61 A.D. b-2 Read online

  61 A.D.

  ( Bachiur - 2 )

  David Mcafee

  61 A.D.

  David McAfee

  Prologue

  She enjoyed this part the most. The part where they started to scream. It didn’t matter how old or how strong they were, when she started to work her particular brand of magic, they all screamed. Even the tough ones; the ones who thought they could hold out and be strong. The ones who thought they were stronger than she was. Those types usually screamed loudest of all. Of course, that could be because she was harder on them than the ones who cooperated, but it didn’t matter.

  In the end, she thought, all Bachiyr are cowards. They all had their breaking point.

  This particular Bachiyr hadn’t lasted long at all. His screams sounded long and loud, echoing off the walls of the keep and traveling the length of the hallways and through the chambers beyond. She couldn’t hide her smile as she realized that the humans in the valley below probably heard them, too. Good. It would give them yet another reason to stay away from her home, as if they needed further warning.

  She watched her prisoner squirm, enjoying the burnt smell of his flesh while her fire scorched his toes. She controlled the flames with a simple psalm, but she had to constantly monitor it to make sure it maintained just the right temperature. If she allowed it to get too hot the fire burned away the nerves and the prisoner would feel nothing. If she allowed the fire to get too cool it lost its effectiveness. After several millennia of practice she had mastered the ability, much to her prisoner’s dismay.

  He’d tried to resist her, even going so far as to tell her to go to the Abyss and calling her all manner of filthy names. He even spat at her, but he missed. She had seen it all before. In four thousand years she’d seen just about everything there was to see. Not much surprised her these nights.

  After two minutes she cooled the flames-not out of any sense of mercy, but because she needed information. A prisoner who is screaming can’t speak.

  The Bachiyr’s feet were little more than charred stumps. Even if she let him go-which she had no intention of doing-he would never walk again. But at times like these few prisoners ever seemed to think that far ahead. Mostly they just wanted the pain to stop. It made getting information much easier.

  “There, Agnor,” she said when he stopped screaming, “is that better?”

  Agnor whimpered something in reply, but she couldn’t make it out.

  “You’d better speak more clearly, Agnor.” She reached over and touched his cheek, running her nails along his jawline with enough force to break the skin. Blood dripped from a thin red wound, and he shivered in his bonds. It reminded her that she had not yet fed this evening. She would have to remedy that soon. “You don’t want to displease me. Your feet were just the beginning.”

  “It is better,” he said, his teeth clenched against the pain.

  “Good. I am glad you can talk. We have much to discuss, you and I.”

  “I already told you, I don’t know where he is.” His voice had taken on a whiny tone. Not good. He already knew he would never leave her keep alive. Damn. It made it harder to get what she wanted, but the difficulty often made the getting more entertaining.

  “Agnor,” she cooed, “You are a clerk to the Halls of the Bachiyr. No, no. Don’t try to deny it, I know it’s true. You have access to information that few others can get. If anyone outside the Council of Thirteen would know of his location, it would be you.”

  “I don’t-”

  “Spare me,” she said. “You are a terrible liar.”

  “And you are going to kill me no matter what I tell you,” Agnor said.

  “True enough,” she admitted. “You’ve seen my face. I can’t very well let you leave. But whether your death takes ten seconds or ten days is up to you. Tell me where he is and you will die like this.” She snapped her fingers. “Or keep stalling. You are only dragging the pain along further.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned the flames on again. This time she started at his fingertips, charring away the skin and flesh as slow as she could, marveling at how his skin crackled and curled upward as it turned black. The acrid odor reached her nostrils and she covered her nose with a damp cloth. Despite her pleasure at the smell’s source, she could only stand it for so long. Agnor screamed again, shaking his head violently back and forth. Amidst the screams were words which she barely understood. Another denial. He was really playing out the lie. Excellent.

