Blood Infernal

1

Don’t get caught.

That warning kept every muscle tense as Dr. Erin Granger crouched behind a card catalog in the center of the Vatican Apostolic Library’s reading room. Elaborate frescoes decorated the white surface of the arched ceiling that hung far above her head. Shelves of the rarest books in the world stretched on either side of her. The library contained over seventy-five thousand manuscripts and over a million books. Ordinarily, as an archaeologist, this was exactly the kind of place she would have loved to while away hours and days, but it had recently become more of a prison than a place of discovery.

Today I must escape it.

She was not alone in this plot. Her accomplice was Father Christian. He stood on one side of her, in plain sight, silently urging her to hurry with furtive waves of his hand. He appeared to be a young priest, tall with dark brown hair and the sharpest of green eyes, his cheekbones defined, his skin flawless. He could be easily mistaken for a youth in his late twenties, but he was decades older than that. He was once a monster, a former strigoi, a creature who had survived on human blood. But long ago he had joined the Catholic Order of the Sanguines and taken a vow to live eternally on the blood of Christ. He was a Sanguinist now, and one of the few that Erin trusted implicitly.

So she took him at his word concerning this stranger beside her.

The young nun, Sister Margaret, hid next to Erin behind the counter. She breathed heavily, struggling to wiggle out of her dark habit, her wimple already on the floor between them. From the perspiration on the woman’s brow, she was human. Erin swore she could hear the nun’s frantic heartbeat. It was likely a match to her own.

“Here,” Margaret said, shaking loose her long blond hair, catching Erin’s gaze with dark amber eyes. Sister Margaret was about Erin’s size and coloring, and that made her essential to their plan.

Erin pulled Margaret’s habit over her head. Black serge scraped against her cheeks. The cloth smelled freshly laundered. She shrugged the garment across her body and smoothed it over her hips as best she could while still crouched. Margaret helped position her abandoned white wimple over Erin’s head, adjusting it around her cheeks to cover her blond hair, tucking away a few errant strands.

Once finished, the nun sat back on her heels, appraising Erin’s disguise with critical eyes.

“What do you think?” Christian asked from a corner of his mouth, leaning an arm on the card catalog to further hide their actions.

Margaret nodded, satisfied. Erin now looked like an ordinary nun, practically anonymous in Vatican City, where only tourists and priests outnumbered the sisters in their habits.

To finish the subterfuge, Margaret slipped a black cord that held a large silver cross over Erin’s head and handed her a silver ring. Erin slipped the warm circle onto her ring finger, realizing that she’d never worn a band there before.

Thirty-two years old and never married.

She knew how her father, long dead, would have been horrified at such a prospect for his daughter. He had preached ardently that it was a woman’s highest duty to create babies that served God. Of course, he would have been equally mortified to know that she’d attended a secular school, gotten a PhD in archaeology, and had spent the past ten years proving that much of the history recorded in the Bible was entirely without miraculous origins. If he hadn’t already shunned her for fleeing the religious compound as a teenager, he would have damned her now. But she had made peace with that.

A few months ago, she had been offered a glimpse into the secret history of the world, a world not explained by the books she had studied in school or the science that was the bedrock of her own personal faith. She had met her first Sanguinist — living proof that monsters existed and that devotion in the church could tame them.

Still, a large part of her remained the same skeptic, still questioning everything. While she might have accepted the existence of strigoi, it was only after she had met one, saw its ferocity, and examined its sharp teeth. She trusted only what she could verify herself, which was why she had insisted on this plan to begin with.

Margaret pulled her own blond hair back into a ponytail like Erin usually wore. Beneath her habit, the nun had already been wearing an old pair of Erin’s jeans and one of her white cotton shirts. From a distance, she could pass for Erin.

Or at least I hope so.

They both turned to Christian for his final approval. He gave a thumbs-up, then leaned down to whisper in Erin’s ear.

“Erin, the danger ahead is real. Where you are about to trespass is forbidden. If you are caught…”

“I know,” she said.

He handed her a folded map and a key. She attempted to take them, but Christian held firm.

“I’m willing to go with you,” he said, his eyes bright with concern. “Just say the word.”

“But you can’t,” she countered. “You know that.”

Erin glanced over to Margaret. For this subterfuge to work, Christian had to stay in the library. He had been assigned as Erin’s bodyguard. And rightfully so. Of late, the number of strigoi attacks across the breadth of Rome was escalating. Something had stirred the monsters up. And not just here. Reports from around the globe indicated a shift in that balance between the light and the dark.

But what was causing it?

She had her suspicions but she wanted confirmation before sharing them, and this trespass today might gain her the answers she needed.

“Be careful,” Christian finally said, releasing the map and key. He then took Margaret’s hand and helped her stand. It was hoped that everyone would assume that the blonde beside Christian was Erin, keeping her absence undetected.

“Your blood,” Erin whispered. She would need that final item as much as she would the key.

Christian gave a small nod and slipped her a stoppered glass vial containing a few milliliters of his own black blood. She added the cold vial to her other pocket next to a small flashlight.

Christian touched his pectoral cross and whispered, “Go get ’em, tiger.”

Then he ushered Sister Margaret out from behind the card catalog toward the table where Erin had left her backpack and notebook. She stared at the backpack, hating to leave it behind. Inside, sealed in a special case, was a tome more precious than all the multitudes of ancient volumes secured in the Vatican’s secret archives.

It held the Blood Gospel.

The book of prophecies had been written by Christ, inscribed in His holy blood. Only a few pages of that book had revealed themselves. She pictured those fiery lines scribing to life across those ancient blank pages. They were stanzas of cryptic prophecies. Some had already been deciphered; others still remained a mystery yet to be solved. But even more intriguing were the hundreds of blank pages that had still not revealed their hidden contents. It was rumored that those lost secrets might contain all the knowledge of the universe, of God, of the meaning of existence, and what lay beyond.

Erin found her mouth going dry even now at the thought of leaving behind such a font of knowledge. Pride also prickled through her, knowing such knowledge was meant for her. Back in the deserts of Egypt, the book had been bound to her. Its words could only be read if she held the book in her hands. So, up until this moment, she had carried it everywhere, never letting it out of her sight.

But now she must.

Nuns didn’t carry backpacks, so for her disguise to work, she would have to leave the precious tome in Christian’s capable care.

And the sooner I get this done, the sooner I can be back.

That knowledge drove her to her feet. She had a lot of ground to cover, and if she didn’t return by evening when the library closed, they would all be caught. Pushing that thought out of her head, she kept her back bowed so that no one could see her face. She took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the catalog into the quiet murmur of the library.

No one seemed to pay her any special notice as she walked slowly toward the front door. She willed herself to remain calm. Sanguinists had senses so acute that they could hear a human heartbeat. They might wonder why a nun walking through the tranquil library had a galloping heartbeat.

She passed rows of shelves and scholars seated at polished wooden tables next to stacks of books. Many of these scholars had waited years to come to this place. They were bent reverently over their tasks, as devout as any priest. She had once been no different from them — until she’d discovered an alternate, deeper vein of history. Well-known texts and familiar paths no longer contented her.

That was just as well. Such ordinary scholarly ways were no longer open to her. She had recently been dismissed from her post at Stanford University following the death of a student on a dig in Israel. She knew that she should be preparing for her future, worrying about her long-term career, but none of that mattered. If she and the others didn’t succeed, no one would have a future to worry about.

She pushed open the heavy library door and stepped out into a bright Italian afternoon. The spring sunshine felt good against her face, but she didn’t have time to linger and enjoy it. She quickened her pace, hurrying through the Holy City toward St. Peter’s Basilica. Tourists were all around, consulting maps and pointing.

They slowed her down, but eventually she reached the grand and imposing basilica. The building symbolized papal power, and no one looking upon it could fail to recognize its strength and grandeur. Even knowing its stern purpose, the beauty of its façade and its massive domes always filled her with awe.

She made straight for the giant doors and passed unchallenged between marble columns so tall that they spanned two floors. As she strode through the atrium and into the nave of the massive basilica itself, she cast a glance at Michelangelo’s Pietà on her right, a sorrowful sculpture of Mary cradling her son’s dead body. It served as a reminder and quickened Erin’s steps.

Many more mothers will be mourning their lost children if I fail.

Still, she had no idea what she was doing. For the past two months she had scoured the Vatican Library, searching for the truth behind the Blood Gospel’s last prophecy: Together, the trio must face their final quest. The shackles of Lucifer have been loosened, and his Chalice remains lost. It will take the light of all three to forge the Chalice anew and banish him again to his eternal darkness.

The skeptical part of her — that part that still struggled with the truth about strigoi and angels and miracles unfolding before her eyes — wondered if the task was even possible.

To reforge some ancient chalice before Lucifer broke free of Hell?

It sounded more like an ancient myth than an act to be performed in modern times.

But she was a member of the prophetic trio referenced in the Blood Gospel. The three individuals consisted of the Knight of Christ, the Warrior of Man, and the Woman of Learning. And as that learned woman, it was Erin’s supposed duty to discover the truth behind those cryptic words.

The other two members of the trio awaited her solution, keeping busy with their own tasks while she worked at the Vatican libraries, trying to find answers. Neither of them was in Rome at the moment, and she missed them both, wanting them by her side, if only as a sounding board for her multitude of theories.

Of course, it was more than that with Sergeant Jordan Stone — the Warrior of Man. In the few short months since they had first met, she had fallen for the tough and handsome soldier, with his piercing blue eyes, his easygoing humor, and his steadfast sense of duty. He could make her laugh in the most stressful moments, had saved her life countless other times.

So what was there not to love?

I don’t love that you’re not here.

It was a selfish thought, but it was also true.

During the last few weeks, he had begun to drift away from her and everything else. At first she thought that he might be upset because he had been taken away from his regular job with the army and assigned to the Sanguinists against his will. But lately she’d begun to suspect that his remoteness came from something deeper, and that she was losing him.

Doubts plagued her.

Maybe he doesn’t want the same kind of relationship that I do…

Maybe I’m not the right woman for him…

She hated even to think about that.

The third member of the trio, Father Rhun Korza, was even more problematic. The Knight of Christ was a Sanguinist. She had come to respect his strong moral code, his incredible fighting skills, and his dedication to the Church, but she also feared him. Shortly after they had met, he had drunk her blood in a moment of dire need, almost killing her in the dark tunnels under Rome. Even now, walking through St. Peter’s, she could easily recall his sharp teeth piercing her throat, the strange ecstasy of that moment, sealing forever the act as both erotic and disturbing. The memory frightened and fascinated her in equal measure.

So for now, the two remained close colleagues, though a wariness stood between them, as if both knew that the line that had been crossed in those tunnels could never be fully erased.

Maybe that’s why Rhun vanished out of Rome these past months.

She sighed, again wishing the two men were here, but knowing the task before her was hers alone. And it was a tall order. If the trio must reforge something called Lucifer’s Chalice, she must discover some clue as to the nature of that prophetic cup. She had searched the Vatican’s archives: from its subterranean crypts moldering with age to shelves high up in the Torre dei Venti, the Tower of Winds, whose very steps Galileo himself had once tread. But for all of her study, so far she had come up empty-handed. There was only one last library left for her to explore, a collection forbidden to anyone with a beating heart.

The Bibliotheca dei Sanguines.

The Sanguinist Order’s private library.

But first I must get there.

The library was buried far below St. Peter’s, in tunnels restricted to the Sanguinist Order, to those strigoi who had vowed to serve the Church, who had forsaken the consumption of human blood to survive only on the blood of Christ — or more precisely, on wine transubstantiated by blessing and prayer into that holy essence.

She stepped more briskly across the vast basilica, noting that extra Swiss Guards had been stationed here. The entire city-state was on heightened alert because of the surge of strigoi attacks. Even with her nose buried deep in books, she had heard stories that the monsters involved in these murders were somehow stronger, quicker, and harder to kill.

But why?

It was another mystery, one whose solution might be found in that secret library.

Over the past few months, she had read thousands of dusty papyrus scrolls, ancient parchments, and carved clay tablets. The texts were recorded in many languages, written by many hands, but none of them had the information she needed.

That is, until two days ago…

In the Tower of Winds, she had discovered an old map concealed between the pages of a copy of the Book of Enoch. She had sought out that ancient Jewish text — a book purported to have been written by the great-grandfather of Noah — because the work dealt with fallen angels and their hybrid offspring, known as the Nephilim. It was Lucifer who had led those fallen angels during the war of Heaven. In the end, he was cast down for challenging God’s divine plan for mankind.

But upon opening that ancient volume in the Tower of Winds, a map had fallen free. It had been drawn in strong black ink on a piece of yellowed paper and annotated by a flowery medieval hand and showed another library in Vatican City, one older than any of the others.

It was the first she had heard of this secret library.

From the map, it appeared this collection was hidden within the Sanctuary, the warren of tunnels and rooms below St. Peter’s where some Sanguinists made their home. In those ancient tunnels Sanguinists flocked to spend untold years of their immortal lives in quiet contemplation and prayer, removed from the cares of the bright world hundreds of feet above. Some had lived in those halls for centuries, sustained by mere sips of sacramental wine. Every day priests delivered wine to their still forms, holding silver cups to their pale lips. They sought only peace, and access to their tunnels was carefully controlled.

According to the map in her pocket, the Sanctuary held the oldest archives in the Vatican. She had privately consulted Christian about this place, learning that most of the documents hidden there had been written by Sanguinist immortals who had lived through the events of the ancient world. Some had known Christ himself. Others had been old even before those times, converted to the order after hundreds of years of savagery as feral strigoi.

Though the Sanctuary was forbidden to humans, Erin had been down there once before, accompanied by Rhun and Jordan. The trio had brought the Blood Gospel into the Sanguinists’ innermost sanctum, to receive the blessing of the founder of the Order of the Sanguines, a figure known as the Risen One. But she had learned then that he had a name more significant to Biblical history.

Lazarus.

He had been the first strigoi whom Christ had commanded into service.

Upon learning of this library, Erin confronted the current head of the order in Rome, Cardinal Bernard. She had sought permission to enter that library to continue her line of research, but she had been soundly rebuffed. The cardinal had been firm that no human had ever been allowed to cross its threshold. He also assured her that the library only contained information about the order itself, nothing that would help with the quest.

Erin hadn’t been surprised by the cardinal’s reaction. Bernard treated knowledge as a powerful treasure to be locked away.

