The Awakening (The Judas Curse Book 1) Read online

  The Awakening

  Book one of The Judas Curse

  By Angella Graff

  Copy righted © 2013 by Angella Graff

  Cover image copyrighted © 2012 by David Ehlen

  2nd Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and characters portrayed are used fictitiously, or are the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to actual persons living or deceased, business establishments, locales or events are purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be printed, scanned or distributed in print or electronic form without permission of the author or amazon.com.

  Books by Angella Graff

  The Judas Curse Series

  The Judas Kiss

  Cry, Nike!

  The Alexandra Fry, Private Eye Series

  Alexandra Fry, Private Eye: Curse of the Lion’s Heart

  The Awakening

  Book one of The Judas Curse

  For my husband and three amazing children.

  I could not have done this without you.

  Prologue

  The city was cold. Rain poured down in huge droves, soaking into his hair, into his dirty clothes. He felt the cold pavement through his torn shoes as he stumbled across the street to the looming building, shining white against the grey sky.

  He’d been walking for years it felt like, maybe even decades. He was lost, he was alone, and he was searching. He was fading fast, fading into madness, every time someone touched him, stole from him the energy, the very breath of life which kept him moving for century upon century.

  The stairs to the church were maddeningly tall, but he made every single step with creaking knees and trembling hands. The doors were locked, but for now, that was okay. He slid down to the ground, his back against the wooden door. Above him sat a statue of Mary, her veil over her hair, her soft gaze staring down, and he laughed.

  “Oh mother,” he whispered in a tongue no passerby would recognize, a language dead and gone, along with so many that he loved. “Oh mother, would you look at me now?”

  His hair was matted, dirty, and he hadn’t eaten in so long he barely remembered what food tasted like. He’d been alone too long, far too long, and he was starting to feel afraid. There were things watching him, out of the eyes of people, staring, glowing, and waiting for him to fall. He heard whispers calling his name, his old name. He could hear them whisper through the night, through the wind, and they reached for him.

  He didn’t know if the church would keep him safe. These buildings brought upon the world war and pestilence, greed and murder, never really sanctuary, but his mother was there. His mother stood there, in statue form, watching him with kind eyes. He struggled to remember her face, her real face, her real hands holding him as a child when he cried.

  “Help me,” he cried up to the alabaster statue, but he received no reply.

  He closed his eyes with tears pouring down his face as another gust of wind rushed past him and he heard the call reaching for him, begging him to come with them, begging him to give into the pressing darkness. “Yehuda…”

  One

  The lights in his office were off, and when he flipped the switch, the fluorescent glare sent a stabbing pain through his temples. Ben groaned and pinched his eyes shut with his thumb and forefinger. His desk chair was waiting, as it always was, his computer humming softly, though the screen was black.

  He took a seat and pushed the monitor switch on. Adjusting the brightness, he tried not to think of the migraine he’d been suffering for the last three days. The smell of coffee was wafting through the station now, and Ben vaguely remembered hearing something about how caffeine helped with headaches.

  Of course, it hadn’t done much good the last three days, but the pain was causing him to lose sleep, and migraine relief or not, the caffeine was a necessity. He made his way to the coffee station, pushing through a few of the beat cops who were preparing for their shift, and sluggishly grabbed a mug.

  The coffee was hot, which he was eternally grateful for, and he didn’t care he was burning his mouth as he gulped down half a cup without waiting for it to cool.

  “Rough night?” came a deep, gravelly voice from behind him.

  Ben turned and saw his boss, the San Francisco police chief, Albert Ole. He was standing there holding his own coffee, watching Ben with a concerned frown. Albert was an older man, worked at the station since Ben was too young to even feed himself. He was a tall man, his skin rough and wrinkled, and his eyes were deep-set, narrow and surveyed the world with suspicion and fear. But he was a kind man, always someone Ben could turn to if he ever needed anything, and that was what made him the best sort of boss a detective could ask for.

  Ben gave a sigh and rubbed his face with his free hand. “You could say that.”

  “You’ve been a little under the weather for a while now,” Albert said as the pair walked away from the throng of officers trying to fuel up for the morning. “You need a day off?”

  Ben shook his head. The very idea of taking vacation was against everything he stood for. He was the detective who had never taken a sick day and reached the end of the year with so much vacation time banked that his payout was more than his Christmas bonus. Workaholic, though he never liked the term, but it was true, and he had no intention of changing that. “I’m okay.”

  Albert frowned and shook his head. “You know, all of us need time off. You’ve had a heavy case load lately.”

  Ben hummed and shrugged. “Yeah well, it’s just this damned migraine. It’s nothing to do with work.”

  “Call your doctor?” Albert asked.

  The pair stopped in front of Ben’s office door and the detective shook his head. “I’m not going to call my doctor because of a damn headache,” he all-but snapped. “It’ll pass, I’m sure. My mother used to get them. I guess I’m just picking up that trait.”

