Blood Relics (A James Acton Thriller, #12) (7 page)

Acton
had to admit he never got tired of hearing that. When he had begun to fall for
Laura he had no idea she was rich, and it wasn’t until she had been kidnapped
that he had any inkling just how rich she was. And it wasn’t until they were
married and she had given him access to everything that he realized how
incredibly rich she was. She wasn’t a billionaire, but she was closer to it
than from it. She was truly a one-percenter, and now by extension so was he,
though the humble home they lived in certainly hid their wealth well.

Both of
them were content to lead simple lives, with the money she inherited from her hi-tech
entrepreneurial brother upon his accidental death at one of her dig sites they
funded their own projects and traveled in comfort. But one of their greatest pleasures
was helping less fortunate students with anonymous donations that would allow
them to come on digs that they otherwise would have been forced to just hear
about through their classmates’ social media accounts.

That
was what he loved most about the money. Helping the kids.

A close
second though was traveling in style wherever and whenever they wanted, Laura
part of some jet sharing company.

“Rest
assured I’ll be flying economy,” grunted Reading.

Laura
winked at Acton. “Why don’t you wait for us and we’ll swing by and pick you
up.”

There
was a pause and Acton stifled his laugh as he pictured their friend debating on
what to say.

“I’ll
see you in bloody Rome.”

The call
ended and Acton laughed, gently smacking Laura’s bum as she rose.

“I’m
just going to make a quick call to arrange the flight then I’ll be back. Finish
your dinner before it gets cold.”

She left
the room and Acton cut off a piece of his wellington, savoring the taste. He
swallowed. “You know, I’m a damned good cook if I do say so myself.”

“No
argument here, but you should taste my KD. I put extra butter with whipping
cream, makes all the difference.”

“Sounds
artery clogging.”

“Hey,
after you get shot in the back and almost die, you tend to look at things
differently.”

“What,
like life is precious and you shouldn’t be risking it?”

Milton
gave Acton an are-you-kidding-me look. “Coming from you, that’s pretty rich.”

Acton
shrugged. “Hey, it’s not like I go
looking
for trouble.”

“Nooo,
you’re just shit-magnet and attract it like flies.”

“Gregory!”

“Sorry,
hon.” He turned back to Acton. “A
crap
-magnet.”

“That’s
much better, dear.”

Milton
turned his head slightly away from his wife and gave Acton a toothy grin.

“Greg, I
can see you in the hutch mirror.”

“Shit.”

“Keep
digging.”

Milton
shook his head, his eyes bulging at Acton. “Save me,” he hissed.

Laura
entered the room, giving him the out he was searching for, Acton content to let
him dig to Middle Earth.

“So, any
luck?”

Laura
nodded as she took her seat, placing her napkin on her lap. “All arranged. We
leave at midnight, so that gives us time to finish our dinner and should put us
in Rome for tomorrow afternoon with the time difference.”

“Good,” said
Sandra, picking up her fork. “I’d hate to see all Jim’s hard work go to waste.”

Acton
swallowed another bite. “Me neither. This stuff is almost as good as sex.”

“James!”

Acton
held up his hands in mock apology. “Hey, I said
almost
. Sex with you is
definitely better.”

He
caught Mai’s flushing cheeks out of the corner of his eye.

“Sorry,
Mai. Eventually you’ll get used to my sense of humor.”

Milton
grunted. “And when you do, you’ll know you’ve truly become a heathen.”

“Hey, I
resent that,” said Acton, jabbing the air with a speared piece of beef. “Who’s
jetting off into the great unknown to try and save the Blood Relics of the Son
of God? Not just any heathen would do that.”

He
popped the meat in his mouth, chewing slowly.

Milton
took the conversation to a more serious tone. “Why do you think they’re
stealing these things?”

Acton
shrugged. “I’m guessing it has to do with the healing properties they’re
rumored to have.”

This
seemed to pique Mai’s interest. “Healing properties?”

Acton
nodded, swallowing. “Yes. The belief is that the blood of Jesus can heal. The
most famous example is the Roman soldier”—he snapped his fingers as he tried to
remember—“what’s his name—”

“Longinus.
Saint
Longinus now.”
Laura for the save!

“Right,
Longinus. His actual name was Cassius—”

“
That
you remember?” interrupted Milton.

“But for
simplicity sake, most texts refer to him as Longinus, his baptized name.” He
shoveled some carrots into his mouth then took a sip of wine. “The story is
that he stabbed Jesus in his side to make sure he was dead, and when he did so,
blood and water poured out, some of it getting into his eyes. Did I mention he
was blind?”

Mai
shook her head.

“Yeah,
according to the accounts he was either blind, or suffering some sort of
affliction of the eyes. Some stories say he was blind in one eye, others say
both, others say he just had an infection. Whatever the truth is, he was
apparently cured right then and there, and from that point on became a
believer.”

“And the
spear? You said it might not be the real one at the Vatican?”

Acton
shrugged. “No one really knows. There’re several places that claim to have the
spear. Besides the one just stolen, there’s one in Vienna and one in Armenia.”

“And
Antioch,” added Laura.

“Why
don’t they test them to see if they’re even from the same era?”

“Well,
there’s a few reasons, not the least of which is people don’t really want to
know. As long as it hasn’t been proven fake, then they can claim it’s real.”

Laura
gave him a chance to eat a few more bites. “The most famous example is the
Shroud of Turin. Small pieces were given to scientists to carbon date and it
was dated to at least a thousand years after Christ’s death.”

