Blood on the Bar (Lucas the Atoner Book 1) Read online

  Simon pulled a face. “And who might that be?”

  “If I told you Thoth, would it mean much?”

  Everyone stared at him blank-faced, and it made Lucas chuckle. It was good feeling like an authority again. “Thoth was an angel the Ancient Egyptians worshipped as a god. He gave hieroglyphics to mankind and allowed them the discovery of writing. Guy always was a swot.”

  Max’s eyes widened. “You knew an Egyptian God?”

  “Thoth is one of my brothers. Not a god though, just an angel. They used to worship me under the name Set. Those were the good old days. We had us some great orgies beside the Nile. Anyway, shall we begin?”

  He waited for everyone to shush, and then spoke the ancient words, pleasing himself at how fluently they came to him. A dead language not spoken in thousands of years, yet it was crystal clear in his mind.

  Until it wasn’t.

  The words deserted him halfway out of his mouth. He mumbled, trying to get back on track, but…

  Vetta glanced at him. “What is wrong?”

  “I… I’m struggling to remember the last part of the unbinding. I-I don’t—”

  The safe popped open, making them all—including Lucas—yelp.

  “You did it!” said Jake. “Amazing!”

  But he hadn’t done it, had he? There was more to the spell; he was sure of it. His memory had ended a few phrases short of completion. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the words he had just spoken. The knowledge slipped away from him, curling up like the edges of a dying leaf. Gone. He was getting dumber.

  The safe had opened though, and that was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? Was there any reason to question the methods if the results were as intended? “Is everyone okay?” he asked the group, worried something had gone wrong.

  “I did not feel anything,” said Vetta, looking relieved.

  “Me either,” said Simon, pulling his hands free of the others. “I can’t actually believe it worked. We really did that? We opened the safe by holding hands and concentrating? Well stone me!”

  “I told you I wouldn’t hurt anyone,” said Lucas, looking at Vetta. “It was a simple spell from a time when spells were ordinary.”

  “What’s inside the safe?” said Shaun excitedly. His tattooed arms were already reaching inside it.

  Lucas moved the man aside so he could take a look himself. The safe’s interior was a gaping black hole, dissected in the middle by a slim metal shelf. Nothing appeared to be inside, and he was about to curse at having gone through an ordeal for nothing, before he noticed the glint of an object nestled towards the back.

  Reaching inside, he went to grab it, but quickly pulled his hand back. A surge ran up his arm, a coldness that whispered in his ear to run. Another stupid emotion, another senseless human component of an inadequate mind. Fear.

  Chiding himself for being so ridiculous, Lucas snatched the object out of the safe and examined it at once. He knew immediately what it was.

  “Is that a nail?” asked Max. “It looks old.”

  “It is,” said Lucas, “Over two thousand years old.”

  Bitter Spirits

  The sun drifted down behind the sandy walls of Jerusalem and bathed the world in amber. The beggar climbed the hill leisurely, kicking aside human skulls and rotting refuse. This was not an ascent to fresh air and scenic views, for this summit offered only despair and misery. The crowds drew away in the opposite direction, hurrying down the hill to their homes. Peasants might relish the spectacle of death by day, but by night, they shunned it for their warm beds and family meals.

  Dawdling, the beggar passed by Roman militia and city officials finishing up for the day, but nobody on the hill noticed him. No one acknowledged the presence of a sickly old vagrant in a city stuffed with them—no one except for one man.

  The condemned man hung from the central of three crosses, and he actually smiled as the beggar traipsed towards him. His long brown hair was filthy and caked in dried blood—his forehead equally so. A Roman spear lay in the mud beneath the man’s dangling feet, responsible for the deep gouge beneath his ribs. A crown of thorns rested upon his head, and a crude banner nailed to the top of the cross declared him ‘King of the Jews.’ Right now, the man was anything but regal.

  “Hello, beggar,” greeted the man in a dry, thirsty voice. “I'm afraid I have nothing for you right now.”

  The beggar laughed unexpectedly and chided himself for it. “You hang naked and shamed, yet offer jokes?”

