Victory of Coins (The Judas Chronicles, #7) by Aiden James Page B

everything fresh whenever I recovered one of my coins was almost too much to bear. I daresay if I were fully human, instead of carrying my immortal curse, I surely would’ve died long ago from overwhelming grief.
    Why was I doing this, then—especially when I had avoided it the day before at Shiloh? In truth, it was an instinctive response... and until I crept upstairs to reclaim the coin I had urged Roderick to retrieve for me less than thirty-two hours earlier, I didn’t know for sure if I would go through with it or not. 
    But I had no choice—that was what my gut told me now. The mystery of what Krontos was up to would never be solved for us until I took care of my personal coin business as usual. Avoiding this step had made us blind to the Russian’s schemes—I was certain of it. The recurring thought that had come back to me all night long as I studied the ragged linen strip and the poem was that my perspective was off—diluted by my refusal to accept my responsibility before The Almighty.
    It was time to remedy that issue, and to do it before my beloved wife and the Golden Eagle kids arose from their beds. The terrible dread seizing more and more of my being since the previous afternoon forced me now to do something about it. Maybe Roderick would chide me at daybreak, and perhaps no one else would understand why I changed my mind about holding the Stutthof-Auschwitz Coin with my bare hands. But it simply had to be done, and preferably without an audience to watch my physical body either convulse or faint while my spirit traveled back in time to that fateful moment.
    I unwrapped the coin and took a deep breath as its sapphire aura stretched toward my chest and face. The pain in my bones that becomes a dull ache when in the presence of any of these coins began to intensify when my mind wavered in panic for a brief instant, and fell away when my conviction to go through with it returned and strengthened.
    Without further delay, I grabbed onto the coin with my left hand, clasping it shut with my right.... Then my spirit began the painful journey back to where the Lord’s imploring eyes and heartrending agony could torment me once again....
    Every time I have taken this unfortunate trek it seems worse than before. This instance was no exception, although for the first time I stood alongside a centurion, whose troops were present to keep order in regard to the mob screaming for Jesus’ death. Flanked by a pair of bodyguards, I expected for this man to be stoic while calmly surveying the audience for the worst offenders to tip his soldiers to quell in order to keep potential riots at bay.
    But he wasn’t stoic at all. The centurion’s eyes met Jesus’ blood-streaked gaze more than once as the Lord looked out onto the crowd, who were demanding His violent exit from this world. I could only see the man’s profile from where we were boxed in by the thousands of Jerusalem’s citizens trying to push their way to where Jesus was being whipped, and where the heavy cross He would later be sacrificed upon waited nearby. But, the centurion’s right eye was filled with tears, and a single stream coursed down the side of his face.
    The scene of crazy hatred had touched him! Here I had thought all the Romans patrolling Jerusalem hated every one of us—whether disciples of Jesus and other self-proclaimed ‘messiahs’, or the religious rank of the Sadducees and Pharisees—hell, even the Essenes who were the most apt to egg on the Italian occupiers of our Holy Land to brutal aggression. The man’s troops certainly hated the local citizenry, or at least a quick glance around me showed the meanness I was quite familiar with.
    My brief survey of the tense gathering revealed much more than this, and the first clue that it was going to be a completely new experience for me came when one of the troops looked at me and nodded, wearing a slight smile.
    What in the hell?!
    It wasn’t until I looked away that I caught a glint of