Innocent Blood

33

With the full face of the moon shining above the midnight sea, Elizabeth stepped to the bow of the strange steel ship and searched across the timeless antiquity of the Mediterranean. She took comfort in its unchanging quality. The lights of the city of Naples vanished swiftly behind her, taking the dark coast with it.

Their plane had alighted back to the ground in the middle of the night, less than an hour ago, landing in a wintry metropolis that bore no resemblance to the city of her past.

She had to stop looking to that past.

It was a new world.

As she stood at the bow, cold wind combed through her hair. She licked salt spray from her lips, amazed at the speed of their craft. The ship hit a tall wave. It shuddered from the impact. Then it kept going, like a horse wading through deep snow.

She smiled at the heaving black waves.

This century had many marvels to offer her. She felt a fool for having confined herself to the streets of old Rome for so long. She should have thrown herself into this new world, not tried to cower in the old.

Inspired, she pulled the Sanguinist’s cloak from her shoulders. It had protected her from the sunlight, but the old design and heavy wool did not belong in this world. She lifted her cloak to the wind. Black cloth flapped in the air like a monstrous bird.

She let it go, freeing herself of her past.

The cloak circled in a current of wind, then swept out and landed in the water. It rested there for a breath, a soot-black circle atop moonlit waves, before the sea dragged it down.

Now she carried nothing from the Sanguinists, nothing from the old world.

She faced forward again, running a palm along the steel rail of the vessel. She stared along the sides of the hull, at the fins upon which the craft flew over the water.

“It’s called a hydrofoil,” Tommy said, coming up behind her.

So caught up in the wind and wonder, she had failed to hear his heartbeat approach. “It’s like a heron, skimming over the water.”

She glanced back at him, laughing with the delight of it all.

“For a prisoner, you look much too happy,” Tommy noted.

She reached and tousled his hair. “Compared to my old prison, this one is wonderful.”

He looked little swayed.

“We must savor every moment given us,” she stressed. “We know not where this journey ends, so we must wring each scrap of joy out of it while it lasts.”

He stepped closer to her, and she found her arm slipping around him. Together, they shared the dark waves rising and falling in front of their ship, the cold wind tearing back their hair.

After a short time, she felt him shiver in her arms, heard his teeth chatter, remembering he did not have her impervious nature.

“We must warm you,” she said. “You will catch your death of cold.”

“No, I won’t,” he said, lifting an amused eye toward her. “Believe me.”

He finally grinned.

She matched it. “Still, we should get you inside, out of this wind, where you’ll be more comfortable.”

She led him across the deck, through a hatch, and down into the main cabin. It smelled of men and coffee and engine oil. Iscariot sat on a bench next to a table, sipping from a thick white cup. His hulking servant hovered near a small kitchen.

“Fetch the boy hot tea,” she called over to Henrik.

“I don’t like tea,” Tommy said.

“Then just hold the cup,” she said. “That will warm you as well.”

Henrik obeyed her order, arriving with a steaming mug. Tommy took it in both hands and stepped over to one of the windows, eyeing Iscariot with plain suspicion.

The man seemed oblivious, motioning with an arm, inviting Elizabeth to join his table. She accepted his offer and slid to the seat.

“What is our destination?” she asked.

“One of my many homes,” he said. “Far from prying eyes.”

She gazed out the window at the moonlit sea. Ahead lay nothing but darkness. This home must be far from anything. “Why do we travel there?”

“The boy must recover from his ordeal in the ice.” Judas looked to where Tommy stood. “He lost much blood.”

“Is his blood then of value to you?” A pang of worry for the boy shot through her.

“It is certainly of value to him.”

She noted that he had not answered her question, but she let it go for a more pressing concern. “Will the Sanguinists find us there?”

Iscariot ran his hand through his silver hair. “I doubt that they can.”

“Then what, pray tell, do you wish of me? I understand you coveting the First Angel, but of what use am I to you?”

“Nothing, my lady,” he said. “But I have had a Bathory woman at my side for four hundred years, eighteen women total, and I know what powerful allies they can be. Should you choose to stay, I will protect you from the Sanguinists, and perhaps you will protect me from myself.”

More riddles.

Before she could inquire further, Tommy pointed out the forward window. “Look!”

She stood to see better. Out of the darkness, lit by hundreds of lamps, a monstrous steel structure appeared out of the waves. Four gray pillars jutted up from the sea like the legs of a massive beast. These monstrous pillars supported a flat tabletop larger than St. Peter’s Basilica. Atop this platform rested a nest of painted beams and blocks.

“It’s an oil rig,” Tommy said.

“It was once an oil rig,” Iscariot corrected him. “I’ve turned it into a private residence. It is on no maps. Positioned far from the cares of the world.”

Elizabeth examined the lights shining from the middle of the nest atop the platform, defining the ramparts of a blocky steel castle. She glanced out at the spread of dark water all around, then back to the oil rig.

Is this to be my new cage?

“We have a problem!” Christian called back to the jet’s cabin from the cockpit.

Of course we do, Jordan thought. They were due to land in another forty minutes. Over the past couple of hours, they had been slowly closing the lead on the others. Christian had reported that Iscariot’s group had gone to ground about fifteen minutes ago in Naples.

“What’s wrong?” Erin yelled back.

For once, Jordan was hoping for engine trouble.

“I lost Bathory’s signal!” Christian reported. “I’ve tried recalibrating, but still nothing.”

Jordan unbuckled and hurried forward to the cockpit. He braced his arms atop the tiny doorway and leaned through. “Where’d you see her last?”

“Her group must have transferred to another vehicle. Slower than the jet, but still fast. Speedboat, helicopter, small-engine plane. Can’t say. They headed away from the coast, out over the Mediterranean, moving due west. Then suddenly the signal cut out.”

Erin joined him with Rhun. “Maybe they went down,” she said. “Crashed.”

“Maybe,” Christian said. “But there are easier explanations. She might have found the tracker, or ditched the cloak where I hid it, or maybe even the battery died in the unit. I can’t say.”

Jordan sighed his frustration, rubbing at the burn in his shoulder. The fire blazing along his tattoo had settled into a steady heat, keeping him from truly sleeping on the flight here.

“No matter the reason, she’s gone,” Christian concluded, glancing back over his shoulder. “So what now?”

“We’ll land in Naples as planned,” Rhun said. “Contact the cardinal in Rome and decide how to proceed from there.”

Resigned that the hunt had gotten much harder, Jordan headed back to his seat with the others, but first he diverted to the rear of the cabin and grabbed the first-aid kit from the bathroom.

When he returned to his seat, Erin asked, “What are you doing?”

He opened the kit on the small walnut table in front of their seats. “I want to take a look at those mechanical moths. If we’re going to tangle with that bastard again, we need to find a way of neutralizing that flying threat. Or we’re screwed.”

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit and lifted up the box where Erin had stored the handful of moths she had collected from the ice maze. He tweezed one out that looked mostly intact and placed it gently on the table.

Rhun recoiled slightly in his seat.

Good instinct.

The residual venom inside could probably still kill him.

Erin shifted closer to Jordan, which he didn’t mind one bit.

He examined the green wings. They definitely looked organic, likely plucked from a living specimen. He turned his attention next to the body, an amazing bit of handiwork in brass, silver, and steel. He inspected the tiny, articulated legs, the thin threads of antennae. Keeping his fingers away from the needle-sharp proboscis, he flipped the body over and probed the bottom side, discovering tiny hinges.

Interesting…

He sat straighter. “We know the moths have the capability to inject poison into strigoi or Sanguinists,” he said. “But it doesn’t affect us humans, so maybe there is a clue there. Time to do a little experimenting.”

He glanced over to Rhun. “I’m going to need a few drops of your blood.”

Rhun nodded and pulled the karambit from his sleeve. He cut his finger and dribbled a few crimson drops onto the tabletop where Jordan indicated. In turn, Jordan used a razor from the kit to nick his thumb and do the same.

“Now what?” Erin asked.

“Now I need some of the toxin from inside the moth.” Jordan tugged back on his latex glove after placing a bandage on his thumb.

“Careful,” Rhun warned.

“Trust me, during my years of forensics work with the military, I handled both poisons and explosives. I’m not taking any chances.”

Bent over the brass body of the moth, he used tweezers from the medical kit to undo the hinges on the underside of the moth. Once free, he pried open the moth’s body with great care, revealing tiny gears, springs, and wires.

“Looks like the inside of a watch,” Erin said, her eyes shining with amazement.

The craftsmanship was exquisite.

Rhun leaned forward, too, curiosity outweighing his earlier caution.

Jordan noted a tiny glass vial occupied the anterior end of the mechanism. It had cracked, but small streaks of blood remained inside it.

“The blood of Iscariot,” Erin said.

Rhun leaned back again. “Smells like death. The taint is plain.”

Jordan stuck his tweezers into the broken vial and pried it farther open. Then he used two cotton swabs to scoop out droplets of the remaining stain. The first swab he pressed into his own blood.

As expected, nothing happened.

So far, so good.

He picked up the second swab and dipped it into Rhun’s blood. With an audible snap, Rhun’s blood vaporized, leaving only a smudge of soot on the walnut surface.

Into the stunned silence that followed, Jordan met the priest’s wide eyes. “So Iscariot’s blood is definitely inimical to the blood of a Sanguinist.”

“And the blood of strigoi,” Erin added.

One and the same in my book, Jordan thought, but he kept that to himself.

Instead, he turned to his bag of discarded winter clothes and rummaged through it until he found one of his woolen gloves. It was stained with Tommy’s blood from when he had helped extract the boy out of the ice sculpture.

“What are you doing?” Erin asked.

“We know Iscariot and this kid are similarly unique immortals. I want to check if the boy’s blood is toxic, too.”

Rhun squeezed out a few more drops for him to test. Jordan wet a swab with the priest’s blood and applied it to the gloves.

There was no reaction.

Erin’s brow furrowed in thought.

Jordan sighed. “So it seems the boy’s blood doesn’t hurt anybody. In fact, it might have saved my life.”

“Might have?” Erin said. “Something sure did.”

Jordan ignored the burn blazing across his shoulder and down his back and chest. “Either way, the kid and Judas are very different, despite their shared immortality.”

“So where does that leave us?” Rhun asked.

“From here, Erin and I should take point whenever those moths are around. And not just moths. We should be suspicious of anything that creeps, crawls, or flies. I also suggest you all wear thicker armor, showing less skin. Maybe even something like a beekeeper’s mask to protect your faces.”

Rhun nodded. “I will share this information with the cardinal, to warn any Sanguinists in the field, to ready such gear for any fight to come.”

Jordan returned his attention to the moth’s remains. “Which brings us next to its functional mechanism. This clockwork inside is very intricate. I suspect any foreign contamination could wreak havoc, possibly gumming up the gears. Fine dust, sand, oil.”

“I will have the cardinal look into that, too.”

Jordan looked at Rhun. “And for all our sakes, it would be good to have as much advance notice of this manner of assault as possible. Back in the ice maze, were you able to hear the moths when they flew through the air?”

He imagined the gears made some sort of noise.

“I remember a soft whirring, far quieter than a heartbeat. But I’d recognize it if I heard it again.”

“Then that’s a start,” Jordan said.

But would it be enough?

34

Tommy gaped as the massive doors of the elevator cage opened into a huge room.

After the hydrofoil had docked at the foot of one of the oil rig’s massive legs, the group had crossed to an industrial freight elevator. It looked old and well worn, an artifact left from the days when the rig actually sucked oil from beneath the Mediterranean Sea. The nondescript steel cage had whisked them to the towering platform above and into the superstructure built on top.

Iscariot stepped out first, flanked by his two huge men.

Tommy followed with Elizabeth.

He had expected to find the same old, industrial look here. Even from below, the superstructure on top had looked like the steel forecastle to an old sailing ship. But as Tommy entered the room now, it was like stepping onto the bridge of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. The room was a graceful mix of steel and wood, glass and brass, masculine yet elegant.

Directly across from the elevator rose towering windows, arched to a point like those found in gothic churches. The outermost flanking windows were even stained glass, depicting scenes of fishing, of men hauling nets, of small boats with white sails. The remaining windows opened a commanding view of the sea. Moonlight shone on white-capped black waves and thin silvery clouds.

It took some effort to tear his gaze from that view. Underfoot, a rich red carpet cushioned a floor that showed polished hardwood at its edges. Overhead, steel beams had been painted black, the rivets a rich copper. A skylight shone up there, also stained glass, displaying seabirds in flight: gulls, pelicans, herons. In the center, though, hung a white dove with emerald eyes.

Tommy tripped a step, remembering the injured dove he had sought to rescue in Masada. Iscariot caught his hand before he fell, glancing up to the same skylight, his silver-blue eyes returning to Tommy with a curious glint.

“Your hands are cold,” Iscariot said. “I’ve had a fire stoked for our arrival.”

Tommy nodded, but he had a hard time getting his legs to move. The remainder of the space was decorated with leather chairs and deeply cushioned couches, tacked with copper studs. There were also display cabinets and tables, holding brass sextants, old telescopes, a large steel bell. Standing before the center window was even a ship’s massive wheel, of wood and brass, clearly an authentic antique. Hanging on the wall above that same window was an old anchor, gone green with verdigris.

Guy must like to fish, Tommy thought.

He cast a sidelong glance at Iscariot.

Judas, he reminded himself, despite the impossibility of that. But after all he had experienced of late, why the hell not?

Elizabeth touched his arm. “You are shivering. Let’s get you before the fire.”

He allowed himself to be led to a set of chairs before a massive hearth. Bookcases rose to either side, climbing from floor to ceiling, so tall that you had to scale a rolling ladder to get to them. His mother would have loved this room, a space warm and cozy, full of books to read.

“Sit,” Elizabeth demanded once they reached an overstuffed chair. She tugged it closer to the fire, showing the depths of her strength.

He sank into it, staring into the flames, at the black andirons, shaped like dolphins dancing on their tails. The entire place smelled like woodsmoke, suddenly reminding him of the ski trips he had taken with his parents before he got sick.

Above a mantel rose a triptych of three maps. He leaned closer, rubbing his hands together over the crackling flames. The middle map displayed the modern world but drawn in an old-fashioned style with spidery lettering. To the left was a map that looked ancient, with vast parts of the world missing. The chart to the right was dated 1502. It showed the edge of North America, colored green, and a tiny bit of South America.

Elizabeth peered closely at that map, her voice drawn softer. “That is how the world looked when I was the same age you are now.”

Her remark caught Tommy off guard as he was suddenly reminded that she was more than four hundred years old.

Tommy pointed to the center map. “That’s how the world looks now. We’ve even mapped it from space.”

“Space?” she asked, glancing back, as if to see if he was joking.

“We have giant satellites. Machines. Orbiting way up, like between here and the moon.”

Her gray eyes clouded up. “Man has gone so far?”

“To the moon and back,” Iscariot said, joining them. “Mankind has sent devices crawling across the surface of Mars and traveling out beyond our solar system.”

Elizabeth sank back, placing a hand on the wingback of Tommy’s chair to steady herself. “I have a great deal to learn,” she said, looking overwhelmed.

Tommy reached up and touched her cold hand. “I’ll help you.”

Her fingers turned and gripped his — at first too strongly, threatening to break bones, but then she softened her hold, reining in that strength. “I would welcome that.”

Iscariot sighed, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes. “Before any of that can happen, Thomas should rest, eat, recover his own strength.”

Elizabeth’s hand tightened slightly again on him. “And then?”

“Then at dawn, Thomas will meet his destiny. As we all must do eventually.”

A chill trickled down Tommy’s spine that the fire could not warm.

What destiny?

One of Iscariot’s men arrived with a tray. Tommy stirred at the sight and smells of a hamburger, french fries, and a chocolate shake.

“I thought you might enjoy such fare,” Iscariot said as the tray was placed next to Tommy on a side table. “You should eat heartily. We have a long day tomorrow.”

Tommy touched the tray, remembering Elizabeth’s earlier warning.

Eat to stay strong.

He knew he would need all his strength to escape.

Elizabeth settled into a chair opposite the hearth from the boy as he ate. She held her palms toward the welcoming heat. True flames warmed her like no modern device could. She closed her eyes and allowed her body to drink in that fire, picturing sunlight on a hot summer’s day.

Warm now and freshly fed, she should be content — but she was not.

I am unsafe here — as is the boy.

She was surprised at how much that last bothered her. Iscariot had plans for the both of them, and she began to suspect that he would treat her no more kindly than the Sanguinists had.

She rotated her injured ankle. It had healed enough that it would not slow her if she needed to flee. But what about the boy? She stared over at Tommy. He displayed appalling manners, devouring everything on his plate. The smell of grilled meat and frying oil repulsed her, but she gave no outward sign. She knew much of the boy’s appetite was driven by the same goal as her, to keep his strength up, to ready himself for escape.

But will the opportunity ever present itself?

Iscariot watched them like a hungry hawk, even as he ate his own meal, a blood-red steak and buttery vegetables. He used a silver fork and knife, the utensils emblazoned with an anchor.

Tommy finally sighed with great satisfaction and leaned back in his chair.

She studied his young face. Color had stolen into his cheeks again. It was uncanny, even for her, how quickly he healed. The food had clearly lent him strength.

“I can’t eat any more,” he declared, stifling a belch with a fist.

It turned instead into a long yawn.

“You should get some rest,” Iscariot said. “We must be up again before dawn.”

Tommy’s tired eyes found hers. He clearly didn’t know how to respond.

She gave him the smallest nod.

Now was not the time to confound their new captor.

“Okay,” he said, standing and stretching his back.

Iscariot gestured to Henrik. “Show the boy to the guest room and deliver him clean clothing.”

Tommy picked at his sweatpants and shirt, stained in spots by dried blood. He plainly could use fresh clothing.

Resigned, Tommy followed after Henrik, but not before casting a worried glance toward Elizabeth. It ached her silent heart.

Once he was gone, Iscariot shifted on the sofa closer to her chair. “Some sleep will do him good.” He caught her gaze with his silver-blue eyes. “But you have many questions for me. Questions better asked and answered with the boy out of the room.”

