Seth Grahame-Smith: Unholy Night

For Gordon, who wouldn’t have believed a word of it.

The magic of Old Testament times is coming to an end.

Great floods, mystical beasts, and parting seas have given way to the empires of man. Many believe that God has abandoned the world — most of which is ruled by Rome and its new emperor, Augustus Caesar.

One of many Roman provinces, Judea (in modern Israel), is ruled by a cruel puppet king named Herod the Great, who — although sickly and dying — fiercely clings to power through murder and intimidation. And he has reason to be paranoid, for the Old Prophecies tell of the imminent birth of a messiah — a King of the Jews — who will topple all the other kingdoms of the world…

A herd of ibex grazed on a cliff high above the Judean Desert — each of their tiny, antelope-like bodies dwarfed by a pair of giant, curved horns. A welcome breeze blew across their backs as they searched for what little shrubbery there was here in the great big nothing, each of them pushing their hot, cracked noses across the hot, cracked earth, gnawing at whatever succulent bits of green had managed to push their way through.

One ibex — tempted by the sight of a few lonely blades of grass on the cliff’s edge — grazed apart from the others, closer to the bone-shattering drop than even they dared go. These blades it now pulled at oh so carefully with its teeth. Its cloven hooves clacked against the loose rocks of its perch as it shifted its weight, sending the occasional pebble tumbling hundreds of feet into the valley below. Ten million years of geological aspirations undone in seconds.

Miles to the north of where it chewed this hard-earned meal, a carpenter was making his way toward Jerusalem in the blistering heat of midday — his head swimming through stories of plagues and floods to keep the thirst from driving him mad, his young, very pregnant wife asleep on the donkey behind him. And though the ibex would never know this — though its life, like the lives of all ibexes, would go completely unnoticed and unappreciated in the annals of history — it was about to become the sole living witness to a truly extraordinary sight.

Something’s wrong…

Perhaps it was a glint in the corner of its eye, a tiny, almost imperceptible vibration beneath its hooves. Whatever the reason, the ibex was suddenly compelled to lift its head and take in the sight of the vast desert below. There, off in the distance, it spotted a small cloud of dust moving steadily across the twisted beiges and browns. This in and of itself was hardly unusual. Dust clouds sprang up all the time, dancing randomly across the desert like swirling spirits. But two things made this cloud unique: one, it was moving in a perfectly straight line, from right to left. Two, it was being followed by a second, much larger cloud.

At least it looked that way. The ibex had no idea if clouds of dust could, in fact, chase each other. It only knew that they were to be avoided if at all possible, since they were murder on the eyes. Still chewing, it turned back to see if the others had spotted it. They hadn’t. They were all grazing away without a care in the world, noses to the ground. The ibex turned back and considered this strange phenomenon a moment longer. Then, convinced there was no danger to itself or the herd, it went back to its meal. The two clouds moved silently, steadily in the distance.

By the time it yanked another blade of grass out of the rock with its teeth, the ibex had forgotten they’d ever existed.

Balthazar couldn’t see a damned thing.

He rode his camel across the desert valley, kicking its sides like mad, his eyes the only things visible through the shemagh he wore to fight off the sun and the odor of the beast beneath him. Two overstuffed saddlebags hung off either side of his animal, and a saber hung from his belt, swinging wildly as they galloped along, kicking up the desert behind them. Balthazar turned back to see how close his pursuers were, but all he saw was the Cloud. The same, massive, relentless cloud that had been chasing him since Tel Arad. The cloud that made it impossible to tell how many men were after him. Dozens? Hundreds? There was no way to know. It was, at present, a cloud of undetermined wrath.

From the direction of that cloud there came a faint whistling, almost like the movement of wind through a ravine. At first it was just a single note, its pitch bending steadily lower and growing louder with each second. This note was joined by another and another, until the air behind Balthazar’s head was a chorus of faint whistles — each of them starting soprano and tilting tenor as they grew louder, closer. Just as Balthazar realized what they were, the arrows began to strike the earth behind him.

They’re shooting from horseback, he thought.

None of the arrows had come close enough to cause concern. Balthazar wasn’t surprised. Any experienced archer knew that firing an arrow from a galloping horse was akin to saying a prayer with a bow. Even at twenty yards, you had little chance of hitting your target. From this distance, it was hopeless — a sign of either desperation or anger. Balthazar didn’t think the Judeans were desperate. They were furious, and they were going to take that fury out on his skull if they caught up to him. After all, the untold legions in that cloud weren’t just chasing the thief who’d made off with a fortune of stolen goods, and they weren’t after the murderer who’d killed a handful of their comrades…

They were trying to catch “the Antioch Ghost.”

It was a nickname born of the only two things the Romans knew about him: one, that he was Syrian by birth, in which case it was a good bet that he’d grown up in Antioch; and two, that he had a knack for slipping into the homes of the wealthy and making off with their riches without being seen or heard. Other than those scant facts and a rough physical description, the Romans had nothing — not his age, not even his real name. And while “the Antioch Ghost” wasn’t particularly inspired as nicknames went, it wasn’t all that bad, either. Balthazar had to admit, he enjoyed seeing it among the “known criminals” painted on the side of public buildings — always in red, always in Latin: Reward! The Antioch Ghost — Enemy of Rome! Thief of the Eastern Empire! Sure, he hadn’t achieved the infamy of a Hannibal or a Spartacus, but he was something of a minor celebrity in his little corner of the world.

There was a second chorus of whistling, followed by a second strike of arrows behind him. Balthazar turned and watched the last of them fall. While still too far away to cause concern, this volley hadn’t been quite as hopeless as the last. They’re getting closer , he thought.