Innocent Blood

25

The world had become encrusted in ice.

Huddled against the implacable cold of the Swedish winter night, Erin shivered in her jacket as she strode down a street in central Stockholm. Her coat’s armored leather might protect her from bites and slashes, but it did little against the frigid wind that cut through every opening afforded it. Every breath felt like she was inhaling frost. Even underfoot, the chill of the ice-glazed cobblestones seemed to seep through the soles of her boots.

She had only learned of their destination once the chartered jet was airborne, sweeping north from Rome. The flight to Sweden took about three hours, landing them in this land of snow and ice. They were now headed to a rendezvous in the city with Grigori Rasputin, to negotiate for the release of Tommy Bolar, possibly the First Angel of prophecy.

She was surprised Rasputin had agreed to meet in Stockholm, not St. Petersburg. Bernard must have pushed hard, drawing the Russian monk as far as possible from his home territory, into something that passed as neutral ground.

Still, to Erin, it didn’t feel far enough.

Christian led the way. In this continuing pageant of subterfuge, the youngest Sanguinist was the only one who had been informed of the meeting place in the city, drawing the group quickly across central Stockholm. Austere buildings lined the way. The simple Scandinavian facades were a relief after the ornamented Italianate structures of Rome. Warm light spilled into the night from most windows, reflecting off new snow that had drifted up on both sides of the street.

Erin’s breath formed white clouds in the air, as did Jordan’s.

If the Sanguinists breathed, there was no sign.

She noted Jordan suddenly sniffing at the air, like a dog on a scent. Then she smelled it, too: gingerbread and honey, roasted chestnuts, and the burnt smell of sugar-glazed almonds.

At the end of the street, a large square beckoned, aglow with lights.

It was a Christmas market.

Christian led the way toward that haven of warmth and cheer. She and Jordan kept to his heels, trailed by Rhun and Bathory, the two again discreetly handcuffed together.

Nadia trailed behind, her attention focused on the straight back of the countess.

With every step and glance, Rhun radiated cold fury. For the entire flight, he had sat seething over Nadia’s attack on Bathory. Erin could understand the logic and necessity of the woman’s confinement. No one trusted the countess, fearful that she might say something to a border agent, or attack someone, or even go on a rampage aboard the jet, which from the sounds of the battle prior to taking off from Rome proved not an unjust concern.

Like Rhun, Erin still balked at the act of slicing the woman’s throat.

Bathory had been nearly killed for their convenience. Erin had donated her own blood to restore the countess to health after the plane had landed, but she knew that did not undo the damage. She saw it in the countess’s eyes. Nadia had cut through more than just the woman’s throat, but also any trust the woman had for them.

To Erin, it was also a harsh reminder of the lengths to which the Sanguinists were willing to go to achieve their goals. She knew securing the First Angel was important to stop a holy war, but she wasn’t so sure that the ends justified the means. Especially in this case. There could have been a less brutal way to secure Bathory, another means to earning her grudging cooperation, but the Sanguinists didn’t seem to look for it.

Still, this deed could not be undone.

They had to move forward.

Stepping into the warmth and merriment of the Christmas market, her icy mood thawed, along with some of the cold as she passed by open braziers that glowed with roasting chestnuts and almonds.

Farther to the left, a giant pine lit with golden balls stretched snow-dusted green branches toward the night sky. Out of the darkness overhead, feathery snowflakes danced to the ground. To the right, a round jolly Santa waved from inside a booth selling Christmas candies, one hand stroking his long white beard.

Jordan seemed to note little of it. His eyes plainly appraised the square, checking the tall buildings and the crowds bustling along in their warm winter clothes. He eyeballed each shop front as if a sniper could be hiding behind it.

She knew he was right to be on guard. Reminded that Rasputin lurked somewhere nearby, the simple magic of the Christmas market quickly evaporated. Per the Russian monk’s demands, their party had left their weapons inside the jet. But could they trust Rasputin to do the same? Oddly, he was known to be a man of his word — though he could twist those words in the most unexpected ways, so great care had to be taken with each syllable he uttered.

Passing alongside a stand selling wooden toys, Erin bumped against a girl wearing a blue knit cap with a white pom-pom. In her small hands, the child had been examining a marionette of an elf riding a deer. The puppet fell into the snow, tangling its strings. The proprietor of the shop did not look happy.

To avoid a scene, Erin handed him a ten-euro note, offering to pay. The transaction was made swiftly in the cold. The child offered a shy smile, grabbed her prize, and ran off.

While this was done, Jordan stood by a booth selling steaming sausages. Other links were looped over dowels near the ceiling. If there was any doubt as to what the sausages were made of, it was dispelled by the stuffed reindeer head hanging behind the apple-cheeked proprietor.

Erin joined the others, ready to apologize for the delay.

But Christian had stopped and searched around. “This is as far as I know where to go,” he said. “I was told to get us from the airport to this Christmas market.”

They all turned to study the spread of the festival.

The countess touched the healed wound on her neck. “A life-or-death mission, and yet you all know so little?”

Erin agreed with her, sick of so many secrets. She felt the weight of the amber stone in her pocket. She had transferred Amy’s keepsake from her old clothes to the new, carrying this burden with her, reminded that secrets could kill.

She eyed everything in the square warily. A woman pushed a baby carriage, the front covered by a plaid blanket. Next to her, a four-year-old with sticky cheeks held a lollipop in his fuzzy mitten. Beyond them, a gaggle of young girls giggled next to a stand that sold gingerbread hearts, while two boys puzzled over the inscriptions written on the hearts with white frosting.

A chorus of voices rose in song, echoing across the market, coming from a children’s choir singing “Silent Night” in Swedish. The melancholy notes of that Christmas favorite echoed her mood.

She craned her neck, searching for any sign of Rasputin. He could be anywhere or nowhere. She would not put it past that mad monk to not show up, to leave them hanging here in the cold.

Jordan rubbed his arms, plainly not liking them all standing out here in the open, or maybe he was merely cold. “We should make a circuit of the market,” he suggested. “If Rasputin wants to find us, he will. This is clearly his game, and we’ll have to wait for him to make the first move.”

Christian nodded and headed out again.

Jordan slipped his gloved hand into hers. While he seemed to walk casually after the young Sanguinist, she felt the tension in his grip, knew from the set of his shoulders that he was anything but relaxed.

Together, they passed other stands selling pottery, knitted goods, and candy beyond counting. Bright colors and glowing yellow lights shone all around, but it became clear that the market was beginning to close down. More people headed out into the surrounding streets than were coming in.

There continued to be no sign of Rasputin or any of his strigoi followers.

Stopping by a stand that sold sweaters knitted from local wool, Erin considered buying one if they had to wait much longer. Behind her, the children’s choir started again, their strong innocent voices filling the air.

She glanced to the stage at the end of the market alley.

She listened as a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy” began. Again it was in Swedish, but the melody was unmistakable, telling the story of a poor child offering up the only gift he could to the Christ child: a drum solo.

She smiled, remembering how enraptured she was as a girl, allowed to watch an animated version of this story, a rare treat in the hard religious compound where she had been raised.

Her eyes were drawn to the singers, noting they were all boys, like the subject of the Christmas carol. Then she suddenly stiffened, staring at all those innocent faces.

“That’s where Rasputin will be,” she said.

She knew the monk’s penchant for children. His interest was not sexual, though it was still predatory in its own way. She pictured all those children of Leningrad whom the monk had found starving or near death during the siege of World War II. He had turned them into strigoi to keep them from dying.

Rasputin had once been a Sanguinist, but he had been excommunicated and banished for such crimes. In turn, he had set up a perverted version of their order in St. Petersburg, becoming its de facto pope, mixing human blood and consecrated wine to sustain his flock, mostly children.

“He’ll be with those boys,” she pressed. “Near that choir.”

Bathory arched a skeptical eyebrow, but Rhun nodded. He knew Rasputin better than any of them. Rhun’s gaze met hers, acknowledging her insight into the monk’s psyche.

Jordan gripped her hand again. “Let’s go watch the show.”

Jordan kept tightly to Erin’s side as the group threaded through the thinning crowds toward the stage. His stomach ached at the smell of roasting chestnuts and mulled wine. It had been too long since he and Erin had any food. The Sanguinists often forgot that their human companions had to occasionally eat.

Once this was over, he planned on finding the largest and hottest bowl of soup in Stockholm. Or maybe two. One to eat and one to stick his numb feet into.

He glanced around at the civilians strolling the marketplace, carrying steaming cups, tied-up packages, or oily bags of chestnuts. What would happen to them if Rasputin attacked with his strigoi flock? He tried to imagine the collateral damage. It would not be good.

In fact, this entire setup stank. They had no weapons. And unreliable allies. He stared over at the countess, who strode with her hood tossed back, oblivious to the cold, her back pulled straight by her haughty, superior attitude.

If push came to shove, he didn’t know which side she would pick. Then he corrected himself. He did know.

She would pick her own side.

During the flight here, he’d had a quick conversation with Christian, holing up with the guy in the jet’s cockpit. Jordan had exacted a promise from Christian: that if things went to hell here, Christian would whisk Erin away as quickly as possible. Jordan wasn’t risking her life any more than he had to. He would not lose her.

He glanced over at Erin’s intent face. She would be mad if she knew of these plans. But he would rather have her angry at him — than gone.

Nearing the stage, Jordan passed a sign shaped like an outstretched arm. Its wooden finger pointed to a section of the market behind the choir.

Words on the sign were written in both Swedish and English, indicating the presence of an ice maze. It seemed the Swedes were definitely capitalizing on the cold.

Jordan passed the sign and approached the choir stage. Two rows of young boys wore white robes, their hands tucked into their sleeves, their noses red with cold. As they sang, he examined their earnest young faces, pale with winter. His eyes stopped on the last boy in the front row, a songbook grasped in his young hands, half obscuring his face.

This kid stuck out from the others. He looked to be thirteen or fourteen, a year or two older than the others. But that wasn’t what struck Jordan as odd.

Jordan touched Christian’s arm.

“The one on the end,” he whispered. “That kid isn’t wearing gloves.”

The boy sang with the others, harmonizing well, clearly experienced with singing in a choir — just maybe not this one. His nearest neighbor leaned away from him, as if he didn’t know him.

Jordan pictured Rasputin’s stronghold in St. Petersburg — the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood — where he conducted his own dark masses, had his own choir.

Jordan studied the singer’s half-hidden features. Dark brown hair framed a face as white as his immaculate robe. There was no rosiness to those cheeks at all.

The young boy noticed his attention and finally lowered his choir book. That was when Jordan recognized him. He was the boy from the video: Alexei Romanov.

Jordan suppressed an urge to grab Erin and haul ass out of there. He examined the other kids in the choir with a keener eye. They seemed cold, tired, and human. Nobody in the neighboring crowd stood out either.

He would see how this played out before reacting.

A small girl approached their group, wearing a blue hat with a white pom-pom. She fiddled with a stringed puppet. It was the child whom Erin had bought a gift for earlier. Jordan noted the girl also wasn’t wearing any gloves or mittens.

Christian followed his gaze to her bare fingers. He seemed to listen for a moment with his head slightly cocked, then nodded.

No heartbeat.

So she was another of Rasputin’s strigoi kids, her innocent face hiding a creature twice as old as Jordan and twice as deadly.

Nadia and Rhun grew stiffer to either side, ready for a fight. The countess simply held one graceful hand to a scarf that covered her damaged throat; her other remained handcuffed to Rhun. She sized up the square in a leisurely way, as if looking for advantages instead of enemies.

As the singing ended, the choirmaster gave a speech in Swedish, wrapping things up, signaling the end of the festival for this night. More of the crowd dispersed toward the streets. A young mother picked up a white-robed boy from the stage, bundled him up in a winter coat, and gave him a thermos full of a steaming beverage.

Lucky kid.

Other parents claimed other children until only Rasputin’s boy remained. With a slight bow toward them, he jumped off the platform and strode toward them with all the pride of Russian nobility.

Christian confronted the boy as he reached them. “Where is your master?”

The kid smiled, drawing a chill down Jordan’s spine. “I have two messages, but first you must answer a question. His Holiness has been watching you since you arrived. He says that you have come with two Women of Learning. The one he met in Russia and another from the true line of Bathory.”

It unnerved Jordan to learn how much Rasputin already knew about them.

But maybe that was the monk’s goal.

“And why does this concern him?” Rhun asked.

Alexei put his hands on his hips. “He said that there must be a test.”

Jordan didn’t like the sound of that.

“By his sworn word to your cardinal, His Holiness will only give the First Angel to the true Woman of Learning. Such is the bargain struck.”

Rhun looked ready to argue, but Erin stopped him.

“What kind of test?” she asked.

“Nothing too dangerous,” Alexei answered. “I will take two of you with one Woman of Learning, and Olga”—he motioned to the young girl with the blue hat—“will take two with the other.”

“What happens then?” Jordan asked.