She folded her hands in her lap and decided to start with the past before addressing the present or future. “I would know more about the fate of my family.”

He nodded, and over the course of several long painful minutes, he told stories of her children, and their children again, of marriages, births, deaths. It was a tale mostly tragic, of a family brought low, a vast tapestry woven from the threads of her sins.

This is my legacy.

She kept her face stoic and buried his words deep inside her. Bathorys did not reveal their pain. Many times she had told her children this, even when she wanted to hold them in her arms and brush away their tears. But she had not learned of comfort from her mother, and she had not taught it to her children. This strength had cost her, but it had also saved her.

Once finished describing her descendants, he asked, “But are you not curious about the modern world?”

“I am,” she said, “but I am more curious about my role in this new world.”

“And I suspect you want to know the boy’s role, too.”

She shrugged, admitting nothing. She let a trace of sarcasm enter her voice. “What kind of monster would I be if I did not care about such a stout lad?”

“What kind of monster indeed.” A hint of a smile crossed his lips.

She read his satisfied expression, letting him believe she was the sort of monster who cared little about such a boy. For she was just such a monster — she had killed many scarcely older than Thomas. But to him she felt a strange kinship, and her kin were sacred.

Iscariot fixed her with a harder stare. “Your role, my dear Countess Bathory, is first and foremost to keep him calm and obedient.”

So I am to play nursemaid.

Keeping ill temper from her voice, she asked, “What do you plan to do to him that you need such soothing services?”

“Near dawn, we will travel to the coast, to the ruins of Cumae. It is there he will find his destiny, a fate he may wish to fight. And while escape is impossible, if he resists, it will go hard for him.”

Elizabeth turned to the flames.

The ruins of Cumae.

A chord of memory rang through her, from her time reading the ancient writings of Virgil and the histories of Europe, as all good noblewomen should. A famous seer had once lived in Cumae, a sibyl who prophesied the birth of Christ. By Elizabeth’s time, the place had fallen to ruin, the city walls long destroyed.

But something else nagged at her, another story of Cumae. Fear etched into her bones, but she kept it from her face.

“What is the boy’s fate in Cumae?” she asked.

And what is mine?

“He is the First Angel,” Judas reminded her. “And you are the Woman of Learning. Together, we will forge the destiny that Christ has set upon me, to return Him to His world, to bring His Judgment upon us all.”

She remembered Iscariot’s earlier admission of such a lofty goal. “You intend to start Armageddon. But how?”

He only smiled, refusing to answer.

Still, she recalled that last detail concerning Cumae. According to Roman legend, the sibyl’s throne hid the entrance to the underworld.

The very gateway to Hell.

35

Cardinal Bernard strode through the nearly deserted airport outside of Naples. Recessed lights cast a bluish tint across the few early morning travelers, lending them a look of ill health. No one gave him a second glance as he passed swiftly toward the arrivals hall. He had shed the crimson of his formal robes for the dark navy of a modern business suit.

But he had not come to Naples as a cardinal or a businessman, but as a warrior.

Beneath the silk of his suit, he wore armor.

Wary of a mole in their order, he had traveled here in secret, slipping out of Vatican City through a long unused tunnel, across the midnight streets of Rome, where he had blended in. He had flown by a commercial airline versus private jet, using false papers. He dragged a suitcase that held two sets of Sanguinist armor, specially prepared for this trip.

Near the airport exit, he immediately recognized Erin and Jordan, hearing their telltale heartbeats before they stepped through the glass doors.

Rhun and Christian flanked the pair.

Jordan reached him first, moving on his strong legs. “Good to see you again, Cardinal.”

“For now, just Bernard.” He glanced around, then swung the suitcase to Rhun and pointed to a bathroom. “Change. Keep the armor under your civilian clothing.”

After they left, he shook Jordan’s hand, noticing the fierce warmth of his palm, almost feverish, as if he were burning up. “Are you well?” he asked.

“Considering I just came back from the dead, I’m doing fantastic.”

Bernard noted a slight hesitation in the man’s manner. He was clearly holding something back, but Bernard let it go. “I am grateful you’re safe… and equally grateful for your work in helping us understand this unique threat posed by Iscariot’s moths.”

Bernard still had trouble coming to terms with Judas Iscariot walking the earth, that Christ had cursed His betrayer with endless years. But the threat the man posed could not be denied or ignored.

“With time and better facilities,” Jordan said, “I could learn more about his creations.”

“It will have to do. Time runs short. We must find the First Angel and unite him with the book.”

The words of the Gospel’s prophecy shone in his mind’s eye in lines of flaming gold: The trio of prophecy must bring the book to the First Angel for his blessing. Only thus may they secure salvation for the world.

Nothing else mattered.

Erin looked grim. “For that to happen, we must discover where Iscariot has hidden him and discern what he wants with the boy.”

“And why the bastard came here with the kid,” Jordan added.

Erin nodded. “It must be important.”

Rhun and Christian returned, their robes tighter than before, hiding their new armor, a stab-resistant material suggested by Jordan as a defense against the sting of those moths.

Bernard motioned to the door. “I have hired us a helicopter to take us to the coordinates where Christian last detected the countess. We will head west over the water along that same path and search for any clues.”

Leading the way, Bernard piled them into a taxi van and drove them to a neighboring airfield, where the helicopter waited. It was a blue-and-orange craft, with a curiously long nose and swept-back windows, defining a large cabin.

Christian exited the van and whistled his appreciation. “Nice. An AW-193.”

“You can fly a chopper?” Jordan asked.

“Been flying them since you were still in short pants.” He waved to the aircraft. “Hop in.”

Erin was aboard first. She stopped short when she spotted a long black box strapped between their seats.

“I readied a coffin for Countess Bathory,” Bernard explained. “In case we come upon her during this sojourn.”

“We’re bringing her back?” Jordan asked.

“She may still be the Woman of Learning,” Bernard answered.

He was not about to take any chances.

Rhun touched the box with one hand, an aggrieved look on his face. Bernard had heard reports from Christian about Nadia slashing the woman’s throat, a woman for whom Rhun still clearly had deep affection.

Bernard needed to remain wary of that bond.

Rhun strapped in next to Erin as Christian took the pilot’s seat. The engine roared to life and the blades began turning faster and faster. Moments later they were airborne and sweeping for the dark waters of the Mediterranean.

As they reached the coastline, Christian called back. “Here is where they took to the sea! I lost her signal a few miles due west from here!”

Rhun stared down at the black waves. Moonlight glinted silver off the whitecaps.

They traveled in silence for several minutes, but the waters remained empty, showing no trace of the others. He pictured Iscariot dumping Elisabeta into the dark sea, ridding himself of her.

Christian yelled. “This is the spot where the signal cut out.”

He brought the craft into a slow circle over the water. All eyes searched below for any wreckage, any evidence as to where Iscariot’s group had gone.

Jordan called forward. “We should consult maps of the local currents. If a boat sank or a helicopter or small plane crashed out here, we might have to follow the coastal currents — but for now I suggest that we continue along their original trajectory.”

“Roger that.” Christian tipped the craft to its side and flew west.

Rhun continued his vigil, his keen eyes searching every wave.

He prayed for hope.

He prayed for her.

36

Judas stood in his bedchamber, dressed again after a short hour’s nap.

He felt refreshed, full of hope.

As he secured his tie, he kept his back to the room’s massive four-poster bed. To assist him while dressing, he used the reflection in the giant clock that covered one wall. The crystal face stretched eight feet across. With his own hands, he had built and rebuilt it in twenty different homes. The dial of the clock was also glass, revealing its inner gears and cogs, all of brass, copper, and steel. He liked to watch the mechanisms tick away the endless passage of his life.

Now with one careful hand, he stopped the clock. He no longer needed it. His life would end soon. After years of praying for this moment, soon he would rest.

A knock on the door disturbed his thoughts.

“Enter!” he called out.

He turned to find Henrik pushing the First Angel into the room. With sunrise only a couple of hours off, he had summoned the boy to be brought before him.

Tommy rubbed his eyes, clearly still sleep addled. “What do you want with me?”

“Only to chat.”

The boy looked like he would have preferred more sleep.

Judas drew him to his small desk. He had a larger office to conduct business elsewhere on the rig, but he preferred sometimes the quiet intimacy of his own chamber. “The two of us, Tommy, are unique unto this world.”

“What do you mean?”

Judas picked up a sharp letter opener and pierced the center of his own palm. Blood welled thickly, but he used a handkerchief to wipe it away. The small wound sealed quickly, healing almost immediately.

“I am immortal, but not like your countess. I am like you.” As proof, he took the boy’s hand in his firm grip and placed his palm against his own chest. “Do you feel my heartbeat?”

Tommy nodded, plainly intimidated but intrigued.

“Like you, I was born an ordinary boy. It was a curse that granted me my immortality, but I would like to know what you did to be so similarly afflicted.”

Judas had heard a rough accounting of the boy’s story, but he wanted to hear the details from the source.

Tommy chewed on his lower lip, clearly hesitant, but the boy likely ached to understand what he had become. “It happened in Israel,” he began and slowly told the story of visiting Masada with his parents, of the earthquake and the gas.

None of this accounting explained his sudden immortality.

“Tell me more about what happened before the earthquake,” Judas pressed.

A guilty look swept his countenance. “I… I went into a room that I wasn’t supposed to. I knew better. But there was a white dove on the floor, and I thought it was hurt. I wanted to take it out and get some help for it.”

Judas’s heart thumped against his ribs. “A dove with a broken wing?”

“How did you know that?” Tommy’s eyes narrowed.

Judas sank back against his desk, his words full of memory. “Two thousand years ago, I saw a dove like that. When I was a boy.”

He had not thought the encounter important, barely considered it, except the event occurred on the morning that he had first met Christ, when Judas was only a boy of fourteen years, when they became fast friends.

I was the same age as Tommy, he suddenly realized.

He remembered that early morning now in immediate detail: how the streets were still shadowy as the sun had not quite risen, how the sewage in the drains had stunk, how the stars still shone.

“And the dove you saw,” the boy said, “it also had a broken wing?”

“Yes.” Judas pictured the ghostly white of its feathers in the night, the only thing moving on that dark street. “It dragged its wing across the muddy stones. I picked it up.”

He felt the plumage now, brushing his palms. The bird had lain quiet, its head against Judas’s thumb, staring up at him out of a single green eye.

“Did you try to help it?” Tommy asked.

“I wrung its neck.”

The boy took a half step back, his eyes wide. “Just like that?”

“There were rats, dogs. It would have been torn apart. I saved it from that misery. It was an act of mercy.”

Still, he remembered how stricken he felt afterward. He had fled to the temple for comfort, to his father, who was a Pharisee. It was there he saw Christ for the first time, a lad of the same age, impressing his father and many others with His words. Afterward, the two of them became friends, seldom parted.

Until the end.

Now I must correct that.

The boy, the dove, they were all signs that his path was the correct one.

Judas drew Tommy back to the door, back into the care of Henrik. “Ready him for our departure.”

Once Tommy was gone, Judas returned to his desk. He picked up a crystal block that fit neatly in his palm. It was his most prized possession. He had taken it from his office safe and would return it before he left. But he needed its reassurance this early morning, needed its physicality and weight in his hands.

The block held a fragile brown leaf suspended inside, protected across the centuries by the glass. He lifted it to his eyes and read the words that had been cut into its once green surface with a sharp stone knife.

He cupped the block in both palms, thinking of the woman who had written these words, picturing her luminous dark skin, her eyes that glowed with a peaceful radiance. Like him, she understood truths that no one else could. Like him, she had lived many lifetimes, watched many friends die. Alone on Earth, she was his equal.

Arella.

But this simple leaf had ended the best century of his long life — the one that he shared with her. It had been in Crete, where their house looked over the ocean. She hated to be far from the sea. He had moved with her from Venice to Alexandria to Constantinople to other cities that looked out over other waves. He would have lived anywhere to see her happy. That particular decade she had wanted simplicity and quiet.

So he chose Crete.

He looked out his bedroom window now, staring at the dark waves. Since those days he, too, had never been far from the sea. But back then he had watched her more often than the endlessly changing water. That night she had stood by a window with the shutters thrown open to the night.

Judas cranked his own window now and breathed in the salt air, remembering the sounds and smells of that long-ago night.

From his bed, he watched her silhouette move against the starry sky.

The scent of the ocean filled their bedroom, along with the soft hush of the waves against the sand. Close at hand, an owl called to its mate and was answered in turn. A week before, he had seen the pair in an olive tree, each bird not much larger than two fists pressed together.

“Do you hear our owls?” she asked, turning toward him.

Moonlight glinted off her ebony hair, one wayward lock falling across her face. She reached her hand to push it away, a gesture he had seen thousands of times. But her hand stopped, her body going rigid in an all-too-familiar manner.

Judas smothered a curse and quickly stood.

As he came to her, he saw her beautiful eyes were empty.

This, too, was familiar.

The prophecies would now spill through her. Each time, he hated it, for in this state she was beyond his reach, and beyond her own, swept by the waves of time, those tidal pulls that could never be resisted.

As usual, he followed her instructions. He drew fresh leaves from a rush basket in the corner and pressed them into her warm left hand. Every day she gathered leaves for this purpose, although the prophecies came but once or twice a year.

He folded the fingers of her right hand around the ancient stone knife.

Then he left her alone.

He kept a silent vigil in front of her door. Sometimes the visions lasted for mere minutes, others for hours. No matter how long, she was not to be interrupted.

Thankfully this night she was spared.

After a single minute, she came to herself and bade him to return.

As he entered the room, she lay in their bed curled into a ball. He took her in his arms and stroked her long thick hair. She turned her face into his chest and wept. He rocked her from side to side and waited for the storm to pass. He knew better than to ask the source of her sorrow. This curse she must bear alone.

Usually the leaves on which she wrote her prophecies lay scattered across the floor, and he would gather them together while she slept and burn each in a fire.

It was as she wished, as she begged of him. No good had ever come from her gift, she had told him. The prophecies were mere shadows, holding no certainty, but the knowledge of them had driven many a man to force them into being, often in their most evil guise.

Still, in secret, he read each leaf before burning it, recording many of her words, even pictures she had drawn, in a thick leather journal that he used for the household accounts. She never read from that book, never concerned herself with financial details.

She trusted him.

This night, after her breaths slowed to sleep, he disentangled himself from her embrace and rose to pick up the single leaf that lay at the edge of the fire.

Only one prophecy tonight.

The leaf felt supple under his fingertips. The smell of green trees drifted up to his nose. The scribbled phrases beckoned him. Holding the leaf near the fire’s flames, he read the words that marched across its surface in uneven lines.

After His words, written in blood, are lifted from their prison of stone, the one who took Him from this world will serve in bringing Him back, sparking an era of fire and bloodshed, casting a pall over the earth and all its creatures.

Disbelieving, he traced each word with a trembling fingertip. He read them again and again, wishing that their meaning was not so plain. He already knew that Christ had written a Gospel in His own blood and imprisoned it in stone. Judas had recorded other prophecies concerning that book that she had written over the past century, but he had not thought them important. He had never thought that her prophecies might concern him until the line that read: the one who took Him from this world.

That could be none other than the one who had betrayed Christ.

Everyone else involved in the death of Jesus was long since turned to dust, but Judas endured. He had been spared for a purpose.

For this purpose.

So few words, but each one confirmed his worst fears about his curse. Once the lost Gospel was unearthed, Judas must seek to bring Christ back. To do that, it was Judas’s duty to start the end of days — a time of fire and blood.

A rustling of sheets drew his attention around. She sat up, as beautiful in the firelight as she was in every light.

Her eyes saw what his fingers held. “You read this?”

He looked away, but he felt her gaze burning into him.

“Have you read them all?” she asked.

He could not lie to her, turning to her. “I wanted to preserve them in case you should change your mind, so that your gift was not lost to the world.”

“Gift? It is no gift. And it was my choice to decide what to do with it. I trusted you, alone of every man in the world, to understand that.”

“I thought that I was serving you.”

“How? When? For one hundred years, you have betrayed me.”

A line of tears glistened in the firelight. She wiped the back of her hand across one smooth cheek. He had gone against her deepest wishes, again and again. He read in her eyes that there could be no forgiveness for his actions.

“I did it for you,” he whispered.

“For me?” Her voice hardened. “Not for your own curiosity?”

He had no answer to that question, so instead asked another. He lifted the leaf. “How long? How long until this prophecy is fulfilled?”

“It is but a prophecy.” Her face was a blank slate on which he could read nothing. “One possible shadow of the future. It is not certainty, nor necessity.”

“This shall come to pass,” he insisted.

He had known its truth the instant that he read her words.

He had betrayed Jesus.

Now he must betray the world of man.

“You cannot know this.” She crossed the room to stand before him. “You must not do this dark thing based on my words. Nothing in this world is set. As all men, you were imbued by God with free will.”

“My will does not matter. I must find Christ’s Gospel. I must set these events in motion.”

“A prophecy cannot be forced.” Her voice rose in rare anger. “Even with all your arrogance, you must know this.”

He lifted the leaf again, matching her anger. “I see this. I know this. We must do what we were created to do. I am a betrayer. You are a prophetess. Did you not defy God by failing to share your prophecy of Lucifer’s betrayal? Were you not cast down because of it? And now you seek to defy Him again!”

Stricken, she stared at him. He knew that he had spoken her greatest fear aloud, and he wished that he could call his words back.

Tears shone in her bright eyes, but she blinked them away. She turned from him, lifted the hood of the cloak so that it hid her face, and ran out the door into the starry night.

He waited for her to come back to him, for her anger to be spent, that he might beg her forgiveness. But by the time the morning sun rose, she had not returned, and he knew that she never would.

Judas breathed deeply of the night air, remembering all.

After Arella left him, he traveled to Europe where he spent many years researching whispered rumors of Christ’s lost Gospel. He learned of another prophecy concerning the book, one that spoke of a sacred trio.

So he sought them, too.

One fall evening, following a rumor among the Sanguinists, he sought out Countess Elizabeth Bathory — the learned woman married to a powerful warrior and bound to a knight of Christ.