  “Are jokes ever unwelcome? Is humour not a mechanism for joy? A thing most needed in my current state, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would think anger more befitting your situation. You have been betrayed and put to death.”

  The man sighed, pain and weariness on his face but not the hopelessness one would expect. “I am alive, and for that I am grateful.”

  “You have mere moments.”

  “And I will not waste them on anger or sadness. Such things will not ease my passage to Heaven, nor keep me here on Earth.”

  The beggar sneered. “Heaven? A cesspool worse than this.”

  “And what is so bad about this place, beggar? Is it not full of wonders?”

  “Wonders? You’ve been persecuted by those you sought to save, and you speak of wonders? Your time here has been meaningless. Nothing shall change. Mankind is offal spoiling in the sun.”

  It started to rain, droplets splashing on the man’s cheeks and cutting lines through the dirt there. He closed his eyes, seeming to enjoy the feel of it. “Man is a passionate and complex animal, and a furious battle rages within each human heart, but while war is never pleasant, it can end in only one outcome.”

  The beggar wiped drizzle from his eyes, irritated. “And what, pray, is that outcome?”

  “Peace. War may only end in peace.”

  The beggar took two steps forward, bare feet sinking into the bloody sand. “Or destruction.”

  “To quench a flame is not to kill fire. God’s spirit cannot be extinguished. It will forever reignite, even when fully dampened. If ruination and rebirth is the intended path for humanity, then so be it. All things die. There is no failure in it.”

  The beggar was close enough now to smell the man's approaching death—a sickly, sweet odour that men instinctively feared. He found it intoxicating. “Then what is the point of it all?” he demanded. “Why live only to die?”

  “To ask such a question is to miss the point of it all.”

  The beggar growled. How dare this man speak to him as if he were a confused child? Hanging from this cross, the man was less than nothing—less than the beetles feasting on his flesh. “You think yourself wise, King of the Jews, but all I see is a dying peasant, betrayed and broken.”

  “All I see before me is a lost soul posing as a beggar.”

  “I have no time for riddles.”

  The man sighed as if frustrated. “Why do you come to me this night, cousin? Do you wish to revel in my final agonies? Such things are petty and beneath you, old one. Have you not witnessed enough death in your vast existence?”

  A thief strung up on one of the rear crucifixes flinched, not yet dead, but the beggar ignored the movement and stared into the eyes of the man who had just said something quite unexpected. “You know what I am?”

  “I know who you are. We have met once before in the desert. I saw through you then as I see through you now. I feel your pain. It reveals your entire history.”

  The beggar spat in the mud. “One such as I does not feel pain. I am archangel, one of The Three.”

  “You are an angel no more, cousin. You are lost and weary, bearing a cross of your own. It must be lonely, knowing so much among those who know so little, Lucifer.”

  Lucifer lost his focus for a second. His facade faltered, and his bare feet turned to hooves in the bloody sand. “Why did Father put you here? What is your aim?”

  “Perhaps I am here for you, cousin, so that you may ask me a question.”

  Lucif
er snarled, darkness bubbling to the surface through his eyes. “What question?”

  The dying man's eyes fluttered. His body was failing fast, flesh pale and wounds no longer bleeding. When he spoke again, his words were strained. “What question do you yearn to ask most? I fear I have time to hear only one.”

  “I have nothing to ask of an insect. You are merely Father's latest discarded creation. He loves you as much as He loves me.”

  “A great deal indeed then. You claim not to want answers, Lucifer, yet questions are all you have. Your mind swims with them. Ask and find yourself answered. But do so quickly, my time is at an end.”

  “I am not one of your meek flock, enamoured by the cloying spices of your tongue.”

  “No, cousin, you are not. You are magnificent.”

  The beggar wavered, confused by the direction of the conversation. “I am The Devil, defiler of all for which you stand. This world is my playground, and I fill it with hate and suffering. Just this very morning, I whispered in a widow’s ear to kill her child. I filled her head with terror that she would fail to provide for the young girl and killing her quickly would be the kinder option. I am not magnificent, I am wicked beyond all compare.”

  “You are Lucifer, eldest and most beautiful of Heaven, the incarnation of innocence.”