“The first woman to find the First Angel wins.”

The countess shifted closer, sensing the game afoot, perhaps seeking a way to betray them. “What happens to the one who loses?”

Alexei shrugged. “I do not know.”

“I’m not putting Erin at risk,” Jordan said. “Find another way.”

The girl, Olga, spoke. Her voice was childishly sibilant, but her words were much too sophisticated and formal for someone of her apparent young age. “His Holiness has informed us to remind you that he possesses the First Angel. If you do not accede to his demands, you will never see him.”

Jordan frowned. Rasputin had them by the shorthairs and knew it.

“Where do we go?” Jordan asked, taking firm hold of Erin, refusing to be separated, irrevocably choosing which team he was going to play on. “Where do we begin this hunt?”

Alexei simply pointed to the sign Jordan had passed earlier.

The one shaped like an outstretched arm.

They were going into the ice maze.

26

Erin followed Olga’s bobbing white pom-pom around the side of the choir stage and toward a narrow alleyway. The festival’s ice maze had been constructed in a neighboring square, hidden for now by the apartment buildings to either side.

Of course, Rasputin would pick such a maze for his test—a place both cold and confusing. And at this late hour with the market now closed, the Russian monk would merely need to post guards at the various entrances to the maze to ensure privacy inside. But what waited for them at the heart of this labyrinth? She pictured the giant blasphemare bear that Rasputin had kept caged below his church in St. Petersburg. What monsters waited for them inside here?

As she headed toward the entrance to the alley, Erin was flanked by Christian and Jordan. A glance to the left showed Alexei leading Rhun, Bathory, and Nadia. They appeared on the far side of the choir stage and headed for a different street. Likely it led to another entrance to the hidden ice maze, another starting point.

Rhun glanced toward her as he reached the mouth of his alley.

She lifted an arm, wishing his group well.

Then the two teams vanished into the narrow streets, ready to face the challenge ahead, to outrace each other for the prize at the center of the maze: the First Angel.

As Erin’s group entered the narrow lane, Jordan’s gaze traced the straight rooflines to either side. He kept watch on the heavy doors, ready for any sudden attack. From frosted windows, light spilled onto the snowy cobblestones. Blurred shadows moved about in the warm rooms, the occupants oblivious of the danger beyond their stone walls and wooden doors, blind to the monsters that still haunted the night.

For a moment, Erin wished for such simple ignorance.

But lack of knowledge was not the same as safety.

With her hands in her pockets, she felt Amy’s keepsake, the chunk of warm amber preserving a fragile feather. Her student had been equally unaware of this secret world — and it had killed her just the same.

After a few more steps, the street ended at another square. Erin stopped abruptly, halted by the sheer beauty of what lay ahead. It seemed this labyrinth was not a simple mimic of a hedge maze. Ahead rose a veritable palace of ice, filling the entire square, rising a hundred feet into the air, composed of spires and turrets all made of ice. Hundreds of sculptures topped its walls, etched with hoarfrost and dusted with snow.

Unaffected by the beauty, Olga led them toward a gothic archway in the nearest wall, one of the many entrances into the maze hidden inside. Drawing closer, Erin admired the skill of the artisans who had carved it, the clever way they had cut ice blocks and mortared them together with frozen water, like stonemasons of old.

Lit by yellow streetlights behind her, the gateway glowed citrine.

Olga halted at the entrance. “I leave you to your journeys. The angel awaits you in the center of the castle.”

The girl folded her arms, stepped her legs apart, and stood as still as the statues atop the walls. Even her eyes went blank. A chill ran up Erin’s spine, reminded that this little girl was a strigoi. The child had probably been killing for half a century or more.

“I’ll go first,” Christian said, stepping under the archway, his black robe dark against the gold light.

“No.” Erin stopped him with a touch on his sleeve. “It’s my test. I should go first. When it comes to Rasputin, we’d best follow his rules. As the Woman of Learning, I must be the one to find the safe passage to the heart of the maze.”

Jordan and Christian exchanged uneasy glances. She knew that they wanted to protect her. But they couldn’t protect her from this.

Erin turned on her flashlight, stepped past Christian, and entered the passageway.

Massive blue-white walls rose on both sides, about twelve feet high, looking two feet thick, open to the dark sky above. The walkway between the blocks was so narrow that she could touch both sides with her outstretched fingertips. Her boots crunched on snow turned dirty gray by countless visitors.

She shone her light around. Every few feet, the builders had inserted clear ice windows to provide distorted glimpses into neighboring passageways. She reached an archway on the left and peered through it, expecting it to be another leg of the maze, but instead she discovered a miniature courtyard garden, where all the flowers and trellises and bushes were made of ice.

Despite the danger, a smile rose on her face.

The Swedes knew how to put on a winter pageant.

Continuing on, she glanced up at the cloudy sky. There were no stars to guide her steps. A light snow now fell, quiet and clean. Reaching an intersection, she set off toward her left, running her gloved fingertips along the left wall, remembering a child’s trick. The surest way to traverse all the parts of a maze was to keep a hand on one side and follow it through. She might reach dead ends, but the path would eventually end in the center.

Not the fastest route, but the surest.

With Jordan and Christian trailing, she picked up the pace, her glove gliding over ice windows, snagging on the parts of the walls made of snow. Her flashlight revealed other chambers. She came upon a space holding a sculpted four-poster bed of ice with two pillows, overhung by an ice chandelier that had been wired with real bulbs. It was dark now, but she tried to imagine it lit, its brilliance shining off all the polished ice.

In another room, she found herself staring at a massive ice elephant, its tusks toward the door, serving as a perch for a line of finely carved birds, some settled in sleep, others with wings outstretched ready to take flight.

Despite the wonders found here, trepidation inside Erin grew with every step, her eyes searching for any traps. What game was Rasputin playing here? The test could not be as simple as solving a path through this maze.

She even searched some of the graffiti carved into the ice by tourists, likely teenagers from all the inscribed hearts holding initials. She found nothing menacing, no clue to some deeper intent by the Russian monk.

She rounded another corner, sure that she was close to the center of the maze by now — then she saw it.

One of the ice windows, its surface polished to the clarity of glass, held an object frozen inside it. She lifted her flashlight in disbelief. Hanging in that window, perfectly preserved by the ice, was a dirty ivory-colored quilt, missing a square in the bottom left corner.

Horrified, Erin stopped and stared.

“What is it?” Jordan asked, adding his light.

How could Rasputin know about this? How had he found it?

“Erin?” Jordan pressed. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Are you okay?”

She peeled off her glove and pressed her bare palm against the ice, the heat of her hand melting the surface, remembering the last time she saw this quilt.

Erin’s small fingertip traced across the ivory-colored muslin. Interlocking squares of willow-green fabric formed a pattern across its surface. Her mother had called the pattern an Irish chain.

She remembered helping her mother make it.

After the day’s work was done, she and her mother would cut and piece squares by candlelight. Her mother’s stitching wasn’t as fine as it once had been, and toward the end, her mother was often too tired to work on it. So Erin took responsibility for the task, carefully sewing each square into place, her young fingers growing faster with each one.

She had finished it in time for her sister Emma’s birth.

Now, only two days old, Emma lay atop that same quilt. Emma had lived her entire life wrapped in it. She was born weak and feverish, but their father forbade that a doctor be called. He decreed that Emma would live or die by God’s will alone.

Emma died.

As Erin could only watch, the pink flush faded from Emma’s tiny face and hands. Her skin grew paler than the ivory of the quilt underneath her. It was not supposed to happen that way. The wrongness of it struck Erin, told her that she could no longer accept her father’s words, her mother’s silences.

She would have to speak her heart, and she would have to leave.

Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that no one saw her, Erin pulled scissors from her dress pocket. The metal snicked together as she cut out one square from the corner of the precious quilt. She folded the square and hid it in her pocket, then wrapped her sister in her quilt for the last time, the missing corner tucked deep inside so that no one would ever know what she had done.

Her sister’s body was wrapped in the quilt when her father buried her tiny body.

Through the ice, Erin traced the green Irish-chain pattern, darkened with mold and age. Her fingertips slid across ice. She had never expected to see this quilt again.

Aghast, she realized what its presence here meant.

To obtain it, Rasputin must have despoiled her sister’s grave.

Elizabeth ran through the maze, dragging Rhun along by the silver manacles. Nadia trailed, ever her dark shadow. Their human opponents could never match her group’s preternatural speed. Elizabeth should have no difficulty reaching the center of the maze well ahead of the blond doctor.

Though she cared little about the ambitions of the Sanguinists, she knew she must win this contest. If Cardinal Bernard ever decided that she was not the Woman of Learning, her life would be forfeit. Her fingers strayed again to the soft scarf that covered the wound on her throat. It was a shallow cut, a reminder of the depths of the order’s trust in her. If Bernard’s faith in her faltered, the next cut would be far deeper.

So she set a swift pace, memorizing every turn in the dark. She needed no light as she sped along. But with every step, her newly healed throat ached from the cold. Erin’s blood had partially revived her, but it was not enough, not nearly enough. It surprised her that the woman had offered such a boon — and even more so that Erin recognized the grievous nature of the Sanguinists’ assault on her.

The woman grew ever more intriguing to her. Elizabeth had even begun to comprehend Rhun’s fascination with her. Still, that would not stop Elizabeth from defeating the human in this task.

Elizabeth’s boots trod across the snow, her legs hurrying her forward. She ignored the distractions along the way, those rooms that had been sculpted to draw the eye and stir the imagination. Only one chamber had slowed her progress. It was a room that held a life-size carousel of horses made of ice. She remembered seeing such a display in Paris back in the summer of 1605, when such attractions had begun to replace the old jousting tourneys. She remembered the delight on her son Paul’s face upon seeing the bright costumes and prancing stallions.

An ache for her lost family, for her children long dead and grandchildren never seen, welled inside her.

Both sorrow and anger drove her onward.

Sweeping along, she peered through the many ice windows, each cunningly fashioned, but none provided clues as to which direction she should go. At a crossroads, she breathed in the smell of cold and snow, trying to judge the wind for a clue to the correct path.

Then from ahead came a faint rustling, hinting at unseen lurkers. No heartbeats accompanied the noises.

Strigoi.

She must be close to the heart of the maze.

Focusing on the sounds, she increased her pace again — then something caught the corner of her eye. Something frozen inside one of the ice windows, like a fly in amber. She stopped to study it, drawing Rhun to a halt, too.

Suspended in the middle of the ice was a rectangular object the size of her two hands put together. A shiny black cloth wrapped it snugly, tied with a dirty scarlet cord. She knew what it held.

It was her journal.

What is it doing here?

It was hard enough to imagine that the book had survived the ravages of centuries. It was even harder to fathom that someone had plucked it from its long-ago hiding place and brought it here.

Why?

The shiny cloth was oilskin. Her fingertips remembered its sticky surface, and her mind’s eye saw the first page as clearly as if she had drawn it yesterday.

It was a picture of an alder leaf, along with a diagram of its roots and stems.

Those early pages had contained drawings of herbs, listing their properties, the secrets to their uses, the places where they might be gathered on her estate. She had drawn the plants and flowers herself, written the instructions in her fairest hand by candlelight during the long winter hours. But she had not stopped there, remembering when her studies had turned darker, as dark as the heart Rhun had blackened.

Elizabeth wrote the last entry while the peasant girl died in front of her, blood seeping from a hundred cuts. Elizabeth had thought her stronger than that. She had mistimed the girl’s death, the outcome a failure. She felt a stab of impatience, but reminded herself that even such failures brought her knowledge.

Behind her, another girl whimpered from her cage. She would be the next subject, but her fate could wait until tomorrow. As if she sensed this, the caged girl grew quiet, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking.

Elizabeth scribbled observations by the light of the fire, recording each detail — how quickly the first girl died, how long she could wait before turning such subject into a strigoi, how long it took for each to die in that state.

Over and over, with different girls, Elizabeth experimented.

Slowly and carefully, she learned the secrets of who she was, what she was.

Such knowledge would only make her stronger.

Elizabeth lifted her hand to touch the ice. She had not thought to see her journal again. She had hidden it within her castle once her trial had started. It contained more than six hundred names, many more girls than she had been charged with killing. She had secured it deep under her castle, beneath a stone so large that no mortal man could lift it.

But someone had.

Likely the same someone who brought it to this maze, left it for her to find.

Who? And why?

“What are you doing?” Rhun asked, noting her interest.

“That book is mine,” she said. “I want it back.”

Nadia shoved her forward. “We have no time for such diversions.”

Elizabeth stepped back to the ice window, standing her ground. She wanted it back. Her work might yet have value.

“Oh, but we do,” she said, scraping the edge of her manacle down the ice, removing the top layer. “I am the Woman of Learning, and I choose how we spend our time. I am the one being tested.”

“She is right,” Rhun added. “Rasputin would not want us to interfere. She must succeed or fail on her own.”