She had tried playing her trump card. “The Blood Gospel itself anointed me as the Woman of Learning,” she had reminded Bernard, quoting the recent prophecy revealed in the desert. “The Woman of Learning is now bound to the book and none may part it from her.”

Still, he refused to bend. “I have read deeply and widely from this library. No one in the Sanctuary ever walked with Lucifer and his fallen angels. The stories of his fall were written long after it happened. So there remains no firsthand account of how or where Lucifer fell, where he is imprisoned, or how the shackles that bound him in eternal darkness were forged or could be remade. It would be a waste of time to search that library, even if it weren’t forbidden.”

As she had glared into his hard brown eyes, she realized he would not break those age-old rules. It meant she had to find her own path down there.

She stared across the last few yards of the basilica, toward a statue of St. Thomas — the apostle who doubted everything until presented with proof. She smiled softly through her nervousness.

There’s an apostle after my own heart.

She continued toward the statue. Below its toes lay a small door. It was normally unguarded, but as she rounded toward it, she discovered a Swiss Guardsman standing before the threshold, half hidden within the door’s alcove. She clenched her teeth and moved to the side, out of direct sight. She knew who was to blame for this new addition.

Damn you, Bernard.

The cardinal must have posted a guard after their earlier heated conversation, suspecting she might attempt to sneak below on her own.

She searched for a solution — and discovered it within the grasp of a girl a few steps away. The child appeared to be eight or nine, bored, dragging her feet across the ornate marble tiles. She rolled a bright green tennis ball between her palms. Her parents ambled several yards ahead of her, talking animatedly.

Moving quickly, Erin fell into step with the girl. “Hello.”

The girl glanced up, her blue eyes narrowing in suspicion. Freckles ran across her nose, and her red hair was braided in two pigtails.

“Hello,” the girl said reluctantly in English, as if she knew that she had to answer nuns.

“Could I borrow your ball?”

The girl pulled the tennis ball protectively behind her back.

Okay, new tactic.

Erin lifted a hand, revealing a five-euro note in her fingers. “Then maybe I could buy it?”

The child’s eyes widened, staring hard at the temptation — then thrust the fuzzy ball toward her, making the trade, while surreptitiously staring at her parents’ backs.

With the deal done, Erin waited until the child had moved off, joining her mother and father. She then tossed the ball underhand in a long arc across the nave toward a tight knot of people several yards past from the posted guardsman. The ball pegged a short man in a gray overcoat on the back of the head.

He yelled sharply, cursing in Italian, causing a commotion that echoed through the vast space. As she had hoped, the Swiss Guardsman moved off to investigate.

Erin used the distraction to hurry forward and fit the key Christian had given her into the door lock. At least the hinges proved to be well oiled as she pulled the way open. Once through, she closed the door behind her and locked it by feel, her heart hammering.

She placed her palm against the door, worry rising inside her. How am I going to get back out without being caught?

But she knew it was too late for second-guessing.

Only one path lay open to her.

She clicked on her flashlight and took stock of her surroundings. A long tunnel stretched in front of her. The rounded ceiling looked about nine feet tall, and the walls curved in. Next to the door a dusty oak table held beeswax candles and matches. She took a few of each but didn’t light them. They’d be good backups to have in case the battery failed in her flashlight.

She pulled the map out of her pocket. On the back, Christian had drawn a schematic of the tunnels that led down to the Sanctuary itself. Knowing there was no turning back, she gathered her heavy skirt in one hand and set off. She had at least a mile to cover before she reached the Sanctuary gate.

Her light bounced up and down as she hurried, its narrow beam moving ahead of her, revealing mouths of secondary tunnels. She counted them under her breath.

One wrong turn, and I could be lost down in this maze for days.

The fear made her move faster as she descended narrow staircases and traversed the maze of tunnels. The tiny vial of Christian’s blood bumped against her thigh, reminding her that the price for knowledge was sometimes blood. It was a message that had been drilled into her as a child, made acutely real when her father discovered a book hidden under her mattress. Her father’s rough voice echoed in her ears, drawing her into the past.

“What happened to Eve when she ate from the tree of knowledge?” her father asked, towering over the nine-year-old version of herself, his powerful farmer’s hands clenched into threatening fists at his sides.

She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer his question and decided to stay silent. He was always angrier over things she said than when she kept her mouth shut.

The book—The Farmer’s Almanac—lay open on the well-swept floorboards, lamplight shining on its creamy pages. Until today, she’d only ever read the Bible, because her father said that it contained all the knowledge that she would ever need.

But within the pages of the almanac, she had discovered new knowledge: when to plant seeds, when to harvest crops, the dates of the phases of the moon. It had even contained a few jokes, which proved her downfall. She had laughed too loudly and had been caught, sitting cross-legged under her desk reading.

“What happened to Eve?” he had pressed her, his voice low and dangerous.

She decided to try to protect herself with Biblical quotes, keeping her manner timid. “ ‘And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.’ ”

“What was their punishment?” her father continued.

“ ‘Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.’ ”

“And that is the lesson you will learn by my hand.”

Her father forced her to choose a willow switch and ordered her to kneel in front of him. Obedient, she dropped to her mother’s clean floor and lifted her dress over her head. Her mother had sewn it for her, and she didn’t want it to get dirty. She folded it carefully and placed it on the floor next to her. Then she gripped her cold knees and waited for the blows to come.

He always let her wait a long time for the first one, as if he knew that the anticipation of the pain was almost as bad as the blow itself. Goose bumps rose up on her back. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the almanac, and she wasn’t sorry.

The first blow cracked across her skin, and she bit her lips to keep from crying out. If she did, he would add more blows. He switched her bare back until blood ran down and soaked into her underwear. Later she would have to clean the bright red spatters off the walls and floor. But first she had to endure the lashes, waiting until her father decided that she’d shed enough blood.

Erin shuddered at the memory, the dark tunnels somehow making it more real. Her back twinged even now, as if remembering the old pain and the lesson learned.

The price of knowledge was blood and pain.

Even before her back had healed, she had returned to her father’s office and read the rest of the almanac in secret. One section contained a weather forecast. For a year she’d tracked it to see if the authors knew what the weather would do, and they were often wrong. And she realized that things in books could be wrong.

Even the Bible.

Back then, the fear of punishment hadn’t stopped her.

And it won’t stop me now.

Her feet pounded the stone, carrying her along until at last she reached the door to the Sanctuary. It was not the main entrance into their territory, but a rarely used back door, one that opened not far from their library. This gateway looked like a blank wall with a small alcove that held a stone basin, not unlike a small bowl or cup.

She knew what she must do.

The secret gate could only be opened by the blood of a Sanguinist.

She reached to her pocket and retrieved Christian’s glass vial. She studied the black blood roiling inside. Sanguinist blood was thicker and darker than any human’s. It could move with a will of its own, flowing through veins without the need of a beating heart. That was about all she knew about the essence that sustained both the Sanguinists and the strigoi, but she suddenly wanted to know more, to tease out the secrets of that blood.

But not now.

She emptied the vial’s dark contents into the stone basin, while speaking words in Latin. “For this is the Chalice of My Blood, of the new and everlasting Testament.”

The blood swirled within the cup, stirring on its own, proving its unnatural state.

She held her breath. Would the gate reject Christian’s blood?

The answer came as the dark pool seeped into the stone, vanishing away, leaving no trace.

She let out a sigh, whispering the final words, “Mysterium fidei.”

She took a step back from the sealed wall, her heart pounding in her throat. Surely any Sanguinists nearby would hear that telltale beat and know she was standing at their threshold.

Stone ground heavily on stone, slowly opening a passage before her.

She took a step toward that waiting darkness, remembering her father’s painful lesson. The price of knowledge was blood and pain.

So be it.

2

Why am I always stuck underground?

Sergeant Jordan Stone dragged himself forward with his elbows through the cramped tunnel. Rock pressed tightly on him from all sides, and the only way to move forward was to wriggle like a worm. As he struggled, dirt sifted into his hair and fell into his eyes.

At least I’m still moving.

He pushed forward another few inches.

A heavily accented voice called from the tunnel ahead, encouraging him. “You’re almost through!”

That would be Baako. He pictured the tall Sanguinist who hailed from somewhere in Africa. Last week, when Jordan had inquired about his exact country of origin, Baako had been vague, saying only, Like many nations in Africa, the one I come from has borne many names, and likely will bear many more.

It was a typical Sanguinist answer: dramatic and basically useless.

Jordan stared ahead. He could vaguely make out a dull glow, a promise that this damned tunnel did indeed reach an inner cavern. He fought toward that light.

Earlier today, Baako had climbed down this recently discovered tunnel, returning with the news that the shaft led straight to the sibyl’s temple. A horrific battle had been fought in that cavern a few months back, when an innocent boy had been used as a sacrificial lamb in an attempt to open a gate to Hell. The effort had failed, and afterward a giant earthquake had sealed the place up.

As he crawled, another voice in a lilting Indian accent urged him from behind, poking fun at him. “Maybe you shouldn’t have had such a big breakfast.”

He glanced back toward Sophia, making out her lithe shadowy form. Unlike the dour Baako, this particular Sanguinist always seemed on the verge of laughter, a perpetual shadow of a smile on her lips, her dark eyes shining with amusement. He usually appreciated her good humor.

Not now.

He rubbed dust from his stinging eyes.

“At least, I still eat breakfast,” he called back to her.

Jordan gritted his teeth and continued onward, wanting to see for himself what remained of that temple in the aftermath of the battle. Following the quake, the Vatican had cordoned off this entire volcanic mountain. The church could not let anyone find the bodies below, especially those of the strigoi and their dead Sanguinist brothers and sisters.

A typical cover-your-ass operation.

And as the Vatican was his new employer after the army reassigned him here, he found himself a part of that cleanup detail. But he wasn’t complaining. It meant more time with Erin.

Still, while that should have thrilled him, something nagged at the corners of his mind, a dark shadow that dampened his emotions. It wasn’t that he didn’t still love her. He did. She was as brilliant and sexy and funny as ever, but those qualities seemed to matter less to him every day.

Everything seemed to matter less.

She clearly sensed it, too. He found her staring quizzically at him, often with a pained expression. Whenever she brought it up, he brushed her concerns away, dismissing them with some joke or a smile that never reached his heart.

What the hell is wrong with me?

He didn’t know, so he did what he always did best: he put one foot in front of the other. He kept working, keeping himself distracted. Everything would get sorted out in the end.

Or at least, I hope it will.

And if nothing else, working here offered him some space from Erin, allowing him to try to find that center that he seemed to have lost. Not that he had found himself with much free time. Over the past week, they had been moving bodies from the mountain’s outermost tunnels, letting the strigoi remains burn away under the Italian sun, and securing the bodies of the Sanguinists for proper burial. Jordan’s background with the Army had been in forensic investigations. It was a skill set much suited to the task at hand.

Especially when this tunnel was discovered.

Nobody remembered seeing this mystery passageway before, and from the freshly excavated appearance of the surrounding walls, it looked to have been dug recently.

A fact that presented an interesting dilemma: was the tunnel formed by someone digging down into that inner temple cavern or someone clawing their way out from below?

Neither prospect was a good one, but Jordan had come down to investigate.

As last, he spilled painfully out of the tunnel and sprawled onto a rough stone floor. Baako helped him up, pulling him to his feet as effortlessly as if lifting a small child instead of a six-and-a-half-foot-tall soldier.

A small lamp on the cavern floor offered some illumination, but Jordan flicked on his helmet light as Sophia climbed out of the tunnel, rolling gracefully to her feet, looking barely disheveled.

“Show-off,” he scolded, brushing dust from his clothes.

That perpetual ghost of a smile grew wider. She combed her short-cropped black hair from her wide brown cheeks as she searched. With her sharp unnatural gaze, she didn’t need the lamp or his helmet light to take in the room.

Jordan envied such night-vision. Stretching a kink out of his neck, he began his own search. As he drew in a deep breath, the smell of sulfur filled his nostrils, but it wasn’t as intense as when he was last down here, during the battle, when a wide crack in the floor had been fuming with smoke and fiery brimstone.

Still, a new odor underlay the sulfur.

The familiar reek of the dead.

Jordan noted the corpses of several strigoi scattered to his right, their bodies broken and burned, their flesh cracked and split. A part of him wanted to turn and run, a natural instinct when faced with such a slaughterhouse of horror, but he had a duty here. Leaning hard on his background to settle himself, he took out a video camera and filmed the room. He took his time, making sure that he captured each body, more out of force of habit than anything else. He had worked as a crime scene investigator as part of the Army’s Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facility in Afghanistan, and he had learned to be thorough.

He moved deeper into the cavern, filming the stone altar, trying not to remember the young boy, Tommy, who had been chained there, his lifeblood dripping to the floor. The boy’s angelic blood was the catalyst to open a gateway to the underworld, and in the end, it was the same boy’s bravery that was instrumental in closing it.

Tommy had left his mark on Jordan, too, healing him with a touch of his palm. Jordan could still feel that imprint, and it seemed to burn brighter with every passing day.

“Well,” Baako said, drawing him back to the present, “what do you think?”

Jordan lowered his camera. “It… it’s definitely changed since we were last here.”

“How so?” Sophia asked, joining them.

Jordan pointed to a pile of dead rats in the far corner. “They’re new.”

Baako crossed over, picked up one of the tiny bodies, and sniffed at it. The action made Jordan cringe.

“Interesting,” Baako said.

“How’s that interesting?” Jordan asked.

“It’s been drained of blood.”

Sophia took the rat, examined it herself, and confirmed the same. “Baako is right.”

The small Indian woman offered the dead body to Jordan.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “But if you’re right, that means something was down here, feeding on those rats.”

Which could only mean one thing…

Jordan dropped his hand to the machine pistol holstered at his side. It was a Heckler & Koch MP7. The gun was compact and powerful, capable of firing 950 rounds a minute. It had always been his go-to weapon, only now the magazine was loaded with silver rounds. He also checked the silver-plated KA-BAR dagger strapped to his ankle.

“One of the strigoi must have survived the attack,” Sophia said.

Baako glanced to the tunnel. “It must have fed on the rats until it was strong enough to dig its way out.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a strigoi,” Jordan said, his heart thudding in his throat as a sudden realization rose. “Help me search the bodies.”

Sophia cast him a quizzical look, but the two Sanguinists obeyed. One by one, they examined the faces of the dead.

“He’s not here,” Jordan said.

Baako frowned. “Who’s not here?”

