Unholy Night (14 page)

Night was falling unnaturally fast, the sun retreating toward the west, frightened off by what it saw below. The world was growing dark before Balthazar’s eyes, and the Nile with it. But not for lack of light. The river was turning dark because it was bleeding.

A red river.

Only the moon loomed above now, casting its full gray glow over Egypt. But there was something different about it tonight. Something wrong. There were strange lines in its surface, and they were growing wider.

The moon was breaking apart.

Like a gray plate slowly shattering against a black marble floor, pieces began to break off and fall from the heavens, each shard the size of a mountain. The pieces began to rain down on the opposite bank—whole cities falling from the sky, making the earth tremble with each impossible impact. Terrified fishermen ran for their lives as one of the pieces crashed down, less than a mile from where they stood. But Balthazar didn’t move. He
knew
. He knew this was all just an illusion. There was no need to run, not even as another sliver grew bigger in the night sky above his head.

Trust yourself, Balthazar.

And he did. But when the sliver was close enough for Balthazar to see the outlines of craters in its surface, his feet overruled his brain and began to move on their own. Slowly at first, then into a full sprint, up the riverbank and into the desert beyond.

He felt the earth shake as the sliver collided with the desert behind him, just like the earthquakes he remembered in Antioch, only a thousand times more powerful. Behind him, a wave of debris lifted off the desert floor, carried by the shock wave of the impact. There were many things a man could outrun, especially a man of Balthazar’s speed. But a shock wave of the moon and earth colliding wasn’t on the list. The only thing Balthazar could do was hit the ground and try to ride it out. He dove onto his belly and lay as flat as he could against the sand, covering the top of his head with his arms.

The first flecks of debris pelted his legs from behind. The stinging grains of the sandstorms he’d weathered before. And then the wave. Slamming into him like a giant fist. The noise deafening. The debris tearing away at his clothes and skin.

The pressure sucking the air out of his lungs. If there was a God, this would be the sound of his voice.

Then it was gone. And the desert with it.

Balthazar lifted his head and found himself in a vast room of brightly colored walls, their surfaces smoother than he thought possible. Smoother even than glass. Three of those walls were purple: the ones behind him, in front of him, and to his left. The wall on his right, however, was pink. A color he’d rarely seen in the empire, except on the blushing faces of a few fair-skinned Roman women. The floor was an untarnished white. A white table before him, a white chair beneath him, and a white ceiling high, high above him.

A man stood on the far side of the room with his back to Balthazar. A man with long gray hair and matching gray robes. He looked to be pouring something from a clay jug with his left hand and holding a wooden walking staff in his right.

The gray-haired man turned, a wooden cup of water in his left hand. His face was older than Balthazar had expected. Almost unnaturally old, with deep bags beneath his cloudy eyes. His skin had clearly seen its share of sun over the years; his hands had known their share of labor. The old man shuffled across the clean white floor and took a seat across the table. He searched Balthazar with those cloudy eyes for a moment, then slid the cup across the table.

“Drink.”

He did. The cool, clear water was, perhaps, the best he’d ever had. And when he’d had his fill, Balthazar wiped his mouth and spoke. “Who are you?”

“A messenger.”

“Whose?”

The old man smiled at him. It was a familiar smile. One Balthazar loathed more than any other. The smug, self-satisfied smile of a man who thinks himself wise.

“Fine,” said Balthazar. “Then what’s the message?”

“You mustn’t leave the child to die.”

After being torn inside out on top of a pyramid, seeing fish boil in a river of blood, and running from the shattered moon, Balthazar had almost forgotten about the baby.

“I didn’t leave him. I saved him.”

“Not yet. You have to stay with him a while longer.”

“I don’t ‘have’ to do anything.”

The old man considered him through those cloudy eyes.

“If you do, you will never have to steal again, so long as you live. You will be wealthy.”

What’s that—a bribe? Dangle a little gold in front of the thief and watch him run? If you think I can be tempted that easily, you’re—

“How wealthy?”

