* * *
Rising at dusk, he found to his surprise that Mary Magdalene had risen before him. She was sitting on a slab, staring at her burned and blistered arms.
“Master, what has happened to me?” she asked in a frightened voice, “I tried to walk outside and it felt like I was on fire!”
“Verily I say unto you,” said Jesus in his vampire voice, “I’ve brought you to the realm of the undead: you are now a vampire, and cannot walk upon the earth while the sun shines. Incidentally Mary, just call me Jesus,” he added, sitting up on his slab.
“A vampire!” she exclaimed, raising a hand in surprised horror to her pale cheek, “Jesus Christ, is this your idea of eternal life?”
“It is now,” said Jesus, stepping to the floor, “The only downside is you have to avoid the sun, oak stakes, and prolonged contact with fire. That’s not too bad, considering you’ll live forever if you avoid things like that in the future. Oh yes, I almost forgot, you have to suck blood every night too.”
“Blood? That’s disgusting, I can't do that!”
“Human blood, and you must imbibe or you will truly die,” Jesus replied, correcting her. “Don’t worry Mary, it’ll come natural, I’ll teach you, after all, I’m a teacher.”
“This isn't life, it’s a living death,” said a frowning Magdalene.
“You may have a point there, but it beats being truly dead doesn't it?” asked Jesus, leaning against the wall of the tomb, staring out at the graveyard.
“Why did you do this to me?” she asked, hands on her hips.
“Why?” asked Jesus, feeling that if he did not answer her honestly, he would lose her forever. He looked her in the eyes. “Mary, I was foolish not to take what you offered me in life, you have always been very dear to me, and I wanted you to be with me.”
“Are you trying to say you love me?”
“Yes, I do love you woman,” said an embarrassed Jesus, avoiding her gaze and looking to the entrance of their tomb.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Why, well, I uh…” Jesus stammered, his voice trailing off.
Mary Magdalene looked at Jesus and wondered why she had never seriously tried to seduce him; the opportunity had come her way many times. Now perhaps he would be hers, but she knew that regardless of his serene exterior, he could so easily be hurt. She swallowed the harsh words she had, vowing to keep them to herself. “Well my love, I suppose this does beat death, and why does your voice sound so weird?”
“Damnit all,” said Jesus, even as he felt his heart lift at the words of his beloved Magdalene, “I have to remember to disguise my voice.”
“Do I sound like that?” she asked, who two thousand years in the future would still kid him for occasionally sounding like Bela Lugosi.
“No, you sound just as you did in the past,” Jesus answered, “That’s strange, I imagine only some of us have this problem.”
“It is a problem,” said Mary with a wry smile, “You sound goofy.”
Caressing her cheek with a finger, Jesus asked, disguising his voice, “Is this better?”
“Much.”
They stepped from their tomb into the night.
“It’s bright, like the day,” she marveled, looking to Jerusalem, seeing flickering light from street torches. In some areas, it had turned the stone and stucco buildings a warm bronze color.
“Yes,” said Jesus, looking to his lovely consort, smiling at the good fortune of having her with him. “Your sight has changed so you can see in the dark. You won’t miss the day, and we’ll have thousands of nights to enjoy, more than all the days of Methuselah and then some.”
“Did God give us this?” she asked, looking to Jesus, wondering what other delights there could be for them to share.
“Who knows,” said Jesus as they headed across the cemetery, “I’m not sure; frankly, after what I went through last Friday, I don’t think there is a God, at least not one who cares about the affairs of man.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, relieved that he was not going to go off and start another ministry.
“To visit old friends.”
“Who?”
“The Pharisees and Sadducees at the Temple.”
“Oh,” the Magdalene replied, her quick mind comprehending, “I get it, revenge, right?”
“Exactly,” said Jesus, determined to slaughter the evil Joseph Caiaphas and his minions by sucking their blood.
“Do you think my burned arms will get better?”
“Of course woman, look at them.”
To her amazement, her arms were quickly healing, returning to their normal appearance. They headed into the city and toward the Temple complex, enjoying the coolness of the early evening.
In the Temple council chamber, an ostentatious room lined with polished stone benches covered in costly cushions, various robed hypocrites, disguised as Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots, sat debating about Hebrew law, the vileness of pork, the terrible Romans, and of how Jesus of Nazareth had been the son of Satan, not God.
“Yeah, but he’s disappeared from his tomb and Pilate’s dead, along with his praetor!” exclaimed Abram Ben-Joshua, a Benjaminite Zealot who had demanded Jesus’ death. “His guards found his body in the mansion courtyard with two of his slaves.”
“Perhaps it was robbers, murdering him for lucre,” said Baruch Zion, adversary of Sadducee Caiaphas in their struggle for power.
“I don’t think so Baruch,” Abram replied, “Soldiers found the men guarding the sepulchre dead as well, and the boulder blocking the entrance is sitting half a stadia from the grave, smashed through the side of a house. Something strange is going on, and we’d best be on the lookout for that Levite bastard Jesus.”
“Come on Abe, do you really think he climbed out of the tomb on his own?” the wicked Caiaphas asked, High Priest who had demanded death for the self-proclaimed Son of Man. “The man was crucified, he died, and dead he will stay. The explanation is simple; his disciples dragged his stinking carcass from the graveyard so they could say he rose from the dead.”
