The Blood Gospel toots-1 Page 3

  This is what I climbed up here for?

  His mother looked equally unimpressed. She pushed curly brown hair out of her eyes, her face pink from sunburn or exertion. “It looks more like a prison than a fortress.”

  “It was a prison,” his father said. “A death row prison. Nobody got out alive.”

  “Nobody ever gets out alive.” Tommy regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth, especially when his mother turned away and slid a finger under her sunglasses, clearly wiping a tear. Still, a part of him was glad that she let herself feel something real instead of lying about it all the time.

  Their guide bounced up to them, rescuing them from the moment. She was all bare legs, tight khaki shorts, and long black hair, barely winded by the long climb. “Glad you guys made it!” She even had a sexy Israeli accent.

  He smiled at her, grateful to have something else to think about. “Thanks.”

  “Like I told everybody else a minute ago, the name Masada comes from the word metzuda, meaning ‘fortress,’ and you can see why.” She waved a long tan arm to encompass the entire plateau. “The casemate walls protecting the fortress are actually two walls, one inside the other. Between them were the main living quarters for Masada’s residents. Ahead of us is the Western Palace, the biggest structure on Masada.”

  Tommy tore his eyes away from her lips to look where she pointed. The massive building didn’t look anything like a palace. It was a wreck. The old stone walls were missing large sections and clad with modern scaffolding. It looked like someone was halfway through building a movie set for the next Indiana Jones installment.

  There must be a deep history under all that scaffolding, but he didn’t feel it. He wanted to. History mattered to his father, and it should to him, too, but since the cancer, he felt outside of time, outside of history. He didn’t have room in his head for other people’s tragedies, especially not people who had been dead for thousands of years.

  “This next building we believe was a private bathhouse,” the guide said, indicating a building on the left. “They found three skeletons inside, skulls separated from the bodies.”

  He perked up. Finally something interesting.

  “Decapitated?” he asked, moving closer. “So they committed suicide by cutting off their own heads?”

  The guide’s lips curved in a smile. “Actually, the soldiers drew lots to see who would be responsible for killing the others. Only the last man had to commit suicide.”

  Tommy scowled at the ruins. So they killed their own children when the going got tough. He felt a surprising flicker of envy. Better to die quickly at the hands of someone who loved you than by the slow and pitiless rot of cancer. Ashamed of this thought, he looked at his parents. His mother smiled at him as she fanned herself with the guidebook, and his father took his picture.

  No, he could never ask that of them.

  Resigned, he turned his attention back to the bathhouse. “Those skeletons … are they still in there?” He stepped forward, ready to peek inside through the metal gate.

  The guide blocked him with her ample chest. “Sorry, young man. No one is allowed inside.”

  He struggled not to stare at her breasts but failed miserably.

  Before he could move, his mother spoke. “How’re you doing, Tommy?”

  Had she seen him checking out the guide? He blushed. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?” She held out her plastic water bottle.

  “No, Mom.”

  “Let me put some more sunscreen on your face.” His mother reached into her purse. Normally, he would have suffered the indignity, but the guide smiled at him, a stunning smile, and he suddenly didn’t want to be babied.

  “I’m fine, Mom!” he spat out, more harshly than he’d intended.

  His mother flinched. The guide walked away.

  “Sorry,” he said to his mother. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be over there with your father. Take your time here.”

  Feeling terrible, he watched her walk away.

  He crossed over to the bathhouse, angry at himself. He leaned on the metal gate to see inside — the gate creaked open under his weight. He almost fell through. He stepped back quickly, but before he did so, something in the corner of the room caught his eye.

  A soft fluttering, white, like a crumpled piece of paper.

  Curiosity piqued inside him. He searched around. No one was looking. Besides, what was the penalty for trespassing? What was the worst that could happen? The cute guide might drag him back out?

  He wouldn’t mind that at all.

  He poked his head inside, staring at the source of the fluttering.

