DAMON CROSSE LOOKED IN HIS BATHROOM MIRROR AND WAS dismayed to see that the deep lines around his eyes were back. Just a few weeks ago, he had been able to stop using makeup because his wrinkles had faded, making it that much easier to masquerade as Crosby Wheeler, a man in his late sixties. But lately he’d noticed that the power of the coins was diminishing. The first time he’d been told about the coins and their power, he’d had a hard time believing it. But his adoptive father, Fred Crosse, whose real name was Friedrich Dunst, had convinced him. He told Damon all about them, how they had traveled to many different lands throughout history after Judas first received them for betraying Christ. After being used in the sale of the potter’s field, the thirty silver pieces had been safeguarded by the church, protected by its trusted patriarchs for over a thousand years.
When the Great Schism occurred in 1054 and the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches split, legend had it that they each took ten coins to keep watch over and hid the remaining ten with someone outside the church as a precaution. Eventually, though, some of them made their way into Caligula’s court. History doesn’t highlight the fact that Caligula began as a benevolent ruler who freed citizens who had been imprisoned and eased their tax burden. What history recalls is an evil despot who raped his own sisters, killed his rivals while their parents watched, and even named himself a god. Legend warned of the power of the coins to turn men evil. Apparently, Caligula was too weak to fight against the power of the coins, and they became his undoing.
Over the centuries the coins had been lost and found, the battle between the power hungry and the church waging on. The coins’ power to corrupt had made even some men of the cloth vulnerable, and they’d sold them for profit. Over the decades, it was believed that among the many who held the coins were Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, Queen Bloody Mary, and Benito Mussolini. Hitler had searched for them in vain, and Damon wondered if history would be different had he gotten his hands on them. Friedrich had been stationed on the Greek island of Patmos during World War II, when the Nazis occupied the island. He’d had teams searching for relics on behalf of the Ahnenerbe—Heinrich Himmler’s secret society tasked with finding evidence that German ancestry was linked to the Aryan master race he believed were the Nordic gods. The war ended before Friedrich could find them, and he was forced to leave.
Years later, his disease made it impossible for him to travel, so he had sent Damon back to the island of Patmos, in Greece, to continue the search. When Damon returned empty-handed, the look of disappointment in Friedrich’s eyes had nearly broken him. Damon had exhausted every lead, knowing that if they didn’t find them soon, Friedrich would be dead. His last lead was a cardinal claiming to know where the coins were hidden.
Damon flew to Rome and met with him, lining the man’s pockets with a hefty seven-figure sum, and he had led Damon to a cathedral where they were allegedly buried under the altar. They weren’t there, and Damon found the cardinal the next day, killed him, and took back the briefcase of money. He was not going to go home without them this time. He flew to Turkey and eventually to Ephesus, where he was led to believe they were buried. He had asked around in the marketplace, mentioning a generous finder’s fee to the person who could even arrange a meeting with someone who could find them. It took over three months, but he finally had left with them in hand.
When he returned home, he had walked into Friedrich’s bedroom victorious but Friedrich could barely open his hands to touch them. As soon as Damon placed the coins in Friedrich’s palms, his eyes flew open, and he looked at Damon with hope for the first time in months. Damon stood, watching in awe, as the color began to return to Friedrich’s face and he was able to push himself into a sitting position. Within the hour, his voice no longer shook.
Over the next several weeks, he slowly improved but was still not able to walk. It was then that Friedrich told him what he required next.
“The blood of the innocent amplifies their power—even more so if it is from the bloodline of the family that was entrusted to watch over the coins.”
“These were hidden in a church. There is no family associated with them.”
Friedrich had shifted in his wheelchair. “I want to get out of this damn chair. You know what you must do.”
That’s when they’d started the orphanage at the Institute. Their first orphan was a young girl of two. Damon still remembered the gleam in Friedrich’s eyes when they dripped her blood onto the coins. The coins began to smoke and Friedrich had grasped them in both hands, seemingly impervious to the fact that they were burning his flesh. Within minutes, he told Damon that he’d gotten the feeling back in his legs.
They took blood from that child every day, and every day, Friedrich got better . . . but it wasn’t quite enough. The child had to be sacrificed if Friedrich was to be fully restored. Damon willingly did it; after all, the child was close to death anyway, with the blood they kept taking daily and the sedatives he had been administering. Once they had performed the ceremony, Friedrich pulled himself up to standing and took a tentative step, smiling at Damon.
“I can walk. I can walk again!” And he’d been well for decades . . . until more was required. This time, a sacrifice wouldn’t do it—they needed more coins, but Friedrich died before Damon could find them.