“Then be quick about it,” Nadia said.

Rhun added his strength to Elizabeth’s. Together, they quickly bored through the clear ice until the book was free. With both hands, Elizabeth plucked the precious book from its cold prison.

As she held it, she noticed shadowy shapes on the far side. Though distorted by the ice, the forms clearly were men or women. Again she heard no heartbeats.

They must be the strigoi she had sensed before.

She suddenly realized there was no need to follow this damnable maze any longer. There was a more direct path to victory. Hauling her free arm back, she slammed her elbow into the ice window, shattering through it to the far side.

Shards of ice danced across the dirty snow of the maze’s heart.

Rhun and Nadia bowed next to her, peering through the hole.

Elizabeth laughed between them. “We have won.”

27

Erin tore her eyes from the frozen quilt. She could not let her personal feelings distract from her goal. She had to leave this piece of her past behind and press on. She guessed its purpose here: Rasputin wanted to throw her off balance, to slow her down.

She would not give him the satisfaction.

“Erin?” Jordan’s soft voice breathed in her ear.

“I’m fine.” The words sounded strange, plainly a lie. “Let’s keep going.”

“Are you sure?” His warm hands cupped her shoulders. Jordan knew her well enough to see through her brave words.

“I’m sure.”

She sounded more confident that time. She could not let Rasputin see how he had affected her. If he sensed any weakness in her, he would use it to tear a deeper wound. So she buried that pain and kept marching.

We must be near the center by now.

She hurried forward, again running her fingertips along the left wall, moving ever closer to the heart of the maze. In another two turns of the passageway, she entered a spacious round room, the walls made of packed snow, again open to the sky above, the edges of the walls overhead crenellated.

They had reached the central turreted tower of the ice palace.

In the middle of the space rose a life-size ice sculpture of an angel. It stood atop a plinth, also carved from ice. The craftsmanship was extraordinary. It looked as if the angel had just landed there, using its massive wings to alight on this frozen perch. Moonlight shimmered through its diamond wings, each feather perfectly defined. The body itself was glazed by frost to a pure white, its snow-dusted face turned up toward the heavens.

As beautiful as the sight was, Erin only felt disappointment.

Gathered below the sculpture was Rhun’s group, with the countess wearing a smug smile.

I lost.

The judge of this contest stood beside the victor.

Rasputin lifted his arm in greeting toward her. “Welcome, Dr. Granger! About time you joined us!”

The monk looked the same as always, in a simple black robe that draped below his knees. From his neck hung a prominent Orthodox cross, in gold instead of the Sanguinist’s silver. His shoulder-length hair looked oily in the dim light, but his light blue eyes stood out, dancing with amusement.

She met his gaze defiantly as she crossed toward them.

He clapped bare white hands, the sound too loud for the quiet space. “Alas, it seems you have come in second, my dear Erin. It was close, I must say.”

Bathory gave her a cold triumphant smile, here again proving she was the true Woman of Learning.

Rasputin continued, turning to Jordan. “But what is that clever expression, Sergeant Stone? Close only counts with hand grenades?”

“Or horseshoes,” Jordan added. “Which is this?”

Rasputin laughed, deep from his belly.

Rhun scowled. “We did not come here to play games, Grigori. You promised us the First Angel. As Bernard agreed, your home in St. Petersburg — the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood — will be reconsecrated by the pope himself. His Holiness will also give you a full pardon and rescind your excommunication. If you wish, you may take the vows of a Sanguinist again and—”

“Why would I want that?” Rasputin said, cutting him off. “An eternity of pious suffering.”

Bathory tilted her head. “Indeed.”

Erin kept back, ignoring Rhun and Rasputin as their argument grew more heated. The masterful sculpture captured her attention. Closer now, she saw the expression of anguish on that white face, as if this winged creature had been cast from the heavens to land atop this plinth, banished to this earthly realm.

It was horrible and beautiful at the same time.

Rhun continued. “You may return to St. Petersburg knowing that your soul has been forgiven by the Church. But you must first deliver us the boy, Grigori.”

“But I brought you what I promised,” Rasputin said, waving toward the statue. “A beautiful angel.”

“We did not ask for this mockery of holiness,” Rhun said, taking a threatening step toward Rasputin, stirring the handful of strigoi who gathered at the room’s edges.

“So are you then saying you don’t want my gift?” Rasputin asked. “Are you declining my generous offer and breaking our bargain?”

Something in the monk’s eyes went dark, hinting at a danger, a trap.

Oblivious to this, too angered to note it, Rhun began to tell Rasputin where he could shove this frozen angel.

Erin cut him off. “We want it!” she called out before Rhun could say otherwise.

Rasputin turned to her, his face going hard, angry.

Erin moved to the statue, beginning to fathom the level of the monk’s cruelty. She took off her gloves and touched the angel’s foot. Frost melted under the warm fingertips. She wiped her palm up the statue’s leg, wiping away more of the surface to reveal the clear ice underneath.

She brought up her flashlight, shining the beam of her light into the heart of the clear sculpture. She swore and stared daggers at Rasputin.

“What is it?” Jordan asked.

She shifted aside to show him, to show them all.

Through the space she had cleared, a bare human leg shone within the ice.

A boy’s leg.

A boy who could not die.

Even if frozen.

With her stomach heaving, she whirled to face Rasputin. “You froze him inside a block of ice and carved a statue out of him.”

Rasputin shrugged, as if this were the most natural thing to do. “He is an angel, so of course I gave him wings.”

Jordan pointed to the statue and grabbed Christian by the arm. “Help me! We need to get that kid free!”

The boy must be in agony.

Frozen to death, but unable to die.

Together, they rammed their shoulders at the statue’s midsection. It toppled backward off the plinth and crashed to the snow. A crack shattered down the torso. Erin joined them, dropping to her knees. They worked to clear the ice from the frozen form, each taking a side, pulling and breaking away chunks of ice.

Jordan removed a piece from the boy’s chest, taking some of his skin with it.

He prayed the boy slept in this icy slumber, trying not to picture the kid being dropped into cold water, sealed there, drowning as the ice formed around him. He could only imagine the suffering.

Erin worked very gently on his face, exposing his cheeks, his eyelids, cracking ice from his hair. His lips and the tip of his nose had split, leaking blood and freezing again.

Rasputin looked on, his arms crossed. “Of course, this presents a problem,” he said. “The countess reached the center of the maze first, but Erin found the angel. So then who is the winner?”

Jordan scowled at him, as if that mattered now. He watched as Erin concentrated on freeing the boy’s face, pressing her hands against his cheeks and chin and across his closed eyes. It seemed a futile process. It could take hours to thaw the boy out, even with a fire nearby.

But Erin glanced over to him, her expression amazed. “His skin is frozen, but once warmed, the flesh below seems soft, pliable.”

Intrigued, Rasputin stepped closer. “It seems the grace that grants Thomas his immortality resists even the touch of ice.”

Still, from the grimace frozen on the boy’s face, such grace had clearly not kept him from suffering.

Jordan pulled a small med kit from his pocket. He had taken it from the bathroom at Castel Gandolfo. He snapped it open and took out a syringe. “This is morphine. It’ll help with the pain. Do you want me to inject it? If his core is not frozen and his heart beats — even slowly — it might offer him some relief, especially as he wakes up.”

Erin nodded. “Do it.”

Jordan placed a hand over the boy’s bare chest, over his heart. He waited for his palm to warm the skin below. As he waited, he felt a feeble beat.

He glanced up.

“I heard it, too!” Rhun said. “He is stirring.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Jordan mumbled.

He lifted the syringe high and pounded the needle through the thawed palm print on his chest, aiming for the heart. Once set, he pulled back on the plunger, got a reassuring flush of cold blood into the syringe, indicating a good stick. Satisfied, he pushed the plunger home.

Erin brushed his frosty hair and whispered a litany into his cold ear, warming him with her breath. “I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry…”

They waited a full minute, but nothing seemed to happen.

After rubbing his thighs, calves, knees, Jordan worked the boy’s legs, bending them with great care. Christian did the same with his arms.

Erin suddenly jerked back as his thin chest gave a heave, then another.

Jordan stared over as the boy’s eyelids pulled open. Despite the dimness, the boy’s pupils remained fixed and tiny, constricted by the morphine. His lips gasped open, and a gargled cry escaped, half weeping, half pain.

Erin cradled him in her lap. Jordan shed his leather jacket and wrapped Thomas’s body and limbs as a violent trembling shook through his wan form.

Rhun loomed over Rasputin. “We will take the boy from here. You have won your pardon, but our business here is concluded.”

“No,” Rasputin said. “I’m afraid, it is not.”

More strigoi entered from the various archways around the room, joining the handful already there, quickly outnumbering their group. Many carried automatic weapons.

The Sanguinists moved together to face the threat.

“Do you break your word?” Rhun asked.

“I almost got you to break it for me by nearly refusing my gift,” Rasputin said with a smile. “But it seems Erin saw through my little ruse here. Which only makes your decision harder, Rhun.”

“What decision?”

“I told Bernard I would hand the boy over to the Woman of Learning.” He waved an arm to encompass both Erin and Bathory. “So which woman is it? You must choose.”

“Why?”

“The prophecy allows for only one Woman of Learning,” said Rasputin. “The false one must die.”

Jordan stood up, moving to stand over Erin.

Rasputin smiled at this motion. “Clearly the Warrior of Man will choose his lady love, guided by his heart not his head. But my dear Rhun, you are the Knight of Christ. So you must choose. Who is the true Woman of Learning? Which woman shall live? Which shall die?”

“I will not become part of your evil, Grigori,” Rhun said. “I will not choose.”

“That is also a choice,” Rasputin said. “Rather the more interesting one.”

The monk clapped his hands once.

His strigoi brought up their guns.

Rasputin faced Rhun. “Pick or I will kill them both.”

Rhun glanced between Elisabeta and Erin, recognizing the cruel trap set by Rasputin. The monk was a spider who wove words to snare and torture. He knew now that Rasputin had come here as much to torment Rhun as for Bernard’s promised absolution. The Russian would hand over the boy, but not before making Rhun suffer.

How can I choose?

But with the fate of the world in balance, how could he not?

He saw how battle lines were drawn in the snow: strigoi on one side, Sanguinists on the other. They were outnumbered, caught without weapons. Even if victory could be achieved, both women would likely be killed or the boy whisked away by Rasputin’s forces during the fighting.

Into the silence that stretched, a strange intruder arrived in their midst, wafting through the drift of snowflakes, crossing between their two small armies. The brilliance of its emerald-green wings caught every mote of light and reflected it back. It was a large moth, so strange to see in this icy landscape. Rhun’s sharp ears picked out the faintest whirring coming from it, accompanied by the soft beat of its iridescent wings.

No one moved, captured by its beauty.

It fluttered closer to the Sanguinists, as if picking a side in the battle to come. It landed on Nadia’s black coat, on her shoulder, displaying swallowtails at the ends of its wings, the emerald scales dusted with a hint of silver.

Before anyone could react, to speak out at the strangeness, more of its brethren blew into the space, some from the various passageways all around, some drifting down with the snowflakes from above.

Soon, the entire room stirred with these tiny shreds of brilliance, dancing about the air, alighting here and there, wings beating.

The whirring Rhun had noted before grew more evident.

Rhun studied the moth perched on Nadia, noted the metallic hue to its body.

Despite the real wings, these trespassers were not living creatures, but artificial constructs, built by some unknown hand.

But whose?

As if answering this question, a tall man entered the ice tower from the same entrance used by Erin. Rhun heard his heartbeat now, having failed to note it earlier amid all the strangeness. He was human.

The man wore a light green scarf and a gray cashmere coat that reached to his knees. The colors set off his gray hair and his silver-blue eyes.

Rhun noted Bathory stir at the sight of him, stiffening slightly, as if she knew this man. But how could she? He was plainly human, of this time. Had she met this stranger during the months that she roamed free in the streets of Rome? Had she called him here to free her? If so, this stranger could hardly hope to win against Rasputin’s strigoi and the Sanguinists.

Yet he did not seem the least nervous.

Rasputin also reacted to the man’s arrival with an expression more worrisome than Bathory’s. The monk fled away, toward the farthest wall, his normal darkly amused expression turned to horror.

Rhun went cold.

Nothing of this world ever unnerved Rasputin.

Knowing this, Rhun turned a wary eye on the stranger. He shifted to stand over Erin and the boy, ready to protect them against this new threat.

The man spoke, in English with a slight British accent, formal and studied. “I have come for the angel,” he said with a deadly calm.

The other Sanguinists closed ranks to either side of Rhun.

Jordan pulled Erin to her feet, clearly readying them to run or fight. The boy sat on the snow at their knees, dazed by debilitation and drugs, wrapped in Jordan’s leather coat. Rhun knew Erin would not leave the boy.

In turn, the strigoi flocked their small forms in front of Rasputin, forming a shield between him and the mysterious man, their guns pointed toward the stranger.

