Innocent Blood

1

An edge of panic kept her tense.

As Dr. Erin Granger entered the lecture hall on the Stanford campus, she glanced across its breadth to make sure she was alone. She even crouched and searched under the empty seats, making certain no one was hiding there. She kept one hand on the Glock 19 in her ankle holster.

It was a beautiful winter morning, the sun hanging in a crisp, cloud-studded blue sky. With bright light streaming through the tall windows, she had little to fear from the dark creatures that haunted her nightmares.

Still, after all that had befallen her, she knew that her fellow man was just as capable of evil.

Straightening again, she reached the lectern in front of the classroom and let out a quiet sigh of relief. She knew her fears were illogical, but that didn’t stop her from checking that the hall was safe before her students trooped in. As annoying as college kids could be, she would fight to the death to keep each one of them from harm.

She wouldn’t fail a student again.

Erin’s fingers tightened on the scuffed leather satchel in her hand. She had to force her fingers to open and place her bag next to the lectern. With her gaze still roaming the room, she unbuckled the satchel and pulled out her notes for the lecture. Usually she memorized her presentations, but she had taken over this class for a professor on maternity leave. It was an interesting topic, and it kept her from dwelling on the events that had upended her life, starting with the loss of her two graduate students in Israel a couple of months before.

Heinrich and Amy.

The German student had died from injuries sustained following an earthquake. Amy’s death had come later, murdered because Erin had unwittingly sent forbidden information to her student, knowledge that had gotten the young woman killed.

She rubbed her palms, as if trying to wipe away that blood, that responsibility. The room seemed suddenly colder. It couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees outside and not much warmer in the classroom. Still, the shivers that swept through her as she prepared her papers had nothing to do with the room’s poor heating system.

Returned again to Stanford, she should have felt good to be home, wrapped in the familiar, in the daily routines of a semester winding toward Christmas break.

But she didn’t.

Because nothing was the same.

As she straightened and prepared this morning’s lecture notes, her students arrived in ones and twos, a few climbing down the stairs to the seats in front, but most hanging back and folding down the seats in the uppermost rows.

“Professor Granger?”

Erin glanced to her left and discovered a young man with five silver hoops along one eyebrow approaching her. The student wore a determined expression on his face as he stepped in front of her. He carried a camera with a long lens over one shoulder.

“Yes?” She didn’t bother to mask the irritation in her voice.

He placed a folded slip of paper atop the wooden lectern and slid it toward her.

Behind him, the other students in the room looked on, nonchalant, but they were unconvincing actors. She could tell they watched her, wondering what she would do. She didn’t need to open that slip of paper to know that it contained the young man’s phone number.

“I’m from the Stanford Daily.” He played with a hoop in his eyebrow. “I was hoping for one quick interview for the school newspaper?”

She pushed the slip of paper back toward him. “No, thank you.”

She had refused all interview requests since returning from Rome. She wouldn’t break her silence now, especially as everything she was allowed to say was a lie.

To hide the truth of the tragic events that had left her two students dead, a story had been put out that she had been trapped three days in the Israeli desert, entombed amid the rubble following an earthquake at Masada. According to that false account, she was discovered alive, along with an army sergeant named Jordan Stone and her sole surviving graduate student, Nate Highsmith.

She understood the necessity of a cover story to explain the time she had spent working for the Vatican, a subterfuge that was further supported by an elite few in the government who also knew the truth. The public wasn’t ready for stories of monsters in the night, of the dark underpinnings that supported the world at large.

Still, necessity or not, she had no intention of elaborating on those lies.

The student with the line of eyebrow rings persisted. “I’d let you review the story before I post it. If you don’t like every single bit, we can work with it until you do.”

“I respect your persistence and diligence, but it does not change my answer.” She gestured to the half-full auditorium. “Please, take your seat.”

He hesitated and seemed about to speak again.

She pulled herself up to her full height and fixed him with her sternest glare. She stood only five foot eight, and with her blond hair tied back in a casual ponytail, she didn’t strike as the most intimidating figure.

Still, it was all about the attitude.

Whatever he saw in her eyes drove him back to the gathering students, where he sank quickly into his seat, keeping his face down.

With the matter settled, she tapped her sheaf of notes into a neat pile and drew the class to order. “Thank you all for coming to the final session of History 104: Stripping the Divine from Biblical History. Today we will discuss common misconceptions about a religious holiday that is almost upon us, namely Christmas.”

The bongs of laptops powering up replaced the once familiar sound of rustling paper as students prepared to take notes.

“What do we celebrate on December twenty-fifth?” She let her gaze play across the students — some pierced, a few tattooed, and several who looked hungover. “December twenty-fifth? Anyone? This one’s a gimme.”

A girl wearing a sweatshirt with an embroidered angel on the front raised her hand. “The birth of Christ?”

“That’s right. But when was Christ actually born?”

No one offered an answer.

She smiled, warming past her fears as she settled into her role as teacher. “That’s smart of you all to avoid that trap.” That earned a few chuckles. “The date of Christ’s birth is actually a matter of some dispute. Clement of Alexandria said…”

She continued her lecture. A year ago, she would have said that no one alive today knew the actual date of Christ’s birth. She couldn’t say that anymore, because as part of her adventures in Israel, Russia, and Rome, she had met someone who did know, someone who was alive when Christ was born. In that moment back then, she had realized how much of accepted history was wrong—either masked by ignorance or obscured by purposeful deceptions to hide darker truths.

As an archaeologist, one who sought the history hidden under sand and rock, such a revelation had left her unsettled, unmoored. After returning to the comfortable world of academia, she discovered that she could no longer give the simplest lecture without careful thought. Telling her students the truth, if not the whole truth, had become nearly impossible. Every lecture felt like a lie.

How can I continue walking that line, lying to those I’m supposed to teach the truth?

Still, what choice did she have? After having that door briefly opened, revealing the hidden nature of the world, it had been shut just as soundly.

Not shut. Slammed in my face.

Cut off from those truths hidden behind that door, she was left on the outside, left to wonder what was real and what was false.

Finally, the lecture came to an end. She hurriedly wiped clean the whiteboard, as if trying to erase the falsehoods and half-truths found there. At least, it was over. She congratulated herself on making it through the final lecture of the year. All that was left now was to grade her last papers — then she would be free to face the challenge of Christmas break.

Across that stretch of open days, she pictured the blue eyes and hard planes of a rugged face, the full lips that smiled so easily, the smooth brow under a short fall of blond hair. It would be good to see Sergeant Jordan Stone again. It had been several weeks since she had last seen him in person — though they spoke often over the phone. She wasn’t sure where this relationship was going long term, but she wanted to be there to find out.

Of course, that meant picking out the perfect Christmas gift to express that sentiment. She smiled at that thought.

As she began to erase the last line from the whiteboard, ready to dismiss the students behind her, a cloud smothered the sun, cloaking the classroom in shadow. The eraser froze on the board. She felt momentarily dizzy, then found herself falling away into—

Absolute darkness.

Stone walls pressed her shoulders. She struggled to sit. Her head smashed against stone, and she fell back with a splash. Frantic hands searched a black world.

Stone all around — above, behind, on all sides. Not rough stone as if she were buried under a mountain. But smooth. Polished like glass.

Along the top of the box was a design worked in silver. It scorched her fingertips.

She gulped, and wine filled her mouth. Enough to drown her.

Wine?

A door at the rear of the hall slammed shut, yanking her back into the classroom. She stared at the eraser on the whiteboard, her fingers clutched tightly to it, her knuckles white.

How long have I stood here like this? In front of everyone.

She guessed no more than a few seconds. She’d had bouts like this before over the past few weeks, but never in front of anyone else. She’d dismissed them as posttraumatic stress and had hoped they would go away by themselves, but this last was the most vivid of them all.

She took a deep breath and turned to face her class. They seemed unconcerned, so she couldn’t have been out of it for too long. She must get this under control before something worse happened.

She looked toward the door that had slammed.

A welcome figure stood at the back of the hall. Noting her attention, Nate Highsmith lifted up a large envelope and waved it at her. He smiled apologetically, then headed down the classroom in cowboy boots, a hitch in his step a reminder of the torture he had endured last fall.

She tightened her lips. She should have protected him better. And Heinrich. And most especially Amy. If Erin hadn’t exposed the young woman to danger, she might still be alive today. Amy’s parents wouldn’t be spending their first Christmas without their daughter. They had never wanted Amy to be an archaeologist. It was Erin who finally convinced them to let her come along on the dig in Israel. As the senior field researcher, Erin had assured them their daughter would be safe.

In the end, she had been terribly, horribly wrong.

She tilted her boot to feel the reassuring bulge of the gun against her ankle. She wouldn’t get caught flat-footed again. No more innocents would die on her watch.

She cleared her throat and returned her attention to the class. “That wraps it up, folks. You’re all dismissed. Enjoy your winter holidays.”

While the room emptied, she forced herself to stare out the window at the bright sky, trying to chase away the darkness left from her vision a moment ago.

Nate finally reached her as the class cleared out. “Professor.” He sounded worried. “I have a message for you.”

“What message?”

“Two of them, actually. The first one is from the Israeli government. They’ve finally released our data from the dig site in Caesarea.”

“That’s terrific.” She tried to fuel her words with enthusiasm, but failed. If nothing else, Amy and Heinrich would get some credit for their last work, an epitaph for their short lives. “What’s the second message?”

“It’s from Cardinal Bernard.”

Surprised, she faced Nate more fully. For weeks, she had attempted to reach the cardinal, the head of the Order of Sanguines in Rome. She’d even considered flying to Italy and staking out his apartments in Vatican City.

“About time he returned my calls,” she muttered.

“He wanted you to phone him at once,” Nate said. “Sounded like an emergency.”

Erin sighed in exasperation. Bernard had ignored her for two months, but now he needed something from her. She had a thousand questions for him — concerns and thoughts that had built up over the past weeks since returning from Rome. She glanced to the whiteboard, eyeing the half-erased line. She had questions about those visions, too.

Were these episodes secondary to posttraumatic stress? Was she reliving the times that she spent trapped under Masada?

But if so, why do I keep tasting wine?

She shook her head to clear it and pointed to his hand. “What’s in the envelope?”

“It’s addressed to you.” He handed it to her.

It weighed too much to contain just a letter. Erin scanned the return address.

Israel.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she slit open the top with her pen.

Nate noted how her hand quivered and looked concerned. She knew he was talking to a counselor about his own PTSD. They were two wounded survivors with secrets that could not be fully spoken aloud.

Shaking the envelope, she slid out a single sheet of typewritten paper and an object about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. Her heart sank as she recognized the object.

Even Nate let out a small gasp and took a step back.

She didn’t have that luxury. She read the enclosed page quickly. It was from the Israeli security forces. They had determined that the enclosed artifact was no longer relevant to the closed investigation of their case, and they hoped that she would give it to its rightful owner.

She cradled the polished chunk of amber in her palm, as if it were the most precious object in the world. Under the dull fluorescent light, it looked like little more than a shiny brown rock, but it felt warmer to the touch. Light reflected off its surface, and in the very center, a tiny dark feather hung motionless, preserved across thousands of years, a moment of time frozen forever in amber.

“Amy’s good luck charm,” Nate mumbled, swallowing hard. He had been there when Amy was murdered. He kept his eyes averted from the tiny egg of amber.

Erin placed a hand on Nate’s elbow in sympathy. In fact, the talisman was more than Amy’s good luck charm. One day out at the dig, Amy had explained to Erin that she had found the amber on a beach as a little girl, and she’d been fascinated by the feather imprisoned inside, wondering where it had come from, picturing the wing from which it might have fallen. The amber captured her imagination as fully as it had the feather. It was what sparked Amy’s desire to study archaeology.

Erin gazed at the amber in her palm, knowing that this tiny object had led not only to Amy’s field of study — but also to her death.

Her fingers closed tightly over the smooth stone, squeezing her determination, making herself a promise.

Never again…

2

Sergeant Jordan Stone felt like a fraud as he marched in his dress blues. Today he would bury the last member of his former team — a young man named Corporal Sanderson. Like his other teammates, Sanderson’s body had never been found.

After a couple of months of searching through the tons of rubble that had once been the mountain of Masada, the military gave up. Sanderson’s empty coffin pressed hard against Jordan’s hip as he marched in step with the other pallbearers.

A December snowstorm had blanketed the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, covering brown grass and gathering atop the branches of leafless trees. Snow mounded across the arched tops of marble grave markers, more markers than he could count. Each grave was numbered, most bore names, and all these soldiers had been laid to rest with honor and dignity.

One of them was his wife, Karen, killed in action more than a year before. There hadn’t been enough of her to bury, just her dog tags. Her coffin was as empty as Sanderson’s. Some days Jordan couldn’t believe that she was gone, that he would never bring her flowers again and get a long slow kiss of thanks. Instead, the only flowers he would ever give her would go on her grave. He had placed red roses there before he headed to Sanderson’s funeral.

He pictured Sanderson’s freckled face. His young teammate had been eager to please, taken his job seriously, and done his best. In return, he got a lonely death on a mountaintop in Israel. Jordan tightened his grip on the cold casket handle, wishing that the mission had ended differently.

A few more steps past the bare trees and he and his companions carried the casket into a frigid chapel. He felt more at home within these simple white walls than he had in the lavish churches of Europe. Sanderson would have been more comfortable here, too.

Sanderson’s mother and sister waited for them inside. They wore nearly identical black dresses and thin formal shoes despite the snow and cold. Both had Sanderson’s fair complexion, with faces freckled brown even in winter. Their noses and eyes were red.

They missed him.

He wished they didn’t have to.

Beside them, his commanding officer, Captain Stanley, stood at attention. The captain had been at Jordan’s left hand for all the funerals, his lips compressed in a thin line as coffins went into the ground. Good soldiers, every one.

He was a by-the-book commander and had handled Jordan’s debriefing faultlessly. In turn, Jordan did his best to stick to the lie that the Vatican had prepared: the mountain had collapsed in an earthquake, and everyone died. He and Erin had been in a corner that hadn’t collapsed and were rescued three days later by a Vatican search party.

Simple enough.

It was untrue. And unfortunately, he was a bad liar, and his CO suspected that he hadn’t revealed everything that had happened in Masada or after his rescue.

Jordan had already been taken off active duty and assigned psychiatric counseling. Someone was watching him all the time, waiting to see if he would crack up. What he wanted most was to simply get back out in the field and do his job. As a member of the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facility in Afghanistan, he’d worked and investigated military crime scenes. He was good at it, and he wanted to do it again.

Anything to keep busy, to keep moving.

Instead, he stood at attention beside yet another coffin, the cold from the marble floor seeping into his toes. Sanderson’s sister shivered next to him. He wished he could give her his uniform jacket.

He listened to the military chaplain’s somber tones more than his words. The priest had only twenty minutes to get through the ceremony. Arlington had many funerals every day, and they set a strict schedule.

He soon found himself outside of the chapel and at the gravesite. He had done this march so many times that his feet found their way to this grave without much thought. Sanderson’s casket rested on snow-dusted brown earth beside a draped hole.

