Blood Infernal

37

Erin held her breath as their helicopter climbed toward the knife-edge of the snowy mountain. The icy wall ahead soared to an elevation of twenty thousand feet, the outside limit of their aircraft’s ability to fly. When they reached the crest, their rotors kicked up swirls of snow, as wind batted the craft back and forth. The helicopter seemed trapped, balancing on that icy razor — then the nose dipped and they slid down the far side of the mountains.

Erin let out a loud breath, rolling her neck from side to side, trying to let go of the tension.

“Landing in ten,” Christian radioed back from the pilot’s seat, his voice irritatingly calm.

They had just crossed over the last range of mountains — the Ganesh Himal — and descended now toward a long valley. Giant sharp peaks surrounded them on all sides, which explained why this place had remained untouched by the modern world for so long. According to the ancient map that Hugh de Payens had supplied, a river should be meandering through the valley’s center, but below, Erin only saw a glaring blanket of uninterrupted whiteness. The river was likely frozen over and covered in snow this time of year. Maybe in summer this valley was a lush and verdant place, but right now it looked like an inhospitable wasteland.

Definitely no Garden of Eden.

Working circulation back into her legs, Erin stomped her heavy snow boots. The steel ice crampons clanged against the metal floor. Even though she was warmed by the cabin heater and decked out in winter gear, the cold of these mountains found its way down to her bones.

Or maybe it was simply the fear.

She glanced to the others, huddled in white parkas. While the cold-blooded Sanguinists had no need for such insulated gear, the snowy color offered good camouflage for this wintry terrain. Even the lion cub, with his white ruff and fur, seemed built for this expedition.

Everyone stirred, readying themselves for what was to come.

Erin craned her neck by the window and stared up at the sun. It hung in a bright blue sky, marred by a few smudges of cirrus clouds. It was a little more than an hour until noon.

Jordan noted her glance skyward and reached to squeeze her knee. “Who says the deadline is midday anyway? We may have more time than that to close the gates of Hell.”

She turned to him. His face bore only faint scars from the recent attack, but now his pale skin whorled and ran with crimson lines, covering half his face. Jordan had his parka unzipped, seemingly oblivious of the cold. Erin imagined if she took off her snow gloves, she could warm her hands off the heat flowing from him.

She took a deep breath and turned away, unable to stare at those lines any longer, knowing they marked how little of Jordan’s humanity remained. Still, a part of her felt guilty, even selfish, at her reaction to Jordan’s state. He had come back from the edge of death in France because of his angelic power and his human stubbornness. When the time came, he would have to decide which path to walk. And she would have to let him, no matter how much she feared to lose him.

To distract from these worrisome thoughts, she answered his question. “We have only until noon today.”

“Why do you sound so certain?” Rhun asked from across the cabin. His lion stretched on the neighboring seat, arching his spine into a bent bow.

Elizabeth answered Rhun before Erin could. “Look at the moon.”

Faces turned toward the various windows. A full moon hovered at the sun’s blazing edge.

Jordan leaned against Erin to see out. “Bernard mentioned that there would be an eclipse today,” he muttered. “But only a partial one, if I’m remembering right.”

“A partial one in France,” Erin corrected him. “This far east, it will be a total eclipse. I checked during the flight here. Totality will reach the Himalayas at one minute past noon.”

She remembered the mural painted on Edward Kelly’s wall. That bloodred sun above that black lake could have been the artist’s representation of a full eclipse.

Knowing this, she wished they had made better time getting here. Piloted by Christian, their Citation X jet had raced across Europe and Asia. En route, Bernard had regularly updated them by satellite phone on the conditions on the ground, about the surge of attacks erupting across the dark cities they flew over. The strigoi and blasphemare had grown bolder and stronger as the tide of evil spread, shifting the balance in their favor. But those monsters were only the spark of this firestorm. Simple panic did the rest, stoking those flames of chaos even higher.

As Christian swung them around a shoulder of a mountain, a small village appeared, tucked against the slope. Atop the peaked slate roofs, chimneys cast ribbons of smoke into the air, showing people inside cooking, laughing, living. It reminded her of what they were fighting to preserve.

A lone yak walked along a narrow snow-covered path. A brightly clad figure walked at its side, a cap pulled tightly over a round head. Both the dark-skinned man and the yak stopped to stare up at their helicopter.

Erin pressed a palm against the glass, wishing them both a long and happy life.

As the village vanished behind them, the last sight of habitation was a Buddhist temple, its gutters strewn with lines of fluttering prayer flags.

But it was not the temple they had come to find.

Christian continued onward, heading for the spot marked on Hugh’s map. “I don’t see any lake, unless it’s under all that snow. I might have to circle around.”

As he lifted their aircraft higher, Erin spotted a bowl-shaped gorge to the right. “Over there!” she called to Christian, leaning forward and pointing.

Christian nodded. “Got it. Let’s check it out.”

He angled toward that basin, sweeping between two peaks. At the bottom of this smaller valley spread a flat expanse of snow, about half the size of a football field, but its surface was not unbroken. Black ice reflected up at them, like dark cracks in the glaze of a white vase.

“That’s got to be it,” Erin said.

“Only one way to find out.” Christian manipulated the helicopter’s stick and lowered their aircraft to a hover over the snow.

Wind from the rotors blew the fine snow away to reveal an expanse of frozen lake. Its surface was black, like obsidian, like the black lake painted on the mural in the Faust House. But here there were no monsters crawling forth.

At least not yet.

Erin checked the sky, noting the moon had already taken a bite out of the sun.

“Think we got the right place?” Christian asked.

Sophia spoke up from the far side of the cabin and pointed. “Look up by the cliffs on this side.”

Erin wriggled to see better. It took her a moment to note what had drawn the small nun’s attention. But then she spotted it, too. Half hidden by the shadow of the sheer rock face, two giant trees hugged the cliff. Both were leafless with pale gray trunks, their branches crusted with ice and frosted with snow.

Sophia faced them. “Didn’t Hugh de Payens mention that the valley home of those strigoi monks had two mighty trees growing in it?

Possibly the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Eternal Life.

Erin felt a sinking of disappointment at the sight of them. The pair looked like ordinary trees, certainly old, but nothing spectacular. Still, they matched Hugh’s description.

“Put us down,” Erin said. “This must be the right place.”

Christian obeyed, warning them. “Let’s hope the ice is thick enough to hold us. It’s the only place to land.”

He was right. All around, the banks sloped steeply, rising and merging with the cliffs of rock. He lowered their craft cautiously until the skids gently kissed the ice. Only when the surface seemed to support their weight did he allow the aircraft to fully settle.

“Looks good,” he said and powered the aircraft down.

Erin took off her headphones and waited while the Sanguinists, even Elizabeth, exited first, wary of any dangers. As soon as the door was open, a frigid breeze blasted inside, sweeping around as if trying to flush her out. She shuddered in her parka, but not from the cold. Instead, every hair on her body seemed to suddenly stand on end.

The Sanguinists reacted even more strongly: Christian crashed to a knee out on the ice, Sophia gasped loudly enough that Erin heard her above the sharp whistling of the wind, Rhun clutched for the cross hidden under his coat, wavering drunkenly as he took a few steps. Elizabeth caught his elbow and steadied him, frowning at the others.

Erin remembered seeing the Sanguinists react the same at the Faust House. The unholiness here was much stronger.

Even I feel it, she thought, shivering with unease.

Next to her, Jordan clenched his shoulders toward his ears and cocked his head, wincing. “That noise… like fingernails on a chalkboard. No, make that steel claws digging into a blackboard. Gawd…”

He looked sick to his stomach.

Erin didn’t hear what he heard, but he alone had heard singing from the stones. His ears were clearly tuned to an entirely different wavelength than hers.

She climbed out of the aircraft to join the others, with Jordan hopping out after her. As her steel crampons touched the ice, her legs went cold, as if the heat of her body were sucked out through her feet.

Behind Jordan, the cat leaped free, jumping high as if trying to avoid the ice, but the shore was too far. The cub landed on his silver claws, then crossed toward Rhun, lifting each foot daintily before placing it down again, as if he were trying not to touch that black surface.

“Something’s wrong here,” she whispered.

“A powerful evil resides in this lake,” Rhun agreed. “Let us be away quickly.”

Despite the desire to run for the shoreline, they proceeded cautiously, careful of the ice’s slipperiness and fearful of disturbing what lay below. Rhun aimed them for the bank closest to those shadowy trees.

Erin sighed when her legs finally stepped from ice to rock. She immediately felt pounds lighter, as if the backpack over her shoulders had been lifted free.

Rhun joined her, his spine straighter now. The Sanguinists looked revived as they left the lake, like flowers opening to sunlight.

“I can still feel it,” Sophia said. “Wafting off the lake, filling this valley.”

Rhun nodded.

Christian wiped his brow with a glove and looked longingly toward the helicopter. “Now I wish I’d parked closer. Don’t look forward to hiking back out again.”

Hopefully we’ll get a chance to.

Erin looked to the sky, squinting at the sun’s glare as the moon continued to edge farther over its face. She lowered her gaze to the steep rocky slope that led up toward those massive trees. Only now did she note that the boulders looked artfully placed, framing a snowy trail that wended up toward the cliffs.

“There’s a trail,” she said and began to head toward it.

Jordan stopped her. “Stay by my side.”

She glanced at him, glad to see his protective nature showing itself again. She took his hand, wishing they didn’t have to wear gloves.

With the lion at his side, Rhun took the lead. They slowly climbed through the boulders, careful of patches of ice. As the trail took its final switchback near the top, Rhun suddenly stopped, the lion let out a low growl.

“We’re not alone,” Rhun said.

Rhun had almost missed them.

Three men knelt between the huge boles of the trees, so still and unmoving that they could be statues. Snow rested upon their shoulders and atop their bald pates, creating powdery skullcaps. Rhun heard no heartbeats from them, but he knew they still lived.

Eyes stared toward him, shining out of the shadows under the leafless bower.

Knowing they had been seen, they rose in unison, unfolding smoothly, snow sliding from their white-robed bodies. They stepped into the sunlight to greet Rhun and the others, pale hands folded at their waists.

Rhun knew these were strigoi, but they walked under the sun as easily as any Sanguinist. As Hugh de Payens had claimed, these monks had found another way to make peace with the day.

Rhun stepped forward and bowed. He held his empty hands out so that they could see he had no weapon. “We have been sent by Hugh de Payens,” he said. “We bring his blessings.”

The lead monk had a round face with dark, soft eyes. “Have you returned the stones our friend was given to safeguard?”

“We have them,” Rhun admitted.

Erin slipped her backpack from a shoulder and unzipped it, clearly ready to produce her stone, but Rhun cautioned restraint. Hugh had said that they could trust these monks, but the palpable evil that rose off the lake made him cautious.

Even the lion stuck close to his knee, plainly unnerved by this entire valley.

All three monks bowed in unison, as if hearing a silent bell. “Then be welcome,” the leader said as he straightened, a soft beatific smile on his lips. “My name is Xao. Please come into our temple and let us reunite your stones with their blue brother. Time, as you know, runs short.”

The monks turned and led them toward the trees. Closer now, Rhun noted the two trees were nearly identical, with thick gray trunks and smooth bark. The pair stood so closely together that their higher branches grew entwined, forming a natural archway overhead. The gnarled limbs trembled in the cold wind that blew off the mountains, but they appeared strongly rooted.

Around the trunks, the ground had been swept away. The broom’s bristles had left circular patterns in the thin layer of remaining snow. The deliberate arrangement of lines looked like patterns raked into sand in a Zen garden, but the patterns themselves — curlicues and arches — reminded Rhun of the tattoo on Jordan’s chest and neck.

The monks stopped at the wall of rock centered behind the trees. They chanted together in a language he did not recognize, but Erin whispered behind him, her voice full of awe.

“I think they’re speaking Sanskrit…”

Xao withdrew a small silver sculpture of a rose from a pocket. He clenched his fist around its stem, piercing his flesh on its thorns. He then dripped his blood atop a rock that jutted from the cliff, and a heavy grinding of stone sounded.

“It’s like a Sanguinist gate,” Christian murmured.

Or the precursor to one, Rhun thought.

As the rock groaned and cracked, a small round door pushed out and rolled to the side. Snow crunched under its weight.

The monks entered, clearly intending for them to follow. The door was so low that it required bowing to enter. It was likely purposefully constructed that way, to imbue humbleness into those who entered.

Rhun and the lion went first, followed by the others.

Once over the threshold, Rhun straightened and found himself facing a cavernous expanse, illuminated by the glow of a thousand candles and scores of fiery braziers that smoked with incense. He immediately recognized that this was no natural cavern, but a massive space hewn from the surrounding rock, sculpted by hand into a masterpiece. It must have taken centuries.

Erin gasped at the sight as she entered with Jordan and the others.

It was as if a small village had been sculpted out of the rock, their foundations still attached to the stone floor, as if the buildings had grown out of the cavern. Then there were the hundreds of statues, their bases similarly merged seamlessly with the stone. They depicted ordinary villagers going about their daily life, including a full-size yak pulling a cart, and herds of goats and sheep grazing on patches of stony grass.

“It’s like they took that village we passed,” Jordan said, “and turned it to stone.”

The monks ignored their stunned reactions and led them to the village’s center, where a massive Buddha sat, rising at least thirty feet tall. Those stone eyes were closed in peaceful meditation. His face was not stylized but appeared to be representative of a real man, with wide-set eyes, a strong straight nose, delicate arched eyebrows, and the hint of a smile on his overly full lips. His features were perfect; it looked as if he could open his eyes at any moment.

Rhun felt peace, order, and calm emanating from that sculpture — a welcome contrast to the evil that hovered outside.