  “Innocence! How can you call me innocent? I devour innocence.”

  “Innocence is merely the search for answers, cousin. God made you to be inquisitive, to question and to want. He created mankind the same way. The thing you claim to hate most is more akin to you than your own brothers. Mankind seeks answers like you do. That is why I am here on this cross. I am just a question mankind is asking of God.”

  “I seek no answers. I know all.”

  “You know nothing. So ask!”

  “I want nothing from you, Jesus.”

  “Yet here before me you stand.”

  “To watch you suffer! I engineered your downfall, son of God. Ha! You agonise because of me. I relish your pain.”

  “Then why do you weep, cousin?”

  Lucifer touched his cheeks in shock. An angel could not shed tears, and yet…

  Jesus smiled down at him with pity, his compassion a force comparable to the wind. “Your heart brims with fear and pain, Lucifer. Discard it and discover what remains.”

  “I am The Devil.”

  “Until you choose not to be.”

  “It is not a choice! Father did this to me.”

  “You did this to you, Lucifer. You made decisions that held consequences, and you must shoulder them.”

  Lucifer stomped forward on cloven hooves. He grabbed the iron nail fastening Jesus’s left wrist to the cross and twisted it cruelly, but Jesus only smiled.

  It made Lucifer angry. So angry he felt like he might explode and consume the earth in the fires of his rage. “I hate you!” he bellowed, causing a wind to whip atop the hill. Dark clouds blotted out the sky. “Heaven has no authority over me. My brothers are weak. God is impotent. You are nothing.”

  “As are you, cousin. You discarded your authority in search of something else. There is no shame in it.”

  “I am King of Hell. I warred with God Himself.”

  “The son always hurts the father, and the father hurts the son. It is so.”

  “Father cast me down for all eternity. He fears me.”

  Jesus shook his head slightly, an expression of even deeper pity. “Eternity doesn’t have to be forever.”

  Lucifer smashed a clawed fist into Jesus’s gentle face, crushing his nose. “You speak more riddles!”

  Jesus spat blood but didn’t cease his gentle smiling. “Sometimes the riddle is in the mind of the listener. Ask your question quickly, cousin. It must be now!”

  “End this nonsense! I despise you, Jesus.”

  “Yes, let it out! What else do you hate, cousin?”

  It was raining heavily now, and Lucifer sneered through it all. “I hate my brothers who turned their backs on me. I hate this earth with its mindless cattle and endless stink. I hate it all. I hate that I was cast down for refusing to bow down to these insects. I hate Father for asking me to.”

  Jesus nodded. “More. There is more hate in you. Give it to me, cousin. Let me take it with me.”

  There was a flood inside Lucifer, emotions gushing forth and breaking dams he didn’t even know were in place. “I hate… I hate… I hate that I acted so rashly and hurt my kin. I hate myself for being so misguided. I hate… myself… I…” He realised he had fallen to his knees in the mud, prostrate beneath Jesus’s dangling feet. “I hate what I did to Father. Why did I do it? Why did I ever let in so much anger? Why?”

  Jesus’s eyes closed. “Ask your true question, cousin. It is time.”

  From on his knees, Lucifer looked up at Jesus and asked something he never thought he would. He asked, “Can I ever be forgiven?”

  Jesus smiled.

  “You knew Jesus?” The expression on Annie’s face was partway between amusement and bafflement.

  Lucas nodded. “I did.”

  “The messiah? The son of God?”

  “He just went by Jesus back then. But yes!”

  “So, so, so, this nail,” she said, pointing at the slither of metal now sitting on the centre of the bar. “This was one of the nails used to pin Jesus to the cross?”

  “Jesus,” muttered Max.

  Lucas grunted. “Yes! Jesus Christ.”

  “No,” said Max. “I just mean, Jesus, that’s crazy.”

  Annie prodded the nail on the bar with her index finger as though she feared it might bite her. It was an ugly thing—aged iron hammered into an uneven spike with a square head formed of one end. It had been driven into the space between Jesus’s left ulna and radius bones. A crude, yet precise torture.

  “So, Julian...” said Vetta, squinting with consideration, “is Jesus?”