Jordan pictured the boyish face of his former friend, someone whom he had trusted wholeheartedly, only to have that confidence betrayed in this cavern.

“Brother Leopold,” Jordan mumbled to the darkness. He stepped to a spot on the floor, where blood still stained the rock. “Rhun stabbed Leopold right here. This is where he fell.”

His body was gone.

Baako swung an arm to encompass the room. “I already checked the space. The earthquake collapsed all the other passages.”

Jordan shone his light toward the narrow tunnel. “So he made his own.”

Jordan closed his eyes, again seeing Rhun giving Leopold his last rites, Leopold’s blood spilling into a huge pool under his body. With such a mortal wound, how had Leopold managed to survive, let alone find the strength to dig himself out? There couldn’t have been enough sustenance in that pile of rats.

The same question must have been on Sophia’s mind. “The tunnel is at least a hundred feet long,” she said. “I’m not sure even a healthy Sanguinist could claw through that much dirt and stone.”

Baako knelt beside the bloodstain on the stone floor, taking in its expanse. “Much blood was spilled. This brother should be dead.”

Jordan nodded, coming to the same assessment. “Which means there’s something we’ve missed.”

He returned to the tunnel, studied the cavern, then began to slowly walk in a grid pattern across the room, looking for anything that could explain what had happened. They moved bodies, checking beneath them. Jordan even dropped to his hands and knees and examined the old crack in the floor by the altar, discovering a thin gold line where it had sealed.

Sophia squatted next to him and passed her brown hand over the entire length of the crack. “It looks closed.”

“That’s good news, at least.” Jordan straightened, cracking his head on the bottom edge of the altar, and knocking his helmet askew.

“Careful there, soldier,” Sophia said, hiding a small smile.

Jordan reseated his helmet. As he did so, his headlamp glinted off two pieces of what looked like glass, green as a broken bottle of beer, resting in the shadow of the altar.

Hmm…

He slipped on a pair of latex gloves and picked up one of the two pieces. “Looks like some sort of crystal.”

He held it higher. In the lamplight, rainbows of light reflected from the broken surfaces. He examined the shattered edge, then returned the piece next to the other one. The two pieces looked as if they’d once been a single stone, about the size of a goose egg, now broken in two. He fitted the halves together, noting that the stone appeared to be hollowed out inside, like an egg.

Baako stared over his shoulder. “Have you seen it before? Maybe during the battle?”

“Not that I recall, but a lot was going on.” Jordan rolled the object to examine it from every angle. “But look at this.”

His gloved fingertip hovered over lines imbedded in the crystalline surface. They formed a symbol.

He glanced to Sophia. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“Not me.”

Baako merely shrugged. “Looks somewhat like a cup.”

Jordan realized he was right, but maybe it didn’t just represent a cup. “Maybe it’s a chalice.”

Sophia cocked a skeptical eyebrow toward him. “As in Lucifer’s Chalice.”

This time he shrugged. “It’s at least worth investigating.”

And I know a certain gal who would be very intrigued by it.

With his phone, Jordan snapped several pictures of the stone and symbol, planning on emailing them to Erin as soon as he had a signal.

“I should crawl back outside and send this to—”

A scraping sound drew all their attentions back to the tunnel. A dark figure snaked out of the darkness and into the light. Jordan barely registered the fangs — before it launched straight at him.

3

A pang of regret flared through Rhun’s silent heart. He sat on his heels at the base of a tall dune and listened to the soft hiss of grains sliding down the Egyptian slopes. It filled him with a sense of profound peace to be here, alone, doing God’s work.

But even that purity was marred by a darkness at the edges of his senses. He turned slowly toward it, drawn by a compass submerged deep in his immortal blood. As he bent over, searching for the source, sunlight glinted off the silver cross hanging from his neck. His black robe brushed the sand as his palm skated across the hot surface of the desert, skimming over the fine grains. His questing fingertips sensed a seed of malevolence below the surface.

Like a crow hunting a buried worm, Rhun cocked his head, narrowing his focus to one point in the sand. Once he was sure, he pulled a small spade from his pack and began to dig.

Weeks ago, he had arrived with a team of Sanguinists tasked with accomplishing this very duty. But the pieces of evil unearthed here had threatened to master the others, to consume them fully. In the end, he had forced them to abandon the dig site and head back to Rome.

It seemed Rhun alone was capable of withstanding the evil buried here.

But what does that say of my own soul?

He poured each shovelful of burning sand through a sieve, like a child at the beach. But this was not work for children. The sieve caught neither shells nor rocks.

Instead, it captured teardrop-shaped bits of stone, black as obsidian.

The blood of Lucifer.

Over two millennia ago, a battle had been fought in these sands between Lucifer and the archangel Michael over the young Christ child. Lucifer had been wounded, and his blood fell to the sand. Each drop had burned with an unholy fire, melting through the tiny grains to form these corrupted bits of glass. Time had long since buried them, and now it was Rhun’s duty to bring them back to the light again.

A single black drop appeared, resting in the bottom of the sieve.

He picked the drop up and held it a moment in his cupped palm. It burned against his bare skin, but it did not seek to corrupt him, as it did the other Sanguinists. Unlike them, he saw no scenes of bloodshed and terror, or lust and temptation. Prayers filled his mind instead.

Opening a leather pouch at his side, he dropped the black pebble inside. It tapped against two others, all that he had found this day. The drops were smaller now, and harder to find. His task was almost complete.

He sighed, staring across the empty sand.

I could stay… make this desert my home.

A cask of sanctified wine waited for him back at his camp. He needed nothing else. Bernard had sent word that he was to increase his efforts, that he was needed back in Rome. So, reluctantly, he had, although he did not wish for this assignment to end.

For the first time in centuries, he felt at peace. A few months ago, he had redeemed his greatest sin when he had restored his former lover’s lost soul, changing her from strigoi back to a human woman. Of course, Elisabeta — or Elizabeth, as she preferred to be called now — had not thanked him for it, cursing him instead for returning her mortality, but he did not need her gratitude. He sought only redemption, and he had found it centuries after he had given up any hope.

As he straightened, forgoing his search, a distant mewling reached his ear. He tried to ignore it as he carefully tied the leather pouch and packed away his tools. But the sound persisted, plaintive and full of pain.

Just some desert creature…

He climbed toward his camp, but the sound pursued him, scratching at his ears, shredding his sense of solace. It was high-pitched, like the screech of a house cat. Irritation grew inside him — along with a trickle of curiosity.

What was wrong with it?

He reached his small camp and plotted how to break down his tent and clear out his gear to leave no trace of his trespass here.

Still, none of his thoughts lessened the ache of that cry in his ears. It was like hearing the scratching of a dry branch against a bedroom window’s glass. The more one tried to ignore it and return to slumber, the louder it became.

He had at best one more night alone in the desert. If he didn’t do something about that mewling, he would never enjoy his last moments of peace.

He stared in the direction of the crying, took one step, then another toward its source. Before he knew it, he was running across the sun-washed sand, flying over the dunes. As he drew closer, the sound grew louder, drawing him inexplicably onward. A part of him recognized something unnatural about this hunt, how it drew him, but he sped faster anyway.

At last, he spotted the source in the distance. The mewling rose from an acacia bush that cast a faraway shadow. The desert tree must have found an underground water source, its tough roots fighting for survival in this dry land. The thorny trunk listed to one side, a testament to the relentless winds.

Long before he reached the tree, a noxious smell struck him. Even upwind, the scent was familiar, marking the presence of a beast corrupted by the blood of a strigoi into something monstrous.

A blasphemare.

Was it that corrupted blood that had drawn him so inextricably across the desert? Had its evil impinged upon his already sharpened senses — senses honed from weeks of mining the sands for those malevolent drops? He slowed enough to pull his blades from their wrist sheaths. Sunlight flashed off the silver knives, ancient karambits, each curved like a leopard’s claw. He would need such claws to fight what lay ahead. By now, he could identify the scent of his prey: a blasphemare lion.

He circled the tree from a distance. His eyes searched the shadows until he spotted a mound of tawny fur, mostly hidden beneath the bower. In her natural form, the lioness must have been stunning. Even as a tainted creature, her magnificence was undeniable. The corruption had filled her form with thick muscle, while her fur grew thick as velvet. Even her massive head, resting between her paws, revealed an intelligent face.

Still, sickness throbbed in each weary beat of her heart.

As he drew closer to her, he noted black blood crusted on her shoulder. It appeared a wide swath of fur had been burned away across her flanks.

He could guess the origin of this corrupted lioness — and her injuries. He pictured the hordes of blasphemare that had accompanied Judas’s army during the battle fought here last winter. There had been jackals, hyenas, and a handful of lions. Rhun had believed that such beasts had been driven off or killed, along with the strigoi forces, at the end of that war, when a holy angelic fire had swept across these sands.

Afterward, a Sanguinist team had been sent forth to hunt down any straggling survivors, but clearly this beast must have escaped the fire and the hunters.

Even wounded, she had survived.

She raised her golden muzzle and snarled in his direction. Her eyes glowed crimson out of the shadows, their true color stolen by the strigoi blood that had corrupted her. But even this effort seemed to sap her remaining strength. Her head sank back again to her paws. She had not long to live.

Should I end her suffering or wait for her to die?

He moved forward, closing the distance, still unsure. But before he could decide, she pounced out of the shadows and into the burning sunlight. The move caught him off guard. He managed to roll to the side, but sharp claws raked his left arm.

He spun to face her again as his blood dripped onto the hot sand.

She lowered into a wary crouch. The skin on her muzzle wrinkled back into a hiss. The sound chilled even his cold heart. She was a powerful foe, but she could not spend much time away from the tree’s shadow. She was still blasphemare, and she would weaken quickly in the direct sunlight.

He moved to place himself between her and the safety of the tree.

The threat agitated her, setting her tail to swishing in savage arcs. She bunched her hind legs and leaped. Yellow teeth aimed for his neck.

Rhun met the challenge this time, jumping toward her in turn, a plan in mind. He spun to the side at the last second, dragging his silver knife across her burned shoulder. He landed in a roll, turning to keep her in sight.

Blood flowed heavily out of the laceration, pouring forth like pitch, thick and black. It was a mortal wound. He backed away, giving her the leeway to retreat into the shadows and die in peace.

Instead, an unearthly yowl burst from deep in her chest — and she was upon him again, ignoring the safety of the shadows to attack him in full sunlight.

Caught off guard by this surprising assault, Rhun moved too slowly. Her teeth closed on his left wrist, grinding together, trying to crush his bones. His blade fell from his fingers.

Twisting in her grip, he slashed down with his other hand — sinking that blade into her eye.

She screamed in agony, loosening her jaws on his damaged wrist. He pulled his arm free, digging his heels into the sand and pushing away from her. He cradled his damaged wrist against his chest, girding for another charge.

But his blade had struck true, and she collapsed on the sand. Her one good eye looked into his. The crimson glow faded to a deep golden brown before she closed her eye for the last time.

The curse had left her in the end, as it always did.

Rhun whispered, “Dominus vobiscum.”

With yet another trace of corruption removed from these sands, Rhun began to turn away — when once again a plaintive mewling reached his ears.

He stopped and turned back, cocking his head. He heard the soft skitter of another heartbeat. A small shadow sidled out from the shadows, moving toward the dead lioness.

A cub.

Its fur was snowy and pure.

Rhun stared in shock. The lioness must have been pregnant, giving the last of her life to give birth, a mother’s final sacrifice. He now understood why she hadn’t retreated to the shadows when given the opportunity. The lioness had been fighting him in her final moments to protect her offspring, to drive him away from her cub.

The infant nosed the lifeless bulk of its mother. Dread filled Rhun. If the cub had been born of her tainted womb and had fed on her corrupted blood, then it was surely blasphemare as well.

I will have to destroy it, too.

He collected the blade that had dropped into the sand.

The cub nudged its mother’s head, trying to get her to rise. It mewled as if it knew it was orphaned and abandoned.

As he edged toward the creature, Rhun studied it cautiously. While it scarcely reached his knee, even such small blasphemare could be dangerous. Closer now, he noted its snowy coat bore grayish rosettes, mostly dotting its round forehead. The cub must have been born after the battle, making it no more than twelve weeks old.

If Rhun had not stumbled upon the cub, it would have died an agonizing death under the sun or starved to death in the shadows.

It would be a kindness to take its life.

His grip tightened on his karambit.

Sensing his approach for the first time, the young cub looked up at him, it eyes shining in the sunlight. It sank back on its haunches, revealing it was a male. The cub leaned his head back and meowed loudly, clearly demanding something from him.

Those small eyes found his again.

He knew what the cub wanted, what all young creatures craved: love and care.

Sensing no threat, Rhun lowered his arm with a sigh. He slipped the knife back into its wrist sheath and stepped closer, dropping to one knee.

“Come to me, little one.”

Rhun beckoned, then reached slowly as the cub approached on splayed paws, comically outsized for his body. As soon as Rhun touched the warm fur, a rumbling rose from the small form. A soft head butted against Rhun’s open palm, then brittle whiskers rubbed his cold skin.

Rhun scratched under the cub’s chin, which stoked that purr louder.

He stared up at the searing sun, noting that the cub seemed oblivious, unharmed by light.

Strange.

Rhun carefully lifted the animal to his nose and drew in the cub’s scent: milk, acacia leaves, and the musky scent of a baby lion.

No hint of a blasphemare’s corruption.

Moist eyes stared up at him. The irises were a caramel brown, rimmed with a thin line of gold.

Ordinary eyes.

He sat down as he pondered this mystery. The cat climbed into his lap, while he absently stroked the velvety chin with his uninjured hand. Purring, the cub rested his muzzle on Rhun’s knee, sniffing a bit, and licking at some blood that had soaked into his trousers from his injured wrist.

“No,” he scolded, pushing the tiny head away and starting to stand.

Sunlight flashed off the silver flask strapped to Rhun’s leg. The cub pounced at it, hooking a claw around the strap that secured the wine flask in place and chewing at the leather.

“Enough.”

While the cub was clearly only playing, Rhun pushed the stubborn animal off his leg and straightened the flask. He realized he had not drunk a drop of wine since yesterday. Perhaps that weakness had softened his heart against the creature. He should fortify himself before he made any decision.

I must act from a place of strength, not sentiment.

To that end, Rhun unfastened the flask and lifted the wine toward his lips, but before he could take a sip, the lion cub rose on his hind legs and knocked the bottle out of Rhun’s fingers.