Like the Church, he thought that these three might be the prophesied trio — until Father Korza had turned the countess into a strigoi, and she was supposedly slain.

Yet he remained convinced of the power of the Bathory family. Each generation, he selected a single woman from that lineage to train and protect, poisoning her blood against the strigoi, to ensure she would never be turned as her ancestor had been.

Most of the women had served him well, until the line had ended with Bathory Darabont. But by then the lost Gospel of Christ had been brought back into the world, heralding what Judas must do next.

He lifted the glass block and read those words.

The one who took Him from this world will serve in bringing Him back, sparking an era of fire and bloodshed, casting a pall over the earth and all its creatures.

At long last, that time had come.

37

Tommy shivered in the breezes blowing across the open platform of the oil rig, the wind driving away the last dregs of his sleepiness.

He stared across the pad to a silver helicopter parked there. It had blacked-out windows and a large radar array sprouting from its nose. From the sleek lines and unusual features, it looked custom-made and expensive. A pilot stood next to the helicopter, dressed in a black flight suit, including a helmet and gloves.

Not a scrap of skin showed, suggesting he was like Elizabeth and Alexei.

Strigoi.

Elizabeth stood next to him. Even though sunrise was two hours away, she was also encased from head to toe. She wore high boots, black pants, a long-sleeved tunic and gloves, along with a veil that covered her face. It left a slit open for her eyes, but she held a pair of sunglasses, ready for the approach of dawn.

Iscariot waved toward the parked aircraft. “Everybody get aboard.”

With no choice, Tommy ducked under the rotors as they began to spin and climbed into the helicopter. Dread etched through him. Where were they taking him? He remembered Iscariot’s talk of destiny, and somehow he knew he was not going to like it.

As he strapped himself in, he noted Elizabeth fussing with the shoulder and lap belts.

“Do you need help?” Tommy asked.

“It is more complex than harnessing a team of horses,” she said, but she figured it out and snapped herself in place next to him.

Iscariot spoke to the pilot, then climbed into the cabin, bringing with him his two hulking bodyguards. When he closed the door, the entire cabin went pitch-black. No light came in through the windows, and Tommy could not see out. He was glad when artificial lights came on.

Elizabeth slowly took off her veil and sunglasses.

Iscariot handed them each a set of heavy wireless earphones.

Tommy put his on and Elizabeth followed his example, clearly watching his every move.

The engine volume got louder, and they lifted off from the helipad with a jerk. With the windows blacked out, Tommy used his stomach to judge how far they climbed, when they leveled out, and when they started their flight back to land.

Tommy leaned over and peered ahead. The windshield was also tinted to a solid black. How did the pilot know where they were going?

Iscariot noted where he was looking. His voice came through the earphones. “There is a digital camera mounted on the nose of the helicopter. Let me show you.”

Reaching across Tommy’s lap, he flicked a switch near the armrest. A monitor lowered in front of Tommy. It flickered to life, displaying a sweep of moonlit waves and a clear horizon in front.

“There’s a small joystick near your right hand,” Iscariot said. “You can move the camera with it.”

Testing this, Tommy spun the joystick in a circle and images on the monitor swung a full 360. He watched waves chasing waves. The horizon was water and sky. Behind the helicopter, the twinkling lights of the oil rig grew smaller and smaller. As he swung the view back forward, he spotted a set of tiny lights running low over the water, heading toward them.

Another helicopter.

Iscariot sat straighter, then leaned forward toward the pilot. “Who is that?”

“Don’t know,” the pilot answered. “I’ve swept it with the night-vision scopes. No distinct markings on the hull, but it looks like a chartered aircraft. Could be tourists.”

Iscariot scoffed. “Out before sunrise? Move us closer.”

Their chopper dipped and dove toward the other craft, on an intercept course.

Iscariot pushed Tommy’s hand off the joystick and commandeered it. He toggled a switch and the view turned brighter, in shades of silvery gray.

Night vision.

The view suddenly zoomed forward, centering on the windshield of the other aircraft.

Tommy could make out the pilot’s face, remembering him from the ice maze.

The shock of recognition quickly changed to hope. It was one of the priests, one of those who helped free him from the ice.

They found me!

He didn’t know how, but he didn’t care.

Maybe they can rescue me… rescue us.

He glanced at Elizabeth, who was also staring at the screen. She smiled with half her mouth, as if she couldn’t help herself. “The Sanguinists have tracked us.”

Anger flared in Iscariot’s voice and reddened his cheeks. “Take them down.”

In the corner of the screen, a yellow icon of four missiles appeared.

Beneath it was a single word:

That couldn’t be good.

Tommy felt a rumbling under his seat. He imagined a hatch opening, a missile bay lowering into view.

On the screen, one of the yellow missiles turned red.

Uh-oh.

With her face pressed to the window, Erin watched the helicopter dive toward them. Earlier, they had noted the aircraft rise like a tiny mote from the galactic cluster of an oil rig farther out to sea. It seemed headed to the coast, going wide from their position — then it had suddenly swung toward them, plainly coming in for a closer look.

Jordan had posited that it might be security for the rig, coming to investigate the approach of an unknown aircraft. These were suspicious times.

Then suddenly it dove straight at them.

Smoke flared from its underside, along with a flash of fire.

“Missile!” Christian screamed from up front.

Erin was thrown back as Christian forced the helicopter into a steep climb. Beyond the roar of the engines, a piercing scream ripped through the night. Their aircraft rolled to the right, as a whistling curl of smoke swept past the landing skid on the left.

A second later, an explosion blasted into the sea behind them, the shock wave shuddering their craft. A flume of water and smoke shot into the sky.

Christian immediately turned their helicopter into a stomach-dropping dive, trying to outmaneuver the other, but their rental aircraft was a lumbering fat bee compared to the sleek killer wasp on their tail.

Black ocean zoomed toward them.

She sucked in her breath. Jordan clutched hard against her.

Inches from the crests of the tallest waves, their craft finally pulled up, sweeping fast and low over the water. She craned her neck and saw the other helicopter behind them. It tipped up on its edge, dropping sideways toward the sea, then straightened and sped toward them, coming in higher.

They would never escape it.

“Gonna try to reach the rig!” Christian yelled. “Use its bulk as a shield.”

Jordan called up. “I saw three more missiles in its bay when it swept past overhead.”

Three more chances to kill them.

Christian struggled with the stick as if it had a life of its own. The helicopter zigzagged over the water, aiming for the oil rig. Another smoke trail screamed past on the right and exploded into the sea, casting a wave of smoke and water over their craft.

Two more chances…

The oil platform loomed ahead, a lamplit skyscraper rising out of the sea.

Erin allowed herself a moment of hope.

Then Nature slapped them down.

An extra tall wave hit the skimming skids. The machine jolted and wobbled like a tightrope walker about to lose his balance. For a sickening second, she thought that it would tip into the sea. Then the helicopter righted itself, climbing out of the waves.

She heaved out a sigh.

“Brace yourselves!” Christian bellowed.

Her throat clutched tightly, knowing they had lost too much speed. They could never outrun this next missile. Erin met Jordan’s eyes — as Christian dove them lower again, this time seeming to drag the skids in the water on purpose.

Erin was thrown against her restraints as their forward momentum braked suddenly. The craft tilted up on its nose.

The missile slipped under their uplifted tail and exploded beneath them.

Fire blossomed up along both sides of the helicopter, flames covering the windows. The world spun in a dizzying wash of smoke, fire, and water. Then the chopper settled on its side in the water. Black smoke roiled into the darkened cabin.

The helicopter hung for one last breath.

Then sank into the sea.

Judas studied the shattered wreckage, the spreading black stain on the dark water. The pilot hovered the helicopter, turning it in a slow sweep of the area, watching for survivors.

“Sir?” the pilot asked.

Judas weighed the odds of anyone surviving that last missile blast. It looked as if the strike had hit the tail of the helicopter square on. Nothing could have survived such a direct hit; even the stubborn bodies of the Sanguinists could not heal after being shredded to ribbons by ripped metal.

Besides—he checked the platinum Rolex Yacht-Master on his wrist—none of this mattered.

Whether there were any survivors, they could never stop him now. Dawn was less than two hours off. Even if the Sanguinists somehow survived, they could not close their lead on him.

Still…

“Contact the remaining crew at the rig,” he ordered. “Have them comb and watch these waters.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Then continue to the coast.”

Judas glanced at the boy, who looked ashen after the attack.

No one can save you now.

38

A racking cough tore through Erin.

She tasted blood, smelled smoke.

Jordan gripped her hand hard.

Alive — but for how long?

Water swamped the windows all round, as the craft continued its plunge into the cold depths. Red emergency lights glowed, casting the cabin into shades of crimson. Water seeped inside, slowly filling the lower half.

Rhun scrambled and splashed forward with Bernard, reaching Christian, who draped limply in his restraints. They fought to free him.

Following their example, Erin fumbled with her seat harness’s quick release, which thankfully popped open. Jordan did the same, then clicked on a flashlight. He placed a hand against the window.

How far down were they?

The waters beyond the windows were as black as oil.

Jordan moved aside as Rhun came splashing to join them, hauling Christian’s arms. Bernard had his legs. Blood covered the young Sanguinist’s entire face.

Was he even alive?

Jordan pointed to the window. “We need to break out of here. Rhun, do you have the strength to kick out this window?”

“I believe so.”

“No,” Erin called. “We don’t know how far down we are. The pressure could crush us. And even if we get free, I doubt we can make it to the surface in one breath.”

Jordan frowned at her. “We have to try. We’ll drown just as surely by doing nothing.”

Rhun nodded. “Jordan is right. I will do my best to shield you both and get you to the surface. Bernard can carry Christian’s body on his own.”

Erin hugged her arms around her belly, looking at the rising water, already thigh-deep in the cabin by now, knowing they were wrong. She searched the space and called again. “Wait! There’s another way!”

Jordan glanced at her.

“You’re not going to like it,” she said.

“What?” Jordan demanded.

She pointed to the long box strapped below the water, the one Bernard had brought along to secure the countess.

“It could act as our escape pod,” she said.

Jordan’s jaw clenched, plainly not keen on putting their hopes of survival on a coffin. Still, he nodded, recognizing she was right.

Rhun quickly ripped away the straps that secured the giant plastic box to the floor and it floated up to the surface, proving it was buoyant.

“It should protect us from the pressure,” Erin said. “And there should be enough air in there for us to make it to the surface.”

“That’s a lot of shoulds,” Jordan said.

But there was no better option.

As Rhun hauled the lid open, Jordan scrambled in first and sprawled onto his back. He lifted his arms, as if inviting her to bed. She climbed into the coffin, into his arms. He hugged her tightly.

Rhun closed the lid of the box, sealing them in darkness. She heard the latches snug into place. In the blackness, she concentrated on Jordan’s heartbeat, feeling it thud against his rib cage, echoing into her. His body heat burned through his damp clothes, intense after the cold soaking. She shifted, noting his left arm felt hotter than his right.

Before she could ponder this, Rhun thumped the outside of the box, likely warning them to prepare themselves.

Jordan pulled her head down onto his chest. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

She heard a crash, and a solid whump of water striking the side of the coffin, shoving it to the other side of the cabin. She rolled and got banged about inside. It felt as if a giant dog had the box in his mouth and was shaking it like a stick. She gritted her teeth to keep from yelling.

Jordan’s arms pulled her closer. “I got you,” he said in her ear.

But who’s got us?

Rhun fought the pull of the sea and hauled the coffin through the shattered window. It became caught. An outer handle normally used by pallbearers snagged on a twisted piece of metal.

He glanced to the side and saw Bernard heading upward through the dark waters, kicking and hugging Christian’s limp form in his arms. The cardinal also towed a sealed and deflated emergency raft, tied by a rope to his waist.

Alone, Rhun positioned his feet to either side of the coffin, bracing against the side of the wreckage as it plunged ever deeper.

Using all the strength in his legs and back, he yanked the box, bending the twisted piece of metal, watching the outer handle tear away. He feared the box might rip open and pictured water bursting inside and drowning Erin and Jordan.

He listened to the frightened timpani of their heartbeats.

He could not fail them.

He heaved again, fueled by his past failures, refusing to repeat them.

Finally, the coffin popped free — so suddenly, he lost hold of it.

He rolled back through the water and watched the box begin to float upward, slowly, too slowly. He kicked and swept his arms and got under the coffin. Pushing from below, he propelled the pod ever higher, chasing the feeble glow of a distant moon.

The surface seemed an impossible distance away, only visible because of his preternatural eyesight. He knew there was little air left in that coffin, and much of it contaminated by the smoke of the trapped cabin.

He must hurry.

All the while, he listened to their heartbeats, each distinct from the other, but sounding somehow in harmony. He prayed that their quiet chorus continued until he reached the surface.

Jordan felt their escape pod breach the waves. The steady upward trajectory suddenly gave way, his stomach lolling to match the roll of sea beyond their prison. A moment later, he heard the latches give way, and the lid suddenly shoved open.

As they floated there, he took a deep breath of clean salt air, savoring the press of Erin’s body against his. But a tremble shook through her. He rubbed his hands along her back, trying to chase away the fear. He had felt her body fighting against panic the whole time.

Rhun gripped an edge of the coffin and raised his head into view. “Are you both well?”

Jordan nodded. “Thanks for the lift.”

Erin let out a small giggle, though it was less amusement at his lame joke than it was the madness of relief. It was still the best sound he’d heard in a long time. She pushed against him and sat.

Rhun pointed left. “Bernard has inflated an emergency raft. I will push you toward it.”

Rhun’s dark head bobbed behind them like a seal as he began kicking toward a round raft, a bright yellow wafer spinning in the water. He saw that Bernard had Christian’s body sprawled atop it, a black stain against the yellow.

Worry for his new friend iced through him.

Too many Sanguinists had already died.

He scanned the horizon, but apparently the other helicopter was long gone.

But they weren’t alone out here.

An echoing pitch of an engine reached them. Jordan looked beyond the raft to a single light racing toward them, bobbing over the waves. A Zodiac pontoon boat. It clearly had to come from the towering oil platform in the distance.

The same site from where the attack helicopter had risen.

Not good.

“Rhun!” Jordan called, knowing the priest was too low in the water to see. “We’ve got company coming at our twelve o’clock!”

If there was any question of them being friendly, it was dispelled as gunfire cracked out, pebbling the dark water, aiming for the larger, brighter target of the raft.

Bernard suddenly dove off the side and vanished, abandoning Christian.

Did that mean the young Sanguinist was already dead?

Rhun had slowed their approach to the raft. “Leave them to Bernard. But in the meantime, we should make less of a target.”

Without warning, the priest upended their coffin and dumped them both into the cold sea. While Jordan understood the necessity, he didn’t necessarily care for the manner. He sputtered on a mouthful of water as he came to the surface. He hurried to Erin, knowing she was not a strong swimmer, nor a fan of water in general.

But she came up smoothly, her eyes scared but determined.

Rhun joined them. “Make for the raft, but keep its bulk between you and whoever comes.”

The priest led the way.

In a few strokes, their group reached their floating refuge but dared not mount it. Jordan peered over its edge as the Zodiac closed the distance, slowing. He spotted three men: a driver and two gunmen with rifles.

In the water, they were sitting ducks.

But unknown to the newcomers, there was also a shark in these waters.

Bernard suddenly rose on the starboard side, a long silver blade flashing in the moonlight. Moving in a blur, he slashed the length of the pontoon on their side. The Zodiac listed crookedly, the engine choking out, throwing the standing gunmen off balance. A hand lunged out of the water, grabbed an ankle, and plucked one man from the boat. He got tossed high, but not before Bernard hacked his leg off at the knee with one savage swipe.

The other rifleman fired, but Bernard was already gone.

As the Zodiac continued to wallow, the second gunman turned in a wary circle, watching the waters all around. Then suddenly the boat opened under the man, the tarp floor ripped out beneath him. His body was yanked straight through the new hole and vanished.

The last man — the driver — gunned the engine to full life and swung the boat away, clearly wanting to flee back to the safety of the oil platform. But Bernard bounded out of the sea, like a dolphin performing a trick. He landed behind the driver, gripped his hair, and slashed his neck, nearly taking the man’s head off.

Bernard threw his body into the sea with one arm.

Jordan tried to balance the pious man of the cloth with this savage butcher.

“Make for the other boat!” Rhun said, loudly enough for Bernard to hear. “Quickly now. I’ll grab Christian and join you there.”

The priest leaped and rolled onto the raft.

Erin and Jordan swam for the Zodiac. Bernard helped them aboard the foundering craft. Jordan knew Zodiacs were tough little boats, capable of running on only one float. By the time Jordan followed Erin up, Rhun was already there, towing Christian by one arm.

He helped Rhun get the young Sanguinist aboard the boat.

“What now?” Jordan asked as Erin and Bernard attended to Christian.

“Can you pilot this craft?” Rhun asked.

“Not a problem,” Jordan said.

The priest pointed to the oil rig. “We’re too far from the shore. We’ll never make landfall with this small engine. We must find another means of transportation to reach the coast.”

Jordan stared toward the towering structure. Despite their team’s firepower sunk to the bottom of the sea, they had to go into that nest of vipers.

Knowing this, Jordan crossed and took the wheel, while Erin leaned over Christian’s body.

“Is he still alive?” she asked.

“It is difficult to say,” Rhun admitted, kneeling between her and Bernard.

Christian’s eyes remained closed. A deep gash ran along his forehead. Jordan knew it would be useless to check for a breath or a heartbeat. The Sanguinists didn’t have either.

The cardinal placed his silver cross atop Christian’s forehead, as if ready to administer last rites. After a moment, Bernard lifted the cross, revealing a seared mark matching its shape on the younger Sanguinist’s skin.

“He lives,” Bernard declared.

Rhun explained, the relief palpable in his voice. “If we die in service to the Church, we are cleansed. Blessed silver would not burn us.”

Erin held Christian’s hand.

“But he requires medical attention,” Rhun warned, eyeing Jordan as he gunned the engine. “His life may still be forfeit.”

Jordan aimed for the oil platform. “Then let’s go pay our neighbors a visit.”