As one, the monks put their hands together and bowed to the statue, then marched them behind the Buddha to a tall temple. Its bell-shaped tower rose gracefully, almost to the ceiling. Lines strung out from it, hanging with flags, all made of stone, sculpted to appear as if they were still flapping to a long-lost wind.

Closer at hand, two statues guarded the door to the temple. On the right side, a stylized dragon coiled on a plinth, its mouth slightly open to display teeth that looked sharp enough to cut. To the left, a shaggy creature stood upright on its hind legs, its powerful arms raised, exposing heavy claws. It looked like a cross between an ape and a bear. Rhun had never seen its like.

The cub sniffed at the dragon, his hackles slightly raised, as if expecting the winged beast to come alive at any moment.

Jordan ran his fingers over the other’s monstrous features. “Looks like some sort of bigfoot.”

“No,” Erin said, drawing closer herself. “I… I think it’s a yeti. A creature said to haunt the Himalayas.”

She looked to Xao for confirmation.

His face remained inscrutable. “It is the likeness of a creature, one of several of its ilk that escaped from the lake. Beasts of various guises periodically crawl into our world from that darker space. Some are naked and quickly succumb to the cold. Others, like this one, roam the mountains for years before we can bring them back, inspiring fireside legends.”

“What do you mean by bring them back?” Jordan asked.

“We capture those that have escaped and return them to the lake. We try to keep them from being harmed or harming others, although we all too often fail.”

“But aren’t they demons?” asked Sophia.

“Our philosophy cannot condemn such beasts for their natures,” Xao answered piously, sounding much like Hugh de Payens. “We are here to protect all.”

Xao turned and waved toward the open temple doors. “But let us continue. We have important tasks before us.”

Rhun did not argue. With his Sanguinist senses, he felt the dying of the sun outside, its blaze slowly being consumed by the moon’s shadow.

They were almost out of time.

38

Elizabeth trailed the others into the temple, following them like some lowly commoner. She hated to be pushed to the back, but it also allowed her time to study everything, free of the judgment of Rhun and the others. Hugh de Payens had shown her another way to live, another way to balance the light and the dark, the night and the day. These monks clearly embodied that same path.

I could teach the same to Tommy.

So for the moment, she bided her time, hoping to learn as much as she could before she made her escape and returned to Tommy, to save the boy from a death that he did not deserve.

As she entered the heart of the temple, the flowery smell of jasmine drifted across the wide room. Underfoot, the stone floor had been carved to resemble wooden planks, a task that must have taken years of devotion. A serene Buddha waited at the far end of the long room. Unlike the statue outside, this one had been carved with its eyes open.

She wondered why this temple complex was so large, if only these three monks lived here. She listened for others, but she heard no telltale scuff of sandal on rock, no brush of robe against skin, no rustle of prayer beads. It seemed only these three sentinels of the valley remained.

The monks took them to a large crimson table, topped by a shallow silver tray. The table sat in front of the Buddha. Within the tray, sands and salts in a multitude of shades and colors had been artfully combined to create a sand painting. It showed a perfect replica of the outer winter valley: white sands for snow, black salt for the lake. Two gray trees stood on one shore, each gnarled limb perfectly replicated.

The young lion sniffed at the tray, until Rhun waved the curious animal back.

The three monks then stepped around the table and took Erin, Jordan, and Rhun by the hand and led them to different corners of the tray. Each stood in one corner, while the trees anchored the fourth.

Xao pointed, rolling his wrist, allowing a finger to hover over a tiny figure painted in the sand on the same side of the lake as Erin. The monk dropped a tiny ruby in front of that figure.

“The sun rises in the east,” he intoned.

Another monk stepped past Rhun’s shoulder, and with a tiny silver dropper, placed a perfect pearl of water upon the sands in front of a figure on that side.

“The moon sets in the west,” Xao added.

The last monk leaned by Jordan and gently blew a green seed from his small palm. It wafted down and landed before a figure painted there.

“The garden collects light from the south,” Xao said. The monk then stepped to the remaining corner himself and pointed to the pair of painted trees in the sand. “While eternal roots anchor the north.”

“What does this mean?” Jordan said, squinting at the figure before him.

“It’s how we open the gate, isn’t it?” Erin asked.

Xao gave the smallest bow of his head in acknowledgment. “The stones must be placed on pillars, each at their proper compass points. When the sun rises to its zenith and its light falls upon the stones, the gems will cast back their brilliance, lancing out over the lake. Once their individual rays strike together, a new light will be born, one of the purest white.”

Erin looked vaguely skeptical. “So you’re saying, the three colors of reflected light — red, blue, and green — will merge to produce a white light.”

Jordan straightened. “Makes sense. It’s like old TV screens. Built with RBG emitters. Red, blue, green. From those three hues, all other colors can be made.”

Xao offered a more elegant answer. “Darkness is the absence of light, while within white light hides a rainbow.”

“The full spectrum,” Jordan concurred with a nod.

“What happens then?” Elizabeth asked, not truly understanding such matters, but accepting them for now.

Xao explained, “This pure light will pierce the eternal darkness that shrouds the lake. And like lancing a sickly boil with a hot needle, the evil below will rise to the surface. But fear not, the pyramid of light created by the three gems will contain those creatures born of such malevolence, stopping them from entering our world.”

Elizabeth began to understand. “Like a cage with bars of light.”

“Just so,” Xao said. “But we must take great care. If the stones are moved while the gate is still open, the bars of light will break, and the evil will be set loose upon the world.”

“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” Jordan said.

“Is that how you returned those creatures who escaped in the past?” Erin asked. “Like the yeti?”

A mournful expression shadowed Xao’s features. “It is the only way to return them to their dark lands, to return balance here.”

Another of the monks gently touched a finger to Xao’s robe, as if prodding him to hurry. For these quiet souls, the simple gesture was likely the equivalent of a violent shake.

Xao nodded. “And now we face an even greater task. The darkness has been growing stronger for the past several months. The dark king who reigns below — the one you call Lucifer — has loosed his bonds, enough to crack the surface of the lake. We must open the gate and repair his broken chains before he shatters fully free.”

“And how do we do that?” Erin asked.

“We must summon him into that gate, lured by that which he can’t resist.” Xao looked across at the three of them. “The scions of this world: Warrior, Woman, and the Knight who has mastered the king’s own dark blood.”

Erin looked aghast.

Jordan gave a small shake of his head. “So in other words, we’re bait.”

Even Rhun appeared shaken, still staring at the tray, as if searching for answers in those squiggles of sand. “And once Lucifer is summoned, what must we do? How do we shackle him anew?”

“We have prepared for this day. Millennia ago. This blessed temple was carved at the edge of this valley to hold not just the three gems, but to protect and hold sacred a great treasure, one sculpted by a single pair of hands. Only the Enlightened One could create such perfection.”

Xao turned and bowed to the statue.

“The Buddha,” Erin said, awe filling her voice.

The three monks stepped over to the statue, and Xao opened a door in the belly of the Buddha, the hatch so seamlessly built that even Elizabeth had failed to note it. From the hollow inside, two of the monks withdrew a large chest of polished white wood, with lotus blossoms painted along its sides.

From the strain in the bearers’ faces, it was of immense weight. Still they held it aloft, as if fearful of letting it touch the floor. As the pair supported it, Xao opened the lid — and a wash of holiness flooded forth.

The Sanguinists gasped. Rhun leaned closer to the chest, drawn toward that blessed font. Elizabeth backed away, wanting to escape it, the chest’s sanctity exposing the dark places inside her.

Even the lion bowed down before the open chest, sinking to his belly.

Jordan and Erin stepped closer to view the treasure inside.

“Chains,” Jordan said. “Silver chains.”

His words did pale justice to their beauty. The chains were the purest silver, burning forth with holiness. Each link was perfection, sculpted and etched to show every leaf and creature that lived under the sun. It was the natural world, rendered in silver.

“And we can reshackle Lucifer with these chains?” Erin asked.

Xao looked to her, then Jordan. “Not you two. Only creatures such as ourselves, such as your companions, can ferry this treasure through the planes of that pyramid of light. It would be death to those whose heart still beats to cross that barrier. Only the damned may pass unscathed, those who have balanced light and darkness within them.”

Xao bowed to his fellow monks, then to the Sanguinists.

Christian stepped forward. “Let me go. Rhun must guard his pillar of this pyramid. But I can enter that pyramid and take those chains to Lucifer.”

“But not alone,” Sophia said. “I will go with you.”

From the strain in the shoulders of the two monks who carried the chest, it would take two Sanguinists to haul that load. Possibly three. But Elizabeth held her tongue. She would not go unless ordered, and perhaps not even then.

Xao came forward and abased himself before Christian and Sophia, dropping to one knee to kiss both their hands. “Our blessings will go with you. The journey into the darkness within that pyramid of light is not an easy one.”

Erin muttered to herself. “Hmm…”

“What is it?” Jordan asked.

The archaeologist turned her back on the monks and held a hand out to Jordan. “Let me see your green stone.”

Jordan reached to his pocket and extracted the two halves and passed them to her. While the Sanguinists remained entranced by the chest and what it held, Elizabeth joined Erin. Erin fitted the two halves together and rotated the gem to expose the design imbedded in the stone. Only this time, she reversed the image, turning that chalice-shaped symbol upside down.

“Could this symbol be some representation of that pyramid of light?” Erin asked.

Erin swung around to Xao, plainly seeking confirmation. In her hands, the stone slipped askew, separating into the two halves.

The monk stared down, and for the first time, he showed a strong reaction, his placid features wrenching into a look of horror and dismay. “No, it can’t be.” His face went hard with fury, stepping menacingly toward Erin. “What have you done?”

Erin backed away as Rhun rushed to stand between the woman and the monk.

“She didn’t do anything,” Rhun said, his tone full of warning.

Xao shook his head. “The Garden Stone is shattered. In such a state, it cannot open the gate.” The monk gaped at them, his face lost. “With this key broken, there is no future. The world ends this day.”

Erin stared down at the two halves of the gem in her palms, tamping down the despair rising inside her. Was their journey doomed from the start? She refused to accept that, not after all the blood and sacrifice needed to reach this valley.

“There must be some way to fix it,” she said.

Jordan took back the pieces. “And here I left my tube of superglue in my other pants.”

“You do not understand,” Xao said. “The stone is not just broken, it is defiled. I can sense the shreds of darkness that still shadow its heart.”

Erin pictured John Dee’s bell and the hundreds of strigoi burned to ash inside, all so their dark essences could be gathered inside the sacred gem.

“Can it be purified?” Erin asked. “Baptized?”

The holy rite of baptism could wash away original sin from a soul. Couldn’t the gem be equally cleansed?

“Only good can vanquish evil,” Xao said. “Only light can rid the darkness. To purify such defilement, it would take the greatest good and the brightest light.”

The monk turned to confer with his brothers. They whispered back and forth to each other in Sanskrit. Erin wished she could understand, but she sensed that the answer would not come from these three.

I am the Woman of Learning.

She stared at the emerald reflection off the pieces in Jordan’s hands — then back to the sand painting. She studied the three figures, each with a representation of Arbor, Aqua, and Sanguis before it, and recalled something Hugh had said.

You must decipher the riddle so that you may retrieve the stone that belongs to you.

She returned her attention to Jordan, noting how the light dappled his features. The motes of shimmering green appeared like tiny leaves shooting forth from his crimson lines. It was as if the stone was indeed a seed, one that had sprouted inside Jordan.

She spoke aloud. “These stones… are they bonded to us individually?”

Xao faced her. “So it is said in the proverbs of the Enlightened One. The Daughter of Eve will be bound to the red stone by her blood. The Son of Adam will be rooted to the green stone by his connection to the land. And the Immortal One will join with the blue stone because he has tamed his nature to walk under the blue sky.”

Erin wished she had time to read all of these ancient proverbs herself, but instead, she focused on their current problem.

“If the Son of Adam’s stone is broken, then maybe the Son of Adam can fix it,” she said. She stared between the snowy lion and Jordan, knowing the common bond the two shared. “Jordan’s blood holds the essences of angels, beings of light and righteousness. Maybe such purity can cleanse the darkness from the stone.”

“And if that blood can heal Jordan,” Rhun added, “perhaps it also holds the power to heal the stone.”

Jordan shrugged. “And if that all fails, I can always just hold those two halves together with my bare hands.”

Erin could tell he was only half-joking. “What other choice do we have?” she asked.

“She’s right,” Christian announced loudly, glancing toward the roof, likely sensing the sun. “Whatever we’re going to try, it’d better be soon.”

“Then let’s see what my blood can do.” Jordan pulled a dagger from his boot. “It’s not like I can defile the stone any worse than it already is.”

He lifted the blade to his wrist.

“No, not here!” Xao exclaimed loudly. “It is forbidden to shed blood in our sacred temple.”

“Where, then?” Jordan asked, pausing with the knifepoint on his skin.

Erin knew they had no more time for second-guessing. She pointed to the sand painting. “We’ll have to attempt it once we’re in our proper positions.” She turned to Xao. “Where is the third stone? Your blue gem?”

The one meant for Rhun.

Xao nodded to one of his brothers, who returned to the belly of the Buddha and removed another box, also white, but painted with a sky full of fluffy clouds. It was easily held in the palms of the monk, who carried it to Rhun and offered it to him.

Rhun began to open it, but Erin stopped him.

“Don’t,” she warned, remembering the effect that the Sanguis stone had on Jordan back in Hugh’s church. She didn’t want this holy gem singing Jordan into a swoon like before.

Instead, she pointed in the direction of the open gate.

“Xao, take us where we must go.”