  When his hands were gone, she cooled the flames again. This time she had to wait several minutes for Agnor’s screams to subside. When at last he quieted, he lay on the stone altar whimpering. Several small red trails leaked from the corners of his eyes. Blood. The coppery smell mixed with the scents of moss, stone, and burned flesh. She sighed, pleased with herself. She had another card to play.

  “Do you think they will save you?” she asked. “They don’t even know you are here. When you failed to report to the Council this evening, how much time do you think they wasted looking for you? None, I’ll wager. You are nothing to them, Agnor. Nothing. They will replace you without a moment’s thought on where you might be. That bastard Herris has probably already seen to it. You owe him nothing, and The Father even less. Why suffer longer than you must? Tell me what I need to know. Where is Ramah? Where did they send him last?”

  Agnor quieted and turned to look at her. His eyes hardened, and the set of his jaw firmed. She didn’t like the expression on his face at all, and she already knew what his response would be. Damn it.

  “It’s Headcouncil Herris,” he said.

  She nodded. She’d expected as much. “Very well, Agnor, clerk of Herris. Have it your way. I will enjoy making you talk.”

  Agnor closed his eyes. She was just trying to decide where next to burn him-perhaps his manhood-when her thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock on the wooden door. Only one person would disturb her at a time like this.

  “Come in, Feyo,” she called.

  The door opened and her pet human entered the room. Feyo was large by human standards, and muscular, which is why she kept him around. She had taken him from the lands just south of the sea as a child and raised him at her keep, biting him every month or so to keep him healthy and stronger than normal. He bore the black hair, dark skin, and deep brown eyes of his people. He kept his tight curly hair cut short so that it resembled a small black rug on his head. Today he wore little more than a loincloth, leaving his lean chest and abdomen bare and shiny with sweat.

  Had she any such desires she might have mated with him. But fond as she was of her servant, he was still human. She might as well mate with the dogs or horses.

  “Mistress Baella,” Feyo said. “I have good news.”

  “Speak it.”

  “Your runners have found one of the renegades from Jerusalem.”

  Baella turned to face him. That was good news. “Where?”

  “Londinium.”

  “Britannia? Why would Theron go there?”

  “Not Theron, Mistress,” Feyo replied. “The other one. The tall one. The one who looks like a northerner but acts like a Roman.”

  “Taras,” she said, not even trying to hide her disappointment.

  On the table, Agnor snorted. He knew which one she wanted, too. Smarmy bastard. She turned to him and set his crotch on fire. His screams made her feel a little better, but not much.

  “The Roman is of no use to me,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above Agnor’s screams.

  “Ramah will not come looking for him?” Feyo asked.

  “Ramah cares nothing for him. Neither does the Council.”

  “But he has eluded them for decades. Surely they-”

  “They will send lesser Enforcers to hunt him down,” sh
e interrupted. “Herris and Ramah will not trouble themselves for one of such thin blood, Feyo. You know this already. Leave now. If you find Theron or Ramah, let me know.”

  “But Mistress,” Feyo persisted, “Theron cares a great deal about the Roman even if the Council doesn’t, does he not?”

  “Of course he does,” she snapped, losing her temper and her focus at the same time. The flames on Agnor’s crotch died instantly, but his screams went on. She turned to regard her servant, concerned about his line of questioning. Did he think she was a fool? “Theron hates Taras with a passion. He’ll never rest until…until…”

  Until Taras is dead, she realized.

  That’s what Feyo was trying to say. Of course. Bait for bigger bait. Ramah might not come looking for Taras, but he would come for Theron. And Theron, she thought, will come for Taras. No matter where he is.

  “Brilliant,” she said. “Well done, Feyo.”

  Feyo’s face cracked in a wide smile. “What are your orders, Mistress?”

  “Send twenty men out. Give them each twenty gold and tell them to spread word of a tall, blonde man in Londinium with sharp teeth in every tavern and brothel they come to. When the men run out of gold, they are to return here and report. Theron likes to hunt in those places, he’ll hear about it eventually.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” Feyo bowed and left the room.

