James Rollins - Innocent Blood

“Allow him up.”

Standing, he stretched and walked to the bank of windows behind his desk. His company — the Argentum Corporation — owned the tallest skyscraper in Rome, and his office took up its uppermost floor. The penthouse looked out upon the Eternal City through windowed walls of ballistic glass. Underfoot, the floor was polished purplish-red marble, imperial porphyry, so rare it was found in only one site in the world, an Egyptian mountain the Romans called Mons Porphyrites . It had been discovered during Christ’s lifetime and became the marble of kings, emperors, and gods.

Fifty years before, he had designed and engineered this spire with a world-renowned architect. That man was dead now, of course. But he remained, unchanged.

He studied his reflection. In his natural lifetime, scars from a childhood scourge had pocked his face, but the imperfections had disappeared when the curse of endless years found him. Now he could not remember where those scars had been. He only saw smooth, unblemished skin, a set of small wrinkles that never deepened around his silver-gray eyes, a square rugged face, and a mass of thick gray hair.

Bitter thoughts swept through him. That face had been called many names over the centuries, worn many identities. But after two millennia he had returned to the one his mother had given him.

Judas Iscariot.

Though that name had become synonymous with betrayal, he had come full circle from denial to accepting that truth — especially after discovering the path to his own redemption. Centuries ago, he had finally discovered why Christ had cursed him with immortality.

So he could do what he must do in the coming days.

Shouldering this responsibility, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass. Once he had a manager who was so terrified of falling that he could not stand within six feet of the window.

Judas had no such fear of falling. He had fallen to what should have been his death many times.

He gazed through the glass to the city below, its glittering streets known for its decadence since before the time of Christ. Rome had always been ablaze at night, although white-hot electricity had long replaced the warm yellow fire of torches and candles.

If his plan worked, all those lights would finally go dark.

Glitter and fire were characteristics that modern people thought belonged to them, but man had brightened the world with his will long ago, too. Sometimes for advancement and sometimes triviality.

Standing there, he remembered the sparkling balls he had attended, centuries of them, all the partygoers certain that they had reached the peak of glamour. With his looks and wealth, he had never lacked for invitations, nor for female companionship, but those companions had often demanded more than he had to give.

He had watched too many lovers age and die, dimming any hope of lasting love.

In the end, it had never been worth the price.

Except once.

He had attended a ball in medieval Venice where a woman had caught his eternal heart and showed him that love was worth any price. He stared down at the colored lights of the city until they blurred together and carried him into memory.

Judas paused at the edge of the Venetian ballroom, letting the colors swirl in front of him. Crimson reds, deepest golds, indigos that matched the evening sea, blacks that ate the light, and the pearly radiance of bare shoulders. Nowhere did the women dress as brightly, and display as much skin, as in Venice.

The ballroom looked much as it had one hundred years before. The only changes were the three new oil paintings hung on its stately walls. The paintings depicted stern or jolly members of this Venetian family, each dressed in stylish finery of their day. All were now long dead. At his right hand was a painting of Giuseppe, gone thirty years, his face frozen at forty by the oils and talent of a long dead painter. Giuseppe’s brown eyes, ready always for fun, belied the stern brow and stolid posturing. Judas had known him well, or as well as it was possible to know someone in ten years.

That is all Judas allowed himself to stay in any one city. After that, people might wonder why he did not age. A man who did not wrinkle and die would be called a witch or worse. So he traveled north to south, east to west, in circles that widened as the edges of civilization spread. In some cities he played the recluse, in others the artist, in still others the gadabout. He tried on roles like cloaks. And wearied of each one.

His stylish black leather boots crossed the wooden floor with practiced ease. He knew each creaky board, each almost imperceptible cove. A masked servant appeared with a tray laden with wineglasses. Judas took one, remembering the strength of his long-ago host’s cellar. He sipped, let the flavors caress his tongue — thankfully Giuseppe’s cellars had not gone into decline with his death. Judas emptied the glass and took another.

In his other hand, hidden behind his back, his fingers clutched tightly around a narrow black object.

He had come here for a purpose larger than this ball.

He had come to mourn.

He slipped between masked dancers on his way to the window. The long nose of his mask curved downward like the beak of a crow. The smell of the well-crafted leather from which it was made filled his nostrils. A woman swept by, her heavy scent lingering in the air long after she and her partner had moved away across the floor.

Judas knew these dances and countless more. Later, after more wine, he would join them. He would choose a young courtesan, perhaps another Moor if he could find one. He would try his best to lose himself in the familiar steps.

Fifty years ago, in his last pass through Venice, he had met the most enchanting woman he had seen in his long life. She, too, had been a Moor — dark-skinned, with luminous deep-brown eyes and black tresses that spilled over her bare shoulders to her slender waist. She wore an emerald-green dress with gold trim, pinched in at the waist as was the fashion, but between her breasts, hanging from a slender gold chain around her neck, rested a shard of bright silver, like a piece of a broken mirror, an unusual adornment. The scent of lotus blossoms, a fragrance he had not enjoyed since his last sojourn in the East, lingered around her.

He and the mysterious woman had danced for hours, neither needing a different partner. When she spoke, she had a curious accent that he could not place. Soon he forgot that and listened only to her words. She knew more than anyone he had ever met — history, philosophy, and the mysteries of the human heart. Serenity and wisdom rested in her slim form, and he wanted to borrow her peace. For her, perhaps, he might find a way to rejoin the simple cares of mortal men.

After the dancing, at this very same window, she had raised her mask that he might see the rest of her face, and he had lifted his as well. He had gazed at her in a silent moment more intimate than he had ever shared with another. Then she had handed him her mask, excused herself, and disappeared into the crowd.

Only then did he realize that he did not know her name.

She never returned. For more than a year he had searched Venice for her, paid ridiculous sums for incorrect information. She was the granddaughter of a doge. She was a slave from the Orient. She was a Jewish girl who escaped from the ghetto for a night. She was none of those.

Heartbroken, he fled the city of masks and strove to forget her in the arms of a hundred different women — some dark as Moors, others fair as snow. He had listened to a thousand stories from them, helped some and forsaken others. None had touched his heart, and he left them all before he had to confront their aging and deaths.