Unholy Night (22 page)

M
orning was giving way to midday, and still no sign of Gaspar or Melchyor. Balthazar paced back and forth, his face and lip almost completely healed now, his movement enough to stir the curtains that had been drawn to ward off the sun.
Where the hell are they?
They’d gone for food and supplies shortly after breakfast, leaving their fellow fugitives with Sela to pack up the camels and prepare for their departure. They had a long ride ahead. If they pressed themselves, stopping for only a few minutes at a time and making camp in the open desert, they could reach the Egyptian border in two days.

Mary was in the next room, feeding the baby beneath her shawl, while Sela topped off their canteens, taking care not to spill a single precious drop. Joseph was praying again. Kneeling in the corner of the room, muttering to himself. Though his words were barely above a whisper, they’d slowly built to a crescendo in Balthazar’s ears.
We have real problems. Real problems here in the real world, and he sits there and mutters to God.
Finally, it was all he could take.

“Could you just…not do that?”

Joseph stopped muttering, though his eyes remained closed.

“You pace when you’re anxious,” he said. “I pray. Of the two of us, I’d say my method was less annoying.”

“Of the two of us,” said Balthazar, “I’m the one with the sword, so I’d shut up and go do something useful before I cut your tongue out.”

Joseph’s eyes opened. He rose to face Balthazar. “Why does my prayer bother you?”

“Because! It goes on and on and on and on and on and on! I’ve never heard someone babble to God so much in my life!”

“Well…I have much to be thankful for.”

“Like what? The fact that the whole world wants your baby dead?”

“Like you.”

Joseph’s answer had the desired effect of stopping Balthazar’s rant in its tracks.

“You rescued us in Bethlehem,” he said. “You led us through the desert, led us here. And you nearly gave your own life doing it. I thanked God for sending you, because if he hadn’t, we’d be dead.”

“In the future, instead of thanking God, you can save yourself the trouble and just thank me directly.”

Joseph smiled. “I know men like you,” he said. “Men who believe that God has forsaken us. That he’s grown tired of our imperfections. These men are burdened by sin. By weakness, and temptation, and guilt. And so they think
all men must be this way
.
And if all men are this way, why would God want anything to do with
m
an?”

“And I know men like you,” said Balthazar, “who believe that every drop of piss is a blessing from ‘almighty God.’ Men who spend their miserable little lives shaking and mumbling, reading their scrolls and setting their goats on fire—afraid they’ll eat the wrong thing, or say the wrong word, or think the wrong thought, and SMACK! God’s fist will fall out of the clouds and flatten them. Well let me tell you—and I speak from experience—God doesn’t care, okay? He doesn’t care about you, or me, or what we do or say or eat or think.”

“He cared enough to send me his son.”

This time Balthazar made no attempt to hide the roll of his eyes.
You’ve got to be kidding me…

“Right, right—the Messiah. And let me ask you a question: Of all the thousands of years, of all the thousands and thousands of Jews he had to choose from, God chose a poor carpenter and a little girl to raise him? Why not a king, huh? Why not let him be the son of an emperor? Give him a real chance to change things?”

Joseph thought about it as the baby began to cry in the other room. In truth, the best he could manage was, “I don’t know. I just know that he did.”

“See?” said Balthazar with a smile. “That’s the problem with your God. He doesn’t think big enoug—”

“BALTHAZAR…OF…ANTIOCH!”

The voice had come from outside, cutting off the rest of Balthazar’s insult. An unfamiliar voice, from in front of the house. Balthazar felt the strength leave his limbs. The blood in his fingertips froze, just as they had when he’d seen the Roman legions in Hebron.

They’ve found us.

Silence followed. A deathly silence as Balthazar and Joseph shared a look of dread, their argument already long forgotten, and moved toward the nearest window to sneak a look through the curtains.

Here were the empty houses of Beersheba. In front of them, standing in neat formation in the street, were Roman soldiers—led by a young officer atop a brown horse. Beyond the soldiers and empty houses, a long, dark cloud hung near the horizon, silent and still.
Sandstorm
, thought Balthazar.
Big one.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” asked the officer. “‘Balthazar’?”

The baby’s cries were suddenly behind Balthazar’s ears. Mary and Sela had come running into the room, drawn by the commotion. As soon as they saw Balthazar and Joseph kneeling by the window, they knew.
They’ve found us.

“Can we get out the back?” asked Sela.

“Doubt it,” said Balthazar.

He was smart, this officer. This time he would’ve taken care to surround them first. To make sure there was no chance of escape. These discouraging thoughts were still forming in his head when Balthazar spotted two men standing beside the officer’s horse. But these weren’t Roman or Judean soldiers. They were liars and thieves. Cowards and traitors.

Gaspar and Melchyor.

“I can see why you don’t use it,” the officer continued. “‘The Antioch Ghost’ is much more colorful, more menacing.”

Balthazar glared at his fellow wise men across the wide street. “How long?” he yelled. “How long have the two of you been working for these dogs? Is this how they found us in Hebron? Did you lead them right to us?”

“On my life,” said Gaspar, “we did not.”

“Your ‘life’? Your ‘life’ isn’t worth the spit in your lying mouth! You only
have
a life because I spared it! I saved you! Both of you!”

Here it was. Here was a vindication of everything Balthazar believed. Here was proof that men were dogs and that all hearts were empty vessels.
It’s too bad I won’t live long enough to rub this in Joseph’s face.

“You have to understand,” said Gaspar, “they caught us in the market! They…they recognized us. We had no choice but to—”

“Lies!”

