I have the urge to nudge her awake, I miss her. I can"t do it. What if she doesn"t yet know about her man? How can Itell her Juan"s head wound up on a stick because of me? There"s no way. I decide to let her stay asleep.
I kneel beside the couch, lean in to kiss her goodbye. I"m very careful not to touch her, though. Afraid my chilly skin will rouse her from sleep.
“Love you, little one,” I whisper and am gone.
Mary Magdalene felt air displacement, heard security door shut. She opened her remaining eye.
“And me, you,” she told the empty space.
Outside, Mary could hear neighbors returning. They were empty handed.
I close the bay door, back in my car, money in hand. I can leave right now. Leave this place and start over somewhere else. I don"t have to do the Pharisees bidding. I still have a choice. I don"t have to take part in this. I still have a choice.
I coax my car to the edge of the street. To the left; escape. To the right is the Christ.
I stay a moment, thinking. What"s it gonna be: left or right? The street is empty and Clarkston still noisy.
I think of Herod and darken. I grip the steering wheel, a growl escapes me. It"s Herod then.
I turn right.
The phone rings. I tell Matthias that I am ready and to call me when the little Christ has reached her destination. I am nearby and will rendezvous without delay. I can pick Immanuel up at the drop site of a small church she"s going to from a dude named Judas. No problem. I"ll grab her, put her in the car and take her silly ass to Herod. Then it will be my turn. I am going to make Herod beg.
I am deep within The Harbor proper. I pull into the parking lot of a grocery store, again barely having enough time to lock the car. My eyeballs roll up to the back of my head as another vision hits:
NEWBORN
70, anno Domini
The baby"s head crowned. The midwife called for another push. The baby"s father pushed down hard on the mother"s bulbous abdomen. The baby came out easy the rest of the way. The mother was relaxed now. She didn"t cry out because her labors did not hurt her anymore. She was dead.
The baby was underweight and blue. It was cold and hungry. It had tiny sharp points pushing through soft cyanotic gums. The baby was a golum, an unnatural. He was a blood drinker, this one.
The father beheld it with bleary eyes. His thoughts were scattered, unclear. His belly was taut and bloated, but empty of food. Sounds of chaos reigned outside. The hovel was shared with the remaining members of his clan.
Jerusalem was falling. The unclean swarmed the Holy City and razed Yahweh"s Temple to the ground. The siege bore fruit, bedlam was all around them. It was as if an ancient and unforgiving evil was unleashed. All, he knew, was lost.
The baby"s father went to the fire. The clan gazed at him with crazed, starving eyes. The midwife stood beside the fire, stoked flames. She was a member of the father"s clan and there to help with the delivery. The offer for her expertise an unusual one, but it made her grateful beyond words. They offered her something far more valuable than gold in these days. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem.
She stirred the water to boil. The midwife looked to the father with the last of her tears. Screams bounced off the outside walls of their barricaded hovel. The Romans beyond were furious and unrestrained.
They were coming.
Even though the Romans neared; the clan was far too weak to run. They had nowhere to go. The Romans will brutally roll over them in a swarm. The father knew his women would soon be savagely raped and most likely killed. He will taste a blade himself before long. His whole family wiped out.
But they won"t be hungry when the Romans finally arrive on their doorstep.
The father went to the midwife. He couldn"t look at her. The children of the clan grabbed anything sharp they could find. They hovered over mother"s dead body. They began with her legs, worked their way up, seeking meat.
At the fire water boiled rapidly. The father stood beside it. He stared hard at the bubbling water, seeking answers not forthcoming. The father could hear his dead wife being cut into, quartered by her own children. His mouth involuntarily watered at the sound of flesh carved.
He gazed at the half-dead newborn vampire in his arms. The baby will save them. He will keep them alive for a time.
And into the pot it did go.
Chapter Eleven
W
ith open eyes and a sharp breath, I regain consciousness. My phone rings. I look around at the night. I"m still in the
grocery store parking lot. My phone is being insistent. The new vision is still fresh in my head.