A cold wind blew across the snow, curling flakes on the surface into tendrils, like cirrus clouds, the kind of high clouds so common in the desert where Sanderson had died. Jordan waited through the rest of the ceremony, listened to the three-rifle volley, the bugler playing “Taps,” and watched the chaplain give the folded flag to Sanderson’s mother.

Jordan had endured the same scene for each of his lost teammates.

It hadn’t gotten any easier.

At the end, Jordan shook Sanderson’s mother’s hand. It felt cold and frail, and he worried that he might break it. “I am deeply sorry for your loss. Corporal Sanderson was a fine soldier, and a good man.”

“He liked you.” His mother offered him a sad smile. “He said you were smart and brave.”

Jordan worked his frozen face to match that smile. “That’s good to hear, ma’am. He was smart and brave himself.”

She blinked back tears and turned away. He moved to take a step after her, although he didn’t know what he would say, but before he could, the chaplain laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I believe we have business to discuss, Sergeant.”

Turning, Jordan examined the young chaplain. The man wore dress blues just like Jordan’s uniform, except that he had crosses sewn onto the lapels of his jacket. Looking closer now, Jordan saw his skin was too white, even for winter, his brown hair a trifle too long, his posture not quite military. As the chaplain stared back at him, his green eyes didn’t blink.

The short hairs rose on the back of Jordan’s neck.

The chill of the chaplain’s hand seeped through his glove. It wasn’t like a hand that had been out too long on a cold day. It was like a hand that hadn’t been warm for years.

Jordan had met many of his ilk before. What stood before him was an undead predator, a vampiric creature called a strigoi. But for this one to be out in daylight, he must be a Sanguinist — a strigoi who had taken a vow to stop drinking human blood, to serve the Catholic Church and sustain himself only on Christ’s blood — or more exactly, on wine consecrated by holy sacrament into His blood.

Such an oath made this creature less dangerous.

But not much.

“I’m not so sure that we have any business left,” Jordan said.

He shifted away from the chaplain and squared off, ready to fight if need be. He had seen Sanguinists battle. No doubt this slight chaplain could take him out, but that didn’t mean Jordan would go down easy.

Captain Stanley moved between them and cleared his throat. “It’s been cleared all the way up to the top, Sergeant Stone.”

“What has, sir?”

“He will explain everything,” the captain answered, gesturing to the chaplain. “Go with him.”

“And if I refuse?” Jordan held his breath, hoping for a good answer.

“It’s an order, Sergeant.” He gave Jordan a level glare. “It’s being handled way above my pay grade.”

Jordan suppressed a groan. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Captain Stanley quirked one tiny corner of his mouth, equivalent to a belly laugh from a jollier man. “That I believe, Sergeant.”

Jordan saluted, wondering if it was for the last time, and followed the chaplain to a black limousine parked at the curb. It seemed the Sanguinists had barreled into his life again, ready to kick apart the rubble of his career with their immortal feet.

The chaplain held open the door for him, and Jordan climbed in. The interior smelled like leather and brandy and expensive cigars. It wasn’t what one expected from a priest’s vehicle.

Jordan slid across the seat. The glass partition had been rolled up, and all he saw of the driver was the back of a thick neck, short blond hair, and a uniform cap.

The chaplain lifted his pant legs to preserve the crease before sliding in. With one hand, he closed the door with a dignified thump, trapping Jordan inside with him.

“Please turn up the heat for our guest,” the chaplain called to the driver. Then he unbuttoned the jacket of his dress blue uniform and leaned back.

“I believe my CO said that you would explain everything.” Jordan folded his arms. “Go ahead.”

“That’s a tall order.” The young chaplain poured a brandy. He brought the glass to his nose and inhaled. With a sigh, he lowered the glass and offered it toward Jordan. “It’s quite a fine vintage.”

“Then you drink it.”

The chaplain swirled the brandy in the glass, his eyes following the brown liquid. “I think you know that I can’t, as much as I’d like to.”

“About that explanation?” he pressed.

The chaplain raised a hand, and the car slid into motion. “Sorry about all this cloak-and-dagger business. Or perhaps robe-and-cross might be the more apt term?”

He smiled wistfully as he sniffed again at the brandy.

Jordan frowned at the guy’s mannerisms. He certainly seemed less stuffy and formal than the other Sanguinists he had met.

The chaplain took off his white glove and held out his hand. “Name’s Christian.”

Jordan ignored the invitation.

Realizing this, the chaplain lifted his hand and ran his fingers through his thick hair. “Yes, I appreciate the irony. A Sanguinist named Christian. It’s like my mother planned it.”

The man snorted.

Jordan wasn’t quite sure what to make of this Sanguinist.

“I think we almost met back in Ettal Abbey,” the chaplain said. “But Rhun picked Nadia and Emmanuel to fill out the rest of his trio back in Germany.”

Jordan pictured Nadia’s dark features and Emmanuel’s darker attitude.

Christian shook his head. “Hardly a surprise, I suppose.”

“Why’s that?”

The other raised an eyebrow. “I believe I’m not sackcloth and ashes enough for Father Rhun Korza.”

Jordan fought down a grin. “I can see how that would bug him.”

Christian set the brandy in a tray near the door and leaned forward, his green eyes serious. “Actually Father Korza is the reason I’m here.”

“He sent you?”

Somehow Jordan couldn’t picture that. He doubted Rhun wanted anything more to do with Jordan. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

“Not exactly.” Christian rested skinny elbows on his knees. “Cardinal Bernard is trying to keep it quiet, but Rhun has disappeared without a word.”

Figures… the guy was hardly the forthcoming sort.

“Has he contacted you since you left Rome in October?” Christian asked.

“Why would he contact me?”

He tilted his head to one side. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“I hate him.” Jordan saw no point in lying. “He knows it.”

“Rhun is a difficult man to like,” Christian admitted, “but what did he do to make you hate him?”

“Besides almost killing Erin?”

Christian’s eyebrows drew down in concern. “I thought he saved her life… and yours.”

Jordan’s jaw tightened. He remembered Erin limp on the floor, her skin white, her hair soaked with blood.

“Rhun bit her,” Jordan explained harshly. “He drained her and left her to die in the tunnels under Rome. If Brother Leopold and I hadn’t come upon her when we did, she’d be dead.”

“Father Korza fed upon Erin?” Christian rocked back, surprise painted on his face. He scrutinized Jordan for several seconds without speaking, plainly floored by the revelation of this sin. “Are you certain? Perhaps—”

“They both admitted it. Erin and Rhun.” Jordan folded his arms. “I’m not the one lying here.”

Christian raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt you. It’s just that this is… unusual.”

“Not for Rhun it’s not.” He put his hands on his knees. “Your golden boy has slipped before.”

“Only once. And Elizabeth Bathory was centuries ago.” Christian picked up the glass of brandy and studied it. “So you’re saying that Brother Leopold knew all about this?”

“He certainly did.”

Apparently Leopold must have covered for Rhun. Jordan felt disappointment, but not surprise. The Sanguinists stuck together.

“He fed on her…” Christian stared at the glass as if he might find the answer there. “That means Rhun is full of her blood.”

Jordan shuddered, disturbed by that thought.

“That changes everything. We must go to her. Now.” Christian leaned over and rapped on the partition to gain the driver’s attention. “Take us to the airport! At once!”

Instantly obeying, the driver accelerated the car, its bottom scraping when it crested a hill and headed out of the cemetery.

Christian glanced to Jordan. “We’ll part ways at the airport. You can get home from there on your own, correct?”

“I could,” he agreed. “But if Erin is involved in any of this, I’m going with you.”

Christian drew in a long breath and let it out. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and punched in numbers. “I’m sure Cardinal Bernard gave you the whole speech last time about your life and soul being in danger if you involve yourself in our affairs?”

“He did.”

“Then let’s save time and pretend I gave it again.” Christian lifted the phone to his ear. “Right now I must charter a plane to California.”

“So you don’t object to me going with you?”

“You love Erin, and you want to protect her. Who am I to stand in the way of that?”

For a dead guy, Christian was turning out to be okay.

Still, as the limousine sped across the snow-swept city, Jordan’s anxiety grew sharper with every passing mile.

Erin was in danger.

Again.

And likely all because of the actions of Rhun Korza.

Maybe it would be better if that bastard stayed lost.

3

Cardinal Bernard rearranged the newspapers atop his polished desk, as if organizing them into neat lines might change the words they contained. Horrifying headlines screamed from the pages:

Candlelight reflected off the bejeweled globe next to his desk. He turned the ancient sphere slowly, longing to be anywhere but here. He glanced at his antique books, his scrolls, his sword on the wall from the time of the Crusades — items he had collected during his centuries of service to the Church.

I have served long, but have I served well?

The smell of newspaper ink pulled his attention back to the pages. The details disturbed him further. Each woman had her throat sliced open, and her body drained of blood. They were all beautiful and young, with black hair and blue eyes. They came from every station in life, but they had all died in the oldest quarters of Rome, in the darkest hours between sunset and sunrise.

Twenty in all, according to the newspapers.

But Bernard had managed to conceal many more deaths. It amounted to a victim claimed nearly every day since the end of October.

He could not escape the timing.

The end of October.

The deaths had started just after the battle waged in the crypts below St. Peter’s Basilica, a fight for possession of the Blood Gospel. The Sanguinists had won that battle against the Belial, a joint force of humans and strigoi, led by an unknown leader who continued to plague his order.

Shortly after that battle, Father Rhun Korza had vanished.

Where was he? What had he done?

Bernard shied away from that thought.

He eyed the pile of newspapers. Had a rogue strigoi escaped that battle and hunted the streets of Rome, preying on these young girls? There had been so many beasts in the tunnels. One could have slipped through their net.

A part of him prayed that was true.

He dared not consider the alternative. That fear kept him waiting, indecisive, as more innocent girls died.

A hand tapped on the door. “Cardinal?”

He recognized the voice and the sluggish heartbeat that belonged to it.

“Come in, Father Ambrose.”

The human priest opened the wooden door with one hand, his other clasped in a loose fist. “I am sorry to disturb you.”

The assistant did not sound sorry. In fact, his voice rang with ill-disguised glee. While Ambrose clearly loved him and served the cardinal’s office diligently, there remained a petty streak in the man that found perverse enjoyment in the misfortunes of others.

Bernard stifled a sigh. “Yes?”

Ambrose entered the office. His plump body leaned forward like a hound on a scent. He glanced around the candlelit room, probably making certain that Bernard was alone. How Ambrose loved his secrets. But then again, maybe that was why the man so loved Bernard. After so many centuries, his own veins ran as much with secrets as with black blood.

Finally satisfied, his assistant bowed his head in deference. “Our people found this at the site of the most recent murder.”

Ambrose stepped to his desk and held out his arm. Slowly, he turned his hand over and uncurled his fingers.

In his palm rested a knife. Its curved blade resembled a tiger’s claw. The sharp hook bore a hole in one end, where a warrior could thread a finger through, allowing its wielder to whip the blade into a thousand deadly cuts. It was an ancient weapon called a karambit, one that traced its roots back centuries. And from the patina that burnished its surface, this particular blade was ancient — but this was no museum piece. It was plainly battle scarred and well used.

Bernard took it from Ambrose’s hand. The heat against his fingertips confirmed his worst fear. The blade was plated with silver, the weapon of a Sanguinist.

He pictured the faces of the murdered girls, of their throats sliced from ear to ear.

He closed his fingers over the burning silver.

Of all the holy order, only one Sanguinist carried such a weapon, the man who had vanished as the murders began.

Rhun Korza.

4

Astride her favorite horse, Erin cantered across meadows turned golden brown by the dry California winter. Responding to the slightest shift of her weight, the black gelding lengthened his stride.

Attaboy, Blackjack.

She kept her horse boarded at a set of stables outside of Palo Alto. She rode him whenever she got a chance, knowing he needed the exercise, but mostly for the pure joy of flying over fields atop the muscular steed. Blackjack hadn’t been ridden in a few days and was bouncy with energy.

She glanced back over a shoulder. Nate rode not far behind her, atop a gray named Gunsmoke. Growing up in Texas, he was a skilled rider himself and was clearly testing the mare.

She simply let Blackjack run out his high spirits, trying to concentrate on the wind across her face, the heady smell of horse, the easy connection between herself and her mount. She had loved riding ever since she was a little girl. It helped her think. Today she wondered about her visions, trying to figure out what to do about them. She knew they weren’t just PTSD. They meant something more.

In front of her, the edge of the sun touched the top of rolling hills.

“We should head back soon!” Nate called to her. “Sun will be down in another half hour!”

She heard the trace of anxiety in his voice. Back in Rome, Nate had been trapped in darkness for days, tortured in those shadows. Night probably held a certain terror for him.

Recognizing this now, she knew she shouldn’t have agreed to let him come along. But, earlier in the afternoon, after failing to reach Cardinal Bernard by phone, she had headed out of her office to burn off some of her anxiety. Nate had asked her where she was going, and foolishly she had allowed him to accompany her.

These last months, she had trouble saying no to him. After the tragic events in Israel and Rome, he continued to struggle, even more than she did, although he rarely spoke about it. She tried to be there for him, to help him bear the memories that had been thrust upon him. It was the least that she could do.

In the past, their relationship had been an easygoing one — as long as she pretended not to notice his attraction to her. But since she had fallen for Jordan, Nate had retreated into remote professionalism. But was it because of hurt feelings, anger, or something else?

Sadly, after tonight, it probably wouldn’t matter.

She inwardly sighed. Maybe it was just as well that Nate had accompanied her on this ride. This moment offered her the perfect opportunity to speak to him in private.

She slowed Blackjack with a slight tension on the reins. Nate drew alongside her with Gunsmoke. He grinned at her, which broke off a piece of her heart. But he had to be told. Better to tell him now, before Christmas break, to give him time to get used to the idea.

She took a deep breath. “Nate, there’s something I want to talk about.”

Nate tilted his straw Stetson up and looked sidelong at her. Their horses walked side by side on the wide path. “What is it?”

“I talked to the dean this morning. I suggested the names of other professors whom you might be interested in working with.”

His eyebrows pinched with concern. “Did I do something wrong? It’s been tough since we got back, but—”

“Your work has always been excellent. It’s not about you.”

“Feels like it might be, seeing as how I’m involved and all.”

She kept her eyes focused between her horse’s soft black ears. “After what happened in Israel… I’m not so certain I’m the best choice for you.”

He reached for Blackjack’s bridle and slowed both horses to a stop. “What are you talking about?”

Erin faced him. He appeared both worried and angry. “Look, Nate. The university isn’t happy that I lost two grad students.”

“Hardly your fault.”

She talked over him. “The dean feels that it might be best if I took a sabbatical to clear my head.”

“So I’ll wait.” Nate folded his hands atop his saddle horn. “Not a problem.”

“You don’t understand.” She fiddled with her reins, wanting to snap them and flee this conversation on horseback, but she let the hard truth hold her in place. “Nate, I think this is the first step toward the university letting me go.”

His mouth dropped open.

She spoke quickly, getting it all out. “You don’t need your dissertation tied to a professor about to be booted out. You’re a brilliant scientist, Nate, and I’m sure we can find you a more suitable adviser — someone who can open doors for you that I can’t anymore.”

“But—”

“I appreciate your loyalty,” she said. “But it’s misguided.”

Outrage flared from him. “Like hell it is!”

