2 The Judas Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

own and returned fractured and hurt.  It was self-healing, Mark believed, and he usually left his companion to it.
                  That afternoon, however, when Mark returned, there was a man in the garden on the phone.  He was wearing a black suit, his hair neatly trimmed, and his face plain looking, almost generic.  He was pacing in front of Jude speaking rapidly into the little device in rushed Italian.
                  Mark entered the gate, the black iron bars giving a violent squeak, and the man turned.  Mark saw the telltale flash of a god in the stranger’s eyes, and Mark reacted with instinct.  Moving quicker than any human could, Mark crossed the path and took hold of the man’s head.
                  Before the god inside could react, Mark broke his neck with a sickening crack, letting the body fall to the ground with a thud.  The man’s dead hand flopped onto Jude’s crossed knee, drawing the meditating man out of his thoughts with a gasp.  Jude looked up at Mark with still, wide, brown eyes.
                  “What happened?” he asked, his voice groggy as though he’d spent those long hours asleep.
                  Mark rubbed his face angrily, taking a step back from the corpse.  “I don’t know.  You didn’t notice him standing there?”
                  Jude gave a shrug, his face devoid of any emotion.  He rose, first to his knees, his eyes staring down at the body.  He stretched his arms up as he climbed to his feet, and when he spoke, his voice was indifferent.  “I was thinking.”
                  Mark gave a frustrated growl, throwing his hands into the air.  “I can’t be around every second to protect you.  They’re going to take you if you refuse to protect yourself.”
                  “Let them,” Jude said in that same dead tone.  He walked off without waiting for Mark’s reply.
                  Mark buried the body in a hole so deep it wasn’t likely anyone would ever find him.  He contemplated looking into who the man was, but Mark didn’t want that on his conscience.  Death was part of the game now, and any human who could succumb to the god’s possession would have to be taken out.  Mark couldn’t let them get the upper hand again.
                  They moved shortly after, heading off to the Spanish coast where it was hot and flooded with tourists that time of year.  Mark acquired a small property overlooking the water, the old wood and stucco walls keeping the villa warm in the spring sun.  There were a couple of bedrooms upstairs and a small secluded cellar off the kitchen where Mark stored several wines. He thought that maybe, with so many people around, they would be safe.
                  It was three weeks before they were found again.  Three weeks, and this time, Mark was home.  He was upstairs with a book, in the little reading nook built into the wall beside the window.  The sun was shining fierce into the room, heating up the wooden boards beneath Mark’s feet.  He enjoyed the temperature on his skin, reminding him of home just a little, when he was a child.  The humid Alexandria summers, the air rich with salt water, the sun unforgiving. 
                  Mark was half-way through the novel when he heard the crash in the kitchen.  He listened, just for a moment, but heard nothing else.  It was only a moment later when he felt it, felt them , that he dropped the book and sped down the stairs.  There were two of them, a man and a woman, standing in the kitchen with Jude at gunpoint. 
                  The woman, old with a wrinkled face and hair nearly all grey save for a few black strands here and there, was holding Jude’s arm with strength impossible for her age.  The man, young, barely older than a teen, turned to Mark with a lopsided grin.
                  “Don’t