  Once word spread that Taras was hiding in Londinium, Theron would make all haste to get there. She would have to plant a message in the Council, as well, to make sure Herris found out. He would send Ramah, and she would be waiting.

  Finally, after four thousand years, the Blood Letter would be hers.

  Agnor whimpered, drawing her attention back to the table.

  “You heard that, I suppose,” she said.

  Agnor nodded. “You don’t need me anymore.”

  “So it seems,” she replied.

  His look of relief brought a smile to her lips, and she couldn’t stifle a short, derisive laugh. “You think that entitles you to a quick death?”

  “But…you don’t need me,” he repeated. “You have what you want.”

  “Yes, but not from you,” she replied. “Rest assured, when the time comes for me to kill Feyo he will die quick and painlessly. You, on the other hand, will be around for a very long time.”

  When Baella brought the flames back, Agnor’s scream seemed even louder and sweeter than before.

  I’m coming for you, Ramah.

  1

  A small tavern in Southern Spain, 61 A.D.

  Gregor’s friends were laughing at him. “I’m telling you, I wasn’t drunk,” he said. “I saw him. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch.”

  “You’re drunk now, Gregor,” Zebhoim said.

  “So are you,” Gregor shot back. “Yet you see me just fine.”

  “You’re a little blurry,” Zebhoim replied, winking.

  “Maybe so, but I wasn’t drunk that night. He was seven feet tall and had long, shaggy blonde hair. Looked like one of those northerners, except for the teeth.”

  “Yes, the teeth,” Boro said, laughing. “Tell us again how sharp they were.”

  “They were like needles,” Gregor insisted. “And he came at me real fast, I almost didn’t see him. I barely escaped with my life.”

  The serving girl brought the wine, and Gregor drank deeply of his cup before he continued. “The strangest part was when he spoke to me. A man like that, I expected to hear the language of the north, but he spoke in Roman.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me to run,” Gregor said. “It was the strangest thing. I thought I was a dead man, but he stopped about five paces away and told me to run. Looked like he was in pain or something, and his chin had blood all over it.”

  Zebhoim laughed again. “A tall northerner, speaking Roman, with sharp teeth and blood on his chin came up to you and told you to run?” At this, the rest of the table joined in the laughter.

  “It’s true, I tell you,” Gregor said.

  Zebhoim laughed harder. When he finally settled into a series of chuckles, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “True or not,” he said, “it’s a story that deserves a drink.” He called to the serving girl and ordered another round, while several of the other men continued to laugh and poke fun at Gregor.

  Gregor stewed in his chair until the serving girl arrived with the drinks, then he reached over and grabbed one. He might be angry that his friends refuse to believe him, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t drink their ale. He raised the mug to his mouth and downed it, much to the amusement of the other men at the table, who promptly ordered another round. Soon he forgot all about Zebhoim’s laughter.

  A few hours later Gregor stumbled out the door and into the street. He looked at the sky and realized for the first time that the sun would be up in a couple of hours. He’d been drinking with his friends almost all night. At least it was fun. After Zebhoim started buying drinks, the night got interesting. Gregor would have stayed longer except he had started seeing two tables where only one should be. That and he felt a pressing need to empty his bladder.

  He walked into an alley near the tavern and untied the leather thong in front of his trousers, barely managing to free his cock in time to avoid wetting himself. A great sense of relief spread through him as the pressure on his bladder eased, and he sighed. Drunk as he was, he swayed back and forth, spraying his boots with piss.

  “Damn it,” Gregor swore, lifting his leg and shaking his boot. This caused him to sway even more, and he nearly fell over. He only managed to catch himself by placing both hands on the wall. Of course, since he was still in the middle of urinating, this meant he splashed himself and the wall even further.