“Wealthier than Herod. Wealthier than Augustus himself.”

You must think I’m stupid. No man could ever be that rich. And even if he could, there’s no way you could possibly make a promise like—

“How long do I have to stay with him?”

The old man smiled. “Until you let him go.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“What I’m asking isn’t easy. Armies will come after you.”

“I can deal with armies.”

“Not just the armies of man.”

Balthazar furrowed his brow and pursed his lips. “What other armies are there?”

The old man smiled again. But this one was different. Less smug, more ominous. A “you’ll see” sort of smile. Balthazar changed his mind. He hated this smile the most.

“I said what other type of armies?”

“Why don’t you have another drink?”

Balthazar stared the old man down. He didn’t like being toyed with. Then again, another drink of that cool, clear water sounded like the cure for all that ailed him. He looked down at the half-empty cup on the white table. But when he reached for it, it was with someone else’s hands. Hands that were covered in brown spots, with dark blue veins bulging beneath thin, baked skin. Balthazar startled—pushing his chair away from the table and trying to stand. But his body was weak. Old. When he looked up for an explanation, the old man was gone.

He looked down at his hands again, shaking and discolored. His eyes barely able to see beyond the length of his arm. There was something in his right hand. Something gold. Balthazar raised his arm, slowly. He knew what it was, but he didn’t dare believe it. Not until it became clear in the palm of his shaking hand. Not until he saw the thing he’d spent half his life searching for.

The pendant.

T
he patient would live. He’d been unconscious for nearly two days, sweating through the last of his fever, but he was starting to come around. Zachariah had saved him.

Balthazar had been lucky. He was still young and strong, and the blade had only just broken the outer sac of his lung. Had it gone any deeper—even a few centimeters deeper—there would have been nothing to do but watch him drown. As it was, Zachariah had been able to drain the air and blood trapped in his chest, and suture the wound shut with a bone needle and flax thread. It was healing nicely, thanks in part to the myrrh the patient had been traveling with.

Balthazar was sitting up on his own. His color had returned, and his appetite with it. Zachariah sat at his bedside in the glow of a candle. The house quiet around them. He watched the patient drink from the cup in his hands, wipe his mouth, and politely say no to the question he’d asked moments before.

“Please,” said Zachariah, “tell me what you saw.”

“I told you…I don’t want to talk about it. It was just a dream.”

Balthazar had mumbled in his sleep. Mumbled about flying. About the moon, and the pink walls, and the roots of a tree being ripped from the earth. Zachariah had seen other patients do this over the years, and he’d always found their visions fascinating. The way their minds interpreted what was happening to their bodies. Their vividness.

“Even if it was strange or absurd. Tell me what you saw.”

Balthazar looked at the bearded old man. The man not unlike the one in his dream. The man who’d saved his life. He supposed that he owed him at least that much. It was just the two of them, after all. The others were asleep.

And so he did. He told him about flying over the desert. About the mountain and the people dancing around the great golden something. He told him about his body tearing itself apart and falling down the side of the pyramid. About the statues on the shores of the Nile. He told him about the fish going belly-up in a river of blood, the moon breaking apart into pieces and falling from the sky. About the room with pink and purple walls and the man with the wooden staff who offered him a drink and told him to go to Egypt.

But not about the Man With Wings. That he kept to himself.

When he was done telling his story, Zachariah sat silently for a long time. Thinking. Balthazar thought he saw the old man’s eyes filling with tears.

“I believe,” said Zachariah at last, “that you have been chosen by God.”

Here we go…

In the two days since the surgery, Zachariah’s house had been full of storytelling. He’d learned who his patient really was. How he and the other fugitives had run into Joseph and Mary in the stables. How he’d saved them when Herod’s men had stormed into Bethlehem. His niece, Mary, had told him about visions of the angel Gabriel and her miraculous pregnancy. This had prompted Zachariah’s wife to admit something she’d kept from him for six years: that the same angel had visited her during her own miraculous pregnancy and told her that their son, John, would be the Messiah’s prophet. And now, Zachariah had just been told about the most astonishing dream. A dream he believed to be a message from God himself.

