Iris Johansen - Eight Days To Live

“But I can’t forget it. I’m a primitive soul, and I have to satisfy that side of me in some way. But I’ll put it off for a little while until you become used to the idea.” He got to his feet. “I’ve arranged for the helicopter to be on standby a short distance from here. He can be at the helipad in twenty minutes.” He passed her as he moved toward the front door of the castle. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”

She watched in helpless frustration as he disappeared into the castle. Dammit, he had told her to go to bed and get some sleep, but she didn’t see how she was going to do it. If she’d been wired before she phoned Caleb, she was doubly hyper now. Not only had she been caught up in an emotional upset when Caleb had mentioned talking to Eve about the dreams, but that upset had been followed by the sexual explosion that had rocked her to her core. Anger and resentment had been overshadowed by a physical response that had left her hot and weak and breathless. She was still experiencing the same sexual tornado even though he was no longer with her.

It was too strong. She had wanted to run as far as she could to get away from the bond that was tightening around her.

And he had known it and thrown her the one distraction that she couldn’t ignore. He had realized that she had been worried about his trying to manipulate Roland and had decided to use it. She should ignore that threat. There was more than one way to manipulate, and he was clever and perceptive enough for any sort of deviousness.

Why was she standing here in the middle of the courtyard and trying to decipher his motives? As long as she wasn’t deceived by anything he did, she didn’t have to understand him. As long as she wasn’t foolish enough to go to bed with him, that attraction might be strong but not overpowering.

He was right. He was a valuable commodity and might prove particularly valuable if she decided on going after the Judas coins. She would be stupid to send him away.

She started quickly for the front door. And, of course, she would sleep. She had told Caleb she could not control her dreams, but she had the will to block all the emotional upheaval and get some much-needed rest. She was beginning to feel the excitement stirring.

Steps. If she took the right steps, she’d be able to keep her head above water and survive.

The way to capture Millet was to use Roland to set the trap. To be sure of Roland, she had to get her hands on the Judas coins. To find the Judas coins, she had to locate the Field of Blood.

Field of Blood . She was suddenly shivering at the words. Foolish. It hadn’t bothered her at all when she had been researching. Yet now it seemed to cast a shadow of malevolence and evil.

Field of Blood…

SOMEONE WAS IN the room.

Jane’s eyes flew open, jarred wide-awake.

Caleb?

“I’m sorry.” Lina was sitting in the tufted red velvet chair across the room. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s still early. I was going to wait until you woke.”

It wasn’t yet dawn, judging by the pale light streaming in the window, Jane noticed. She raised herself on her elbow. “Is anything wrong?”

Lina shook her head. “Something is right. I finished the translation on the tablet.” She nodded at the papers on the table beside her. “I worked all night, and I didn’t want to go to bed until I went over it with you.”

Jane swung her legs to the floor. “Give me a few minutes to splash some water on my face, and I’ll be right with you. I’m still drowsy.”

“I thought you would be. You got to bed late yourself.”

She glanced over her shoulder as she started for the bathroom. “How do you know?”

“I was taking a break and opened the shutters to get some air. You were down in the courtyard with Caleb.”

Jane glanced over her shoulder. “You were watching us?”

“Don’t be silly,” Lina said. “Why would I waste my time? I just saw you before I closed the shutters again. I don’t care if you have a hundred rendezvous with Caleb. It’s your bad luck if you let him seduce you.”

“He wasn’t seducing me.”

Lina smiled crookedly. “He was coming close. He never tried it with me, but I always knew that he was capable of spinning a web to get what he wants. My husband never bothered to try persuasion, he always demanded and coerced. But when it comes down to the end, it’s all the same. Taking.”

“There are some big differences.” But Lina probably can’t see them, Jane thought. Almost from childhood, she had been abused and sexually exploited. “You can tear the web and get out.” She opened the bathroom door. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Lina nodded. “I’ll pull up the text on the computer and get these papers in order.”

Lina was still frowning down at the computer when Jane came out of the bathroom. “I think I have every nuance right. I had to call the language institute in Tel Aviv.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I’ve dealt with them before. We have a relationship.” She gestured to the chair on the other side of the table. “Sit down. I’ll pull up the translation on the computer.”

Jane dropped down in the chair. “I fully intend to read all of it, but set it up for me. Is it what we need?”

Lina nodded. “I think it may be. No, I’m almost sure that it’s what you want, providing Hadar wasn’t a liar. Why do you think that I was sitting here waiting for you to wake up?”

Because she was excited, Jane realized. Lina kept her emotions so well concealed that she hadn’t realized it until this moment. “Tell me.”

“First, it was written years after he reached Syria and had founded his religion glorifying Judas. It was a sort of a justification of all the atrocities he committed in the name of Judas. The first paragraph is just a sort of discourse on the injustices that had been inflicted on him as a boy and how Judas had come into his life and he had seen the light.”

“Not Jesus, Judas?”

“He mentions Jesus only fleetingly; it was Judas who was the center of his life. He rants and raves about the priests and the disciples who didn’t understand that Judas was only doing what God wanted in betraying Jesus. That Judas was only a divine tool to bring about the salvation of the world. That the condemnation that led to the suicide of Judas was an act against all the angels of heaven and should be revenged.” She looked up at Jane. “And the suggested methods of that revenge are pretty bloodthirsty. Crucifixion figured prominently. Boiling in oil was another. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Hadar was psychotic. He might have had a genuine affection for Judas, but it became a destructive obsession after his death.”

“He got all of that venom into one tablet?”

She nodded. “As you saw, the tablet was fourteen by ten, and the script was very tiny. I almost went blind trying to decipher it. And after those first paragraphs, it was all about why and how he fled Jerusalem.”

“The coins,” Jane prompted.

“He said that Judas tried to give them back to the high priest, but he was refused. The priest wouldn’t pick them up from the floor of the temple. Hadar offered to go back and get the pouch for Judas, but he wouldn’t let him. Judas ran away from the temple, and later Hadar heard that he had hanged himself. Hadar went crazy. He wanted to kill all the priests. He wanted to kill all the disciples. He was in a fury. He said that it was Judas who was the martyr and should be worshipped.”

“And so a cult was born.”

“At least the seeds were planted. But he got it into his head that the thirty pieces of silver were a symbol of that martyrdom. That Judas’s returning the coins to the temple had some sort of divine significance. Hadar was enraged that the priests were going to spend the money buying a field to bury strangers instead of preserving it as a holy relic.’