I wastheir food, for fuck"s sake, I"m thinking. I reach for the resolute ringing.
I answer the phone and listen to Matthias and his specific instructions on how I will recognize Immanuel. I disconnect and drop the phone. The lame fucks.
The car starts and I shove it into gear. The Harbor is deceptively quiet at the moment. Out of frustration I stir the pot, squealing my tires angrily. All the dogs in the world begin barking at once. I wish I could join them.
“With an embrace,” I spit, quick-shifting through the column. “What a cute bunch of assholes.”
I slow to a crawl and douse headlights as I approach the chapel. Out of habit, I park a ways up the block and under the cover of a shot-out street lamp.
I exit the car. I stand still and silent. I raise my nose to the night and sniff it. They are all present. I walk slowly toward the rendezvous point, up around the corner ahead.
I feel strung out. My body still ho lds the golden glow of rich, saturated blood, but my mind is weary. I suppose it"s the past- life visions I"d been having since she touched me. The visions are not just frequent as all hell, but they are strange too. They are very much like dreams. I inherently know more than just what I see. I know the location and the year in which each vision occurs.
Including this present life, I"m a cat with nine lives. Eight visions in the last…have to think…I stop. It"s hard to believe it has only been a couple of days.
I want to know why she did that to me. That"s exactly what I"m going to find out from her. I really, really want her to tell me why.
I walk until I hear a sound coming from the chapel. I cock my ears and listen, vampire hearing bringing it crisply to me.
“Aw, FUCK,” under my breath.
I am a blur as I run.
I stop at the corner. What I seeHerod"s
cops doing to her there is distasteful and it"s enough.
In two heartbeats I am by her side.
I see two cops dragging an unconscious man to a car. He isn"t undercover po-po, so the poor, passed-out fuck must be Judas. No matter, I know who the young lady is. She"s Immanuel the little preacher girl and she is about two seconds away from getting her ass gang raped.
I appear at her side and have taloned fingers in the cop"s mop-top of hair. My hand is wrapped in a death grip. I pull down hard and bring the would-be rapist bitch to the asphalt eye-blink fast.
The cop lands on the blacktop hard. I then turn to the man who is pressing little Immanuel face-first into the cold metal trunk of the undercover car. The cop, in shock, says nothing.
“Let go of her,” I order, but I kno w what they will do. The police always follow the playbook, so I know that some inane asshole response is coming. So, before: „get on the ground!" at full volume leaves his mouth, I slam a fist into the cop"s face, breaking everything.
I tug free my hot, wet fist from the cavern of the cop"s face. I calmly wipe the bloody mess from myfist with the cop"s polo shirt. I hold the man up until my fist is clean. Then I let him drop dead to the ground.
The stopping of the rape and my exchange happen so quickly no one has time to respond. I turn to the rest of the police when one did.
I hear the unmistakable sound of gunmetal scraping against leather. I see the rapist/cop on the ground. He pulls the service weapon from his shoulder holster and draws a bead on me.
Using vampire sp
eed, I drop to one knee and grab hold ofthe shooter"s wrist. I jerk the arm toward me and twist it until the pointy bone of the elbow faces up. I then place my hand on the skyward elbow bone and apply vicious downward pressure.
The cop"s arm bre aks. It cracks like a hard nutshell and I keep pushing down on the elbow and up on the wrist until the arm folds back on itself, the gun pointing at its owner. I make sure the gun fires. One of the hollow point bullets wed ges itself so deep in the cop"s brain you can see all of his filthy thoughts.
I snatch the gun as he falls dead to the ground. I grab and hold another one of the cops with the smoking gun to his temple. I am safely hidden behind the man"s bulk. I find my own gun under my shirtfront. I aim it over the shoulder of my cop/hostage.
The hostage"s penis is still out. He"s been prepping himself, his zipper undone. I glance down at it. It is flaccid and trying its damndest to turtle its way back inside.
I tug the cop back so that his car is behind us. The others try to outflank and encircle me.
“STOP!” I shout at them, “We have a truce. I"m under the protection of the Pharisees,” I say, “You can"t touch me and I won"t let you touch her.”
