“Stay back, Erin,” Jordan called. “This is my fight.”
The woman looked as if she wanted to argue, but she didn’t.
Judas lifted his bloody sword into a guard position. “How often must I kill you, Sergeant Stone?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
His sword shone white-hot in his hands, sparking with spats of fire.
Judas shivered in anticipation.
The soldier circled him, suspicion plain in his face, as if he suspected some trick.
You must play your role, Warrior. Do not disappoint me.
To ensure that, Judas lunged for him, and the man parried. He was unnaturally quick. Knowing this, Judas fought harder, no longer needing to feign incompetence. He had been trained under many different sword masters over the centuries.
He attacked again and again, enjoying the true challenge, his last. It was fitting to find a worthy opponent. But that was not his destiny. He allowed his guard to drop, as if by accident.
Jordan struck.
The blade pierced Judas’s side.
The same place where a Roman soldier had stabbed Christ on the cross.
Judas offered a quick plea of gratitude before he fell to his knees. Bright red blood poured from his wound. It soaked through his shirt. He dropped his sword.
Jordan stood before him. “We’re even.”
“No,” Judas said, reached to his leg. “I am forever in your debt.”
He fell to his side, then rolled to his back. Gray sky filled his vision. He had done that. The world surrounded by ash and blood. The sun was minutes from setting. Nothing could stop what he had started.
My death heralds my success.
He took it as a sign, his reward for opening the gates of Hell and bringing about the final Day of Judgment.
The burning pain in his side was unlike anything he had ever experienced, but he drank it in. He would soon be at peace. He welcomed it. He let his eyes drift closed.
Then a shadow fell over him, bringing with it the smell of lotus blossoms.
Arella.
He opened his eyes and looked upon her beauty, another reward for fulfilling his destiny.
Her warm hands took his. “My love.”
“It came to be just as you foretold,” he said.
As she leaned over him, her tears fell onto his face. He savored each warm drop.
“Oh, my love,” she said, “I curse the vision that brought you to this.”
He sought her dark eyes. “This was Christ’s will, not yours.”
“This was your will,” she insisted. “You could have walked a different path.”
He touched her wet cheek. “I always walked a different path. But I am grateful for the years that we walked that path together.”
She struggled to smile.
“Do not blame yourself,” he said. “If you can grant me but a single favor, grant me that. You are blameless in all this.”
Her chin firmed, as it always did when she held her feelings inside.
He reached up through the pain and curled a strand of her long hair around his finger. “We are but His instruments.”
She placed her palm against his wound. “I could fetch water from the spring to heal you.”
Fear shot through his body. He searched for clever words to persuade her against such a path, but she knew his ways. So he settled on one word, placing all his will into it, letting the truth shine in his eyes.
“Please.”
She bent and kissed his lips, then fell into his arms one last time.
4:49 P.M.
Erin’s throat tightened as an angel wept for Judas.
Arella cradled him and stroked his gray hair back from his forehead while murmuring words in an ancient tongue. He smiled up at Arella, as if they were young lovers instead of two ageless creatures caught at the end of time.
Rhun touched Erin’s shoulder, looking to the darkening sky.
His single touch reminded her that, while the battle was won, the war was not over. She looked to the sun, sunk deep into the horizon to the west. They were nearly out of time to undo what Iscariot had set in motion.
She stared at the man who had started all of this.
Iscariot’s blood flowed from his side, weeping out his life. In the growing darkness, she noted the soft glow shining within the crimson, remembering seeing the same when he had accidentally cut his finger in the cavern under the ruins of Cumae, by a sliver of the same blade that slew him now.
She remembered Arella, casting out the same golden radiance when she rescued Tommy. And even Tommy’s blood had glowed faintly on the beach in Cumae.
What did that mean?
She looked from Tommy, who stood still by the well, to Judas.
Did that mean they both carried angelic blood?
She remembered that both Tommy and Judas had also encountered a dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, an echo of the bird Christ had killed. And both were about Christ’s same age at that time.