39

As the boat fled toward the lights of the oil platform, Rhun studied Christian’s pale face. He was young, relatively new to the cloth, making him brash and irreverent, but Rhun could not fault his faith and his bravery. He clenched a fist of frustration, refusing to lose another companion so soon after Nadia’s death.

Bernard poured little sips of wine from his leather flask through Christian’s slack lips, but most spilled down his hollow cheeks. He was still too weak to swallow.

“What if I gave him some of my blood?” Erin asked. “Like we did with the countess. Wouldn’t that help revive him?”

“We will consider that only as a last resort,” Bernard mumbled.

Erin looked little satisfied with that answer.

Rhun whispered to her. “The taste of blood for one as young as he risks freeing the beast inside him. We dare not risk it, especially here where we have so little means to control him. Let us see what we find at the oil platform.”

“What we will find will surely be more enemies,” Bernard added and pointed to the flask hidden and tied to Rhun’s upper thigh. “We ourselves should drink, restore our strength to its fullest.”

Rhun knew Bernard was correct, but he hated taking penance in front of others, knowing it often left him weeping and confused. He did not wish to display such weakness.

Still, he knew he must.

As Rhun freed his holy flask, Bernard upended his own and drank deeply, unabashedly. Bernard seemed at peace with his sins. He did his penance and was always calm moments afterward.

Rhun prayed for the same today as he lifted the flask to his lips and drank fully.

The cemetery loomed around Rhun as he lay on his back atop his sister’s grave. The beast straddled him, their limbs entangled like lovers. The monster’s blood filled his mouth.

Rhun had come to his sister’s grave this night to mourn her passing, only to be waylaid by this beast, a monster wearing fine breeches and a studded leather tunic. Fangs had torn into Rhun’s throat, draining his blood into this other’s hungry mouth. But instead of dying, his attacker had offered Rhun a wrist, sliced open, pouring with the beast’s black blood.

He had resisted — until cold, silken blood burst to fire on his tongue.

Bliss welled through him, and with it, hunger.

He now drank fully from that crimson font, knowing it was a sin, knowing that the pleasure that pulsed through every limb in his body would damn him for all eternity. And still he could not stop. He longed to stay locked in this man’s embrace forever, drowned in ecstasy with every fiery swallow.

Then his head cracked painfully against his sister’s headstone. He watched the beast yanked off him. Rhun moaned, reaching again for him, wanting more of his blood.

Four priests pulled the monster from Rhun’s aching body. Their silver pectoral crosses glinted in the cold moonlight.

“Run!” shouted the beast, attempting to warn him.

But how could he ever abandon such a font of bliss and blood?

His arms remained up, stretching to the other.

A blade flashed silver across the beast’s throat. Dark blood exploded from the wound, staining his fine white shirt, soiling his leather tunic.

“No!” Rhun struggled to rise.

The four priests dropped the man’s body to the ground. Rhun heard it hit the scattered leaves, knew without knowing how that the man was gone forever. Tears rose in his eyes at the loss of such ecstasy.

The priests sat Rhun up and wrenched his arms behind his back. Rhun fought with the ferocity of a cornered lynx, but they imprisoned him with an implacable strength for which he was no match.

He twisted, his sharp teeth seeking their necks.

His body ached for blood, any blood.

They carried him through the night without a word. But for all their silence, Rhun heard more than he ever had before in his life. He listened to each leaf crumble under their boots, the soft hush of owl wings overhead, the scurry of a mouse into its hole. Rhun’s mind strained to fathom it. He could even hear the tiny beasts’ heartbeats: the mouse’s swift and frightened, the owl’s slower and determined.

Yet when he turned his ear to the priests around him, he heard nothing.

Only a dreadful silence.

Was he so cut off from the grace of God that he could not hear holy heartbeats, only those of soulless beasts in the field?

Despairing his fate, he went limp in the priests’ hands. His lips formed desperate prayers. Still, all the while, he wished only to tear out these priests’ throats and bathe his face in their blood. The prayers did nothing to quiet this bloodlust. His teeth continued to chatter with longing.

Desire burned hotter than anything he had ever felt, fiercer than any love for his family, even his love for God.

The priests carried him back to the monastery, where moments before he had left as an innocent, a seminary student about to swear his holy vows. They stopped in front of a clean, bare wall that transformed into a door. During his years here, he had never known of its existence.

He had known so little of everything.

The priests bore him below to where a familiar figure sat at a desk holding a goose quill: Father Bernard, his mentor, his counselor in all things. It seemed Rhun’s lessons were not yet finished.

“We bring him to you, Father,” said the priest holding his right arm. “He was felled in the cemetery, but he has tasted no other blood.”

“Leave him to me.”

The same priest refused. “He is in a dangerous state.”

“I know this as well as you.” Bernard rose from his desk. “Leave us.”

“As you wish.”

The priest released Rhun’s arm, dropping him to the stone floor, and headed away, drawing his brethren with him. Rhun lay there a long moment, breathing in the smells of stone, mildew, and old rushes.

Bernard remained silent.

Rhun hid his face from his mentor. He loved Bernard more than he had ever loved his own father. The priest had taught him of wisdom, kindness, and faith. Bernard was the man Rhun had always aspired to become.

But right now all Rhun knew was that he must slake his thirst or die trying. In one bound, he closed the space between them, knocking them both to the floor.

Bernard fell under him, his body strangely cold.

Rhun lunged for his neck, but his prey moved with an unearthly speed, rolling from Rhun’s grasp and standing next to him. How could he be so quick?

“Be careful, my son.” Bernard’s rich voice was calm and steady. “Your faith is your most precious gift.”

A hiss started low in Rhun’s throat. Faith meant nothing now. Only blood mattered.

He sprang again.

Bernard caught him and bore him down to the floor. Rhun struggled, but the older man pinned him against the tiles, proving himself far stronger, stronger than the beast who had changed him, even stronger than the priests who had carried him.

Father Bernard was as hard as stone.

Was this strength proof of God’s might against the evil inside of Rhun?

But his body raged against such thoughts. Throughout the long night, Rhun continued to battle this priest, refusing to listen, trying always to gain a mouthful of his precious blood.

The old man would not be taken.

Eventually, Rhun’s body weakened — but not from exhaustion.

“You feel the approach of dawn,” Bernard explained, holding him, pinning him. “Unless you accept Christ’s love, you will always weaken with the morning, as will you die if the pure light of sun shines upon you.”

A great weariness grew inside of Rhun, weighing down his limbs.

“You must listen, my son. You may view your new state as a curse, but it is a blessing for you. For the world.”

Rhun scoffed. “I have become an unholy beast. I yearn for evil. It is no blessing.”

“You can become more than what you are.”

Bernard’s voice held simple certainty.

“I wish nothing more than to drink your blood, to kill you,” Rhun warned, as his strength ebbed even further. He could barely lift his head now.

“I know how you feel, my son.”

Bernard finally loosened his grip, and Rhun slid to the floor.

On his hands and knees like a dog, Rhun mumbled to the tiles. “You cannot know of the lust inside of me. You are a priest. This evil is beyond your ken.”

Bernard shook his head, drawing Rhun’s eye. His white hair shone in the light of the dying candle. “I am like you.”

Rhun closed his eyes, disbelieving. He was so tired.

Bernard shook Rhun until he opened his eyes again. The old priest drew Rhun’s face to his own, as if to kiss him. Bernard parted those lips in invitation — but long sharp teeth greeted Rhun.

Rhun gaped at his mentor, a man whom he had known many years, a man who was never a man — but a beast.

“I have hungered as you have, my son.” Bernard’s deep voice filled Rhun with calm. “I have indulged evil appetites.”

Rhun struggled to understand.

Father Bernard was good. He brought comfort to the sick and dying. He brought hope to the living. Without him, most of the priests in this very monastery would never have found their way to God.

“There is a path for us,” Bernard said. “It is the most difficult road that any priest can walk, but we can do good, we can serve the Church in ways that no others can. God has not forsaken us. We, too, can live in His grace.”

With those words, Rhun slipped toward a deep well of sleep, letting this lasting hope tame his bloodlust and offer him salvation.

Rhun came out of his penance, to find the cardinal leaning over him, those deep brown eyes shining with that same love and concern.

Bernard had saved him back then.

Still, Rhun now knew the misery that had followed that one act of mercy, picturing Elisabeta’s eyes, her cunning smile, the deaths and suffering that followed in her wake.

Perhaps the world would have been better served if Bernard had let him die.

40

Elizabeth clutched Tommy to her side, feeling him tremble every now and then, likely still picturing the fire and explosions. She had never seen such a battle: two adversaries flying about like hawks, smoke screaming from impossible cannons in their bow, booms that shook even the air. The fighting exhilarated her, awed her — but it had terrified the boy.

He leaned against her shoulder, seeking comfort.

She remembered the other vessel exploding and rolling into the sea, sinking like a scuttled ship. She pictured Rhun torn to pieces — but oddly she found no satisfaction in the vision, only disappointment.

He should have died at my hands.

She also could not discount a sense of hollowness at his loss. She explored that emptiness now, knowing it was not grief, at least not entirely. It was more like the world was barren without him. Rhun had always filled her life, even back at the castle, before she was turned — with his frequent visits, their long conversations, their long pregnant silences. After that bloody night, he continued to define her, having given birth to her new existence. And ever since then he had plagued her shadow — even into this modern world.

Now he was simply gone.

“We’re almost there,” Iscariot said, waving a hand to the screen before them.

She drew her attention forward. The screen showed a dark coastline, littered with a blaze of lights. Farther to the east, she noted the skies had begun to pale with the approach of dawn. She felt its approach in the lassitude that weighed her down, making her feel sluggish.

Their craft suddenly veered away from the mass of lights that marked the city of Naples. It swung toward a shadowy stretch of coastline, overlooked by a tall hill, with a thin sandy beach at its base. The crown of the hill was scooped out, marking it as one of the many old volcanoes that dotted this region of southern Italy, but its slopes had long turned to thick forests, sheltering deep lakes.

“Where are we?” Tommy asked, stirring from her side.

“Cumae,” Elizabeth answered, staring across the top of the boy’s head to Iscariot.

“We’re going to visit an old friend,” Iscariot added cryptically.

Elizabeth had little interest in anyone whom Iscariot considered a friend.

As their craft reached the shore, it swept low over the sandy beach, stirring dust into a cloud. They lowered back to the land as sand rose around them in a cloud.

She felt Tommy stiffen in her arms. He must know his destiny was close at hand and rightly feared it. She remembered Iscariot’s instructions to her, that she was supposed to keep the boy calm, to play nursemaid to him.

She tightened her arm around his thin shoulders — not because it was her duty, but because the boy needed such comfort.

At last, the craft bumped to the ground. The sand sifted and settled, opening a view to the ocean on one side and the steep slope of cliffs on the other.

Iscariot cracked open his door, washing in the smell of salt and burning oil.

They all climbed out.

Once Elizabeth’s feet felt the sand, another note struck her keen senses.

A whiff of sulfurous brimstone.

She faced the seaside cliffs of that ancient volcano, knowing what lay far beneath it, protected by an ancient sibyl.

The entrance to Hades.

Standing beside her, Tommy stared dully out across the dark seas, likely picturing the deaths far out there, wondering about his own fate. She took his hand and gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze. She would play her role as ordered, biding her time until she could make her escape.

As Elizabeth turned her own eyes out across those empty waters, she was again struck by the hollowness of her loss. And not just Rhun. She pictured her estates, her children, her family. All gone.

I am alone in this world.

Tommy leaned against her. She gripped him in turn. He glanced at her, moonlight shining in his eyes, his gaze full of fear but also gratefulness that she was near.

He needed her.

And I need you, she suddenly realized.

Iscariot joined them, stepping forward amid a flutter of emerald wings, the moths released from a hold in the side of the craft. She refused to shy from the unspoken threat and kept her back stiff.

“It is time,” he said and took Tommy’s shoulders.

He turned the boy to face the cliffs — and his destiny.

Erin held Christian’s heavy head in her lap as Jordan idled their listing boat toward the dark dock of the oil platform. The three of them were alone on the boat. Rhun and Bernard had slipped into the water when they were a hundred yards off and swam to the dock on their own. From a distance away, she saw a small scuffle of shadows, a strangled cry — then Rhun had flashed a signal that it was safe for them to continue to the dock.

Jordan nudged the boat forward.

The pair of Sanguinists had made it clear that she and Jordan were to hang back until the way ahead was clear. Rhun’s and Bernard’s keen senses would pick out and dispatch any threats.

“Keep down,” Jordan warned her as they fell under the shadow of the platform above. He kept one hand on the wheel, the other on a rifle, the weapon dropped by one of the men Bernard had killed earlier. She ducked her head low over Christian, watching Jordan.

Jordan’s eyes surveyed every strut and catwalk above, clearly not fully trusting the Sanguinists to keep them safe. The weight of the massive structure seemed to press down upon them. Far above, electric lights blazed, but the lower area was mostly dark, a shadowy world of concrete pillars, steel stairs, and a crisscrossing maze of ramps and bridges.

The Zodiac limped past the bulk of a huge luxury hydrofoil docked in a neighboring berth.

Jordan looked at it closely — and perhaps a bit enviously. “Guy’s got bank,” he mumbled, with a weak attempt at levity.

She gave him a quick smile to let him know that she appreciated the gesture. A minute later, the Zodiac bumped to a stop at a steel dock.

Jordan held out an arm, his palm down, urging her to remain low. He watched closely for several long breaths, then waved her up.

Erin shifted higher. The salty wind felt good against her face.

Jordan hopped off, shouldering his rifle and quickly tying off the boat. He then crouched next to her in the boat. They were to await Rhun and Bernard’s return.

It did not take long.

A shadow shed from above and landed silently on the steel treads of the dock. Rhun joined them, followed a moment later by Bernard. Both had knives bared and bloody. Erin wondered how many men they had killed tonight.

Bernard sheathed his blade and helped Erin to haul Christian quickly from the boat, then the cardinal carried his body from there.

“The way up should be clear,” Rhun said. “But we must take care when we reach the structure on top.”

He led them to a long metal staircase that corkscrewed around the neighboring concrete pillar and rose to the platform above. Once on the stairs, Rhun passed Jordan a machine pistol. He must have confiscated it from one of the guards.

Jordan shouldered his rifle and took the more agile weapon.

“Don’t fire unless you must,” Rhun warned. “My blade is more silent.”

He nodded, as if they were talking about their golf swings.

As they climbed higher and higher, Erin concentrated on hanging tightly to the cold slippery metal rail. Winds whipped at her in sudden gusts. She came across one landing slick with blood and stepped gingerly around the stain, trying not to picture the slaughter.

Ahead of her, Jordan’s boots ascended more confidently. Behind her, the cardinal seemed to have no trouble climbing while carrying Christian over his shoulder.

Rhun had disappeared above again, but his presence was plain. She heard a soft thud somewhere over her head. Moments later, they reached the top of the winding stairs. The electric lights seemed too stark and cold after the shadows below.

Rhun stood over the body of another guard.

Jordan joined him, crouched low, his pistol high.

Erin huddled with Bernard at the top of the stairs while the other two made a fast canvass of the immediate area. Up this high, the winds crashed against her, whipping her hair, snapping her leather jacket.

Finally, Rhun and Jordan returned.

“Place is a ghost town,” Jordan said. “Must keep only a skeletal crew here.”

Rhun pointed to the towering superstructure. “There’s a doorway over there.”

They sprinted as a group across the open decking. The structure ahead appeared to be a rendition of an old sailing ship’s forecastle, down to the tall windows, faux rigging, even a bowsprit with a figurehead. It looked like a ship cresting upward out of a steel sea.

Rhun led them to a door. He creaked it open, revealing a long corridor. He ushered them across the threshold, shutting the door behind them, but he held them at the entrance.

He lifted up a hand and shared a significant glance with Bernard. Erin guessed that they must have heard something, possibly a heartbeat or some sign of a life. With a nod from Bernard, Rhun rushed forward like a hound loosed upon a fox. He vanished into the shadows. Distantly a door slammed, accompanied by a crash of what sounded like pots and pans.

Rhun returned a moment later, slipping out of the darkness and waving them onward.

Jordan glanced hard at Rhun.

“A galley cook.” Rhun lifted his arm, revealing a green bottle of wine. “And I found this.”

Bernard quickly took it.

Erin knew the wine could be consecrated and used to help Christian heal. She hoped that it would be enough.

“I hear no one else,” Rhun said. “Not a scuff, breath, or heartbeat.”

Bernard concurred. “I believe we are alone here.”

“Let’s be careful anyway, just in case,” Jordan warned.

As they headed down the corridor, Erin realized the significance of the lack of any living presence. “Does that mean that Tommy isn’t here?”

Or Iscariot or Elizabeth.

She pictured the helicopter that had attacked them.

Had the others been aboard it? If so, where had they been headed?

“We must search thoroughly to make certain,” Rhun said. “And if they are not, we must try to find where they’ve gone.”

“And why Judas absconded with the First Angel to begin with,” Bernard added, shifting Christian’s weight on his shoulder. “How is the boy a part of his plan?”

His plan for Armageddon, Erin reminded herself.

The passageway ended at a large salon, lined by bookcases on both sides with arched windows overlooking the sea below. A large ship’s wheel stood before the windows. From the display cases holding nautical bric-a-brac, it looked like a museum.

Rhun crossed to a large hearth set amid the shelves and held out his hand. “Still warm.”

“The boss clearly left in a hurry,” Jordan said. “He must’ve been on that other chopper.”

But why?

“I will tend to Christian here,” Bernard said, carrying his body to the fireplace and lowering him to a couch. “Go learn what you can.”

Erin was already moving, spotting a set of elevator doors to the right, framed in a frilly grille of brass. Other doors stood closed along the walls, likely leading to a maze of rooms and corridors. Ignoring them, she crossed instead to the ship’s wheel. It marked the symbolic post of the captain of this steel-locked ship. The towering windows offered a commanding view of the sea, looking east toward the distant coast, where the stars had begun to fade with the approach of the new day.