“Nate, it won’t help me if you stay. Whatever is going to happen to my career will happen.”

“But I picked you as my adviser because you’re the best in your field.” The anger drained from him, leaving him sagging in the saddle. “The very best. And that hasn’t changed.”

“Who knows? This may blow over in time.”

Truthfully, Erin didn’t expect it would, and down deep, she wasn’t even sure she wanted it to. Earlier in her career, academia had offered her a haven of rationality after her strict religious upbringing, but it didn’t feel like enough anymore. She remembered her difficulty with her classes this past semester. She couldn’t keep teaching lies.

And she couldn’t be any less truthful with Nate now.

“Even if it does blow over,” she said, “you will have lost valuable opportunities while it does. I won’t let that happen.”

Nate looked ready to argue, to protest. Perhaps sensing his stress, his mare tossed her head and danced slightly on her forelegs.

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” she finished.

Nate rubbed his top lip, unable to look at her. Finally, he shook his head, turned Gunsmoke, and galloped away without a word, heading back toward the stable.

Blackjack whinnied after them, but she held the horse firm, knowing Nate needed some time alone. She gave them a good lead before letting Blackjack walk back along the trail.

The last rays of the day finally slipped behind the hill, but enough light remained to keep Blackjack from stepping into a gopher hole. Uncomfortable, she shifted on the horse. She felt Amy’s lucky charm in her front pants pocket. She had forgotten she had put it there, still unsure what to do with it. She had considered returning it to Amy’s parents, but would that be doing them any favors? The chunk of amber would always be a reminder that their daughter had chosen a profession that ended up killing her, her blood spilling away on foreign sands.

Erin couldn’t do that to them — nor did she want to keep the talisman herself, this heavy token of her role in Amy’s death.

Still not knowing what to do with it, she turned her thoughts back to Nate. Back in Rome, she had saved Nate’s life, and now she would do what she could to save his career, no matter how angry that made him. Hopefully Nate would be more resigned to her request by the time she got to the stable. Either way, she would send him an e-mail later this evening with her list of names. They were solid archaeologists, and her recommendation would carry weight with them.

Nate would be all right.

And the farther he got away from her, the better off he would be.

Resigned and resolved, she patted Blackjack’s neck. “Let’s get you some oats and a good rubdown. How’d you like that?”

Blackjack’s ear flicked back. He suddenly tensed under her.

Without thinking, she tightened her knees.

Blackjack snorted and danced sideways, rolling his eyes.

Something had him spooked.

Erin took in the open grasslands with one quick sweep. To her right stretched a shadowy stand of live oaks, their branches hung with clouds of silvery mistletoe. Anything could be hidden inside there.

From the tree line, she heard crack! as the snap of a twig cut across the quiet evening.

She drew her pistol from the ankle holster and clicked off the safety, searching the live oaks for a target. But it was too dark to see anything. With her heart thundering in her ears, she cast a glance toward the distant stables.

Nate was probably there by now.

Blackjack suddenly reared, almost tossing her from the saddle. She leaned low over his neck as he tore away toward the stables. She didn’t try to slow or stop him.

Fear tightened her vision, while she struggled to search in all directions. She tasted blood on her tongue as she bit her lip.

Then the smell of wine filled her nostrils.

No, no, no…

She fought to keep from slipping away, sensing another attack coming on. Panic tightened her grip on Blackjack’s reins. If she lost control now, she’d pitch to the ground.

Then came a worse terror.

A low growl rumbled out of the night, rolling across the hills toward her. The guttural cry rose from no natural throat, but something horrid—

— and close.

5

Rhun lurched up and away. His head smashed against smooth stone. The blow opened a wound on his temple and knocked him back into the scalding bath of wine with a splash. He had awakened like this many times, trapped inside a stone sarcophagus, his body half submerged in wine — wine that had been blessed and consecrated into Christ’s blood.

His cursed flesh burned in that holiness, floating in a sea of red pain. Part of him wanted to fight it, but another part of him knew that he had earned it. He had sinned centuries ago, and now he had found his true penance.

But how much time had passed?

Hours, days, years?

The pain refused to abate. He had sinned much, so he must be punished much. Then he could rest. His body craved rest — an end to pain, an end to sin.

Still, as he felt himself slipping away, he fought against it, sensing he must not surrender. He had a duty.

But to what?

He forced his eyes to stay open, to face a blackness even his preternatural vision could not pierce. Agony continued to rack his weakened body, but he beat it back with faith.

He reached a hand for the heavy silver cross he always wore on his breast — and found only wet cloth. He remembered. Someone had stolen his crucifix, his rosary, all the proofs of his faith. But he did not need them to reach the heavens. He breathed another prayer into the silence and pondered his fate.

Where am I? When…

He had a weight of years behind him, more than humans could fathom.

Lifetimes of sin and service.

The memories plagued him as he hung within that burning sea. He drifted into and out of them.

… a horse cart stuck in the mud. He shoved bark under the wooden wheels while his sister laughed at him, her long braids flying from side to side.

… a gravestone with a woman’s name on it. That same laughing sister. But this time he wore the garb of a priest.

… gathering lavender in a field and talking of court intrigues. Pale white hands placed the purple stalks into a handwoven basket.

… trains, automobiles, airplanes. Traveling ever faster across the surface of the earth, while seeing ever less.

… a woman with golden hair and amber eyes, eyes that saw what his could not.

He pulled free of the crush of these memories.

Only this moment mattered.

Only this place.

He must hold on to the pain, to his body.

He felt around, his hands plunging into cold liquid that burned as if it boiled. He was a Knight of Christ, ever since that moonlit evening he had visited his sister’s grave. And while Christ’s blood had sustained him over the long centuries since, the same consecrated wine blazed against him always, its holiness at war with the evil deep inside him.

He took a deep breath, smelling stone and his own blood. He stretched his arms and ran his palms along the polished surfaces around him. He stroked the marble — slick as glass. Across the roof of his prison, his fingertips found a tracery of inlaid silver. It burned his fingertips.

Still, he pressed his palms to that design and pushed against the sarcophagus’s stone lid. He vaguely sensed he had done this many times before — and like those prior attempts, he failed again. The weight would not be shifted.

Weakened by even this small effort, he collapsed limply back into the wine.

He cupped his hands and lifted the scalding bitter liquid to his lips. The blood of Christ would lend him strength, but it would also force him to relive his worst sins. Steadying himself against the penance that must follow, he drank. As his throat burned with fire, he folded his hands in prayer.

Which of his sins would the wine torture him with this time?

As he drifted into it, he realized his penance was revealing a sin that was hundreds of years old.

The servants of Čachtice Castle huddled outside the steel door of the windowless tower room. Inside, their former mistress had been imprisoned, charged with the deaths of hundreds of young girls. As a member of Hungarian nobility, the countess could not be executed, only shut off from the world for her crimes, where her bloodlust could be bottled up behind brick and steel.

Rhun had come here for one purpose: to rid the world of this creature, to atone for his role in her transformation from a woman of sweet spirit, one skilled in the healing arts, into a beast who ravaged the surrounding countryside, stripping young girls of their lives.

He stood before the countess now, locked inside the room with her. He had bought the servants’ silence with gold and promises of freedom. They wanted her gone from the castle as much as he.

They, too, knew what she was and cowered outside.

Rhun had also arrived with a gift for the countess, something she had demanded to gain her cooperation. To appease her, he had found a young girl, sick with fever, soon to die, in a neighboring orphanage, and brought her to this monster.

Standing beside the prison cot, Rhun listened as the young girl’s heart stumbled and slowed. He did nothing to save her. He could not. He must wait. He hated himself, but he remained still.

At last, the weak heart stuttered its final beat.

You will be the last one she kills, he promised.

Near to death herself, starved for so long in this prison, the countess raised her head from the girl’s throat. Pearls of blood dripped from her white chin. Her silver eyes held a dreamy and sated look, an expression he had seen there once before. He would not dwell on that. He prayed that she was distracted enough for him to end this, and that he would be strong enough to do so.

He could not fail again.

He bent to the cot, untangled her thin limbs from the dead girl. He gently lifted the countess’s cold form in his arms and carried her away from the soiled bed.

She leaned her cheek against his, her lips near his ear. “It is good to be in your arms again,” she whispered, and he believed her. Her silver eyes shone up at him. “Will you break your vows once more?”

She favored him with a slow, lazy smile, mesmerizingly beautiful. He responded, trapped for a moment by her charm.

He remembered his love for her, how in a moment of hubris he had believed himself capable of breaking his vow as a Sanguinist, that he could lie with her like any ordinary man. But in his lust of that moment, locked to her, inside her, he had lost control and let the demon in him burst its bonds. Teeth ripped her soft throat and drank deeply until that font was nearly empty, the woman under him at death’s door. To save her, he had turned her into a monster, fed her his own blood to keep her with him, praying she would take the same vows he did and join the Sanguinist order alongside him.

She did not.

A rustle on the far side of the thick door brought his thoughts back to this room, to the dead girl on the bed, to the many others who had shared her fate.

He knocked on the door with the toe of his boot, and the servants unlocked the way. He shouldered it open as they fled down the dark stairs of the tower.

Left behind in their wake, placed outside the door, a marble sarcophagus rested atop the rush-covered floor. Earlier, he had filled the coffin with consecrated wine and left it open.

Seeing what awaited her, she raised her head, dazed by bloodlust. “Rhun?”

“It will save you,” he said. “And your soul.”

“I don’t want my soul saved,” she said, her fingers clutching to him.

Before she could fight him, he lifted her over the open sarcophagus and plunged her down into wine. She screamed when the consecrated wine first touched her skin. He set his jaw, knowing how it must pain her, wanting even now to take the agony from her and claim it for himself.

She thrashed under his hands, but in her weakened state, she was no match for his strength. Wine splashed over the sides. He forced her against the stone bottom, ignoring the fiery burn of the wine. He was glad he could not see her face, drowned under that red tide.

He held her there — until at last, she lay quiet.

She would now sleep until such a time as he could find a way to reverse what he had done, to return life to her dead heart.

With tears in his eyes, he fitted the heavy stone lid in place and secured it with silver straps. Once done, he rested his cold palms against the marble and prayed for her soul.

And his own.

Slowly Rhun returned to himself. He remembered fully how he had come to be here, imprisoned in the same sarcophagus he had used to trap the countess centuries ago. He recalled returning to his sarcophagus, to where he had entombed the coffin inside a bricked-up vault far beneath Vatican City, hiding his secret from all eyes.

He had come here upon the words of a prophecy.

It seemed the countess still had a role to play in this world.

Following the battle for the Blood Gospel, he had ventured alone to where he had buried his greatest sin. He had hammered through the bricks, broken the seals of the sarcophagus, and decanted her from this bath of ancient wine. He pictured her silver eyes opening for the first time in centuries, gazing into his. For that brief moment, he allowed his defenses to fall, slipping back to long-ago summers, to a time when he dared to believe that he could become more than what he was, that one such as he could love without destruction.

In that lapse, he had failed to see the shattered brick clutched in her hand. He moved too slowly as she swung the hard rock with a hatred that spanned centuries — or perhaps he simply knew he deserved it.

Then he awoke here, and now he finally knew the truth.

She sentenced me to this same prison.

While a part of him knew he deserved this fate, he knew he must escape.

If for no other reason than that he had loosed this monster once again upon the unsuspecting world.

Still, he pictured her as he once knew her, so full of life, always in sunlight. He had always called her Elisabeta, but history now christened her by another name, a darker epitaph.

Elizabeth Bathory—the Blood Countess.

As befit her noble station, the apartment Elisabeta had chosen was luxurious. Thick red velvet drapes cloaked tall arched windows. The oak floor beneath her cold feet glowed a soft gold and breathed warmth. She settled into a leather chair, the hide finely tanned, with the comforting scent of the long dead animal under the chemical smell.

On the mahogany table in front of her, a white taper sputtered, near to expiring. She held a fresh candle to its dying flame. Once the wick caught fire, she pressed the tall taper into the soft wax of the old one. She leaned close to the small flame, preferring firelight to the harsh glare that blazed in modern Rome.

She had claimed these rooms after killing the former tenants. Afterward, she had ransacked drawers full of unfamiliar objects, trying to fathom this strange century, attempting to piece together a lost civilization by studying its artifacts.

But her clues to this age were not all to be found in drawers.

Across the table, candlelight flickered over uneven piles, each gathered from the pockets and bodies of her past kills. She turned her attention to a stack crowned by a silver cross. She reached toward it but kept her fingers from the fiery heat of the metal and the blessing it carried.

She let a single fingertip caress the silver. It burned her, but she did not care — for another suffered far more because of its loss.

She smiled, the pain drawing her into memory.

Strong arms had lifted her from the coffin of wine, pulling her from her slumber, awakening her. Like any threatened beast, she had stayed limp, knowing stealth to be her best advantage.

As her eyes opened, she recognized her benefactor as much from his white Roman collar as from his dark eyes and hard face.

Father Rhun Korza.

It was the same man who had tricked her into this coffin.

But how long ago?

As he held her, she let her arm fall to the ground. The back of her hand came to rest against a loose stone.

She smiled up at him. He smiled back, love in his shining eyes.

With unearthly speed, she smashed the stone against his temple. Her other hand slipped up his sleeve, where he always kept his silver knife. She palmed it before he dropped her. Another blow, and he fell.

She quickly rolled atop him, her teeth seeking the cold flesh of his white throat. Once she pierced his skin, his fate lay at her mercy. It took strength to stop drinking before she killed him, patience to empty half the wine from the coffin before she sealed him inside it. But she must. Fully immersed in wine, he would merely sleep until rescued, as she had done.

Instead, she had left only a little wine, knowing he would soon wake in his lonely tomb and slowly starve, as she had while imprisoned in her castle tower.

Lifting her finger from his stolen cross, she allowed herself a moment of cold satisfaction. As she moved her arm, her fingers dragged over a battered shoe atop another pile.

This tiny bit of leather marked her first kill in this new age.

She savored that moment.

As she fled the dark catacombs — blind to where she was, when she was — rough stones cut through the thin leather soles of her shoes and sliced her feet. She paid them no heed. She had this one chance of escape.

She knew not where she ran to, but she recognized the feel of holy ground underfoot. It weakened her muscles and slowed her steps. Still, she felt more powerful than she ever had. Her time in the wine had strengthened her, how much she only dared to guess.

Then the sound of a heartbeat had stopped her headlong flight through the dark tunnels.

Human.

The heart thrummed steady and calm. It had not yet sensed her presence. Faint with hunger, she rested her back against the tunnel wall. She licked her lips, tasting the Sanguinist’s bitter blood. She lusted to savor something sweeter, hotter.

The flicker of a faraway candle lightened the darkness. She heard the pad of shoes drawing nearer.

Then a name was called. “Rhun?”

She flattened against the cold stone. So someone was searching for the priest.

She crept forward and spotted a shadowy figure stepping around a far corner toward her. In one raised hand, he carried a candle in a holder, revealing the brown robes of a monk.

Failing to see her, he continued forward, oblivious of the danger.

Once close enough, she sprang forward and bore his warm body to the floor. Before the man could even gasp, her teeth found his luscious throat. Blood surged through her in wave after wave, strengthening her even more. She reveled in bliss, as she had every time since the first. She wanted to laugh amid this joy.