The man remained unperturbed, his eyes on Rasputin. “Grigori, you are sometimes too clever for your own good.” The man gestured to the boy. “You found another immortal such as I, months ago, and you did not tell me until hours ago?”

Rhun struggled to understand.

Another immortal such as I…

He stared at the man. How could that be?

The man scowled sadly. “I thought we had an arrangement when it came to such matters, tovarishch.”

Rasputin’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

Another rarity for the clever-tongued monk.

Christian and Nadia exchanged a quick glance with Rhun, confirming their mutual confusion. None of them knew anything about this man, this supposed immortal.

Bathory simply watched, a small calculating crinkle between her brows. She knew something but remained silent, clearly wanting to see how this would play out before reacting.

The man’s eyes found hers, and a welcoming smile softened his cold countenance. “Ah, Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed,” he said formally. “You remain as beautiful as first I set eyes upon you.”

“You, too, are unchanged, sir,” she said. “Yet I hear your heartbeat and cannot fathom how such a thing could be so, since we met so long ago.”

He clasped his hands behind his back, looking relaxed. He answered her, but his words were for them all. “Like you, I am immortal. Unlike you, I am not strigoi. My immortality is a gift given to me by Christ to mark my service to Him.”

Behind him, Erin sucked in a quick breath.

Rhun also could not keep the shock from his face.

Why would Jesus grant this man immortality?

Nadia spoke up, asking another question. “What service did you perform?” she pressed. “What did you do that our Lord blessed you with eternity?”

“Blessing?” he scoffed. “You know better than anyone that immortality is no blessing. It is a curse.”

Rhun could not argue against that. “Then why were you cursed?”

A smile formed on his lips. “That is two questions buried in one. First, you are asking, what did I do to become cursed? Second, why was I given this particular punishment?”

Rhun wanted the answers to both.

As if reading his mind, that smile broadened. “The answer to the first is easy. The second was a question that plagued me for millennia. I had to walk this earth many centuries before the truth of my purpose became evident.”

“Then answer the first,” Rhun said. “What did you do to become cursed?”

He met Rhun’s eye unabashedly. “I betrayed Christ with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane. Surely you know your biblical history, priest.”

Nadia gasped, while Rhun stumbled back in horror.

It could not be.

Into that stunned silence, Erin stepped forward, as if to face the truth of this man’s impossible existence. “And why were you given this punishment, these endless years?”

The Betrayer of Christ stared back at Erin. “By my word, I sent Christ from this world. By my actions, I will bring him back. That is the purpose of my curse. To open the gates of Hell and prepare the world for His return, for the Second Coming of Christ.”

To his horror, Rhun understood.

He intends to bring about Armageddon.

28

Erin struggled against the weight of the history that stood before her, to keep it from crushing her into immobility. If this man spoke the truth and was not some deluded soul, here stood Judas Iscariot, the most infamous man in history, the betrayer who sent Christ to the cross.

She listened to his confession, to his goal to end the world.

“And you believe that is your purpose?” she challenged him. “You believe Christ set you on this long path so that you could orchestrate His return?”

In the distance came the wail of police sirens, reminding her of this modern world, of this age, where few believed in saints and demons. Yet before her was a man who claimed to encompass both. If he spoke the truth, his eyes had witnessed Christ’s miracle, his ears had heard His parables and lessons, those very lips had kissed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and condemned Christ to death.

The sirens grew louder, closing in on them.

Had their trespass been noted by neighbors? Had an alarm been raised?

Iscariot’s eyes turned in that direction — then back to them. “The time for talk is over. I will have this angel and be gone.”

Sensing a threat behind his words, both strigoi and Sanguinist tensed for battle.

Jordan pulled Erin behind him.

Iscariot simply lifted his index finger, as if summoning a waiter to the table — but instead he summoned the strange flock that heralded his arrival. The flutter of moths in the air settled over their gathered forces.

One landed on Erin’s hand as she held up her arm, warding against whatever threat these bits of brilliance posed. Tiny brass legs danced over the wool of her glove until it reached a bare patch of skin exposed at the end of her sleeve. A tiny silver proboscis jabbed her flesh, needling deep.

She dropped her arm and shook her hand against the sting.

The moth dislodged and, with a slow beat of its wings, fluttered off.

What the hell?

She scrutinized the drop of blood welling from the puncture wound.

Jordan swore, slapping at the back of his neck, crumpling a moth that fell to the snow. She watched as the others were similarly assaulted. She still failed to understand the threat — until she saw Olga stumble away from the cluster of strigoi children.

Emerald wings battered at her small cheek. Then she screamed, falling to her knees. The moth flittered up from its perch on her nose and wafted away. A black corruption started at her cheek and quickly ate away her face, exposing bone, blood boiling from cracks. Her small form convulsed. More of Rasputin’s flock fell, writhing, dropping to the snow.

Erin glanced to the spot of blood on her wrist, recognizing what was happening.

Poison.

The butterflies carried some form of venom.

She rubbed at her arm, but she remained unaffected.

So did Jordan.

Rasputin fell among his flock, but he was brought low not by poison, but by grief. “Stop!” he wailed.

Erin remembered another creature that had died by a similar corruption. She pictured the grimwolf in the tunnel under the Vatican. She had shot the beast with bullets tainted by the blood of Bathory Darabont. The woman had carried some form of venom in her blood that was poisonous to strigoi—even to Sanguinists.

Panicked, she turned to Rhun, to the other Sanguinists.

Nadia was on her knees, cradled by Christian, while Rhun battered against the emerald storm around him, using his leather armor as a shield.

Erin rushed over, drawing Jordan with her. “Help them!” she called out. As humans, they seemed to be immune to this poison. “Keep those moths away!”

Still, she remembered the first moth, its emerald wings coming to perch on Nadia.

“It burns,” the woman moaned. Her fingers clutched her blackened throat, squeezing as if to hold back the poison.

But it was useless. The darkness moved up her cheeks, consuming her — though it spread through more slowly than it did with the strigoi, it appeared as inevitable.

Christian looked helplessly at Erin. “What can we do?”

The answer came from the far side of the storm. “Nothing,” Iscariot called, hearing his plea. “Except watch her die.”

Nadia’s body arched back, racking into a convulsion.

Something hit Erin from the side. A small boy clutched at her, one of the strigoi, half his face gone. Tears wept from his one eye. She dropped and held him, his tiny hand clutching hers, perhaps knowing that she could not save him, but not wanting to be alone. He looked up at her with an anguished sky-blue eye. She held his cold hands tightly until he went quiet, the corruption consuming him entirely.

She stared across the snow.

None of the children moved now; their ravaged bodies draped the snow.

Nadia gave one final gasp — then lay motionless in death.

Christian bent over her, his eyes shining with tears.

Erin released the strigoi’s tiny hands — or what was left of them.

Obeying some silent signal, the moths lifted around them, ascending high, but remaining a threat above. She counted the few survivors: Rasputin and the other Sanguinists. She suspected they only lived because their master willed it.

She stood and faced Iscariot. “Why?”

Judas held out his hand and a moth landed gracefully in his palm, silvery-green wings opening and closing. “A lesson for you all.” He nodded to Nadia’s body. “To prove to the Sanguinists that their blessing will not protect them from my curse, from my blood.”

So it was his tainted blood inside the moths.

Erin watched as Nadia’s form dissolved to ash and bone. The brave woman had saved her life countless times. She did not deserve such an ignominious and pointless death.

And not just her.

Rasputin moaned, on his knees among his fallen children. “Then why this? What lesson are you trying to teach me?”

“No lesson, Grigori. Only punishment. For keeping secrets from me.”

Moths swirled lower again, threateningly. One wafted about Rhun’s shoulder.

Erin’s mind raced, sensing Iscariot was not done with them. Her best hope was knowledge. She remembered the black palm print that had decorated the throat of Bathory Darabont, marking her blood as tainted. Erin sensed that palm belonged to Iscariot. Had he used some alchemy of his own blood to corrupt the woman’s, to protect her among the strigoi she had commanded? Darabont had served the Belial, a group of strigoi and humans working together, manipulated by an unknown puppet master.

Erin again pictured that black palm print and looked at Iscariot. “You are the leader of the Belial.”

Her words drew his attention. “It seems your former title as the Woman of Learning was not unjustified, Dr. Granger.” He faced the survivors here. “But I am not done here.”

Before anyone could move, the moths fell from the skies and covered the Sanguinists, landing atop Rasputin, even Bathory, too many to stop. As they began to struggle anew, Iscariot bellowed an order.

“Stop!” Iscariot threatened. “Fight and you will all die!”

Recognizing the futility, they obeyed, going still. Moths fluttered to perch across shoulders and limbs.

“I have no wish to kill you all, but I will if forced.”

Iscariot kept his gaze fixed to Rhun, who remained standing like a suit of armor, a true Knight of Christ.

He pointed a finger at Rhun. “It is now time for the Knight of Christ to join his sister of the cloth. To leave his world in peace and ascend to his place in the heavens.”

Rhun’s eyes flicked to hers, as if to say good-bye.

“Wait,” Erin said. “Please.”

Iscariot turned to her.

Erin had only one card to play, remembering Rasputin’s dealings with the Belial before. Back in St. Petersburg, the monk had turned over the Blood Gospel and Erin to Bathory Darabont, but only after exacting a promise from her. Erin remembered Rasputin’s words, of the debt sworn.

I promised you the book as a gesture of goodwill… if, in return, your master grants me the life of my choosing later.

It had been agreed.

Erin turned toward Rasputin. Would the monk be willing to call in that debt now to save Rhun? Would Iscariot honor it? She had no other choice but to make her case.

She faced Iscariot. “Two months ago, Rasputin made a deal with your Belial forces. In exchange for his cooperation, he would be granted a life of his choosing. The pact was made. It was witnessed by all.”

Iscariot looked to Rasputin, who knelt among his children’s bodies. Tears ran down his cheeks and disappeared in his beard. In spite of his evil, he had loved his children like a true father, and he had watched them die in agony, victims of his own plotting.

“Is that your wish then, Grigori?” Judas asked. “Will you cast this veil of protection over Rhun Korza? Is this who you will claim?”

Rasputin raised his head to meet the man’s gaze.

Please, she thought. Say yes. Save one life tonight.

The Russian monk stared long at Iscariot, longer at Rhun. At one time, he and Rhun had been friends, working together as fellow Sanguinists.

Eventually Rasputin spoke, his voice faint with grief. “Too many have died this night.”

Iscariot sighed, his lips drawing tight with irritation. “I broke my word once… and was cursed for it. I swore never to break it again. And will not now. Despite what you think, I am not a craven man.” He inclined his head toward Rasputin. “I honor my debt and grant your wish.”

Erin let out her held breath, closing her eyes.

Rhun would live.

Iscariot lifted his arm, and two burly men entered the room, one with dark hair and one with light. Both were tall and built like tanks, with thick necks and arms. They crossed toward the boy, ready to collect Iscariot’s prize.

Erin moved to stop them, but Jordan gripped her arm.

This was not a battle they could win, and any aggression could end up with their friends falling dead to the moths.

The large pair examined the boy’s limp body with rough attention, raising a whimper from his dazed and drugged form. They got him roughly on his feet.

“What do you want with him?” Erin asked.

“That is none of your concern.”

“I think we can move him,” said one of the men. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but he seems strong enough.”

“Very good.” Iscariot lifted a hand in invitation toward Bathory. “Would you care to come with me?”

Bathory straightened. “I would be honored to make your reacquaintance.” She lifted up her arm, displaying her handcuffs. “But it seems I’m bound to another at the moment.”

“Release her.”

Christian hesitated, but Rhun nodded to him. “Do as he says.”

No one wanted to provoke this man any further. Christian dropped, fumbled in Nadia’s pocket, and produced a tiny key. The countess held out her hand as if she wore an expensive bracelet. Christian unlocked the handcuffs.

Once free, Bathory stepped to join Iscariot. “Thank you, sir, for the kindness that you show me now, as you have always shown my family.”

Iscariot barely noted her, which drew a small pique of irritation upon the countess’s lips. Instead, the man drew out a large pistol from his pocket, pointed it forward, and fired.

Erin flinched from the noise of the gunshot — but the weapon had not been aimed at her.

Jordan’s grip on her arm slipped away.

He slid to the snow beside her.

Crying out, she fell to her knees beside him. A wet stain spread from the left side of his chest. She ripped his shirt open, revealing a bullet wound. Blood pumped out of his wound, running across the blue lines of his lightning tattoo, sweeping over his chest, pooling under him.

She pressed her hands tight against the hole. Slippery warm blood coated her fingers. He would be fine. He had to be. But her heart knew better.

“Why?” she cried at Iscariot.

“I’m sorry,” he said matter-of-factly. “According to the words of the prophecy, you are the only three in the world who hold any hope of thwarting me, of stopping the Armageddon to come. To break that prophecy, one of the trio must die. Once accomplished, the other two become irrelevant. So I give you your lives. As I said, I am not a craven man, merely practical.”