Sensing time was running out, she glanced to the right, to the nearest door. Perhaps the captain kept his most precious spaces close to his command post.

She headed to that door and found it locked.

Jordan noted her frustration as she tugged on it.

“Allow me,” Jordan said. “I have a key.”

She turned to him. How—?

He lowered his rifle, aimed at the lock, and fired.

The blast made her jump, but the result made her smile. The handle was blown off, leaving a hole through the door.

She easily pushed it open, revealing a private study lined by walnut wainscoting in a high Victorian style, with a botanical mural intricately painted on the wall, depicting lifelike flowers, leaves, and twining vines, mixed with butterflies and bees. It looked less decorative than instructional, like something one would find in a Renaissance text on botany.

Erin made straight for the massive writing desk, a solid affair with well-turned legs and a leather top covered with papers.

Jordan followed her inside.

Rhun stepped to the doorway, drawn by the commotion.

“Be careful,” he warned. “We don’t know—”

Suddenly the delicate paintings along the wall burst to life. Leaves fluttered from branches, flowers spun delicately from stems, a scatter of butterflies and bees wafted off the wall.

The entire motif was a deadly collage.

It filled the air in a dazzling kaleidoscope of movement and color.

And swooped toward Rhun.

41

Jordan charged the few steps to Rhun and shoved him out the door, punching one palm to his chest. Caught by surprise, the priest tripped backward and landed flat on his ass in the next room.

Jordan slammed the door shut in his face with a certain amount of satisfaction.

“Stay out there!” he yelled through the door. He grabbed an umbrella from a neighboring stand and jammed its tip through the hole he had blasted through the door, plugging the stinging cloud in with him and Erin. “I’ll see about ridding the room of these buggers! Until then, stay out, Padre!”

Jordan turned away, imagining Rhun was not happy.

Too bad.

A flower petal drifted to his cheek — and stung him, piercing the corner of his lip. He grabbed it, crushed it in his fingers, and threw it down.

As if angry at this assault, more of the creatures fell upon him, silver stingers penetrating any exposed skin: face, hands, neck. He battered at them, seeing Erin under attack, too. He headed toward her through the cloud, doing his best to protect his eyes. While the buggers might not be toxic to humans, he and Erin could still be blinded by their stingers.

Erin huddled by the large antique desk and swatted at the air around her with a binder from the tabletop. He heard a litany of curses, saw spots of blood dribbling from countless punctures on her arms and face.

She slapped at her throat, and a butterfly crumpled to the ground.

Taking a clue from her example, he swept off his long jacket and batted at the air. He joined her, using the coat like a matador against a thousand angry bulls. Whipping it in a fury, he cleared some breathing room around her.

Still, she pulled the collar of her own jacket up over her head and formed a tent around her. She leaned down, scattering papers under her palms, plainly searching for any clue to the whereabouts of the others.

He peeked over her shoulder. The papers looked to be written in a hundred languages, many of them ancient. “Just grab everything!” he suggested. “We can sort through it later!”

“Not until we neutralize the threat here. If anything escapes with us, they’ll go straight for Rhun, Bernard, or Christian.”

Jordan knew she was right. The buggers seemed tuned to attack strigoi. A moment ago, Erin had not set off this trap by entering. Even his rifle blast had failed to wake them up. It was only when Rhun crossed the threshold that they rose up.

“Let’s see if I can’t knock this load down a bit,” he said. “You keep searching.”

He reversed his tactic. Instead of using the coat to batter the threat away, he used its length and bulk like a huge net. He cast it out, scooping coatfuls of the fluttering horde out of the air. He forced them to the floor and stamped them under his boots.

Erin called to him as he worked. “Most of these papers have the letterhead of the same company. The Argentum Corporation.”

Jordan recognized the name. “Big conglomerate!” he called back. “Does all kinds of stuff, including arms manufacture. Sounds like a business a man like Judas would get himself involved with.”

He continued his steady assault. He bashed, battered, and crushed his way throughout the room until the air began to clear. Then his hunting became more focused, picking individuals out of the air with a snap of his coat.

Rhun called through the door. “How are you faring?”

“Just finishing some light housekeeping!”

Erin waved to him. “Jordan, come see this.”

He joined her, brushing a trail of blood from his eyes. She pointed to a piece of Argentum company correspondence: a grayish-silver envelope with an embossed letterhead in the corner, depicting an old-fashioned anchor.

“I keep seeing these anchors all over this place,” Erin said. “And remember Rhun’s text from Rasputin, the one that warned him that the symbol of an anchor was connected to Judas?”

“Yeah, the guy clearly has a nautical fetish.”

“It’s not nautical. It’s Christian.” She traced the shape of the cross that made up the center of the anchor. “This is a crux dissimulata. Ancient Christians used it as a secret symbol, back when Christians were persecuted for their faith and a cross would have been too dangerous to display outright.”

Jordan slapped a small brass-and-silver bee to ruin. “Must be why he chose it for the logo of his Argentum Corporation.”

“He still loves Christ,” Erin said. “And with this immortality, he can never escape his guilt. It’s no wonder he is fighting so hard to bring Him back.”

“But how?” Jordan asked.

She pushed the papers away. “There is nothing here but corporate financials and normal correspondence. Nothing points to his plan. But it must be here. Somewhere in this room.”

“He wouldn’t leave something like that out in plain sight. He would’ve hidden it.” Jordan pointed to the desk drawers. “Search for something locked, something concealed.”

With only a few stingers still in the air, Jordan searched the walls, removing the framed paintings.

“Nothing in the drawers!” Erin called to him.

Jordan reached a gilt-edged portrait that looked old. A second glance at its subject matter revealed it was a painting of Iscariot, little changed from today, but here he was wearing a Renaissance outfit, his arm around a dark-skinned woman in an expensive-looking gown. Her fingers held a small Venetian mask.

As he tried to lift this portrait, he found it was actually hinged to the wall.

Jordan’s smile matched the one worn by Judas in the painting.

He pulled it back to reveal the face of a modern safe with a digital lock.

“Erin!”

She glanced up, her eyes widening. “That’s gotta be it!”

“Let’s see if I can get this open.”

“I don’t think blasting it with a rifle will help this time.”

Jordan rubbed the tips of his fingers and blew on them. “Just needs a little safecracking.”

She looked doubtfully at him.

“Ever the skeptic, Dr. Granger.” Jordan took the flashlight out of his pocket and played the beam across the numbers on the white numerical keypad, tilting it back and forth to illuminate them from different angles. “I can get this one open in six tries.”

“Really? How?”

“Science,” he said. “Breaking into this safe will be all about science.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Look closely at the numbers.” He shone the flashlight on the digital keypad again. “Do you see the colored dust on a few of the keys?”

She leaned forward. “What is it?”

He held up his free hand, which was coated with the same glittering flakes. “Guy has a hobby he dotes on. Likely tinkers and handles his creations often. Forgets to wash his hands when he is in a hurry.”

“Makes sense,” Erin said.

“The guy is full of himself, grown confident in his security. Punches the same numbers over and over. But he’s also plainly paranoid. I doubt he lets his maid clean his hidden safe.”

Jordan pointed to the number seven. “That button has got the most dust on it, so I’m betting it’s the first number.”

“And the other three?”

“If you look close enough, you can see dust on the numbers nine, three, and five.”

She bent to look. He liked having her close, and he liked looking intelligent for a change, too.

“So.” Here he needed a bit of good fortune. “If there are no repeated numbers and the code is four digits long, starting with the number seven, that leaves me only six possible variations.”

“Clever,” Erin said.

He tapped his head with a finger. “Logic.”

And hopefully luck.

He tapped out the various combinations, starting with 7935. Nope. On his third attempt, the light on the front of the safe blinked from red to green.

He stepped back and let Erin do the honors.

She grabbed the handle, turned it, and swung the door open.

Jordan stared over her shoulder. “More paper.”

A stack filled the space, held down by a blocky glass paperweight.

Erin picked it up, lifting the block toward his flashlight. Hanging in the center of the crystal was a brown leaf.

“There’s writing on it,” she said. “Herodian Aramaic.”

“Can you translate it?”

She nodded, squinting a bit, turning the block this way and that. Finally, she sighed and spoke the words written there. “ ‘After His words, written in blood, are lifted from their prison of stone, the one who took Him from this world will serve in bringing Him back, sparking an era of fire and bloodshed, casting a pall over the earth and all its creatures.’ ”

Erin turned her face to Jordan, her voice dry and breathless with fear. “This is where Judas came upon his purpose. He wasn’t pulling this plan out of thin air. It’s a prophecy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The leaf. It’s plainly old, preserved to protect it. The ancient seers of the past were often known to write their predictions upon leaves.”

“So what does that mean? It’s destined to happen? We can’t do anything about it?”

“No, it’s why the seers wrote them on leaves. A reminder that destiny is not written on stone. But Judas — as guilt-ridden as he was — would surely have latched firmly upon this prophecy as his ultimate destiny.”

“But we still don’t know what he’s planning,” Jordan reminded her.

She nodded and slipped the first sheet of paper from the pile.

Jordan noted the old sheet was also stained with flakes of emeralds, purples, and crimsons, proving it was often handled, likely recently.

Erin stiffened, unable to speak.

“What is it?” he asked.

As answer, she held out the page toward him, revealing what was drawn there.

42

Tommy stopped at the dark tunnel in the cliff face, balking at entering. The soft stink of rotten eggs flowed out of the darkness like a foul breath. Behind him stretched the soft sugary sand of the beach. Overhead, the sky was dark, shining with stars and a few pale silver clouds, lit with the promise of morning.

A cool wind brushed through his hair but failed to hide the stink with the sea’s salt and algae.

I don’t want to go in there.

An emerald-winged moth landed on one of the boulders, winking its wings at him. Elizabeth stood at his shoulder, her eyes on other moths that flitted about in the gusts, their delicate flights disguising their danger.

One of Iscariot’s henchman bent his bulk past Tommy, entered the tunnel, and clicked on a flashlight. Black volcanic walls, streaked with yellow, stretched beyond the reach of the beam.

The flat of a hand pushed into the center of his back, allowing no other recourse.

“Follow Henrik,” Iscariot ordered.

Elizabeth took his hand firmly in hers. “We’ll go together.”

Tommy took a steadying breath, nodded, and took one step forward, then another. It was how you got through hard times: you had to keep going.

Behind him, Iscariot spoke to the strigoi who piloted the helicopter. “Ready your brethren. Have them haunt the tunnels behind us. We must not be disturbed.”

With that final order, Iscariot followed, trailed by his second bodyguard. Tommy realized he had never learned this other’s name, not that it would likely matter. He sensed he would never be seeing the sky again.

Once a fair distance into the narrow tunnel, Elizabeth shed her veil and gloves and pushed back the hood of her cloak. One of the moths fluttered into her hair, tangling its tiny legs for a moment, then flew away again.

She did not seem to care.

Tommy did, recognizing the unspoken threat from their captor.

To calm and distract himself, he counted the moths, observing subtle differences in them. A few were smaller, one had a long tail, another had flakes of gold mixed with the emerald.

… nine, ten,… eleven…

There were probably a dozen, but he couldn’t find the last one to make it that even number.

Elizabeth ran her fingertips along the wall, her eyes studying the side passages that crisscrossed their path and the blind caves that opened up every now and again. It was a maze down here. Tommy had read the myth of Theseus in school, of his struggle against the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete.

What monsters are down here?

Elizabeth must have been thinking of another story. She glanced back to Iscariot. “In Virgil’s The Aeneid, the hero Aeneas comes to Cumae, speaks to the sibyl there, and she guides him to the land of the dead. The path we take now is very much how it’s described in that book.”

Iscariot waved his arm around as if to encompass the entire volcanic hill. “He also states there are a hundred paths to that pit, which considering this pocked mountain and its wormed-out holes, is likely true.”

She shrugged, changing her tone as if she were quoting a poem. “ ‘Easy is the descent to hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven — there is the task, there is the burden.’ ”

Iscariot clapped his hands once. “Truly you are the Woman of Learning.”

Despite his praise, worry clouded her silver eyes. A bright green-gray moth landed in her black hair again, and Tommy reached up to take it off.

“No,” she warned. “Leave it be.”

He drew his hand back.

As they continued, going ever deeper, the branching of the tunnels slowed until they reached a long steep passageway so foul with sulfur, Tommy had to cover his mouth and breathe through his sleeve. The temperature also grew warmer, the walls damp. Tommy heard the echoing rush of water.

Finally the passage bottomed out, reaching a wide underground river. It bubbled and steamed, a geothermal hot spring. Tommy’s eyes stung from the sulfur; his cheeks burned from the heat.

“Looks as if we’ve reached the river Acheron… or perhaps Styx… or its many countless names in the histories of man,” Elizabeth commented. “But apparently no ferryman is needed here.”

“Indeed,” Iscariot said.

An arch of rock spanned the river leading to a dark cavern beyond.

Tommy looked to Elizabeth, suddenly terrified to cross. The hairs on his arms shivered, his heart pounded in his ears.

Henrik roughly grabbed his arm at the foot of the bridge, ready to drag him across if necessary.

Elizabeth slammed the big man back as if he were a gnat. “I will not have the boy mishandled.”

Henrik’s eyes flashed with fury, but he stayed back, getting a confirming nod from Iscariot to obey her.

Another moth landed on Elizabeth, this time on her shoulder, its wings brushing under her ear. She refused to acknowledge it, but Tommy understood the message here.

I cross, or he’ll kill Elizabeth.

Swallowing back his terror, Tommy headed over the bridge, flanked on one side by Henrik, on the other by Elizabeth. He moved slowly across the steam-slick rock bridge, coughing against the sulfur, squinting from the heat. Black water, looking like oil, bubbled and popped, roiled and churned.

Elizabeth strode along at his side as if passing through a garden, her back straight, her chin high. He tried to emulate her confidence, her stiff swagger, but he failed. Once he saw the far side of the bridge, he rushed to it, happy to escape the burning river.

For a moment, he was alone, all the others behind him, even Henrik with his flashlight. Ahead, the pitch-dark room smelled oddly of flowers, the perfume cutting through the stink of the sulfur.

Curious, he headed deeper, wanting to find the source.

Henrik and the others finally caught up with him. The large man directed his light high, revealing an arched ceiling of volcanic rock, covered in heavy soot. The walls held many iron sconces, bearing fresh bundles of reeds. Someone had prepared this place.

“Light the torches,” Iscariot ordered.

Henrik and his partner set about igniting the tar-soaked bundles, each setting off in opposite directions, slowly revealing more of the large cavern. Other tunnels led out from here.

Tommy remembered Iscariot’s description of the hundred paths to Hell.

In the center of the room, a large black stone, slightly slanted but polished flat, sat like a black eye staring back at him. He had difficulty looking at it, sensing a wrongness about it.

His gaze skittered past it to the far side as the last torches were lit.

What he found there, bound to an iron ring in the wall, was a woman in a white dress. Her skin was brown and smooth, her cheekbones high. Long black hair spilled over her round bare shoulders. Torchlight glinted off a splinter of metal hung round her neck.

Unlike the black stone, Tommy’s eyes couldn’t look away from her. Even from across the chamber, her gaze glowed at him, drawing him closer, capturing him, like a whisper of his name spoken with all the love in the world.

Iscariot stopped him with a touch on his shoulder. He stepped past Tommy to face the woman across the gulf of the room, but the sadness in his voice made that gap sound infinite and impossible to cross.

“Arella.”

Judas stopped near the altar stone, unable to approach her closer. It had been centuries since he had last seen her in the flesh. For a moment, he considered forsaking everything and rushing to her side and begging her forgiveness.

She offered him that path now. “My love, there is yet time to stop this.”

A moth fluttered before his eyes, breaking the well of her dark gaze with emerald wings. He fell back a full step. “No…”

“All the centuries we wasted. When we could have been together. All to serve this dark destiny.”

“After Christ’s return, we can spend eternity together.”

She stared at him sadly. “Come what will, that will never be. What you do is wrong.”

“How can that be? For the centuries that passed following your revelation of my purpose, I collected bits and pieces of other prophecies, to understand what I must do, how I must bring about Armageddon. I sought seers from every age, and each confirmed my destiny. Yet it wasn’t until I learned of the boy, of this immortal so like me yet so different, that I recalled something you drew, my love. One of your earlier predictions before you fled my side. I had forgotten about it, considered it of little worth.”

He turned to the First Angel. “Then came this wondrous boy.”

“You see shadows I cast and call them real,” she countered. “They are but one path, a ghost of possibility. No more. It is your dark actions that give them flesh, that imbue them with significance and weight.”

“It is right that I do so, for even the slimmest chance to bring Christ back.”

“Yet all of this you’ve built up in your mind’s eye alone, basing so many deeds on these prophecies you stole from me. How could anything good come from such a shattering of trust?”

“In other words, an act of betrayal.” He smiled, almost swayed by her earlier words, but now delivered. “For you see, I am the Betrayer. My first sin led to the forgiveness of all sins, by Christ dying on the cross. Now I will sin again to bring Him back.”

She sagged along the wall, baring her restraints, clearly recognizing his resolution. “Then why have you trapped me here? Only to torment me by forcing me to watch?”

Iscariot found the strength at last to cross fully to her. He breathed in the scent of lotus, of the skin he once kissed and caressed. He reached and touched her bare collarbone, daring such a violation with only one finger.

She leaned toward him, as if to sway him with her body where her words failed.

Instead, he slipped that finger into the loop of her gold necklace, tightened his fist around it, stirring the silver shard between her perfect breasts.

Her eyes darted to his, filling with understanding and horror. She pulled away, smashing her back flat against the wall.

“No.”

He yanked hard and broke the chain. He stepped back with his prize, letting the gold slither between his fingers until he held only the silver shard.

“With this blade, I can slay angels to wake the very heavens.”

She turned to Tommy, but her words were for Judas. “My love, you know nothing. You move in the dark and call it day.”

Judas turned his back on her words and strode to the boy, prepared to fulfill his destiny.

At long last.