The flask fell into the sand, the holy wine spilling forth.

The lion bent and lapped from that red font. While the cub was surely dehydrated, looking for any liquid to quench his thirst, Rhun still stiffened in fear. If the cub had even a drop of blasphemare blood, the holiness in the wine would burn the creature to ash.

He tugged the cub away. The cat glanced back at him, wine staining his snowy muzzle. Rhun wiped the droplets away with the back of his hand. The cub appeared unharmed. Rhun looked closer. For a brief instant, he would have sworn those small eyes shone with a pure golden shine.

The cub butted his head against Rhun’s knee again, and when the small creature stared up at him again, the eyes had returned to that caramel brown.

Rhun rubbed his own eyes, blaming the brief illusion on a trick of the desert sunlight.

Still, the fact remained that the cub had moved in the sunlight and consumed sacramental wine without any ill effect, proving the young cat was no blasphemare. Perhaps the holy fire had spared the cub because the animal was an innocent in his mother’s womb. Perhaps it also explained why the lioness had lived through the blast, weakened but strong enough to bring forth this new life.

If God spared this innocent life, how can I abandon it now?

With the decision made, Rhun gathered the cub up in his tunic and headed back toward his camp. While it was forbidden for a Sanguinist to possess a blasphemare creature, no edict forbade them from owning ordinary pets. Yet, as he crossed the desert with the warm cub purring against his chest, Rhun knew one firm certainty.

This was no ordinary creature.

4

Words from Dante’s Inferno filled Erin’s head as she passed through the Sanguinist gate to enter the order’s private Sanctuary: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. According to Dante, that warning had been inscribed above the entrance to Hell.

And it would be fitting enough here, too.

The antechamber beyond the gate was lined by torches made of bundled rushes, placed at regular intervals along the walls. Though smoky, they illuminated a long hall, lit brightly enough that she clicked off her flashlight.

She set off along its length, noting that the walls had no elaborate frescoes as could be found in St. Peter’s Basilica. The order’s Sanctuary was known to be simple, almost austere. Beyond the smoke, the air smelled of wine and incense, not unlike a church.

At the end of the hall, a large circular chamber opened, equally unadorned.

But it didn’t mean the room was empty.

Smooth niches had been carved into the bare walls. Some spaces held what appeared to be exquisite white statues, with hands folded in prayer, eyes closed, faces either downcast or lifted toward the ceiling. But these statues could move, they were in fact ancient Sanguinists, those who had sunk deeply into meditation and contemplation.

They were known as the Cloistered Ones.

The gateway she and Christian had chosen to use to enter the Sanctuary opened into their inner sanctum. She had picked this doorway because the Sanguinist library lay within the Cloistered Ones’ meditative wing — which made sense as the proximity of such a storehouse of knowledge would be useful for reflection and study.

Erin stepped to the threshold of the large room and stopped. Surely the Cloistered Ones must have sensed the gateway opening nearby or heard her frantic heartbeat, but none of the figures stirred.

At least not yet.

She waited another moment. Christian had told her to give these ancient Sanguinists time to adjust to her presence, to see what they decided. If they wanted to keep her out of their domain, they would.

She stared across the space to a distant archway. According to the map, it marked the entrance to the library. Almost without realizing it, she moved toward it. She stepped slowly — not to be quiet, but out of respect to those around her.

Her gaze swept the walls, waiting for an arm to raise, a hoarse voice to call out. She noted several of the still figures wore clothing and robes from orders that no longer existed in the world above. She imagined those ancient times, trying to picture these quiet, contemplative forms as former warriors for the Church.

All of these Cloistered Ones were once as alive as Rhun.

Rhun had been headed to one of these niches, ready to turn his back upon the outer world, but then he had been summoned by prophecy to seek out the Blood Gospel, joining her and Jordan on this ongoing quest to stop a coming apocalypse. But at times, she saw the world-weariness in that dark priest, the weight of the bloodshed and horrors he had experienced.

She had begun to understand his haunted look. Lately she woke all too often with a scream clenched in her throat. The horrors she had endured played in a never-ending loop in her dreams: soldiers torn to pieces by savage creatures… the clear silver eyes of a woman Erin had shot to save Rhun’s life… strigoi children dying in the snow… a bright young boy falling on a sword.

Too much had been sacrificed to this quest.

And it was far from over.

She stared at the unmoving statues.

Rhun, is this the peace you truly seek or do you just want to hide down here? Would I hide down here if I could, lost in study and peace?

Sighing softly, she continued across the wide room. None of the Cloistered Ones acknowledged her passage. At last, she reached the archway that led into the pitch-dark library. Her fingers touched her flashlight, but then moved to the beeswax candle she had pocketed earlier. She lit the wick from one of the neighboring torches, then stepped across the threshold into the library.

As she held the candle aloft, the flickering glow illuminated a hexagonal space, lined by shelves of books and cubbyholes for scrolls. There were no chairs to sit in, no reading lights, nothing that hinted at human needs. Walking by candlelight made her feel as if she had traveled back in time.

She smiled at the thought and consulted her map. To her left, a smaller archway led to another room. The medieval mapmaker had noted that this room contained the Sanguinists’ most ancient texts. If there was any knowledge of Lucifer’s fall and imprisonment in Hell, that’s where she should begin her search.

She headed there and found another hexagonal room. She pictured the layout of this library, imagining it sprawling out with similar rooms, like the comb of a beehive, only the treasure here was not a flow of golden honey, but an ancient font of knowledge. This room was similar to the first, but here there were more scrolls than books. One wall even held a dusty shelf of copper and clay tablets, hinting at the older nature to this particular collection.

But it wasn’t the presence of such rare artifacts that drew her to a stop.

A figure, covered in a film of dust, stood in the center of the room, but like the Cloistered Ones, this was no statue. Though his back was to her, she knew who stood there. She had once looked into his eyes, black as olives, and had heard his deep voice. In the past, the few words spoken by those ashen lips had changed everything. Here was the founder of the Sanguinist order, a man who had once counted the holiest of the holy among his friends, the one who had died and had risen again at the hand of Christ himself.

Lazarus.

She bowed her head, not sure what else to do. She stood for what seemed an interminable time, her heart pounding in her ears.

Still, he remained motionless, his eyes closed.

Finally, with no word spoken against her trespass, she took a deep shuddering breath and stepped past his still form. She didn’t know what else to do. She had come here with a specific goal in mind, and as long as no one stopped her, she would continue on the course she had started.

But where to start?

She searched the shelves and cubbies. It would take years to translate and read all that could be found here. Lost and overwhelmed, she turned to the room’s sole occupant, its makeshift librarian. Her candlelight reflected off his open dark eyes.

“Lazarus,” she whispered. Even his name sounded far too loud for the space, but she pressed on. “I am here to find—”

“I know.” Dust fell from his lips with those few words. “I have been waiting.”

An arm rose smoothly, shedding more motes into the air. A single long finger pointed to a clay tablet that rested near the edge of a shelf. She moved over to it, glancing down. It was no larger than a deck of cards, terracotta in color. Lines of script covered its surface.

Erin carefully picked it up and examined it, recognizing the writing as Aramaic, a language she knew well. She skimmed the first few lines. It recounted a familiar story: the arrival of a serpent in the Garden of Eden and its confrontation with Eve.

“From the Book of Genesis,” she mumbled to herself.

According to most interpretations, that serpent was Lucifer, come to tempt Eve. But this account seemed to refer to the snake as just another animal in the garden, only craftier than the others.

She brought her candle closer to the most significant descriptor of that snake, phonetically speaking it aloud. “Chok-maw.”

The word could be interpreted as wise or crafty, or even clever or sly.

Erin continued to translate the tablet, finding the story written here much like the account in the King James Bible. Again Eve refused to eat of the fruit, saying that God had warned her that she would die if she disobeyed. But the serpent argued that Eve wouldn’t die, but instead she would gain knowledge — knowledge of good and evil.

Erin let out a small breath, realizing that in this story, the serpent was actually more truthful than God. In the end Adam and Eve hadn’t died after consuming the fruit, but as the snake foretold, they had gained knowledge.

She pushed this detail aside as insignificant, especially upon reading the next line. It was wholly new. She translated aloud, the candle trembling in her hand.

“ ‘And the serpent said unto the woman: Swear a vow that ye shall take the fruit and share it with me.’ ”

Erin read the passage twice more to make sure she hadn’t mistranslated it, then continued on. In the next line, Eve swore a pact that she would give the snake the fruit. After that, the story continued along the same path as the Bible: Eve eats the fruit, shares it with Adam, and they are cursed and banished.

Her father’s words echoed in her head.

The price of knowledge is blood and pain.

Erin read the entire tablet again.

So in the end, it seemed Eve had broken her promise to the serpent, failing to share the fruit.

Erin pondered this altered story. What did the serpent want with such knowledge in the first place? In all the other Biblical stories, animals didn’t care about knowledge. Did this expanded story further support that the serpent in the garden was indeed Lucifer in disguise?

She shook her head, trying to make sense, to discern some significance. She looked over at Lazarus, hoping for some elaboration.

His eyes only stared back at her.

Before she could question him, a sound echoed to her, coming from beyond the library, the heavy grating of stone.

She stared in that direction.

Someone must be opening the nearby Sanguinist gate.

She checked her wristwatch. Christian had warned her that a sect of Sanguinist priests tended to the Cloistered Ones, bringing them wine to sip. But he hadn’t known their schedule or how often they came down here. She had counted on a little luck to get her by.

And that just ran out.

As soon as those priests got closer, they would hear her heartbeat, blowing her cover. She prayed Bernard wouldn’t be too hard on Christian and Sister Margaret.

She returned the tablet to its shelf, but as she turned around, ready to face the consequences of her trespass, Lazarus leaned forward — and blew out her candle. Startled, she stumbled backward. The library sank into darkness, illuminated only by the faraway torches in the main chamber.

Lazarus placed a cold hand on her arm, his fingers tightening as if to urge her to stay quiet. He guided her forward so she could peer into the chamber of the Cloistered Ones.

The ancient Sanguinists stirred. Fabric rustled, and dust fell from their old clothing.

At her side, Lazarus began to sing. It was a hymn in Hebrew. The Cloistered Ones in the chambers outside took up the chant, too. The fear in Erin fell away, caught in the rise and fall of their voices, as steady as waves against a shore. Wonder welled through her.

Figures appeared on the far side. A clutch of black-cloaked Sanguinist priests entered the chamber, carrying flagons of wine and silver cups. They stared at the Cloistered Ones, mouths agape. Apparently such singing wasn’t a common occurrence.

Lazarus’s fingers lifted from her shoulder, but not before a final squeeze of reassurance. She understood. Lazarus and the others were protecting her. Their song would drown out her heartbeat.

Erin stood stock-still, hoping that their ruse worked.

The young priests went about their duty, offering cups to lips, but those same lips only continued singing, ignoring the wine. The Sanguinists exchanged worried glances, clearly puzzled. They tried again, but with no better outcome.

The rich powerful voices only soared louder.

Eventually the small group of priests relented, retreating back down the entry hall and away. Erin listened as that distant doorway ground closed — only then did the singing stop.

Lazarus walked her to the torch-lit chamber as the Cloistered Ones went quiet and still again. He motioned toward the exit.

Erin turned to him. “But I didn’t learn anything,” she protested. “I don’t know how to find Lucifer, let alone how to reforge his shackles.”

Lazarus spoke, his voice deep but distant, as if he were talking to himself rather than to her. “When Lucifer stands before you, your heart will guide you on your path. You must fulfill the covenant.”

“How am I supposed to find him?” Erin asked. “And what covenant are you talking about? The prophecy in the Blood Gospel?”

“You know all that you can know,” he said, his voice drifting farther away. “The way will be revealed, and you will follow it.”

Erin wanted to shake better answers from him, even took a step back in his direction. Questions chased through her head, but she voiced the most important one aloud.

“Will we succeed?” she asked.

Lazarus closed his eyes and did not answer.

6

I must break free…

Leopold’s consciousness drowned in a sea of dark smoke. As a Sanguinist, he’d grown used to pain — the ever-present burning of his silver cross against his chest, the searing of sacramental wine down his throat — but those pains were trivial compared to his current agony.

Bound within a dark well of smoke, he was lost, senseless to the world around him. Even the awareness of his own limbs had been stripped from him by this black pall.

Who knew the lack of pain, of any sensation, could be the worst torture of all?

But even more monstrous were those moments when the darkness would recede, and he would find himself looking out his own eyes again. Too often, they revealed horror and bloodshed, but even those brief respites from eternal darkness were welcome. In those moments, he tried to draw as much life back into himself as he could before he was drowned again by the demon that possessed his body. But as much as he struggled to hold on, it never lasted. In the end, such hopes proved crueler than any torment.

Better to simply let go, to allow the flame of myself to be extinguished into this nothingness, to add my smoke to the multitude that have come before me.

And he knew there were others before him. Occasionally wisps of smoke would brush through him, carrying with them snatches of another’s life: a flash of a lover’s face, the sting of a lash, the laughter of a child running through clover.

Is that all my life will become? Scraps in the wind?

As he pictured that wind, the darkness shredded around him, as if torn apart by a gale. He found a naked woman pressed under him on a bed. A streak of scarlet ran down her neck and between her breasts, coating a golden locket that hung there. Her eyes, as green as oak leaves, met his. They were wide with fear and pain, and they begged him to let her go.

Gasping, he forced his gaze away, to the sumptuous room. Heavy silver curtains had been drawn across the windows to keep out the sunlight, but he sensed that they would soon be opened. With the eternal clock of a Sanguinist, he knew sunset was less than an hour away.

Other bodies lay broken on the cold marble floor to either side of the bed, naked and unmoving.

He counted nine.

The demon inside me must be hungry.

But it wasn’t just the demon.

A half dozen strigoi shared the chamber, some slumbering and slated, others still feasting on the dead. The intoxicating scent of blood lingered in the air, enticing Leopold to partake in this slaughter. But he also sensed his belly was full.

Perhaps that is why I have broken free, even for this brief moment.

He intended to take advantage of it.

He pushed higher off the woman, though one hand still clutched her arm. She shrank away, her heart fluttering like a wounded bird. The demon had fed too deeply upon her. He could not save her, but perhaps he could release her to die in peace. Summoning all his concentration, he forced one finger, then another to let go, willing his hand to obey.

Sweat sprang up on his brow from the effort, but he succeeded, freeing her arm. Unable to speak, he nodded to tell her that she should go.