39

Rhun hurried with the others out of temple and back through the stone village. His inner clock felt the approach of the noon hour, while the holiness in his blood responded to the moon’s passage across the sun. As darkness approached, his strength faded with each passing second, like sand sifting through the pinch of an hourglass.

Ahead, beyond the open gate, the day’s brightness had dimmed to a dull twilight as the moon’s shadow swept over these mountains. The group rushed forward and bowed their way back into that wintry valley, the evil even more palpable now.

As Rhun straightened, he looked to the sky, noting only a thin crescent of sun remained. The brilliance burned his eyes, searing him with certainty.

We’re out of time.

Under the bower of the two massive trees, the group quickly divided. One monk led each of the trio. Rhun split away with the tallest of the brothers, who hurried him at a fast clip along the base of the icy cliffs toward the western bank of that black lake. Xao took Erin by the hand, and another marched with Jordan. Both headed in the other direction, toward their respective positions on the eastern and southern shores.

Between their parties, Sophia and Christian strained under the weight of the chest and its sacred silver chains and climbed straight down, staying in the shadow of the trees at the north end.

The two remaining members of their party followed at Rhun’s heels. One did not surprise him. The young lion padded through the snow behind him, growling softly, his head lowered from the evil wafting off the lake. Clearly this valley assaulted the cub’s senses as thoroughly as Rhun’s.

His last companion surprised him. Elizabeth strode behind him, taking large steps, her back straight, her eyes on the lake. Unlike Rhun and the lion, he read a longing in her face, as if she wished to run to that lake and skate across its dark surface.

Why does she seem so little bothered by the evil here?

She noted his attention, reading the question on his face, but misinterpreting it. “I’m not about to let you do this without someone at your back. Especially with you missing an arm.”

He offered her a grateful smile.

She scowled at him. “Watch your step, Rhun, or you and that stone will go rolling away.”

He turned around as the monk led them down a thin path to a tall marker that stuck upward from the shoreline. It was a plinth of gray granite, frosted with ice, rising as high as his chest.

The monk brushed the snow off the pillar’s crown with reverent fingers, revealing the sculpture of a small cup, identical to the chalices depicted in the mosaic back in Venice. Like the structures in the Buddhist temple, the base of the stone chalice merged with the stone, making cup and pillar one piece.

Rhun imagined if he cleared the snow from around the foot of plinth that it, too, would be a part of this mountain.

The monk stepped to Rhun’s side, collected the box from his one hand, then turned it so the latch faced Rhun.

“The Sky Stone is for you,” the monk intoned, bowing slightly. “You must place the sacred gem in its place. At the same time as the others.”

The monk nodded toward the chalice.

Rhun understood.

I must set the Aqua stone into this receptacle.

Rhun reached his hand to the box, undid the latch with his thumb, and tilted the lid open. For a breath, he expected to find nothing, some final act of betrayal by these monks. But instead, resting in a bed of silk, lay a perfect gem. It shone with the brilliance of a bright blue sky, as if the most perfect day had been captured in that stone, preserved for eternity.

A small sigh of reverence slipped his lips.

The lion stepped closer, placing his paw on Rhun’s knee to lift his nose higher so that he could peer at the stone. Elizabeth merely crossed her arms.

Rhun pushed the lion off his leg and closed his fingers over the gem, feeling a sinking sense of unworthiness.

How could such beauty be meant for me?

Still, he knew his duty and took the stone in hand, feeling the holiness warm his fingers, his wrist, and up his arm. As it suffused his chest, he almost expected it to start his heart beating again. When it did not, he turned and faced the pillar and that carved chalice.

Across the lake, he saw the others were already at their positions. Xao was bent near Erin’s ear, whispering, likely passing on the same instructions to her.

Erin looked up toward him. Though she was fifty yards away, he could see the fear in her face. He knew the source of her anxiety and turned toward it now, too. The trio needed to act in unison, but there remained one final task.

Rhun stared over at Jordan.

Would the man’s blood purify and heal the broken gem?

Jordan touched the cold point of the dagger against the skin of his wrist.

This had better work.

A glance up revealed what was left of the sun: a fiery crimson blaze shooting from the edge of the moon’s dark shadow. The brilliance stung his eyes, leaving his vision dazzled when he glanced back to the blade poised at his wrist. By now, the valley was smothered in the moon’s umbra, turning the snow a soft crimson and the ice of the lake an even darker shade of black, reminding him of those drops of Lucifer’s blood.

The lake looks like a hole in this world.

His blood ran cold at the sight of it, sensing its wrongness.

Knowing what he must do, he pressed the point of the dagger into his flesh and drew its edge along his wrist. A thick line of blood welled up. He sheathed the knife and withdrew the pieces of the green stone, handing one to the monk at his side. Jordan took the remaining piece and held it under his wrist, catching the first falling drop into the gem’s hollow center.

He steeled himself against some dramatic reaction, but when nothing happened, he continued filling that stone’s cavity. Once his blood was spilling over the gem’s lip, he exchanged that half for the still-empty one and repeated the same.

Still, there was no blinding flash of light, no crescendo of song.

Jordan looked at the monk for help, but the guy appeared equally lost — and scared.

Only one thing left to do…

Pushing aside his worries, Jordan took the two halves in hand. With his blood sloshing over the facets, he fitted the two pieces back together.

C’mon…

For a moment, there was no better outcome — then the stone began to warm between his palms, growing quickly hotter, not unlike the feverish heat when his body healed. Jordan prayed this was a good sign. Soon the inner fire grew to a burn, as if he had plucked a coal from a campfire. Still, he held tight, grimacing from the pain.

He watched new crimson lines appear across the back of his hands, burning whorls across his skin, twining up his fingers. He almost expected his hands to fuse together over the stone, to become a husk for the burning seed he held.

When he thought he could withstand that heat no longer, the fire subsided, replaced instead by a singing that passed through him, drawing him closer, rooting him in a new way to the gem in his hands. That faint echo he had heard from the stone before grew into a great chorus.

It sang of warm summer days, the smell of hay in the barn, the sound of wind blowing through cornfields. It rang with the buzzing of bees on a late afternoon, the soft honking of geese migrating with the changing tide of seasons, the low bass notes of a whale seeking a mate.

Jordan cocked his head, hearing a new song merge with the gem’s melody. A warm red ribbon of hope and life flowed and danced into his song, the new notes sounded of heartbeats and laughter and the soft whicker of a horse greeting a loved one.

Then a third voice joined the chorus, as blue as the bright plumage of a jay in sunlight. This refrain ran deeper through the chorus: flowing with the thunder of falling water, the soft patter of rain on dry earth, and the sighing of a tide as it waxed and waned, a motion as eternal as the earth.

The three songs wove together into a great canticle of life, one that revealed in each note and chorus the beauty and wonder of this world, of its endless harmony and variety, how each piece fit together into a whole

Jordan felt himself a part of that song, yet still an observer.

Then through that majesty, a command rang forth, reaching his ears.

“Now,” Erin called. “On three.”

Jordan tore his gaze away from the emerald depths of his stone to see Erin standing before her pillar, her arms upraised, bearing aloft a shining red gem that defied the darkness of the eclipse.

Jordan’s heart ached at the sight of her, allowing the song to fade enough to listen and obey. She looked like some ancient tribal goddess, her figure lit by that crimson shine, turning her golden hair to fire.

To the west, Rhun also held his stone aloft.

“One.” Erin’s clear voice ran across the lake.

“Two,” Rhun answered her, as if they had rehearsed it.

Jordan added finality to this moment. “Three.”

Erin lowered the Sanguis stone into the chalice before her.

As soon as its facets touched the granite, the ruby gem burst forth with a blazing light, echoing the crimson fire of the eclipsing sun. Flames ignited from the gem’s surface and danced around the stone chalice. Heat and holiness washed across Erin’s face. She feared if she got too close it would burn her to ash.

Xao showed no such worry. He stepped to her side and held his palms before those flames. As he basked his cold flesh in front of that warm fire, the monk chanted loudly in Sanskrit. She heard it echoed by his brothers.

As the moon fully eclipsed the sun, sinking the valley into a shadowy twilight, the gem fought back against the darkness. The flames flared higher, wafting wildly, as if stoked by some great bellows into a fiery whirlwind. Erin wanted to run from that inferno, but she knew her place was here.

Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the flames were sucked back into the stone, setting it to shining even brighter, as if a piece of the sun rested within that chalice. Then the fires ignited again — not along the gem’s facets this time, but all around her.

Erin craned her neck, looking everywhere, realizing those flames defined a ruby bubble that surrounded her, its surface chased by crimson fire. It was as if the gem itself had suddenly expanded, swallowing her whole.

And I am but a flaw in its heart.

A glance across the lake’s dark surface revealed Rhun standing in a sphere running with blue fire — Jordan in a globe of emerald.

She took a step toward them, but Xao was still next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, holding her firmly. She stared at the liquid fire roiling over the sphere’s surface, remembering the monk’s warning about the danger of humans crossing these barriers of light, how they would be consumed by that fire.

Or maybe Xao was cautioning her to watch what was still to come.

The flames suddenly swirled and gathered near the top of her bubble — then shot skyward, angling out over the lake. Similar spears of fire — blazing azure and emerald — ignited from the other spheres, lancing upward to meet the ruby column.

All three crashed together above the center of the lake, ringing out with a resounding note that staggered Erin, but Xao helped her hold her feet. She gaped at that giant pyramid of fire. At the top, those three infernos whipped into a great maelstrom, swirling their flames together, blending and merging their colors, revealing a slurry of every combination of light. Then that spinning grew even more intense, moving too quickly for the human eye to follow, until all colors became one, creating a pool of pure white fire.

Erin remembered the reversed symbol she had shown Jordan and Elizabeth.

Here it is, brought to life.

Then from that pool above, a column of light shot down to the lake below, striking the black ice. The ice broke with the impact, cracks shooting across the lake. The ground bucked underfoot.

In its wake, the world went quiet.

Erin heard no breath of wind, no creak of tree limbs, no sound of any life.

Except for the pounding of her own heart in her throat.

She watched as the white column of light expanded outward across the ice, forming a cone shining down from above, creating a pyramid inside a pyramid. Within that conical blaze of brilliance, the black ice rippled like water under a stiff breeze.

Erin remembered the mural at the Faust House, showing all manner of monsters heaving into this world. She steeled herself against what was to come — but even then, she knew she would be unprepared.

With his skin prickling with warning, Jordan’s hand went to the Colt 1911 holstered under the edge of his parka. He knew the weapon would likely do squat against what he felt rising from the dark depths of that lake, but he wanted to feel its solidity in his hand, a counterpoint to that hole in the world wavering before him.

To his left, Erin looked scared, locked within her fiery sphere. She must have felt his eyes on her, because she turned her head to look at him. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and she mustered up a small smile in return.

To his right, Rhun stood with one of the monks in a sphere running with blue flames. Behind him, Elizabeth had drawn her sword. The lion paced beyond the sphere, apparently caught outside it when the gem ignited, the only one of them wise enough not to get trapped.

And Jordan knew he was trapped, sensing he dared not pass out of this barrier of emerald light, that he would be burned to ash if he tried. So all he could do was grip his weapon harder in his hand.

Out in the center of the lake, that rippling darkness began to steam forth with shadows and smoke, slowly filling the confines of that white cone of brilliance. Eventually he could no longer see through it to the lake’s north side, where Christian and Sophia waited with the chest of silver chains.

As he watched, that darkness began to coalesce at the core, shadow and smoke becoming substance. A dark figure formed there, rising two stories tall, seated on a throne of obsidian. It features were blackened, its naked skin running with shadows as dark as pitch. From behind strong shoulders, a set of massive wings unfurled, feathered with black flames. Where those fiery tips brushed the light, black bolts of lightning chased across the inner surface of the cone — but the barrier held.

The winged creature shifted up from his throne, straining against the coils of silver chain, its body weighted from the waist down.

Jordan knew whom he faced.

The king of that bottomless pit.

Lucifer himself.

And Jordan could not help but find this dark angel—

— so beautiful.

Erin marveled at the perfection of the figure on the throne. Every muscle in his arms and chest was flawlessly defined, his wings blazed with black fire. But it was his face that drew her full attention. Cheekbones rose high, sculpted into graceful arches, flanking a straight narrow nose. Higher still, long lashes fringed eyes that shone with a dark majesty, seeing everything and nothing.

She found it impossible to look away.

One of their group was not so afflicted and awed.

“Why do you wait?” Elizabeth yelled from across the lake, breaking the spell.

Erin watched Rhun shake free of the trance and shout to the north side of the lake. “Christian, Sophia! Go!”

The pair set off from the rocky bank, hauling the heavy chest between them. As Xao had promised, the pair of Sanguinists passed through that outer plane of the fiery pyramid with no trouble, though once out on the ice, the malevolence clearly weakened them, setting their legs to stumbling. The new cracks in the ice also made the trek more treacherous, forcing the pair to take a circuitous route through the damage, slowing them even more.

As fear rang through her, Erin turned to Jordan, wishing he was beside her.

Jordan noted her attention and cupped his mouth to shout something to her — but a length of silver flashed into view behind his shoulders.

Erin screamed a warning. “Jordan! Watch—”

Then cold hard fingers clamped around her neck, strangling away her words.

40

Jordan was moving as soon as he heard Erin’s shout, responding with years of instinct as a soldier. He ducked low — as a long curved blade swept over his head.

While the sword missed its intended target, the steel still struck the emerald stone a glancing blow, knocking the gem loose, causing it to roll drunkenly along the rim of the granite chalice. Jordan hit the ground at the base of the pillar and twisted to one hip, bringing up the Colt and firing into the chest of the monk who wielded the sword.