“I believe,” he said, “that you have been instructed to walk the path that Moses walked. The path of Exodus. I believe that you have been chosen to take the child and his parents to Egypt.”

It made sense. Egypt was relatively close, and beyond Herod’s political or military reach. And while it had technically been a Roman province for the last thirty years, the Romans had little influence over local affairs.

“Do you want to know what I think?” asked Balthazar. “I think I had a bad dream.”

“Will you take them?”

The voice hadn’t come from Zachariah. Balthazar turned toward the door and saw a boy. He had no idea who this boy was or how long he’d been standing there.

“Will you take them?” the boy repeated. “Take them to Egypt?”

“My son,” said Zachariah. “You must forgive him. He sometimes mistakes himself for a grown man.”

Balthazar didn’t like children, generally speaking. He especially didn’t like the way this one looked at him. There was no fear in his eyes.

“If I take them,” he said, turning back to Zachariah, “it’s only because I’m headed in the same direction. Not because I believe that some god sent me a message.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe or not,” said Zachariah. “As long as God believes in y—”

“Stop.”

He wasn’t about to hear any more of that zealot garbage. Not even from the man who’d saved his life.

“I said I’ll think about it.”

It was nearly 200 miles to Egypt if they took the route Balthazar had in mind. South past Aijalon, then through the desert to Hebron, where they would rest and resupply before making the final push south to Egypt. Normally, he could make a trip like that in five days. But with his current entourage, and the fact that they’d have to stay off the main roads, he expected it to take nearly twice as long.

It had been five days since the surgery, and Balthazar was beginning to feel like his old self again. Up, around, and ready to go. Gaspar and Melchyor had seen to it that the camels were fed and watered. They’d packed as much food as they could carry. Their robes were new, their bodies were bathed, and their bellies were full. They were ready.

And they were waiting.

Waiting because the Jews were inside, performing another one of their ancient, pointless rituals.
If ever you need proof that religion is a waste of time, here it is. We could’ve been off an hour ago.

With everything that’d happened, Joseph and Mary had almost forgotten that it had been eight days since their baby’s birth. In accordance with Jewish law, males were circumcised and named on their eighth day. Normally, the bris would’ve been performed by a mohel—an elder designated by the father, usually a rabbi. But under the circumstances, an old physician with shaking hands would have to suffice. Joseph and Mary held hands as they watched Zachariah wield his scalpel and lean over the baby.

Both of them said a silent prayer asking God to guide his hand.

“I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins.”

—Leviticus 26:33

F
or a moment, it seemed like Herod was done screaming. Then he began again.

What came out of his diseased mouth was less a collection of words and more a series of sharp, anguished notes. Tired lungs forcing bursts of air through bloodied vocal cords. Sounds with no shape or rhythm. The improvisations of a madman. Herod’s courtesans had taken refuge behind their pillars once again. His advisors and servants pressed their backs against the walls of the sunlit throne room, trying to make themselves as small as possible as their king circled, tearing and kicking at any object that dared cross his path, spewing those frightening, senseless sounds.

A body lay in the center of Herod’s harried orbit—the body of a giant whose legs had been shredded by the enemy in Bethlehem and whose throat had more recently been cut by friends in Jerusalem.

It was the body of the soldier Balthazar had spared.

He’d been led in to see his king only moments before, two fellow soldiers helping him along as he limped down the length of the throne room, helping him down as he knelt before Herod on broken knees. With his head bowed and his body shaking from fright, the giant had delivered the news: They’d failed to kill all the male children of Bethlehem. His captain was dead, and many men with him.

“Did the men of the village rise up against you?” asked Herod. There was a faint hope behind this question. An uprising could be forgiven. Better yet, it could be crushed. He would simply send more men.