Rhun would have her trade this power for scalding wine, for a life of servitude to his Church.

Never.

Spent, she released the human shell, her curious fingers lingering on the fabric of the robes. It did not feel like linen. She detected a slipperiness to it, like silk, but not like silk.

A trickle of unease wormed through her.

The candle had snuffed when the man fell, but the ember at the wick’s tip glowed dull red. She blew on it, brightening its color to a feeble orange.

Under the dim light, she patted down the cooling body, repulsed again by the slippery feel of the fabric. She discovered a silver pectoral cross but abandoned its searing touch.

She reached down his legs and pulled a shoe from one lifeless foot, sensing strangeness here, too. She held it near the light. The top was leather, scuffed and unremarkable, but the sole was made of a thick spongy substance. She had never seen its like. She pinched the material between her thumb and forefinger. It gave, then sprang back, like a young tree.

She sat back on her haunches, thinking. Such a peculiar substance had not existed when Rhun had tricked her into the coffin of wine, but now it must be commonplace enough for a lowly monk to wear.

She suddenly felt like screaming, sensing the breadth of the gulf that separated her from her past. She knew she had not slumbered for days, weeks, nor even months.

But years, decades, perhaps centuries.

She accepted this brutal truth, knowing one other.

She must take extra care in this strange new world.

And she had. Moving from the shoe, she picked up a white ball with a red star on it from the tabletop. Its surface felt like human skin, but smoother. It repulsed her, but she forced herself to hold it, to toss it in the air and catch it again.

Upon leaving the catacombs, she had been so frightened.

But soon others became frightened of her.

She had crept through the tunnels, expecting more monks. But she had encountered none as she followed the whisper of distant heartbeats ever higher.

Eventually she reached a thick wooden door and broke through it with ease — and stepped into unfettered air. It caressed her body, dried the wine on her dress, and carried with it the familiar smells of humans, of perfumes, of stone, of river. But also odors she had never scented before — acrid stinks she imagined only existed in an alchemist’s workshop. The stench drove her against the door, almost back across the threshold and into the shelter of the dark tunnels.

The foreignness terrified her.

But a countess never cowers, never shows fear.

She straightened her back and stepped forward as a lady must, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes and ears alert to danger.

As she moved away from the door, she immediately recognized the columns to either side, the massive dome rising to the left, even the obelisk in the plaza ahead. The Egyptian spire had been erected in the piazza the same year that her daughter Anna was born.

She relaxed upon seeing all this, knowing where she was.

St. Peter’s Square.

Sardonic amusement warmed her.

Rhun had hidden her under the Holy City.

She kept to the edge of the piazza. Tall poles illuminated the square with a harsh, unnatural flame. The light hurt her eyes, so she shied away from it, staying near the colonnade that framed the plaza.

A couple strolled past her.

Ill at ease, she slipped behind a marble column. The woman wore breeches, like a man. Her short hair brushed the top of her shoulders, and her partner held her hand as they talked together.

She had never seen a woman so tall.

Hidden by the column, she studied other figures shifting out on the square. All brightly dressed, bundled in thick coats that looked finely made. Out on a neighboring street, strange wagons glided along, led by unnatural beams of light, pulled by no beasts.

Shivering, she leaned against the column. This new world threatened to overwhelm her, to freeze her in place. She hung her head and forced herself to breathe. She must shut it all out and find one simple task… and perform that task.

The reek of wine struck her nose. She touched her sodden garment. It would not do. She looked again out at the plaza, at the women in such strange garb. To escape from here, she must become a wolf in sheep’s clothing, for if they guessed what she was, her death would follow.

No matter how many years had passed, that certainty had not changed.

Her nails dug deep into her palms. She did not want to leave the familiar. She sensed that whatever lay beyond the plaza would be even more foreign to her than what lay inside.

But she must go.

A countess never shirked from her duty.

And her duty was to survive.

Sensing she had hours before dawn, she lowered herself into the shadows of the colonnade. She sat not breathing, not moving, as motionless as a statue, listening to chaotic human heartbeats, the words from many tongues, the frequent laughter.

These people were so very different from the men and women of her time.

Taller, louder, stronger, and well fed.

The women fascinated her the most. They wore men’s clothing: pants and shirts. They walked unafraid. They spoke sharply to men without reprimand and acted as if they were their equals — not in the calculated way she had been forced to use in her time, but with an easy manner, as if this was commonplace and accepted.

This era held promise.

A young mother approached carelessly with a small child in tow. The woman hunched in a burgundy-colored woolen coat and wore riding boots, although by the smell of them they had never been near a horse.

Small for a woman of this time, she was close to Elisabeta’s own size.

The child dropped a white ball with a red star on it, and it rolled into the shadows, stopping a handsbreadth from Elisabeta’s tattered shoes. The ball smelled like the bottom of the priest’s shoes. The child refused to go after the plaything, as if sensing the beast hiding in the shadows.

Her mother coaxed her in queer-sounding Italian, waving toward the forest of columns. Still, the little girl shook her head.

Elisabeta ran her tongue across her sharp teeth, willing the mother to come in after the toy. She could take the woman’s life, steal her finery, and be gone before the motherless child could cry for help.

From the shadows, she savored the child’s terrified heartbeats, listening as the mother’s tones grew more impatient.

She waited for the proper moment in this strange time.

Then sprang.

Elisabeta lowered the ball to the table, sighing, losing interest in her trophies.

Standing, she crossed over to the vast wardrobes in the bedroom, stuffed with silks, velvets, furs, all stolen from her victims these many weeks. Each night, she preened before the perfect silver mirrors and selected a new set of clothes to wear. Some of the garments were almost familiar, others as outlandish as a minstrel’s garb.

Tonight she chose soft blue pants, a silk shirt that matched her silver eyes, and a pair of thin leather boots. She ran a comb through her thick black hair. She had cropped it to her shoulders, matching the style of a woman whom she had killed under a bridge.

How very different she looked now. What would Anna, Katalin, and Paul say if they saw her? Her own children would not recognize her.

Still, she reminded herself, I am Countess Elisabeta de Ecsed.

Her eyes narrowed.

No.

“Elizabeth…” she whispered to her reflection, reminding herself that this was a new time and, to survive it, she must abide by its ways. So she would take on this more modern name, wear it like she wore her new hair and clothing. It was who she would become. She had played many roles since she had been betrothed to Ferenc at age eleven — an impulsive girl, a lonely wife, a scholar of languages, a skilled healer, a devoted mother — more roles than she could count. This was but another one.

She turned slightly to judge her new self in the mirror. With short hair and wearing pants, she looked like a man. But she was no man, and she no longer envied men their strength and power.

She had her own.

She walked to the balcony windows and drew back the soft curtains. She gazed at the blaze of glorious man-made lights of the new Rome. The strangeness still terrified her, but she had mastered it enough to eat, to rest, to learn.

She took strength in one feature of the city, the one rhythm that survived unchanged across the centuries. She closed her eyes and listened to a thousand heartbeats, ticking like a thousand clocks, letting her know, in the end, that the march of time mattered little.

She knew what time it was, what time it always was for a predator such as she.

She pushed open the balcony doors upon the night.

It was time to hunt.

6

As twilight swept over the hills and meadows, Erin thundered down the last of the trail toward the stables. With no urging, Blackjack galloped at full speed into the yard.

She kept one hand on the reins and the other on her pistol. As her gelding skidded and stuttered to a stop in the dusty yard, she twisted in her saddle. She pointed her weapon toward the black hills.

While racing here, she had failed to spot the creature that had spooked her horse, but she had heard it. Sounds of branches cracking, of brush being trampled, had chased them out of the hills. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the shadowy hunter was playing with them, waiting for full night to attack.

She wasn’t about to give it that chance.

She trotted Blackjack past her old Land Rover, only to discover a new car — a black Lincoln town car — on its far side, parked a distance away. She passed closer to it on the way to the stables, spotting a familiar symbol on its door: two crossed keys and a triple crown.

The papal seal.

The fear inside her stoked higher.

What is someone from the Vatican doing here?

She searched and saw no one and urged Blackjack forward toward the stables. Once at the sliding doors of the barn, she reined in the horse. Coughing from the dust, she slid from the saddle and kept hold of both Blackjack’s lead and her pistol. Seeking answers as well as shelter, she hurried to the doors and reached for the handle.

Before her fingers could touch it, the door slid open on its own. A hand burst out, grabbed her wrist in an iron grip, and hauled her across the threshold. Startled, she lost her grip on Blackjack’s lead, fighting just to keep her footing.

Her attacker pulled her into the darkness of the stable, and the door slammed closed behind her, leaving her horse on the outside. Gaining her feet, she twisted to the side and kicked hard, her boot striking something soft.

“Ow. Take it easy, Erin.”

She immediately recognized the voice, though it made no sense. “Jordan?”

Hands released her.

A flashlight clicked, and a white glow illuminated Jordan’s face. Past the sergeant’s shoulder, she spotted Nate, safe but looking pale, his eyes too wide.

Jordan rubbed his stomach and flashed her that crooked grin of his, immediately drawing a large amount of the tension from her bones. He stood there in dress pants and a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar with the sleeves rolled up, displaying his muscular tanned arms.

She leaped to him and hugged him hard. He felt warm and good and natural, and she loved how easy it was to fall into his arms again.

She spoke into his chest. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

“In the flesh… though after that kick of yours, maybe a tad more sore.”

She leaned back to take him in. A day’s worth of stubble shadowed his square chin, his blue eyes smiled at her, and his hair had grown out longer. She threaded her fingers through that thick wheat-blond hair and pulled him down into a kiss.

She wanted nothing more than to lengthen it, to linger in his arms, maybe show him the empty hay loft upstairs, but she stepped back, drawn away by a larger concern.

“Blackjack,” she said. “My horse. We have to get him inside. Something’s out there in the hills.”

She turned to the door — as a horse’s scream erupted, ripping through the night and quickly cutting off. Before anyone could move, a heavy object thudded against the neighboring wall. They fled deeper into the stables, to where the other horses were boarded in stalls. She looked toward the door.

No, please, no…

She pictured her large gelding, with his trusting eyes and soft nose, the way he pranced when happy, and his gentle neighs that greeted her whenever she entered the barn.

Jordan readied his black Heckler & Koch MP7, a mean-looking machine pistol.

She lifted her small Glock 19, recognizing a problem. “I need something bigger.”

Jordan handed his flashlight to Nate and reached to his belt. He pulled out his Colt 1911 and passed it to her, the same gun he had loaned to her often in the past. She wrapped her fingers around the grip and felt safer.

She turned to give her Glock to Nate, to offer him some protection — when a stranger appeared, stepping out of the deeper shadows behind him and startling her. The man wore a formal dark blue uniform, with two gold crosses embroidered on his lapels.

A chaplain?

“I hate to interrupt your happy reunion,” the stranger said. “But it’s time we thought about leaving here. I searched for other exits, but the main door remains the wisest path.”

“This is Christian,” Jordan introduced. “Friend of Rhun’s, if you get my drift.”

In other words, Sanguinist.

Nate’s voice trembled. “The professor’s car is parked about fifty yards away. Could we make it that far?”

As answer, an unnatural screeching pierced the night.

From the stalls all around, the horses stamped and shouldered into their gates, whinnying their growing terror. Even they knew escape was the only hope.

“What’s waiting for us out there?” Jordan asked, his weapon fixed on the door.

“From its smell and hisses, I believe it’s a cougar,” Christian said. “Albeit a tainted one.”

Tainted?

Erin went colder. “You’re talking about a blasphemare.”

The chaplain bowed his head in acknowledgment.

Blasphemare were beasts that had been corrupted by the blood of a strigoi, poisoned into monstrous incarnations of their natural forms, with hides so tough that Sanguinists made armor out of their skins.

Nate sucked in a quick breath. She touched him with one hand and felt him shiver. She didn’t blame him. A blasphemare wolf had once savaged him badly.

She had to get Nate out of here.

A ripping, splintering sound erupted to their left. Nate swung the flashlight toward the noise. Four hooked claws shredded through the thick redwood wall. Panicked, Nate fired the Glock at it.

The claws vanished, followed by another yowl, sounding angrier.

“I think you pissed it off,” Jordan said.

“Sorry,” Nate said.

“No worries. If you hadn’t fired, I would’ve.”

The cat bowled into the same wall, shaking the rafters, as if trying to break inside.

“Time to go,” Christian said and pointed to the door ahead. “I’ll exit first, try to draw it off, and you follow in a count of ten. Make straight for Erin’s Land Rover and get moving.”

“What about you?” Jordan asked.

“If I’m lucky, pick me up. If not, leave me.”

Before anyone could argue, Christian covered the distance to the door in a breath. He grabbed a handle and shoved open the front doors. In front of him stretched an expanse of dust and grass. In the distance stood her beat-up Land Rover and the shiny Lincoln town car. Both looked much farther away than when she had ridden up on Blackjack a moment ago.

Christian stepped into the night, illuminated by a lamp over the door. A flash of silver showed that he’d drawn a blade, then he vanished to the left.

Jordan kept his gun up, plainly starting a countdown in his head.

Erin turned away, remembering Blackjack. She hurried along the line of six stalls and began releasing the catches, swinging the doors open. She wouldn’t leave the horses trapped in here to die as Blackjack had. They deserved a chance to run.

Already frightened, the horses thundered out of the stalls and swept between Jordan and Nate. Gunsmoke followed last. Nate ran his fingers along the mare’s sweating flanks as the horse raced by, as if longing to accompany her. Reaching the door, the horses fled out into the night.

“That’s a ten count,” Jordan said and waved his free arm toward the open door.

The three of them rushed forward, following the dust-stirred trail of the horses out into the yard. Jordan kept to their left, pointing his gun in the direction Christian had vanished.

As Erin sprinted with Nate toward the Land Rover, motion drew her attention back to the stable. From around the far corner, Christian came tumbling back into the yard, landing in a crouch.

From that same corner, a monstrous beast stalked into view.

Erin gaped at the sight.

Nate tripped, crashing down to one knee.

The cougar padded into the yard, its tail lashing back and forth. It stretched nine feet, well over three hundred pounds of muscle, claws, and teeth. Tall, tufted ears swiveled, taking in every sound. Red-gold eyes shone in the darkness. But the most striking feature was its ghostly gray pelt, like a shred of fog made flesh.

“Go,” Jordan urged, seeing her slow to help Nate. “I got him.”

But who has you?

She stayed with them, keeping her Colt high.

Across the yard, the beast snarled at Christian, revealing long fangs — then lunged. But it was a feint. It jumped past the Sanguinist chaplain and headed straight for them.

By now, Jordan had Nate back on his feet, but the two men would never get out of the way in time. Standing her ground in front of them, she squeezed off a shot. The bullet struck the animal on the forehead, but it merely shook its head and kept coming.

She kept firing as it barreled toward her.

She couldn’t run, not until Nate was safe.

She squeezed the trigger over and over again — until finally the Colt’s slide locked back. Out of bullets.

The cat bunched its back legs and bounded across the last of the distance.

Rhun’s muscles stiffened with terror.

She’s in danger…

He pictured wisps of blond hair and amber eyes. The scent of lavender filled his nostrils. Pain kept her name from him, leaving him only need and desire.

