61 A.D. (Bachiyr, Book 2) (16 page)

And why Theron? Ramah would chase her regardless of the company she kept. Doubtless she knew that, so taking the former Enforcer wasn’t necessary. That meant she wanted him for something, too. But what?

Damn it all, there were too many questions. He needed to focus his energies on finding her, not speculating about her motives. He’d force her to answer his questions when he caught her. Then he’d kill her, and bring her shriveled, blackened heart to Herris as a gift, along with Taras and Theron, if he could be captured alive.

He turned a corner and saw two figures huddled in the shadow of a tavern doorway, a man and a woman. The man’s back was to him, but his height and build were about the same as Theron’s. Could it be that easy? He didn’t recognize the woman, but he’d never seen Baella before, so that didn’t surprise him.

As he approached, he heard their voices.

“How much?” the man asked.

“Five silver,” the woman replied.

“Robbery. I’ll not pay more than two silver.”

The woman spat. “It’s a bargain at five. Four is my final price.”

A prostitute. Not Baella. Damn.

Ramah swept by the pair, plunging his claws into the man’s back as he passed. The man gurgled and slumped to the ground, while the prostitute screamed and fled. Ramah ignored her and stepped over the body of his kill, peering into the next alley.

The man grabbed Ramah’s boot, his weak grip leaving red prints on the leather. Ramah shook him loose and kept walking.

Baella had to be nearby. She
had
to be.

***

Boudica spotted the torches atop Londinium’s Eastern wall. The city’s lights flared into the sky, illuminating the place in a dull orange glow that could be seen for miles. Under cover of darkness, her army had moved, covered from head to toe in black clothing, and managed to sneak, undetected, to within three hundred yards of the city gate. Well within range of her ballista.

Beside her, Heanua nodded, and Cyric motioned to the Captain of the Ballista Regiment. The big, heavy machines stood in dark silhouette, looking skeletal and deadly in the weak light. They moved forward on well-oiled wheels that her troops had padded with animal hides earlier in the day. The hides had dampened the sound of the wheels on the ground, but they also made rolling the machines a great deal harder. The last few hours had been long and tedious, but as she watched the first of her crews load a stone the size of a sheep, Boudica felt it was all worth the wait.

Behind her, crews carried large balls of tightly packed rope soaked with black pitch. The buildings in Londinium were mostly made of wood, and the balls would be set alight prior to launch. They should create havoc inside the city walls, and hundreds would feel the sting of their burn and breathe their acrid smoke just before they died. Once the city was reduced to a pile of burning rubble, her people would storm the walls and put any survivors to the sword.

“Sleep well, Romans,” she whispered. “Those of you who are lucky will never wake up.” Tonight she meant to wipe Londinium off the face of the world.

20

Taras lay in a pool of his own blood, watching it spread out around him in an ever increasing arc across the stone floor. The smell of it wafted up from underneath him, making it hard to think. The metal pole through his chest had ceased to hurt, and now he felt only a slight pressure as the skin and flesh tried to mend itself around the foreign object in his torso.

Maybe he’d lost too much blood to feel pain. That seemed likely, given the amount on the floor and the fact that he hadn’t fed recently. What had that witch gotten him into? Baella. He remembered the name. She’d been using him to get to Theron, and he’d fallen for it.

Clemency from the Council of Thirteen. What was he thinking? He’d never met any of the Councilors, but from what he understood, they never made deals such as the one she offered. He’d been a fool to think he could gain acceptance into their race. And now he would pay the price by dying like a stuck pig on a dirty floor.

Taras had spent nearly thirty years learning everything he could about the Bachiyr. He’d studied everything from folklore to reported firsthand accounts, even traveling to the East to speak with a man who claimed to have killed one. Almost all his leads turned out to be a waste of time, but he had managed to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of the Council and its minions.

Ramah was the one who hunted him. Ramah and Theron. Of course, Theron did so for personal reasons. Ramah was another matter. Bloodthirsty and violent, he made Theron look like a Jewish rabbi.