“Probably,” agreed a young Benjaminite Pharisee, named Saul of Tarsus.
“What does it take to get through to you, Caiaphas?” asked Abram, pointing to the vestibule, “Sunday morning a scribe found one of his disciples, Simon Peter, dead – back there!”
“You’re saying Jesus did it?” asked Caiaphas, hiding his glee at their apparent foolishness, his judgment clouded by blind ambition. He would indeed go higher in the temple with these fools saying a dead man had risen from the grave, thought the Sadducee, they would be seen as insane and removed from their positions by Herod Antipas and the Temple elders.
Then he could assume the position he had coveted for so long – sole blessed treasurer of the valuable sin gifts to the temple, a job that would allow him to embezzle untold sums of silver shekels for his personal use. For had he not learned as a child to misdirect and mislead from his childhood nurse, a woman who had slept with his father for years – the vicious Jezebel still ruling his father’s house with impunity, thanks to forbidden favors she gave him that his mother never would.
“I don’t know Caiaphas, but they say Thomas and another disciple saw him Sunday and fled for parts unknown,” said Abram, unaware that he and his fellows were playing into the hands of an unknown enemy – the greedy, amoral Caiaphas. “Thomas may have been a member of Jesus’ group, but he isn’t stupid. A man who knows both of us swears Thomas was scared to death when he saw him, and suspects he has returned as a vampire, bent on revenge.”
“A vampire, and who are ‘they’?” asked Caiaphas, smirking.
“A Roman writer named Gaius Plinius Celer and Grania Marcella his wife,” Abram answered. “They are lodged at Issachar’s hotel with their young son Pliny.”
“I know who you’re tal
king about,” Shadrach Bar-Judah replied, another Pharisee who had demanded the death of Jesus. “He’s the guy who wants to write an encyclopedia of history, using that prodigy son of his as a scribe to record events around the empire.”
“You’re kidding,” said a frowning Caiaphas, shaken by what he heard. “Gaius Celer is a man of letters, well educated, and I know him too.” He rose to his feet and added, “Excuse me brethren, I’m heading to the hotel to hear firsthand what he has to say.”
“I’m coming with you,” Saul of Tarsus declared, rising from his softly covered stone bench.
Both left the temple as Jesus approached, these men forever escaping his wrath. The Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots resuming in their discussion, Jesus and Mary silently climbed the temple stairs, entering the council chamber, confronting most of the holy men who had condemned the gentle preacher to death.
Abram looked up and said, “So, Thomas of Capernaum was right, you have risen, surely you are the Son of God.”
“I don’t know about that anymore,” said Jesus, pausing and looking to his consort. The Magdalene’s instincts were awakening, she staring hungrily at their necks, sharp fangs emerging from her gums for the first time. “But there’s one thing I do know,” he added, turning to the assemblage of hypocrites.
“What is that Rabbi?” asked Shadrach.
“That I’m going to kill all of you, for killing me,” said Jesus, entrancing and freezing them to their spots.
Six Hebrew fanatics met their end, as the Son of Man, a vampire, and his consort, Mary the Magdalene, dropped the bodies to the floor, she wiping her mouth on the robe of one victim.
Jesus sat down on a couch, belched loudly and remarked, “See, it wasn’t that bad was it?”
“No, but I feel bloated,” said Mary, rising from the cooling cadavers, rubbing her distended stomach.
“Two or three seems to be the limit, and you’re rather small,” Jesus replied, watching her move her hand. “If you like we can go to a lavatorium and purge the excess.”
“I need to; thank you Jesus, you’re still a wonderful teacher,” she answered politely, smiling in gratitude. Jesus nodded, embarrassed at her extolations.
They left the Temple and headed to a lavatorium, where Mary vomited half of her hemoglobin supper into the sewers of Jerusalem.
“Would you like to see the city at night, it’s beautiful,” said Jesus, while Mary leaned over the basin, wiping coagulating blood from her mouth.
“I’d love to,” replied his smiling consort, sensing the blooming romance between her and Jesus, a man she had been deeply in love with for several years.
They strolled Jerusalem for hours, hand in hand, enjoying their surroundings, agreeing the Romans were probably the best thing that ever happened to Judea, with their villas, plumbing, aqueducts and sewerage systems. The main streets lit by torchlight, the beauty of the golden stonework and slightly darker concrete masonry gave the deserted streets an amber hue.
As the sky began to lighten, Jesus said, “We’d best head to our tomb woman.”
“Do you have to put it that way?” the Magdalene asked, facing him with arms around his waist. She hoped that in time he would understand that romance was an art form, as much as seduction or dancing, and like all art, it had to be practiced, even if she had to help him.
Jesus looked to the beautiful, raven-haired vampiress and replied, “No my dear Mary, perhaps a better word would be our home.” He kissed her passionately, the Magdalene overwhelmed by his embrace, her body nearly growing limp.
“What‘s wrong, my woman?” asked Jesus, holding her in his arms.
“Oh, nothing, I just love you, that’s all,” said Mary, feeling flushed.
“And I love you Mary, I have always loved you,” said Jesus, taking her hand in his.
Maybe he does understand, she thought, smiling and strolling beside him toward the sepulchre, hand in hand.