Until he looked at his hand.
He wandered the streets of Athens for several hours. In the older sections of the city, the street patterns remained mostly as he remembered them, though the buildings had changed. When he reached the newer sections of the city, he had to pay close attention to where he walked, lest he be unable to find his way back to the port and the ship that carried him here. In the belly of the boat was a sturdy room, reinforced with steel and completely cut off from sunlight. Until he could find a new dwelling, that would be his sanctum.
The sheer volume of people bustling by on their way to one errand or another, even at this late hour, was astonishing. Merchants carried their wares to storage, orators spoke on corners, hoping for coin from those seeking enlightenment, and of course, ratty beggars and gaily-dressed prostitutes were everywhere. This was good news for Theron, since they would be the largest portion of his diet during his stay. By necessity he would have to be careful to only feed on those people whom no one would miss. Beggars and prostitutes were at the top of that list. He would stick to them for his meals.
Unless he came across one of the rabbi’s followers. He had seen them on his way to Athens in other cities and villages, preaching to the assembled people of the virtues of their faith. Theron killed them at every opportunity, but how many more were there? Were teams of men and women even now spreading to other towns all over the known world, preaching the word of a single dead rabbi?
Surely not. And yet it was possible. If so, it meant a long journey for Theron, who had made it his mission to kill everyone who called himself a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.
One thing at a time, he reminded himself. First he needed a place to stay. The ship’s hold was serviceable, but not ideal. In any case, they would leave port in a few days, and he intended to remain behind. In a city the size of Athens, it should be easy for him to blend in and disappear. At least for a while. Long enough to figure out what to do next, anyway.
He wandered the streets until shortly before sunrise, memorizing the layout of the city and planning his next move. When the eastern sky began to lighten with the coming sun, he started back for the docks. In eight hours of walking he had not even covered one quarter of the city, but he had found several locations that could be useful. In a city as old as Athens, there were many secrets that few knew about. Theron, having lived in the city nearly a thousand years before, knew several of which no one living today would have any knowledge.
One of those secrets was a tunnel system built even before Theron was born. They had initially been designed as an escape, and were used as such during the invasion of Persian emperor Xerxes. Most of them had crumbled or been covered over by new structures in the centuries since. But the stone under Athens was strong, and a handful of the tunnels still existed in dark and forgotten corners of the city. If he could secure one such tunnel against intrusion, he would have his base of operations.
It would have to wait until tomorrow night, however, as he was running out of time before sunrise. The captain of the boat said he would remain at port for three days. That would give Theron enough time to secure one of the tunnels. But he would need blood, and plenty of it, to work the psalms. Tomorrow night he would have to feed again.
On his way back to the boat, he felt eyes on his back. He turned to look behind him, scanning the shadows on the city and looking for anything-or anyone-out of the ordinary. His fingers itched as his claws begged for release, but the streets behind him revealed nothing out of place. A handful of people milled about on one errand or another, but none of them paid the slightest bit of attention to him. Nonetheless, he stood his ground for several minutes, watching the people as they went about their business. He kept a mental tally of where each person was and where they were headed. When he was sure that all the people on the street had moved on, he turned his back and resumed walking. Not normally prone to imagining things, he chalked it up to paranoia about the Council and continued on his way back to the ship.
The whole way there, he had the nagging feeling that he’d missed something.
Theron woke to fire.
All around him, the ship’s cargo burned. Flames crackled through the hold, feeding on the wood and filling the air with smoke. Several burned and blackened bodies lay on the floor, tongues of fire licking their way across their charred skin. Had Theron needed to breathe, he would have been dead already.
He waved his hand in front of his face, trying to clear some of the smoke so he could see deeper into the ship, but it was no use. The smoke created a thick barrier even to his keen eyes, and he was forced to wander blindly through the flames, dodging aside as burning timbers dropped from above.
The heat was intense. His skin shriveled and cracked, revealing the muscles beneath just long enough for them to turn black. He staggered through the hold, trying to focus his mind beyond the pain and find a way out. But the flames were everywhere, and the smoke made it impossible to know where he was. Was he facing the ladder to the deck? Or was he walking into the bilge room? The sickly-sweet smell of burning flesh hung in the air with the smoke.
He walked on, sometimes forced to step through a wall of fire, determined to find a way out. He hadn’t escaped from Ramah in Jerusalem just to die on a damned boat two months later. Finally, he reached the inside wall of the ship. Flames danced at his back, and his clothes had caught fire again. He patted them out and looked down the length of the ship’s inner hull for any kind of opening. All down his line of sight the wood was whole and smooth, undamaged by the flames that even now moved to hem him into a corner.
Theron turned, hoping to cut back across the rolling hold and look for another way, but the fire had closed his exit. Above him, the timbers supporting the deck crackled and charred in the heat. As he watched, a large beam snapped in half and fell to the floor, sending up a glowing cloud of sparks. there would be no exit that way.
He turned back to the hull. How thick was the wood? He had no idea, but he didn’t have much choice. Theron screamed as his claws ripped the burned flesh of his fingertips, but he grew them just the same. Then he set to work clawing at the wood. Splinters fell away as he gouged tracks in the hull of the ship, but after an agonizing few minutes, he knew it was hopeless. He was simply not making enough progress.
Theron forced some of his blood into his hands, using their energy to heal the blisters. Somehow, he resisted the urge to spend more blood healing his bubbled skin. There would be time enough to take care of all his wounds if he made it out alive. He used more blood on the muscles of his upper body, enhancing his strength, endurance, and speed. Satisfied that he had done everything he could, he began to pound on the wood of the ship with his fists, hoping to break through the hull.
The fire reached his feet, burning through his boots and licking at his ankles. Still he pounded, even as the skin of his knuckles tore and the flesh turned to a red, pasty mush. He focused his energies on keeping the bones in his hand whole. If they broke, he would have no chance of escape at all.
A satisfying crack sounded under his hand, and a thin jet of seawater shot into the hold. It turned to steam before it hit the floor, but it was a start. Theron punched the wall again, and another crack sounded through the hold. By now his fists were little more than bloody masses of pulp, and the pain of the fire at his feet made him dizzy.