Trembling, she looked down at her arm, then back at him.

Candlelight flickered against green eyes, and reminded him of another flash of emerald. The green diamond. Impotent hate flashed through him. Just to think of that stone numbed his body, making it even more difficult to move.

By my own hand, I doomed myself — and so many others.

He had been ordered to break that foul gemstone by a master who he had believed could return Christ to this world. But upon shattering that stone, he had unleashed a demon instead. He remembered that icy blackness flowing out of the heart of the shattered diamond, invading his body, bringing with it other voices, snatches of other lives. He was quickly lost, deafened by that cacophony — but one name rose above the others.

Legion.

That was the name of the darkness that had suffocated him, of the demon that had consumed him.

Since then, he had drifted in and out of awareness.

But for how long?

He could not tell. All he knew for sure was that the demon seemed to be gathering others to its side, building an army of strigoi.

With a great effort, Leopold lifted his hand before his own face as the woman dragged herself away, tangling in the bedsheets. He ignored her as shock rang through him. His normally pale white hand was as black as ink. He turned his head, discovering a mirror on the wall.

In its reflection, he was naked, a sculpture in ebony.

Leopold screamed, but no sound came from his lips.

The woman fell from the bed, stirring up one of the slumbering strigoi. The monster hissed, spitting blood. As it reared up, Leopold spotted a black palm print in the middle of its bare chest, like a brand or tattoo, only that blackness reeked of corruption and malevolence, far worse than even the stench of the strigoi who bore it.

Worst of all… that oily darkness was a match to the hue of his new skin.

But that was not all.

Leopold reached his arm out, splaying his fingers, realizing a new horror.

That mark on the beast is the same shape and size as my hand.

The demon must have marked this monster as his own, perhaps enslaving it as surely as it had Leopold.

The strigoi grabbed the woman, twisted her around, and ripped out her throat.

Before Leopold could react, darkness again welled up, dragging him back into that smoky sea, taking with it the sight of the ravaged woman. For once, he didn’t resist, happy to let the horrors of that room vanish. But as he drowned into nothingness, he let go of any hope of escape.

A new desire filled him.

I must find a way to atone for my sins…

But along with that goal came a nagging question, one that might prove important: Why was I allowed to break free for so long just now? What drew away that demon’s attention?

Damn, this bastard’s fast…

Jordan brought up his machine pistol and fired three bursts toward the attacker who had climbed out of the tunnel. His rounds spattered against the rock wall of the cavern temple, finding no target.

Missed again…

From its fangs, it was plainly a strigoi, but he had never seen one move like that. The creature was there, and a split second later the monster was across the room, as if it had teleported the distance.

Baako and Sophia had Jordan’s back, literally. The three of them stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder. Baako carried a long African sword, while Sophia wielded a pair of curved knives.

The strigoi hissed from behind the room’s altar. A long laceration bled across his chest. It was a wound Baako had inflicted as the beast first charged at them, saving Jordan’s life in the process.

Unfortunately, it was the only successful strike his team had inflicted.

“It’s trying to wear us down before the kill,” Sophia said.

“Then time for a new strategy.” Jordan pointed his gun, but as his finger pulled on the trigger, he shifted his aim to the side and fired into emptiness, anticipating that the strigoi would move again.

It did — right into his line of fire.

A scream pierced the roar of his weapon. The strigoi flew backward, blood spraying the walls.

Lucky shot, but I’m taking that point on the scoreboard.

The strigoi spun away, vanishing again into a blur. Jordan searched, swinging his weapon, but then, from out of nowhere, cold hands snatched Jordan off his feet and hurled him toward the wall. Still in midair, he drew the dagger from his ankle sheath, preparing to fight.

Unfortunately, the beast had armed itself, too — not only grabbing Jordan, but also Baako’s sword. As they hit the wall together, his attacker shoved the stolen blade through Jordan’s stomach.

He gasped, falling to his knees.

Baako and Sophia came instantly to his aid. With an arcing blow, Sophia severed the strigoi’s sword arm. She drove her second blade into its stomach and ripped the monster from groin to neck.

Cold black blood spurted across Jordan’s face.

He stared down at the blade still impaled through him.

Little late, guys.

Pain shredded the darkness around Leopold, casting him back into the world, back in to that blood-soaked room. He clutched his belly, expecting to feel rent flesh and spilling guts. Instead, his fingers discovered smooth skin and a round intact belly, still full of blood from the demon’s last feeding.

Leopold rubbed his naked abdomen, still feeling a ghost of that pain.

He saw the same blood-soaked abattoir as before — but he also saw into another chamber overlapping this one: a dark cavern with an altar in the middle.

I know that place.

It was the sibyl’s temple, hidden at the heart of a volcanic mountain in Cumae, the same place where Leopold had loosed the demon Legion into this world.

But how am I seeing this vision?

It was as if he were viewing the scene through another’s eyes. As he watched, clawed hands rose up and clutched a belly pouring forth with oily black blood, while loops of viscera tumbled forth.

But it wasn’t just sight he shared with this other — he also felt that pain.

Then that distant form collapsed on its side. It had to be a strigoi, likely a member of Legion’s army, perhaps one that the demon had enslaved. Leopold pictured the black brand on the chest of the strigoi here.

Did that mark serve as some sort of psychic link? Would it end as this beast died?

Black smoke billowed around him, preparing to drag him away. Yet, he still saw into that cavern temple, the link still intact as the strigoi faded. Even while dying, the beast searched the cavern, as if looking for some way to save itself.

Instead, its gaze fell upon the altar, focusing upon two pieces of an emerald stone.

The green diamond.

Is that what you were sent to fetch?

Somewhere deep inside Leopold’s possessed soul, he sensed that longing from Legion. Leopold vaguely remembered tunneling out of that temple, his limbs impossibly strengthened by the demon that possessed him, but the monster had also been frantic to escape that mountain, to be free of that prison of volcanic rock. After centuries of being locked away inside that gemstone, it plainly could not stand to be trapped a moment longer, and in its haste, it forgot to take the stone with it.

But why does it need that stone?

The diamond shone brightly atop the altar, as if to mock Legion’s failure. But the strigoi’s eyes had begun to glaze, fogging the view. There was little life left. That gaze shifted to movement nearby, a scuffling of legs. Those limbs parted enough to reveal a man kneeling on the rock, a blade through his belly.

Through that link, Leopold looked into the man’s blue eyes.

Recognition rang through him.

Jordan…

With that thought, Legion stirred to life again, rising from the ashes of the strigoi who was dying in that cavern. Darkness swelled up inside Leopold. Within that tide, he felt the demon’s attention swing toward him. He could feel it picking through his memories. He tried his best to bottle up his knowledge.

About Jordan, about the others.

But he failed.

As he fell into nothingness, he felt his own lips move, heard his own voice, but it was not Leopold, but Legion, who spoke Jordan’s other name, his truer name.

“The Warrior of Man…”

Dear Lord, what have I done?

Leopold fled away, down the only path still open to him for a few breaths more, down that fading link.

Sprawled in a pool of his own blood, Jordan stared up at the cavern roof. Baako kept his large hands pressed onto Jordan’s wound, while Sophia tossed aside the long blade. Jordan had barely felt the impaled sword being yanked free. A strange numbness kept his belly cold, making the bloody pool under him feel hot.

Baako knelt over him, offering a reassuring smile. “We’ll get you stabilized and back to Rome in no time.”

“You’re… a bad liar,” Jordan grunted.

He would never survive being dragged up that tunnel with his stomach sliced open. He doubted if he’d even make it across the room.

Knowing this, a vision of Erin’s face shimmered in his head, her brown eyes laughing, a smile on her lips. Other memories overlapped: a lock of wet blond hair falling across her cheek, her bathrobe falling open, revealing her warm body.

I don’t want to die in a hole, away from you.

For that matter, he didn’t want to die at all.

He wished Erin were here right now, holding his hand, telling him it would be all right, even if it wouldn’t. He wanted to see her one more time, tell her that he loved her, and make her feel it. He knew she was afraid of love, believing it would melt away like snow, that it couldn’t last.

And now I’m proving it to her.

He clutched Baako’s iron-strong arm. “Tell Erin… I’ll always love her.”

Baako kept pressure on his wound. “You can tell her yourself.”

“And my family…”

They would need to know, too. His mother would be devastated, his sisters and brothers would mourn him, and his nieces and nephews would barely remember him in a few years.

Should’ve called my mother more often.

Because whatever malaise of emotions that had afflicted him of late extended beyond Erin to his family, too. He’d cut himself off from them all.

He clenched his teeth, not wanting to die, if only to make amends to everyone. But the spreading pool of warm blood told him that his wounded body didn’t care about his future plans of babies and kids and sitting in rocking chairs on a porch, watching the corn grow.

He turned his head, as Sophia checked on his attacker.

At least, I don’t look as bad as that guy.

The strigoi didn’t have long to live, either. Strangely, the creature’s eyes stared directly at him. Those cold bloodless lips moved, as if speaking.

Sophia leaned closer, one eyebrow arching high. “What was that?”

The strigoi drew in a deeper, shuddering breath and, in an accent that Jordan knew well, it spoke. “Jordan, mein Freund… I’m sorry.”

Sophia pulled her hand back from the creature’s body. Jordan was equally shocked.

Leopold.

But how?

The strigoi shuddered and went still.

Sophia sat back and shook her head. The beast was dead, taking with it any further explanation.

Jordan struggled to understand, but the world faded as he bled away the last of his life. He felt himself falling away, the room receding, but instead of into darkness, it was into brilliance that he plummeted. He wanted to raise his hand against it, especially as it grew brighter, burning into him. He screwed his eyelids closed, but it didn’t help.

He had felt such a burning light only once before, when he’d been struck by lightning as a teenager. He had survived the bolt, but it had left its mark, burning in a fractal pattern of scar tissue across his shoulder and upper chest. Those strange vinelike designs were called Lichtenberg figures, or sometimes, lightning flowers.

Now ribbons of liquid fire radiated along those scars, filling them completely — then stretching even farther. Tendrils of heat grew outward, rooting into his stomach, where a searing agony exploded. The fire writhed in his gut like a living thing.

Is this what death truly felt like?

But he didn’t feel himself weakening. Instead, he felt inexplicably stronger.

He took another breath, then another.

Slowly the room slipped back into focus. Nothing seemed to have changed. He still lay in a pool of his own cooling blood. Baako continued to press hard against his wound.

Jordan met the African’s concerned gaze and pushed at his hands. “I think I’m okay.”

Better than okay.

Baako shifted his palms and glanced at the spot where the sword had impaled Jordan. Strong fingers wiped the residual blood away.

A low whistle escaped Baako.

Sophia joined him. “What is it?”

Baako glanced up at her. “It’s stopped bleeding. I swear the wound even looks smaller.”

Sophia examined him, too. Only her expression grew more worried than relieved. “You should be dead,” she said baldly, gesturing to the spread of blood. “You received a mortal wound. I’ve seen many over the past centuries.”

Jordan pushed up into a seated position. “People have counted me out before. I even died once. No, make that twice. But who’s keeping track?”

Baako sighed. “You healed, just as the book said you would.”

Sophia quoted from the Blood Gospel. “ ‘The Warrior of Man is likewise bound to the angels to whom he owes his mortal life.’ ”

Baako clapped him on the shoulder. “It seems those angels are still watching over you.”

Or they’re not done with me yet.

Sophia returned her attention to the dead strigoi. “It knew your name.”

Jordan was glad for the distraction, remembering the last words spoken from those dying lips.

Jordan, mein Freund … I’m sorry.

“That voice,” he said. “I swear it was Brother Leopold’s.”

“If you’re right,” Sophia said, “that is one miracle that can wait. We should get you to the medics at camp.”

Jordan fingered open his shirt. The wound was now just a sticky scab. He wagered even that would be gone in a few hours. Still, he pictured that sword piercing through him, which raised another mystery.

“Have you guys ever seen a strigoi move like that?”

Baako looked to Sophia, as if she had more experience.

“Never,” she answered.

“It was not just fast,” Baako said. “But strong, too.”

Sophia moved to the dead creature’s side, rolled it to its back, and began to strip away its clothes. Three bullet holes decorated the corpse’s center mass. Jordan was pretty impressed that he’d hit the creature at all. As Sophia peeled the shirt away, Jordan sucked in a surprised breath.

Emblazoned on the strigoi’s pale chest was the imprint of a black hand. Jordan had seen one like it once before — burned on the neck of the now dead Bathory Darabont. Her mark had bound her to her former master, branding her as one of his own.

The presence of it here now meant only one thing.

“Someone sent this creature down here.”

I am Legion…

He stood before a silvered mirror, drawing himself fully back into his vessel to center himself after his sojourn to that dread cavern. In that reflection, he saw an unremarkable body: weak limbs, sunken chest, soft belly. But his mark graced this one’s form, painting his skin as dark as the void between stars. Eyes as blackened as dead suns stared back out of that mirror.

He let those eyes close and searched the shadows that made up his true essence. Six hundred and sixty-six spirits. He let those tendrils run through his awareness, reading what still remained, looking for answers. He caught glimpses of a common pain from the past, of a glass prison, of a white-bearded figure staring inward with disgust.

But from such pain came his birth.

I am many… I am plural… I am Legion.

Within those swirls of darkness that made up his being, a single flame glowed, flickering in those endless shadows. He drew closer to that fire, reading the smoke that came from it as the spirit that sustained it slowly smothered.

He knew that one’s name, the vessel that he possessed.

Leopold.

It was from the smoke of that weakening flame that Legion had learned the ways of this present world. He had rifled through those memories, those experiences, to ready himself for the war to come. He had built an army, enslaving others with merely a touch of his hand. He let the strength of his darkness flow into them. With each touch, his eyes and ears in this world multiplied, allowing his awareness to grow ever larger across the land.

He had one purpose.

He pictured a being of immensely dark angelic power, seated on a black throne.

Centuries ago, those six-hundred-and-sixty-six spirits had been woven by that black angel, securing Legion inside that gemstone. He was left there as a harbinger for what was to come, a dark seed waiting to take root in this new world and spread.

When he was finally freed from the gem, he attached himself to the creature who broke that stone. Leopold. Legion rooted himself deep into his new vessel, attaching himself to Leopold, taking possession, the two becoming one. The vessel was the pot from which he could grow into this world, spreading his branches far and wide, claiming others, branding them, enslaving them. And while his foothold in this world depended on Leopold living, he could still travel along those branches and control them from afar.

