Unholy Night (30 page)

Balthazar is born again. He’s Samson slaying an entire army with a jawbone. He’s Hercules killing the Nemean lion. David killing Goliath. He pulls his arms until they shake, pulls on the ropes that bind each of his wrists to the wooden beam above. And witness now the sound of cracking wood.

The admiral’s eyes nearly leap out of his head, because he doesn’t believe what he sees. The math doesn’t hold up. A man can’t be that powerful, especially one whose body has been so battered. Yet the beam splinters, then splits in two and falls to the stone floor with a crash, freeing Balthazar’s hands.

The guards draw their swords and come at him. Balthazar charges too. He goes for the table against the wall—the one filled with an assortment of scalpels and clamps and scissors. He grabs the first one his fingers touch, unaware that it’s the very scalpel that was used to cut away the missing flesh beneath both of his arms. With long ropes still attached to both wrists, Balthazar turns and swings the blade in front of his body just in time.

And as weak and battered as he is, he swings with more strength than he’s ever known. His blade cuts through the droplets of rainwater that fall from the stone ceiling, splitting the ones it touches as it strikes the side of the first guard’s face—flaying it open like his own flesh had been flayed. He pierces the other beneath the armpit, driving the blade deeper—deeper past his ribs and into his lungs. He withdraws it and the man falls to the wet floor, where he’ll either drown in his own blood in seconds or die from infection in weeks. It doesn’t matter, as long as he leaves the earth in pain.

But no time for these thoughts. Not yet. For the admiral has just realized that he’s next and begins his hasty retreat toward the closed cell door. Balthazar has to cover twice the distance to beat him there. It’s impossible. But not today. The world has bowed before him. Time has wrapped him in its arms. Balthazar moves with wings on his feet, sees with eyes in the back of his head. He takes a sword from one of the guards and moves across the wet floor with impossible speed, blocking the admiral’s escape. And the admiral is afraid. He backs away, for he can see the truth written on Balthazar’s face. He can see that this man will not fail, no matter what he aims to do. He’s afraid because he knows that these are his last moments on this earth and that they’re going to be terrible moments.

And he’s right.

Balthazar pushes his sword into the admiral’s belly. And the admiral cries out as his tender flesh gives way but doesn’t break. So Balthazar pushes harder, and the flesh tears—letting the blade in. Letting it through his belly and out the back. And it hurts, and he’s so afraid. Suddenly lying on the wet floor, where his blood mixes with rainwater. Pouring out of him, around the sides of the blade.

Every day is the last day,
he thinks.
Every light casts a shadow. And only the gods know when the darkness will find us.

But the admiral sees a light. A light coming for him. His breathing is labored, blood running from the corners of his mouth. He watches this warm, soothing orange light as it grows closer, dancing from side to side. And he knows it’s a merciful light, though he doesn’t know how he knows this.

But there’s a man with the light—carrying it with him. It’s the Ghost. And now the admiral is afraid again, because he knows. He knows what the light really is. The Ghost has gone and taken something out of the oven. Something metal. Hot enough to glow.

And the Ghost is above him now. He brings a bare foot down on the admiral’s hair and presses it hard against the wet stone floor. So hard that the admiral can’t move his head. And before he can scream, the light is forced into the admiral’s mouth, shattering his front teeth—and his scream disappears behind the sizzle and smoke. He can smell his lips burning away. Feel his saliva turning to steam and his tongue cooking as the poker moves past his mouth and down into his throat—the red-hot iron blackening his tonsils and vocal cords. He writhes with what little strength he has left as the Ghost pulls the light back out of his throat and pushes it up into the roof of his mouth, searing his palate before breaking through it and entering his nasal cavity. And the Ghost can see that glowing light beneath the skin of the admiral’s face now, and it’s a strange, almost beautiful sight—that warm orange light making a man’s face light up from the inside. But he keeps pushing, until the iron tip breaks through the bone at the top of his nasal cavity and sinks into his—

The admiral woke with a scream. Panicked at first, he examined his body, looking for blood, bruises, anything—but to his relief and amazement, he was unharmed. It had all been a strange, vivid dream. Something brought on by an illness, perhaps. The stress of being away from home for too long.

He stood on the bank of a river. It was a hot, clear day. The fishermen were out in droves, the boats drifting gently by. He could see a boy and a toddler resting in the shade of a scarred palm tree on the opposite bank.

The Orontes…Antioch.

