The Mona Lisa Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing in my mind but those memories. I should have been dead, but instead I was born.
    I used to be Christ, but now I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t him in the same way you know a dream wasn’t real when you wake. I woke in that cave trapped in a body that wasn’t mine, a lost soul with no memories of my own. I didn’t know how I’d got there, or where or even what I had been before, but I knew I wasn’t Christ.
    I was born and I yearned for something to fill the void inside me. The void that Christ had left. I was born and I hated. I hated Judas instinctively. Perhaps because of the memories of what he had done to Christ. Perhaps because I suspected he played some role in me being trapped in Christ’s body. That hate has never faded, even now, but then he’s given me plenty of reasons over the centuries to keep on hating.
    I had hoped Judas dead after our last encounter, after Penelope, but if what Cassiel told me was true, then it seemed Judas was still alive. And Cassiel didn’t strike me as the type to make things up.
    Cassiel probably knew I’d do anything to get my hands on Judas, to corner him in a little chamber like I’d cornered Remiel. Remiel wasn’t personal. Remiel was just grace.
    But Judas. Judas was personal.

A VISIT WITH THE MONA LISA
AND OTHER CURIOSITIES
    Every quest has to start somewhere, but luckily this one had an obvious starting point: the Mona Lisa in Paris. The one that Cassiel seemed to think wasn’t the real Mona Lisa.
    So I took Remiel’s money from his shoulder bag and I slept on a bench in the Barcelona train station. Only one pickpocket tried to take the money from my pants during the night, and I caught a couple of his fingers and broke them without opening my eyes. After that, no one else bothered me.
    I took the first train to Paris in the morning. As we pulled out of the station we passed an old steam locomotive with a single passenger car sitting on one of the side tracks, empty of travellers or crew. Both locomotive and car were painted white, with crimson wheels. They were waiting for someone to board. I knew this because I’d been warned about the train once by a Spanish sculptor I’d raised from the dead to ask about some of his missing works. I thought maybe if he knew where they were I could find them and sell them to afford more wine and women. I’d tell you his name but I’ve forgotten it. Just like history has forgotten him.
    The sculptor didn’t know what had happened to the missing works, and he no longer cared. But he did tell me about the white train, maybe because a railway ran past the cemetery where I raised him, and maybe because I’d brought wine with me to the cemetery. He said the white train went to Paris, but a different Paris. The Paris of people’s dreams and fantasies, the perfect Paris. The Paris that didn’t exist and you would never find unless you were on that train. He said you wouldn’t want to go there, though, because the white train only makes one-way trips. I don’t know how he knew that. I’m still not even sure if he was telling the truth or just making it up. But ever since then I’ve avoided white trains. He said there were trains like it all around the world, making trips to impossible cities. I left him in his grave with the wine and a promise to raise him again for more drinks some day, although I never did. It wasn’t the first promise I’d broken to the dead, and it wouldn’t be the last.
    So I took the regular train to Paris. Once there, I stopped at a café by the river Seine and enjoyed a croissant and espresso on the patio. Anyone can do espresso well, but only the French can make a proper croissant. I watched the river and the traffic, the flow of people along the streets. I returned the smile of the waitress who brought me the bill and gave her a large tip, because, why not? I watched the tourists holding hands and laughing as they looked for the best places along the riverbank to pose for photos. They wouldn’t