“But a
lot of people dispute those results. Some say that parts of the cloth many not
be original, instead patches added after the fact to repair damage over the
centuries, others claim that carbon from a fire in medieval times actually
contaminated the samples. And that’s the problem. A negative when testing
something like this doesn’t really prove anything, but people think just
because there was a scientific test that it’s conclusive.”

Mai’s
meal was forgotten. And so were her nerves. “But why would anyone sew in
another piece of cloth when they knew how important it was?”

“Well,
take King Tut’s mask. You know, the famous blue and gold king cobra?”

“Yes,
I’ve seen pictures.”

“Well,
just last year workers at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo broke off the beard and
rather than tell anyone, they just glued it back on. That glue is now causing
damage to the mask.”

“Unbelievable!”

“We see
it all the time, unfortunately.” Laura put her fork down, her meal finished.
“Many times we find artifacts or structures that we now consider priceless, but
during the centuries or millennia were just things handed down over time.
Imagine you have an antique table handed down through the generations. If
something were to happen to it, you would fix it. In some cases, you might need
to even replace a piece, let’s say one of the legs. Because it’s precious to
you, you would insist the work is done properly so you could never tell that
the leg had been replaced. Sometimes this even involves artificially aging the
wood or stone. Now imagine five hundred years from now somebody finds that
table and wants to carbon date it. If they take a portion from the replaced
leg, they’ll find out it was only five hundred years old instead of the actual
seven hundred years. This is why the dating might be a science, but the
selection of what to date can sometimes be an art.”

“They
actually broke the beard off of King Tut?” asked Sandra. “That’s incredible!
How’d they find out?”

Acton
pushed his plate away, finished. “Somebody noticed a ring of glue oozing out in
a photograph.”

“So back
to the original question of why,” interjected Milton. “Do you think someone could
really be after these things for their healing properties?”

Acton
pursed his lips, leaning back in his chair, swirling his wine. He sighed. “I
can’t think of any other reason. There’s so many other priceless artifacts kept
with the two that were stolen, you’d have to think they’d have taken them as
well if money were the motive.”

“My
God!” said Sandra. “Do you think it could actually work?” Her hand darted to
her husband’s arm. “Do you think they might try to clone
him
?”

Acton’s
chest tightened slightly as a shot of nervous adrenaline shot through his
system at the thought. “I-I don’t know.” He looked at his wife, memories of The
Vault, a hidden chamber under The Vatican known to almost no one, momentarily overwhelming
him. “Are we getting ourselves into something that we shouldn’t be? Something
bigger than us?”

Laura
seemed to pale slightly.

“Maybe
you two shouldn’t get involved.”

Acton
looked at his friend and shook his head. “No, Hugh’s expecting us. And if this
is some type of cloning effort, it needs to be stopped.”

“But
why?”

Everyone
turned to Mai who withered from the attention.

“What do
you mean?” asked Laura, gently.

“Well,
isn’t your entire religion focused on the second coming of Christ? Maybe this
is how it was meant to happen?”

Acton
paused for a moment as he contemplated her words. They were a simple truth
spoken by a Buddhist with no vested interest in something she didn’t believe
in, which made her words all the more poignant. Could that be what this was all
about? Some religious zealot trying to get a sample of DNA that they would then
use to create a new baby Jesus?

It was a
fantastically terrifying idea, something he hoped no one would actually be
foolish enough to try and do. All you would be doing was creating the body, and
though he wasn’t terribly religious by any stretch of the imagination, even his
own basic understanding told him it was the Holy Spirit that was actually the
Son of God, not the flesh and blood that had walked the Earth.

He
looked at Laura.

“I think
we focus on the job.”

She
nodded. “Agreed. We help Hugh stop the murderers and thieves and use their
motives against them. We’ll leave the ethical and metaphysical debate to
others.”

Acton
sucked in a deep breath, grimacing.

That
could be easier said than done.

Golgatha, Judea
April 7
^th
, 30 AD
Approaching the Twelfth Hour

“Are you okay?”

He felt Albus’
hand on his shoulder, shaking him as tears filled his eyes at the sight of the
man hanging above him, dead, water and blood still flowing out of the hole he
had made only moments before, it now a trickle but still inexplicable. Turning
toward his friend, he looked at him and smiled.

“I can
see.”

Albus’ jaw
dropped, a jaw he hadn’t seen clearly in years, the expression on his face one
of pure shock. Shock he could discern with ease once again. The idea of seeing
again was something that had never occurred to him. His thoughts on it had
always been one of hoping that the shadows he could make out would continue to
at least be discernable, it giving him at least some warning of something
coming at him.

But to
see again?

Never in
a lifetime could he have imagined something so wonderful.

His
friend let go of his shoulder, dropping to his knees in front of him, looking
at him skeptically. He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.
And your hair is much grayer than I remember.”

A smile
broke out on Albus’ face as he grasped him by both shoulders, shaking him in
excitement. “You
can
see! It’s a miracle!”

They
both looked up at the man, slumped on the cross high on the hilltop, the two
other men on either side in their last gasps of life, their knees broken, their
chests heaving as their lungs, straining to provide precious air, slowly failed
as their bodies finally gave in to the inevitable.

But he
didn’t care.

They
were criminals.

But not
this
man. He pushed himself to his feet, feeling remarkably well, though he was sure
it was the rush of the moment, the excitement fueling his weary bones.
Twenty-five years in the Roman Army didn’t leave the body in good shape, his body
still beaten but his soul replenished, he now feeling a vigor he hadn’t since
he was a boy.