by David McAfee
“I’m so sorry,” he said. He looked from her to the other corpse sharing the small space with him. Abraham, pale and waxen, stared up at the ceiling of the cavern, his unblinking eyes clouded over in death. Taras had hidden the body here just before leaving for Jerusalem last night. The gaping hole in Abraham’s throat looked eerily similar to Mary’s. He looked back to Mary, hidden underneath the soft cotton wrappings.
“The Bachiyr,” he said. “That’s what they call themselves.” Taras realized with a start he’d almost slipped and said we instead of they. But so what if he did? What did it matter anymore? He was one of them, now, as well. He had only to look at Abraham's mutilated throat to prove it.
“Oh, gods, what did you do to me, Theron?” He asked aloud, recalling the name Ramah had used the night before. He dropped his hands to his face as he realized how far he’d fallen. By rights, he and Mary should be well on their way to Carthage by now, holding hands and making plans for their future family while a boat waited for them in the harbor. Instead, Taras sat in his dead love’s tomb, with only her corpse and that of her murdered father for company. No tears, they still would not come, and without their cleansing power he found it impossible to release his grief. Thus he sat in the darkness of the tomb in silence, listening to the thoughts in his own mind. He almost wished he’d stayed behind in Jerusalem and let Ramah finish him.
Taras stood, hunched over, and made his way to the huge stone in front of the tomb. He placed his hands on it and pushed. The boulder moved easily, and he rolled it out of the way just enough to squeeze through the opening. Even in his grief he marveled at his newfound strength. He rolled the stone back into place and rested his head on it. He thought of Mary’s beautiful face and sighed, knowing he could never return here; it would be a desecration of her memory.
“Goodbye, Mary” he said, placing his palms flat on the stone. “Goodbye Abraham.”
No one wants to die, Roman. Those were the words Abraham used, almost the last words he spoke before Taras killed him.
“You were wrong, Abraham,” he said. “Some of us want to die. Some would find it preferable.”
“It’s not beyond you, you know,” a voice said from behind him.
Taras spun, yanking his sword from its sheath. It was too early in the evening; too soon after such a painful goodbye to kill again, but he would if he had to. When he saw the speaker, his mouth fell open and he dropped his sword.
“You remember me,” Jesus said.
There stood the Nazarene, just as Taras remembered from the night he’d tailed Theron to the Gardens. That night, Jesus had not yet been arrested, and thus he didn’t have the cuts and bruises Taras saw later as he was led to Golgotha. On the cross, his face was bruised and swollen, and numerous cuts and scrapes pocked his body. Now, however, the man’s smooth, unblemished skin showed no evidence of abuse. The crown of thorns was gone, and Jesus's dark hair spilled over his thin shoulders and down his back. But the biggest change in the Nazarene, Taras noted, was the light.
Jesus glowed, similar to the people of Jerusalem but far more intense. Taras felt weak just looking at him. It radiated from Jesus like the light of the sun, and he had to squint his eyes nearly shut against the glare.
Taras blinked, thinking his own situation had driven him insane, but when he opened his eyes again, Jesus remained in front of him. “It’s not possible,” Taras said. “You are dead.”
“As are you, if I’m not mistaken.”
Taras looked down at his hands, so cold and lifeless, and realized he didn’t have a reply. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
Taras remembered his part in the man’s death, and shame filled him. He raised his eyes and looked at Jesus, so calm and serene in the moonlight. “Why are you here?” He asked. “Have you come to take your revenge on me, Nazarene? If so, please get on with it. I’m late; I should have been in Hades four days ago.”
Jesus smiled, and the light around him intensified so much Taras had to turn his head. “That is not why I came,” Jesus said. “Your mistakes are not entirely your own, though you must still take responsibility for them. I hold no anger for you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To tell you it’s not beyond you.”
“What isn’t?”
“You know the answer to that already, Taras.” Jesus folded his arms and fixed him with a stern look, as though lecturing a dense child. “Your wish; it’s not impossible. The Sun can do it. So can fire. If I’m not mistaken, the Bachiyr can also die by having their heads removed, and there are other ways, too. In other words, you have options.”
“Options?”
“Yes, options. Allow death to find you, or spend eternity running from the other Bachiyr, killing and devouring innocent people. They will hunt you, you know. Ramah, in particular, will not rest until you have been destroyed.”
Taras pondered that for a moment. He’d known about the Sun’s ability to kill him; his burned fingers told him that much. But he hadn’t been ready. Of course, at the time he didn’t know the extent of what he would become, either. Was he ready now? Could he step into the sunlight, if it came to that? Could he willingly walk into his death?
A thought occurred to him, and he looked at the Nazarene. “But you’re Jewish,” Taras said. “How could you advocate such a thing? Doesn’t it go against your beliefs?”
“Oh, I don’t advocate either choice. Neither of them is very good, if you ask me.”
“Then why tell me about them?”
“Because you needed to know you have them. You always have a choice. Your options may not be good ones, but they are always there, and it is up to you to choose one. That’s the whole point.”
“The point of what?”
“Free will, of course.”