Knowing his adversary was a strigoi, Jordan unloaded his entire magazine. The monk went flying backward, falling out of the emerald bubble. The monk landed on his back in the snow, his chest smoking from the silver rounds, black blood pouring from beneath his body.

Jordan spun around, his body thrumming with warning, still attuned to the stone.

He lunged with his arm outstretched as the rolling gem rocked free of its perch and plummeted downward. Unfortunately only his fingers brushed its facets before it landed into a bank of snow at the foot of the plinth.

As it struck, a resounding boom shook the ground. He crawled toward the gem as it continued to blaze from the snowbank. But the damage had been done. While the emerald bubble around him remained intact, still blazing with fire, one of the columns of the pyramid had been dislodged from its foundation.

Must get it back up there, before it’s too—

A series of sharp pops exploded near at hand, ringing out as loud as rifle fire, echoing from the lake’s surface.

Jordan looked up and watched the ice shatter, breaking apart like a dropped mirror. But what that mirror was intended to reflect was something much darker, something not meant for this world.

And it burst free.

Creatures boiled to the surface of the lake: lumbering, slithering, and shoving through the ice. The horde clambered toward shore, mostly toward him and the broken foot of the pyramid, sensing a way to escape.

Jordan flinched away, responding with the lizard part of his brain, refusing to accept what he was seeing, but unable to deny it at the same time. His stomach roiled at the sight, at horrors his mind could not fully grasp. But when his fingers reached back and brushed the inside surface of the flaming sphere that surrounded him, agony shot up his arm to his chest. He yanked his hand back. Smoke rising from his blackened fingertips.

He realized he was trapped in this sphere, unable to escape, remembering the monk’s warning.

It would be death to those whose heart still beats to pierce that brilliant veil.

But the abominations that crawled out of the lake had no such hearts, no such limitations.

Something sloshed out of the lake to the right, lumbering forth like an ordinary person, but with a flat black face, showing no eyes or mouth — yet still it screamed, howling at the world. To his left, a massive creature bounded to the rocks, clinging there, with cloven hoofs and a malformed head, then it leaped away.

He wanted to cover his eyes, but he feared the unknown even more.

Directly ahead of him, a black crocodilian shape slithered and clawed its way from the broken ice. But it had no head, only a puckered sucker at the front, showing a ring of teeth. It left a glistening trail of bile-colored slime behind it. Seeming to sense him, it clawed faster in his direction, passing unharmed through the emerald veil of his bubble, bringing with it the stench of sulfur and rotted meat.

Jordan’s mind struggled with the impossibility of it, tipping toward insanity. Still, one greater fear kept him grounded, momentarily anchored.

Erin.

But trapped here, Jordan could never reach her.

Only one person could.

Rhun lashed out with his karambit, parrying aside the monk’s sword — but the impact staggered him. This enemy was far more powerful and faster than any strigoi that Rhun had ever fought, its strength likely fueled by the malevolence wafting off the lake and the looming presence of its master of darkness, Lucifer.

To keep his feet after that blow, Rhun stumbled out of the blue veil of light. Beyond that sphere, the air reeked of death and pestilence. Revulsion crawled along his skin like a thousand spiders.

The monk pursued him, his long sword flashing down in a streak of reflected blue, but that strike never landed. Instead, something struck the monk in the side, knocking him down. The cub rolled away, but twisted back around, hissing loudly. The monk rose with the speed of a striking cobra, thrusting his blade at the cub’s throat — but instead, the monk toppled forward, his head flying off his body, while his sword harmlessly impaled a snowbank next to the cat.

Elizabeth stood there, dark blood dripping from her blade.

Again, she had saved his life, probably the cat’s, too, but he had no time to thank her.

During the heated skirmish, he had seen Jordan dispatch the monk alongside him, his pistol blazing. He also saw the gem fall, causing the lake to shatter on that side, allowing hell to break loose into this world. Even now beasts were clambering along the banks, spreading wider. Others bounded across the ice, gibbering around the foot of their master. Several spotted Christian and Sophia with the chest and went in pursuit, either enraged by the holiness of the chains or perhaps commanded by that dark angel himself.

“Defend the stone,” Rhun commanded Elizabeth.

He had to reach Erin. A moment ago, he had watched her get attacked as she tried to warn Jordan, and even now she still struggled in the iron grip of Xao. The monk’s fingers were wrapped around her throat, lifting her high, until only her toes brushed the snow.

Rhun raced along the shoreline toward her. A reptilian creature lunged off the ice at him, but Rhun smoothly stepped aside, striking out and decapitating its scaly head with a single stroke. Yellow smoke boiled out of the stump, while a splatter of blood dissolved through his parka and burned his skin like acid.

Still, he kept going, trailed by the lion.

A few other creatures threatened, but they seemed more interested in escaping the lake into the larger world, than truly attacking him. The same was not true for Christian and Sophia deeper out on the ice. The pair had set down the chest and battled a growing horde. Their robes were slick with blood.

Across the lake, a fresh spat of gunfire revealed Jordan had reloaded and was shooting at some beast within his emerald glow, still holding his own for now.

Rhun charged the last of the distance toward that ruby sphere.

Erin still lived, her heart hammering in her chest, her breath ragged in that chokehold.

Xao saw Rhun coming and smiled. Rhun knew the monk could have snapped Erin’s neck like a twig at any time, but Xao had refrained — perhaps only to better savor this moment.

The monk freed one hand and lifted a dagger to Erin’s throat.

No…

The blade sliced deep and wide, carving open that tender neck. Blood burst forth like a fountain as the monk let her go.

Erin dropped like a sack, falling to her side, her life steaming into the snow.

Rhun’s legs stumbled with the truth, knowing it was too much to stop, too much to heal. Still, he fought to close the last of the distance. He would not lose her. He had sworn to protect her — not only as a Knight of Christ, but as one who loved her, one who could not imagine the world without her in it.

Xao met his fury with a larger smile, his eyes shining dark with malice.

Here was not the work of Lucifer.

Rhun knew who stared out those eyes at him.

From across the lake, Legion savored the look of horror and defeat in the Knight’s face. He witnessed it both through the gaze of the possessed monk and through the eyes of this vessel now.

Legion still remained hidden among the rocks on the southern side of the lake, where he had been manipulating events from afar, lying in wait for the right moment to show himself.

Deep inside him, the small flame of Leopold quavered, shaken by the sudden death of the Woman at the hands of the monk. Legion imagined that feeble flame weeping smoky tears.

How easy it had been to make the trio dance to his wishes!

Using the stolen knowledge of Hugh de Payens, Legion had sped here ahead of the others, coming upon the monks unprepared.

With a touch, they were mine.

Legion had thought to take advantage of a secret, one that Hugh had not shared with the others. The hermit had known that the broken stone could no longer open the gate in this valley. Hugh had trusted that the monks would know how to repair it, so Legion came to believe it, too. Unfortunately, once he took in the monks’ long memories, he found no such knowledge.

Frustrated, Legion made new plans. Leopold and Hugh de Payens both trusted the Woman of Learning, held her in the highest esteem. If anyone could figure out how to repair the stone, it would be her. So he hid himself away and carefully manipulated the three monks, using them to wheedle the truth out of the trio, to make them do the work for him.

And how perfectly that had worked.

The Woman did indeed provide the answer, and the Warrior gave his blood to make it so. Together, the trio had opened the gate — which left Legion the simple task of shattering the stones, to ensure this portal was never closed again. This world would be claimed for the dark one. Once that black angel was freed, the garden would be purged of mankind, leaving this paradise for Legion alone.

A promise sworn to Legion by Lucifer.

Legion stepped from the small cave in the rocks and lifted his arms to the eclipse-darkened sky. He only had a handful of moments to complete his task. The sun was already being born again in the sky, rising fiery from the ashes of the eclipse. Knowing time would be short, he had chosen this spot to hide earlier, a shelter closest to the green stone, the closest to the Warrior who still guarded it. Though mended, that stone was still the weakest. Legion would shatter it first — then he would destroy the others one by one.

To ensure his success, he had lured the Knight astray by threatening the Woman. Legion had waited until the Sanguinist priest was drawn close before slaying the first of the trio. Next, Legion would destroy the Warrior, who remained trapped by the emerald light, a bird in a cage. Only then would he dispatch the Knight, after breaking his will by killing all those he held most dear.

But Legion wouldn’t do so alone.

As he stepped under that blasted sky, the denizens of the dark land came to him, gathering to him like shadows. They licked his tattered boots, bowed and scraped before him, bit each other in wild joy in his wake. Of course, they loved him.

He had freed them.

And now he would free this world of the plague of man.

Legion eyed the Warrior.

Starting with this one.

Sprawled on her side, Erin clamped both hands to her throat. Hot blood slicked between her fingers, as cold snow cushioned her cheek.

She could only watch as Xao stepped over her body and met Rhun’s charge with a bloody dagger in one hand and a curved sword in the other. Beyond the fiery sphere, steel and silver clashed in a flurry of blows, counterstrikes, and parries. The cub helped, flying in to snag the edge of the monk’s robe to throw Xao off balance or bowling into the man’s legs.

Even now, she understood the source of this betrayal, knowing how artfully they had been played in this sacred valley, used like puppets by Legion, as surely as if they had been possessed by the demon themselves. Legion had needed them to bring the two stones, repair the broken one, and open the gate so that Lucifer could rise from the darkness of the lake.

And we did all of that.

Anger kept her warm as the blood continued to seep through her fingers.

Xao backed toward her, passing through fire to reenter the sphere. The demon inside seemed oblivious of her, perhaps believing she was already dead, or at least, too weak to fight.

But I am more than the Woman of Learning.

She lashed out with a leg and tripped Xao, catching the demon by surprise. As he fell and lost his guard, Rhun struck fast with his karambit, jamming it deep into the monk’s eye. Rhun used that new handle to swing Xao’s skull and crack it hard against a neighboring granite pillar. He smashed it over and over again, until the monk stopped moving.

Only then did Rhun swing around and fall to his knees next to her.

At least I won’t die alone.

But ultimately she did not matter.

“Jordan…” she croaked out.

Rhun took her hand, refusing to leave her side.

She let her other hand drop from her throat and pushed at his knee, urging him to help Jordan. Instead, he placed his own hand to her wound. His stronger fingers applied firmer pressure, as if knowing where to push to close the largest arteries.

She wanted to fight him, but she did not have the strength.

The cub paced outside that fiery veil, anxious, plainly wanting to help.

Erin gritted her teeth, hating to fail them both. She was the Woman of Learning, and she still had a job to do. She would fight in the only way left to her.

She shifted to better expose the pack on her back.

“The Gospel,” she whispered.

Surely there had to be some answer in that book. She had carried the volume this far, not just because she didn’t trust Bernard, but also because she knew that the book must still have a role to play. She had been bound to the book. That had to be important.

But if I die, the potential of the Gospel dies with me.

She could not let that happen without trying everything.

Perhaps believing he was granting her dying wish, Rhun released her neck, taking her hand and showing her where best to apply pressure. Only then did he pull the gospel out of her backpack and free it from its case. He laid the book open in front of her in the snow, then quickly reapplied pressure to her neck, whispering a prayer over her.

Erin turned her head until the edge of the cover touched her cheek. Most of the pages were empty, still waiting to be filled with the words that Christ had written long ago. Bernard had once told her that the Blood Gospel might contain the key to unleashing the divinity within each person, knowledge locked in those blank pages. If so, because of her, the world would never know it.

Rhun had opened the book to the page that held the last lines of prophecies, perhaps hoping she would find extra meaning there. But those words glowed golden and bright, as if mocking her for her failure.

With one trembling fingertip, she turned that page of prophecy and laid her bloody hand on the next blank page. She felt that paper grow warmer under her palm, its surface strangely smoother.

Rhun gasped as golden words appeared under her fingers, inscribing across the paper as if being freshly written, line by line, flowing down the page.

Rhun turned that page for her, then another.

More words, more lines.

Rhun flipped through rapidly. “The entire book is full,” he said with awe.

Erin studied the page that was still open, realizing she could not read the words. The letters looked Enochian — the language developed by John Dee to talk to the angels.

Erin closed her eyes, struggling to understand why Christ chose to write the rest of the gospel in Enochian, when the previous prophecies had been written in Greek, the language of man. Why write the rest in the language of angels? Only one answer made sense. Perhaps these new words — perhaps the entire gospel — were not meant for mankind, but for the angels.

No, not angels, she realized opening her eyes. Angel… one angel.

No wonder the pages only appeared now, in this valley.

She turned her face toward the only angel present.

Lucifer sat upon his dark throne, staring straight at her.

Erin clutched Rhun’s knee with her fingers. He leaned closer.

“I… I know,” she croaked softly. “I know what I must do.”

41

Jordan reseated the emerald stone in its proper place. As the gem touched the granite chalice, the column of fire on this side of the pyramid flared brighter. The ice reformed over the lake, sealing the portal between worlds. Several creatures were caught halfway between this plane and the other, their bodies frozen and contorted in the ice.

But his efforts did nothing for the hundreds that had already escaped.

Christian and Sophia were still under siege by a mass of them, unable to make headway across the lake to reach Lucifer. Elizabeth held her position by the blue stone, bloodied but still defending her post. Across the lake, Rhun knelt beside Erin, who still lived, although the lake of red blood that surrounded her told him that she did not have much longer. Jordan ached to rush to her side, to take her in his arms one last time.

But even if he could have broken free of his emerald prison, another adversary seemed determined to stop him.

As Jordan turned his back to the granite pillar, Legion stalked down from the cliffs toward him. He was surrounded by a shadow of abominations, a cloak of living flesh. Jordan used his last rounds to fire at the demon, but each time he shot, one of those shadows leaped up and threw itself in the way, blocking his slug with its twisted body.

