Free By Blood We Live by Stephen King, John Joseph Adams

behind the scenes for years. Getting his chance to come out and do it in the open, to be noted for it, to be noticed for it, was sweet. And his fellow cardinals hadn't waited long before they chose him, either. What greater honor was there than the approval of your own? More than anyone else, they understood what this meant. Some of them wanted it, too. Most of them wanted it, no doubt, but most of the ones who did also understood they had no chance of gaining it.
    Coming out of the shadows, becoming the public face of the Church, wasn't easy for a man who'd spent so long in the background. But he'd shown what he could do when he was chosen to eulogize his predecessor. He wrote the farewell in his own tongue, then translated it into Italian. That wasn't the churchly lingua franca Latin had been, but still, no one who wasn't fluent in it could reasonably hope to occupy Peter's seat.
    If he spoke slowly, if he showed Italian wasn't his native tongue—well, so what? It gave translators around the world the chance to stay up with him. And delivering the eulogy meant people around the world saw him and learned who he was. When the College of Cardinals convened to deliberate, that had to be in the back of some minds.
    He wouldn't have a reign to match the one that had gone before, not unless he lived well past the century mark. But Achilles said glory mattered more than length of days. And John XXIII showed you didn't need a long reign to make your mark.
    Vatican II cleared away centuries of deadwood from the Church. Even the Latin of the Mass went. Well, there was reason behind that. Who spoke Latin nowadays? This wasn't the Roman Empire any more, even if cardinals' vestments came straight out of Byzantine court regalia.
    But change always spawned a cry for more change. Female priests? Married priests? Homosexuality? Contraception? Abortion? When? Ever? The world shouted for all those things. The world, though, was a weather vane, turning now this way, now that, changeable as the breeze. The Church was supposed to stand for what was right. . . whatever that turned out to be.
    If changes come, they'll come because of me. If they don't, that will also be because of me, the new Holy Father thought. Which way more than a billion people go depends on me.
    Why anyone would want a job like this made him scratch his head. That he wanted it himself, or that most of him did. . . was true, no matter how strange it seemed. So much to decide, to do. So little time.
     
    A tavern in the late afternoon. They were all worried. Even the publican was worried; he hadn't looked for such a big crowd so late in the day. They were all eating and drinking and talking. They showed no signs of getting up and leaving. If they kept hanging around, he would have to light the lamps, and olive oil wasn't cheap.
    But they kept digging their right hands into the bowl of chickpeas and mashed garlic he'd set out, and eating more bread, and calling for wine. One of them had already drunk himself into quite a state.
    Looking back from down here, understanding why was easy. Hindsight was always easy. Foresight? They'd called it prophecy in those days. Had he had the gift? His human memory wasn't sure. But then, his human memory wasn't sure about a lot of things. That was what made trying to trace the different threads twisting through the fabric so eternally fascinating.
    He wished he hadn't used that word, even to himself. He kept hoping it wasn't so. He'd been down here a long, long, long time, but not forever. He wouldn't stay down here forever, either. He couldn't.
    Could he?
    He was so hungry.
    The tavern. He'd been looking back at the tavern again. He wasn't hungry then. He'd eaten his fill, and he'd drunk plenty of wine, wine red as blood.
    What did wine taste like? He remembered it was sweet, and he remembered it could mount to your head. . . almost the way any food did these days. But the taste? The taste, now, was a memory of a memory of a memory—and