Avenging Angels (Bad Times Book 3)

the annoying lictor from his presence.
No evidence was found of the visitor, but soldiers located the Arabs who served in his caravan and brought them back to the palace, where they were scourged and finally strangled with ropes. They knew nothing of the stranger except that he hired them in Seythopolis to carry him and his goods west to Caesarea. He paid them generously in silver and released them from his service. Beyond that, they knew nothing, and each went to their death protesting the same.
That was the end of the matter, or so Gratus believed.
Two nights later he made for his bed with a pair of his most treasured slaves to find a bottle much like the one given him by the stranger resting on a table. It was decorated as before in blue relief depicting jungle cats this time. And this bottle was smaller by half than the one before. He called the servants together and questioned each one. Not a one had any idea how the bottle had come to be in the prefect’s rooms. He dismissed them all, even the pair he’d intended to bed.
Gratus’s thirst and the memories of the delicious rapture the wine created in him overcame his trepidation. He poured a few sips into a cup and tasted it cautiously. It was thick and sweet as he remembered. He could feel the warmth of it creeping into his limbs and poured himself a more generous serving, draining the smaller bottle, and surrendered to the enveloping effect of the draught.
He awoke the following morning feeling the same jocund drowsiness as the time before and spent the day idly lying upon a chaise watching the shadows grow longer along the walls of the courtyard. The lictor tried to engage him in the business of the day, but Gratus only waved him away and returned to his study of the clouds scudding overhead like his own personal parade.
That evening he went to his bedchamber alone to find a new bottle upon the table. This one was even smaller than the night before and encrusted with images of braying donkeys. Gratus snickered at the jest though it held no significance to him. He drained the bottle in three long swallows and fell back upon the bed to plummet into Elysium.
This went on for several days. Each night a new, increasingly diminutive bottle was found on his bed table. And each day he felt the effect of the draught less and less as the volume of the bottles shrank.
The seventh day passed in distracted ennui and all the prefect could think of was the coming of night and his new bottle of the healing tonic. But that night he entered to find the table bare of a bottle of any size. On hands and knees, he crawled about the floor looking for a vessel of any kind and found none. Exhausted, he dropped into a fretful sleep and was awake before the light of dawn tinged the mountains to the east. His mood was in stark contrast to the prior days. He was short with the slaves and even cuffed a body servant hard enough to draw blood from the boy’s mouth. Gratus felt uneasy, as though stalked by a nameless dread. He was physically uncomfortable as well, alternately flushed and chilled, and had the disturbing sensation that his skin was growing tighter.
The following days and nights were hell made real as the prefect was racked with intense pains in his limbs and a crippling agony in his gut. He would not eat, as all tasted like ashes, no matter how sweet or seasoned the servants prepared it. He could not sleep or even sit or lie down for prolonged periods. His hands shook and his head pounded, and no amount of wine would relieve his torment. Gratus’s mind shrank to the solitary focus of those tiny bottles and his overpowering desire to feel their effect once more or die.
He lay on his couch, writhing in a lake of sweat when Ravilla entered to inform him that the mysterious stranger had returned to seek a second audience.
The prefect staggered into his office with hands clawing for the stranger who was standing cool and immaculate before him. Gratus fell to his knees before the man and begged for the gift of another bottle of the elixir.
“Honorable Prefect! Remember your station!” Ravilla cried in alarm, but Gratus groveled and snuffled and kissed the hem of the stranger’s robe.
“He does not wish your counsel,” the stranger said boldly to Ravilla.
“Then perhaps the legate in Antioch will listen to me,” Ravilla said, taken aback by this dark bastard’s effrontery to an official and citizen of Rome.
“He will never hear you,” the stranger said and withdrew his hand from within his robe to reveal a strange object in his fist. It gleamed darkly, a stubby rectangle of unknown design or purpose. Ravilla smirked as he looked into the circular hole in the device held out at him in the stranger’s upheld grasp.
Ravilla began to ask how the stranger meant to prevent him when a sudden crack of thunder filled the room. The lictor felt something tap him in the chest and looked down to see a crimson blot spreading across the front of his white tunic. He raised his head to ask a second question, but this was cut short by a second clap of thunder that went unheard by Ravilla as his skull flew apart.
Prefect Valerius Gratus took no note when the lifeless form of the lictor dropped to the tiles behind him. He was aware only of the agony twisting his innards and the man standing before him who could bring a cessation to his suffering. He felt the man’s fingers grip his hair and pull his face from the cloth of the man’s robe. Even Gratus’s deadened senses could smell the stink of sulfur in the air.
“The wine is laced with a substance gifted to me by the god Morpheus,”