Elizabeth watched Iscariot grab Tommy by the arm and pull him roughly toward the black stone in the room’s center. She sensed a pall of evil around that black altar, so great that even the rock floor beneath it looked unable to bear its unholy weight, the ground breaking away from it in a scatter of thin cracks.

Tommy cried out, not wanting to get near it.

His plea ignited something inside her. She lunged forward, ready to rip him free.

Before she could take two steps, she heard a whispered order echo from the dark tunnels that branched out from here, hinting at another spider in this black web, someone staying hidden for now. The voice struck her as familiar, but before she could ponder it, four figures — two each from the tunnels to either side — burst before her, baring fangs.

Strigoi.

They were hulking beasts, bare chested and tattooed with blasphemies. They bore scars, with self-inflicted bits of steel in their flesh. They formed a wall between her and Tommy.

Beyond them, Iscariot dragged the boy to the black stone. Its slanted surface was polished smooth by the many bodies sacrificed upon it. A slight hollow had been worn near the bottom, as if a thousand heads had rested there, baring their throats to the roof.

Fueled by terror, Tommy ripped out of Iscariot’s grasp. He knew what was to be asked of him. The boy was no fool.

“No. Don’t make me do this.”

Iscariot stood back and lifted his arms, the silver shard flashing in the torchlight. “I cannot force you. You must make this sacrifice of your own will.”

“Then I choose not to.”

Elizabeth smiled at his tenacity.

“Then let me persuade you,” Iscariot said.

The remaining moths fell upon Elizabeth, on her cheek, the nape of her neck, several on her arms and shoulders.

“With a thought, they will kill her,” Iscariot promised. “Her blood will boil. She will die in agony. Is that what you choose?”

Elizabeth suddenly realized Iscariot had not asked her to play nursemaid to the boy to keep him calm, but to win over his heart so that Iscariot could wield her like a weapon. To her horror, she realized how well she played into that trap.

Tommy’s eyes met hers.

“Do not do this for me,” she said coldly. “You are nothing to me, Thomas Bolar. Nothing but an amusement, something to play with before I feed.”

She showed her fangs.

Tommy cringed from her words, from her teeth. Still, his eyes never turned from hers. He held her gaze for a full breath, then turned to Iscariot.

“What do you want?” Tommy asked.

Damn it, boy.

She narrowed her eyes on the wall of strigoi before her, calculating their young strength against her own. She weighed how long it would take the stings to kill her. Could she break Tommy free in time? Her sharp ears heard shuffling from beyond the boiling river behind her.

More strigoi lurked in the tunnels back there.

Tommy would never make it outside alone.

“Lie down on this table,” Iscariot said. “That’s all you must do. I will do the rest, and she will live. This I swear to you.”

As the boy stepped forward, she called again to him. “Tommy, we may not leave this room alive, but that does not mean we must submit to the likes of him.”

Iscariot laughed, from deep in his belly. “You Bathory women! If I’ve learned nothing, it’s that your allegiances are as fickle as the wind.”

“Then my blood ran true!”

Elizabeth spun to one side, her form a blur. She tore out Henrik’s throat before he could glance her way. The other strigoi came at her, the closest grabbing her arm. She ripped his limb from its socket, tossing him aside. Two others leaped high and pounded her to the floor. She heaved against them, succeeding in pushing them back a pace, but more beasts poured from the neighboring tunnels and pinned her arms, her legs.

She struggled but knew it was futile.

She had failed — not just in not breaking Tommy free, but in not dying. With her death, Iscariot would have no further emotional hold on Tommy. The boy could yet refuse him.

Iscariot must have realized her ploy.

She watched a moth crawl across her cheek, then gently rise on soft wings and drift away.

He needed her alive.

“No more!” Tommy yelled and faced Iscariot. Tears streamed down his face. “Do whatever you’re going to do!”

“Climb on top,” he was told. “On your back. Your head at the lower end of the slab.”

Tommy crossed to the black stone, every cell in his body screaming for him to run, but he mounted the rock and twisted around to lie on his back, his neck coming to rest in a hollow at the base of the altar — and he knew it was an altar.

Below his head, a large black crack steamed with sulfur, more foul than even the river. His lungs crinkled up against it. Hot tears spilled from his cheeks. He turned his head enough to find Elizabeth.

He knew she did not understand. He had watched his mother and father die in his arms, their blood boiling from their eyes — while he lived, cured of his cancer. He could not let another die in agony in his place again. Not even to save the world.

She stared back at him, a single tear rolling from her angry eyes.

She also did not know the goodness inside her. He recognized she was a monster as surely as those that pinned her, but somewhere deep inside, something brighter still existed. Even if she didn’t see it yet.

Iscariot knelt next to him and dragged a rope net over his body, weighted at the edges with heavy stones. He fastened the four corners to iron rings driven into the floor. Once done, Tommy could no longer move, and only his head remained free.

Tilted with his legs high, blood rushed down, flushing his face even hotter.

Iscariot placed a cool palm on his cheek. “Be at peace. It is a good thing you do. Your worthy sacrifice will herald Christ’s return.”

Tommy tried to shrug. “I’m Jewish. So why do I care? Just get it over with.”

He wanted to sound brave, defiant, but his words came out a strained whisper. A flash caught his eyes as the silver shard, stolen from the woman, was lifted high. Torchlight glimmered along its sharp edge. Everything else in the room disappeared except for that small blade.

Iscariot leaned to his ear. “This may hurt and—”

He stabbed the shard into Tommy’s neck before he could even brace for it. Though that was likely the goal, to spare him pain.

It failed.

Tommy screamed as fire lanced into him, radiating throughout his entire body. Blood welled down his throat, washing as hotly as fiery magma. He writhed and bucked under the netting, fierce enough to break one corner free. He twisted his head to see his blood flowing across the stone, over its edge, and dripping into the black crack below.

He wailed from a pain that refused to subside.

His vision closed around him, darkness filling the edges. He wanted that oblivion, to escape this pyre of agony. Under his back, he felt the stone tremble. The rock ground and cracked.

Distantly, Iscariot extolled in a booming voice, “The gate is opening! Just as foretold!”

The bound woman responded, her very voice beating back the edge of his pain. “There is yet time to show mercy. You can end this!”

“It is too late. By the time all his blood is cast below, no one can end it.”

Tommy felt himself sinking into darkness — only to realize that darkness was rising to take him. A black mist roiled from the crack below, enveloping him in its dark embrace, swirling around him like a living thing. With every drop of his blood, more blackness surged upward and flowed into the world.

He stared toward the source, watching the crack below him split wider. He flashed to the chamber in Masada, to another crack splitting the earth, to other smoke rising from below.

No… not again…

Then the ground shook — same as before — jolting with great quakes, strong enough to break mountains. The boiling river surged up from its banks in a great font, splashing high and crashing back down again. During all this, a massive rumbling grew louder and louder, filling the world and bursting outward.

Tommy let it wash over him — until there was only silence and darkness.

And he was gone.

43

As Erin crossed the main salon, her stomach suddenly churned, as if she were getting seasick. She weaved on her feet, her hand slapping atop a display case to keep her balance. She turned back to Jordan as he closed the door to the private office, making sure no stray butterfly or bee sailed out with them.

His gaze met hers as the entire platform began to ominously tremble, like a herd of elephants were rampaging across the deck.

“Earthquake!” Jordan yelled, rushing toward her.

Erin turned to see Rhun and Bernard helping Christian to stand. The cardinal must have managed to revive the young Sanguinist with the freshly consecrated wine, at least enough to get him up on his feet.

A huge jolt bumped under her, tossing her a foot in the air. She landed on one knee as Jordan skidded beside her. Books fell from the shelves. Fiery sparks blew through the grate of the cast-iron hearth.

Jordan picked her up as the rig shook ever more violently.

Steel groaned through the walls. A tall, thin display cabinet toppled with a crash of glass. Jordan rushed her to the others.

“We have to get off this rig!” he yelled above the low roar.

Seemingly oblivious, Bernard’s gaze remained fixed on the tall windows. Erin turned to see what so captured his attention. Off to the east, the horizon had brightened with the new day, rising in a steam of pinks and oranges. But the beauty was marred by a black cloud pushing through it, churning high and spreading outward, as if trying to eat away the day.

“A volcanic eruption,” Jordan said.

Erin pictured the direction in which Iscariot had flown with Tommy. Her fingers crumpled the one sheet of paper in her hand, holding an old drawing. She had come out here to show it to Rhun and Bernard.

Were they too late?

As if punctuating this worry, a loud shake rose through the rig, throwing them to the floor. The lights went out. Crack! The deafening sound of stressed rock echoed up from below. The entire deck began a slow tilt.

She pictured one of the platform’s concrete legs shattering at the knee.

“Move!” Jordan bellowed. “Now!”

He grabbed her arm. Rhun and Bernard slung Christian between them.

They fled out of the salon and down the central passageway. The shaking continued, throwing them against the wood-paneled walls. The darkness amplified her terror. They finally reached the exterior doors and fled into a world of swaying steel and crumbling concrete. An arm of a crane swung past overhead, unmoored and unmanned.

“The hydrofoil!” Jordan said, pointing to the stairs as they tumbled forward. “We need to get down to it! Get as far from this heap as possible.”

Christian broke free from the others. “I’ll… I’ll see to it.”

Even in his weakened state, he was fast, vanishing in a blur of black down the stairs. Bernard followed at his heels, while Rhun kept with Erin and Jordan.

The trio hit the staircase at a dead run, hurdling steps, sometimes tossed. Debris rained around them, crashing to the water below. Erin saw the surrounding seas had gone strangely flat, no waves, just a trembling surface like a pot about to boil. That more than anything drove her faster. She hit the next landing hard, slamming her belly against the far railing and bouncing away.

Around and around they fled as the platform above continued its slow tilt, crushing down upon the pillar on that side, compressing concrete with loud blasts of rock.

Another violent quake tossed her high, throwing her toward the rail. Her fingers scrambled to grab hold before her body heaved over the side — then Rhun’s iron fingers grabbed her leather jacket and jerked her back to the steps, back to her feet.

“Thanks,” she said, huddling for a breath.

Then they rushed onward again as the world crashed around them. Another pillar on the far side exploded with cracks, skittering upward.

But a new noise intruded through the chaos: the high-pitched rumble of an engine. A final turn around the pillar, and they reached the dock. Several sections of its length had been blasted away by falling debris. They hopped across the open gaps as the hydrofoil slipped backward out of its berth. The ship had not escaped unscathed: a length of catwalk had slammed across its stern deck and still rested there.

Suddenly an arm scooped around her waist and yanked her forward across the last of the dock. A length of twisted strut fell like a spear and pierced cleanly through the section of dock where she had been standing.

Rhun again.

Jordan hopscotched around the length of deadly steel to join them.

The hydrofoil backed next to the dock, allowing them to scramble aboard, ducking under the catwalk.

“Go!” Jordan screamed toward the cabin ahead.

The engines roared, thrusting the ship forward, knocking Erin back into Jordan’s arms. They both looked upward as the craft fled from beneath the toppling platform. Giant steel pieces of shrapnel rained around them, but they finally escaped the deadly onslaught and made it to open water.

“Don’t slow!” Jordan yelled. “Give it everything!”

Erin failed to understand his urgency, until a glance back showed the entire platform falling toward them, ready to crush them. Christian heeded Jordan’s warning, racing ahead, lifting the ship up on its twin foils, skimming across the water.

She watched in horror and awe as the platform struck the sea, casting up a huge wave, sending that wall of water chasing after them. But by now their speed was such that they easily outran it. The tidal wave faded behind, sinking back into the sea.

Erin finally allowed herself to breathe, gasping, wiping a tear from one eye.

“C’mon,” Jordan said. “Let’s join Christian and Bernard.”

She nodded, unable to speak.

They climbed into the pilothouse, saw Christian at the wheel, Bernard at his shoulder. They both faced forward, staring toward the coastline.

A black cloud filled the world ahead, rolling toward them. At its heart danced a small fountain of fire. Definitely a volcano. Already ash flakes began to fall, collecting on the glass like foul snow.

Erin knew this section of Italy’s coast was a geothermic hot spot. She pictured the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the shadow of Vesuvius. But even that deadly mountain was but a small blip compared to the monster lurking under that entire region, a supervolcano called Campi Flegrei, with a caldera four miles wide. If that sleeping dragon ever blew, most of Europe would be destroyed.

A chunk of ash slipped down across the window, leaving a sooty streak.

Bernard leaned closer to the same. “It’s crimson colored,” he said.

Erin joined him, noting he was right. The streak was distinctly dark red.

Like blood.

It was probably just due to the color of the regional rock, known to be rich in iron and volcanic copper.

Still, Erin quoted a passage from Revelation 8: “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth.”

Bernard glanced at her. “The start of the end of the world.”

Erin nodded, quoting what followed. “And the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”

She pictured the caldera of Campi Flegrei. If that ignited, far more than a third of Europe would burn.

“Can we stop it?” Jordan asked, unwilling to give up without a fight.

“There may still be time,” Bernard said. “If we can find the First Angel, perhaps we might yet right this wrong.”

“But he might be anywhere,” Rhun said.

“Not necessarily,” Jordan countered. “If Iscariot did something to trigger this — and that’s a big if, by the way — then he can’t have gone far with the boy. The attack helicopter was headed east. It’s only been ninety minutes since he shot us down.”

“And Iscariot would have needed time to prepare once he reached the coast,” Rhun agreed. “He likely timed it to match the rise of the new day.”

Bernard pointed to the dance of lava at the heart of the ash cloud. “He must be near there, but where?”

Erin reached to the inner pocket of her jacket and removed the drawing she had stolen from the safe. She flattened it on the ship’s chart table. “Look at this.”

The drawing depicted two men — one older, one younger — in a sacrificial pose with an angel looking over the man’s shoulder, her face concerned, and rightfully so. A stream of blood ran down the younger man’s side and dripped into a black crack near the bottom of the page. A hand with four claws protruded from that crack.

“What’s it mean?” Jordan asked.

Erin tapped the two men. The older of the two had dark hair, the other lighter. Otherwise, they looked fairly identical, like they could be related to each other.

She pointed to the younger man, maybe an older boy. “What if that’s Tommy?”

Rhun leaned at her shoulder. “It looks as if his blood is being spilled onto the floor, into that black fissure.” His dark eyes met hers. “You think he’s being sacrificed by Iscariot?”

“And his blood is being used to open a door. Like your Sanguinist blood opens your hidden gates.”

“And that thing with the claws coming out?” Jordan asked. “That can’t be good.”

Bernard stared at the demon climbing from the pit and despaired. How could they hope to stop Armageddon if it had already begun? He turned toward the smoke and conflagration. Where to even begin?

He voiced that aloud. “If you’re correct, Erin, this still does not tell us where the sacrifice is taking place.”

“Yes, it does.”

He stared harder at her.

She circled a finger across the five symbols that ringed this sacrificial tableaux: an oil lamp, a torch, a rose, a crown of thorns, and a bowl. “Five icons. I knew they weren’t just decorative. Nothing in this drawing is here by chance.”

He studied them, knowing she was right, nagged by the familiarity of those same symbols, but unable to place them. Then again, he was not as steeped in ancient history as Dr. Granger.

She explained, “These symbols represent five famous seers out of the distant past. Five women, five ancient sibyls.”

Bernard gripped the edge of the table. Of course!

“From the Sistine Chapel,” he said, awed. “Those five women are painted there.”

“Why?” Jordan asked.

Bernard reached and took Erin’s hand gratefully. “They are the five women who predicted the birth of Christ. They came from various times and places, but each prophesied his coming.”

Erin touched each symbol, naming them aloud. “The Persian Sibyl, the Erythraean Sibyl, the Delphic Sibyl, the Libyan Sibyl…”

She stopped last at the symbol at the top. “The bowl always represents the Cumaean Sibyl. It is said to represent the nativity of Christ.” She studied the coast. “She made her home outside Naples. And according to numerous ancient accounts — from Virgil through Dante — it is said her throne guarded the very gates of Hell.”

Referring to the claw rising from below, Bernard said, “I believe he seeks to release Lucifer, the Fallen One.”

“That’s how he intends to trigger Armageddon,” Erin said.

Ash lashed against the window like sleet as they drew ever nearer the coast. The sky above had closed off with smoke, keeping the day from showing its face here. Bernard quailed against the doom that must surely follow.

Jordan cleared his throat, his nose close to the drawing. “So if everything in this drawing is important, how come there’s an angel looking over Judas’s shoulder, doing nothing but looking sad?”

Bernard pulled his attention from the burning coastline back to the drawing.

“Her face,” Jordan continued. “It looks a lot like the woman painted in Iscariot’s office. Like they could be the same woman. In the oil portrait, Judas had his arm around her, like they were man and wife.”

Bernard peered closer at the drawing with Erin. He examined the face, then a shudder of recognition swept through him, turning him cold.

How could this be…?

Erin noticed his reaction. “Do you know her?”

“I met her once myself,” he said softly, going back to that warren of tunnels beneath Jerusalem, to the woman shining with such grace at the edge of that dark pool. He remembered her lack of heartbeat, yet the fierce heat that flowed from her in that cold cave. “Back during the Crusades.”

Erin frowned at him, plainly doubtful. “How… where did you meet her?”

“In Jerusalem.” Bernard touched his pectoral cross. “She was guarding a secret, something buried far below the Foundation Stone of that ancient city.”

“What secret?” Erin asked.

“A carving.” He nodded to the sketch before them. “It was the history of Christ’s life told through His miracles. The story was supposed to reveal a weapon that could destroy any and all evil. I sought it out at great cost.”

Screams of the city’s dying filled his ears even now.

“What happened?” Erin asked, sounding far away.

“She found me unworthy. She destroyed the most crucial part before I could see it.”

“But who is she?” Jordan asked. “If she was around during the Crusades, then again during the Renaissance with Judas, she must be immortal. Does that mean she is a strigoi? Or someone like Judas or the boy?”

“Neither,” Bernard realized aloud. He pointed to the wings drawn over her shoulders. “I believe she is an angel.”

He stared at Erin, his eyes welling with tears.

And she found me unworthy.