Out of ammunition, Jordan held his KA-BAR dagger in one hand. He dropped his pistol and bent down to collect the monk’s abandoned sword, glad it had fallen inside the green sphere of light.

“Come on!” Jordan shouted over the tide of the demon’s screaming beasts. “Come and get me.”

Black eyes locked on to Jordan’s. “Do not be in such a hurry to die, Warrior of Man, I will be there soon enough.”

Good… I’m ready for you this time.

Jordan burned with a golden rage, one ignited by both his angelic blood and his lust for revenge. As Legion approached, Jordan lifted the stolen sword — a long curved blade with a green piece of jade set in its pommel. Jordan set his legs in a wide stance and prepared to meet the demon.

Legion also carried a sword, something with a poisonous-looking black blade, shining like a long sliver of obsidian. It was not of this world, probably carried here and gifted to the demon by one of his horde.

Jordan motioned with the tip of his own weapon. “Just the two of us,” he urged. “Unless you fear one man?”

“While you are more than a mere mortal,” Legion answered, “I will not be caught off guard again. So yes, let us end this.”

Sword held high, Legion shed his monsters and entered the emerald sphere. Without preamble, Legion thrust his sword at Jordan, forcing a quick parry that numbed Jordan to the elbow. Legion struck again and again, slowly forcing Jordan toward the edge of the sphere.

If that blade doesn’t kill me, the green fire will.

A quick flurry of blows followed. Steel rang against black crystal. Legion darted back and forth through the barrier, using the fiery veil as his own personal shield, knowing Jordan could not follow.

A quick thrust finally penetrated Jordan’s guard and sliced across his side. Hot red blood drenched his shirt. Another series of attacks ended with Legion’s blade cutting deep into his upper arm. Legion retreated through the barrier, smiling back at him.

Jordan realized a hard truth.

Legion is toying with me.

Jordan lurched away, dropping his dagger and hugging an arm around his wounded side, while still keeping his sword up.

Legion stalked forward, clearly ready to finish him.

As soon as the demon pierced the barrier’s edge, Jordan lunged forward, hoping that the flames of the veil might have blinded the demon for a fraction of a second. As Legion’s leg stepped through, Jordan kicked out and smashed his steel crampons into the demon’s knee. The limb gave way with a crack. As Legion pitched to the side, Jordan grabbed the demon’s sword arm, rolled Legion under him, and rode the black body to the ground.Once they struck, Jordan used the momentum to jam his sword into the soft belly, thrusting up toward that quiet heart. Legion screamed and threw him off with the force of a bull’s kick. Jordan went flying, rolling across the snow. All that saved him from striking the fiery barrier was the granite pillar. He hit it broadside, hard enough to break ribs.

Legion was already on his feet. The demon dropped his own sword into the snow and unsheathed the monk’s blade from his black belly and came at Jordan, the weapon raised high. Jordan lunged away, going for the dagger he had abandoned. Only too late did he realize his mistake.

Legion stepped past him and brought the sword down, slamming the jade-encrusted pommel onto the green diamond. The gem shattered beneath it, as did the granite chalice underneath. The column of green fire extinguished, blown out like a snuffed candle.

Again the lake exploded along this bank. The entire surface buckled upward as if punched from below. Larger beasts rose to the surface, things still barely seen: the roll of an immense black eye, a flurry of black tentacles. Jordan sensed these creatures were older and darker than the minor demons loosed so far.

Beyond that monstrous upwelling, Lucifer looked down from his throne, his face unreadable. The cone of white light still held the dark angel trapped, but for how long? That purity of whiteness now ran with streaks of shadows, reflecting the damage done to his prison.

As if knowing this, Lucifer shifted higher in his throne, breaking more links in the chains that bound him.

The ground quaked and trembled with his efforts.

Legion faced Jordan, the demon’s smile triumphant. “The time of man is finally at an end.”

Erin huddled under Rhun as the quakes subsided. She had watched the emerald column go dark, saw the ice on the far side shatter open exposing a roil of monstrous beasts. New cracks skittered across the lake.

Christian and Sophia dragged the chest to a patch of solid ice, hounded by more creatures, the beasts plainly growing bolder at the change of circumstance.

Erin searched for Jordan, but a heavy black steam rose from the lake by that shore, obscuring her view.

Rhun still clutched her throat with his one hand as he leaned back. “Erin, what do you mean you know what to do?” he asked.

She understood the subtext to his question: What do you believe you can do this close to death?

She answered him silently, What I can.

She clutched the Blood Gospel to her chest with one arm, picturing the lines of Enochian script filling its pages. She knew the truth with absolute certainty, but still the words refused to come out. She was too stunned at what she had come to understand: the true purpose behind this lost Gospel of Christ.

The book was not written to help humans unleash their divinity. It had been written for a single being, one angel, to redeem himself: Lucifer. She remembered the tablet Lazarus had revealed to her in the Sanguinist library, telling an alternate version of the story of the Garden of Eden, how Eve had promised to share the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge with the serpent, but in the end, she had broken that promise.

Lazarus’s words returned to her now, as the world grew darker around her.

When Lucifer stands before you, your heart will guide you on your path. You must fulfill the covenant.

She hadn’t understood those words back then, but she did now.

The serpent — Lucifer — had been denied secret knowledge, knowledge that might have led the dark angel to make different choices: the knowledge of good and evil. He had asked for that understanding, been promised it by Eve herself, but she had not given it to him, and so he had never learned it.

But Christ had sent it here for him.

“I must fulfill the covenant of Eve,” she muttered with dry, cold lips.

Beyond the edge of the sphere, the lion stared back at her, stirring as if he had heard her, mewling softly. The cub reminded her of her first cat, a giant barn tom named Nebuchadnezzar. He’d been snowy white, too.

“Hey there, Neb,” she whispered, momentarily lost in time.

Rhun bent closer, drawing back her attention. The sorrow in his eyes made her want to reach up and touch him, to comfort him. “What covenant do you speak of?” he pressed her.

She forced her eyes to focus. “The book… the gospel… must go to Lucifer.”

Rhun’s eyes widened with disbelief, even outrage. “How can Christ’s gospel go to an angel cast out of Heaven by God himself?”

She didn’t have the strength to argue, but she exhaled faint words with each fading breath, knowing his sharp Sanguinist ears would hear them. “Christ wrote it to redeem Lucifer. If Eve had given him the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he would have known good. He could have chosen good. The covenant of Eve must be fulfilled. Rhun, you must give him this knowledge.”

Rhun looked up at the blackened sky. “I cannot leave you to die alone.”

“You must… this is what we were chosen for.”

Rhun lifted the gospel from her as she let it go, glad to be free of this burden. Her empty fingers returned to clutching her throat, as useless as that gesture was by now. She concentrated on Rhun. His face told her how much he wanted to stay with her, and what it cost him to leave her. His eyes flicked to the book hanging open in his one hand, then his face looked scared.

What’s wrong?

He answered her silent question. “The writing is gone.” He tipped the book, fluttering through the pages, all blank. “Remember, the gospel is bound only to you, Erin. The words are not revealed to any other.”

She was so cold now. She didn’t know what to do, what to say.

“Perhaps I can carry you and the book to Lucifer,” Rhun suggested. “We can give it to him together.”

No…

He quickly understood, too, sagging over her. “That won’t work. While you live, the light will burn you to ash. Only Sanguinists or strigoi may pass through such barriers unharmed.”

Erin’s vision faded. She used her last breath to whisper the ultimate truth.

“You have to turn me… it’s the only way.”

I must become a strigoi.

Jordan had lost sight of Erin as a heavy black mist rolled across the shattered lake, rising with distant screams and howls, its darkness broken by flares of blacker flames. Giant forms stirred that fog, things he knew whose very sight would strip him of his sanity, what little there remained.

Still, even with the emerald sphere collapsed around him, he remained on his knees. The gate was forever damaged with the gem’s destruction, never to be closed again.

Jordan saw no reason to keep fighting, especially knowing Erin was likely dead.

If not now, soon.

Without Erin, Jordan wasn’t sure if he wanted to live or die.

But he did know one thing with absolute certainty.

He wanted revenge.

Jordan stared up as Legion fell upon him. The demon lifted the monk’s sword high, his face shining with triumph. That blade still steamed with the demon’s own blood.

It was what had given Jordan this idea.

Retreating from that assault, Jordan sprawled backward to the ground, as if prostrating himself before Legion, accepting death. Instead, Jordan threw himself atop the blade he had propped up a moment ago behind him. The blade pierced his back and thrust out of his belly. That black obsidian sword burned through him like a spike of ice. It was Legion’s own sword, abandoned in the snow earlier, the blade now slick with Jordan’s fiery blood.

As the demon came at him, hobbled by the broken knee, Jordan kicked out again. His crampon struck Legion’s good ankle — not enough to break it, but enough to trip the demon, to send him crashing atop Jordan.

Jordan opened his arms in a giant bear hug. Legion crashed into him, impaling his body on the bloody sword, coated with Jordan’s angelic blood. The demon screamed and writhed on that pike, but Jordan wrapped his arms around Legion and rolled to the side, pouring the pool of fiery blood from his belly wound into Legion’s cold black body. Jordan willed all of his angelic essence to follow, to burn this demon from Leopold’s body.

“Go back to Hell, you bastard.”

Legion thrashed and howled, casting out gouts of dark smoke, as if the demon blazed atop the coals of Jordan’s body. Slowly, the black drained from Legion’s face, from his body. Leopold’s watery blue eyes looked at Jordan.

“Mein Freund…” Leopold said, lowering his forehead to Jordan’s cheek. “You have freed me.”

Jordan held him, not to keep the man from escaping, but to let Leopold know he wasn’t alone, that he was forgiven in the end, even loved. Jordan held him, until the body of his friend fell limp in his arms, finding true peace at last.

Rhun watched as Erin’s hands fell slackly from her neck, too weak now to hold them to the ruins of her throat. Rhun lifted his hand to apply that pressure for her, but he knew from each feeble beat of her fading heart that such an effort was useless. Instead, he scooped her into his lap, cradling her body against his, and clutched her blood-slicked fingers. Her head lolled back, her face bathed in the crimson fire of the stone.

How could he turn her, a woman he had grown to love, still loved?

Strigoi were soulless abominations, and it was a sin to create them. He had slipped from that path long ago when he had taken Elizabeth, and only evil had come of that. She had turned from a healer of man into a killer of men, slaughtering hundreds of innocents.

Rhun glanced in Elizabeth’s direction — but by now, those dreadful mists had spread, consuming her position. Still, the azure column of fire continued to blaze into the dark sky. He hoped that meant she still lived. He knew that there was still good in her, even if she could not fully see it yet. He prayed she lived long enough to discover it.

His eyes stared out into the deeper darkness, toward where that fiery emerald column had gone dark. Did Jordan yet live? Either way, with the gateway damaged, what hope did any of them have?

The lion yowled at him from outside the fiery bubble, as if scolding him. Those golden eyes stared deeply into his, reminding him that there was hope, that it lay limply in his arms.

“But it is forbidden,” he told the young creature. “Look at these soulless demons. Would you have her join their ranks?”

The answer rose like a sigh from Erin’s lips, likely her last.

“Please.”

42

Erin hovered at the edge of oblivion. Though her eyes were open, she saw only shadows now. Still, she could make out a silhouette of Rhun’s face against a fiery backdrop. Past his shoulders, the blaze of the fading eclipse pierced those shadows, but even that fire was slowly being wiped away by a rising tide of black mists from the lake, a darkness that if unchecked would grow to consume this world.

She had no arguments left to convince Rhun, no breath to speak them, but her mind ran with them anyway.

She knew this battle had played out a hundred times before. Even if the others succeeded in rebinding Lucifer’s chains, this would not end.

What was forged could be shattered again.

She knew there was only one path to truly end this.

Lucifer must be redeemed.

Erin stared up at Rhun, trying to get him to search her face for that truth, to accept what must be done.

Don’t let my death mean nothing. Free me, so I may do what I must.

Instead, Rhun pressed his cold lips gently on her forehead. She wished it was Jordan who kissed her now, who held her now. But Jordan couldn’t do what had to be done. Only Rhun could.

Please…

As Rhun straightened, stroking the hair back from her brow, she used the last of her strength to let her plea shine in her dimming eyes.

Tears ran down Rhun’s cheeks. He shook his head, as if he indeed knew what she was thinking. She could read him just as readily, knowing the scripture that likely held him back from acting, from stripping her soul: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

She tried to get him to understand.

I am not gaining the world… I’m saving it.

She let that shine from her.

Rhun drew her closer to him, gazing deep inside her. She saw for the first time that his eyes weren’t black. They were dark brown and threaded with cinnamon-colored lines, like the bark of a redwood tree, vibrantly alive in his pale face.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.

His lips brushed softly against hers, like a cold breeze from the mountains.

She let her eyes close, defeated.

Then those lips lowered to her neck and sharp teeth bit deep into her flesh.

The little blood left inside her surged out in a single blissful wave.

Thank you, Rhun.

Rhun took great care, knowing death shadowed Erin’s heart. As he drew those last embers of life from her cooling body, he ignored the surge of ecstasy and focused instead on the erratic final beats of her heart. He needed enough blood of hers in order to transform her, but not so much to kill her.

A moment ago, he had read the determination in Erin’s eyes, saw the knowledge there, the certainty — but most of all, he witnessed the love, that bottomless well of compassion in her heart, not just for Jordan, not just for him.

For everyone.

To save all, she was willing to sacrifice herself.