  “Damn it,” Gregor repeated. He steadied himself against the wall, then reached down with his left hand and grabbed his flailing manhood. Thankfully he managed to finish the rest of the job without further incident.

  His good mood gone, he re-tied his trousers and tried to shake some of the urine off them, but it didn’t do any good. He would have to have the girl at the inn wash them or he would spend the whole day smelling like piss. She wouldn’t do it for free, either.

  Gregor grumbled about the cost of everything and turned to leave the alley. He froze in his tracks at the sight of the man behind him. The newcomer was dark, and hidden in the shadows of the alley, but Gregor could see the outline of sharp, high cheekbones and shoulder length dark hair. His eyes shone red in the middle of his face, giving off a surreal glow that only magnified the two sharp fangs in the stranger’s mouth.

  Gregor had thought his bladder empty, but as he stared at the man’s eyes and teeth, he felt a tiny trickle escape and moisten the front of his trousers. He took a deep breath, ready to shout for help, while his right hand stole to the dagger at his hip.

  The stranger’s arm shot forward, his hand clamping down on Gregor’s throat and shoving him back against the building. Gregor felt the moisture on his rump as the urine on the wall soaked the back of his trousers, but of more concern was the lack of air as the stranger’s hand closed around his throat. Gregor gasped and tried to pry the man’s fingers from his windpipe, but it was like trying to pry open a pair of iron shackles. Despite the lack of air, he couldn’t help but notice the color of the man’s hand. Black, like charred skin. It didn’t match the olive color of his face.

  “Don’t struggle,” the man said. “It will not do you any good. Save your strength.”

  Gregor gurgled. His vision swam and he was starting to feel lightheaded.

  “You are mine until I release you,” the stranger said. “Do you understand?”

  Gregor nodded.

  “You have information I want. I am going to release your throat. If you scream, the rats in this alley will feast tonight,” the stranger said. With that, he opened his hand, allowing Gregor to suck in air. When Gregor caught his breath, he looked up to see the man staring down at him with those odd red eyes. His toothy mouth was curled
into a sadistic grin.

  “What do you want from me?” Gregor asked.

  “Tell me about the tall Roman with teeth like mine.”

  ***

  Theron stepped out of the alley, checking both directions to make sure no one saw him, and walked down the street with a spring in his step. It wasn’t just Gregor’s blood that had him in a good mood. The news that his old friend was hiding in Londinium caused him to smile all the way back to his sanctum.

  From Gregor’s description, the tall Roman could only be one Bachiyr, and Theron had been looking for him for almost thirty years.

  Taras.

  His hand itched, as it did whenever he thought of Jerusalem. He reached over and scratched the blackened flesh. It looked charred, as though someone had taken a torch to it. It still functioned, and it didn’t hurt. The skin had even healed without a visible scar, unless you counted the color. It reminded him of the story the Jews in Judea told of a man named Cain, who had killed his brother and was thus, according to legend, given a dark mark on his forehead so that all who saw him would know what he had done.

  It wasn’t quite the same, of course. Cain had killed Abel, but Theron had killed the so-called Messiah. The Son of God, some people called him. Supposedly he was anointed to free the people of Israel and lead humanity back to the path of righteousness. Ha! Those fools in Jerusalem would believe anything if it meant they could oust the Romans. Being the Son of God hadnhe S7?t saved him from me, Theron mused.

  Still, he looked at his black hand and had to admit there was more to the man than he’d first imagined. Almost thirty years had passed since he’d burned his hand on the rabbi’s skin, and it still retained the pigmentation of a vial of ink. He could no longer exact revenge on the dead rabbi, but Taras was another matter.

  Ever since Jerusalem, Theron had dreamed of finding the wretched northerner again, and now thanks to a drunken Spaniard he knew exactly where the bastard was hiding. The time had come to repay an old debt. Tomorrow night he would head to the coast. There he would buy passage on a ship to Britannia. In less than a month he would be in Londinium, and shortly after that Taras would be little more than a bad memory.