“What?” Taras sat on a small boulder by the tomb, his hand on his forhead. Free will? What did that mean? Was there any other kind? His head hurt, and he massaged his left temple with his fingers. “I don’t understand.”
Jesus smiled again. “That’s all right. The important thing about having choices is to know you have them. Just remember, Taras, you are already dead. You should not, in fact, be here at all. But, since you are here, maybe you don’t want to leave. It seems you haven’t made your choice yet.” Jesus paused and looked behind Taras, at the entrance to Mary’s tomb.
“Then again,” he said, “maybe you have.” With that, Jesus turned away and walked down the path, headed in the direction of Bethany, taking his glow with him.
Taras was left in darkness as he sat by Mary’s tomb – now Abraham’s, as well – and thought about what Jesus told him. He did, indeed have options. But was he strong enough to do it? Could he face the sun and die, with honor?
He thought of the pain from last night when the crowd had set him alight. His back still burned. The only way to ease that pain was blood, which he craved even after speaking to the Nazarene. He thought of Theron, the Bachiyr who’d done this to him, who’d also killed Mary. If he died, who would bring Theron to justice? Ramah? Jesus? Anyone? Or would he simply roam the world, taking lives at will and causing more misery? But if Taras lived, would he be any different? He had only to reopen the tomb and look at Abraham’s corpse to know the answer.
But, still…
Options, Jesus said. You always have a choice, and in that moment, Taras made his. No, he thought, shaking his head at his own cowardice. No, I’m not ready. Not yet. He stood, whispered a final goodbye to Mary, and started walking. Here I come, Theron.
He had no idea where to start looking, but he guessed one place was as good as another, and anywhere was better than nowhere. He broke from the road and stepped onto the same path Jesus had taken, but going the opposite direction.
* * *
Theron woke in a cave somewhere east of Jerusalem. His body ached from his many wounds and the long flight from the city. He’d run until the sun crested the horizon ahead, and then he found this cav
e. Now, as he stretched his pained limbs, he thought it was not too soon to start running again. Like Theron, Ramah would be up at dusk, and he shouldn’t be too far behind. Best to get moving as soon as possible. By now Ramah would have calmed from his initial anger and realized death was too easy a punishment for Theron, and would no doubt press the Council to have him turned into a Lost One for thousands of years. Just the thought of it sent a shudder up Theron’s spine.
Theron checked his equipment, making sure his sword and boots were all in good working order. In one of his pockets, he found the letter he’d retrieved from Simon’s tunic. He opened it and read it a second time, still not believing his eyes. But the cuts and bruises on his skin were proof enough of his dilemma. He knew the Council would hunt him down like a dog for turning a human into a Bachiyr without their consent. They guarded their members with a fervor bordering on fanaticism, only allowing a select few to join their ranks. No one was permitted to just go around creating more at their whim; only the Council had that authority.
He started to crumple up the letter and throw it to the ground, but instead he folded it up and placed it in the pocket of his tunic, wanting to keep it as a reminder. He knew he would be better off to do as Herris asked and return to the Council to face his punishment with honor, even given the new charges the Council hadn’t known about when Herris wrote the letter. Except…
You have been lied to, vampire…
…except he pictured the Lost One in the house by the Damascus Gate. Could he go through that? Could he live such a wretched existence? Rotting and festering for centuries while his flesh was eaten alive by swarms of insect larva? He imagined himself in the tattered robe, serving the vampires in the Halls: tending to their whims and cleaning up after them when they finished in the Larder.
“I can’t do it,” he whispered. He could not make himself obey Herris’ request. He stepped out of the cave, his hunger driving him to hunt. He needed blood, and it seemed he no longer had to worry about using any restraint. What did it matter anymore? Why should he care if bodies were discovered drained of blood when he finished with them? The Council already wanted to kill him, or to turn him into a Lost One. Why should he care about their laws now? To hell with them.
He left the cave and loped down a rough mountain road, heading away from Jerusalem and into the countryside. He hoped to come to a small village or town before daybreak. Tonight, he would feast, and the Council of Thirteen be damned. Oh, they would catch him eventually. Theron held no illusions in that regard. Sooner or later Ramah would track him down and then, if he survived, Theron would spend the next eternity or two as a Lost One.
…and you have been betrayed.
The words came, unbidden, into his mind. Jesus was right; he had been betrayed, by his own people. Theron examined the flesh on the back of his right hand, which remained charred and blackened from Jesus's touch.
“To Hell with you, Nazarene," he said. "None of this would have happened if not for you.”
He again found a small measure of satisfaction in the knowledge that Jesus had died horribly on the cross. Nailed to it, or so he heard, left to die a slow and painful death under the seething Israeli sun. But it wasn’t enough. Because of Jesus, Theron’s own people had turned against him. After hundreds of years of loyal service, he was now an outcast. The Nazarene was probably laughing at him from beyond the grave.
Well, he would have the last laugh. Theron would use his skill and power, unequaled in Bachiyr society except among the Council of Thirteen, to hunt down every single human who called himself a friend of the fallen rabbi. Their deaths would be horrible. Theron would put them through all the suffering the Council meant for him. He would rip their organs from their still-living flesh and savor their screams like wine.