  Albert sighed and glanced through Ben’s office window at the small pile of deskwork that waited for the younger detective. “Look, I just forwarded you a new case, but if you want some time off, just say so. I’m sure Hernandez can take it. It’s a homicide case that reopened from about five years ago after a new body was found in a similar state last week. It’s probably nothing, but I want someone to go through it again.”

  “I’ve got it, no problem,” Ben said. When Albert hesitated, Ben continued, “And if it gets any worse, I promise I’ll give my doctor a call.”

  Albert seemed satisfied with the answer. “Alright. Talk later.”

  Stepping back into his office, he tried to ignore the pounding ache in his temples and dropped into his chair to read over the older case file email. A man in his early twenties had disappeared from a hospital bed. He’d been in long term care after a traffic accident. There were no witnesses or suspects, and the man’s body had been found in an accelerated state of decay about three weeks later. Without leads or any physical evidence, the case had gone unsolved.

  Ben opened the new case which read much the same. Patient in long term care gone missing, found dead two weeks later, body disposed of near the Golden Gate Bridge. No witnesses, hospital staff reported a power outage just before the patient went missing, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. No sign of forced entry, no evidence to show how the man had been removed right under the nose of hospital staff.

  Rubbing his temples, he clicked out of the message and sighed. He was just not in the mood for a mystery case. He had six others, with several leads to follow up on, and seeing as those cases might be solved in a relatively quick manner, Ben grabbed his keys and decided to start his day with some field work.

  Whe
n he reached his office door, however, his head swam and for a moment, he thought he was going to pass out. He grabbed the handle to steady himself, and as his world slowly came back into focus, Ben felt a momentary panic.

  “Maybe I should call the doctor,” he muttered to himself. He vowed then, that should anything else happen, he’d suck it up and make the appointment. That resolved, he threw open his office door and strolled out to start the day.

  ~*~

  “Benjamin Stanford.”

  He’d been in the waiting room so long he’d nearly forgotten why he was there in the first place. He was one of ten patients sitting glumly in the uncomfortable chairs, and he’d officially lost track of how much time had gone by. He was wearing street clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, feeling out of his element and extremely uncomfortable.

  Ben startled when he heard the bored nurse call his name and he jumped, his magazine falling to the floor. Face blushing, he bent down to tidy up and then followed the large, bitter-faced woman through the doors and into the office hallway.

  He’d never really enjoyed being at the doctor, even for basic checkups. It was the smell of anesthetic, the sounds of machines beeping and whirring, and knowing that whatever was behind the door was probably going to hurt or give him news he didn’t want. It was just never a pleasant experience.

  The room he walked into was small. There were copies of medical school diplomas on the wall, an old wooden rack holding even older magazines than in the waiting room, and a small sink sat in the corner surrounded by jars of cotton balls, tongue depressors and a brown bottle of iodine.

  “Do doctors even use iodine anymore?” he asked absently as the nurse gestured for him to sit on the extremely tall exam table.

  “In certain instances,” she said in her monotone voice. “Please roll up your sleeve.”

  Ben made an oomph noise, as he hoisted himself onto the table, wincing at the sound of the crinkling tissue paper covering the bench. He looked down at his bare arms sticking out of his t-shirt and then quirked an eyebrow at her request. She seemed completely unfazed as she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm.

  “So uh, does this tissue paper really prevent the spreading of germs?” he asked as she began to pump the little bulb on the end of the cuff. He was nervous, and when he was nervous, he had a terrible habit of rambling. The only thing that worked for Ben was that his nervous moments in life were very few and far between.

  “Yes,” she replied to his question dryly, and proceeded to ignore him once more.

  Ben sighed and looked away as she took the reading from the little dial on the side. He jumped at the ripping sound of Velcro as the nurse tugged the cuff off, and he crossed his arms tightly over his chest. There was a sudden thump from the ceiling, and a small vent directly above the exam table began pumping out freezing cold air. The A/C surprised him, as winter was fast approaching in San Francisco, where the winter chill always arrived early and stayed late.

  “Any chance I can get you to turn that off?” he asked, wrapping his arms tighter around his middle.

  She looked at him, her dull, flat, brown eyes narrow. “Sorry Mr. Stanford, it’s on a timer. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

  The sound of the heavy door slamming shut reminded him of those old prison movies where the metal bars clanged shut and the prisoner was left facing his own mortality trapped in a small cell for the rest of his life. Ben related in that moment, not to being in prison, but facing his mortality.

  A few weeks after he’d started experiencing the headaches and dizzy spells, the symptoms took a turn for the worse. During an interrogation of a homicide suspect, he hadn’t been able to remember the suspect’s name and had to call in another detective to take over.

  It was last week in the shower, however, when he became very concerned about his health. He’d felt a little odd all morning, and as he stood under the streaming, hot water, he passed out. Or at least, he thought he’d passed out. He’d cracked his head on the tub and took a cab to the ER to make sure he didn’t have a concussion. The doctor there ordered what he told Ben was an EEG, and an MRI.