He shrugged.

Erin covered her face with her hands, but she could not hide the truth so easily. She had killed Jordan with her cleverness. By saving Rhun, she had doomed the man she loved.

Iscariot would not be thwarted.

If the Knight of Christ lived, the Warrior of Man had to die.

Under her palms, Jordan’s chest no longer rose and fell. Blood continued to spread, steaming across the cold snow. A snowflake fell onto his open blue eye and melted there.

He did not blink.

“You cannot help him,” Christian whispered.

She refused to believe that.

I can help him. I must help him.

As tears streamed down her cheeks, she couldn’t breathe. Jordan could not be gone. He was always strong, always came through. He could not die from a simple gunshot. It was wrong, and she would not let it happen.

She stared up at Christian, clutching his pant leg with a bloody hand. “You can bring him back. Make him one of you.”

He looked at her in horror.

She didn’t care. “Turn him. You owe him that. You owe me that.”

Christian shook his head. “Even if it were not forbidden, I could do nothing. His heart has already stopped. It is too late.”

She gaped at him, trying to make sense of his words.

“I’m sorry, Erin,” Rhun said. “But Jordan is truly gone.”

A crunching in the snow told her that someone moved toward her, but she did not care who. A hand, skin cracked and bleeding, touched Jordan’s chest.

She raised her head to find the boy crouched next to her, barely on his feet. He slipped the coat off his shoulders — Jordan’s coat — and returned it to its former owner, gently draping it over the wound.

The boy licked his cracked lips. “Thank you.”

Erin knew he was thanking Jordan for far more than the coat.

“Enough,” Iscariot said as the sirens crashed louder around them. “Take him.”

One of his burly assistants picked the boy up as if he were a sack of potatoes, carrying him in his arms. The boy cried out at the rough handling, fresh blood dripping from his many wounds, melting holes into the snow.

Erin half stood, wanting to go to him. “Please don’t hurt him.”

She was ignored. Iscariot turned and held out his hand, and Bathory took it, her white hand coming to rest in his, making her choice of whom to follow.

“Stay, Elisabeta,” Rhun pleaded. “You do not know this man.”

The countess touched the scarf that covered the barely healed incision on her neck. “But, my love, I know you.”

Covered in moths, Rhun could only watch as they departed.

Erin returned to Jordan’s body. She caressed his lifeless cheek, his stubble rough under her fingertips. She touched his upper lip, then leaned forward, kissing him one last time, his lips already cold, more like Rhun’s.

She pushed that thought roughly away.

At her shoulder, the two Sanguinists chanted a prayer. She recognized the words, but she stayed mute. Prayers did not comfort her.

Jordan was dead.

None of their words could change that.

29

Leopold stood on the shore of a blue lake in southern Italy, starlight reflecting in the quiet waters. He took in a deep breath, readying himself for what must come. He noted traces of sulfur in the air, the odor too faint for mortal senses to detect, but it was still there, revealing the volcanic nature of Avernus Lake. Thick woods rose along the ancient crater’s steep banks. Across the water, a scatter of lights marked distant homesteads and farms, and much farther out the city of Naples glowed at the horizon.

In the past, the lake had once steamed heavily with volcanic gases, so strongly that birds passing overhead would drop from the sky. Even the name Avernus meant without birds. Ancient Romans came to believe that the entrance to the underworld could be found near this lake.

How true they were…

He studied the unruffled blue waters, picturing this peaceful place birthed out of fire, born from lava blasting into the sky, burning the land, killing every creature that crept, crawled, or flew. Now it had become a calm valley, offering a haven for birds, fishes, deer, and rabbits. The surrounding pines and shrubs teemed with new life.

He took that lesson to heart.

Sometimes fire was necessary to cleanse, to offer a lasting peace.

That was Leopold’s hope, to bring salvation to the world through the fires of Armageddon.

He stared out at the lake, pausing from his task to thank God for sparing the lives of those on the train. He had called the Damnatus after viewing his own coffin at Castel Gandolfo, only to learn that the others had survived, that the Damnatus had made a pact with that Russian monk to ambush the others in Stockholm.

Resolved to do what he must, he turned his back on the lake. His leather sandals scuffed red volcanic soil as he followed a path that led toward the Grotta di Cocceio. It was an old Roman tunnel, a kilometer long, built before the birth of Christ, burrowing from the lake to the ruins of ancient Cumae on the far side of the crater wall. Damaged during World War II, the tunnel was closed to the public, serving now as the perfect place to hide secrets.

Leopold reached the entrance, an archway of dark stone sealed with an iron gate.

It took little of his strength to break the lock and slip inside. Once through, he had to crawl and traverse a broken landscape of rock, to reach the main tunnel. With the way now open, he ran through the darkness, not bothering to hide his unearthly speed. No one would see him here.

His footsteps slowed when he reached the far end, where it opened into a complex of ruins outside the crater. He stepped out into the cool breezes off the neighboring sea. Above his head, perched at the rim of the valley, was a temple to Apollo, an ancient complex of broken pillars, stone amphitheaters, and crumbling foundations of structures long gone. That was not his destination. From the tunnel entrance, he turned right, ducking into another tunnel. The passageway here was cut through yellow stone, carved trapezoidal in shape, narrow at the bottom with walls that slanted outward.

It was the entrance to the grotto of the Cumaean sibyl, the timeless prophetess mentioned by Virgil and whose image was painted on the Sistine Chapel, marking her as one of the five seers who had predicted the birth of Christ.

Leopold had been instructed on precisely what he must do from here. By now, the Damnatus should have secured the First Angel. Leopold must do the same with another. A chill swept his cold skin, threatening to drive him back.

How dare I assault such a one?

But he pictured Avernus Lake, where peace and grace were born out of fire and brimstone. He must not balk when their goal was so close.

The passageway stretched a hundred yards into the depths below the crater. According to Virgil, the path to the sibyl was a hundredfold, hinting at the maze buried beneath these ruins. What was visible to the tourists was but the tiniest fraction of the true lair of the prophetess.

Still, he reached the tunnel’s end and lingered at what was considered the sibyl’s inner sanctum. Standing at the threshold, he examined the carved archways and empty stone benches. Once it had been grander, filled with frescoes and flowers. Beautiful offerings would have lined the walls. Blossoms would have released their scents to the underground air. Fruit would have ripened and rotted here.

Across the way stood her carved throne, a simple bench of stone.

He pictured the Sibyl of Cumae singing her prophecies from there, imagining the stir of leaves that were said to accompany her predictions, leaves upon which she recorded her visions of the future.

Despite the ancient accounts, Leopold knew the true power did not lie in this room — but far below it. The sibyl had chosen this site because of what lay hidden at the heart of her lair, something she protected from the world at large.

Before he lost his courage, he rushed across the chamber to her throne, to the archway behind it. Drawing up to the far wall, he studied the pattern of stones found there. Following the directions given to him by the Damnatus, he pushed in a series of the stones, forming the rough symbol of a bowl, the ancient icon representing this sibyl.

As he pushed in the last stone, he heard a crack, and black lines formed, spilling dust, marking a door. He knew there were other secret ways to the maze below, but the Damnatus had been clear that he must approach her from this path. The Damnatus knew her from another life, learned of this sanctuary of hers. Over the centuries, he had tracked her steps across the earth, knew she resided here now, likely awaiting them.

Leopold shoved open the door with a grate of stone but remained at the threshold. He dared not enter her domain without permission. He retreated to the front of the throne and knelt before it.

He drew a knife and cut his wrist.

Dark blood welled out, letting the blessing of Christ inside him shine forth.

“Hear my prayer, O Sibyl!” he chanted. “The time has come for your final prophecy to come to fruition.”

He waited on his knees for what seemed like hours, but was likely minutes.

Finally to his keen ears came the soft pad of bare feet on stone.

He looked beyond the stone seat to the dark doorway.

A shred of shadow melted out, stepping into view, revealing the lithe perfection of a dark-skinned woman. She wore a simple linen shift. Her only bits of adornment were a gold cuff upon her upper arm and a shard of silver hanging from a gold chain. Not that she needed any such decoration. Her dark beauty captured his every imagination, stirring even sinful ones. How could any man resist her? She was mother, lover, daughter, the very embodiment of womanhood.

But she was not a woman.

He heard no heartbeat as she stepped around and sat atop her throne.

She was something far greater.

He lowered his face from her beauty. “Forgive me, O Great One.”

He knew her name—Arella—but dared not use it, finding himself unworthy.

“My forgiveness will not ease your burdens,” she said softly. “You must put them down of your own accord.”

“You know I cannot.”

“And he sent you in his stead, unable to come himself.”

He glanced up, noting the depth of sorrow in her eyes. “I’m sorry, my blessed lady.”

She laughed quietly, a simple sound that promised joy and peace. “I am beyond your blessing, priest. But are you beyond mine? You can yet set aside the task he set for you. It is not too late.”

“I cannot. From fire will come a lasting peace.”

She sighed, as if scolding a child. “From fire comes only ruin. It is only love that brings peace. Did you not learn that from He who blesses the very blood you spill at my doorway?”

“We only seek to bring His love back to this world.”

“By destroying it?”

He remained silent, resolute.

The Damnatus had tasked him with this mission — and one other. He felt the weight of the emerald rock in the inner pocket of his robe. It would have to wait. Now, he must complete his first duty, no matter how much it pained him.

He bared his face to the sibyl.

She must have read his unwavering determination. With a look of profound sadness, she simply held out her wrists. “Then let it begin. I will not interfere. Children must make their own mistakes. Even you.”

Hating himself, Leopold stood and bound her wrists in soft cords of leather. Unlike him, she had no unnatural strength to resist, to fight him. The scent of lotus blossoms floated off her skin as she pushed gracefully to her feet. He took hold of the cord that ran to her bound hands and walked her, his legs trembling at his impertinence, back to the dark doorway.

As he crossed the threshold first, a pall of sulfur and brimstone from below washed away the gentle wisp of lotus. Swallowing against it, he headed down into darkness, toward a destiny of fire and chaos.

30

He can’t be gone…

Rhun touched Erin’s arm, but she barely felt it. When he spoke, his voice sounded far away. “We must leave this place.”

Sirens rang loudly all around.

The emerald butterflies had lifted a moment before, rising away upon some silent signal of their vanished master, leaving only ruin behind. There remained little of the dead, clothing and bits of blackened bone amid piles of corrupted ashes.

Nothing bound them here any longer.

Still, she clung to Jordan, unable to let go. She saw no need to leave. Everything had gone to ashes. The First Angel was gone, the Woman of Learning had abandoned them for the enemy, and the Warrior of Man lay dead at her knees.

Jordan…

He was far more than that prophesied title.

A sound of rushing feet drew her eyes to the side. The small shape of Alexei appeared from one of the maze archways. Though he was a monster, she was glad he still lived. He must have been left to guard the outer walls of the ice palace, escaping the slaughter here — but not the pain. He sprinted to Rasputin and fell into his arms, like any scared boy seeking the comfort of his father. Tears streamed down his face as he stared across the tattered remains of the others, his dark family.

Christian stood, holding the body of Nadia wrapped in a cloak, what little there was left of her. “There’s a cathedral close by. We can seek refuge there, decide our next course of action.”

“Next?” Erin still watched Alexei, reminding herself that there was another child at great risk. She would not abandon the boy without a fight. Anger dried her tears. Determination steeled through her grief. “We must rescue the First Angel.”

Tommy, she reminded herself, not allowing herself to relegate him to a cold title. He had been given that name by a mother and father who had loved him. That was far more important than any prophesied name.

Rhun spoke, staring down at Jordan. “But with the trio destroyed, there is no—”

She cut him off. “We cannot leave Tommy in that monster’s hands.”

Rhun and Christian looked down at her, worry on their faces.

Let them worry.

Erin rested her hand on Jordan’s shoulder. She would see to it that he was buried in Arlington, like the hero that he was. He had saved many lives, including hers. To honor that, she would save that boy.

Complete the mission.

It was what Jordan would have wanted.

She could do no less.

A snowflake fell on his cold eyelid and melted, the droplet shedding from his eye like a tear. She reached a thumb to wipe it away. As she did so, she noted that the dusting of snow on his cheeks had begun to run and slide from his skin.

“Rhun,” she whispered.

She yanked her glove off and put her bare palm on his neck.

His skin was warm.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. She yanked back the grimwolf coat that Tommy had draped so gently across his body.

Blood swamped Jordan’s chest, pooled in the well of his sternum. She wiped at it with her bare palm, exposing his tattoo, the stretch of skin over firm muscle. She used both hands now, smearing his chest clean.

She stared up at Rhun, at Christian.

Even Rasputin was drawn by her frantic action.

“There’s no wound,” she said.