  A small white dove limped across the mosaic floor, its left wing dragging across the tiles, scrawling some mysterious message in the dust with the tip of its feathers.

  Poor thing …

  He had to get it out of there. It would die from dehydration or get eaten by something. The guide probably knew a bird rescue place they could bring it to. His mother had volunteered at a place like that back home in California, before his cancer ate up everyone’s life.

  He slipped through the gap in the gate. Inside, the room was smaller than his father’s toolshed, with four plain stone walls and a floor covered by a faded mosaic made of maddeningly tiny tiles. The mosaic showed eight dusty red hearts arranged in a circle like a flower, a row of dark blue and white tiles that looked like waves, and a border of terra-cotta and white triangles that reminded him of teeth. He tried to imagine long-ago craftsmen putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle, but the thought made him tired.

  He stepped across the shadowy threshold, grateful to be out of the unforgiving sun. How many people had died in here? A chill raced up his spine as he imagined the scene. He pictured people kneeling — he was certain they would be kneeling. A man in a dirty linen tunic stood above them with his sword raised high. He’d started with the youngest one, and by the time he was done, he barely had the strength to lift his arms, but he did. Finally, he, too, fell to his knees and waited for a quick death from his friend’s blade. And then, it was over. Their blood ran over the tiny tiles, stained the grout, and pooled on the floor.

  Tommy shook his head to clear the vision and looked around.

  No skeletons.

  They were probably taken to a museum or maybe buried someplace.

  The bird raised its head, halting its journey across the tiles to stare up at Tommy, first with one eye, then the other, sizing him up. Its eyes were a brilliant shade of green, like malachite. He’d never seen a bird with green eyes before.

  He knelt down and whispered, his words barely a breath. “Come here, little one. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  It stared with each eye again — then took a hop toward him.

  Encouraged, he reached out and gently scooped up the wounded creature. As he rose with its warm body cradled between his palms, the ground shifted under him. He struggled to keep his balance. Was he dizzy because of the long climb? Between his toes, a tiny black line skittered across the mosaic, like a living thing.

  Snake was his first thought.

  Fear beat in his heart.

  But the dark line widened, revealing it to be something worse. Not a snake, but a crack. A finger of dark orange smoke curled up from one end of the crack, no bigger than if someone had dropped a lit cigarette.

  The bird suddenly burst from his palms, spread its wings, and sailed through the smoke as it fled out the door. Apparently it hadn’t been that injured. The smoke wafted Tommy’s way, beat by the passing wings. It smelled surprisingly sweet with a hint of darker spices, almost like incense.

  Tommy crinkled his brow and leaned forward. He held his palm over the smoke. It rose up between his fingertips, cold instead of warm, as if it came from some cool place deep within the earth.

  He bent to look at it more closely — when the mosaic cracked under his boots like glass. He jumped back. Ti
les slipped into the gap. Blues, tans, and reds. The gap devoured the pattern as it grew wider.

  He backpedaled toward the door. Gouts of smoke, now a reddish orange, boiled up through the splintering mosaic.

  A grinding groan rose from the mountain’s core, and the entire room shook.

  Earthquake.

  He leaped out the bathhouse door and landed hard on his backside. In front of him, the building gave a final, violent jerk, as if slapped by an angry god — then toppled into the chasm opening beneath it.

  The edges crumbled wider, only feet away. He scooted backward. The chasm chased him. He gained his feet to run, but the mountaintop jolted and knocked him back to the ground.

  He crawled away on his hands and knees. Stones shredded his palms. Around him, buildings and columns smashed to the ground.

  God, please help me!

  Dust and smoke hid everything more than a few yards away. As he crawled, he saw a man vanish under a falling section of wall. Two screaming women dropped away as the ground split beneath them.

  “TOMMY!”

  He crawled toward his mother’s voice, finally clearing the pall of smoke.

  “Here!” he coughed.