44

Rhun stood at the pilothouse door as the hydrofoil raced toward the shore. Following Erin’s advice they had plotted a course northwest of the city of Naples, aiming for a dark bay in the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the shadow of the volcanic cone that the Cumaean Sibyl made her home.

Black waves churned past their hull, and ash blasted Rhun’s bare face. It did not smell of blood, only of iron and cinders and sulfur. When he wiped it from his brow, grit coated his fingertips.

The quakes had stopped, but the eruption continued, churning smoke and ash into the world, jetting sprays of fiery lava into the darkness beyond the rim of the cone. Erin had told them that this caldera lay in the center of a larger supervolcano called Campi Flegrei. She warned that if this smaller burning match set off that monstrous well of magma beneath it, much of Europe was doomed.

How much time did they have?

He raised his eyes to the sky for an answer — and found none. Sunrise was upon them, but under the cloak of the volcano’s shroud, it remained a moonless night. The lights of the ship tunneled through the black snow.

Inside the cabin, Erin and Jordan covered their noses and mouths with scraps of ripped cloth, like thieves in this endless night, protecting themselves against the ash fall.

Jordan shouted and pointed his arm. “To the left, is that a helicopter parked on the beach?”

Rhun saw he was correct, slightly irked that the soldier had noted it first. With Rhun’s sharper eyes, he picked out its unique shape, its markings, both a match to the aircraft that had attacked them.

“It’s Iscariot’s helicopter!” he confirmed for the others.

Christian turned the hydrofoil toward it, sweeping his lights across its bulk.

In return, gunfire spat at them, taking out one of their lights, chattering across the bow. Jordan and Erin ducked. Christian gunned the engines, looking as if he intended to ram the chopper as they beached.

“Hold tight!” Christian called out.

Instead, Rhun stepped free of the door, moving to the bow. He heard sand and rock grind under the fins — and the ship jerked to a sudden halt. Thrown forward, Rhun leaped high, using the momentum to fly over the bow rail and across the remaining strip of water. He landed smoothly on the soft sand near the helicopter. He spotted a shift of shadows and fell upon it. The gunman wore a pilot’s leathers and bared the fangs of a strigoi.

Rhun slashed his karambit across the beast’s throat, slicing with the blessed steel down to bone. The pilot fell to his knees, then his face. A pool spread across the sand as black blood attempted to boil the holiness out of the cursed body, taking his life with it.

Rhun did a fast canvass of the ash-covered beach — then waved everyone to shore.

As they clambered to him, Rhun looked from the dead body to the dark sky. With day turned to night, any manner of creature could walk free.

Jordan picked up something glittering out of the black ash. “One of Iscariot’s moths.” He played the beam of his flashlight across other bits of brightness that glittered under the light, like a scatter of emeralds in dirt. “The moth in my hand looks intact. I bet the gears and clockwork couldn’t handle all this ash.”

“Still, be careful where you step,” Erin warned her companions. “They’re likely still full of poisonous blood.”

It was sound advice.

Christian especially searched the ground, looking wary.

Rhun joined him. “How do you feel?”

After a nervous lick of his lips, he said, “Better. A little wine, a little fresh air…” He waved sardonically to the dark snowfall. “Who wouldn’t feel as strong as an ox?”

Rhun cast him an appraising look.

Christian straightened, going serious. “I am doing… okay.”

Rhun certainly could not fault his handling of the ship. He had gotten them back to the coast in under twenty minutes.

Beyond Christian, Bernard searched the beach, likely looking less for evidence of Iscariot’s whereabouts as for the reinforcements he had summoned while en route. The team could not expect much immediate help, only from those Sanguinists within easy reach of Naples. Rome was too far for them to get here in time.

Erin called out, her voice muffled by her mask. She and Jordan had moved closer to the cliffs. “Footprints! Over here in the sand!”

Rhun joined them, bringing Christian and Bernard.

She pointed as Jordan swept his flashlight. Even dusted with ash, the fresh tracks were plain, crisply impressed into the soft sand. She glanced up, her face streaming with sweat. The very air here burned. “Looks like they headed into that nest of boulders.”

Rhun nodded and took the lead. He forced his way between the rocks until he reached the mouth of a narrow tunnel that broke into the cliff face. Despite the ash fouling the air and caking his nostrils, he smelled the breath of brimstone coming from this tunnel.

Jordan shone his light inside, revealing a long throat of black rock, streaked with yellow veins of sulfur.

“This must lead beneath the volcanic hill,” Erin said. “Likely burrowing toward the ruins of Cumae and the sibyl’s throne to the northeast.”

And below it, the gates of Hell.

Bernard touched Christian’s shoulder. “You remain here with Erin and Jordan. Await the arrival of those I’ve summoned. Once here, follow our path.” He nicked a finger with a blade. “I’ll leave blood for you to follow.”

Erin stepped up. “I agree Christian should stay here, to lead the others, but I’m coming now. I know the sibyl and her local history better than anyone. You may need that knowledge in that maze below.”

Jordan nodded. “What she said. I’m coming, too.”

Bernard conceded, too easily. Rhun wanted to argue more stridently, but he also knew how futile it was to thwart Erin.

They headed inside, leaving Christian to guard their rear, to ready any reinforcements.

Rhun led the way, trailed by Bernard. He noticed how Jordan kept Erin safely ahead of him. Free of the rain of ash, the two had tugged off their masks, breathing easier, but their faces streamed with salt and sweat.

Rhun shifted farther ahead, needing no light. He sniffed at the air as he came to any crossroads. Through the stink of sulfur, Rhun’s sharp nose picked out other scents: older sweat, a familiar perfume, a musky cologne. The distinct trail led him through the darkness as surely as any map.

The passageways twisted and turned. His shoulders scraped the sides, but he did not slow. Bernard kept to his heels or strode alongside when he could. Plainly Bernard had noted the trail ahead, too, while in turn marking their own path with drops of blood.

Rhun tuned out that crimson note, while trying his best not to listen to the frightened beat of Erin’s heart. Yet, despite her fear, she kept going, unflagging in her determination and will. Jordan’s heart also raced, but Rhun knew it was more in fear for her safety than his own.

Behind him, the beams of their flashlight bumped along, illuminating the way in short bursts. As they moved ever deeper, he noted tendrils of blackness snaking along the ceiling, looking like the smoky curl of living vines. The deeper they went, the thicker the tendrils grew, seeming to rise from the depths below.

He wafted a tendril to his face and coughed its foulness back out as he sniffed. It reeked of sulfur, but also of rotting flesh, of corruption, of the darkness of an ancient crypt.

He shared a worried glance with Bernard.

Then Bernard’s gaze snapped forward.

Distracted, with his senses addled by the dark smoke, Rhun almost missed it. A scuff of bare feet, a whisper of cloth — then the others were upon them, blades flashing in the dark.

Strigoi.

A trap.

Rhun and Bernard met the sudden charge with silver and swiftness, their movements a synchronized blur. The two had fought alongside each other many times in their long lives. They felled the first two easily enough — but more surged from tunnels ahead, stirring the darkness with their damnation, filling it with the hiss of their ferocity.

Luckily, the tunnels were narrow, limiting how many could reach them at any one time. Instead, the pack seemed more determined to hold them back, to wear the Sanguinists down. Perhaps, for Iscariot to be victorious, it did not require killing the Sanguinists. He merely had to hold them in check, to buy himself enough time to complete his task here.

Which offered Rhun hope.

If Iscariot sent these beasts to thwart them, there must be something worth thwarting.

Maybe we are not too late.

Rhun gritted his teeth and fought on.

Gunfire erupted behind them. A glance back showed more strigoi appearing to their rear. Either they had lain in wait, or others had circled this maze to come behind them. Jordan’s machine pistol tore through the first bodies. Erin had a pistol out, too, popping past the soldier’s shoulder.

“Help them,” Bernard said. “I can hold the front.”

But for how long?

Rhun turned and added his blade to the battle in the rear, the trio working efficiently together. Erin slowed them with well-placed shots to knees and legs. Jordan strafed heads, blasting apart skulls. Rhun took out anything that got close.

They held their own, but time ticked away.

Surely that was Iscariot’s goal.

Then past the mass of strigoi, figures in black robes swept into view, cutting through the rearguard, their silver crosses flashing in the darkness.

Sanguinist reinforcements.

Christian led them, blades in both hands. He cut a swath through the remaining strigoi to join them. Jordan clapped him happily on the shoulder.

More Sanguinists swept past to join Bernard.

Rhun followed.

Bernard pointed to the surrounding labyrinth of passages. “Spread out. Clear our flanks!”

Moving again, Rhun redoubled his efforts, slashing strigoi and forcing the party ever forward. Ahead the tunnel widened, revealing a subterranean river, a bridge, and a torchlit cavern beyond.

Rhun and Bernard drove the remaining strigoi over the edge of the river and into the boiling water below, where they were swept away. The Sanguinist reinforcements swelled behind them, bolstering their rear.

Erin joined Rhun, pointing through the sulfurous steam of the river. Vague shapes moved out there, but there was no mistaking the silhouette of a sacrifice.

“Hurry!”

Together, the team raced across the slick stone of the arched bridge.

As soon as Rhun’s foot touched the floor on the other side, the very air changed, going as cold as a tomb in the dead of winter. Erin and Jordan’s breath blew white as they gasped at the change. But far more chilling was the horrific sight that awaited them.

In the room’s center, a pale shape lay pinned under ropes atop a black stone. A cloud of dark fog enveloped him completely, churning and swirling, reaching the arched roof and stretching to every tunnel, snaking out tendrils, questing for the open air.

The place reeked of doom and corruption.

The familiar gray figure of Iscariot stood limned against that dread force, a triumphant expression on his face.

Beyond the altar, a woman hung from the wall, her dark skin shining, her eyes seemingly aglow.

“It is she!” Bernard said, clutching his sleeve.

Rhun ignored the cardinal, spying the one final figure in this grim theater.

To the right, Elisabeta lay on the floor, in a pool of black blood, but little of it seemed to be her own. She struggled beneath a half dozen strigoi. Others were dead around her. A handful of moths lay twitching on the cold stone, their wings frosted brittle by the cold.

Her eyes found his, full of terror — but not for her own life.

“Save the boy!”

Jordan drew closer to Erin, taking swift inventory.

In that moment of stunned incapacitation, a flurry of strigoi rushed from the closest tunnels to either side. Bernard took those on the left; Rhun charged to the right.

Jordan pushed Erin forward, out of those pincers.

He aimed for the only other direct threat in the room.

He had his machine pistol up and rushed the gray-suited figure. As Iscariot turned, Jordan skipped any witty repartee. He fired three fast bursts into the man’s chest, clustered on his heart.

Iscariot collapsed backward onto the floor, bright red blood soaking through his jacket and white shirt, spreading across the stone.

“Owed you that, bastard,” he mumbled, rubbing his own chest.

Still, he kept his weapon trained on the man. Iscariot was immortal, would likely heal, but how long would it take? It had taken the boy some time to recuperate. He hoped for the same here, but he kept watch. A trail of crimson blood ran across the black rock as if aiming for that black swirl.

The blood froze before reaching it.

Erin stepped in that direction, plainly wanting to help the boy.

He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Hold on.”

She glanced at him. “Do you think it’s poisonous?”

“I think it’s something way beyond that,” he said. “Let me go first.”

As he moved closer, he felt the ever-present burn in his shoulder go cooler. With every step, his legs turned leaden. It was as if whatever force roiled up from below could stanch that fire inside him — and take all his strength with it. His chest suddenly ached, drawing his fingers to where he had been shot. He looked down, expecting blood.

“Jordan?”

“I can’t…”

He fell to his knees.

Rhun heard the gunshots, watched Iscariot fall, incapacitated for now. Behind him, Bernard fought before the mouth of a tunnel, keeping strigoi bottled on that side. Rhun leaped over those holding Elisabeta captive. While in the air, he reached down and ripped two of her assailants off her, tossing them forward into the pack coming at him.

He crushed moths under his heels as he landed, the creations strangely weakened by the inimical cold.

Then he barreled into the pack, his blade flashing.

Strigoi fell, blood pouring over rock.

Claws ripped and teeth gnashed at him, but he fought on and drove the pack back to the tunnels. Finally, they seemed to lose their will and fled into the darkness.

Taking advantage of the lull, he swung around. Elisabeta fought her four remaining captors, whirling like a trapped lioness, weeping from a hundred cuts, as did her assailants.

For the moment, it was a stalemate.

He leaped forward to break it.

45

Erin pulled Jordan back from the cold pyre of black smoke. He regained his strength enough to stand, but he still rubbed his chest. Was he exerting himself too much after his recent ordeal? She was relieved to feel his clammy hand grow warmer in hers.

A voice rose from beyond the cloud. “You can go no nearer.”

It came from the woman chained to the wall. She wore a simple white dress and leather sandals, looking like she had stepped off an ancient Greek urn.

Erin circled the black cloud enough to see her face better. Unmistakably, it was the woman from the drawing, from Iscariot’s oil painting, and likely the woman Bernard saw in Jerusalem. She was tied to an iron ring mounted in the stone, seemingly as much a prisoner as the boy.

But what was she?

Her musings were interrupted as Rhun hurled a strigoi high into the air, sending it flying across the fog above the altar. Hitting that cloud, a scream ripped from the beast’s throat. The body immediately froze in a posture of agony. For a moment, Erin thought she saw smoky darkness explode from its lips and nostrils, swirling to join the blackness above Tommy. She remembered Elizabeth’s drawings in her macabre research journal, how she had described the same smoky essence connected to the strigoi.

Then the body struck the far wall and shattered like a china plate.

Aghast, Erin took a full step back.

How were they ever going to save the boy? Was the boy even alive?

As if reading her fears, the woman spoke. “I can reach him.”

Erin stared at her.

She lifted her bound arms. “Free me.”

Erin shared a look with Jordan.

Jordan shrugged, keeping his gun pointed at the fighting across the room. Rhun battled alongside both Bernard and Elizabeth to rid the cavern of the last of the strigoi.

“At this point,” he said, “any enemy of Iscariot is a friend of mine.”

Still, Erin hesitated, remembering the oil painting, with Iscariot’s arm around her, looking lovingly upon her.

“Someone has to go in there and save the boy,” Jordan reminded her.

She nodded, hurried over, and using a dagger from Jordan, she sawed at the thick rope that bound the woman’s hands to the iron ring. Jordan continued to guard over her.

The woman’s eyes met Erin’s as she worked, shining with peace amid the bloodshed.

Erin swallowed, knowing whom she sought to free, but needing confirmation. “You are the Sibyl of Cumae.”

Her chin dropped slightly in acknowledgment. “That is one of many names I’ve carried over the centuries. For the moment, I prefer Arella.”

“And you will help the boy?” She glanced to his thin form on the stone.

“I must… as I helped another boy long ago.”

Arella’s hands finally broke free, and she brought her palms together as if in prayer, her index fingers inches from her face.

Jordan and Erin stepped back, sensing something building within this other.

A golden light suddenly washed from the sibyl’s body, driving them farther back. A corona of that light brushed against Erin, warming the cold out of her bones, like the buttery warmth of a summer sun, smelling of grass and clover. Erin drank it in. Joy filled her, reminding her of the moment the Blood Gospel had transformed from a simple lead block into a tome that held the words of Christ.

She suddenly found the word to describe what she felt.

Holiness.

She was in the presence of true holiness.

Next to her, Jordan smiled, surely feeling the same. For one moment, in the midst of the battle, there was peace. She leaned against him, sharing warmth and strength and love with him.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Erin asked.

Her grace turned fully upon Erin. “No. Neither you nor the priests can save the boy. Only I can.”

The woman — Arella — drifted from the wall and headed toward the towering pyre of cold darkness. The few wisps of blackness at the edges burned away as her radiance drew closer. Other tendrils withered back into the cloud, as if fearful of her touch.

Then she pushed into the cloud itself, her radiance shining brighter, battering back the darkness that swirled around her. Her glow swept upward to either side, feathering out into the blackness, forming a familiar shape.

Erin pictured the old drawing from the safe.

Wings.

How could such a being exist on Earth?

She realized that it had been far easier for her to believe in strigoi, in the presence of unholy evil made flesh, than to accept the presence of good. But she could not deny what she witnessed now.

Arella stepped to the altar, to the boy’s side.

The darkness closed down around her, tearing away at her brilliance.

A cry rose from the far side. “No… Arella… no…”

Iscariot rose to his feet, blood soaking through his shirt. He backed away, falling into a tunnel behind him and disappearing.

Jordan moved to chase after him, but Erin gripped his arm, wanting him close.

“He knows he’s lost, but the boy may need us.”

Jordan grimaced in frustration, but he nodded, keeping his gun pointed at that tunnel.

Arella knelt on the rough floor. Her wings bent and formed a protective shroud around the boy. Tommy lay on his back with a heavy net covering his body. His skin had a waxen, grayish hue, as if he had already died.

We are too late.

Erin’s throat closed.

But the sibyl touched his pale face, and color bloomed there, spreading from her fingertips, promising at least hope for the boy.

Arella lifted his head from the stone, cradling his neck, exposing a bright silver shard that pierced his pale throat, blood seeping from the wound. Her other hand cast a corner of the net free. It looked as if it had already been ripped loose. Her arm slipped within and gently eased the boy’s thin body out.

But the darkness was not about to let its prey escape so easily. As she gathered him up and stood, darkness coalesced into black claws that drove themselves deep into her light, ripping and shredding.

Arella gasped, falling to a knee.

The back of her dress tore, revealing black scratches across her shoulders.

Erin reached to help, but her arms fell, and she knew that there was nothing she could do.

Arella struggled back to her feet, lifting the boy in her arms. Her golden light was dimmer now, eaten away at the edges into a tattered lace. She hunched against the storm, as it grew ever fiercer about her. The cloud closed tighter, trying to stifle her glow, ripping at her like a shredding ice storm.

Arella took a halting step, then another.

She seemed to concentrate the last of her glow around the boy, leaving herself defenseless against the onslaught.