Rhun dropped beside her, his hand over Jordan’s ribs, but he refrained from touching the traces of blood found there. Then suddenly Jordan’s chest rose under his palm, as if trying to reach the priest’s hand. Rhun fell back in shock.

As Erin watched, Jordan’s chest rose again.

“Jordan?” Her voice shook.

Christian spoke. “I hear a heartbeat.”

How could that be?

Erin placed her palm atop his chest, wanting to feel it beat. Then Jordan’s arm rose on the far side and reached for her hand, resting his warm palm over hers.

She looked up to find his eyes open, staring at her, his gaze addled, as if waking from a deep sleep. His lips parted. “Erin…?”

She cupped his face in her palms, wanting to both cry and laugh.

Rhun helped pull Jordan into a sitting position. He felt for the exit wound in Jordan’s back. Then simply shook his head when he found nothing.

“A miracle,” Rhun breathed.

Jordan looked dazedly to her for an explanation for all the commotion.

Words failed her.

Rasputin spoke. “It must have been the touch of the First Angel. It was the boy’s blood.”

Erin pictured Tommy placing his bloody hand on Jordan’s chest.

Could it be?

Sirens reached the square, blue and white lights flashing beyond the wall. Shouts could be heard in the distance.

Rhun helped Jordan to his feet. “Can you stand?”

Jordan rose with little effort, shivering and pulling on his jacket, staring down at his bloody shirt with a confused expression. “Why shouldn’t I be able to stand?”

He clearly had no memory of getting shot.

Rhun pointed for the exit that lay farthest from the sirens and lights. “We must go.”

Rasputin nodded, moving forward in that direction. “I know the path out. I have a car not far.”

Christian hiked Nadia’s body up, ready to run with her.

Seeing her prostrate form in the young Sanguinist’s arms, Erin’s joy ebbed. Rather than succumbing to grief, she took firm hold of the anger inside her. She glared down at the broken moths in the snow. Determined to better understand her enemy, to turn grief into purpose, she bent and scooped up several of the broken moths, dumping them into the pocket of her grimwolf jacket.

As she bent for a last moth, Erin looked with sorrow at the destruction left in Iscariot’s wake. The bodies of the strigoi were beyond recognition, a mystery that would haunt Stockholm for some time. Peering that way, she noted something discarded in the snow a yard away, something dark. She crossed to it and discovered a package wrapped in oilcloth. She scooped it up and tucked it into her inner jacket.

As she straightened, fingers gripped her arm, as hard as iron.

Rhun tugged her toward the exit, as shouts of the police grew louder behind her. He herded Jordan along with her. Reaching the archway of ice, he pushed them both into the maze.

“Run!”

Snow crunched under Rhun’s feet. He listened to Erin’s and Jordan’s heartbeats as they ran. Steady and strong, faster because of the exertion.

Jordan’s heart sounded like any other. But Rhun knew he had heard it stop. He had listened to the silence of his death. He had known that stilled heart would never beat again — but it had.

It was a true miracle.

He pictured the boy’s face, the First Angel, imagining such grace, to bring the dead back to life. Did the boy know he held such power? Rhun knew such a miracle must ultimately come from the will of God. Was this resurrection a sign that the trio truly served His will?

But who were the trio?

He studied Erin’s back, while recalling Elisabeta’s departure. She had not even looked back when she walked away. Still, he knew he had earned that desertion.

Finally, the exit loomed. They fled the massive ice palace for the dark tangle of streets beyond. Grigori led them to a blue minivan parked in a deserted alleyway. They piled through the doors from all sides.

Grigori took the wheel and sped out into the dark city.

Christian leaned forward from the backseat. “Take us to the Church of St. Nicholas. We should be safe there for a short time.”

“I will drop you off there,” Grigori said, dull with the shock of his loss. “I have my own rooms.”

In the rearview mirror, Grigori’s shadowy blue eyes met Rhun’s, apology shining there along with profound grief. Rhun wanted to lash out at the monk, for laying this trap, but his old friend had also saved him a moment ago, using the favor owed him to spare Rhun’s life. In the end, there was no worse punishment than what the monk had already suffered inside that maze.

A few turns later, the minivan pulled to a stop in front of Stockholm’s cathedral: the Church of St. Nicholas. The structure was simpler than the churches of Rome, built in a brick gothic style. Four streetlamps cast golden light against the yellow sides. Arched windows were set deep in the stone, flanking a large rosette of stained glass in the middle.

Rhun waited while everyone else exited. Once he was alone, he leaned forward and touched Grigori on the shoulder. “I am sorry for all you lost today. I will pray for their souls.”

Grigori nodded his thanks, glancing to Alexei. The monk gripped the boy’s small hand as if afraid of losing him, too.

“I did not think he would show himself,” Grigori whispered. “In person.”

Rhun pictured Iscariot’s cold countenance.

“I only wished to challenge God,” the monk said. “To see His hand in action by casting all into chaos by my own hand. To see if He would make it right.”

Rhun squeezed his old friend’s shoulder, knowing there would always be a gulf between them. Grigori was too angry at God, too wounded in the past by His servants on Earth. They could never fully make amends between them, but for this night, they would part as best they could.

Grigori watched Jordan walk away. “In the end, maybe I did see the hand of God.”

The monk’s face turned slightly toward Rhun, his cheeks stained with tears.

With a final squeeze of farewell, Rhun departed and slammed the door. The van took off down the street, abandoning them to the night.

A step away, Christian held Nadia’s covered head against his shoulder as if she slept, one palm cradling the back of her neck.

Rhun, too, had fought many battles at her side. In many ways, she had been the strongest among them, not plagued by doubt. Her dedication to her purpose was fierce and unyielding. Her loss — as both a Sanguinist and a friend — was incalculable.

“We should get off the street,” Jordan warned.

Rhun nodded, and Christian headed for the side of the church, passing under the skeletal limbs of winter-bare trees. Rhun tilted his head to look up at the windows of the cathedral. The church inside was ever a beautiful space, with whitewashed ceilings and redbrick archways. Their prayers for Nadia would find a proper home here.

At the rear of the cathedral, facing a featureless wall, Rhun went through the ritual, cutting his palm and opening the secret Sanguinist door. He remembered Nadia doing the same half a day ago, neither of them knowing it would be her last time.

Christian hurried inside and down the dark steps.

Jordan clicked on a flashlight and followed. Erin held the soldier’s hand with an easy intimacy. Rhun remembered listening to her heart, gauging the bottomless depth of her grief. Yet, against all expectations, Jordan had been returned to her.

Envy flashed through Rhun. Centuries ago, he had once lost his love, but when she was restored to him, she had been forever changed.

For him, there was no going back.

Rhun entered the secret chapel below. Like the church above, it had a vaulted ceiling, painted a serene blue centuries ago, to remind the Sanguinists of the sky, of God’s grace restored to them. To either side, red bricks lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Ahead, the simple altar contained a picture of Lazarus rising from the dead with a resplendent Christ in front of him.

Passing ahead, Rhun smoothed the altar cloth, then Christian placed Nadia’s remains gently atop it, keeping her wrapped. They prayed over her. With her death, all unholiness had finally fled her.

In death, she was free.

Erin and Jordan also bowed their heads during these last prayers, their hands clasped. Grief sounded in each breath, each heartbeat, as they mourned her, too.

Once finished, Christian stepped back from the altar. “We must go.”

“We’re not staying here?” Jordan asked, sounding exhausted.

“We cannot risk it,” Christian said. “If we hope to rescue the boy, we should keep moving.”

Rhun agreed, reminding them, “Someone within the Church remains a traitor. We dare not stay in any one place too long. Especially here.”

“What about Nadia’s body?” Erin asked.

“The local priests will understand,” Rhun assured her. “They will see to it that she is returned to Rome.”

Rhun bowed his head a final time to honor her, then left her cold body alone on the altar and followed the others out.

He must look to the living now.

31

Erin walked down a well-lit street, heading away from the shelter and warmth of the cathedral. Snow fell more thickly now, shrinking the world around her. Flakes soon dusted her hair, her shoulders. A few inches had accumulated underfoot.

A handful of cars flowed along the street at this late hour, tires rumbling over cobblestones, headlights poking holes through falling snow.

She kept a firm grip on Jordan — both to keep from slipping on the icy pavement and to make sure she was not dreaming. As they walked, she watched the warm breath huffing from his lips, turning white in the cold air.

Less than an hour ago, he had been dead — no breath and no heartbeat.

She studied Jordan sidelong.

Her logical mind struggled to understand this miracle, to put it into scientific context, to understand the rules. But for now, she simply held tight to him, grateful that he was warm and alive.

Rhun walked on the other side of her. He looked beaten down, weaker than even the recent loss of blood could explain. She could guess why. Bathory had done a great deal of damage to him — and not only to his body. He still clearly loved her, and the countess seemed intent on using those feelings to hurt him.

Finally, Christian stopped in front of a well-lit storefront.

“Where are we?” Jordan asked.

“An Internet café.” Christian opened the door, tinkling a bell attached to the door frame. “It was the closest one I could find this late.”

Happy to escape the snow, Erin hurried into the warm building. Inside, it looked more like a convenience store than an Internet café—shelves of food stretched off to her left and a refrigerator case covered one wall. But in the back, two metal folding chairs waited in front of computer monitors and keyboards set on a long card table.

Christian spoke to the bored woman behind the counter. She wore black, with a silver stud in her tongue that glinted as she talked. Christian purchased a cell phone, asking terse questions in Swedish. Once done, he handed her a hundred-euro note and headed for the back of the store.

At the counter, Jordan ordered four sausages from the roller grill, where it looked like they had been turning since the beginning of the millennium. Erin added two Cokes, a couple bags of potato chips, and a handful of chocolate bars to the pile.

She might not get a chance to eat again for a long time.

Jordan carried their dinner on a piled tray to the computer stations. Christian already sat in front of one monitor, his fingers flying, blurring over the keyboards.

Rhun hovered at his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Jordan asked, wolfing down a sausage.

“Checking the contingency plan I worked out with Cardinal Bernard.”

“What contingency plan?” Erin pressed, forgetting the unwrapped chocolate bar for the moment.

“The cardinal wanted our dear countess kept on a short leash,” Christian explained. “In case she broke her bonds and tried to escape. I devised a way to keep track of her.”

Jordan gripped the young Sanguinist’s shoulder with a greasy hand, smiling. “You planted a tracking device on her, didn’t you?”

Christian smiled. “Inside her cloak.”

Erin matched his grin. If they could track Bathory, there was a good chance they could track the boy.

Rhun glared down at the smaller man. “Why was I never informed of this?”

“You’ll have to take it up with Bernard.” Christian ducked his head lower, looking chagrined at his subterfuge.

Rhun sighed heavily, shedding his anger. Erin read the understanding that came to his eyes. The cardinal had not trusted that Rhun might not escape with the countess. After Rhun had hidden Bathory for centuries, Bernard could not be blamed for this bit of caution.

“It may take a few minutes to pick up her signal and gain a fix on it,” Christian warned. “So make yourselves comfortable.”

Erin did exactly that, slipping her arm around Jordan’s waist and resting her head against the warmth of his chest, listening to his heartbeat, appreciating each solid lub-dub.

After ten minutes of keyboard tapping and mumbled complaints about connection speeds, Christian pounded a fist on the table — not in anger, but satisfaction.

“Got it!” he declared. “I’m picking up her signal at the airport.”

Rhun turned with a sweep of his black robe, drawing up Christian, who quickly logged out. The two Sanguinists rushed away, not bothering to hide their preternatural speed from the counter clerk.

Oblivious, the girl had her nose buried in a dog-eared paperback, her iPod earbuds firmly in place.

Jordan hurried after them, grousing. “Sometimes I really wish those guys needed to eat and sleep.”

She grabbed his hand again and jogged with him toward the door, waving good-bye to the girl behind the counter. Erin was equally ignored by the disdain of youth.

She suppressed a smile, suddenly missing her students.

Elizabeth settled into a seat by the airplane’s window. The space was much like the one she had traveled in earlier to come here: rich leather seats, small bolted tables. Only this time, she was not trapped in a coffin. As she touched the scarf around her neck, anger flared inside her.

She stared out the round window. The lights of the airport glowed, each wreathed in a glittering halo of snow. She clipped the unfamiliar belt into place across her lap. She had never worn such a restraint, but Iscariot and the boy had both fastened theirs, so she assumed that she should as well.

She glanced at the child seated next to her, trying to understand what made him so special. He was the First Angel, another immortal, but he seemed outwardly to be just a normal boy. She even heard his heart beating in fear and pain. After bandaging the worst of his outer wounds, his new captors had given him a set of gray clothes to wear, soft and loose so as not to abrade his raw skin.

Sweats, they had called them.

She turned her attention to the mystery seated across from her.

Judas Iscariot.

He had removed his overcoat and wore a modern cashmere suit, well tailored. On the small table between them rested a glass box, holding his collection of moths, save three that flitted about the cabin. She knew they remained loose as a reminder of the price of any disobedience, as if she had not been paying that price for centuries.