  His father rushed forward and yanked him to his feet. His mother grabbed his elbow. They dragged him toward the Snake Path, away from the destruction.

  He looked back. The fissure gaped wider, cleaving the summit. Chunks of mountain fell away and rumbled down to the desert. Dark smoke churned into the achingly blue sky, as if to take its horrors to the burning sun.

  Together, he and his parents stumbled to the cliff’s edge.

  But as quickly as it began, the earthquake ceased.

  His parents froze, as if afraid any movement might restart the quakes. His father wrapped his arms around them both. Across the summit, pained cries cut the air.

  “Tommy?” His mother’s voice shook. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I scraped my hands,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

  His father let them go. He’d lost his hat and cut his cheek. His normally deep voice came out too high. “Terrorists, do you think?”

  “I didn’t hear a bomb,” his mother said, stroking Tommy’s hair like he was a little boy.

  For once, he didn’t mind.

  The cloud of blackish-red smoke charged toward them, as if to drive them off the cliff.

  His father took the suggestion and pointed toward the steep trail. “Let’s go. That stuff could be toxic.”

  “I breathed it,” Tommy assured them, standing. “It’s okay.”

  A woman ran out of the smoke clutching her throat. She ran blind, eyelids blistered and bleeding. Just a few steps, then she pitched forward and didn’t move.

  “Go!” his father yelled, and pushed Tommy ahead of him. “Now!”

  Together, they ran, but they could not outpace the smoke.

  It overtook them. His mother coughed — a wet, tearing, unnatural sound. Tommy reached for her, not knowing what to do.

  His parents stopped running, driven to their knees.

  It was over.

  “Tommy …” his father gasped. “Go …”

  Disobedient, he sank down beside them.

  If I’m going to die anyway, let it be on my own terms.

  With my family.

  A sense of finality calmed him. “It’s okay, Dad.” He squeezed his mom’s hand, then his dad’s. Tears flowed when he thought he had none left. “I love you, so much.”

  Both of his parents looked at him — square in the eye. Despite the terrible moment at hand, Tommy felt so warm right then.

  He hugged them both tightly and still held them as they went limp in his grasp, refusing to let gravity take them as death had. When his strength gave out, he knelt next to their bodies and waited for his own last breath.

  But as minutes passed, that last breath refused to come.

  He wiped an arm across his tearstained face and stumbled to his feet, refusing to look at his parents’ crumpled bodies, their blistered eyes, the blood on their faces. If he didn’t look, maybe they weren’t really dead. Maybe it was a dream.

  He turned in a slow circle facing away from them. The foul smoke had blown away. Bodies littered the ground. As far as he could see, everything was dead still.

  It was no dream.

  Why am I the only one still alive? I was supposed to die. Not Mom and Dad.

  He looked down again at their bodies. His grief was deeper than weeping. Deeper than all the times he’d mourned his own death.

  It was wrong. He was the sick one, the defective one. He had known for a long time that his death was coming. But his parents were supposed to carry on memories of him, frozen at the age of fourteen in a thousand snapshots. The grief was supposed to be theirs.

  He fell to his knees with a sob, thrusting his hands toward the sun, his palms upraised, both beseeching and cursing God.

  But God wasn’t done with him yet.

  As his arms stretched to the sky, one sleeve fell back, baring his wrist, pale and clear.

  He lowered his limbs, staring at his skin in disbelief.

  His melanoma had vanished.

  3

  October 26, 2:15 P.M., IST

  Caesarea, Israel

  Kneeling in the trench, Erin surveyed the earthquake’s damage and sighed in frustration. According to initial reports, the epicenter was miles away, but the quaking rocked the entire Israeli coastline, including here.

  Sand poured through the broken boards that shored up the sides of her excavation, slowly reburying her discovery, as if it were never supposed to have been unearthed.