His duty was to open the way for his master’s return, to ready this world for its purification, when the vermin known as mankind would be purged out of this earthly garden. The dark angel had promised Legion this paradise, but before he could be awarded this prize, he must first complete his task.

And now he knew there were forces aligned against him.

That he also learned from the flickering flame inside him.

Legion did not fully understand that threat, but he recognized that his vessel fought to keep certain scraps hidden from him. Moments ago, he felt that flame of Leopold’s spirit flare brighter with shock, saw it shudder in the darkness, drawing his attention. From that smoke, he learned a name, put a face to it.

The Warrior of Man.

But not just that name. Others slipped free, too, as memories burned away to smoke.

The Knight of Christ.

The Woman of Learning.

Whispers of prophecy rose with that smoke, along with an image of a book written by the very Son of God. He studied that flame now, trying to learn more.

Who else stands in my way?

6

Talk about an exercise in futility…

With gritted teeth, Tommy shinnied up another couple of inches on the knotted rope that hung from the center of the gymnasium. Below his toes, his classmates yelled either words of encouragement or insults. He couldn’t really tell which from up there, especially past the pounding of his heart and gasping of his breath.

Not that it would matter anyway.

He had always hated gym, even before his cancer diagnosis. Uncoordinated and not particularly fast on his feet, he was usually picked last for most sports. He also quickly discovered that he would rather stay away from any ball than jump after it.

I mean what’s the point?

Only one activity truly interested him: climbing. He was actually good at it, and he liked the simplicity of it. It was all about him and the rope. Whenever he climbed, his worries and fears faded away.

Or at least most of them.

He clamped his knees on the rope and tugged up higher. Sweat trickled down his back. The weather was always warm in Santa Barbara, and almost always sunny. He liked that. After spending time in Russia and aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic, he never wanted to be that cold again.

Of course, after being frozen solid in an ice sculpture of an angel, anyone would appreciate the Southern California sunshine.

He stared up toward that sunshine now, where it flowed through a row of windows at the top of the gymnasium.

Almost there…

In another two yards, he should be able to touch the wire cages that protected the lights that hung from the ceiling. Touching the dusty wires was a badge of honor in the ninth-grade class, and he intended to reach them.

He stopped for a moment, readying himself for the last bit of the ascent. Lately, he got out of breath so easily. It was worrisome. Half a year ago, he had been touched by an angel… literally. Angelic blood had flowed through him, curing him of his cancer, strengthening him, even making him temporarily immortal. But that was gone, burned away in the sands of Egypt.

He was just an ordinary boy again.

And I plan to stay that way.

He hung for a moment, staring upward and taking a deep breath.

I can do this.

A sharper shout reached him from below. “That’s far enough! Come back down!”

That would be Martin Altman, Tommy’s only friend at the new school. He’d lost his old friends when he had moved in with his aunt and uncle. After Tommy’s parents had died, they were his only blood relatives.

He pushed that thought away before dark memories overwhelmed him. Glancing between his toes, he saw Martin staring up at him. His friend was tall and lanky, with long arms and legs. Martin was always ready with a corny joke, and laughter came easily out of him.

Of course, Martin’s parents hadn’t died in his arms.

Tommy felt a flare of anger at his friend, but he knew it came from a place of petty jealousy, so he stamped it back down. Still, the rope slipped between his sweaty palms. He clutched tighter.

Maybe Martin’s right.

A wave of dizziness further convinced him. He started back down, but everything grew steadily fuzzier. He struggled to hold on as he descended more rapidly, sliding now, burning his palms.

Whatever you do, don’t let—

Then he was falling. He stared up at the sunshine flowing through the windows above, remembering another time he had plummeted through the air. Then, he had been immortal.

Not so lucky today.

He slammed into the pile of mats at the base of the rope. Air burst from his chest. He gasped, trying to refill his lungs, but they refused to cooperate.

“Move!” shouted Mr. Lessing, the gym teacher.

Everything went gray — then he found his breath again. He heaved in great gulps of air, sounding like a hoarse seal.

His classmates stared down at him. Some were laughing, others looked concerned, especially Martin.

Mr. Lessing pushed through them. “You’re okay,” he said. “Just got the wind knocked out of you.”

Tommy fought to slow his breath. He wanted to sink through the floor. Especially when he spotted Lisa Ballantine’s face among the others. He liked her, and now he’d made a fool of himself.

He tried to sit up, tweaking a spike of pain up his bruised back.

“Go slow,” Mr. Lessing said, helping him to his feet, which only made Tommy’s face heat up even more.

Still, the room tilted a little, and he clutched the gym teacher’s arm. This day couldn’t get any worse.

Martin pointed to Tommy’s left hand. “Is that a rope burn?”

Tommy looked down. His palms certainly were red, but Martin pointed to a dark mark on the inside of his wrist.

“Let me see that,” Mr. Lessing said.

Tommy shook free and stumbled away, covering the blemish with his other hand. “Just a rope burn. Like Martin said.”

“Okay, then everyone clear out,” Mr. Lessing ordered. “Showers. Double time.”

Tommy hurried away. He was still light-headed, but it wasn’t from the fall. He kept the lesion covered. He didn’t want anyone else to know, especially not his aunt and uncle. He would keep it secret for as long as he could. While he didn’t understand what was happening, he knew one thing for sure.

No chemotherapy this time around.

He rubbed the spot on his wrist with his thumb, as if trying to erase it away, because he knew he was out of miracles.

His cancer was truly back.

Fear and despair welled through him. He wished he could speak to his mother or father, but that was impossible. Still, there was one person he could call, one person he could trust with his secret.

Another immortal who, like him, had lost her immortality.

She’ll know what to do.

Standing in the middle of the convent’s garden, Elizabeth Bathory adjusted her broad-brimmed straw hat to cover her face, to shade her eyes from the low-hanging spring sun. To protect her skin, she always wore a hat when she worked outside, even here in the tiny herb garden inside the walled courtyard that served as her prison.

She had been taught centuries ago that those of royal blood should never have skin the same hue as the peasants who worked the fields. Back then she had her own gardens at Čachtice Castle, where she had grown medicinal plants, studying the arts of healing, plying cures out of a flower’s petals or a stubborn root. Even then, she had not gone outside with her clippers and baskets without some manner of shade.

Though this small herb garden paled next to her former fields, she appreciated her time among the convent’s fragrant collage of thyme, chives, basil, and parsley. She had spent the past afternoon clearing out old, woody growths of rosemary to fill in those new spaces with lavender and mint. Their homely scents drifted up into the warm air.

If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that it was a summer day back at her castle, that her children would soon run out to meet her. She would pass them her gathered herbs and walk with them through the grounds, hearing their stories of the day.

But that world had ended four hundred years ago.

Her children were dead; her castle in ruins. Even her name was whispered as a curse. All because she had been made into an accursed strigoi.

She pictured Rhun Korza’s face, remembering him atop her, the taste of her own blood on his lips. In that moment of weakness and desire, her life had been forever changed. After her initial shock at her transformation into a strigoi, she had come to embrace that damned existence, to appreciate all it offered. But even that had been stripped from her this past winter — stolen away by the same hand that had given it.

Now she was simply human again.

Weak, mortal, and trapped.

Curse you, Rhun.

She bent down and savagely clipped a branch of rosemary and tossed it to the flagstone path. Marie, an elderly nun, worked the gardens with her, sweeping the path behind her with a handmade broom. Marie was a wrinkled-up apricot of a woman, eighty if she was a day, with blue eyes filmed with age. She treated Elizabeth with a kind condescension, as if the nun expected her to grow out of her troublesome behavior. If only she knew that Elizabeth had lived more centuries than this old woman would ever see.

But Marie knew nothing of Elizabeth’s past, not even her full name.

None at the convent was given this knowledge.

A twinge in one knee caused Elizabeth to shift her weight to the other, recognizing the pain for what it was.

Aging.

I’ve had one curse replaced with another.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Berndt Niedermann crossing the courtyard on his way to the dining hall for dinner. The elegant German lodged in one of the convent’s guest rooms. He was dressed in what passed in this era for formal: pressed trousers and a well-tailored blue jacket. He raised a hand in greeting.

She ignored him.

Familiarity was not yet called for.

At least for the moment.

Instead, she stretched a kink from her back, glancing everywhere but in Berndt’s direction. The Venetian convent was not without its charm. In the past, the convent had been a grand house with a stately entrance overlooking a wide canal. Tall columns flanked a stout oaken door that led to the dock. She had spent many hours staring out her room’s window, watching life travel by on the canals. Venice had no cars or horses — only boats and people on foot. It was a curious anachronism, a city largely unchanged from her own past.

Over the last week, she had chatted with the German lodger on occasion. Berndt was an author visiting Venice to research a book, which seemed to entail walking around the stone streets and eating fine food and drinking expensive wine. If she had been allowed to accompany him for one day, she could have shown him so much more, filled him with the history of this flooded city, but that was never to be.

She was always under the watchful eye of Sister Abigail, a Sanguinist who made it clear that Elizabeth must never leave the convent grounds. To keep her life — mortal as it was now — Elizabeth had to remain a prisoner within its stately walls.

Cardinal Bernard had been clear on that point. She was imprisoned here to atone for her past crimes.

Still, this German might prove useful. To that end, she had read his books, discussed them with the author over wine, careful to praise them when she could. Even these brief conversations were not private. She was only allowed to speak to guests while closely supervised, usually by Marie or Abigail, that gray-haired battle-ax of a Sanguinist.

Still, Elizabeth found gaps in their supervision, especially lately. As the months of her imprisonment ticked away, the others had begun to let their guard down.

Two nights ago, she had been able to slip into Berndt’s room while he was out. Among his private belongings, she had discovered a key to his rented canal boat. Rashly, she had stolen it, hoping he would think he had misplaced it.

So far, no alarm had been raised.

Good.

She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief as a small boy in a blue messenger cap appeared at the other end of the courtyard. The child moved in the careless modern way that she had seen Tommy use, as if children today were not in control of their limbs, allowing them to flop uselessly when they moved. Even at a younger age than this boy, her long dead son Paul would never have traipsed so artlessly.

Marie hobbled over to greet the messenger, while Elizabeth strained to overhear their conversation. Her Italian was passable now, as she’d had little to do beyond work in the garden and study. She studied far into the night. Everything she learned was a weapon that she would one day wield against her captors.

A honeybee lit on her hand, and she lifted it to her face.

“Be careful,” warned a voice behind her, startling her. That would never have happened when she was a strigoi. Then she had been able to pick out a heartbeat from fields away.

She turned to discover Berndt standing there. He must have circled the courtyard to approach her so discreetly. He stood close enough that she could smell his musky aftershave.

She glanced down to the bee. “I should be fearful of this small creature?”

“Many people are allergic to bees,” Berndt explained. “If it were to sting me, it might even kill me.”

Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow. Modern man was so weak. No one perished from bee stings in her time. Or perhaps many had, and one simply had not known.

“We cannot allow such a thing to happen.” She moved her hand away from Berndt and blew on the bee to make it fly.

As she did so, a figure stepped out of the shadows of the courtyard wall and headed toward them.

Sister Abigail, of course.

Her Sanguinist minder looked like a harmless old British nun — her limbs thin and weak, her blue eyes faded with age. As she reached them, she tucked in a wisp of gray hair that had escaped the side of her wimple.

“Good evening, Herr Niedermann,” Abigail greeted him. “Dinner is soon to be served. If you’ll head to the hall, I’m sure—”

Berndt interrupted her. “Perhaps Elizabeth would care to join me.”

Abigail grabbed Elizabeth’s arm with a grip that would leave a bruise. She did not resist. Bruises might engender sympathy from Berndt in the right circumstances.

“I’m afraid that Elizabeth cannot go with you,” Abigail said in an irritated tone that brooked no argument.

“Of course I may, Sister,” Elizabeth said. “I’m not a prisoner, am I?”

Abigail’s square face flushed hotly.

“Then it’s settled,” Berndt said. “And perhaps afterward we could go for a short boat ride?”

Elizabeth forced herself not to react, fearing Abigail would hear the sudden spike of her heartbeat. Would the missing key be noted?

“Elizabeth has been ill,” Abigail said, clearly struggling for any explanation to keep Elizabeth within the convent’s walls. “She mustn’t overtire herself.”

“Perhaps the sea air will do me good,” Elizabeth said with a smile.

“I can’t allow it,” Abigail countered. “Your… your father would be very mad. You certainly don’t want me to call Bernard, do you?”

Elizabeth gave up toying with the woman, as much as it delighted her. She certainly didn’t want Cardinal Bernard’s attention drawn this way.

“That’s unfortunate,” Berndt said. “Especially as I must leave tomorrow.”

Elizabeth looked sharply toward him. “I thought you were staying another week.”

He smiled at her concern, clearly mistaking it for affection. “I’m afraid business calls me back to Frankfurt earlier that I was expecting.”

That presented a problem. If she intended to use his boat to make her escape, it would have to be this night. She thought quickly, knowing this was still her best chance — not just of escape, but so much more.

She had grander plans, to be more than just free.

While Elizabeth could walk under the sun again, she had lost so much more. As a mortal human, she could no longer hear the softest sounds, smell the faintest wisps of scent, or witness the glowing colors of the night. It was as if she had been wrapped in a thick blanket.

She hated it.

She wanted her strigoi senses back, to feel that unnatural strength flowing through her limbs again, but most of all, she desired to be immortal — to be unfettered not just from these convent’s walls, but from the march of years.

I will let nothing stop me.

Before she could move, the cell phone hidden in the pocket of her skirts vibrated.

Only one person had that number.

Tommy.

She moved back from the German. “Thank you, Berndt, but Sister Abigail is correct.” She gave him a quick curtsy, realizing too late that no one did such things anymore. “I am feeling a touch faint from working the gardens. Perhaps I should take my meal in my room after all.”

Abigail’s lips tightened into a hard line. “I think that is wise.”

“A shame,” he said, disappointment ringing in his voice.

Abigail took her by the arm, the nun’s fingers even tighter now, and led her to her room. “You are to stay here,” she commanded once they reached her small cell. “I will bring your dinner to you.”

Abigail locked the door behind her. Elizabeth waited until her footsteps faded, then crossed to the barred window. Alone now, she retrieved the telephone and returned the call.

When she heard Tommy, she immediately knew something was wrong. Tears frosted his voice.