The plane accelerated across the snowy black field. She clasped her hands in her lap, letting her cloak fall over them so that Iscariot could not see her nervousness. She tried not to imagine this metal contraption flinging itself into the air and hurling itself hundreds of miles across land and sea.

Nature never intended such a thing.

Next to her, the boy reclined his seat, clearly indifferent to the airplane and how it functioned. Several spots of crimson stained his gray sweats, weeping from the hundreds of cracks in his thawed skin. The scent of his blood filled the cabin, but oddly it held no temptation for her.

Was the blood of angels different from all others?

He brushed brown hair out of his eyes. He was older than she had first thought, perhaps fourteen. The anguish in his face reminded her of her son, Paul, whenever he was hurt. Sadness welled up in her at the memory, knowing her son was now dead, along with all her children. She wondered what had happened to her son.

Did he have a long life? Was he happy? Did he marry and father children?

She wished that she might know these simple facts. Bitterness rose in her throat. Rhun stole that from her with a single careless act. She had lost her daughters, her son, everyone whom she had loved.

The boy shifted in his seat with a small groan. Like her, he had also lost everything. Rhun had told her how his parents had died in front of him, poisoned by a horrible gas.

She gently touched his shoulder. “Are you in much pain?”

Incredulous eyes met hers.

Of course he was in pain.

A cut above one brow had clotted and dried. Already he was healing. She touched her throat, still throbbing from the wound Nadia had given her. She was also healing, but it would take more blood.

As if reading her thoughts, Iscariot flicked her a quick glance. “Refreshments will be served in a moment, my dear.”

Beyond their cabin, the engines rose in pitch, and the plane took a smooth jump into the sky. She held her breath, as if that would help hold the plane aloft. The craft rose higher. Her stomach fell and settled. The feeling reminded her of jumping her beloved mare across fences.

Finally, their course settled into a smooth glide, like a hawk through the air.

She slowly released her breath.

Iscariot lifted an arm, and the blond bear of a man who had accompanied them from the maze lumbered into the back of the plane.

“Please, Henrik, bring drinks for our guests. Perhaps something warm after all the ice and cold.”

The man bowed his head and departed.

Her attention returned to the window, captivated by the lights growing smaller and smaller below. They flew higher than any bird. Exhilaration flared through her.

Henrik returned a few minutes later.

“Hot chocolate,” he said, bending to place a steaming mug into the boy’s hands.

He then lifted a small bowl toward her. The heady fragrance of warm blood wafted to her. She noted the white tape at the crook of the brute’s thick arm, stained with a drop of blood. It seemed there was little that his servants would not do for their master. Her opinion of Iscariot grew.

She accepted the bowl and drained its warm contents in a single draught. Heat and bliss spread outward from her belly, into her arms, her legs, the ends of her fingertips. The lingering ache in her neck faded. She now throbbed with strength and delight.

How could the Sanguinists refuse such pleasure?

Rejuvenated, she turned her attention to her young companion. She remembered the conversation aboard the train. “I understand your name is Thomas Bolar.”

“Tommy,” he answered softly, offering something more intimate.

She offered the same. “Then you may call me Elizabeth.”

His gaze focused a bit more strongly on her. In turn, she studied him. He might be a valuable ally. The Church wanted him, and if he was truly the First Angel, he might have powers that she yet failed to comprehend.

“You should drink,” she said, nodding to the mug in his hands. “It will warm you.”

Still looking at her, he lifted the cup and sipped gently, wincing a bit from the heat.

“Good,” she said and turned to Henrik. “Fetch clean towels, hot water.”

The blond man seemed taken aback at her tone. He glanced at his master.

“Bring her what she wants,” Iscariot ordered.

She savored this small victory, and moments later, Henrik returned with a basin and a pile of white towels. She soaked the first towel and held it toward Tommy.

“Clean your face and hands. Gently now.”

Tommy seemed ready to refuse, but she kept her arm out until, with a tired sigh, he took the towel. After placing his mug down, he wrung the towel’s heat in his hands and pressed it to his face. Soon he was rubbing a second towel up his arms, tucking it under his shirt and across his chest. His face softened with the simple pleasure of the damp heat.

His gaze, also softened now, found hers again. “Thank you.”

She nodded her head very slightly and turned her attention to the gray-haired man across from her. When she had last seen him, four hundred years ago, he had worn the gray silk tunic of a nobleman. It felt like only months ago, after slumbering away the centuries in Rhun’s trap. Back then a ruby ring had adorned one of his fingers, a ring that he had given to Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, Anna, marking his oath to protect the Bathory family.

But why?

She asked that now. “Why did you come to me when I was imprisoned in Čachtice Castle?”

He studied her for a long breath before responding. “Your fate interested me.”

“Because of the prophecy?”

“Many spoke of your skills at healing, your sharp mind and keen eye. I heard whispers of the Church’s interest in you, in your family. So I came to see for myself if the rumors of your wisdom were true.”

So he came sniffing at the edges of prophecy, like a dog on a coattail.

“And what did you find?” she asked.

“I found the Church’s interest of possible worth. I decided to watch over the women of your lineage.”

“My daughters. Anna and Katalin.”

He bowed his head. “And many after that.”

A yearning ached in her, to fill in the gaps of her past, to know the fate of her family. “What became of them? Of Anna and Katalin?”

“Anna had no children. But your eldest, Katalin, had two daughters and a son.”

She turned away, wishing she might have seen them, the seed and blood of the noble house of Bathory. Had they possessed Katalin’s simple beauty and easy grace? She would never know, because they were also long dead.

All because of Rhun.

“And what of my son, Paul?”

“He married. His wife bore him three sons and a daughter.”

Relief washed through her, knowing now they had all lived, had lives after her. She was afraid to ask how long they had lived, how their lives had unfolded. For now, she was content to know that her line had not been broken.

Tommy dropped the towel into the bowl next to his seat and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, looking more settled.

“You should finish your drink,” she scolded him, motioning to the mug. “It will help to restore your strength.”

“What do I care about my strength?” he mumbled. “I’m just a prisoner.”

She lifted the mug and held it out to him. “As am I. And prisoners must keep up their strength at all costs.”

He took the mug from her hands, his brown eyes curious. Perhaps he had not realized that she was as much a prisoner as he.

Iscariot shifted in his seat. “You are not my prisoners. You are my guests.”

So said all her captors.

Tommy didn’t look any more relieved than she. He swirled the mug, transfixed by the contents. Clearly he had been a much-loved boy once, anyone could see that. Then he had been taken away, been hurt, and grown wary.

Tommy finally looked up, ready to face this other. “Where are you taking us?”

“To your destiny,” Iscariot answered, steepling his fingers and staring over their tips toward the boy. “You are fortunate that you came into being at such a pivotal time.”

“I don’t feel fortunate.”

“Sometimes you cannot understand destiny until it is upon you.”

Tommy simply sighed loudly and stared out the window. After a long time, Elizabeth noted him eyeing her, studying her hands, her face, trying not to show it.

“What is it?” she finally asked.

He scrunched his face. “How old are you?”

She smiled at his discourteous question, understanding his curiosity, appreciating his boldness. “I was born in 1560.”

He sucked in a breath, and his eyebrow rose in surprise.

“But I have slept many of those centuries away. I do not understand this modern world as I should.”

“Like the story of Sleeping Beauty,” he said.

“I am not familiar with that tale,” she said, earning another raised eyebrow. “Tell me it. Then perhaps you can tell me more about this age, how I might learn to live in it.”

He nodded, looking happy for the distraction — and maybe she needed the diversion, too. He took a deep breath and began. As she listened attentively to his tale of magic and fairies, his warm hand stole across the armrest and nestled into hers.

She felt his warm fingers clasped to hers. Beyond his powers and unknown destiny, she saw he was also a lonely young boy, bereft of his father, his mother.

As Paul had been after her trial.

Her fingers tightened over his, an unfamiliar feeling rising in her.

Protectiveness.

In the backseat of the stolen silver Audi, Jordan clutched the car’s grab bar as Rhun raced across Stockholm for the airport. He tried to ignore the red lights that they blew through. Desperate times called for desperate measures, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be wrapped around a light pole.

He hoped the owner of the car had good insurance.

Now on the highway, Rhun wove in and out of lanes, as if the freeway lines were mere suggestions. Christian sat up front, oblivious to the danger, studying his new phone, using its cellular connection to keep track of the countess. A moment ago, he had reported that she was already airborne, whisking south from Stockholm over the Baltic Sea.

Rhun refused to allow her any more of a lead. He sped alongside a semitruck, the side of their car racing less than an inch from the truck’s running board.

Erin clutched Jordan’s arm.

“It’s easier if you close your eyes,” he said.

“When my death comes, I want to see it.”

“I already died once today. I don’t recommend it, eyes wide or not.”

“Do you remember anything from when you were…?” Her words trailed off.

“When I was dead?” He shrugged. “I remember feeling the kick to the chest and falling. Then everything went dark. The last thing I saw was your eyes. You looked worried, by the way.”

“I was. Still am.” She took his hand with both of hers. “What do you remember after that?”

“Nothing. No white light, no celestial choir. I vaguely remember having a dream about the day I got struck by lightning. The lines of my tattoo burned.” He scratched at his shoulder. “Still sort of itches.”

“Marking when you last died,” she said, studying his face, as if looking for meaning in this detail.

“Guess Heaven didn’t want me then or now. Anyway, next thing I knew I was staring into your eyes again.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Like I just woke up on Christmas morning, full of energy and ready to go.”

“Seeing you sitting here is like Christmas morning for me.”

He squeezed her hand — as Rhun suddenly slammed the brakes, pitching Jordan against his seat belt.

“We’re here,” Rhun announced.

Jordan saw they were back at the airport, parked next to their jet.

They all quickly exited, hurrying to continue their chase.

Rhun and Christian led Erin toward the plane.

As Jordan followed, he felt guilty lying to Erin a moment ago — or at least not telling her the entire truth.

He rubbed his shoulder. His entire left side burned with a fire that refused to subside, tracing along the fractal lines of his lightning flower. He didn’t know the significance of that blaze — only its source.

Something is inside of me.

32

As soon as the jet reached cruising altitude, Rhun unbuckled his seat. He needed to move, to pace out his frustration. Earlier, he could barely contain his anxiety while Christian performed his interminable preflight check, and Jordan examined the plane with a sensor for any hidden explosives. Both were wise precautions, but Rhun chafed against any further delays, sensing Elisabeta flying farther and farther away with every passing minute.

He pictured the smug countenance of the man who had killed Nadia. Elisabeta was now under his thumb, a man who could murder her with a single gesture

Why had he taken her?

Why had she gone with him?

Rhun at least understood the answer to that last question. He glanced back to the empty coffin in the rear of the plane, where Elisabeta had been imprisoned on the flight over.

I failed to protect her.

But who was this man truly?

While driving to the airport, Grigori had sent a text to Rhun’s phone. It was a single picture of an old-fashioned anchor.

Beneath it were the words: This is his symbol. Be wary of it.

Needing to move, Rhun walked to the cockpit and peered inside the room lit with instruments.

“You can come in,” Christian said, waving to the empty copilot’s seat.

Rhun stayed in the doorway. He did not like to be close to the controls, afraid that he would inadvertently bump into something and cause havoc.

“I’m still tracking the countess’s plane,” Christian said. “It continues south, sticking to the prescribed air corridor. Now it’s just a matter of following, seeing if we can close their lead. But should we even be attempting this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you truly believe the man we are chasing is the Betrayer of Christ?” Christian asked. “Not some deluded madman?”

“Elisabeta recognized him from her time, marking him as immortal. But he also has a heartbeat. So he cannot be a strigoi, but something else.”

“Like the boy.”

Rhun considered that, sensing there must be a connection between the two.

But what?

“Whether he is indeed Judas Iscariot from the Gospels or not,” Rhun said, “he was granted immortality while still maintaining his humanity. Such a miracle would seemingly take the hand of God, or possibly an act of Christ as the man claimed.”

“If you’re right, then he must’ve been granted this miracle for a purpose.”

“To bring about the Apocalypse?”

“Maybe.” Christian looked to Rhun, touching his cross. “If you’re right, are we interfering in the will of God by trying to stop him, by following him, by trying to rescue this boy?”

A stirring rose behind him. Erin unbuckled and crossed toward them, drawing Jordan with her. They had both changed into clean, dry clothes prior to taking off. The scent of lavender drifted forward with her, pushing Rhun farther into the cockpit, to better keep his distance from her.

She leaned against the door frame. “Do either of you believe it would be God’s will to torture an innocent child?”

“Remember,” Jordan said to her, “we’re talking about Judas. Isn’t his role always the bad guy?”