“Eat shit, you faggot!” one of the circlers replies, stepping up to me.
“You"re first,” I promise , stopping the rushing cop by sticking the 9mm in his face. “You wanna think about this,” I advise the fuming and defenseless rusher. His eyes cross from staring at the gun. It"s so close it almost kisses him. “Think about what you"re gonna lose if you make me open up your head like your buddy on the ground here,” I try, “No more wads of cash from taxing runners, how"d that be? How about no more free bottles of scotch from the liquor stores,” then hit „em with the big one:“and no more blowjobs at gunpoint from high school girls.”
The police all stop where they are, contemplating and weighing options. To their credit, they realize that they have none.
“C"mon, be smart,” I say before they have a chance to change their minds, “Give Matthias a call,” I tell them, “While you"re still only down two.”
Chapter Twelve
Y
ou do not have to apologize for them,” she tells me as we drive. I snap shut my mouth. I"m just about ready to do exactly that. “How did you know?” I ask her. I peek at
her as my car climbs the steeper street. “How did you know I was going to apologize for Herod"s police?”
Immanuel is slumped in the front seat. The handcuffs on her wrists are now gone. I gasp at the surprise of it. I blink once and they are back on, her small pale hands are folded obediently in her lap.
“Are you going to answer me?”
“Yes,” she replies, “as soon as you ask real questions.”
We are getting closer to Herod"s compound and I want some hard answers from this little preacher girl.
“Immanuel,” I say, “When I brought Mary to you, remember?”
“Of course,” she answers, “you need to know why I touched you.” That sure is it. I nod. “You need to know what it means, don"t you Pilate?”
“Yes,” I reply, slowing to a stop at a light, “Tell me.”
With Immanuel"s head still lowered and her body slumped, I look at her. She reaches up with a freed, cuffless hand and scratches her chin. I do a double-take. I look back and the cuffs are once more secure. She is quiet.
I look at her and wait. The light turns green and I speed through the intersection.
“Well,” I ask her, “are you going to tell me?”
“There were hints, of course,” she explains, “Woven throughout your past lives, a redundant thread. It played out time and time again, you simply refusedsee it.”
“Bullshit,” I hiss.
“The next one,” she promises, “that is when all will be made clear to you.”
My hands begin to burn. I remove them one at a time and rub them on the material of my pant legs.
“Perhaps they need to be washed,” Immanuel suggests while staring out her passenger side window into the night. As soon as this is said, the burning sensation ceases and I quit rubbing them.
More bullshit games and I have had enough. I screech a rubber laying stop in the middle of the busy street. People begin shouting curses and they hurl rough insultsat us. I don"t care. I have my full attention played on my prisoner, yelling at her:
“BULLSHIT!” I cry, “This is all such bullshit! Why can"t you talk me straight?” My eyes are yellow warning signs, but I can sense no fear from Immanuel. “There is no common thread except I was a vampire in the visions you cursed me with. Is that my hint?” I ask, “Because if it is I sure as shit don"t know what it means.” Out of pure frustration, I punch a gauge on the dashboard and crack it, bleeding my hand a moment before it begins to heal itself. I suck a bit of hard plastic from my hand and spit it out the window. I turn to her: “I"m warning you,” I growl, “tell me what you fucking know.”
Immanuel throws hair out of her face and glares right back at me. “Hold your tongue, young man,” she tells me. I jerk away from her, recoiling in pure raw primal fear. I begin to fumble with the door handle, aching for escape. I"d never known such terror. Then, as quickly as it came, the fear leaks away. I am left breathing heavy and my heart pounding, but feeling as peaceful as if we were in grandma"s chocolate chip cookie scented kitchen.
“But I ssaved your life,” I whine without thinking. “I just want to know what to do….”
As I trail off in a little boy voice, Immanuel smiles at me.