He had taken possession of another set of ten two years ago, when his fool son Jeremy had thought he’d outwitted him and brought them to the Institute. They’d been locked away safely in a vault in his panic room until now. When he had first tried to use them and had put them next to his original ten, nothing had happened. He was not a man who panicked though, so he went back and methodically read Friedrich’s extensive notes on the relics and realized that he had to pay a price for desecrating them, because he’d had Peritas swallow them and then retrieved them from the dog’s feces. He needed blood for atonement, and because of the desecration, it had to be from the bloodline of those in charge of the coins.
Evan had solved that problem for him, and Damon now had enough to complete the ceremony of the blood cleansing to reactivate the coins’ power. Trembling with excitement, he pulled the velvet pouch from his pocket and fingered the silver pieces. He took the handkerchief from his desk and opened it, placing the coins in the cloth, then rested the cloth in his left hand. Next, he took the vial of Evan’s blood and poured a few drops on the first coin, rubbing it with his finger. He did the same with the rest of them. He waited but nothing happened. Something was wrong. The coins were supposed to heat up, make smoke.
This didn’t make any sense. He picked them up to examine them more carefully. The blood should have worked. He pulled out the original ten and dabbed a bit of the blood on one. Smoke poured from it.
A horrible thought occurred to him—what if the ten he’d gotten from Jeremy weren’t the real silver pieces? He picked one up again. It looked exactly the same as the others, but if they were the real Judas coins, Evan’s blood would have affected them. Damon’s own blood boiled and he cursed. Had Jeremy tricked him? Or hadn’t Jeremy known they weren’t authentic? Maybe something more than Evan’s blood alone was required.
Damon sighed deeply. Maybe his blood was required as well. His own sacrifice for what he had done. Perhaps the coins would not work unless he proved his worth.
He walked over to the wall and took down one of the short swords hanging there, and before he could allow himself time to think, he brought it down swiftly above the knuckle on the ring finger of his left hand, cutting off the tip of his finger.
White-hot pain rippled up his hand, into his arm. It took all his strength to drip the blood from his finger onto the coins. He waited in anticipation, but still nothing happened. Blood was squirting from his finger at an alarming rate and he grabbed one of the original coins and held it to his finger. The coin became hot, and he finally lost his composure enough to scream as it cauterized the wound and the bleeding stopped. He was grateful the original coins still retained some of their healing power. He picked up his severed fingertip and pressed it to the nub. The skin throbbed and he watched in amazement as it reattached, the skin knitting back together.
He picked up the useless coins and threw them against the wall. This was unacceptable. It meant that Taylor’s family still had their ten somewhere. He would find them—and after he did, he would kill Taylor and Jeremy. No one made a fool of Damon Crosse.
Scooping up the original ten, he pressed them between his hands, feeling the heat transfer from them to him. It began in his hands and rose all through his body, as though he were being painted with a brush of warm water. He closed his eyes and waited. After a few minutes, the feeling was gone. He looked down at his hand and saw the wound was completely healed. He walked over to mirror and noticed the wrinkles were gone, as was the silver around his temples, which was black once again. His skin was supple again . . . but it wouldn’t last. He would need to get more blood. Any blood would do for the original coins and he fumed that he’d wasted Evan’s precious blood on the fakes.
He went to the ancient book his adoptive father had given him and put the heavy black tome on his desk and began looking through it. There were spells and incantations, but he wasn’t interested in those. He was looking for the chapter on regeneration. Friedrich had told him if he was able to unlock the secret, Damon might be able to live, if not forever, then close. He thought about the story of the coins and pulled up the Gospel of Matthew on his phone. In Matthew 26, Judas received the money before he betrayed Jesus. Once he’d actually gone through with it, though, he regretted it, gave the coins back, then hanged himself. Had the coins prompted him to kill himself? They were referred to as blood money. And Damon knew what the blood could do to the coins. He went to the black book and found the chapter. Sacrifices. Christ had sacrificed his life for the salvation of the world, and the coins had been used to secure his death. What if a blood sacrifice of more than a few drops was required to activate them to their full potential? He went between the black book and the Bible over the next several hours but came up with nothing.
He returned the coins to their hiding place in the panic room and, once back in his study, texted his housekeeper to bring him dinner. While he waited, he read various news sites online, interested to see the leading news stories. The image of a reporter standing outside a Catholic church drew his attention and when he clicked the link, the woman’s voice filled the room.
“I’m here in Boston outside St. Luke’s Church, where a local priest has been taken to the hospital by ambulance. He was counseling a couple when allegedly the wife pulled out a gun and shot him. She then turned the gun on herself pulled the trigger. Her husband was not injured.”
He smiled. At least one thing was going as planned.