“Depends on how you interpret the Gospels,” Erin said, turning to him, but her words were for them all. “In the canonical texts of the Bible, Christ knew Judas was going to betray Him but did nothing to stop it. Christ needed someone to turn him over to the Romans so that He could die on the cross for man’s sins. In fact, in a Gnostic text — the Gospel of Judas—it states that Christ asked him to betray Him, that He said to Judas, ‘As for you, you will surpass them all. For you will sacrifice the human being who bears me.’ So, at best, the character of Judas is murky.”

Jordan scowled, clearly not accepting this judgment. “Murky? I saw him mow down Nadia and Rasputin’s kids. He shot me in the chest. I’m not buying him as a force for good.”

“Maybe,” Christian said. “But perhaps God sometimes needs a force of evil to act. The betrayal by Judas served a higher purpose. Like Erin said, Christ needed to die to forgive our sins. Maybe this is what is happening now. An evil act that serves a greater goal.”

Erin crossed her arms. “So we sit back and let evil happen on the off chance there is a positive outcome. As in, the ends justify the means.”

“But what are the ends?” Jordan asked, homing in with his usual practicality to the heart of the problem. “We still have no idea what this bastard wants with the boy.”

“He remains the prophesied First Angel,” Rhun reminded them. “The boy must serve a destiny. Perhaps Judas intends to pervert it in the same way he attempted to break the trio by killing Jordan.”

Jordan rubbed his chest, looking discomfited by that thought.

Erin frowned. “But what is Tommy? He plainly cannot die. So is he actually an angel?”

Rhun gave her a doubtful look. “I heard his heartbeat. It sounded natural and human, not something unearthly. At best, I suspect he carries angelic blood, some blessing cast upon him when he was atop that mountaintop at Masada.”

“But why him?” Erin asked. “Why Tommy Bolar?”

Rhun shook his head, unsure. “Back at the mountain, I sought to console him, to ask him what he knew concerning the tragic events that killed so many, yet spared him. He mentioned finding a dove with a broken wing, of attempting to save it, just before the ground split open and the earthquakes began.”

“A single merciful act?” Erin mumbled. “Would that be enough to earn such a blessing?”

Christian glanced back as they hit a jolt of turbulence. “The dove is often the symbol for the Holy Spirit. Perhaps that messenger sought someone deserving of such a blessing. A small test placed before him.”

Rhun nodded. “He was an ordinary boy when he came to that mountain, but perhaps when he performed this merciful act in the right place at the right time, he was infused with angelic blood.”

“I don’t care what’s in his blood,” Jordan said. “If you’re right, then he’s still essentially just a boy.”

“He is more than a boy,” Rhun said.

“But he’s also a boy,” Erin pressed. “And we should not forget that.”

Rhun could not deny her words, but none of it settled the fundamental concern raised by Christian. Rhun faced them all. “So do we risk thwarting the will of God by rescuing Tommy from the hands of Iscariot?”

“Damn straight.” Jordan raised his chin, ready to fight for the boy. “My former commander drilled a quote into all of us soldiers. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Erin looked as resolute. “Jordan is right. It’s about free will. Tommy Bolar chose to save that dove and was blessed for that kind act. We must allow the boy to choose his own future, not to have it stripped from him by Iscariot.”

Rhun had expected nothing less from the pair and took strength from them. “Christ walked willingly onto the cross,” he agreed. “We will give this boy Tommy the same freedom to decide his fate.”

As the plane hit a rough patch of turbulence, Christian sent them back to their seats. The bouncing and rocking echoed Erin’s own unease, keeping her further unsettled. While buckling into the seat, she knew she should get some sleep, but she also knew any effort toward that goal would be wasted.

Jordan seemed less troubled, yawning with a pop of his jaws, his training as a soldier serving him. It seemed he could sleep under the roughest of circumstances.

As he reclined his seat, squirming his large frame into a better position, Erin stared out the window at the stretch of darkness over the midnight sea. Her mind spun on the mystery that was Tommy Bolar, on the stretch of history surrounding Judas Iscariot. Finally, needing a distraction, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the oilcloth-covered object she had recovered from the snow of the ice maze.

Rhun stirred across from her, his gaze sharpening at what was in her hands. “That belongs to the countess. She found it frozen in the wall of the maze. She must have dropped it during the commotion.”

Erin pinched her brows, remembering finding her sister’s baby quilt similarly encased in ice, planted by the Russian monk to distract and cause pain. The sight of that stained cloth had struck her deeply and personally.

Yet, still I abandoned it.

She rubbed a thumb across the oilcloth. Bathory had clearly dug her prize out. Was that the right choice in the maze? Erin had chosen to follow the dictates of necessity, rather than emotion. Yet Bathory won by crashing through the ice to reveal a shortcut. Had Grigori been testing their hearts?

Is that why I failed?

Even now a pang of regret rang through her. She should have retrieved the quilt, so it could be taken back to California and buried in her sister’s grave where it belonged.

She considered the object in her hands, wondering what it held, if it had the same emotional punch for Bathory as the quilt did for her. Needing to know, she struggled to work the knot loose, her fingers slipping each time the plane bounced.

Finally, the cord loosened a fraction. She slowly worked the rest of the knot free and teased back a corner of the cloth. It looked like linen that had been treated with beeswax to make it waterproof.

“Whatever is in here,” she mumbled, “must have been important to Bathory.”

Rhun held out his hand. “Then perhaps it is private. And we should honor that.”

Erin stayed her hand, remembering how disturbed she had been by the thought of Rasputin violating her sister’s grave to obtain the quilt.

Am I performing a similar violation now?

Jordan stirred next to her, plainly awake. “Something in there may offer us a clue to that bastard’s interest in the countess. It might save her life. It might save ours.”

Erin raised her eyebrows at Rhun.

The priest lowered his hand to his lap, conceding the point.

While the plane pitched up and down, Erin unfolded the thick cloth with deliberate movements. She uncovered a book, bound in leather, marred by age spots. She ran a finger gently across a shield embossed on the cover.

It was a heraldic symbol of a dragon wrapped around with three horizontal teeth.

“It is the Bathory family crest,” Rhun said. “The teeth allude to a dragon allegedly slain by the warrior Vitus, the founder of the Bathory line.”

Even more curious now, she gently parted the cover to reveal paper darkened to a brownish cream. A clear feminine script flowed across the page, written in iron gall ink. There was also a beautifully inscribed drawing of a plant: leaves, stems, even a detailed notation of its root system.

Erin’s heart quickened.

It must be her personal journal.

“What’s it say?” Jordan asked, sitting straighter and leaning over.

“It’s Latin.” She puzzled over the first sentence, getting used to the handwriting. “It describes an alder plant, listing various properties of its parts. Including remedies and the manner in which to prepare them.”

“In her time, Elisabeta was a devoted mother and a healer.” Rhun spoke so softly that she barely made out his words.

“In our time, she’s a killer,” Jordan added.

Rhun stiffened.

Erin turned to the next page. It contained a skillful drawing of a yarrow plant. The countess had reproduced its composite blooms, its feathery leaves, its taproot rendered with tiny tendrils curling from the sides.

“It looks like she was also a gifted artist,” Erin said.

“She was,” Rhun agreed, looking more aggrieved, likely reminded of the goodness he had destroyed by turning her.

Erin scanned the text, reading the common medicinal uses for yarrow: as an aid in healing of wounds and to halt bleeding. A notation at the end caught her eye. It is also known as the Devil’s Nettle, due to its help in divination and to ward off evil.

The last served as a reminder that Bathory had lived in superstitious times. Still, the countess had sought to understand plants, to bring them order, mixing science with the beliefs of her day. A grudging respect for the woman formed in her. The countess had defied superstitions of her time in order to search for ways to heal.

Erin contrasted that with her father’s strict admonitions against modern medicine. He had adhered instead to superstition, grasping his beliefs with his hard-calloused hands and inflexible attitude, allowing no compromise.

Such willing blindness had killed her baby sister.

Erin settled into her seat and read, no longer noticing the turbulence as she learned about the ancient uses of plants. But halfway through, the illustrations suddenly changed.

Instead of flower petals and roots, she found herself staring at a detailed rendition of a human heart. It was anatomically perfect, like one of da Vinci’s medieval sketches. She drew the book closer. Neat letters underneath the heart listed a woman’s name and her age.

Seventeen.

A chill spread through her as she continued to read. The countess had turned this seventeen-year-old girl into a strigoi—then killed her and dissected her corpse, trying to uncover why her own heart no longer beat. The countess noted that the strigoi heart looked anatomically identical to a human one, but that it no longer needed to contract. Bathory noted her speculations from her experiments in the same sweet script. She hypothesized that the strigoi had another method of circulation.

She called it the will of the blood itself.

Aghast, Erin read the page again. Bathory’s brilliance was undeniable. These pages predated European theories of circulation by at least twenty years. In her isolated castle, far from universities and courts, she had used macabre experiments to understand her new body in ways that few in Europe could have fathomed.

Erin searched the next pages, as Bathory’s methods grew more horrific.

The countess had tortured and murdered innocents to satisfy her insatiable curiosity, turning her talents as a healer and scientist to grisly ends. It reminded Erin of what the Nazi medical researchers had done to prisoners in their camps, acts just as callous and dismissive of the suffering.

Erin touched the aged page. As an archaeologist, she was not supposed to judge. She often had to stare evil full in the face and record its deeds. Her job was to pull facts from history, to place them in a larger context, and to bring truths to light, no matter how horrible.

So despite her queasiness, she read on.

Slowly the countess’s quest turned from the physical to the spiritual. Erin came upon a passage dated November 7, 1605. It concerned a conversation Elizabeth had had with Rhun, about how the strigoi did not have souls.

Bathory wanted to know if it was true. Erin read what she wrote.

I trust him to tell me the truth that he believes, but I do not think that he has ever turned beyond faith to seek to understand the simple mechanics of this state that has been forced upon us.

Seeking evidence of this claim, Bathory experimented and observed. First, she weighed girls before and after their deaths, to see if the soul had weight. It had cost four girls their lives to determine it did not.

On another page was an architecturally precise depiction of a sealed glass casket. Bathory had it crafted to be waterproof. She even filled it with smoke to make sure no gases could escape. Once satisfied, Bathory locked a young girl inside and let her suffocate, trying to capture the dead girl’s soul inside her box.

Erin pictured the girl pounding on the glass sides, begging for her life, but the countess had no mercy. She let her die and took her notes.

Afterward, the countess kept the box sealed for twenty-four hours, examining it by candlelight, by sunlight. She found no shred of a soul in the glass box.

The countess did the same with a strigoi girl, mortally wounding her before sealing her to her death. Erin wanted to skip past these gruesome experiments, but her eye caught upon a passage at the bottom of the next page. Despite the horror, it intrigued her.

Upon the death of the beast, a small black shadow rose from her body, barely visible in the candlelight. Long into the night, I watched the shadow flit throughout the box, seeking an escape. But at dawn, a ray of sunlight fell upon it, and it shriveled to nothingness and vanished from my sight, never to return.

Shocked, Erin read that passage several times. Was Bathory deluded, seeing something that wasn’t there? If not, what did that mean? Did some dark force animate the strigoi? Did Rhun know?

Erin read Bathory’s conclusion.

I surmise that the human soul is invisible, perhaps too light for my eyes to see, but the souls of beasts such as I are as black as tarnished silver. In its attempt to escape, where did it seek to go? That I must discover.

Erin studied the last page, where Bathory neatly rendered a picture of her experiment. It showed a girl with fangs sprawled dead in a box. Light from a window fell across the foot of the glass coffin, while a black shadow hovered at the other end, as if trying to stay away from the light.

Rhun stared at that page, too, visibly shaken. But which upset him more: the shadow or the murdered girl? He held out his hand for the book.

“Please, may I see it?”

“Did you know about this? What she was doing? What she discovered?”

Rhun would not meet her eye. “She sought to discover what kind of creature she was… what manner of beast I had turned her into.”

Erin flipped through the remaining pages, finding them all blank. Clearly Bathory must have been caught and imprisoned shortly after this last experiment. She was about to hand the book over to Rhun when she spotted one final drawing, on the last page, looking as if it had been drawn in great haste.

It looked like some form of cup, but what was its meaning?

“May I see it?” Rhun asked again.

She closed the book and handed it to him.

He slowly looked through the pages now himself. She watched his jaw grow tighter and tighter.

Does he blame himself for the countess’s actions?

How could he not?

Rhun finally closed the book, his face lost and defeated. “Once she was not evil. She was full of sunlight and goodness.”

Erin questioned how much of that was true, wondering if love blinded Rhun to the true nature of the countess. For Bathory to have performed these gruesome experiments, there must have been some shadow behind that sunlight, buried deep, but there.

Jordan scowled. “I don’t care what that countess was like in the past. She’s evil now. And none of us had better forget that.”

He gave Rhun a scathing look, then turned his back toward them, ready to sleep.

Erin knew he was right. Given the chance, Bathory would kill them all — probably slowly, while taking notes.