James Rollins - Innocent Blood

Her seriousness drew a shadow of a smile from Tommy. “I promise.” He lifted up a hand. “I’ll never impale myself on another sword.”

Christian moved closer to Erin. “His blood doesn’t smell… angelic anymore. He is mortal again.”

“I think it’s because we released the spirit inside him. So it could rejoin its other half.” She glanced over to Iscariot. “Does that mean Judas is healed, too?”

Christian shook his head. “I checked as I made my circuit with Wingu. He lives yet, but only barely. Even now I can feel his heart about to give out.”

Rhun fixed his eyes on Judas. “His reward was not life.”

For the first time in thousands of years, Judas knew his death was near. A tingling sensation spread from the wound in his side and coursed through his veins like icy water.

“I’m cold,” he whispered.

Arella drew him tighter into her warm embrace.

With great effort, he lifted his arm in front of his failing eyes. The back of his hand was covered in brown age spots. His skin hung in loose wrinkles from his bones.

It was the fragile limb of an old man.

With trembling fingers, he felt his face, discovering furrows where there had once been smooth skin, around his mouth, at the corners of his eyes. He had withered to this.

“You are still beautiful, my vain old man.”

He smiled softly at her words, at her gentle teasing.

He had replaced the curse of immortality with the curse of old age. His bones ached, and his lungs rattled. His heart lurched along like a drunken man walking in the dark.

He stared at Arella, as beautiful as ever. It seemed impossible that she had ever loved him, that she loved him still. He had been wrong to let her go.

I have been wrong about everything.

He had thought that his purpose was to bring Christ back to Earth. All his thoughts had been directed toward nothing else. He had spent centuries in service of this holy mission.

But that had not been his purpose, only his conceit.

Christ had granted him this gift, not to end the world, not as penance for his own betrayal, but to undo the mistake that Christ Himself had made as a boy.

To fix what was broken.

And now I have.

That was his true penance and purpose, and it was better than he deserved. He had been called to restore life, instead of bringing death.

Peace filled him as he closed his eyes and silently confessed his sins.

There were so many.

When he opened them again, gray cataracts clouded his vision. Arella was a blur, already cruelly fading from his sight as the end neared.

She hugged him tighter, as if to hold him there.

“You always knew the truth,” he whispered.

“No, but I hoped,” she whispered back. “Prophecy is never clear.”

He coughed as his lungs shriveled inside him. His voice was a croak. “My only regret is that I cannot spend eternity with you.”

Too weak now, Judas closed his eyes — not onto darkness, but onto a golden light. Cold and pain receded before that radiance, leaving only joy.

Words whispered in his ear. “How do you know how we shall spend eternity?”

He opened his eyes one last time. She blazed through his cataracts now, in all her glory, shining with heavenly grace.

“I am forgiven, too,” she intoned. “I am called at last home.”

She drifted up from him, away from him. He reached for her, discovering his arm was only light. She took his hand and pulled him from his mortal shell and into her eternal embrace. Bathed in love and hope, they sailed to their final peace.

Together.

No one spoke.

Like Erin, they had all witnessed Arella bursting to light, washing the crater with a warmth that smelled of lotus blossoms. Then there was nothing.

Judas’s body remained, but even now it was crumbling to dust, stirred by the desert wind, mixing with the eternal sand, marking his final resting place.

“What happened to him?” Tommy’s voice was tight with worry.

“He aged to his natural years,” Rhun answered. “From young man to old in a handful of heartbeats.”

“Will that happen to me?” Tommy looked aghast.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, kid,” Jordan answered. “You were only immortal for a couple months.”

“Is that true?” He turned to the countess.

“I believe so,” Elizabeth said. “The soldier’s words are sound.”

“And what about the angel?” Tommy studied the empty spot in the desert. “What happened to her?”

“If I had to guess,” Erin said, “I would say that she and Judas were taken up together.”

“He would have liked that,” Tommy said.

“I think so, too.”

Erin threaded her fingers through Jordan’s.

He tightened his grip. “But that means we’re out of angels here. Isn’t at least one of them supposed to have blessed the book?”

Erin turned to Bernard. “Maybe they already have. The skies are clear overhead again.”

Bernard reached through his shredded clothes to the armor beneath. He tugged the zipper, looking ready to rip it clean off. Finally, he got it open and pulled free the Blood Gospel.

He held it atop trembling palms, his eyes worried.

The leather-bound volume looked unchanged.

But they all knew any truth lay inside.

Bernard carried it to Tommy and placed it reverently in the boy’s hands, his expression apologetic. “Open it. You have earned it.”

He sure had.

Tommy dropped to his knees and put the book on his lap. With one finger, he slowly lifted the cover, as if afraid of what it might reveal.

Erin watched over his shoulder, equally unnerved, her heart racing.

Tommy lowered the cover to his knee, revealing the first page. The original hand-scrawled passage glowed with a soft radiance in the dark, each letter perfectly clear.

“Nothing new is there,” Bernard said, sounding forlorn and distraught.

“Maybe that means everything is over,” Jordan said. “We don’t have to do anything else.”

If only…

Erin knew better. “Turn the page.”

Tommy licked his upper lip and obeyed, lifting the first page and exposing the next.

It, too, was blank — then darkly crimson words appeared, marching across it in finely scribbled lines. She pictured Christ writing those Greek letters, his quill dipped in His own blood to enact this miraculous gospel.

Line after line quickly filled the page, far more than the first time the book had revealed its message. Three short cantos formed, accompanied by a final message.

Tommy held the book up to Erin. “You can read it, right?”

Jordan placed a hand on her good shoulder. “Of course she can. She’s the Woman of Learning.”

For once, Erin didn’t feel the urge to correct him.

I am.

As she took the book, a strange strength surged from the cover through her palms. The words shone brighter before her eyes, as if she were always destined to read what was written here. She felt suddenly possessive of the book, of its words.

She translated the ancient Greek and read aloud the first canto. “ The Woman of Learning is now bound to the book and none may part it from her .”

“What does that mean?” Bernard asked.

She shrugged lightly, as clueless as he was.

Jordan slipped the book from her hands. As soon as the Gospel was lifted from her fingers, the words vanished.

Bernard gasped.

Erin quickly took the book back, and words blew back to life.

Jordan flashed a grin at Bernard. “Still doubt who she is?”

Bernard simply stared at the book, looking anguished, as if the love of his life had been torn from him. And maybe it had been. Erin remembered how she had felt when sent back to California, deemed unworthy to be involved with this miraculous book.