“My cancer’s back,” he said. “I don’t know what to do, who to tell.”

She gripped the phone harder, as if she could reach through the ethers to a boy she had grown to love as much as her own son. “Explain what has happened.”

She knew Tommy’s history, knew that he had been sick before an infusion of angelic blood had cured him, granting him immortality. Now he was an ordinary mortal, like her — afflicted as he had been before. Though she had heard him use the word cancer, she never truly comprehended the nature of his sickness.

Wanting to understand more, she pressed him. “Tell me of this cancer.”

“It’s a disease that eats you up from inside.” His words grew soft, forlorn, and lost. “It’s in my skin and bones.”

Her heart ached for the boy. She wanted to comfort him, as she often did with her own son. “Surely doctors can cure you of this affliction in this modern age.”

There was a long pause, then a tired sigh. “Not my cancer. I spent years in chemotherapy, throwing up all the time. I lost my hair. Even my bones hurt. The doctors couldn’t stop it.”

She leaned against the cold plaster wall and studied the dark waters of the canal outside her window. “Can you not try this chemotherapy again?”

“I won’t.” He sounded firm, more like a man. “I should have died back then. I think I’m supposed to. I won’t go through that misery again.”

“What about your aunt and uncle? What do they say you should do?”

“I haven’t told them, and I’m not going to. They would make me go through those medical procedures again, and it won’t help. I know it. This is how things are supposed to be.”

Anger built inside her, hearing the defeat in his voice.

You may not wish to fight, but I will.

“Listen,” he said, “no one can save me. I just called to talk, to get this off my chest… with someone I can trust.”

His honesty touched her. He, alone in the world, trusted her. And he alone was the only one whom she trusted in return. Determination grew inside her. Her own son had died because she had failed to protect him. She would not let that happen to this boy.

He talked for a few minutes more, mostly about his dead parents. As he did, a new purpose grew in her heart.

I will break free of these walls… and I will save you.

7

Out of the frying pan, and into the fire…

After safely escaping the Sanguinist library undetected, Erin had met up with Christian and Sister Margaret before being summoned to Cardinal Bernard’s offices in the Apostolic Palace. She followed a black-robed priest down a long paneled hall, passing through the papal apartments on her way to the Sanguinists’ private wing.

She wondered why this sudden summons.

Has Bernard learned about my trespass?

She tried to keep the tension out of her stride. She had already attempted to question the priest ahead of her. His name was Father Gregory. He was Bernard’s new assistant, but the man remained close-mouthed, an attribute necessary for anyone serving the cardinal.

She studied this newly recruited priest. He had milky white skin, thick dark eyebrows, and collar-length black hair. Unlike the cardinal’s previous assistant, he wasn’t human — he was a Sanguinist. He looked to be in his early thirties, but he could be centuries older than that.

They reached Bernard’s office door, and Father Gregory opened it for her. “Here we are, Dr. Granger.”

She noted the Irish lilt to his words. “Thank you, Father.”

He followed her inside, slipping free an old-fashioned watch fob on a chain and glancing down at it. “We’re a touch early, I’m afraid. The cardinal should be here momentarily.”

Erin suspected this was some ploy of Bernard’s, to leave her waiting as a petty show of superiority. The cardinal still bristled that the Blood Gospel had been bound to her.

Father Gregory pulled out a chair for her before the cardinal’s wide mahogany desk. She placed her backpack next to her seat.

As she waited, she took in the room, always finding new surprises. Ancient leather-bound volumes filled floor-to-ceiling bookcases, an antique jeweled globe from the sixteenth century gleamed on the desk, and a sword from the time of the Crusades hung above the door.

Cardinal Bernard had wielded that very sword to take Jerusalem from the Saracens a thousand years before, and she had personally witnessed his skill with it a few months back. While he seemed to prefer to work behind the scenes, he remained a fierce warrior.

Something to keep in mind.

“You must be worn out after your long day of study,” Father Gregory said, returning to the door. “I’ll fetch you some coffee while you wait.”

As soon as he closed the door, she crossed around to the other side of the cardinal’s desk. She studied the papers strewn across the surface, reading rapidly through them. A few months ago she would have balked at invading the cardinal’s privacy, but she had seen enough people die to preserve Bernard’s secrets.

Knowledge was power, and she would not let him hoard it.

The topmost sheet was written in Latin. She skimmed the words, translating as she went. It seemed two strigoi had attacked a nightclub in Rome, killing thirty-four people. Such open attacks were unusual, almost unheard of in modern times. Over the passing centuries, even the strigoi had learned to conceal themselves and hide the bodies of their prey.

But apparently that wasn’t true any longer.

She read through the private report on the massacre and discovered an even more disturbing detail. Among the dead was a trio of Sanguinists. She swallowed at the seeming impossibility of that.

Two strigoi had killed three trained Sanguinists?

She moved the sheet aside and read the next report, this one in English. It described a similar attack on a military base outside of London, twenty-seven armed soldiers killed at their evening mess hall.

Erin shuffled through the remainder of the pages. They documented strange and ferocious attacks across Italy, Austria, and Germany. She became so lost in the horrors of these accounts that she barely noted the office door swinging open.

She raised her head.

Cardinal Bernard entered, dressed in the scarlet robes of his station. With his white hair and calm demeanor, he could easily be mistaken for someone’s kindly grandfather.

He sighed, nodding to his desk. “I see you’ve read my intelligence reports.”

She didn’t bother trying to deny her actions. “They’re light on specifics. Have you learned anything more about these attackers?”

“No,” he said as they exchanged places. He took his desk chair, and she returned to her seat. “We know their tactics are savage, undisciplined, and unpredictable.”

“How about witnesses?”

“So far, they’ve left no survivors. But from this latest attack, at the discotheque, we were able to obtain surveillance footage.”

Erin sat straighter.

“It is quite gruesome,” he warned, tilting his computer monitor toward her.

She leaned forward. “Show me.”

He opened a file, and soon grainy footage showed a handful of dancers moving around on a dark floor. Lights strobed, and though the footage had no audio, she could imagine the heavy bass beat of that music.

“Watch these two,” Bernard said, pointing.

He indicated two men, both dressed in dark clothing, at the edge of the screen. They moved slowly out onto the dance floor. One had white skin, one black. She squinted closer, studying the dark figure. The video quality was too poor to pick out features, but it seemed as if his skin drank in the light. His face looked unnatural somehow, more like a mask than human skin.

As if the dancers sensed the hunters in their midst, the small crowd parted, keeping a ragged circle of free space around the two creatures. They were right to be wary. A moment later, the two strigoi lashed out, moving so quickly that their images blurred on the screen. She had never seen strigoi move at such speeds.

In less than ten seconds, only the two strigoi remained standing. Broken and bloody bodies lay at their feet. Each figure picked up a wounded woman from the floor, slung her over his shoulder, and disappeared out of the frame.

Erin shuddered to think what lay in wait for those poor girls.

The cardinal tapped a key, and the image froze.

Erin swallowed hard, thinking of the pain and fear those people must have felt in their final moments. None of them had stood a chance.

“Are the police looking for these killers?” she asked.

The cardinal moved his monitor back around. “They are searching, but they don’t understand what they’re hunting.”

“What do you mean?”

“The police were never allowed to see this footage. As you know, we cannot allow proof of the existence of strigoi to be revealed to the world at large.”

She sat back in her chair. “Then how can the people protect themselves?”

“We have sent additional teams out. They patrol the city night and day. We’ll find this pair of killers and destroy them. That is our sacred duty.”

Erin wondered how many innocent lives would be claimed before that happened. “Those strigoi were fast, like nothing I’ve seen before.”

The cardinal grimaced. “And they aren’t the only ones. We have similar reports globally. For some reason, the strigoi have begun to change, to grow more powerful.”

“So I’ve heard, but why is this happening? Why now?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I fear that it is related to the prophecy.”

She bunched her brows, guessing what he was referring to. “That Lucifer’s shackles have somehow loosened.”

“And because of that, more evil is entering our world. A fundamental balance has begun to shift, giving additional strength to evil creatures, while sapping holy forces at the same time.”

She stared harder at the cardinal, sizing him up. “Do you feel weaker?”

He clenched one hand atop his desk. “Here, on these blessed grounds, I do not. But we have lost eighteen Sanguinists in the field over the past twelve weeks.”

Eighteen? The order had already begun fading in numbers over the past decades, much like the Catholic priesthood. The Sanguinists could not afford to lose more foot soldiers, especially if a war was coming.

“Do the attacks have any geographic pattern?” she asked. “Perhaps if we knew where all of this started, it could offer us a clue to stopping it.”

His eyes narrowed, studying her. “Dr. Granger, as usual, you always seem to hit the nail on the head.”

She sat straighter. “You figured something out.”

“We’ve been meticulously recording dates and locations of these attacks.”

“To build a database,” she said. “Smart.”

He nodded acknowledgment of her compliment and tilted his monitor toward her again. He quickly brought into view a map of Europe. Small red dots bloomed, marking attack sites. She balked at the sheer number, but she kept her focus.

“If you extrapolate backward,” Bernard said, demonstrating on the map, “it appears these attacks have been expanding outward from a single location.”

He zoomed into the epicenter of the attacks.

She read the name written there, feeling the blood sink into the pit of her gut. “Cumae… that’s where the sibyl’s temple is located.”

And where Jordan is working.

She stared over at Bernard. “Have you heard anything from Jordan and his team? Did they learn anything?”

The cardinal sank heavily into his seat. “That was the other reason I summoned you. I thought you should hear it from me first. There was an attack—”

He was interrupted as Father Gregory arrived with a silver coffee service. Erin glanced back, a light-headed panic rushing through her. Gregory must have heard the frantic flutter of her heartbeat and froze at the door.

Erin turned back to Bernard. “Is Jordan okay?”

Bernard motioned to Father Gregory. “Leave the coffee on the table over there. That will be all.”

Erin didn’t bother waiting for Bernard’s assistant to leave. Her days of waiting until the Sanguinists got around to telling her things were over.

“What happened?” she blurted out, leaning aggressively forward.

Bernard held up a palm, plainly urging her to calm down. “Do not fear, Jordan and his team are unharmed.”

Erin settled back. She let out a shaky breath, but she also sensed that the cardinal was holding something back. But with her most important concern addressed, she waited until Father Gregory left to confront Bernard.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

“This morning, Jordan’s team discovered a new tunnel, one that looked recently excavated. It appears something may have dug its way out of that buried temple.”

“Something? What does that mean?”

“We don’t know. But we do know that Brother Leopold’s body is missing from that temple.”

She took this all in. During the battle in that temple last winter, Leopold had been killed by Rhun… or at least, it sure looked that way. But if his body was now missing, that meant either he was still alive or someone had taken his body.

She returned again to a worry closer to her heart. “You said there was an attack.”

“A strigoi ambushed Jordan and his team down in that temple.”

She stood up and crossed to the coffee service, too anxious to keep sitting. She poured herself a cup, reminding herself that Jordan was fine.

Still…

Warming her palms on the cup, she faced Bernard. “Was this attacker one of these super strigoi?”

“It appears so. The good news is that the others are bringing the strigoi’s body back to Rome for study. We may learn something from the remains.”

“When?” she asked sharply, anxious to see Jordan, to make sure that he was safe.

“They should be here in the next hour. But they also found something else in the chamber, something they didn’t want to discuss over the phone. In fact, Jordan said that he wanted you to see it first.” The cardinal looked peeved that someone was withholding information from him. “He believed you might recognize it, because, as he adamantly insisted, you are the Woman of Learning.”

She took a sip of the coffee, allowing the heat to warm away the residual chill of her panic. She appreciated Jordan’s confidence, but she hoped it wasn’t misplaced. With no idea what he was bringing back from Cumae, she pondered the mystery of Leopold’s missing body and returned to Bernard’s cryptic assertion.

Something dug its way out of that temple.

Legion sidled along the edge of a tall wall in the heart of Rome. He kept the barrier’s shadow over his form. Though the sun had sunk below the horizon, the surrounding streets still glowed with twilight. He preferred darker places to prowl. As an extra precaution, he pulled the hood of his coat farther over his head, knowing one certainty.

No one can look upon my bare face and not recognize my glory.

Yet, so much more remained unknown.

And that must end.

His vessel, the one called Leopold, has proven valuable. From that flickering flame that still glowed in the darkness inside his being, Legion had learned more about this prophecy and those who stood against him in his duty.

The words of that divination rang through him with each step.

Together, the trio must face their final quest. The shackles of Lucifer have been loosened, and his Chalice remains lost. It will take the light of all three to forge the Chalice anew and banish him again to his eternal darkness.

He pictured the face of the one known as the Warrior of Man, fixing that image of his blue eyes and hard planes of his face. The Warrior exuded all that masculinity represented, a true figure of a man.

As he continued along that tall wall, a large vehicle rushed past on the road beside him, stirring up trash, belching out foul fumes. From Leopold’s memories, he knew this was called a bus. But he retreated to his own memories. As a fallen one, he had spent endless years walking this garden of a world, well before man had trampled through it. Where once wild things grew, mankind had clad the land with artificial stone. Where once clear streams trickled under blue skies, now there was filth — both in the water and in the air.

Even from the beginning, he had known man was unfit to inherit this paradise. During the war of the heavens, where he had joined others against God’s plan for man, he had hoped to claim this garden for himself. But in the end, he and the others lost that battle and were cast down, and now mankind had proven, as he had envisioned, to be a blight in this garden, a weed that needed to be rooted out and burned.

I will take this paradise back.

He would let nothing stop him.

Not even prophecy.

To that end, he must learn more about this trio, enough to stop them. He ran his shadowy fingertips along the wall next to him, feeling the burn of holiness in those stones. This barrier separated Rome from Vatican City. He prowled its length for one determined purpose.

He had learned from Leopold the names of the remaining two members of the trio: the Woman of Learning and the Knight of Christ. They were likely nearby, hiding in this bastion of godliness. He pulled his fingers from the wall and stared down at his palm, swirling the darkness across his skin.

If he laid his hand upon one of the trio, he could possess them in an instant.

With a single touch, I can end this prophecy’s threat.

The first step toward that goal approached him now. He had hoped to find such a one haunting the edges of this holy city. The figure walked toward him on the sidewalk, looking like any other pedestrian. But with the sharpened senses, Legion registered one significant difference.

No heart thudded in this one’s chest.