He was back in Antioch, and for all its crime and rats, he’d never been happier to be anywhere in his life. The admiral turned, expecting to see the familiar desert behind him, the long, narrow mounds marking the shallow graves where the Romans tossed their dead trash. But the desert was gone. The graves were empty. And in their place was a wall of the dead—their eyes long since turned to dust but looking at him all the same.

They’d been waiting for him…waiting to welcome him into the wasteland they’d called home for so many years. A place where there
were
no years. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder—a semicircle that bent around him until it touched the river on both sides. Trapped, by all the unjustly dead of Antioch. And there, at the center of this mob of twisted, bloodless bodies, was a man unlike any of the others. A man unlike any the admiral had ever seen.

A Man With Wings.

He was good and beautiful. And the admiral began to sob, for he knew—somehow he knew exactly who this man was and what he’d come to do. He sobbed and shook, for he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. And worst of all, he knew that he deserved it.

The Man With Wings walked forward and took the admiral gently in his arms, and off they went. Off into a sea of time and space—the whole of the universe reflected in its shimmering surface. Off to the place where the dead burned forever…

And Mary and Joseph instinctively press their backs to the wall of their pitch-black cell and shield the baby with their bodies as they hear the latch opening. Sela rises, determined to die fighting whatever comes through that door. Every inch of her is broken and bloodied; her hands are shackled. But they aren’t getting that baby without a fight. Not a chance. And the creak of the cell door opening, and the lone, impossible silhouette it reveals. And the joy and amazement of impossible reunion and the hurried tossing off of chains.

The reunited fellowship hurried down the corridor that twisted its way through the dungeon, trying to go as quietly as they could despite the two inches of rainwater on the floor. Trying to find a sliver of daylight to show them the way and running from the growing shouts in the dark behind them. A call of alarm had gone out, and every way in or out of the palace would soon be sealed off. They needed another miracle, and for a moment, Balthazar thought they’d gotten it: daylight. Up ahead, around the next corner.

He led the others quickly and quietly around the corner. But on rounding it, Balthazar froze. There was a Roman soldier blocking their path, his sword drawn. The promise of daylight behind him. The dungeon’s torchlight flickering off his meticulously polished helmet, breastplate, and sword. He’d been waiting for them.

Pontius Pilate.

Balthazar stood with his sword clutched tightly in his right hand, his left arm extended, shielding Mary and the baby behind him. The two men glared at each other. Both of them dark, driven men. Both of them killers. Their fingers shifted on the handles of their swords, each man waiting for the slightest twitch of the other. Waiting for attack. But none came.

Satisfied that Balthazar didn’t mean to cut him down on the spot, Pilate’s eyes shifted to the other fugitives: the baby’s parents.
Terrified.
The woman who harbored them.
Who risked her life to save them and fought off at least two of my men by herself.
And then there was the Antioch Ghost.
Who risks his life to protect them even now, when he could have just as easily escaped on his own.

Pilate stood there a moment—his eyes fixed on Balthazar. On everything he’d ever wanted.

“Fifty paces,” he said. “And then I start yelling.”

With that, he lowered his sword, passed by them, and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.

Until his dying breath, Pilate would never fully understand why he’d done it. All he’d had to do was call for help, and he would’ve been a hero. Had it been the sight of Balthazar being tortured? Was it the desire to see the puppet king of Judea humiliated? Or was it just that he didn’t like the idea of putting newborn babies to death?

Whatever the reason, he’d held the glory he sought right there, in his hands—and he’d let it slip away. Just like that. It was a decision that would shape his life in ways he couldn’t possibly understand, and it wouldn’t be the last time he faced it. Some three decades later, Pontius Pilate would encounter the infant again, in Jerusalem. Once again, he would feel a strange compulsion to spare his life. But the second time, he would fail.

The fellowship of five ran out of the palace’s seaward entrance and into the stormy gray of its terrace, where raindrops collided with marble, producing a ceaseless, almost soothing noise. With the rain falling and the alarm being raised inside, the terrace was momentarily free of guards. Balthazar had a decision to make, and it had to be made in the next few seconds, in spite of his exhaustion and the breathtaking pain radiating from the exposed muscle on his sides.

They could flee through the desert on foot, but if they were spotted, they’d be no match for the Romans and their horses. They could look for somewhere to hide near the palace and hope that the Romans would be fooled into chasing an assumption through the desert—but what if they weren’t? It was here, in this moment of bleeding indecision, that a vision of waving reeds caught the fellowship’s attention, and their eyes descended the wet marble steps to the sea, where the masts of Roman warships bobbed up and down in the swell. All of them firmly moored against the dock…