Must reach her…

As panic thrummed through his body, he thrashed over onto his stomach in the burning wine, fighting through the agony, trying to think, to hold one thought in his head.

He could not let her die.

He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and braced his back against the stone lid of the sarcophagus. Gathering his faith, his strength, and his fear, he pushed against the marble slab.

Stone grated on stone as the lid shifted. A mere finger’s breadth, but it moved.

He gritted his teeth and pushed again, straining, tearing his robe. The silver inlaid into the marble slab above branded his exposed back. He smelled his skin burning, felt his blood flowing.

Still, he strained with every last fiber of muscle, bone, and will.

His existence became one agonizing note of desire.

To save her.

Jordan bowled into Erin, sweeping her legs out from under her.

As she crashed onto her back, the blasphemare cat sailed over them both. A back paw slammed near Jordan’s head, knocking up dust. The cougar spun around, hissing a scream of thwarted desire.

Still on the ground, Jordan rolled to a shoulder and pointed his Heckler & Koch machine pistol and fired on full automatic. He blazed a trail along its flank as it turned, stripping tufts of fur, drawing some blood, but not much.

He emptied his entire forty-round box magazine in less than three seconds.

And only succeeded in pissing off the cat.

The cougar faced them, crouched low, claws dug deep into the hard clay. It growled, hissing like a steam engine.

Jordan repositioned his empty weapon, ready to go caveman and use it as a club.

Then in a flash of blue, a small shape landed atop the creature’s head. A silver knife slashed through its ear. Dark blood oozed out. The cat yowled, rolling, twisting its head, trying to reach Christian.

But the Sanguinist was fast, sliding off the rear of the cat, dodging the tail.

“Get to the Rover!” Christian yelled, ducking as a hind paw kicked at him and slashed the air with razor claws.

Jordan hauled Erin to her feet and sprinted toward the Land Rover.

Ahead, Nate had already reached the SUV and pulled open both the driver’s door and the rear door — then climbed into the backseat.

Good man.

Jordan raced alongside Erin. Once they reached the Rover, he dove into the driver’s seat at the same time she lunged into the back to join Nate. Both doors slammed in unison.

Erin reached over the seat back and slapped cold keys into his open, waiting palm.

He grinned savagely. They made a good team — now to make sure that team stayed alive. He keyed the ignition, gunned the engine, and sped in reverse, fishtailing to the side.

As he swung around, his headlamps found the cougar. Its ghost-gray pelt glowed in the light. The cat turned toward the car like a churning storm cloud, squinting its red-gold eyes against the glare.

Christian stood a few paces behind it.

The cougar growled and bounded toward the Land Rover, drawn by the sound and motion.

Typical cat…

Jordan sped away in reverse, trying to keep the light in the cat’s eyes.

Momentarily free, Christian sprinted for his black sedan.

The cat gained on them, running full tilt. Jordan feared the beast could easily outrun them on these country roads. Proving this, the beast leaped and crashed its front half onto the hood. Claws tore through the metal. A heavy paw batted at the windshield. Cracks splintered across the glass.

Another blow like that, and it would be in the front seat.

Then a car horn blasted loudly, incessantly.

Howling at the sudden noise, the cougar bounded off the hood like a startled tabby. It landed, twisting to face the new challenge, its ears flattened in fury.

Past the beast’s bulk, Jordan spotted Christian. The Sanguinist crouched inside the back of his town car. He leaned over the front seat, an arm stretched to the steering wheel, and laid into the car horn, pressing it over and over again.

All the sedan’s windows were down.

What are you doing?

The cat bounded toward the noise.

Jordan braked hard and shoved the car out of reverse and back into drive. He sped after the cougar, chasing its tail. He knew he couldn’t reach the car before the beast did, but he intended to be there to help Christian.

The cougar slammed into the flank of the town car, knocking it aside a full foot, denting it deeply. Christian was bowled across the backseat. The blare of the horn immediately died away, leaving only the growling hiss of the monstrous cat.

The cougar spotted its prey inside and forced its head and shoulders through the window, going after the priest.

Jordan floored the gas, intending to ram the beast from behind if necessary.

Get out of there, buddy!

The cat squirmed and kicked its hindquarters, pulling its full length through the back window and into the car. It was a tight squeeze, but the beast was determined.

Then on the other side, Christian squirted out of the far window.

“There!” Erin yelled, spotting him, too.

Jordan turned and skidded the Rover past the rear bumper of the sedan.

Christian stumbled away from the town car, pointing the key fob back at the car. He pressed a button — and all the windows rolled up, and the car beeped twice.

Jordan stifled a laugh at Christian’s sheer audacity.

He’d locked the cougar in the car.

The cat snarled and furiously flung itself about inside, rocking the sedan.

Jordan pulled up next to Christian. “Need a lift?”

Christian opened the front passenger door and climbed inside. “Drive. And fast. I don’t know how long my trap will hold it.”

Jordan understood. He gunned the engine, raced the Land Rover out of the stable yard, and ricocheted along the dirt road toward the highway. He needed to put as much distance as possible between them and that angry cat.

Christian pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and barked orders in Latin.

“What’s he saying?” Jordan asked Erin.

“Calling for backup,” she said. “For someone to dispatch that cougar.”

Christian finished his call, then glanced back at the stable. “I hope the beast doesn’t have enough space inside that car to get up a good enough swing to break through the safety glass.”

Erin cleared her throat. “But why was it even here? Why was it after me?”

Jordan glanced over to Christian.

“My apologies,” Christian said, looking crestfallen. “But I believe someone must have caught wind that Jordan and I were seeking your help. Word might have reached the wrong ears. As you know, the order has suspicions that there are Belial traitors hidden among our fold. I fear I might not have been careful enough.”

The Belial…

She pictured that force of strigoi and humans, united under a mysterious leader. Even the tight ranks of the Sanguinist order were not impervious to that group’s reach and infiltration.

“It might not be you,” Erin said, reaching forward and squeezing his shoulder. “Cardinal Bernard called for me earlier today, too. Maybe he let something slip. But either way, let’s table this until we get Nate somewhere safe.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Nate sounded aggrieved.

“You do not,” Christian answered. “My orders are clear and specific. I am to take Erin and Jordan back to Rome. That’s it.”

Jordan wondered if that was true, or if he was just trying to take the pressure off Erin.

“Why Rome?” Erin asked.

Christian swung to face her. “It seems, in all this tumult, we’ve forgotten to tell you. Father Rhun Korza has gone missing. He vanished shortly after that bloody battle in Rome.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Jordan noted the concern in Erin’s eyes, the way a hand rose to her throat. She still had scars there from where Rhun had bitten her, fed on her. But from her worried expression, she plainly cared deeply for the Sanguinist priest.

“What does that have to do with me?” she asked.

Christian smiled at her. “Because you, Dr. Granger, are the only one who can find him.”

Jordan didn’t care about the disappearance of Rhun Korza. As far as he was concerned, the guy could stay lost. Instead, there remained only one mystery he wanted solved.

Who sent that damned cat?

7

With a pair of antique watchmaker’s tweezers in hand, the leader of the Belial hunched over the workspace on his desk. He pinched a magnifying loupe to one eye. With exquisite care, he carefully wound a tiny brass spring inside the heart of a thumbnail-size mechanism.

The spring tightened and caught.

He smiled his satisfaction and closed the two halves of the mechanism, forming what appeared to be the metal sculpture of an insect, with six jointed legs and an eyeless head. The latter was spiked with a needle-sharp silver proboscis and crowned by the gentle sweep of a pair of feathery brass antennae.

Blessed with steady hands, he shifted to another corner of his workspace and tweezed up the disarticulated forewing of a moth from a bed of white silk. He lifted the iridescent petal toward the glow of his halogen work light. The moth’s scales shone silvery green, barely hiding the delicate lace of its internal structure, marking the handsome pattern of Actias luna, the luna moth. With a total wingspan of four inches, it was one of the world’s largest moths.

With patient and clever motions, he fitted the fragile wing into tiny clips lining the brass-and-silver thorax of his mechanical creation. He repeated the same with the other forewing and two more hind wings. The mechanism inside the thorax held hundreds of gears, wheels, and springs, waiting to beat life back into these beautiful organic wings.

Once finished, his eyes lingered on each piece. He loved the precision of his creations, the way each cog caught another, meshed into a larger design. For years he had made clocks, needing to see time measured on a device as it was not measured on his own body. He had since moved his interest and skill toward the creation of these tiny automatons — half machine and half living creatures — bound for eternity to his bidding.

Normally he found peace in such intricate work, settling into easy concentration. But this night, that perfect calm escaped him. Even the soft tinkling of a neighboring fountain failed to soothe him. His centuries-old plan — as intricate and delicate as any of his mechanisms — was at risk.

As he made a tiny correction upon his latest creation, the end of the tweezers quivered, and he tore the delicate forewing, sprinkling iridescent green scales upon the white silk. He uttered a curse that had not been heard since the days of ancient Rome and threw the tweezers to his glass desktop.

He drew in a long breath, searching again for that peace.

It eluded him.

As if on cue, the telephone on his desk rang.

He rubbed his temples with his longer fingers, seeking to work calm into his head from the outside. “Sì, Renate?”

“Father Leopold has arrived in the downstairs lobby, sir.” The bored tone of his beautiful receptionist strummed through the speaker. He had rescued her from a life of sexual slavery on the streets of Turkey, and she repaid him with loyal, yet indifferent, service. In the years he had known her, she had never once expressed surprise. A trait he respected.

“Allow him up.”

Standing, he stretched and walked to the bank of windows behind his desk. His company — the Argentum Corporation — owned the tallest skyscraper in Rome, and his office took up its uppermost floor. The penthouse looked out upon the Eternal City through windowed walls of ballistic glass. Underfoot, the floor was polished purplish-red marble, imperial porphyry, so rare it was found in only one site in the world, an Egyptian mountain the Romans called Mons Porphyrites. It had been discovered during Christ’s lifetime and became the marble of kings, emperors, and gods.

Fifty years before, he had designed and engineered this spire with a world-renowned architect. That man was dead now, of course. But he remained, unchanged.

He studied his reflection. In his natural lifetime, scars from a childhood scourge had pocked his face, but the imperfections had disappeared when the curse of endless years found him. Now he could not remember where those scars had been. He only saw smooth, unblemished skin, a set of small wrinkles that never deepened around his silver-gray eyes, a square rugged face, and a mass of thick gray hair.

Bitter thoughts swept through him. That face had been called many names over the centuries, worn many identities. But after two millennia he had returned to the one his mother had given him.

Judas Iscariot.

Though that name had become synonymous with betrayal, he had come full circle from denial to accepting that truth — especially after discovering the path to his own redemption. Centuries ago, he had finally discovered why Christ had cursed him with immortality.

So he could do what he must do in the coming days.

Shouldering this responsibility, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass. Once he had a manager who was so terrified of falling that he could not stand within six feet of the window.

Judas had no such fear of falling. He had fallen to what should have been his death many times.

He gazed through the glass to the city below, its glittering streets known for its decadence since before the time of Christ. Rome had always been ablaze at night, although white-hot electricity had long replaced the warm yellow fire of torches and candles.

If his plan worked, all those lights would finally go dark.

Glitter and fire were characteristics that modern people thought belonged to them, but man had brightened the world with his will long ago, too. Sometimes for advancement and sometimes triviality.

Standing there, he remembered the sparkling balls he had attended, centuries of them, all the partygoers certain that they had reached the peak of glamour. With his looks and wealth, he had never lacked for invitations, nor for female companionship, but those companions had often demanded more than he had to give.

He had watched too many lovers age and die, dimming any hope of lasting love.

In the end, it had never been worth the price.

Except once.

He had attended a ball in medieval Venice where a woman had caught his eternal heart and showed him that love was worth any price. He stared down at the colored lights of the city until they blurred together and carried him into memory.

Judas paused at the edge of the Venetian ballroom, letting the colors swirl in front of him. Crimson reds, deepest golds, indigos that matched the evening sea, blacks that ate the light, and the pearly radiance of bare shoulders. Nowhere did the women dress as brightly, and display as much skin, as in Venice.

The ballroom looked much as it had one hundred years before. The only changes were the three new oil paintings hung on its stately walls. The paintings depicted stern or jolly members of this Venetian family, each dressed in stylish finery of their day. All were now long dead. At his right hand was a painting of Giuseppe, gone thirty years, his face frozen at forty by the oils and talent of a long dead painter. Giuseppe’s brown eyes, ready always for fun, belied the stern brow and stolid posturing. Judas had known him well, or as well as it was possible to know someone in ten years.

That is all Judas allowed himself to stay in any one city. After that, people might wonder why he did not age. A man who did not wrinkle and die would be called a witch or worse. So he traveled north to south, east to west, in circles that widened as the edges of civilization spread. In some cities he played the recluse, in others the artist, in still others the gadabout. He tried on roles like cloaks. And wearied of each one.

His stylish black leather boots crossed the wooden floor with practiced ease. He knew each creaky board, each almost imperceptible cove. A masked servant appeared with a tray laden with wineglasses. Judas took one, remembering the strength of his long-ago host’s cellar. He sipped, let the flavors caress his tongue — thankfully Giuseppe’s cellars had not gone into decline with his death. Judas emptied the glass and took another.

In his other hand, hidden behind his back, his fingers clutched tightly around a narrow black object.

He had come here for a purpose larger than this ball.

He had come to mourn.

He slipped between masked dancers on his way to the window. The long nose of his mask curved downward like the beak of a crow. The smell of the well-crafted leather from which it was made filled his nostrils. A woman swept by, her heavy scent lingering in the air long after she and her partner had moved away across the floor.

Judas knew these dances and countless more. Later, after more wine, he would join them. He would choose a young courtesan, perhaps another Moor if he could find one. He would try his best to lose himself in the familiar steps.

Fifty years ago, in his last pass through Venice, he had met the most enchanting woman he had seen in his long life. She, too, had been a Moor — dark-skinned, with luminous deep-brown eyes and black tresses that spilled over her bare shoulders to her slender waist. She wore an emerald-green dress with gold trim, pinched in at the waist as was the fashion, but between her breasts, hanging from a slender gold chain around her neck, rested a shard of bright silver, like a piece of a broken mirror, an unusual adornment. The scent of lotus blossoms, a fragrance he had not enjoyed since his last sojourn in the East, lingered around her.

He and the mysterious woman had danced for hours, neither needing a different partner. When she spoke, she had a curious accent that he could not place. Soon he forgot that and listened only to her words. She knew more than anyone he had ever met — history, philosophy, and the mysteries of the human heart. Serenity and wisdom rested in her slim form, and he wanted to borrow her peace. For her, perhaps, he might find a way to rejoin the simple cares of mortal men.

After the dancing, at this very same window, she had raised her mask that he might see the rest of her face, and he had lifted his as well. He had gazed at her in a silent moment more intimate than he had ever shared with another. Then she had handed him her mask, excused herself, and disappeared into the crowd.

Only then did he realize that he did not know her name.

She never returned. For more than a year he had searched Venice for her, paid ridiculous sums for incorrect information. She was the granddaughter of a doge. She was a slave from the Orient. She was a Jewish girl who escaped from the ghetto for a night. She was none of those.

