Page 1 of Judas

Prologue

"Can I get you a coffee to go?" Her sweet offer soothed his soul.

Judas nodded, “That would be great, thank you.”

The bouncy, middle-aged woman with bright red lips turned on her sneaker-covered heel to find a to-go cup. After filling it with the rich, dark bean water, she snapped the lid on tightly, handing it to the only person brave enough to sit at the old diner counter.

She thought he was handsome. His pale caramel, sultry eyes called to her from somewhere beyond time. She imagined for a moment what it would be like to dive deep and swim in them. To let herself be consumed by this vagabond passing through her small town only to be whisked away to someplace new and exotic.

“Here you go, sugar. Stay awake out there, you hear?” she blinked.

He put on a friendly smile before laying a fifty dollar bill next to his plate; an amount more than three times the cost of his meal. “It was nice meeting you, Darlene.”

She winked, dropping her eyes to the Formica counter. But before she could protest and offer him change, the extraordinarily beautiful man and his coffee were gone.

The bluesy rock of KALEO blared from the speakers of the silver Audi and a darkening twilight settled over the open expanse of New Mexico landscape, the little town and the diner disappearing in his rearview mirror. The reflective green sign glowed in the car's headlights and Judas relaxed a bit knowing he was just within a few miles of the Texas state line. The grueling drive from Tacoma to Dallas took him the better part of three days to complete. But, to be honest, car travel across the country was leaps and bounds better than on horseback, and definitely better than by foot.

This wasn't his first time traveling across this slice of the desert or even on this highway, but it had been at least a century or more since he visited the second-largest state in the union. Judas couldn't say he recognized much of the area. The last time he was here, for starters, Raton was called Willow Springs. Admittedly over a few centuries, the specifically local scenery began to look the same anyway.

He was pleased that his new apartment was well-managed by a super attentive older gentleman who, after a haggle about a price for his time, graciously allowed the movers access to the space today. Judas wouldn't need to worry about lifting or assembling furniture, he paid extra for that as well, and all he would be responsible for was unpacking the boxes. Thankfully, relocations were becoming much easier with time.

He considered how many more of them he would have to undertake.

Thisgift, as his friend Yesh called it, was tiresome. While the locations changed, the repetition of life did not. In the beginning, he made friends and built communities only to watch them succumb to the inevitable ravages of time and death. After a while, he stopped making so many connections because his heart just couldn’t bear the loss. But the real mind game came as Judas lived on the fringes of his old life for more than two thousand years not only to hear it retold in stories and rumors, but even worse, lies.

For the first three or four hundred of those years, the gossip infuriated him to the point of near madness. Judas made it his mission to tell people the truth in places like Assos and Apollonia, but it only got him labeled as an apostate and heretic by certain groups of a new, fledgling religion at the time. He held onto some hope with a sect of this radical group, the Gnostics, but even they were vilified by this new theology and lost to the sands of time. No one wanted to hear the truth it seemed, so over time, he gave up trying to tell it.

Judas assimilated into the world again and again. He made his way to the territories of the Franks and Visigoths, eventually settling for several hundred years in the Western Rhaetia Alps. Keeping his head down and out of sight, he watched humanity evolve around him. He witnessed wars, famines, and plagues. By the middle of the French Revolution, society and its technology encroached upon him, and moving every thirty years to a different town, country, or continent became his new gamble. After barely escaping the fighting during the Reign of Terror, Judas made the arduous journey to the newly formed United States of America, a land he eventually grew to love for its expansive landscape and restless wandering spirit. He found he could blend in and out of circles more easily here in this land of plenty, but this young nation of promised opportunity wasn't without its own challenges or dangers.

While he preferred to disarm an opponent with words, Jude, as he called himself in public, had known from his first day in his new country that he was looked upon as different because of the color of his skin. It had been that way in Europe, and it was for sure a struggle here. For this reason, among others, he’d established himself in northern states and territories to ease his transition. Until as recently as fifty years ago, Judas lived a delicate balance of being the helpful outsider while also staying in the shadows. He was perfectly content in being the apprentice or assistant and mostly took odd jobs that required the use of his brain instead of his brawn.

That wasn't to say that Judas wouldn't or couldn't fight as he had done plenty of it before even arriving on American shores. But shortly after realizing that he couldn't die, he devoted himself to learning everything his mind could hold including strategies of war, fighting, and self-defense. He defended a fair amount of interlopers on his remote Alpine farm and he had even taken ranks in more than one war in Europe.

But all of that was in the past now, and his immediate future lay almost six hundred miles within the next state's border. Allowing his mind to wander, Judas reminisced on how much of this country he had seen. In a little more than two hundred and thirty years, he moved no less than nine times. He knew he had not begun to scratch the surface of his adopted homeland but he did have his favorite places.

It was in the mid-1960s that he first moved to Oakland, California and began studying under a young martial artist named Lee Jun-fan who was known to his friends and students as Bruce. A striking person, both literally and figuratively, Judas was stunned that he could be in awe of such ayoungman. Bruce was incredibly intelligent, loved philosophy, and had an infinite sense of humor. The pair had an immediate, friendly rapport and often spoke at length after class hours about their love of thetaste of a freshly caught fish and the mutual dislike of the racial tensions of that time.

The memory of his friend made Judas smile. He was always fond of Bruce's teaching style and life ideology, mostly because it reminded him a bit of Yesh. And, not unlike Yesh, he was gone from the world before anyone was really able to know and appreciate him.

The blanket of stars was bright overhead as the car hummed along the desolate highway and song lyrics floated out the window. He pulled his mind back to living in the present and felt the cool air on his face. He had never lived in Dallas before and the thought of what potentially awaited him excited him a tiny bit. It amused him that, after all this time, he could still get excited about a new city. Although, if this were his last move, that would excite him more. The soothing voice of the car's electronic voice from the GPS pulled him from his daydreaming.

"Welcome to Texas."

Chapter one

The oppressive Texas sun bounced off the mirrored glass of the eighteen-story downtown building as Judas raised his hand to block his eyes from the glare. It was his third interview today, but he felt more confident as the day continued that he would find the right fit soon. He had accumulated enough wealth in his lifetime that he could easily choose not to work, but he found that having a job or a duty to report to for made life pass more easily. Boredom was soul-sucking in unbearable ways.

Pulling on the oversized chrome handle of the door, a rush of icy, air-conditioned air met him like a sentinel, slamming into his face. He strode to the building directory at the center of the spacious, mostly empty lobby. Names of various companies and law offices were etched in the black marble monolith, the letters carefully gilded with gold paint.

Arthur and Branson, floors seventeen and eighteen.

Most of the names on the stone slab listed at least two destinations on each floor, but evidently, the top two werereserved for only the law firm of Arthur and Branson. Judas would like to pretend he was impressed a tiny bit but after several hundred years on earth, there was little that did. The chime on the elevator pinged softly as its doors opened and he slipped inside the empty car.

As the door chimed again, Judas was greeted by an enormous reception area decorated in rich wood tones and gold. Stepping out of the lift, his spotless Lafitte oxfords sunk into plush snow-white carpeting. Taking in his surroundings momentarily, he waited patiently for the older woman with curly graying locks to finish her phone call and tap her headset before he approached.

"Welcome to Arthur and Branson. Do you have an appointment?" she smiled pleasantly, her accent dripping with southern hospitality.

"I have an interview… Jude Christian," Judas nodded.

---