And had not Christ made that same decision in the Garden of Gethsemane and upon the cross?

How could I not honor her choice now?

He felt her go slack under him and withdrew his teeth from her flesh, his lips from her skin. He stared down, still cradled against him, a woman he loved so very dearly in turn.

Even now he hesitated, knowing what he must do next, yet terrified of it.

Both for his sake and her own.

Then he heard a heavy thump of her heart, the last of her life demanding him to act.

He slashed with his karambit, slicing the silver deep into his throat. As his dark blood flooded forth, he dropped his blade, cupped the back of her head, and drew her mouth to that black font. He let his blood pour between her slack lips, down her open throat. She was too gone to swallow on her own, but he held her there, waiting, praying.

He stared up at the dark sky, watching the sun die again, consumed not by the moon, but by the dread smoke rising from the lake, through the very gates of Hell.

Then he felt a surge of hope — as soft lips firmed upon his flesh and began to drink, drawing him into a crimson bliss.

Still, cold tears ran down his face.

What have I done?

Erin woke to cold blood in her mouth, tasting of salt and silver. She swallowed strength with each sip. More blood followed, awakening a dark passion inside her. Fingers rose to grasp Rhun by the hair, to pull him closer. Her tongue probed and stirred a heavier flow. She drank like she once breathed, in great gulps, as if she had been drowning and finally reached air.

It was life as much as it was death.

And it was ecstasy.

Her body screamed for more, her arms clasped harder to Rhun, as if to pull him inside her, to draw everything out of him. She flashed to that intimate moment in the chapel when she had bathed him with her blood. It paled before this crimson rapture, as two fully became one.

She felt him harden against her, rolling atop her, crushing her under him.

Yes…

But it was still not enough.

She wanted all of him.

Her teeth now tore into his neck, demanding, accepting no refusal.

But then iron fingers snagged her hair and pulled her lips and teeth away from that blissful font. She struggled against it, straining to reach that throat, but Rhun was much stronger.

“No…” he gasped out and rolled off her.

Cold air blew between them, and she wanted to weep with loneliness. She craved that intimacy, that connection, almost as much as his blood. Her tongue licked her lips, searching for an ember of that rapture.

Rhun covered his throat with his hand. “Wine,” he croaked hoarsely.

Her sensibilities slowly returned, along with the fear that she had drunk too deeply from him. She stripped the silver flask from his thigh, uncapped it, and poured it over his lips. The silver burned her fingertips, but she held it steady, gasping as drops of wine spattered her hand, as fiery as acid.

That fire burned the truth into her.

I am strigoi.

Rhun swallowed convulsively, finishing the last of the flask, then knocking it aside. He stood shakily and pulled her to her feet next to him.

She rose into her new body, accepting it. Her senses expanded in an amazing manner. She heard every noise, felt every breeze, every scent was a symphony. The darkness seemed to shine around her. The malevolence wafting from the lake drew her, called to her.

But that was not all.

Hunger spiked inside her, drawing her gaze across the lake, to a heavy booming in her ears. A heartbeat. Marking the only human left in the valley.

She wanted, needed it, longing for the heat it promised, for the blood it pumped, craving to slake that gnawing hunger inside her. She felt the source drawing nearer, coming slowly toward her.

She took a step to meet it, but Rhun stopped her.

“It is Jordan,” he told her.

She blinked at the name, remembering, taking an impossibly long time to let warmer memories calm that craving to a dull ache. Still, it would not go fully away. She was not safe around him, especially not now, maybe not ever.

Rhun clamped his hand on her wrist. “You must fight it.”

She was not sure she could, finally coming to understand Rhun’s struggle.

Without a free arm, Rhun nudged the Blood Gospel closer to her with the toe of his boot, pushing it ignobly through the snow. Erin was still archaeologist enough to instinctively reach down and pluck the ancient artifact out of the snow before it was damaged. But as soon as her fingers touched that worn leather cover, golden light burst forth, washing over her, dimming the worst of her craving.

She straightened, noting how even Jordan’s heartbeat grew muffled.

She searched along the shoreline, longing filling her anew, not for Jordan’s blood — but for the man she loved.

“We must go,” Rhun urged.

She allowed him to gently guide her through that fiery veil, letting her old life burn away behind her.

As Jordan lurched along the shoreline, he clutched a fist against the wound in his belly. He was unsure if he was healing. He feared he had cast most of his angelic essence, along with his blood, into that demon. Still, an ember of fire burned in his belly, suggesting some dregs remained, but he felt even that fading fast.

Still, he kept marching onward. His other hand dragged Legion’s black sword behind him, still dripping with the demon’s blood. He continued through the damnable fog as it smoked out of the broken piece of the gate behind him. After slaying Legion, he had fled the worst of that gibbering, maddening horde, as they gathered in those mists, greeting the larger abominations that slowly slouched into this world.

Let them… as long as they leave me alone.

He followed the only path open to him, sticking to the bank of the lake, cautious of the two remaining planes of the pyramid that still blazed across the ice.

Farther out, the cone of Lucifer’s white light continued to shine, but even through the black mists, Jordan knew the purity of that white light was dissipating. With the gateway broken, it would only be a matter of time before that dark angel broke free.

When that happened, Jordan was determined to be at Erin’s side, if only to hold her cold body one last time. Still, a glimmer of hope remained inside him, driving him forward, one hard step after another.

Maybe she’s still alive… maybe I can kiss her one last time.

Finally, a ruddy glow appeared through the mists. As he drew closer, he saw it was the fiery sphere around the Sanguis pillar. He stumbled out of the worst of the mists and hurried forward — only to find that sphere empty.

She was gone.

He leaned on the sword and searched around, realizing he was not entirely alone.

The lion cub waited at the edge of the lake, his gaze fixed on the ice. Jordan limped over to him, following that intent stare.

Two figures moved out there.

Rhun… and Erin.

She marched alongside the Sanguinist, clutching the Blood Gospel in her arms. The glow of the book cast them both in a golden light.

He wanted to cry with joy, to run to her side, but all he could do was fall to his knees at the edge of the lake, knowing he could not cross this outer plane of the fiery pyramid. He struggled to understand how she still lived, how she got through that barrier.

Had the book healed her, had its glow allowed her to pierce that fiery veil?

“Erin!” he shouted, wanting if nothing else to see her face again.

She heard him and turned.

The lower half of her face was covered in black blood. She spotted him, but there was no joy in her eyes, only sorrow. Rhun glanced back, exposing the wound on his own throat.

Jordan knew the truth. It was not the book that had healed her; it was not the glow that had let her pass the barrier unharmed.

I’ve lost her.

Rhun touched Erin’s arm, and with one last desolate look, she turned away.

“She is gone,” a voice spoke behind him. It was Elizabeth, soaked in blood, most of it her own.

Jordan glanced toward the fiery blue pillar on that side, where Elizabeth had been guarding the Aqua stone. It still blazed strongly.

“I was driven away,” Elizabeth explained. “Some massive beast, churning with tentacles…”

Jordan didn’t care. He returned his attention to Erin.

Elizabeth confirmed his worst fear. “I hear no heartbeat.”

A tired sadness filled the woman’s words — mourning not his loss, but her own.

Elizabeth sank to her knees beside him. As a strigoi, she could have crossed that barrier, gone out onto the ice. But she plainly had no reason.

Rhun was lost to her, too.

43

Erin wanted to turn around, to go running back to Jordan.

Rhun must have read her desire — not because they were blood-bonded, but simply because he knew her heart, even this new silenced one.

“You must go to Lucifer,” Rhun said. “That is your destiny now.”

She knew he was right, so she continued across the ice, clutching the Blood Gospel to her chest, taking strength from it to keep going. With each step, the book cast out its glow more brightly, pushing back against the darkness, burning through the heavier mists.

A scatter of twisted beasts came charging toward them, breaking away from the siege around Christian and Sophia. Something black shot out of the mists overhead and dove at them. Erin barely got a look at the featherless, reptilian shape before it struck that golden light around her and burst into flames.

Rhun tugged her aside as its body crashed to the ice.

Upon seeing this, the other beasts split away, fleeing that glow, slithering back into the darkness, wanting nothing more to do with that golden light.

She and Rhun hurried on, careful of the cracks in the ice, winding their way toward Christian and Sophia. The pair was not doing well. They were an island in a roiling mass of demons.

Christian had removed the sacred chain from the chest and slung the heavy links around his neck, even though the silver must burn him. He whipped the loose end of the chain like some sacred bola, lashing and striking out at the demons. It ripped through the horde as if those links were made of molten steel.

Still, Christian’s face streamed blood, and his robes hung in tatters around him.

Next to him, Sophia was even worse off. The small woman noted their approach and perhaps that was all she had been waiting for — holding out only this long by sheer force of will.

Erin saw it in her eyes.

Don’t…

Sophia gave one last valiant effort, swinging around and spearing a beast in the back before it could attack Christian. But to do so, it forced her to let her own guard down. The horde was upon her, swarming over her, bearing her down.

Christian tried to fight to Sophia’s side, but there were too many.

Erin finally reached them, bringing her golden light, scattering the beasts. Something dark and spiny leaped away, leaving behind a broken body on the ice.

Erin skidded to a stop and covered her mouth.

No.

Sophia, earnest and kind, was gone.

Erin trembled, but Rhun steadied her.

“Only the book matters,” he said. “It must reach Lucifer.”

She nodded. Or Sophia’s sacrifice would be in vain.

Still, it took a small push from Rhun to get her moving. Soon, though, she was running, flying across the ice, her limbs powered with preternatural strength, aiming for that cone of light. Demons gave way before that glow, but they no longer fled. They hissed and snarled in her wake, as if they knew that they would claim her soon.

And they might yet get that chance.

Even the Blood Gospel could not withstand such palpable evil for long. The golden light had begun to tatter, torn by those mists, shredded by the malevolence found here. The deeper she went, the worse the damage.

Rhun and Christian did their best to compensate, flanking her, keeping away anything that dared to approach. Christian lashed out with the chain and struck a loping hairless ape. The hiss of burning flesh accompanied the creature’s agonized shriek as it rolled clear of their path.

Erin concentrated on their goal: Lucifer continued to strain from his throne, shattering new links. His wings, feathered by black flames, battered against the brilliance that imprisoned him. Each strike dimmed that light, streaking it with darkness.

She rushed to close the distance, but her strength faded with that golden light. Her legs ached, her arms felt too heavy even to hold the gospel, and her body began to scream again with bloodlust.

Ahead of her Lucifer thrashed, tearing at the silver chains that bound him.

Finally, she and the others reached the edge of that shining cone.

Erin slowed, stumbling the last of the way. Christian outpaced her and reached a hand toward that white light. He screamed and yanked his arm back, pulling back a smoking stump, ending at his wrist. The light had burned away his hand.

Christian swung to Rhun. Through the man’s agony, an even greater pain shone forth: the knowledge that even the Sanguinists could not pass this last barrier.

Erin moved to join them, but as her golden light touched that barrier, it snuffed out, taking away her shield. Before the Sanguinists could react, a chitinous black beast leaped out of the mists behind her and landed on her back, latching jointed legs to her and sinking fangs into her shoulder.

She screamed.

Rhun whirled, striking out with his silver karambit, severing two of the creature’s six legs. It was enough for Christian to rip the beast from Erin’s back and fling the monster toward that cone of light. Its body struck that barrier — and blew away into a cloud of fiery embers.

Rhun tugged Erin behind him, as he and Christian faced the gathering mass of beasts shadowing the heavier mists. Rhun bared his blade, while Christian slowly swung the end of the chain, back and forth, letting it scrape the ice menacingly.

“Rhun…” Erin moaned.

He turned, seeing a poisonous darkness creeping up from her neckline, boiling away her skin as it rose. She swooned on her legs. The Blood Gospel fell from her trembling hands.

Whatever had bit her must have been venomous.

He had turned to help her when something fell out of the fog overhead and knocked him hard to the ice. It appeared to be a leathery bat, grown to tremendous size. Needle-sharp teeth snapped at his face. With only one arm, he had to drop his blade and snatch the beast by the neck, keeping those jaws from his throat.

Off to the side, Erin began to topple over, falling toward that white light, but Christian rushed forward and caught her around the waist with his bad arm. He hauled her to safety, while grabbing the gospel from the ice and tucking the book into his coat.

As Christian retreated, Erin struggled in his grip, her head lolling, turning her face toward the light, toward Lucifer.

Even now she seemed determined to complete her mission.

Christian dragged her away, coming to Rhun’s aid. He slashed with his chain, knocking the bat creature away, burning a swath through its thick hide. It hissed and flopped back into the darkness.

From those mists, darker shadows closed in on them.

“What now?” Christian asked.

Erin’s cold body ran with a poisonous fire. She felt the flesh melting around the bite wound in her shoulder. Her blood flowed heavily there, as if trying to put out that fire. The same venom ate at her face and ran down her arm on that side.

Again.

She had a hard time focusing through the pain, the nausea, but she knew that word was important. A moment ago, she had begun to fall. To brace herself, she had thrust out her arm, already flowing with toxins — only to have her hand and forearm pierce that blazing barrier. The purity of that light cooled her arm and vanquished that dark poison.

Then Christian had caught her and pulled her away.

The toxin was again flowing into her arm.

Too weak even to stand, she hung in Christian’s arm. She found it hard to speak as her cheek blistered, but she had to get them to understand.

“The light…” she gasped out. “I can pass through it.”

“She’s delirious,” Christian said.

“I can…” She rolled her head to face Rhun, letting him see the truth there, to trust in their blood bond, in their mutual understanding of each other.

“She speaks the truth,” Rhun said, glancing toward that cone and the dark angel thrashing within that prison.