When he finished with Jesus's friends, he would hunt down those who had heard the Nazarene speak and do the same to them. Then he would go after anyone those people had spoken to about Jesus. It would take a long time to finish, but time was all Theron had left. If it took him a thousand years or ten thousand, he would eliminate all traces of Jesus's life on this planet, washing it away in a river of blood until no one remained who’d heard the name of Jesus. He would continue his quest until humanity had lost all memory of the carpenter’s son from Galilee or until the Council caught him, whichever came first.
He looked up at the moon, shining from the heavens, and shook his fist at it.
When he returned his eyes to the road, he spotted a caravan stopped up ahead. Half a dozen horses stood tethered to trees at the side of the road, and four wagons surrounded a small fire. Clearly, the drivers had made camp for the night. Theron walked up to the wagons, not bothering to hide the sound of his approach.
“Hello, traveler” a man said from beside the fire. “Have you come to join us? We have food and a pallet. You are welcome to share our dinner.”
Theron recognized the speaker. Filius, his name was. A Roman legionary. Or at least he used to be. He recalled the night Taras led him through Jerusalem bound hand and foot. Filius had accosted him, even struck him. Apparently Filius had traded his legionary’s uniform for a simple, coarse robe tied at the waist with a short piece of rope. Theron noted the man possessed a faint glow, but it would not be strong enough to protect him. Not tonight.
Theron smiled and stepped into the ring of wagons.
Dinner, indeed.
Epilogue
Just outside the city of Caesarea, 103 A.D.
After following the scent for nearly an hour, Ramah the Bloodletter, second of the Council of Thirteen and their primary assassin for over four thousand years, stepped through the splintered door and into the small home. Nestled into the hills of the countryside, the house was not easy to find. The gray stone had been allowed to grow moss, and the structure itself seemed to squat into the earth, its roof just peeking over the ground. If Ramah’s suspicions about the place were correct, it had been built that way on purpose, lest the Romans discover the place and crucify whoever lived there.
Ramah’s hard brown eyes probed the darkness of the interior, noting with stern displeasure the coagulated blood sprayed along the walls in arcs up to ten feet long. A demolished table lay in a corner, the broken body of a middle-aged man in a blood-spattered white robe sprawled over the shattered remains. The man’s shredded neck could not support his head, which lolled to the side at an angle no living man could attain. Glazed, empty eyes stared up at the ceiling from a face that was only just beginning to collect a swarm of flies. The man had not been dead long. A few hours, at most.
As he walked through the house, he noted several other corpses among the broken furniture and other household items. All were in similar condition to the first, including the torn remains of two small children. He could not even tell if the two little ones were boys or girls, such was the devastation their killer had wrought on their tiny bodies.
He shook his head as he continued through the house, looking for a sign that would tell him for certain he was on the right track. He knew this to be the work of a Bachiyr like himself, but he needed confirmation that it was the one he sought. At this point the slaughter could be the work of any one of a number of renegade vampires, the Father knew there were plenty of them these days. He had to make sure he was following the right one. In truth, it didn’t matter much. Ramah would kill whatever vampire committed these acts regardless of whether or not he or she was his intended target. Whoever did this had left too many clues, too many possibilities for the people of the nearby town to guess the true nature of the savage murders. As such, he would have to raze the place when he finished his search.
He wandered through the building several times, but could not find what he sought. More than a little irritated at himself for wasting valuable time, he started to leave. He was almost to the door when he stepped on a metal ring in the floor. He frowned. How had the ring escaped his notice earlier? Had he not felt it beneath his boot, he might have walked out of this place and never known
it was there. He reached down to grasp it and sure enough, a section of the floor came up, revealing a stone staircase leading down into the earth.
Ramah walked slowly down the stairs, knowing already what he would find. His hunch was confirmed when he came to the bottom and found a large stone chamber. A central aisle cut through the middle of the place, bordered on either side by the remains of several wooden benches. At the head of the aisle, on a slightly raised area, stood a small wooden altar. Emblazoned on the front of the altar was the simple silhouette of a fish, symbol of the new religion sweeping the world. The symbol was smeared with blood, as though the killer tried to cover it up.
The air here was thick with the heady scent of blood and clouds of buzzing flies, but his attention was drawn to a question scrawled on the wall behind the altar, written in the blood of the victims. He smiled when he read it; it was all the proof he needed.
RAMAH, HAVE YOU FOUND ME?
Next to the message, the killer had drawn a black hand on the wall. Ramah had seen the same mark many times in the last seventy years.
He turned and examined the rest of the room. Amidst the clouds of hungry flies, he counted at least a dozen more bodies. He smiled in the darkness as he took in the macabre scene. The Christians, as they called themselves, must have been right in the middle of one of their secret worship ceremonies when the killer came in and sent them to their Promised Land.
Judging by the ferocity and brutality of the killings, as well as the writing on the wall, it could only be one vampire; the same one Ramah had been hunting for seventy years. A fugitive who went out of his way to ferret out these Christians and kill them as horribly as possible, then leaving without bothering to cover up the deed.
“I have you now, Theron,” Ramah said aloud, the words echoing against the stone walls of the makeshift tomb.