Heartbroken, he fled the city of masks and strove to forget her in the arms of a hundred different women — some dark as Moors, others fair as snow. He had listened to a thousand stories from them, helped some and forsaken others. None had touched his heart, and he left them all before he had to confront their aging and deaths.

But now he had returned to Venice to banish her from his thoughts, fifty years after he had danced with her across these floorboards. By this time, he knew, she was likely dead, or a wizened and blind old woman who had long forgotten their magical night. All he had left of it himself was his memory and her old leather mask.

He turned the mask over in his hands now. Black and glossy, it was a thick flat ribbon of leather that slashed across her eyes, with a tiny paste jewel glittering near the corner of each eye. A daring design, its simplicity at odds with the ornate masks worn by the women of those times.

But she had needed no further adornment.

He had returned to these bright halls to cast that dark mask into the canal tonight and banish her ghost to the library of his past. Gripping the old leather, he glanced out the open window. Below, a gondolier poled his slim craft through the dark water, ripples lit silver by moonlight.

Beyond the canal’s banks, figures hurried across stone tiles or over bridges. People on mysterious errands. People on everyday ones. He did not know, did not care. Like everything else, it wearied him. For one moment, he had believed that he might find connection, until she left.

Reluctant now to part with it, he stroked the mask with his index finger. It had rested in the bottom of his trunk for years, wrapped in the finest silk. At first he’d been able to smell the scent of lotus blossoms, but even that had faded. He brought the mask now to his nose and sniffed — one last time — expecting to inhale the odors of old leather and cedar from his trunk.

But the scent of lotus blossoms bloomed instead.

He turned his head, fearful of looking, the movement so slow that he would not startle even a timorous bird. His heart thumped in his ears, so loud that he expected the sound to draw all eyes to him.

She stood before him, unmasked and unchanged, her serene smile the same as a half century before. The mask slipped from his fingers to the floor. His breath held in his throat. Dancers swirled around, but he remained motionless.

It could not be.

Could this be the same woman’s daughter?

He dismissed this possibility.

Not with such an exact likeness.

A darker thought intruded. He knew of the ungodly beasts that shared his march through time, as undying as himself, but of craven bloodlusts and madness.

Again he banished this prospect from his mind.

He could never forget the heat of her body through her velvet dress when he danced with her.

So what was she? Was she cursed like him? Was she immortal?

A thousand questions danced in his head, replaced finally by the only one that truly mattered, the question he had failed to ask fifty years ago.

“What is your name?” he whispered, afraid to shatter the moment into shards like the one that she wore around her slender neck.

“This evening, it is Anna.” Her voice sounded with the same, queer accent.

“But that is not your real name. Will you share it with me?”

“If you will.”

Her glittering brown eyes looked long into his, not flirting, instead assessing his measure. He slowly nodded his agreement, praying she would find him worthy.

“Arella,” she said in hushed tones.

He repeated her name, matching her voice syllable for syllable. “Arella.”

She smiled. She had probably not heard her name spoken aloud by another in many mortal lifetimes. Her eyes sought his, demanding he settle the promised price for learning her one true name.

For the first time in a thousand years, he said his aloud, too.

“Judas.”

“The cursed son of Simon Iscariot,” she finished, looking unsurprised, wearing only a faint smile.

She held out a hand toward him. “Would you care to dance?”

With secrets revealed, their relationship began.

But those secrets hid others, deeper and darker.

Secrets without end, to match each eternal life.

Oversize doors swung open behind him, reflected in the window, drawing him back from ancient Venice to modern-day Rome. Judas tapped his fingers against the cold ballistic glass, wondering what the medieval Venetian glassblowers would have made of it.

In the reflection, he watched Renate stand framed in the doorway. She wore a mulberry-colored business suit and a brown silk top. Even though she had grown from a young woman to middle-aged in his service, he found her attractive. He realized suddenly that it was because Renate reminded him of Arella. His receptionist had the same brown skin and black eyes, the same calm.

How have I not seen this before?

The blond monk stepped into the room behind her, wearing a face much younger than his years. Nervous, the Sanguinist pinched the edge of his small spectacles. His round face fell into lines of worry that looked out of place on one so youthful, betraying a hint of the hidden decades behind that smooth skin.

Renate left and soundlessly closed the door.

Judas waved him forward. “Come, Brother Leopold.”

The monk licked his lips, smoothed the drape of his simple hooded brown robe, and obeyed. He passed the fountain and came to a stop in front of the massive desk. He knew better than to sit without being told.

“As you ordered, I took the first train from Germany, Damnatus.”

Leopold bowed his head, using an ancient title that marked Judas’s past. The Latin roughly translated as the condemned, the wretched, and the damned. While others might take such a title as an insult, Judas wore it with pride.

Christ had given it to him.

Judas shifted a chair behind his desk, returning to his workspace, and sat. He kept the monk waiting as he focused his attention back on his earlier project. With deft and practiced skill, he unclipped the forewing he had ripped earlier and dropped it onto the floor. He opened his specimen drawer and removed another luna moth. He detached its forewing and used it to replace the one he had damaged, returning his creation to flawless perfection.

Now he must repair something else that was broken.

“I have a new mission for you, Brother Leopold.”

The monk stood silent in front of him, with the stillness that only Sanguinists could attain. “Yes?”

“As I understand it, your order is certain that Father Korza is the prophesied Knight of Christ and that this American soldier, Jordan Stone, is the Warrior of Man. But there remains doubt as to the identity of the third figure mentioned in the Blood Gospel’s prophecy. The Woman of Learning. Am I to understand that it is not Professor Erin Granger, as you originally surmised during the quest for Christ’s lost Gospel?”

Leopold bowed his head in apology. “I have heard such doubts, and I believe that they may be true.”

“If so, then we must find the true Woman of Learning.”

“It will be done.”

Judas pulled a silver razor from another drawer and sliced the tip of his finger. He held it over the moth he had constructed of metal and gossamer wings. A single shiny drop of blood fell onto the back of his creation, seeping through holes along the thorax and vanishing away.

The monk stepped back.

“You fear my blood.”

All strigoi did.

Centuries ago, Judas had learned that a single drop of his blood was deadly to any of these damned creatures, even those few who had converted to serve the Church as Sanguines.

“Blood holds great power, does it not, Brother Leopold?”

“It does.” The monk’s eyes darted from side to side. It must trouble him to be close to something that could put an end to his immortal life.

Judas envied him his fear. Cursed by Christ with immortality, he would have sacrificed much to have the choice to die.

“Then why did you not tell me that the trio is now bonded by blood?”

Judas slid careful fingers under his creation. It shook itself to life in his palm, powered by his own blood. The whirring of tiny gears vibrated, barely audible under the fountain. The wings rose up and came together on its back, then extended out straight.

The monk trembled.

“Such a beautiful creature of the night, the simple moth,” Judas said.

The automaton flapped its wings and lifted from the bed of his palm. It slowly circled his desk, its wings catching every mote of light and casting it back with every beat.

Leopold followed its path, plainly wanting to flee but knowing better.

Judas lifted his hand, and the moth came again to light atop Judas’s outstretched fingertip. Its metal legs brushed light as spider silk against his skin.

“So very delicate, yet of immense power.”

The monk’s eyes fixed on the bright wings, his voice trembling. “I’m sorry. I did not think it mattered that Rhun had fed upon the archaeologist. I… I thought that she was not the true Woman of Learning.”

“Yet, her blood flows in Rhun Korza’s veins and — thanks to your ill-advised blood transfusion — the blood of Sergeant Stone now flows in hers. Do you not find such happenstance strange? Perhaps even significant?”

Obeying his will, the moth rose again from Judas’s finger and flitted around the office. It danced across the currents of air just as Judas had once danced around the ballrooms of the world.

The monk swallowed his terror.

“Perhaps,” Judas said. “Perhaps this archaeologist is the Woman of Learning after all.”

“I am sorry—”

The moth descended out of the air and settled to the monk’s left shoulder, its tiny legs clinging to the rough cloth of his robe.

“I tried to kill her tonight.” Judas toyed with the tiny gears on his desk. “With a blasphemare cat. Do you imagine that such a simple woman could elude such a beast?”

“I do not know how.”

“Nor do I.”

With the slightest provocation, the moth would stab the monk with its sharp proboscis, releasing a single drop of blood, killing him instantly.

“Yet she survived,” Judas said. “And she is now reunited with the Warrior, but not yet the Knight. Do you know why they are not reunited with Father Rhun Korza?”

“No.” The monk dropped his eyes to his rosary. If he died now, in sin instead of in holy battle, his soul would be damned for all eternity. He must be thinking about that.

Judas gave him an extra moment to dwell on it, then explained. “Because Rhun Korza is missing.”

“Missing?” For the first time, the monk looked surprised.

“A few days after Korza fed on her, he disappeared from the view of the Church. And all others.” The moth’s wings shivered in the air currents. “Now bodies litter the streets of Rome, as a monster dares to prey along the edge of the Holy City itself. It is not a strigoi under my control or under theirs. They fear it might be their precious Rhun Korza, returned to a feral state.”

Brother Leopold met his eyes. “What would you have me do? Kill him?”

“As if you could. No, my dear brother, that task goes to another. Your task is to watch and report. And never again keep any detail to yourself.” He lifted his hand, and the moth took flight from the monk’s shoulder and returned to its creator’s outstretched palm. “If you fail me, you fail Christ.”

Brother Leopold stared upon him, his eyes looking both relieved and exultant. “I will not falter again.”

8

At least the restaurant is empty.

Erin heaved a sigh of relief as she sat down with Christian and Jordan at a small battle-scarred booth in the Haight-Ashbury district. They had dumped Nate off at his campus apartment at Stanford, then whisked away into the anonymity of San Francisco, taking a circuitous path to the small diner.

She picked up the menu — not that she was hungry, just needing something to do with her hands. The weight of her Glock was again in her ankle holster. She carried Jordan’s Colt in the deep pocket of her winter jacket. Their combined weight helped ground her.

She studied the ramshackle eatery, with its black-and-white paintings of skulls and flowers. The only nods to Christmas were ragged plastic poinsettias gracing each table.

Jordan took her right hand in his left. Even in the harsh, unflattering light, he looked good. A smudge of dust ran across one cheek. She reached out with her napkin and wiped it away, her fingers lingering there.

His eyes darkened, and he gave her a suggestive smile.

Across the booth, Christian cleared his throat.

Jordan straightened but kept hold of her hand. “Nice place you picked out,” he said, craning to look around at the tie-dyed rainbows that decorated the back wall. “So were you a Deadhead in a past life or just stuck in the sixties?”

Hiding a smile behind her menu, Erin saw the fare was all vegan.

Jordan’s going to love that.

“This place is far nicer now than it was in the sixties,” Christian said, revealing a hint of his own past, of a prior life in the city. “Back then, you could barely breathe from the fog of pot smoke and patchouli in here. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the establishment’s contempt for authority. I’m willing to bet my life that there aren’t any surveillance cameras in this building or electronic monitoring devices. The fewer prying eyes, the better.”

Erin appreciated the Sanguinist’s level of paranoia, especially after the attack.

“Are you truly that worried about a mole in your order?” Jordan asked.

“Someone knew Erin would be alone at that ranch. For now, it’s best we fly under the radar. At least until we reach Rome.”

“That sounds fine to me,” Erin said. “What did you mean when you said I’m the only one who can find Rhun?”

During the ride to the restaurant, Christian had refused to talk. Even now, he glanced once around the room, then leaned forward. “I have heard from Sergeant Stone that Rhun fed on you during the battle below St. Peter’s. Is that true?”

She let go of Jordan’s hand, studying the napkin in her lap so that he couldn’t see her expression when she thought of the intimacy that she had shared with Rhun. She flashed to those sharp teeth sinking into her flesh, balancing between pain and bliss as his lips burned her skin, his tongue probing the wounds wider to drink more deeply.

“He did,” she mumbled. “But he had to. There was no other way to catch the grimwolf and Bathory Darabont. Without our actions, the Blood Gospel would have been lost.”

Jordan slipped his arm around her shoulders, and she shrugged it off. Surprise flashed across his eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t want anyone touching her right now.

“I am not here to judge Rhun,” Christian said. “The situation was extraordinary. You don’t need to explain it to me. I’m more interested in what’s happened to you after that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you had visions? Feelings that you cannot explain?”

She closed her eyes. Relief flooded through her. So there might be an explanation for her blackouts.

I’m not going crazy after all.

Christian must have noticed her reaction. “You have had visions. Thank God.”

“Someone want to explain this to me?” Jordan asked.

In retrospect, she should have told him about the blackouts. But she hadn’t wanted to think about them, let alone share them.

Christian explained to both of them. “When a strigoi feeds on someone and the victim lives — which is a rare occurrence — the blood forms a bond between them. It lasts until the strigoi feeds again and erases that bond with a wash of new blood.”

Jordan looked sick.

A young server came by at that moment, his hair in blond dreadlocks, with a pad in hand, a pencil behind his ear. He was waved off after a round of black coffee was ordered.

Erin waited until the kid was out of earshot, then pressed on. “But what I’ve been experiencing makes no sense. It’s dark. Totally black. I have an intense claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. It’s as if I’m encased in a sarcophagus or coffin.”

“Like back in Masada?” Jordan asked.

She took his hand again, appreciating the heat of his palm, partially apologizing for snubbing him a moment ago. “That’s what I thought. I thought it was a panic attack. I dismissed the episodes as flashbacks to that moment when we were stuck in that ancient crypt. But certain details of those visions had struck me as odd. The box was cold, but it felt like I was lying in acid. It soaked through my clothes and burned my skin. And even stranger, everything smelled like wine.”

“Wine?” Christian asked, sitting straighter.

She nodded.

“If you were channeling Rhun during those visions, a bath of consecrated wine would burn.” Christian fixed her with his sharp green eyes. “Do you have any idea where this box might be? Could you hear anything?”

She slowly shook her head, trying to think of more details, but failing. “I’m sorry.”

All she remembered was that pain, sensing that what she had felt was only the tiniest fraction of what Rhun must be experiencing. How long had he been trapped there? Christian had said Rhun had gone missing shortly after the battle. That was two months ago. She couldn’t abandon him to that.

Another insight chilled her. “Christian, with each of these visions I feel weaker, more leaden. In the last, I could barely lift my arms.”

Christian’s expression confirmed her worst fear.

It likely meant Rhun was dying.

Christian reached and touched her arm, trying to reassure her. “The best plan is to get to Rome. Cardinal Bernard has more knowledge of this kind of bond than I do. It was more common in the early days of the Church.”

They were scheduled to leave by chartered plane in another two hours.

“And if we do find Rhun,” Erin asked, “what do we do after that?”

She feared she would be tossed aside again, summarily dismissed, like before.

“Then we all go in search of the First Angel,” Christian said.

The First Angel.

She knew all too well the prophecy concerning that mythic figure. She pictured the words inscribed on the first page of the Blood Gospel, words written by Christ, a prediction of a coming war — and a way to avert it.

A great War of the Heavens looms. For the forces of goodness to prevail, a Weapon must be forged of this Gospel written in my own blood. The trio of prophecy must bring the book to the First Angel for his blessing. Only thus may they secure salvation for the world.