Before a plan could be made, the dark shadows of the mists fell upon them. Rhun was quickly separated from them. Compromised by his missing arm, he could barely keep the beasts from his throat, let alone return to their side. He soon vanished into the fog, but he still fought out there, revealing himself in flashes of silver.

Christian never let her go. He kept up a valiant fight, swinging his chain, clearing a space around them, holding the demonic horde at bay. But his strength began to ebb, as he reached the bottom of his reserves after battling so long beside Sophia.

His bad arm tightened around her, glancing toward that brilliance that imprisoned Lucifer. He swung the chain once more, striking a giant snake so hard that blood whipped from its body and spattered against the cone of light, burning away with a hiss.

Christian then shrugged off the heavy links from his shoulder.

Erin frowned. “What are you—?”

“It appears this can’t get done without sacrificing a Christian.” A smile flashed across his features. “I will miss you, Dr. Erin Granger.”

She understood.

No…

Christian wrapped his arms around her — and leaped high, using the last of his strength to hurtle over the nearest beasts. Together, they struck the barrier. His body burst to fiery ash around her as she fell through. She crashed safely inside, skidding on her hip, a sob trapped in her throat. The Blood Gospel slid up against her, as unharmed as she was.

She sat up, feeling strength returning to her, the black poison vanquished from her body by the passage through the light.

She stared beyond the barrier, watching all that was left of her funny, irreverent, and brave friend drift down in a rain of fiery embers.

Christian deserved better. He had sacrificed himself to get her into this cone of light. She intended to make sure that debt was paid in full.

She picked up the Blood Gospel and turned to face the prisoner.

Lucifer sat upon his throne, no longer fighting, staring down at her, plainly curious and possibly surprised at her presence.

She did not shrink from that black gaze. She had given her soul and her life to stand before him. And now she only had one thing left to give.

She lifted the book in her palms.

Only Eve could pick the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and only the daughter of Eve could bring that knowledge back to the serpent.

Lucifer’s lips moved, but no words came forth, only a sound like the peal of a great bell. Still, such a metaphor paled from the true beauty of that sound, the voice of an angel, the music of the spheres. The bell pealed again, bright and questioning.

He was speaking, but she could not understand him.

She raised the book higher, hoping he would understand, if not her words, then at least her actions.

“Here is the Gospel of Christ, written in His blood and hidden for many long years. My task is to bring it to you, to fulfill the covenant that you made with Eve long ago.”

That head cocked to the side, those flawless features unreadable.

Erin splayed open the book between her palms to show him. As the cover broke open, golden light washed forth. Even without looking, she knew those pages were full of glowing script, all written in Enochian.

Lucifer leaned down, then reached a massive hand toward her.

Erin wanted to run, but she held her ground.

Once those fingers were low enough, she closed the book and gently slipped the gospel into his blackened hands. He sat back again, taking the book with him. With one ebony finger he opened the cover, and that golden light shone even brighter, flaring with such majesty that it burned Erin’s eyes.

She had to look away, its glare more fearsome than a thousand eclipsing suns. Still, she felt that light burning through her skull, through her closed eyelids. For a moment, she felt shreds of understanding caught inside her mind: of the secrets of creation, of the movement of stars, of the hidden code of life. But those scraps fluttered through her, whirling away like leaves in a whirlwind. She tried to mentally grasp after them, to hold them, even though she knew such knowledge might destroy her.

So she weathered that storm, waiting for it to finally fade, which at last it did, accompanied by a heavy clanging that drew her gaze back up.

Lucifer still sat in his throne, but his chains lay at his feet.

He was free.

Still, that was not what drove her to her knees. His body was no longer black, but as white as polished marble, aglow with an inner fire that shone from his eyes as he stared upward, the gospel closed in his lap. The black of his sins had been cleansed from his body as surely as the poison had been from her flesh.

Lucifer had been redeemed.

His beauty and glory shone so brightly that the rest of the world seemed shadowy and insubstantial. The cone of light, the flaming pieces of the broken pyramid of fire had all vanished, consumed by the sacred brilliance.

Farther out, Erin could make out the dark lake, the gray mountains, and the blue sky. Even the bright wintry day was returning as the eclipse ended. Still, it all seemed distant, a dream of another world.

For a breath, that view shifted, filling in with a warmer light, melting winter into a summer of green grass, blue waters, and a blazing red sun. Off by the cliffs, two trees stood guard, their bowers thick with leaves, their branches heavy with ripened fruit.

Could this be the Garden of—?

Bells rang out again, impossible to ignore, pulling Erin’s gaze back to Lucifer. But these joyous peals rose not from the redeemed angel, but from the heavens above. The chorus was one of elation and welcome, inviting Lucifer to return. After all these years, they wanted him to come home.

Lucifer rose up, expanding his wings, feathered now with white flames.

With his gaze never leaving the promise of Heaven, he reached down to her and rested a finger atop her head. From that touch, a warmth suffused through her, filling her body from head to toe. Joy bubbled up inside her like a spring.

Then a drum thumped once in her ears — then again, quieter.

She recognized that rhythm, having heard it all her life.

It was her heartbeat.

She covered her face, a sob of happiness escaping her. Lucifer had brought her back. She had sacrificed her life for him, and he had returned it.

The bells pealed louder now, with a touch of insistency, a new urgency.

It was time for this bright angel to return to his rightful place.

Answering that call, Lucifer beat his great wings together and rose into the air, climbing to hover over the valley. He hung for a long instant, holding the book against his chest.

Then he looked down, perhaps for one last time.

His gaze swept the lake, its surface frozen solid again. Atop the lake and out across the valley floor, inky shapes crawled, slithered, and lurched, their very movements foreign to this world. They fled and scrambled, mewled and howled, knowing their way home had been closed forever.

Lucifer stared down, not with loathing, nor with pity. Instead, love shone from his body. He opened his mouth, and a dark note pealed out. The nearest creatures stopped in their tracks. Again that head cocked, staring below, perhaps pondering the great evil that such demons could unleash upon this world.

If Lucifer left, the earthly realm might yet be damned.

As if seeking the right answer, Lucifer opened the gospel once more, allowing that golden light to shine across the planes of his face. After a moment, a shine of certainty grew in his eyes, maybe even a trace of regret.

Lucifer glanced Heavenward one last time, then drifted on wings of fire back to the frozen lake, touching lightly down on the ice. Sensing what was coming, Erin retreated until she felt cold hands grasping her warm skin.

Rhun…

As another dark peal rang out from Lucifer, Rhun gathered her to his side. Relief was writ large on his face. He knew that she was human again. Still, now was not the time for a reunion. Instead, he took her hand, and together they ran across the ice toward shore.

Demons and abominations of every ilk streamed past them, responding to the siren call of their master, rushing back to Lucifer’s side.

Erin spotted Jordan standing with Elizabeth at the shoreline. The lion came loping out onto the ice, gamboling around their legs, his every movement one of joy, urging them all together.

Erin needed no such urging.

She broke free of Rhun and ran toward Jordan.

He hobbled forward to meet her, one arm wrapped around his belly. “Careful there, lady,” he warned, but his smile was one of warm invitation.

She struck him without slowing and wrapped tightly to him, intending never to let him go.

But Rhun herded them off the lake. “Keep going,” he ordered. “As far from this lake as possible.”

They obeyed, climbing up to the shelter of those two ancient trees. Only then did they stop and turn around. Under that icy bower, Erin kept close to Jordan.

By now, the demons had gathered around Lucifer, shadowing the brightness of that angel.

Lucifer looked in her direction. Silver light beamed from his face, shining with peace and acceptance, clearly knowing what he was sacrificing by his next action. He lifted his wings high and batted them down. A blaze of light flared, blinding the eye — but not before Erin saw a dark hole open below the gathered horde and watched those shadows fall away — taking that shining star with them.

When the brilliance faded, the lake was empty, frozen over.

Tears streamed down Erin’s face.

“He chose to go back,” she said. “He could have ascended, but he went back to guard the demons, to keep everything safe.”

“Because you redeemed him.” Rhun touched his pectoral cross. “In the face of such glory, he chose to serve in Hell instead of Heaven.”

44

Two days after the events in Nepal, Elizabeth sat beside Tommy’s bed.

A Sanguinist guard had led her here and waited outside the door. It was a small concession in order to be allowed to see Tommy, to learn where the boy was being housed in Vatican City. She had intended to evaluate Tommy’s health and make her plans. And in the worst of cases, she knew she could easily overpower the lone guard and whisk Tommy away before anyone was the wiser.

Once here, she had found Tommy asleep, looking much sicker than she had ever imagined. His heart told a story of disease and weakness. His pale skin was only a few shades darker than the pillow on which he rested his head. And his arms, folded atop his blanket, were riddled with dark lesions.

I must do something quickly.

As if sensing her presence, the boy’s brown eyes opened, reminding her of a doe — round and innocent. He blinked, then rubbed his knuckles against his eyelids.

“Elizabeth? It’s really you?”

“Of course it is I!” Her words came out harsher than she had intended.

“I heard you were back.”

He struggled to sit, but she offered him no help, knowing how he prized his independence. Still, to hide her shock at his profound weakness, she reached behind him and adjusted his pillows to make sure he was well supported.

“I also heard you guys saved the world… again,” he said with a tired grin. “That you’re a hero among the Sanguinists.”

“I have never wanted to be considered a hero by the Sanguinists,” she answered.

He frowned. “But I thought you were one of them now.”

“I have taken their vows, yes.”

“Good.”

She stiffened. “Why is this good?”

“I don’t know,” he answered with a shrug. “You can make friends with other Sanguinists. You won’t have to be alone all the time. You won’t even have to hunt.”

His concern for her touched her heart. “I have found another way.”

She told him what she had discovered in France — that there was another way to live outside the bounds of the Church, without falling prey to one’s own feral nature.

“But won’t the Sanguinists hunt you down if you try to leave?” he asked.

“They have been hunting me for many long years, but I am still here.”

He grew quiet, his hands fiddled with his quilt, and he would not meet her eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“When are you leaving?”

She had not finalized such plans and said so. “I’ve not decided as of yet.”

“Then will you at least stay… until I go?” He looked at the crucifix on the wall, the door, the window, everywhere but at her. “It won’t take long, I don’t think.”

“I will stay with you,” she promised. “Not to watch you die. But to help you to live.”

Tommy covered his neck with his hand, plainly knowing what she meant. “No.”

“No?”

“I don’t want to become a monster.”

“But you need not be a monster.” Apparently she had not made herself clear enough. “I told you about France, about the Himalayas, about another way.”

He shook his head violently. “I’m ready to die. I should have died in Masada with my parents.”

“There is always time to die,” she said. “It must not be so soon.”

“No,” he repeated, collapsing against the pillows. The effort of disagreeing with her had cost him much. “I don’t want to be immortal. I don’t want to live on blood or wine. I’ve seen that life, and I don’t want it.”

She touched his hand. It was warmer than hers, but colder than it should have been. She could take him. It would be easy. She was stronger. She had killed and changed more humans than she could count. Hundreds. But he would be the first that she killed out of love.

Tommy squeezed her hand. “Please, let me go.”

“You do not know of what you speak.”

“I do,” he said. “I watched Rasputin and Bernard and Rhun and the others. I know how they live. They’re not happy, and I wouldn’t be either.”

What did he know of happiness or of life? He was fourteen years old, and he’d spent two of those years dying of this disease. She could turn him. With time, he might forgive her, and even if he did not, he would still be alive. She could not bear the thought of him dying.

Those brown eyes stared into hers. They had seen much in their few short years, and yet they still reflected innocence and kindness. They were dark, like Rhun’s, but she had never seen simple happiness or innocence in Rhun’s eyes. Immortality had been thrust upon Rhun, too, and it had not suited him. He was not a killer. He had truly been meant to be a priest — someone who served others. Becoming a strigoi was a perversion of his nature.

Just as it would be a perversion of Tommy’s.

How can I force my will on him and pervert that innocence?

It would be a selfish act. She would be taking his soul to spare herself the grief of losing another child. She could not hurt him to spare herself. Not ever.

Tommy must have seen the change in her eyes, because he relaxed and smiled at her. “Thank you,” he whispered.

She looked away and blinked back tears. He would suffer, and he would die, and she would not save him. She rose from the chair, walked to the window, and faced the shutters so that he would not see her cry. She would bear up silently and stay with him until the end. She took a deep breath and reached inside herself for strength.

“Perhaps we should go outside, for a walk in the sunshine?” she suggested. She would help him enjoy the time he had left.

Before he could answer, a sharp rap sounded on the door. Without waiting for permission, Rhun burst inside, with the lion cub close on his heels.

“Forgive the intrusion.” He looked between Elizabeth and Tommy. “I heard that you were here, Sister Elizabeth, and I…”

She scowled at him, knowing what had drawn him here so brusquely. Rhun had feared she would turn the boy.

“I’m fine,” Tommy said.

She smiled down at his pale face. “This is the truth.”

The lion bounded past Rhun and jumped up onto the bed. His golden eyes locked on to Tommy’s, and the two stared at each other with rapt attention.

“Meet Rhun’s lion,” she said by way of introduction.

Tommy seemed deaf to her, lost in the beast’s gaze, as if they knew each other.

Rhun watched and whispered quietly, “The cub reacted in such a manner when he first met Jordan. I think it’s because of the angelic blood they once shared. All three of them carried the angelic essence of the Archangel Michael at one time or another.”

The cub leaned forward and rubbed his head against the boy’s cheek, breaking the spell and raising a bright laugh.

Her heart ached at the sound, knowing how much she would miss it.

Rhun crossed to the window and opened the shutters. Sunlight flooded the room, but it did not bother her as much as it had even a few days before.