  The EEG results came right then, as the doctor read the machine. From the echoes, the doctor said, it was likely Ben had suffered a mild seizure. The MRI, which had taken much longer, would determine if there was anything for Ben to worry about, and his own doctor would follow up with the results.

  The doctor at the ER had assured him it was probably nothing. Possibly stress, he’d said. Ben’s job was stressful at its mildest point. Being head homicide detective for the San Francisco PD, thirty-four, unmarried, son of an alcoholic and big brother to a fanatical Christian teacher who worked at Sacred Heart academy, his life wasn’t easy. His boss was constantly going on about how he worked too much, and it was likely he just needed a vacation.

  At least, that’s what he wanted to hear. He wasn’t feeling so secure now that his doctor had told him to come in right away. Now he sat there, under a freezing stream of air, staring at the door handle, begging the doctor to hurry in and tell him it was nothing. Tell him, “We just wanted to compliment you on the incredible size and function of your brain, Mr. Stanford.”

  The doctor’s face told a different story when he walked in fifteen minutes later. Ben’s doctor wasn’t a neurologist or specialist. He was just a general practitioner Ben had been seeing since he was in college, who had never treated him for anything more than a couple of work injuries and the occasional chest cold. He was an older man, frank and matter-of-fact. His white hair was always over-gelled into place, and his lab coat, Ben was certain, was just for show.

  “How are you feeling today, Ben?” he asked in his gravelly voice.

  He let out a sigh. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.”

  “Any more instances of blacking out or losing time? Suffering repeated headaches? Vision changes?”

  Ben shrugged. “Headaches, yes. They’re pretty persistent. No more seizures or anything like that and nothing weird with my eyes.” He shifted and looked his doctor in the eye. “Look, lay it out for me, okay. I don’t want to dance around this. I’m freaking out a little bit.”

  The doctor sat back, crossing his ankle over his knee. “I don’t have good news for you, Ben. In fact, it’s some of the worst news I can give without any proper results from a biopsy.”

  “Biopsy,” Ben repeated, his voice sounding really far away.

  “The MRI found a rather substantial mass lodged in the left lateral lobe of your brain,” the doctor said. “I’ve seen this before, and I can tell you more than likely, it’s malignant. Either way, it’s going to be difficult to operate on and we want to get in there as quickly as we can to see what we’re dealing with, and how we can possibly treat it. Tumors can be very tricky things, and time is often not on our side.”

  “A tumor. Are you saying I have brain cancer?” Ben asked. His voice was tight and tense.

  The doctor shrugged. “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s possible. I can’t give you a definitive answer until we do some tests. I can tell you that you have a rather substantial brain tumor, and that’s what’s causing all of your problems.”

  “Am I going to die?”

  “From the tumor? I don’t know,” the doctor said. “One day you will die, but I can’t tell you if it’s going to be from old age, being shot on the job, or this. All I can tell you is that we need to get you under the knife as quickly as we can. I’m going to push forward the surgery, so you need to make arrangements to take some time off. Even an exploratory surgery on the brain isn’t outpatient surgery. I’d have a talk with your chief and see about transferring some of your cases for the time being.”

  Ben nodded, feeling his entire body go numb with shock. He hadn’t realized his hands were shaking until he stepped down to shake the doctor’s hand. “I uh…” he said.

  The doctor looked at him, for the first time in Ben’s life, with actual concern. “Take a few minutes if you need it. This isn’t
something I like to tell people, and it’s not something you can just go home and sleep on.”

  Ben nodded mutely and watched as the doctor walked out of the room. He swallowed and looked up at the vent still pouring out the freezing air, but he couldn’t feel it anymore. He was in shock, and as he started to leave the room, he felt like he was floating.

  The receptionist rambled on about calling him with the surgery date in the next twenty-four hours and he nodded, not trusting himself to speak right then. She handed him a few sheets of paper which she said were prescriptions from the doctor to help with the pain and insomnia he was suffering from. He nodded again and slipped them into his pocket.

  It was pouring rain as he stepped outside, but he barely felt it. His car seemed an eternity away as he crossed the parking lot, paying no mind to the water rushing into his shoes from the puddles forming on the pavement. His car door opened with a loud creak and he slid inside. It smelled like work, like coffee and stale pastries, and printer ink from the files he carried around everywhere.

  He wondered how he could possibly give up, possibly lose his job, his life, because of some brain tumor. He’d never been really sick a day in his life, and now this? Sure, he drank and smoked a little, but he worked out and ate healthy and never in a million years thought he’d be taken out this way.

  “Jesus,” he whispered as he flipped down his visor and opened the mirror. He looked like a ghost, his skin white as a sheet except under his eyes where it was nearly black. His eyes, themselves, were bloodshot, and his hair hung in little curls against his forehead, dripping with the rain. He let out a laugh, the sound of it nearly startling him and then he said aloud, “I think I’m going to die.”