“No, Your Highness.”

“Then why does one of my soldiers come crawling back to me with his head hung low, spilling his blood on my floor? Who did this to you?”

The soldier paused, ashamed of what he was about to say. He’d considered lying to the king, saying it was thirty or even fifty men who’d defeated them in Bethlehem, making up some story about a band of mysterious fighters who came out of nowhere. Mercenaries from some nearby kingdom. But lying was pointless. Sooner or later, Herod would learn the truth. Shameful as it was, it had to be told.

“Three men, Your Highness,” he said at last.

Herod stood and walked slowly, slowly down the steps from his throne.

“Three men?”

“Three men…dressed in the robes of nobles.”

Somewhere at the ends of his arms, Herod’s spindly fingers were balling into fists.

“They…killed our captain and…escaped with one of the children. One of them gave me a message. I’m…supposed to deliver it to you.”

Herod was directly in front of the soldier now, his small frame rendered almost comically frail next to the giant kneeling before him.

“Then,” said Herod, “I suppose you’d better deliver it.”

The soldier swallowed hard. All things being equal, he would’ve preferred being left to bleed on the streets of Bethlehem. But this duty had fallen to him, and it must be done.

“He said ‘the Antioch Ghost is laughing at you.’ He said he’ll…‘stand over your grave.’”

The words took a moment to register. When they did, Herod lost the last of himself that was sane and ordered the soldier’s throat cut at once. Even repeating such a thing was an act of treason. And so the two soldiers who’d helped their battered comrade kneel now drew their blades from behind. The giant, for his part, didn’t resist. Not as his brothers dragged their daggers along his neck. Not even as he saw a spray of red cover their arms or felt the warmth of blood running over his chest. He’d known. He’d known the moment the Antioch Ghost had chosen him as his messenger. He’d known he would never leave Herod’s throne room alive. The giant fell forward, feeling as if his head were full of wine. A moment later, he couldn’t remember his own name. A moment after that, he was gone, and Herod was screaming, “The child will die! The child will die, and the Antioch Ghost with him!”

There were no political considerations to be made. No discussions to be had or advisors consulted. These things would simply come to pass, no matter the cost in men or treasure. They would come to pass, even if he had to kill all the sons in all of the villages of Judea.

Not even the sight of that treasonous blood spilling on his floor, of that treasonous mouth hanging stupidly open, could assuage the effect of what the giant had said. Of how the Antioch Ghost was mocking him. And so Herod circled, spewing those strange, disconnected noises with his raw throat while his advisors waited in silence. Waiting for his rage to subside—for they could no more hasten the end of their king’s tantrum than make a storm blow itself out before its time. All they could do was take shelter and wait for the clouds to part. When at last they did, Herod slumped into his throne. He was shaking from exhaustion, wincing from the pain in his throat…but he was smiling. Smiling, because the storm had left a seedling in its wake. An idea.

Herod smiled, for here again was proof that he was blessed with the greatest gift a leader could possess:

Vision.

Where others saw arid wastelands, he saw future cities. Where others mourned the ashes, he harnessed the flames. Even now, slumped over in his throne, weak with rage, he saw an opportunity. A way to slay the child and the Ghost in one stroke, and achieve something even greater in the process.

The emperor…

Herod, like all provincial kings, only ruled because he enjoyed the backing of Rome. But his relationship with the empire had been strained ever since Rome’s civil war, from which Augustus Caesar emerged the ultimate victor. Unfortunately, Herod had been a supporter of Augustus’s chief rival, Marc Antony. And while he’d been quick to pledge his everlasting and unwavering loyalty to the new Caesar, Augustus had viewed Judea’s puppet king with suspicion ever since. But here was a chance to change all of that. A chance to improve relations with Rome and protect his dynasty in Judea. Here was a chance to flatter the emperor, while using him at the same time.

With the last of his voice, Herod summoned a scribe and dictated a letter. It began: