"What did you call me?" Stunned, Berkfield stood slowly, but held on to the edge of the ambulance gurney for support.
"Your Eminence," the cardinal whispered and then bowed with the others as they stood within the tight confines of the aircraft.
"Wait, wait, wait," Berkfield said, becoming agitated as he waved his hands. "I'm not Him, by any stretch of the imagination, and you guys need to let the boys in the Vatican know that. I'm just a regular Joe that got caught up in something really bizarre."
One by one the bowed clerics peered up at Berkfield, awe still filling their expressions.
"Are you sure?" the cardinal asked, seeming so disappointed that fresh tears glittered in his eyes.
"Yeah," Berkfield whispered.
"Do you feel any pains? Soreness? Nausea? Anything that might suggest there's an injury we haven't treated?"
Berkfield looked at the frightened medical team and slowly shook his head no.
"But you've had the Living Blood within your veins. No human being has ever-"
"I'm just a regular guy who misses his wife and is scared shitless." Berkfield let out a weary sigh. "I want to go home, hug Marjorie, tell her it's gonna be all right." Tears threatened Berkfield's composure. "I wanna kiss my daughter and drop her off at the mall, and yell at my son for playing his music too loud." His voice broke. "I want to drink a beer and wave at my neighbor while I'm grilling burgers. I don't want to be on the run for the rest of my life, or have my family live in the shadows. I can't live like this!"
"The first shall be last and the last shall be first," one cleric said above Berkfield's sobs.
"When the stigmata occurred, is it possible that it all came out of him and soaked into the holy robes?" the cardinal asked, going to Berkfield to place a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Whatever soaked into the robes, Cardinal, evacuated itself into the challis as soon as those clerics entered the cathedral," another said. "That's been sent directly to Rome on a separate charter with a clerical army on board to protect it."
The cardinal nodded. "I was given orders to follow your lead... to grant you whatever you asked. We were told we would know from your words what to do, because the pontiff believes that a man cannot experience the Ultimate Light without being subject to profound change." He looked at Berkfield, his aged gray eyes searching for answers. "There is so much that we want to know about what it felt like to have His grace enter your cells, to fill you up with the Light. We have lived all our lives hoping to experience a small measure of that... yet a man with no particular religious zeal, no special gifts, nothing other than a good heart has been so blessed." He chuckled sadly and turned to one of the doctors and sighed. "Just as it is written, so it was done... as it has always been. The least likely is given the highest honor."
"But where are Carlos and Damali and the rest of the team?" Berkfield cried. He looked at the faces around him, fear, anger, and frustration colliding to become one emotion.
"I don't know how many of them made it," the cardinal said, fingering his cross and then taking it off, holding it out for Berkfield to accept. "If they don't turn, or weren't polluted..."
Berkfield's eyes went to the cross, but he didn't take it from the cardinal's hand. "You should have seen the way they fought! They were on the front line and got their asses kicked. Do you hear me? I've seen that same shit when I was doing my bid in 'Nam... young kids on both sides, barely out of high school, haven't even lived, but slaughtered. And for what? Same thing is going on now over in Iraq, same thing has been going on over and over again in world history. Call it Desert Storm, the Gulf War, Korea, or we can go all the way back to the beginning of caveman versus caveman, the Crusades, whatever. For what? Nobody wins. Wrongs get done on both sides. Mothers and father bury their children, blood soaks the land, the women wail, and all of humanity suffers. Don't you guys get it? People have to stop fighting each other. We have to go after the real enemy, or it never ends. And I know where he lives... about seven levels underground." Berkfield held his head in his hands as a wave of nausea suddenly overcame him.
Unable to speak, the clerics bowed. He could almost feel their shame of wanting a safe haven mingling with their misplaced reverence. He wasn't the Most High; they didn't need to bow to him. In that instant he felt it with clarity, as though someone had called him by name. These men of the cloth had been hiding behind safe walls, while the world suffered. They ate well, lived well, had been sheltered from horrors, and their deep resources had kept jets flying and spectacular cathedrals as monuments, while people begged in the streets. They lived in oasislike compounds while the common man lived in a spiritual and physical wasteland. This one sect of faith wasn't the only guilty party. Every major religion had done no less. But they all had seemingly forgotten that the battle was in the streets, their prayers necessary, that until one's body was out on the front line, it didn't mean a damn.
As soon as the thought ebbed, Berkfield felt his body slump from sudden, inexplicable fatigue. But his new awareness made him bold as he looked at the men before him.
"I can't tell you how I know, but I do. The vamps can kill me, but they can never bite me. If I die fighting for the side of good, I go into the Light. So I don't need a cross, it flows through my veins these days. Thanks, anyway."
The cardinal nodded. "Forgive us and don't judge us so harshly."
"I don't judge anymore," Berkfield said, stretching out. "I've seen too much to do that." He reclined and closed his eyes.
"Then, what would you have us do with you?" the cardinal asked, confusion slowing his response.
"If any of that Guardian team made it out alive, I'm going with them. My family is going with them. I don't know what else to do. I can't go back home and act like none of this ever happened. There's no safe place to put your head in the sand and hide. This whole thing is about to blow. So, I'll wait for a sign. Got it?"
CARLOS CONTINUED to stare out of the jet window. He needed a moment to think, put everything into perspective, and figure out his next move. In his currently weakened state, with all his most cherished powers stripped from him, what would be his strategy now?
He was glad that silence had fallen over the cabin. The only sound that punctuated the oppressive quiet was the low drone of the engine and Big Mike's snoring. Then he heard someone opening a bottle of water. The sound of deep swallows suddenly made him aware of the burning dryness of his own throat. But he'd declined the water offered by Monk Lin. He wasn't ready for the reality that he might, indeed, be able to drink it without color. He wasn't ready to face that until he was someplace private.
There was a surreal comfort in knowing the rules of the game, whatever game a man played, and he'd played Hell to the bone-literally. For whatever it was worth, at the moment he allowed himself some small measure of pride in having bested the most ruthless bastards at their own game. Problem now was, to what end? Maybe he'd played himself.
Carlos sighed and kept his eyes trained on the sun, remembering how he'd finally embraced his fate and how delicious the power had been. True, he'd been in Hell, but what a ride it had been...
He shook his head slowly, quietly admonishing himself for the perverse thought. Yeah... the Light was awesome, but on the other side, the women, the cars, the villas, walking on air, the clubs, the money, the sex... damn, it had been good, and when Damali had turned, there'd been nothing like it.
A new, frightening thought made his chest tight. He was now, possibly, just an average human being. Again, he was trapped in a situation with no money, unable to use the full range of his personal power, and probably owed a higher authority, just like before. They hadn't approached him, but he knew it had to be coming sooner or later. There was always barter, always a payoff. Nothing was free.