The lion basked under that morning sun, stretching out next to Tommy. A low purr rumbled from that furry chest. The sound was full of love, contentment, and simple pleasures.

As she listened, Elizabeth felt a strange warmth pass through her and away, leaving her slightly swooning. She leaned against a bedpost until it passed.

Maybe I’m not as accustomed to sunlight as I imagined.

Tommy lifted a pale hand and stroked the cub’s snowy fur, a wistful smile on his lips.

If nothing else, it was good to see the boy happy. Even his heartbeat sounded stronger, his blood flowing more richly through his veins.

Then she stepped back in shock, staring at Tommy’s pale skin. “Your arm,” she said.

Tommy looked down, confused, then wearing a matching expression of surprise. “My lesions…”

“They’re gone,” Elizabeth said.

The lion raised his head at the commotion and drowsily opened his eyes. The snowy cub’s eyes were no longer golden. They were a simple brown, like Tommy’s own.

“Rhun…” She turned to him for some explanation.

He lowered to a knee, touched his silver pectoral cross, then gently examined both the lion and Tommy’s skin.

“I feel better,” Tommy said, his eyes large, as if surprised to be speaking those words.

Elizabeth smiled. She tried to stop it, but hope crept into her long-cold heart. “Is he cured?”

Rhun stood. “I do not know. But it appears the cub’s angelic essence is gone. Jordan returned from Nepal with no evidence of that spirit in his blood. Perhaps this trace that persisted in the cat needed to perform this one last miracle.”

Elizabeth remembered the strange warmth rising with the cat’s purring. Was that what had happened? Ultimately, she cared little for the mechanism of the cure, only that it was so.

“We’ll have the doctors look at him,” Rhun promised. “But I think he’s just an ordinary boy, one cured of his disease, but still a boy.”

Tommy’s smile broadened.

Elizabeth reached over and tousled his warm, thick hair. That was what he had always wanted — to be an ordinary boy.

After a few pleasantries and promises, Elizabeth followed Rhun out into the hall, trailed by the cub.

“I am glad that you did not turn him,” Rhun said, once they were out of earshot.

“You thought that I would?” Elizabeth widened her eyes in a show of innocence that she knew he did not believe.

“I feared that you might,” he answered.

“I am stronger than you think,” she said.

“What will become of the boy?”

“He must be returned to his aunt and uncle, and I will see that done,” Elizabeth said. “One such as I will not be fit to mother him.”

“Can you simply give him up, then?”

“It will not be simple.” She lifted her chin. “And I shall not give him up entirely. I shall watch over him, come when he needs me, and leave him alone when he does not.”

“I doubt the order will allow you to have further contact with him.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I am not their chattel. I will come and go as I like.”

“You would leave the order, then?” He swallowed. “And me?”

“I cannot stay bound to the Church. You must know this better than any other. So long as you remain here, we can never be together.”

“Then we should say our good-byes soon,” Rhun said, touching her on the arm, drawing her to a stop. She turned to him. “I’ve been given permission to enter Solitude, to begin a period of seclusion and reflection within the order’s Sanctuary.”

She wanted to scoff at him, deride him for turning his back upon the world, but upon hearing the true joy in his voice, she could only look sadly upon him.

“Go then, Rhun, find your peace.”

Rhun descended through the halls of the Sanctuary with a quiet sense of joy, ready at last to forsake his earthly cares. He walked alone, his footsteps echoing through the vast chambers and passageways. With his sharp ears, he could hear whispers of distant prayers, marking the beginning of vespers.

He continued deeper, to levels where even such whispers would fade.

The bright world above had nothing more to offer him. Before Cardinal Bernard had sent him to Masada to search for the Blood Gospel, Rhun had been ready to live a cloistered life in the Sanctuary. He was even wearier now.

It is time.

From this moment on, the soaring ceilings of the Sanctuary would be his sky. Lost in meditation, Sanguinist priests would bring him wine, as he had once brought wine to others. He could rest here, in the bosom of the Church that had saved him so many years before. His role as the Knight of Christ was finished, and he did not need to serve the Church again. He was free of those responsibilities now.

Rhun bowed his head as he passed into the domain of the Cloistered Ones. Here his brothers and sisters rested in peace, standing in niches or lying on cold stone, forgoing matters of the flesh for eternal contemplation and reflection. He had been assigned a cell down here, where for an entire year he would not speak, where his prayers would be his own.

But first he stopped and lit a candle before a frieze of a patron saint, one of hundreds of such small moments of worship to be found throughout the Sanctuary. He knelt as the glow of the taper flickered over the features of a robed figure standing under a tree, with birds perched both on the branches and on the saint’s shoulder — St. Francis of Assisi. He bowed his head, remembering Hugh de Payens and the sacrifice he committed to save them and so many others.

Rhun had said his good-byes to Jordan and Erin at the airport this morning, before their flight back to the States, heading to happy lives. They still lived because such heroes had died. Though the hermit had turned his back on the order, Rhun intended that he be honored, if only in this small way.

Thank you, my friend.

He closed his eyes and moved his lips in prayers. After a time, long past the end of vespers, a hand touched his shoulder, as light as the wing of a butterfly.

Rhun turned to a tall, robed figure standing behind him.

Surprised by the visitation, Rhun bowed his head even farther. “You honor me,” he whispered before the Risen One, the first of their order.

“Stand,” Lazarus said, his voice hoarse with age.

Rhun obeyed, but he kept his gaze lowered.

“Why are you here, my son?” Lazarus asked.

Rhun gestured to the silent figures nearby, covered in dust, unmoving as statues. “I have come to share the peace of the Sanctuary.”

“You have given everything to the order,” said Lazarus. “Your life, your soul, and your service. Would you now give the sum of your days?”

“I would. I gave these things willingly to a higher cause. I exist only to serve Him with a simple, honest heart.”

“Yet you came into this life through a lie. You were not meant to serve so. You might have walked a different path, and you might still.”

Rhun lifted his head, hearing not accusation, but only sorrow in the other’s voice. He did not understand. Lazarus turned from him and walked away, drawing Rhun after him.

Lazarus shuffled past the motionless forms of nuns and priests who had come here to seek respite.

“Have I not paid enough for my sins?” Rhun asked, fearing he would be denied such peace.

“You have not sinned,” Lazarus answered. “You have been sinned against.”

Rhun continued after the somber figure, his mind whirling, numbering the sins he had committed in his long life and those that had been committed against him. Yet, he found no enlightenment.

Lazarus led him deeper, to darker halls, where forms were clad in ancient robes, with heads downcast or raised to the ceiling. Rhun had heard of this region, where those who came sought not just eternal reflection but also absolution, reflecting upon the meaning of sin — both their own and those of others.

Rhun looked around, staring at these faces shadowed by mortification.

Why was I brought here?

At last, Lazarus stopped in front of a priest who stood with his face downcast. He wore the simple brown robes that Rhun had donned long ago in his mortal life. Even though he could not see that face, Rhun sensed a familiarity.

It must be one of my brothers from long ago, also retired to a life of contemplation.

Lazarus leaned at the man’s cheek, his breath disturbing the dust atop the figure’s ear.

Finally, the man raised his head — revealing a visage that had haunted Rhun’s nightmares for over four hundred years. Rhun staggered back, as if struck a hard blow.

It cannot be…

Rhun studied the long dark hair, the high pale brow, those full lips. He remembered those lips upon his throat, those teeth in his flesh. He could still taste the man’s blood on his tongue. Even now, his body remembered that bliss. Even now, they were still connected.

Here was the strigoi who had attacked him by his sister’s gravesite, who ripped his soul from his body, ending his life as a mortal. Rhun had thought the beast had been killed. He remembered seeing the creature being dragged away by Sanguinist guards loyal to Bernard.

But now that monster wore the robes of the order.

The man opened his eyes and looked on Rhun with great tenderness. He touched the side of Rhun’s neck, where his teeth had pierced Rhun’s flesh. His fingers lingered there. “I thought I served when I committed this sin upon you.”

“Served? Served whom?”

That arm dropped away, and those eyes drifted closed again, awareness fading. “Forgive me, my son,” the man said, his voice whispering away. “I knew not what I did.”

Rhun waited for more, some words that would make sense of this impossibility.

“He is the symbol for a lie,” Lazarus explained. “The lie that turned you from your pious path of service to a long road of servitude within our order.”

“I don’t understand,” Rhun said. “What is this lie?”

“You must ask Bernard,” Lazarus said, taking Rhun’s elbow and leading him back toward the entrance to the Sanctuary. At the gate, Lazarus ushered him out.

Rhun faltered at the threshold, fearful of leaving the shelter of the Sanctuary, suddenly not wanting to know these last secrets.

But Lazarus blocked the way back, leaving him no choice. “Understand your past, my son, to know your future. Learn who you truly are. Then make your choice of where to spend your days.”

Rhun left. He could not say how his feet found their way up the tunnels to St. Peter’s Basilica, but as he climbed, a picture formed of that night when he was turned, how he had been found by Sanguinists before he could sin, how he was brought before Bernard, and how the cardinal convinced him to forsake his evil nature and lead the life of the Sanguinists.

All paths led back to Bernard.

The words of the man below echoed over and over in Rhun’s head.

I thought I served when I committed this sin upon you.

Rhun knew the meaning behind those words.

Bernard had known of Rhun’s nocturnal visits to his sister’s grave. He had known that Rhun would be out in the night, alone and vulnerable. It was Bernard who had sent one of the order — masquerading as a strigoi—to the graveyard to turn him, to recruit Rhun, to force prophecy into existence, to create the Chosen One, a Sanguinist who had never tasted human blood. Bernard knew from centuries-old prophecies that only a Chosen One of the order could find the lost Blood Gospel.

So Bernard created one.

As understanding grew in him, rage burned through Rhun like a cleansing fire. Bernard had stolen his soul, and Rhun had thanked him for it, a thousand times over.

My whole existence has been a lie.

As if in a dream, Rhun found himself stalking through the Apostolic Palace, toward Bernard’s offices, where the cardinal was still allowed to work while awaiting his trial for his blood sin against Elizabeth. Rhun did not knock when he reached that door. He barged inside like a storm.

Bernard looked up from a desk strewn with papers, his face wide with surprise. The man wore his scarlet cassock, his red gloves, all the trappings of his office.

“Rhun, what has happened?”

Rhun could barely speak, his rage strangling him. “You gave the order that robbed me of my soul.”

Bernard stood. “What are you saying?”

“You commanded the monster who turned me into an abomination. You drove me into Elizabeth’s arms and took her soul. My life, my death, all of this, was engineered by you, to force the will of God. To bend prophecy to your will.”

Rhun watched as Bernard sifted his words carefully, searching how to best answer these accusations.

Finally, Bernard settled on the truth. “Then you know that I was right.”

“Right?” the word burst from Rhun’s lips, ripe with bitterness and pain.

“Now that all of the prophecies have come to pass, would you have had matters go otherwise? You know the price the world would have paid had we failed.”

Rhun shook with fury. Bernard had stripped Rhun from his family, condemned him to an eternity of bloodlust, led him to believe that his only path was service to the Church, and turned the woman he loved from a healer into a killer.

All to save the world on Bernard’s own terms. To fulfill a prophecy that might never have come to pass without his meddling. To keep all the Sanguinists in darkness about their choices beyond the Church, and beyond his control.

To Bernard’s eyes, any sacrifice was worth that end. What was the suffering of one man when the world hung in the balance? One countess? A few hundred Sanguinists?

Disgusted and betrayed, Rhun turned on his heel and left Bernard’s office.

Bernard called after him. “Act not in haste, my son!”

But it was not in haste. His betrayal had been centuries in the making.

Rhun fled into the papal gardens, needing fresh air, the open sky above him. With the night fallen, the air was crisp and cold. Stars swept the skies. A large moon loomed high.

Lazarus had sent him aboveground to learn the truth so that he could freely choose his fate, a choice that Bernard had denied him. Denied him and all other Sanguinists. The truth about Hugh and the Buddhist strigoi had already spread within the order, and others were facing the choice Rhun faced tonight — how and where to spend eternity.

He ran far into the gardens — until a familiar scent reached him.

The lion came bounding over the grounds, a piece of silvery moonlight running over the dark grass, chased by an irritated caretaker.

“Get back here, Nebuchadnezzar!”

The cub raced up to Rhun and hit him hard in the shins, then rubbed furiously at his legs. The lion was scheduled to be taken to Castel Gandolfo tomorrow, to be looked after by Friar Patrick, but it seemed someone had decided she owed the lion at least a final romp in the gardens after saving Tommy’s life.

Elizabeth ran up to him, wearing black jeans, white sneakers, and a crimson sweater under a light jacket. Her hair was loose, curls blowing about her face as a gust wafted through the garden. She had never looked so beautiful.

She swore in Hungarian. “Cursed beast won’t listen.”

“Yet, you gave him a name,” Rhun said. “Nebuchadnezzar.”

“The King of Babylon,” Elizabeth said, combing her hair back, challenging him to make fun of her. “It was Erin’s suggestion. I thought it fitting. And just so you know, I’m taking him with me when I leave.”

“Are you?”

“He shouldn’t be cooped up in some horse stable. He needs open fields, wide skies. He needs the world.”

Rhun stared at her, loving her with all his heart. As he stepped forward and took her hand, her strong fingers intertwined with his. She tilted her face and looked harder at him, perhaps sensing how much he had changed since this morning.

“Show me,” he whispered.

She leaned closer, beginning to understand.

“Show me the world.”

He bent down and kissed her, deeply and fully with no uncertainty. It was not the chaste kiss of a priest.

For he was a priest no longer.