“The time for waiting is past,” Christian pressed. “Especially after someone moved against you, Erin. They clearly know now how valuable you are.”

“Valuable?” She couldn’t keep a scoffing, bitter tone from that word.

“The prophecy says the trio must carry the book to the First Angel. The Knight of Christ, the Warrior of Man, and the Woman of Learning. Jordan and you are the last two. Rhun the first.”

“But I thought it was clear that I am not the Woman of Learning.” She kept her voice steady and forced out the next sentence. “I’m pretty sure I killed her.”

Jordan squeezed her hand. She had shot Bathory Darabont in the tunnels under Rome. Not only had she taken the woman’s life, but the Bathory family was long thought to be the true line from which the Woman of Learning would emerge. Erin’s bullet had ended that line, murdering the last living descendant.

“Darabont is indeed dead and with her that cursed line.” Christian sighed, leaning back with a shrug. “So it looks like you’re the best we’ve got, Dr. Erin Granger. What’s the point in second-guessing?”

The coffee finally arrived, allowing them to collect their thoughts.

Once the server was gone, Jordan took a sip, winced at the blistering heat, and nodded to Christian. “I agree with him. Let’s go find this angel dude.”

As if it could be so easy.

No one had the faintest idea who the First Angel was.

9

Tommy Bolar’s teeth ached from the cold. He hadn’t known that was possible. Standing at the ship’s rail in the darkness of the early Arctic morning, a rigid wind burned his exposed cheeks. White ice stretched to the horizon ahead. Behind the ship, a crushed wake of blue ice and black water marked the passage of the icebreaker through the frozen landscape.

He stared out, despairing. He had no idea where he was.

Or for that matter, what he was.

All he knew was that he was no longer the same fourteen-year-old boy who had watched his parents die in his arms atop the ruins of Masada, victims of a poison gas that killed them and healed him. He glanced at the bit of bare skin showing between his deerskin gloves and the sleeves of his high-tech down parka. Once, a brown patch of melanoma had stuck out on his pale wrist, showing his terminal condition — now it was gone, along with the rest of his cancer. Even his hair, lost to chemo, had begun to grow back.

He had been cured.

Or cursed. Depending on how you looked at it.

He wished he had died on that mountaintop with his parents. Instead, he had been kidnapped from an Israeli military hospital, stolen from the faceless doctors who had been trying to understand his miraculous survival. His latest jailers claimed he had more than survived the tragedy at Masada, insisted he had been more than cured of his cancer.

They said he could never die.

And worst of all, he had begun to believe them.

A tear rolled from his cheek, leaving a hot trail across his frozen skin.

He wiped it away with the back of his glove, growing angry, frustrated, wanting to scream at the endless expanse — not for help, but for release, to see his mother and father again.

Two months ago, someone had drugged him, and he woke up here, on this giant icebreaker in the middle of a frozen ocean. The ship was newly painted, mostly black, the cabins stacked on top like red LEGO bricks. So far he had counted roughly a hundred crewmembers aboard, memorizing faces, learning the ship’s routine.

For now, escape was impossible — but knowledge was power.

It was one of the reasons he spent so much time in the ship’s library, sifting through the few books in English, trying to learn as much as he could.

Any other inquiries fell on deaf ears. The crew spoke Russian, and none of them would talk to him. Only two people aboard the icebreaker ever spoke to him — and they terrified him, though he did his best to hide it.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Alyosha joined him at the rail. He carried two rapiers and passed one over. The Russian boy looked the same age as Tommy, but that face was a lie. Alyosha was lots older, decades older. Proving his inhumanity, Alyosha wore a pair of gray flannel pants and a perfectly pressed white shirt, open at the collar, exposing his pale throat to the frigid wind that raked across this empty corner of the icy deck. A real person would freeze to death in that outfit.

Tommy accepted the rapier, knowing that if he touched Alyosha’s bare hand, he would find it as cold as the ice crusting the ship’s rail.

Alyosha was an undying creature called a strigoi.

Immortal, like Tommy, but also very different from himself.

Shortly after Tommy’s kidnapping, Alyosha had pressed Tommy’s hand to his cold chest, revealing the creature’s lack of a heartbeat. He had shown Tommy his fangs, how his canine teeth could push into and out of his gums at will. But the biggest difference between them was that Alyosha fed on human blood.

Tommy was nothing like him.

He still ate regular food, still had a heartbeat, still had his same teeth.

So what am I?

It seemed even his captor — Alyosha’s master — didn’t know. Or at least, never shared this knowledge.

Alyosha clouted him on the head with the hilt of his rapier to gain his attention. “You must attend to what I am saying. We must practice.”

Tommy followed him out onto the makeshift fencing strip on the ship’s deck and took his position.

“No!” his competitor scolded. “Widen your stance! And keep the rapier up to cover yourself.”

Alyosha, apparently bored on the giant ship, was teaching him the manners of a Russian nobleman. Besides these fencing lessons, the boy taught him a lot of terms for horses, horse tack, and cavalry formations.

Tommy understood the other’s obsession. He had been told Alyosha’s real name: Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov. In the library, he had found a text on Russian history, discovered more about this “boy.” A hundred years ago he had been the son of Czar Nicholas II, a royal prince of the Russian Empire. As a kid, Alyosha had suffered from hemophilia, and according to the book, only one person could relieve him of his painful bouts of internal bleeding, the same man who would eventually become his master, turning the prince into a monster.

He pictured Alyosha’s master, with his thick beard and dark face, hidden elsewhere aboard the ship, like a black spider in a web. He was known in the early 1900s as the Mad Monk of Russia, but his real name was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. The history texts detailed how the monk had made friends with the Romanovs, becoming an invaluable counselor to the czar. But other sections hinted at Rasputin’s sexual weirdness and political intrigues, which eventually led to an assassination attempt by a group of nobles.

The monk had been poisoned, shot in the head, beaten with a club, and dumped in a frozen river — only to come back up sputtering, still alive. The books said he eventually drowned in that river, but Tommy knew the truth.

It wasn’t so easy to kill a monster.

Like the boy-prince, Rasputin was a strigoi.

Quick as a cobra strike, Alyosha lunged across the fencing strip, feinting right, then moving left, almost too fast to see. The tip of his rapier landed in the center of Tommy’s chest, the point poking through his parka and piercing his skin. These were not practice swords with blunted ends. Tommy knew Alyosha could have skewered his heart if he had wanted to.

Not that it would have killed Tommy.

It would have hurt, likely left him bedridden and weak for a day or two, but he would have healed, cursed as he was atop Masada with an immortal life.

Alyosha smiled and stepped back, sweeping his rapier with a triumphant wave. He was close to Tommy’s height, with wiry arms and legs. But he was far stronger and faster.

Tommy’s curse offered him no such advantages of strength and speed.

Still, he did his best to parry the next few attacks. They danced back and forth along the fencing strip. Tommy quickly grew exhausted, sapped by the cold.

As they paused for a breath, a loud crack drew Tommy’s attention past the starboard rail. The deck canted underfoot. The bow of the ship rose slightly, then crashed down onto thick plates of ice. Its giant engines ground the ship forward, continuing its slow passage through the Arctic sea.

He watched great sheets of ice shear away and scrape along the hull and wondered what would happen if he jumped.

Would I die?

Fear kept him from testing it. While he might not be able to die, he could suffer. He’d wait for a better chance.

Alyosha burst forward and slapped him across the cheek with his sword.

The sting reminded him that life was pain.

“Enough!” Alyosha demanded. “Keep alert, my friend!”

Friend…

Tommy wanted to scoff at such a label, but he kept silent. He knew in some ways this young prince was lonely, enjoying the companionship, even if forced, of another kid.

Still, Tommy wasn’t fooled.

Alyosha was no boy.

So he returned to a defensive stance at his end of the strip. That was his only option for now. He would bide his time, learn what he could, and keep himself fit.

Until he could escape.

10

The hunter had become the hunted.

Elizabeth sensed the pack trailing her across the dark narrow streets and alleys, growing ever larger in her wake. For now, they remained back, perhaps wanting strength in numbers. These were no human curs, no brigands or thieves seeking the soft target of a lone woman on these predawn streets. They were strigoi, like her.

Had she intruded upon their hunting grounds? Broken some rule of etiquette in her feeding? This age held many pitfalls for her.

She glanced to the east, sensing the winter sun was close to rising. Fear trickled through her. She wanted to return to her loft, to escape the burning day, but she dared not lead this pack to her home.

So, as the day threatened, she continued down a narrow street, her shoulder close to the cold stucco wall, ancient cobblestones uneven under the soles of her boots.

The hours before the dawn had grown to be her favorite in this modern city. At this early time, the growling automobiles fell mostly silent, their breath no longer fouling the air. She took care to study the men and women of the night, recognizing how, in many ways, little had changed from her century, easily spotting harlots, gamblers, and thieves.

She understood the night — and she had thought she owned it alone.

Until this morning.

In the corners of her eyes, shadowy wraiths shifted. They numbered more than a dozen, she knew, but how many more she could not say. Without heartbeats or breaths, she could not be confident until they were upon her.

Which would not be long.

The beasts circled, drawing their net ever tighter.

It seemed they believed that she had not marked them. She allowed them this belief. Deception might yet save her, as it had so often in the past. She drew them onward, toward her own choice of battleground.

Her destination was far. Fearing they might attack before she reached it, she quickened her steps, but only a little, for she did not want them to know that she had sensed their presence.

She needed an open area. Trapped in these narrow alleys, it was too easy for the pack to fall upon her, to overwhelm her.

At last, her boots drew her toward the Pantheon at the Piazza della Rotonda. The square was the closest patch of free ground. The gray light of the pearling sun lightened the shadows on the Pantheon’s rounded dome. The open eye of the oculum on top waited for the new day, blind in the dark.

Not like her. Not like them.

The Pantheon was once the home of many gods, but it was now a Catholic Church dedicated to only one. She avoided that sanctuary. The holy ground inside would weaken her — likewise those that hunted her — but after being reborn to this new strength, she refused to forsake it.

Instead, she kept to the open square in front.

On one side, a row of empty booths waited for daylight to transform them into a bustling Christmas marketplace. Their festive golden lights had been turned off, and large white canvas umbrellas dusted with frost protected empty tables. Elsewhere, restaurants stood lightless and shuttered, their diners long abed.

Behind her, shadows shifted at the edges of the square.

Knowing her time ran short, she hurried to the fountain in the center of the square. She rested her palms on the basin’s gray stone. Near at hand, a carved stone fish spat water into the pool below. In the center rose a slim obelisk. Its red granite had been quarried under the merciless Egyptian sun only to be dragged here by conquerors. Hieroglyphs had been cut in its four sides and reached to its conical tip: moons, birds, a sitting man. The language was old gibberish, as meaningless to her as the modern world. But the images, carved by long dead stonemasons, might yet save her this night.

Her gaze rose to the very top, to where the Church had mounted a cross to claim the power of these ancient gods.

Behind her came the squeak of leather, the scrape of cloth against cloth, the soft fall of hair from a turned head.

At last, the pack closed in.

Before any of them could reach her, she vaulted over the side of the basin and onto the obelisk, clinging like a cat. Her strong fingers found purchase in those ancient carvings: a palm, a moon, a feather, a falcon. She clambered upward, but as the pedestal grew thinner, the climbing grew harder. Fear pushed her to the very top.

Perched there, she braced herself against the searing pain and grabbed the cross with one hand. She spared a quick glance downward.

Shadows boiled up the obelisk like ants, befouling every inch of granite. Their clothes were tatters, their limbs skeletal, their hair matted and grimed. One beast tumbled back into the fountain with a splash, but others poured into the space it left.

Turning away, she glanced at the nearest house across the plaza and gathered her strength around her like a cloak.

Then leaped.

Far below St. Peter’s Basilica, Rhun crawled on all fours down a dark tunnel, his head hanging so low his nose sometimes brushed the stone floor.

Still, he whispered prayers of thanks.

Erin was safe.

The urgency that had shattered him out of his agonizing prison had faded. Sheer will alone now drove him to lift each bloody hand, to drag each raw knee. Foot by foot, he crossed along the passageway, seeking light.

Taking a moment to rest, he leaned his shoulder against the stone wall. He touched his throat, remembering the wound, now healed. Elisabeta had taken so much of his blood. She had purposefully left him helpless but alive.

To suffer.

Agony had become her new art. He pictured the faces of the many young girls who died in her experiments. This dark incarnation of his bright Elisabeta had learned to sculpt pain as others did marble. All those horrible deaths remained on his conscience.

How many more deaths must he add to that toll as she ran wild in the streets of Rome?

While entombed, he caught whispers of her delight, of the elation of her feeding. She had drained him, carried his blood inside her, binding them.

He knew she had crafted that connection on purpose.

She had wanted to drag him along on her hunts, forcing him to witness her depravations and murder. Thankfully, as she fed, washing new blood over old, that bond weakened, allowing only the strongest of her emotions to still reach him.

As if stoked by these thoughts, Rhun felt the edges of his vision narrow, fraught with panicked fear — not his own, but another’s. As weak as that bond was, he could have resisted her pull, but such a fight would risk further sapping his already-drained reserves.

So he let himself be taken away.

Both to conserve his strength and for another purpose.

Where are you, Elisabeta?

He intended to use this fraying bond to find her, to stop this rampage once he found the light again. For now, he fell willingly into that shared darkness.

A tide of black beasts rose toward him. White fangs flashed out of that darkness, ravenous, ready to feed. He leaped away, sailing through the air.

The sky brightened to the east, promising a new day.

He must be locked away before that happened, shuttered against the blazing sun.

He landed on a roof. Terra-cotta tiles broke under his boots, his hands. Pieces skittered over the edge to shatter on the gray stone of the square below.

He ran across the roof, sure-footed. Behind him, one of the hunters attempted the jump, failed, and hit the ground with a sickening thud.

Others tried.

Many fell, but a few made it across.

He had reached the far side of the roof — and vaulted to the next. Cool night air washed across his cheeks. If he forgot his pursuers, he could appreciate the beauty here, running across the top of Rome.

But he could not forget them, and so he ran onward.

Ever west.

His goal climbed high into the blushing sky.

Rhun returned to his own skin, slumped in the tunnel. He rose on hands and knees, knowing this was not enough. Tapping into the last dregs of his waning strength, he shoved to his feet. With one palm on the wall, he shambled forward.

He must warn the others.

Elisabeta was leading a pack of strigoi straight to Vatican City.

She held nothing back as she fled across the rooftops, heading west, fleeing the rising sun to the east and chased by a furious horde. The surprise of her climbing the obelisk had gained her precious seconds.

If they caught her, she was dead.

She vaulted from rooftop to rooftop, breaking tiles, bending rain gutters. She had never run like this in her natural or supernatural life. It seemed those centuries trapped in the sarcophagus had made her stronger and faster.

Exhilaration washed through her, holding her fear in check.

She spread her arms to the side like wings, loving the caress of the wind from her passage. If she lived, she must do this every night. She sensed she was older than those who pursued her, faster — certainly not enough to outdistance them forever, but perhaps long enough to reach her destination.

She hurdled onto the next roof, landed hard. A flock of pigeons startled and rose around her. Feathers surrounded her like a cloud, blinded her. Momentarily distracted, her boot caught in the crack between a row of tiles. She had to halt to pull it loose, tearing the leather.