He was a Sanguinist, a word learned from Leopold. This servant of God registered Legion’s own unnatural state a moment too late. Legion grasped the man’s bared forearm with his black fingers. His prey fell to his knees as Legion burned away his will, pushed his shadows into this one’s heart.

You will be my eyes and ears in that holy city.

Legion stared up at the wall. With this slave he could learn where his enemy was hiding, and end this threat.

I will not fail again.

As she waited for Jordan’s return, Erin studied the map on Bernard’s computer monitor, noting the outward spread of the attack from Cumae.

“It’s like a plague,” she mumbled.

The cardinal glanced up from the reports he had been reviewing. “What was that?”

She pointed to the screen. “What if we consider the pattern of these strange strigoi attacks more like a disease, a pathogen that is spreading far and wide?”

“How does that help us?”

“Perhaps instead of trying to find a way to thwart these attacks, we should concentrate our efforts on finding Patient Zero. If we can find him—”

A short rap on the door cut her off.

“Come in,” Bernard called out, straightening the crimson skullcap of his station. The cardinal was vainer than he would ever admit.

She turned as the door swung wide and Father Gregory stepped inside, but he was only holding the way open for others. She caught sight of the first visitor and was out of her seat and halfway across the room before she realized it.

Jordan caught her in his arms and lifted her off her feet. She hugged him back, hard. Once he let her down, she leaned back, keeping her hands on his shoulders, while taking him all in.

Despite the cardinal’s prior reassurance, a knot of concern for his well-being had remained. But he did indeed look fine. In fact, he looked terrific, his tanned skin practically glowing with health.

She lifted on her toes, inviting a kiss. He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek. His lips burned, as if he were feverish. She settled back to her heels, a hand rising to touch her cheek.

A peck on the cheek?

Such a tepid sign of affection was out of character, and it felt like a rejection.

She studied his clear blue eyes and reached up to run a hand through his shock of short blond hair, wanting to ask him what was going on. He didn’t react to her touch. She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. His skin was burning hot.

“Do you have a fever?”

“Not at all. I feel great.” He stepped back and jerked his thumb toward his companion behind him. “Probably just overheated from chasing after this guy.”

It was Christian, but from the young Sanguinist’s expression, he was equally concerned. Jordan was definitely not telling her something.

Before she could press the issue, Christian entered the room. He was dressed casually in worn black jeans and dark blue windbreaker, beneath which showed a priest’s shirt and collar. He nodded to Bernard. “Sophia and Baako are bringing the strigoi’s body to the pope’s surgery.”

Erin let go of her worry about Jordan’s continuing estrangement and focused on the mystery he and the others had delivered to their doorstep. If they could discover the source of this strigoi’s unusual strength and speed, then maybe they could devise a way to short-circuit it in the future.

But apparently that would wait.

Christian pulled a khaki rag from his jacket pocket. He glanced guiltily toward Jordan. “Sophia asked me to show this to Erin.”

Erin caught her breath as she recognized the scrap. It was a piece of Jordan’s shirt — only it was caked in dry blood, with a clear slash through the middle. She looked anxiously at Jordan.

He grinned back. “Nothing to worry about. I just got nicked during the battle.”

“Nicked?” She sensed he was holding back. “Show me.”

Jordan lifted his palms. “I swear… there’s nothing to see.”

“Jordan…” A warning tone frosted her voice.

“Fine.” He reached a hand and lifted up his T-shirt. A set of six-pack abs came into view.

Definitely nothing wrong with them.

She ran a finger across his unusually warm skin, noting the thin line of a scar. That was new. Without taking her hand from Jordan’s belly, she looked back at the bloody shirt that Christian held. The cut in the front of the shirt matched the scar.

“Just a nick or not,” she said, “this shouldn’t have healed so quickly.”

Bernard came around to examine Jordan, too.

“According to Sophia and Baako,” Christian explained, “Jordan spontaneously healed, suffering no ill effects.”

No ill effects?

His skin blazed under her fingertips. He would barely meet her eyes. She remembered another time when he had burned so hotly. It was when he was healed by Tommy’s angelic blood. Was this evidence of the prophecy concerning the Warrior of Man? The words echoed in her head: The Warrior of Man is likewise bound to the angels to whom he owes his mortal life.

Jordan tugged his shirt back down, glancing at Erin. “I didn’t want you to worry. I was going to tell you when we were alone.”

Were you?

She hated that she doubted him, but she did.

“I figured we had a more important detail to address first,” Jordan continued.

He pulled something out of his camouflage pants and held it up for all to see. Its sharp edges flashed in the candlelight. It looked like two pieces of a broken green egg.

“We found this near the altar down in the sibyl’s temple,” Jordan explained.

He crossed the room and put the pieces down on the cardinal’s desk. They gathered around it. Its facets cast rainbows across their faces, brighter than she’d ever seen — yellows like sunshine, greens like the sun on the grass, blues like a summer sky. The pieces certainly weren’t made of ordinary glass.

“What kind of stone is it?” she asked.

“Diamond, I think,” said Christian, as he leaned closer. “A green diamond, more precisely. Exceedingly rare.”

Transfixed by its beauty, Erin gazed at the stone. The crystal cast dappled reflections around the desktop. Those glowing emerald teardrops reminded her of tiny leaves, dancing in a summer wind.

Jordan nudged the two pieces together. “We found it already broken into these two halves, but at one time, it must have been a single gemstone. And look at this…”

He rolled the stone over to reveal a symbol etched into the crystal.

Erin leaned closer, traced it with her index finger. It looked as if the design had been melted into the stone.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Jordan said, noting her attention. “It’s like the symbol was always part of the diamond, not carved in afterward.”

Erin frowned. “I’ve heard of flaws and inclusions in gems, but it’s hard to believe that such a precise emblem formed naturally.”

Christian nodded. “I agree.”

She straightened. “Besides, I’ve seen this symbol before.”

A small part of her enjoyed their shocked expressions.

“Where?” Bernard asked.

She pointed to the cardinal’s bookshelf. “Right here.”

Proving it, she stepped over and took down a small leather-bound tome. She herself had delivered this depraved book to the cardinal, picking it up from the snow in Stockholm after Elizabeth Bathory had dropped it. It was the Blood Countess’s personal diary, a record of her atrocities and macabre experiments.

Erin stepped back to the desk and opened the book’s brittle cover. It was centuries old. Still, she swore she could smell the scent of blood wafting forth from its pages. She flipped past drawings of medicinal plants until she reached Bathory’s later experiments, those that held detailed drawings of human and strigoi anatomy. Her eyes were drawn to the neatly written notes of horrific tests performed on living women and strigoi, grisly acts that must have caused terrible suffering and death.

She hurried past them.

At the end of the book, Erin found what she sought. Scrawled as if in great haste on the last page was a symbol.

It matched the one on the stone exactly.

“What does it mean?” Bernard asked.

“We’ll have to ask the woman who wrote it,” Erin said.

Jordan groaned. “Something tells me she’s not going to be that cooperative, especially after what Rhun did to her. She’s not exactly the forgiving type.”

“Still,” Erin said, “Rhun might be the only one who could convince her.”

Jordan sighed. “In other words, it’s time to put the band back together again.”

He didn’t look happy, but Erin felt a flicker of relief at the thought of them all together again, the trio of prophecy reunited.

She pictured Rhun’s ashen face, his haunted dark eyes, and turned to Bernard.

“So where exactly is our missing Knight of Christ?”

8

One last duty, and I’ll be free to return to Rome.

Though in truth, Rhun was not in any particular hurry. After returning from Egypt, he had stopped first at the pope’s summer residence in the rural countryside of Castel Gandolfo. With the pontiff rarely visiting, the residence was run like a country estate. The pace was slow and deliberate, changing only with the seasons.

Rhun stood at a window and stared across the spring fields and down to the moonlit waters of Lake Albano. He did not realize how much he had missed the sight of water after his months in the desert. He drew in a deep breath filled with the scent of water, green things, and fish.

Then a sharp pain flared in his heel, drawing his attention back to the stone floor and the mischievous lion cub chewing on the back of his shoe. The snowy-white cub was lying flat on the floor, his paws stretched in front of him like the sphinx. Except a sphinx normally didn’t have its head tilted to the side, its teeth embedded in leather.

“Enough of that, my friend.” Rhun shook the determined cub off his foot.

The young lion had tolerated the journey from Egypt. Before the flight to Italy, the cub had devoured a huge breakfast of milk and meat, then slept curled up for hours in the crate.

Apparently you’re hungry again… for shoe leather.

A knock on the door caused them both to look in that direction. Rhun hurried over, hoping it was the person he had privately asked to meet him in this remote corner of the papal residence. He opened the door to discover a chubby priest, with gray hair shaved into a friar’s tonsure. His head barely reached Rhun’s shoulder.

“Friar Patrick, thank you for coming.”

The fellow Sanguinist ignored Rhun’s formal manner and pushed into the room. He clasped both of Rhun’s hands in his cold ones. “When they said you had come to see me, I did not believe it. It has been so many years.”

Rhun smiled at his enthusiasm. “Friar Patrick, you shame me. Has it been so long?”

The man scrunched his face in thought. “I believe the last time we spoke, man had just set foot on the moon. I know you were here recently, but you came and went so quickly.” He scolded him with the wag of a finger. “You should have stopped by.”

Rhun nodded. He had been busy at the time, dealing with the threat of a traitor in the order, but he didn’t bother trying to explain. Luckily, Friar Patrick’s attention was quickly diverted to the castle’s other guest.

“Oh my!” Patrick dropped to a knee and reached for the cub, his fingers fondling those soft ears. “This certainly makes up for your long absence. It’s been ages since I’ve seen such a magnificent beast.”

The friar had long cared for the pope’s menagerie, from the days when it had consisted of horses, cattle, pigeons, and falcons. In spite of his small stature and well-padded frame, he could harness a team of horses faster than anyone. Over a century ago, Rhun had worked alongside him in the stables. No one had a better kinship with God’s creatures than Patrick.

“This little one looks hungry,” Patrick said, proving that natural affinity now.

“And I just fed him a huge meal not long ago.”

The old friar chuckled. “That’s because he’s a growing lad.” Patrick stood and motioned to the door. “Come. Follow me. I already have a cozy place picked out for him. After you sent word about your charming companion, I made sure everything was ready.”

With the cub loping happily behind them, Patrick led Rhun out of the room, down a set of stairs, and outside to the papal grounds. He marched them across the back acres to where an old set of stables stood.

As soon as Rhun stepped inside, the smell of horse, leather, and hay took him back a hundred years. The strong slow heartbeats of the horses surrounded him like music. Only a few beasts lived in the stable now, nowhere near as many as in times past, when every journey required something with four legs.

The horses whickered at the sight of Patrick, who deftly produced a lump of sugar from his pocket for each, stroking one nose after another as he bustled past the stalls.

Rhun picked up the curious lion cub to keep him from darting into the stalls.

Finally, Patrick reached the door to his office and ushered them inside. Pictures of horses lined the walls — both photographs and pencil drawings. Rhun recognized a horse from his own day, a champion that Patrick had bred.

The friar followed his gaze. “You remember Holy Fire, don’t you? What a champion, that one was. I swear he fell from his mother’s womb and landed sure on his feet.”

Patrick ignored his cluttered desk and stepped to a small refrigerator. From inside, he pulled out a metal milk jug and took a large ceramic bowl down from a shelf, then filled the basin to the brim.

As soon as he placed it on the floor, the cub dove straight for the bowl, half-burying his muzzle as he lapped. A loud purr filled the room.

For an odd moment, Rhun felt himself pulled out of his body. He found himself staring down into a white pool in front of his nose, felt icy milk sliding down his throat. Then he snapped back into his own body, stumbling back a step in surprise.

Patrick gave him a pinched look of concern. “Rhun?”

Rhun shook his head, collecting himself, not sure what had happened. He stared at the cub, then back to Patrick, ready to dismiss the event as nothing more than exhaustion. For now, he had more practical concerns to address.

“Thank you for agreeing to watch him. I know the cub will be a burden, but I appreciate you keeping him for as long as you can.”

“I’m happy to do so, but I can’t keep a lion forever, not around horses. Eventually, he’ll need to be given to a zoo, some place with the space to care for him properly.” He stared up at Rhun and patted the cub’s side. “While he’s a charmer, I’ll give you that, it’s not like you to bring home strays. What’s so unique about this little fellow?”

Rhun was not ready to explain about the cub’s blasphemare origins, so he danced around the subject. “He was abandoned. I found him next to the body of his dead mother.”

“Many creatures are alone, yet you don’t drag them to my stable.”

“He’s… different, maybe special.”

Patrick waited for more of an explanation, but when it didn’t come, he clapped his hands to his thighs and stood up. “I can give him a few weeks. But just in case, I’ll start making inquiries about a permanent home for him.”

“Thank you, Patrick.”

The phone rang on his desk. The friar frowned at it. “Sounds like someone else needs my attention.”

As Patrick answered the call, Rhun bent down to give the cub’s nape a quick ruffle, then headed toward the door, but as he exited the office, Patrick called back to him.

“It seems I’m mistaken, Rhun. It seems someone needs your attention.”

Rhun stepped back into the office.

Patrick lowered the phone’s receiver. “That was the cardinal’s office. It seems His Eminence wants you to head immediately to Venice.”

“Venice?”

“Cardinal Bernard will meet you there himself.”

Rhun felt a shiver of unease, guessing the source behind this summons. Elisabeta had been sent to Venice after events in Egypt. There she was watched over and guarded at a convent, a prisoner of its walls.

What has Elisabeta done now?

Rhun recalibrated his plans. With the lion dropped off, he had intended on heading straight to Rome, to deliver the satchel of black stones, those drops of Lucifer’s blood mined from the Egyptian sands. But this sudden change required securing the stones first. He didn’t want such malevolence anywhere near Elisabeta.

He stepped to the friar’s desk. Patrick must have read his expression. “What else do you need me to do, my son?”

Rhun removed the leather bag from his pocket and placed it on the desktop. The friar recoiled, sensing the evil. “Can you secure this in the cardinal’s safe here at the castle? No one must touch what’s inside.”

Patrick eyed the satchel with distaste, but he nodded. “You come with many curious possessions, Rhun.”

Rhun clasped the friar’s hand. “You’ve relieved me of two burdens today, my old friend. I appreciate it.”

With the matter settled, he headed out, but he felt little relief. He did not know what to expect in Venice. He knew only one thing for certain.

Elisabeta would not welcome his visit.