  But that wasn’t the worst of the earthquake’s wrath. Sand could be dug out again, but a cracked plank sat atop the child’s skull, the one she had been struggling to gently release from the earth’s grip. She didn’t permit herself to speculate about what lay under that chunk of wood.

  Just please let it be intact …

  Her three students fidgeted near the trench, keeping to the edge.

  Holding her breath, Erin eased up the splintered plank, got it free, and blindly passed it to Nate. She then lifted the tarp that she’d covered the tiny skeleton with earlier.

  Shattered fragments marked where the baby’s once-intact skull had been. The body had lain undisturbed for two thousand years — until she exposed it to destruction.

  Her throat tightened.

  She sat in the trench and brushed her fingertips lightly over the bone fragments, counting them. Too many. She bowed her head. Clues to the baby’s death had been lost on her watch. She should have finished this excavation before following Nate to the tent to study the new GPR readings.

  “Dr. Granger?” Heinrich spoke from the edge of the trench.

  She leaned back quickly so he would not think she was praying. The German archaeology student was too bound up with religion. She didn’t want him to think that she was, too. “Let’s get a plaster cast over the rest of this, Heinrich.”

  She needed to protect the rest of the skeleton from aftershocks.

  Too little, too late, for the tiny skull.

  “Right away.” Heinrich combed his fingers through his shaggy blond hair before heading toward the equipment tent, which had ridden out the earthquake undamaged. The only modern casualty was Amy’s Diet Coke.

  Heinrich’s sylphlike girlfriend, Julia, trailed behind him. She wasn’t supposed to be on the dig site at all, but she was passing through for the weekend, so Erin had allowed it.

  “I’ll check out the equipment.” Amy’s anxious voice reminded Erin of how young they all really were. Even at their age, she had not been so young. Had she?

  Erin gestured around the hippodrome. It had been in ruins long before their arrival. “The site’s been through worse.” She injected false cheer into her voice. “Let’s get to work putting it to rights.”

  “We can rebuild it. We have the technology. Better than it was before.” Nate hummed the theme music from the Six Million Dollar Man.


  Amy gave him a flirtatious smile before heading off to the tent.

  “Can you fetch me a new board?” Erin asked Nate.

  “Sure thing, Doc.”

  As he left, his tune drifted through her mind. What if they could actually rebuild it? Not just the excavation, but the entire site.

  Her gaze traveled across the ruins, picturing what this place must have once looked like. In her mind’s eye, she filled in the half that had long since crumbled away. She imagined cheering crowds, the rattle of chariots, the pounding of hooves. But then she remembered what came before the hippodrome was constructed: the Massacre of the Innocents. She imagined the raw panic when soldiers snatched infants from their helpless mothers. Mothers forced to see swords cut short the wailing of their babies.

  So many lives lost.

  If she was right about her discovery, she began to suspect the real reason why Herod had built this hippodrome at this spot. Had it given him some dark amusement to know the trampling of hooves and the spill of the blood further desecrated the graves of those he had slaughtered?

  Shrill neighing startled her out of her thoughts. She stood and looked toward the stables, where a groom walked a skittish white stallion. She knew horses. She had spent many happy childhood hours at the compound’s stable and knew firsthand how they hated earthquakes. The great, sensitive beasts were restless before a quake struck and unsettled after. She hoped these were being properly taken care of.

  Heinrich and Nate returned. Nate had an intact board, while Heinrich carried a box of plaster, a water jug, and a bucket. An art minor, he had careful hands, just what she needed to help put the broken pieces in place.

  Nate handed her the board. It brought with it the forest scent of pine, out of place here in this desert. Taking care to avoid the remains of the skeleton, he climbed in next to her. Together she and Nate shouldered the board between its braces and back against the edge of the trench. She hoped it wouldn’t fail her like the last one.

  While Nate left to check on his equipment, she and Heinrich dug out sand. The board had damaged the skull and the left arm. She remembered the tiny fontanel, the angle of the neck. There had been clues there, she felt certain. Now lost forever.