“You will, Pilate,” she assures me, “I promise.” She looks away once more, stating as a mater-offact: “When you experience your very last vision,” she says, “of your very first life. Then I will keep my promise to you and ye shall know all. You shall remember all.” Immanuel looks up and raisesher cuffed hands. “But what will he do then, Father?” she asks the sky, “When we give to him yet anotherchance?”
Right now I can tell you that I am straight up fucking losing it. Who is she talking to, God? Are you shitting me? This is crazy. I can"t seem to keep my wits around her. To give myself a moment, I pull over to the curb. I put the stick-shift into neutral, setting the parking brake. I turn to her.
I ask, “You do know where I am taking you, don"t you?”
“Yes,” she replies, “now ask your real question.”
I pause, taking the sight of her in: powerful, subdued: allowing herself to remain cuffed. I ask her: “who are you?”
Without hesitation she tells me: “I am Truth.”
I glance out at the street, my jaw clenching from frustration. I vividly recall the terror I felt, so no more angry shouting from this boy. Blowing air out through my clenched teeth, I gun the engine and merge into the center lane, driving once more. My fingers bloodless pale as I grip the wheel and crack my tense neck.
“Truth,” I mutter low, “just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I force myself to ignore the anger now boiling inside me. I turn to her once more and ask: “Truth? Are you forreal?” The soft question opens the dam to my frustrated anger, spittle raining from my lips as I demand: “What the fuck isTRUTH?”
My aggressive driving has caught us up to the thin night time traffic. I weave in and out of it. The Harbor"s a blur as we drive by.
She sighs and says gently to me: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” she explains to me, raspy and tired. “I am the Beginning and the End. I am,” she statesfirmly, “Truth.” Immanuel let hair fall down over her face. “I answered all your questions,” she informs me. “Now leave me alone.”
Herod"s Compound looms ahead, towering over The Harbor as a plague. Lights show, here and there, in the old refinery. The wind howls like the unseen demons that shriek throughout the complex. I hate thisplace I"ve brought the Christ to, but my masters demand such.
I look at Immanuel. Her wrists are bare once more. I sigh and shake my head. I exit the car, and come round to the passenger side. I open the door and help her out. She seem so small to me, deflated. I can no longer
sense her abundant power. She is drained, leeched…ordinary.
Immanuel stands beside the car, saying nothing. Herod"s cops pull up and park behind us. They file out of their vehicles. I see a small glint of shiny metal, the cuffs returning to Immanuel"s wrists. I lookat her and she not back. She"s staring out of focus at the ground. She appears to be praying.
“Spare me this cup of suffering,” I hear her whisper. Immanuel then says: “Not by my will, but Thine,be done.” And then she is silent.
Herod"s cops align themselves in a concave wall in front of Immanuel and me. They do not take eyes off me, their guns only a quick snatch away. No matter what Matthias told the cops about the Pharisee- imposed truce, I know without a doubt that if I even so much as think about pulling more shit like I did at the chapel, they are going to punch my motherfucking card. Dear God in Heaven do the cops look like they wish I would. The police are all smiling to themselves knowing they would get their chance to give my vampireass what they"re sure I"ve got coming to me.
Sensing this, I grip Immanuel"s bicep. I very carefully proceed through the hole they make in their cop wall. I guide a subdued Immanuel toward the entrance. The cops follow close behind us as we all enter Herod"s Compound.
Immanuel remains a passive prisoner as we make our progressive way through the layers of security to Herod"s Throne Room, deep in the subbasement of the refinery. I know the bastard is waiting for us there.
I am bringing the Herod of The Harbor Immanuel the Christ. I feel as though I am drowning a puppy, but try my level best to shake it off. Thinking like that will get me nowhere but dead. My entire existence depends on the next few hours.
Immanuel moves slowly, walking in her gallows gait like guilty prisoners whom have made their peace and are resigned to their fate. But, I know she hasn"t done a fucking thing to deserve what"s to be done to her. It is making my hands burn again.
We are nearing the Throne Room entrance. We can hear Herod"s laughter right through the wall. It is well-oiled, Herod"s evil. I can feel its thickness and depth.
and his evil is true.
THE FALL Page 6