But this Baella woman…he’d never heard of her before. Whoever she was, the mention of her name had sent Ramah running after her like a dog chasing a rabbit.

Taras felt weak. His vision dimmed.
This is it
, he thought.
The end of my days.
He knew what it was like to die, he’d done it once already, and now it seemed he was about to do it again. Did he have the strength to fight it? Did he want to? He didn’t think so. Maybe it would be easier to lay down and die, as he should have done all those years ago.

But something about the comparison of Ramah to Theron brought back a fuzzy memory.

A Jewish rabbi.

Another time he contemplated death...

***

“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 sitting with Pluto in
Tertius
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?

***

Jesus had delivered his words and walked away, taking his strange glow with him as he headed toward Bethany. He probably thought he’d left Taras better off than he’d found him, but instead Taras was more confused than ever. He’d stood by the entrance to Mary’s tomb and wondered if he was strong and brave enough to die. In the end, the answer was no. And he still wasn’t. He willed his hands to move, and placed them on the floor, palms down underneath his chest. With a grunt of pain, he began to push his body off the floor and up the length of the steel rod. The pain flared in his chest like a white hot poker, and he had to stop for fear of losing consciousness.

But as soon as it faded a bit, he shoved again.

Not yet,
he thought.

When the pain flared through his chest again, he clenched his jaw shut and pushed still harder against the floor, rising off it in a haze of blood and pain. His vision blurred, and more than once his mind threatened to shut down, but he forced himself to focus on the task at hand, working his way up the metal pole one slick, red, painful inch at a time.

I will not die yet.

21

Ramah stood in the empty street, looking one way and then the other. Both showed him nothing. The dusty streets of Londinium showed no sign of his quarry’s passing. Theron and Baella could be in any direction, at any distance. He’d never locate them with his eyes alone, he would have to use a web psalm, though he dreaded the subsequent loss of blood. He would simply have to take some from Theron before he killed him.

Ramah stood in the middle of the street and closed his eyes, focusing his mind on the task at hand.
He cast a mental web around his current position, and slowly expanded it to include the outlying area. The web kept growing, until it eventually covered an area one quarter the size of the city with him at its center. Once it was set, he poked along the filaments with mental fingers and willed his quarry to touch one of them.
The strands were limited in their ability to gather information. He could only search for one person. Other individuals would merely register as a slight tickle of the web, but when the object of his search crossed a thread, he would know immediately.

He’d never seen Baella, but he’d known Theron for nearly a thousand years. It was easy enough to conjure an image in his mind of the former Enforcer. Since they were traveling together, he only needed to locate the one to find them both. Or so he hoped.

He pushed the strands out further, slowly feeling his way across the city streets. Dozens of small tingles registered on the web, but none more than a slight twinge. They were the normal humans who had remained behind. He forced himself to remain calm and still, letting the web expand at a slow, steady pace. Patience, he counseled himself. It would not do to drop his web and run randomly through the streets, he would never find them that way, and he knew it. It should not take much longer before—

There! A bright flash touched his web about half a mile to the east, back toward the gate. It could only be Theron. Ramah turned toward the flash and concentrated only on the strands of the web in its immediate vicinity. The rest of the web withered, lacking the mental energy to keep itself open.

The web psalm was a strong tool in the Bachiyr’s arsenal, and very useful, but it also drained a great deal of mental energy. Ramah could feel his body burning blood to keep the web active, but he couldn’t drop it yet. He needed Theron to cross another strand. The relation of the new strand to Theron’s previous position would tell Ramah exactly which direction the renegade was moving, making it a simple matter to cut him off.

There it was again! Still headed toward the city gate, and moving fast.
They must know I am coming for them.
Ramah dropped the web and ran. Theron and Baella were trying to leave the city. Ramah could probably catch them before they made the city gate, but it suited his purpose to let them leave. Once outside the city walls, there would be fewer humans, and fewer witnesses. Witnesses were messy. Easy enough to kill one, but not so easy to dispose of several dozen. Far better to have none at all.