Balthazar was right. Gaspar had been considering this betrayal for days—especially in the wake of their near-capture in Hebron. And when he’d watched the mighty Antioch Ghost get beaten senseless by a woman, the last of his faith in their fearless leader had evaporated. Better to strike a deal and live than cast their lot with Balthazar, whose luck had clearly run out.

“They offered us pardons,” said Melchyor, so stupidly and apologetically that it was hard not to feel for him.

This part, at least, was true. When Gaspar had approached the Romans, he and Melchyor had been offered pardons in return for the Antioch Ghost and the infant.

“They offered us pardons if we led them back to—”

“Led them back to what,” cried Mary, “an infant? You’re no better than Herod’s men! Both of you!”

Melchyor looked away, clearly ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” said Gaspar.

“Go to hell,” said Balthazar.

As far as insults went, it left a lot to be desired. Especially since Balthazar didn’t even believe in such a place. But under the circumstances, it was the best he could muster. With an entire legion of Roman troops staring him down, surrounding the house. There would be no angry pilgrims to help them fight this time. This time they would either be captured or—

“Balthazar!”

Sela was looking out a side window, clearly distressed. Or at least, more distressed than everyone else under her roof. Balthazar and the others hurried to her and peered through the curtains and saw why.

They’re going to burn us.

A handful of Roman soldiers stood ready with flaming torches in their hands, awaiting the order. Their young commander sat atop his horse, his eyes darting between the house they’d surrounded and the long, dark cloud hanging low to the horizon.
Sandstorm
, he thought.
A big one, and growing closer.

For all the fugitives’ fears of charred flesh, Pilate had no intention of burning them out. There were Jewish zealots in there, and he knew how zealots thought.
They would rather give themselves to God as burnt offerings than surrender to a godless Roman like me.
No, if he ordered the house set alight, he would only be able to watch as they martyred themselves in the flames. And what good would that be? And the Antioch Ghost? What glory was there in burning him? Pilate wanted to present his emperor with a living, quivering specimen, not a heap of charred remains. Unlike Herod, he wasn’t comfortable having the blood of women and infants on his hands. This campaign had taken on a dark enough tenor already.

It was a dark thing to hunt a newborn child with swords and spears. But Pilate had comforted himself with the idea that he was merely delivering his targets to their judges. He wasn’t responsible for what happened after that. What Pilate
wasn’t
comfortable with was the magus. The way he frightened the men with his strange little rituals. With his very appearance. The power he seemed to have to conjure visions from the air, to breathe life into places it didn’t belong. The way he seemed to know exactly where their targets were going. This was an altogether different kind of darkness. One that any rational man would know to fear. But in this case, Pilate’s hands were tied. Augustus wished it, and so it must be done. But Pilate had tried to keep the emperor’s little mystic on a tight leash—keeping him sequestered “for his own safety.” Under guard, alone in his tent. Miles from where they now stoo—

Stop.

Pilate caught his mind wandering and reined it back in. The image of the magus had just popped into his head out of nowhere, distracting him from the task at hand. Regaining focus, he noticed the torch-bearing solders beginning to advance on the house, their faces uniformly blank. Their movements stilted and awkward, as if they had strings attached to their limbs, being pulled from above. At first he thought it was some kind of joke.

“What are they doing?” cried Pilate to his officers. “WHAT ARE THEY DOING?” But when he got a better look at their faces, Pilate knew.
They have no idea what they’re doing.

“STOP!”

But it was too late. The torches were laid at the foot of the house on all sides, and in seconds, the flames had taken hold. They climbed the walls, hastened by the dryness that permeated all of Beersheba. And though he would never have the opportunity to prove it, Pilate would go to his grave believing that the magus was responsible for it all: flooding his thoughts to distract him. Sitting cross-legged in his tent, eyes closed, muttering some strange old chant. Controlling his men, all the while thinking,
This is what you get for trying to keep me on a short leash, you insignificant little nothing.

Inside, Balthazar and the others backed away as the flames climbed through the windows, filling the room with blistering air and setting the curtains ablaze in the process. Smoke began to pour in almost immediately, crawling across the ceiling and forcing the fugitives to crouch. As Mary covered the baby’s face with her robes, Sela hurried to the wall farthest from the fire, grabbed a washbowl, and threw its contents at the burning curtains. But this had all the effect of spitting into a volcano. The flames were spreading too quickly, the smoke already too heavy to be beaten back. They were faced with the unsavory choice of burning alive or running out of the house and being captured by the Romans.

Before Pilate could order his men to storm the house and take the fugitives alive, his eye was drawn away from the conflagration by a darkness in the west. The low cloud had risen from the horizon and doubled in size in the few moments since he’d last looked at it. Pilate had never seen a sandstorm—or any storm—move so fast. But that wasn’t the only strange thing about this cloud. It was shrieking. The sound had been barely perceivable at first, but it was unmistakable now. The cloud was shrieking. Emitting a constant, otherworldly sound—like the ceaseless scream of an angry animal. The scream of an angry god. A million voices raised in unison, growing closer by the second.

“Sandstorm,” said Gaspar. “We should take cover.”

“It’s not a sandstorm,” said Pilate, his eyes fixed on the shrieking cloud.

It’s a swarm.

Locusts. Millions of them, flying in a cloud so dense that it choked out the sun. Moving so fast that it defied nature. They’d crossed into the city, washing over the dead streets and abandoned houses like a wave, heading straight toward them. There were no crops left to eat in Beersheba…but still they came.

Pilate’s men saw it too. They heard the shrieking of the millions of locusts, saw the wave washing over the city. Like their leader, they turned away from the flames that climbed the wall of the house and stared in rapt wonder at the cloud.
This is no sandstorm.…