  Lucas wished he knew the answer. Julian looked and behaved nothing like that man he had met on that cross in Jerusalem—but people change. Even The Devil had changed. And yet... “I don’t think Julian is Jesus,” he said. “That doesn’t feel right.”

  “Then who?” Max scratched his head like a confused monkey. With his wispy blonde hair he looked a lot like an infant. “I thought you were going to get answers. Now all we have is more questions.”

  “Questions are good. Questions mean we’re still in the game. Answers are final.”

  “You’re talking in riddles,” said Simon angrily.

  Shirley nodded. “Yeah, this is getting a bit much for me too.”

  Lucas sighed. The nail on the bar took him back to a time long ago. A worse time. A better time. A time when he hadn’t tormented himself every second about what he was and what he had done. There had been a joyful abandon in being God’s Adversary, in being The Devil.

  Some secret part of him had always yearned to revert back, like a middle-aged family man lamenting on his glory days. Tormenting mankind was a game he had been unrivalled at. His wickedness had been glorious. He missed it. But he had given it all up, the thing that had defined him for thousands of years, suppressed so that he could become one of the good guys.

  And where had it got him?

  Up shit creek with a paddle wedged up my arse!

  Lucas moved away from the bar, sickened by the sight of the nail—sickened by what had become of him since the last time he’d seen it. Damn you, Gladri. There will be a reckoning for this, I vow to you.

  “You okay?” asked Max. While the others remained at the bar in silence, he broke away and followed Lucas over to the pool table. Lucas plucked a pool cue from the rack and started belting the white ball off the cushions. Whap-whap-whap.

  Max picked up a cue as well, as if he wanted to play, but Lucas ignored him.

  Whap-whap-whap.

  “Hey, man. Just cool it, okay? We’ll figure this out. Hey, man…? Come on!”

  Lucas smashed the cue ball harder. WHAP! It hit the cushion and ricocheted into the air. Max had
to duck, and when he stood back up, Lucas was snarling in his face. “What do you know about anything, kid? I’ve existed for eons. I fear nothing. I know all. So get away from me before I flay the flesh from your puny body!”

  Max looked shocked at first, then hurt, but his expression eventually settled on something else—something that seemed almost mocking. Instead of going away, he started talking.

  “There was this lad I was friends with at school, right? Greg, his name was. Used to act tough all the time. Bullied just about everyone, even me, his friend. Told us his dad was an SAS soldier and that his whole family took Karate lessons. Everyone in school was afraid of him. He was tough.”

  “Nice story,” said Lucas. “Go tell it to someone else.”

  “He was tough,” repeated Max, “until somebody put him to the test. A new kid joined our school. His name was Ross, and he’d come from a tower block in Kings Heath. From the get-go, Ross wasn’t willing to put up with any of Greg’s bullshit—he called him on it straight away. And of course, Greg had been top dog too long to let that stand and still keep his cred, so he had no choice but to face Ross.”

  “Who kicked his arse,” said Lucas. “Your story lacks originality.”

  “Yeah,” said Max. “Ross kicked the ever-living shit out of Greg. Left him sobbing on the ground. The entire school just walked away and left him there in the middle of the car park. No one was ever afraid of Greg again.”

  “The end,” said Lucas, rolling his eyes.

  “No,” said Max. “The beginning. Everyone left Greg lying there on the ground, except for me. I stayed. I helped him up and got him home, and that’s when he finally stopped with the bullshit. He admitted how his dad was never home, and his mom was a drunk who said she hated him and wished he were dead. He told me how alone he was. How scared he was.”

  Lucas slammed the pool cue down on the table. “What’s your goddamn point, Max?”

  “That the guy who acts toughest is the most afraid. Greg and I are still friends to this day. He joined the Army after school and became a paratrooper, just like he used to fantasise about his dad being. He’s a genuinely tough SOB now and dedicated to protecting others. No more bullshit. No more bullying.” Max looked down and smiled as he reminisced, and it seemed pretty clear that this was a true story. When he looked up at Lucas again, his eyes were steely and determined. “Words and actions are two separate things, Lucas. I know you’re afraid, probably more than any of us, because you have so much more to lose.”