A glance behind revealed her lead was gone.

The pack was upon her, at her heels now.

She fled away, pain lancing up from her ankle. The leg would not take her weight. She cursed its weakness, jumping more than running now, pushing off with the good leg, landing on the bad, punishing it for failing her.

To the east, the sky was the same light gray as the pigeons’ wings.

If strigoi did not strike her down, the sun would.

She hurled herself forward. She would not lie down and let those who followed claim her. Such beasts were not fit to end her life.

She focused on her goal ahead.

A few streets separated her from the walls of Vatican City.

The Sanguinists would never let such a pack of strigoi enter their holy city. They would cut them down like weeds. She ran toward that same death with one hope in her silent heart.

She bore the secret of where Rhun lay hidden.

But would that be enough to turn their swords from her neck?

She did not know.

11

“Help us!” a voice called at his door.

Hearing the fear, the urgency, Cardinal Bernard rose from his desk chair and crossed his chamber in a heartbeat, not bothering to hide his otherness from Father Ambrose. Although his assistant knew of the cardinal’s hidden nature, he still stumbled back, looking shocked.

Bernard ignored him and ripped open the door, coming close to tearing it off the hinges.

At the threshold, he found the young form of the German monk, Brother Leopold, newly arrived from Ettal Abbey. On his other side, a diminutive novice named Mario. They carried a slack form of a priest between them, the victim’s head hanging down.

“I found him stumbling out of the lower tunnels,” Mario said.

The vinegary scent of old wine poured from the body, filling the room, as Leopold and Mario entered with their burden. Waxen wrists stuck out from the damp robe, the skin stretched tight over bones.

This priest had starved long, suffered much.

Bernard lifted the man’s chin. He beheld a face as familiar as his own — the high Slavic cheekbones, the deeply cleft chin, and the tall, smooth forehead.

“Rhun?”

Past his shock, waves of emotions battered within him at the sight of his friend’s ravaged form: fury at whoever had inflicted this upon him; fear that it might be too late to save him; and a great measure of relief. Both for Rhun’s return and the plain evidence that he could not have murdered and drained all those girls in Rome, not in this state.

All was not yet lost.

Tortured dark eyes opened and rolled back.

“Rhun?” Bernard begged. “Who did this to you?”

Rhun forced words through cracked lips. “She comes. She nears the Holy City.”

“Who comes?”

“She leads them to us,” he whispered. “Many strigoi. Coming here.”

With his message delivered, Rhun collapsed.

Leopold slipped an arm under Rhun’s knees and picked him up as if he were a child. His body hung there, spent. Bernard would get nothing more from him in this state. He would need more than wine to recover Rhun from this devastation.

“Take him to the couch,” Bernard ordered. “Leave him with me.”

The young scholar obeyed, placing Rhun on the chamber’s small sofa.

Bernard turned to Mario, who gaped at him with wide blue eyes. New to the cross, he had seen nothing akin to this. “Go with Brother Leopold and Father Ambrose. Sound the alarm, and make for the entrance of the city.”

As soon as the others were out of the room, he opened the small refrigerator under his desk. It was stocked with drinks for his human guests, but that was not what he needed now. He reached behind those bottles to a simple glass jar stoppered with a cork. Every day, he refilled it. Having such a temptation near him was forbidden, but Bernard believed in the old ways, when necessity tempered sin.

He carried the bottle to Rhun and uncorked it. The intoxicating scent wafted out, causing even Rhun to stir.

Good.

Bernard tilted Rhun’s head back, opened his mouth, and poured the blood down his throat.

Rhun shuddered with the bliss, lost in the crimson flow through his black veins. He wanted to rebel, recognizing the sin on his tongue. But memories blurred: his lips upon a velvety throat, the give of flesh under his sharp teeth. Blood and dreams carried away his pain. He moaned with pleasure of it, riding waves of ecstasy that pulsed through every fiber of his being.

Denied this pleasure so long, his body would not let it go.

But the rapture eventually ebbed, leaving an emptiness behind, a well of dark craving. Rhun struggled for breath to speak, but before he could, darkness overwhelmed him. As it consumed him, he prayed that his sin-filled body could withstand the penance to come.

Rhun passed through the monastery’s herb garden, heading to midmorning prayers. He lingered and let the summer sun warm his face. He ran his hand along the purple stalks of lavender that bordered the gravel path, the delicate scent swelling in his wake. He brought his dusted fingers to his face to savor the fragrance.

He smiled, reminded of home.

Back at his family’s cottage, his sister would often scold him for dawdling in the kitchen garden and laugh when he tried to apologize. How his sister had loved to vex him, but she always made him smile. Perhaps he would see her this Sunday, her round belly rising in front of her, full with her first child.

A fat yellow bee wandered along a dusky purple bloom, another bee landing on the same stalk. The stalk bent under their weight and swayed in the breeze, but the bees paid that no mind. They worked so diligently, sure of their place in God’s plan.

The first bee lifted off the blossom and swooped across the lavender.

He knew where it was headed.

Following its meandering path, Rhun reached the lichen-covered wall at the back of the garden. The bee disappeared through a round hole in one of the golden-yellow conical hives — called skeps — that lined the top of the stone wall.

Rhun had constructed this very skep himself late the previous summer. He had loved the simple task of braiding straw into ropes, twisting those ropes into spirals, and forming them into these conical hives. He found peace in such simple tasks and was good at them.

Brother Thomas had observed the same. “Your nimble fingers are meant for this kind of work.”

He closed his eyes and breathed in the rich smell of honey. The sonorous buzzing of bees enveloped him. He had other work that he could be doing, but he stood a long moment, content.

When he came back to himself, Rhun smiled. He had forgotten that moment. It was a simple slice of another life, centuries old, from before he was turned into a strigoi and lost his soul.

He smelled again the sweet rich scent of the honey, the light undertone of lavender. He remembered the warmth of sun on his skin, when sunlight was not yet mixed with pain. But mostly he thought of his laughing sister.

He ached for that simple life — only to recognize it could never be.

And with that hard realization came another.

His eyes snapped open, tasting blood on his tongue, and confronted Bernard. “What you did… it is a sin.”

The cardinal patted his hand. “It is my sin, not yours. I’ll willingly accept that burden to have you at my side for the upcoming battle.”

Rhun lay still, wrestling with Bernard’s words, wanting to believe them, but knowing the act was wrong. He sat up, finding renewed strength in muscle and bone. Most of his wounds had also closed. He drew in a breath to steady his riotous mind.

Bernard held out his hand, revealing a familiar curve of tarnished silver.

It was Rhun’s karambit.

“If you are recovered enough,” Bernard said, “you may join us in the battle ahead. To exact vengeance upon those who treated you so brutally. You mentioned a woman.”

Rhun took the weapon, shying away from the cardinal’s penetrating gaze, too ashamed even now to speak her name. He fingered the blade’s sharp edge.

Elisabeta had stolen it from him.

How had Bernard found it again?

The strident clang of a warning bell shattered the moment.

Questions would have to wait.

Bernard crossed the chamber in a flash of scarlet robes and lifted down his ancient sword from the wall. Rhun stood, surprised by how light his body felt after drinking blood, as if he could fly. He firmed his grip on his own weapon.

Rhun nodded to Bernard, acknowledging that he was fit enough to fight, and they took off at a run. They sailed down the gleaming wooden halls of the papal apartments, through its front bronze doors, and out onto the square.

To avoid the eyes of the handful of people milling about the open plaza, Rhun followed Bernard into the shadowy refuge of Bernini’s colonnade that bordered the piazza’s edges. The massive Tuscan columns, four deep, should keep their preternaturally swift passage hidden. Bernard joined a contingent of other Sanguinists who waited in the shadows for the cardinal. As a group, they rushed along the sweep of the colonnade toward the entrance to the Holy City.

Once they reached the waist-high fence that divided the Vatican city-state from Rome proper, Rhun’s eyes scanned the nearest rooftops. He remembered the shared vision he had with Elisabeta, of her leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

The furious honk of a car horn drew his eyes below, to the cobblestone street that led here.

Fifty yards away, the small shape of a woman fled down the center of Via della Conciliazione, limping on one leg. Though her hair was shorter, he had no trouble recognizing Elisabeta. A white car swerved to miss her.

She paid it no mind, intent on reaching St. Peter’s Square.

Trailing behind her, a dozen strigoi loped and sprinted.

He longed to burst from the colonnade and run to her, but Bernard put a steadying hand on his arm.

“Stay,” the cardinal warned, as if reading his thoughts. “Humans are on that street and in those houses. They will see the battle, and they will know. We have millennia of secrecy to protect. Let the fight come to us.”

As Rhun watched, he recognized the pain in Elisabeta’s thinned lips, her fearful glances behind. He remembered the same panic when looking through her eyes.

She is not leading this pack — she’s fleeing them.

Despite all she had done to him, to the innocents of the city, a reflexive surge to protect her fired inside him. Bernard’s fingers tightened on his shoulder, perhaps feeling him lean forward, ready to dash to her defense.

Elisabeta finally reached the end of the street. The other strigoi were almost upon her. Not slowing, she hurdled the low fence that marked the boundary of Vatican City and landed in a half crouch, facing the snarling pack.

She sneered, exposing her fangs, and taunted them. “Cross to me if you dare.”

The pack pulled hard to a stop beyond the fencerow. A few took a cautious step closer, then away again, sensing the debilitating holiness of the hallowed ground on this side. They wanted her, but would they dare enter Vatican City to get her?

Holy ground was not all they had to fear here.

The Sanguinist force waited to either side of Rhun and Bernard, as still as statues among the columns. If the strigoi came into the city, the beasts would be pulled into this shadowy forest of stone and slaughtered.

Elisabeta retreated from the fencerow — but she put too much weight on her hurt leg, and her ankle finally gave out fully, dropping her to the pavement.

The sign of weakness was too much for the strigoi to resist. Like lions descending upon a wounded gazelle, the pack surged forward.

Rhun ripped out of Bernard’s grip and burst into the open. He flew toward Elisabeta, as much a creature of instinct as the strigoi. He reached her at the same time that the pack leader, a huge figure with ropy muscles and blue-black tattoos, bounded the fence and landed on the countess’s far side, baring his teeth.

More strigoi followed his example, flowing over the fence.

Rhun grabbed her by the arm and retreated toward the colonnade, dragging her, hoping to lure the pack into the stone forest.

The leader barked an order and an overzealous beast rushed forward.

Heaving with one arm, Rhun threw Elisabeta like a rag doll into the colonnade and slashed out with his karambit. The silver blade cut through the air — then through flesh. The feral youngster fell back, clutching his throat as blood and breath bubbled out of his severed neck.

Other strigoi surged forward as Rhun retreated — only to be met at the edge of the colonnade by Bernard and the other Sanguinists.

A brief battle raged among the columns. But with the pack caught by surprise and weakened by holy ground, it was a slaughter. A few broke away, leaping the fence and scattering like vermin into the streets, fleeing both the fight and the sun.

Rhun found himself confronting the hulking leader. Upon his bared chest, a Hieronymus Bosch painting had been tattooed, a hellish landscape of death and punishment. It came to life as his muscles rippled, lifting his heavy blade.

Rhun’s blade looked contemptibly small compared to that length of steel.

As if knowing this, spite polished the other’s dark eyes to a wicked gleam. He sprang at Rhun, hacking that sword downward at his head, ready to cleave him in two.

But holiness slowed the strigoi’s attack, allowing time for Rhun to duck inside the other’s guard. He turned the hook of his karambit up and sliced into the other’s belly. Ripping high, he tore that grotesque canvas in half and kicked the body away.

The gutted bulk toppled to the edge of the columns, one arm flinging out into the light — into sunlight. The limb burst into flame. Another Sanguinist helped Rhun yank the body back into the shadows and stanched the flames before the fire drew unwanted attention.

A few faces turned toward the shadows, but most remained oblivious of the swift and deadly battle within the colonnade. As Rhun stared at the sunlight brightening the plaza, fear rang through him.

Elisabeta…

He turned to find Bernard looming over her huddled form, her face to the ground. She surely felt the blaze of the new day, sensed its burn. For now, her only safety lay within the shadowy shelter of the colonnade. To step beyond it would be her death.

Bernard grabbed her by the shoulder, looking ready to cast her out into the square, to face the judgment of a new day. Sanguinists crowded around him, reeking of wine and incense. None would stop the cardinal if he chose to slay her. She had led strigoi to the holiest city in Europe.

Bernard buried a hand in her short hair, yanked her head back, rested his blade against her soft white throat.

“No!” Rhun called out, rushing forward, shoving through the others.

But it was not his shout that halted the cardinal’s blade.

Shock froze Bernard in place — along with utter disbelief.

He stared at the woman’s face as if she were a ghost.

It could not be her.

It must be a trick of light and shadow, his mind indulging in fantasy, a strigoi with an uncanny likeness. Still, he recognized the silver eyes, the raven color of her hair, even the indignant, haughty expression as his blade rested against her soft throat, as if she dared him to take her life.

Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed.

But she had perished centuries ago. Bernard had seen her imprisoned in her castle. He had even visited her there once, pitied her, the learned noblewoman brought low by Rhun’s base desires.

But Bernard bore as much guilt for that crime. Centuries ago, he had put the woman on this cruel path when he set the countess and Rhun together, when he tried to force his will upon divine prophecy. Afterward, Bernard had begged to be the one to take her life, to spare Rhun of such a deed, knowing how much he had loved her, how far he had fallen for her. But the pope had deemed it part of Rhun’s penance to end her unnatural life, to slay the monster that he had created.

Bernard had worried when Rhun returned from Hungary. Rhun had claimed the deed was done, that the countess was gone from this world. Bernard had taken it to mean she was dead, not put away like a doll in a drawer. At the time, as additional penance, Rhun had starved himself for years, mortified himself for decades, shutting himself off from the mortal world.

But plainly Rhun had not killed her.

What have you done, my son? What sin have you committed yet again in the name of love?

As horror faded, another realization took root, one full of promise.

By Rhun sparing her, the Bathory line was not dead — as Bernard had despaired these past months. He pondered what that implied.

Could this be a sign from God?

Had God’s will acted through Rhun to preserve the countess for this new task?

For the first time since the Blood Gospel had delivered its message and cast doubt on Dr. Erin Granger’s role as the Woman of Learning, hope surged through Bernard.

Countess Bathory might yet save them all.

Bernard stared at her beautiful face in wonder, still disbelieving this miracle, this sudden turn of good fortune. He gripped her hair tighter, refusing to lose this one hope.

She could not be allowed to escape.

Rhun appeared at his side, listing a bit on his feet, plainly succumbing to his weakened state again. Even this brief battle had quickly stanched whatever fire the blood had stoked inside him.

Still…

“Restrain him,” Bernard ordered the others, fearing what Rhun might do. At this moment, he did not know his friend’s heart. Would he kill her, save her, or try to run off with her in shame?

I do not know.

All he knew for sure was that he had to protect this wicked woman with every force he could marshal.

He needed her.

The world needed her.

The countess must have read that certainty in his eyes. Her perfect lips curved into a smile, both cunning and mean.

God help us, if I’m wrong.