"DEATH IS HERE." He could smell it. It reeked of wet rocks, decaying flowers, and burnt candlewicks. 

     It was a dreamy evening lit with the rising blue moon until Zakkai the Zealot sniffed its scent.

     He reigned in his horse and halted. Killer instinct. He was a Sicarii, a militant Zealot who used the small curved dagger called sica for assassinations, and he knew how to pick up on the stench of death in the air. The Roman official had stunk of it before he cut his throat almost a month ago.

     All his kills had this smell.

     It was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea. Herod was the tetrarch of Galilee. His brother, Philip, was the tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis. Lysanias was the tetrarch of Abilene. It was the time of the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.

     And it was the beginning of Jesus' public life.

     "Am I close to the one called Jesus of Nazareth?" Zakkai muttered.

     The night stood in breathless silence. Blood circled the moon. A portent of brooding menace.

     Mist strayed along the road to Jerusalem and the lone fig tree seemed to shrink back, its shadow trembling in nervous anticipation.

     An invisible procession was passing by: the harbingers of death. Twelve naked corpses in single file, rotting skin clinging to their bones. Their faces were white porcelain, death masks with edges of blood red lips turned up in a hideous permanent smile. They marched to the beat of distant tolling bells inaudible to humans.

     A creature with the body of a pre-pubescent girl and thin black hair up to her ankles led them.

     Qamatayian.

     Death. The snuffer of life.

     Neither demon nor angel.

     She had no face. Magical symbols tattooed on her visage made up her inscrutable countenance. They showed when, where, and how a living being would die--humans, animals, plants, even angels and demons. The tattoos would shift or change designs depending on the being about to expire.

     Dark clouds wrapped around her as with a garment constellated with eyes that beam like glittering distant stars.

     Qamatayian had a dreamlike, inhuman gait. She seemed to be walking backwards but was gliding forward, disappearing and reappearing on the right spot before the eyes could miss her.

     Moving in slow marching cadence, the corpses followed like well-choreographed dancers with grotesque footwork, bony hands making magical gestures, and impossible head movements.

     Their procession was a marvel in bizarre synchronicity. 

     Every seven steps, they froze in a ghostly position for seven breaths, and then they moved on again.

     A faint stir in the fig tree's leaves.

     And on its branch, a black form unfurled.

     Without much thought, Zakkai unsheathed his weapon. This time it was not a sica. It was a unique dagger given to him by his master, the Lord of the Sicarii. 

     The dagger gleamed in the dark. Flames and heavenly creatures appeared and disappeared in its blade like mirror reflections. In its handle, stars burned out of a great deep space.

     It was the only one of its kind in the whole universe. The angelic knife forged in heaven by Lucifer Morning Star on the eve of his rebellion against God. The silver tree that bore angels of death entrusted to him by God wrought into a single dagger with the power to wipe any supernatural being out of existence.

     He had named it Church.

     It was the only thing Satan took with him when he fell from heaven.

     For the first time, he allowed the dagger to be in the hands of his human minions.

     Zakkai squinted at the expanding form on the branch.

     And he saw

     A huge bird

     A fat lappet-faced vulture.

     He had never seen a vulture as fat as this one. It elevated its wings, extended its legs. Waiting for someone to kill something. Or someone.

     He shrugged.

     "Ah, that explains the stink," Zakkai said. And he moved on, the city of Jerusalem barely visible behind him. He turned to the vulture. "Stick around bird, and soon you'll feast on a famous man's rotting carcass."

     And then he heard the sound of a horse prancing with stealth from deep ahead of him.

     Church heated up in his right hand.

     Danger.

     And he saw a dark rider coming toward him like a night shadow creeping along the road.

     No time to stop. Or think.

     Zakkai rode fast to meet him.

     This black-cowled rider could be a noble man on his way to Jerusalem. Or a priest. Or a desert nomad. Or a ghost.

     But he must kill him just the same.

     The silver dagger could never be wrong. If he were an enemy, it would be vigilance; if he weren't, it would be a midnight treat for the overweight vulture. And if he were Jesus, well...

     They passed each other in front of the fig tree

     Zakkai felt a sudden sense of utter skin-crawling dread

     And he saw his horse running on without him.

     Then he discovered that he was hanging in the air, paralyzed, gasping for breath.

     The dark rider had him by the throat, strangling him, hand raised like he was toasting a glass of wine--and with as little effort.

     Zakkai's bulging eyes turned to his tormentor and saw a handsome face pale as the silver moon with black eyes that stared like a corpse's, his cold maniacal grin froze the Sicarii's dwindling courage.

     The dark rider spoke in a soft yet menacing voice, "Did you say your prayers?"

     He broke Zakkai's neck. And the Sicarii's soul saw moving magical symbols tattooed on a faceless girl in black.

     The dark rider took the dagger and let Zakkai's lifeless body fall on the ground. Then he turned his horse around and rode away.

     He would be the one to find Jesus.

     "Dinner is served," the fat vulture said to the fig tree. "My man never fails to leave a wake of dead meat."

     "Who is he anyway?" The fig tree asked.

     "Oh, some guy named Cain."

     "The real thing? Adam and Eve's firstborn?"

     "None other."

     "Holy shit."

     "Exactly."