She took yet another step — then finally fell out of the darkness, onto her knees, cradling the boy in her lap. Her dress was rags, her skin mottled with black pocks and dark scratches, her black hair gone a ghostly white.

Erin rushed forward as the woman toppled to her side. She grabbed Tommy by the armpits and hauled his limp form farther away from the darkness.

Jordan scooped up Arella and did the same.

“We need to get them out of here,” Erin said. “As far from this foul place as possible.”

By now, the fighting had ended in the room.

Any remaining strigoi seemed to have fled along with Iscariot’s retreat.

Rhun and Bernard joined her, but the countess pushed between them, coming swiftly to the boy’s side.

“His heart,” Elizabeth said, her eyes truly scared. “It weakens.”

Rhun nodded, as if hearing the same.

“He cannot heal with this still in him,” Elizabeth warned.

Before anyone could urge caution, the countess grasped the shard, pulled it from the boy’s neck, and hurled it across the room. Blood continued to flow from Tommy’s wound.

“Why isn’t he healing?” Erin asked.

They turned toward the discarded blade.

From a tunnel near its resting place, a figure appeared, melting out of the darkness.

Iscariot glared at them with a cold fury.

He then gazed at the drape of Arella on the ground and quickly recovered the shard from the floor. Distracted by grief, Iscariot cut himself on the blade. It sliced into his finger, which spilled golden drops of light instead of blood.

With a cry of shock, he fell back.

Jordan fired at him, sparking rounds off the stone.

Rhun rushed forward, sweeping across the room with the speed only a Sanguinist could muster, his karambit flashing silver in the torchlight.

Then Iscariot was grabbed and thrown back into the tunnel.

And another came out to confront Rhun in his stead.

Rhun drew to a sudden stop, frozen by shock and disbelief. He stared at the monk, at the familiar brown robe, tied with a rosary, his spectacled countenance looking forever boyish.

“Brother Leopold?”

Back from the dead.

Leopold lifted a sword, his face set and severe.

Rhun gaped at him. His mind tried to explain Leopold’s actions, the fact that he still lived. A thousand explanations flitted through Rhun’s head, but he knew each one to be false. He must face the harsh truth.

Here stood the Sanguinist traitor, the one who had been in league with Iscariot all along.

How many deaths lay at the feet of this one, someone he called friend?

Faces and names flashed through Rhun’s silent heart. All those he had mourned. Others he barely knew. He pictured the train engineer and his coworker.

But one name, more than any, ignited the fury inside him.

“Nadia died because of you.”

Leopold had the good graces to look pained, but he still found justification. “All wars have casualties. Better than you and I, she knew this and accepted it.”

Rhun could not stomach such platitudes. “When did you begin to betray the order? How long have you been a traitor?”

“I have always served a higher purpose. Before I took my Sanguinist vows, before I drank my first cup of Christ’s blood, I was already set on this path by the Damnatus. To help bring Christ back to the earth.”

Rhun frowned. How could that be? Why was Leopold not burned like other strigoi who sought to deceive the order by swearing false oaths?

Rhun found his answer in the shine of devotion in the other’s eyes.

Leopold had not sworn falsely when he took his vows. With all his heart, he had believed he was serving Christ.

“We mourned you,” Rhun said. “We buried your rosary with full honor in the Sanctuary, as if you had fallen in service to Him.”

“I do serve Him,” Leopold said firmly. “If I did not, why does consecrated wine still bless me even now?”

Rhun faltered. Was Leopold’s devotion that absolute?

“You must see the truth of my words,” Leopold pleaded. “You can join us. He will welcome you.”

Astonishment filled Rhun. “You wish me to leave the Church and join this betrayer of Christ? A man who joins forces with the strigoi?”

“Have you not done the same with the strigoi?” Leopold motioned to Elizabeth. “The heart must follow what it knows is right.”

Rhun was stunned — which was what Leopold in all his cunning had wanted.

He lunged at Rhun, swiftly, savagely, leading with his sword.

Rhun pivoted at the last moment, his instincts reacting faster than his mind. Leopold’s sword sliced his side, through his armor, cutting to his ribs. Reacting as heedlessly, Rhun slashed out with his karambit.

Leopold stumbled back and dropped his sword. He clutched his throat, blood pouring through his fingers. He fell to his knees, knocking his glasses askew. Still, his eyes remained on Rhun — shining not with anger, nor with sorrow, only devotion.

46

With a hand at her throat and tears in her eyes, Erin watched Leopold’s body slump to the ground. She remembered a gentler man, the studious crinkle to his eyes, his wry self-deprecating humor. She pictured waking in the tunnels below Rome, sure she was dead, only to find him gripping her hand, using his medical skills to revive her.

The man had saved her life.

Yet his secrets had killed so many.

Suddenly the ground gave a violent quake, as if a fist had slammed into the floor beneath their feet. The black cloud around the altar writhed and churned, shredding and whipping. The gnash of rock and rumble of falling boulders echoed from all the tunnels.

“Time to move, people!” Jordan yelled.

Erin helped Elizabeth with Tommy as they fled for the bridge. Rhun led the way, while Bernard and Jordan followed with Arella slung between them. The ground continued to tremble. Ahead, a crack skittered across the arch of rock spanning the river, which splashed higher from its stone banks.

“Hurry!” Erin cried out.

They sprinted. Elizabeth quickly outdistanced her, even while burdened with the boy. She swept over the bridge, passing even Rhun who raced now at her heels. They joined the handful of Sanguinists guarding the tunnels back to the surface, meeting Christian there.

Erin ran, hitting the steamy wall of sulfurous heat, scorching after the chill of the cavern. She feared the slipperiness of the rock, but she did not slow — especially as a chunk of the bridge fell away, splashing into the boil below. More cracks skittered underfoot.

Suddenly a large quake sent her sprawling. At her fingertips, the span ahead of her fell away. She measured the impossible gap as a roil of steam and water blasted up from below.

Then Rhun came winging through it like a dark crow. He landed next to her, scooped her to her feet, then into his arms, and leaped headlong over the gap. He crashed with her on the far side, taking the impact on his shoulder and rolling her to safety.

Jordan…

Bernard came leaping over with the sibyl in his arms. Jordan sailed next to them. Both men landed on their feet — though Jordan had to skip several steps to keep his balance.

Behind them, the entire span cracked into pieces and crumbled into the river.

Heat and steam parched Erin’s skin and burned her lungs.

“Keep going!” Bernard commanded.

As a group, they raced back through the maze. Nagging fears chased her ever upward. She felt the continuing trembles underfoot. She pictured the darkness churning below. Why wasn’t it stopping?

Were they too late?

Were the gates of Hell still opening?

Rhun rushed alongside Elisabeta as she carried Tommy in her arms, the prophesied First Angel. He remembered her calling out to him as he first entered the cold cavern.

Save the boy!

He knew from the anguish in her voice that it had not been prophecy that had fueled her need to protect the boy. She cradled Tommy against her chest, her mouth set in a worried line. The boy’s heartbeat stumbled along, weak but determined, matching Elisabeta’s expression. Rhun watched her every step, ready to catch her if she faltered. Blood seeped from a thousand cuts, but she seemed to draw from a well of strength far deeper than just that of a strigoi.

It was that of a mother resolved to save her child at any cost.

Erin and Jordan followed them, trailed by the cardinal, who carried the dark-skinned woman. He remembered the golden light spilling from her, remembering Bernard’s belief that she was an angel. Still, she clearly knew Iscariot and had some relationship with him. But why would an angel seek out the Betrayer of Christ?

Why would anyone?

Rhun stared down at the blood staining his sleeve.

Leopold’s blood.

So much remained unknown.

Finally, they reached the tunnel’s end and escaped through the nest of boulders to the beach. The sky remained black, hiding the sun. He glanced to Elisabeta. For now she remained safe from this hidden day. But she fell to her knees with the boy in the sand. The risen sun still plainly taxed her, sapping even her great strength.

Rhun searched the sky. The smoke had spread to the horizon. Whatever Iscariot had set in motion, taking the First Angel from the temple had not stopped it.

Looking equally worried, Bernard joined them and lowered the woman to the sand. She did not open her eyes, but one arm moved feebly, brushing at her face as if to remove cobwebs.

She still lived.

Elisabeta gently placed the boy near her, resting his head on the sand, examining the wound on his throat. It continued to seep blood, though perhaps slightly less. But was that because he was healing or simply running out of life?

Elisabeta held his hand. Rhun had no doubt that she would kill anyone who tried to harm the boy. He remembered her fierce protectiveness of her own children, even while she murdered the children of others. Her loyalties were inexplicable to him.

Wind stirred her cloak and a shaft of filtered daylight fell upon her cheek. Rhun rushed toward her, but her skin did not burn. Evidently, there was enough foul ash shrouding the air to allow strigoi to walk under this dread sky.

He pictured the ash cloud circling the world, waking horrors long slumbering in crypts, graves, and other sunless places.

Elisabeta sensed this change, too, lifting her face to the gray sky. Even overcast with ash, it was the first daylight sky she had looked upon with her naked eyes in centuries. She examined it for a long moment before returning her attention to the wounded boy in the sand.

Bernard stepped to Tommy’s other side. He shed his suit jacket and unbuttoned his bloodstained white shirt, revealing his hidden armor. He unzipped a waterproof compartment over his heart and pulled free a simple leather-bound book.

Rhun gaped at what he held.

It was the Blood Gospel.

Spotting the Gospel in Bernard’s hands, Erin knelt by the boy’s head. She sensed the centuries of prophecy weighing down upon his pale brow. Ash settled into his hair, still boyishly soft. More flakes landed on his cheeks and lips. She reached and wiped them away, leaving an iron-rust smudge across his skin.

He did not move under her touch, his breathing shallow and too slow.

Christian joined her.

“What’s wrong with him?” Erin asked. “In Stockholm, he recovered much more quickly. Why isn’t Tommy healing now?”

“I don’t know,” Bathory whispered softly, glancing at her, grief shining in her eyes, catching Erin by surprise at its depth. “But I heard Iscariot say that blade he used could slay angels. Even now, I hear his young heart continuing to fade. It must be something about that knife.”

The countess stroked hair back from the boy’s forehead.

Bernard dropped to a knee. “Let me put the Gospel in Tommy’s hands,” he said. “Perhaps its grace will save him.”

Bathory scowled at him. “You place your hope in another holy book, priest? Has the other served us so well?”

Still, the countess did not resist as Bernard drew the boy’s hands to his chest. Even she knew any hope was better than none at all.

Bernard reverentially placed the book into his hands. As leather touched skin, the cover glowed golden for a brief breath, then went dark.

Tommy’s eyelids fluttered open. “Mom…?”

The countess leaned over him, a tear falling to the boy’s cheek. “It’s Elizabeth, my brave boy,” she said. “We are free.”

“Open the book, son,” Bernard urged. “And save the world.”

Prophecy echoed through Erin.

The trio of prophecy must bring the book to the First Angel for his blessing…

She stared from Rhun, to Jordan, to Bathory.

Tommy struggled to sit, to fulfill his role, too.

Bathory helped him up, letting his thin back lean against her side, treating him ever so gently.

Tommy settled the book in his lap and opened it to the first page. He leaned down weakly, struggling to read the ancient words in Greek found there.

“What does it say?” he asked hoarsely.

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

As they watched, waiting, ash fell on the opened pages.

Nothing else transpired.

Tommy looked up at the roiling sky, then out to the choppy leaden sea. “What else am I supposed to do?” he asked, sounding so lost and forlorn.

“You are the First Angel,” Rhun said softly. “You are destined to bless this book.”

Tommy blinked ash away from his long lashes, looking doubtfully at him. He turned to the one person he plainly trusted most.

To Bathory.

The countess wiped blood from his throat, revealing the wound was still present. Worry filled her voice, grasping for any hope. “It may be so.”

“I’m not an angel.” Tommy scowled. “There’s no such thing as angels.”

Bathory grinned at him, showing the barest points of sharp teeth. “If there are monsters in the world, why not angels?”

Tommy sighed, his eyes rolling a bit — not from disdain but growing weakness. He was clearly fading again.

Bathory touched a palm to his cheek. “Whether you believe or not, what harm is it to abide their wishes, to bless this accursed book?”

Bernard gripped his shoulder. “Please, try.”

Tommy gave a defeated shake of his head and lifted a palm over the open pages of the Gospel. His hand trembled with even this small effort. “I bless… this book.”

Again they waited as ash fell, and the ground still trembled.

No miracle presented itself. No golden light, no new words.

Uneasiness rose in Erin.

They had missed something — but what?

Jordan frowned. “Maybe he needs to say some special prayer.”

Christian surveyed the blasted landscape. “Or maybe it’s this cursed place.”

Bernard stiffened and grasped Christian’s arm in thanks. “Of course! The Blood Gospel could only be transfigured above the holy bones of Peter in St. Peter’s Basilica. We must take the boy to Rome. Only there must the book be blessed!”

Tommy suddenly slumped against the countess, his brief strength blowing out like a spent candle. A drop of blood rolled from his wound, still unhealed.

“He will never make it to Rome,” Bathory said. “I can barely sense his heartbeat.”

Rhun glanced at Erin, confirming this.

A small sigh drew Erin’s attention past her shoulder, to where Arella lay in the sand. The woman had rolled to her side, but now fell again to her back, but not before her eyes glowed at Erin, full of the same sadness seen in the drawing, the same sorrow as she had looked upon Iscariot.

Erin understood that message, the one not heeded by Judas.

You are wrong.

As if the sibyl knew she was understood, her eyes finally closed, and her body went slack.

Worried, Erin shifted next to her and took her hand, finding it warm. She noted damp sand covering her fingertips. A glance to her side — where Arella had been leaning — revealed a symbol drawn in the sand.

It was a torch — hastily drawn, shaded with the ash, depicting a bundle of rushes, bound and set aflame.

Behind her, Bernard said, “We can bandage the boy here, put pressure on his wound en route. He will… he must survive the flight to Rome.”

Christian pointed to a second helicopter parked on the beach. It must have been brought in by the cardinal’s reinforcements. “I’ll grab the first-aid kit. There should be enough fuel in that chopper to make it to Vatican City. It’s no more than an hour’s flight. Once in the air, I’ll alert the doctors on staff to be ready for us.”

Bathory scoffed. “The boy bears no natural wound. It cannot be cured through your modern medicines.”

For once, Erin found herself agreeing with the countess. Even without Tommy’s healing powers, the wound should have begun to clot.

She considered the symbol again.

You are all wrong.

As Christian ran for the first-aid kit, Bernard tried pouring consecrated wine onto the wound, murmuring Latin prayers. He wiped it clean with his sleeve.

Blood welled up, flowing thicker now.

Erin noted a faint golden glow, only evident because of the gloom. Perhaps it marked his special angelic essence, the miracle that sustained his life, the same miracle that possibly saved Jordan in Stockholm.

“You do not know what you are doing,” Bathory said, pushing Bernard’s hands off the boy. She pointed to Arella. “She carried that blade that cut him. She must know more about it. Wake her.”

Erin tried, shaking the woman’s shoulder, but she got no response.

“We must remove the boy from these cursed sands and take him to Rome,” Bernard demanded as Christian returned. “There we will save him.”

Erin flashed to Arella’s earlier warning.

Neither you nor the priests can save the boy. Only I can.

Erin turned to Bernard and voiced aloud what she grew to believe. “You are all wrong.”

As if hearing her own message spoken aloud, Arella stirred. Her arm weakly flopped to Tommy, to his bloody throat. With her touch, a drop of blood stopped welling up from his wound. It hovered there. Then those fingers slipped away, and the drop swelled and rolled down his pale skin.

“She can heal him,” Erin insisted.

Bathory nodded. “It is an angelic weapon that pierced him. It will take an angel to heal him.”

“How?” Bernard asked.

Erin stared at the symbol, knowing it was important. The woman wouldn’t have drawn it without purpose. The sibyl never drew anything that was not important. She pictured the sketch found in Iscariot’s safe.

“A torch!” Erin drew the others to her and pointed to the sand. “It was one of the five symbols depicted on the drawing, representing the five sibyls.”

“What of it?” Bernard asked as Christian returned.

“She’s trying to tell us where to go, how to heal him. The flaming torch is the symbol for the Libyan Sibyl, another of the seers who prophesied the coming of Christ. According to the mythology of that area, the waters are said to have miraculous healing properties. Some believe Christ stayed there with Mary and Joseph after fleeing Herod’s slaughter.”

“I know those stories,” Bernard said. “But the Libyan Sibyl made her home in Siwa, an oasis in the deserts of present-day Egypt. Far across the Mediterranean. The boy will never make such a long journey and live.”

Erin recognized this truth and remained silent.

Taking this as acquiescence, Bernard drew straighter. “We’ll take them both to Rome.” He waved to Christian. “Carry the boy. I’ll take the woman.”

Bathory stepped between Christian and Tommy. “You shall not.”

Bernard looked upon her with fury. “If the boy cannot be healed here, if he can’t reach Siwa, what then?” he pressed. “At least if we can get him to Rome, to St. Peter’s Basilica, he may yet live long enough to bless the book and reveal its secrets.”

“So you don’t really care if the kid lives or dies?” Jordan asked, placing a hand on Erin’s shoulder. “As long as he delivers the goods.”

Bernard’s angry expression answered that.

Erin joined Bathory. “This child’s life is more important than any secrets.”

Bernard confronted them, waving an arm to the spreading pall in the sky. “Ash still falls. What has been broken has not been set to right. We have seen the gates of Hell cracking open beneath the boy. It has slowed, but it is inevitable. What has been opened must be closed. We have until the sun sets this day to stop it.”

“Why sunset?” Erin asked.

Bernard looked to the skies. “I have read the stories of this place. If the gates of Hell are cracked open during the day, they must be closed before the day’s last light or nothing will close them again. This is more important than any single life, including the boy’s. Unless we act now, innocents beyond counting will surely die.”

“But it is that act that I find suspect,” she said.

Jordan kept to her side. “I’m with Erin on this.”

The countess stood firm. “As am I.”

Rhun looked uncertainly at them, hovering between them and Bernard, who had the weight of a dozen Sanguinists at his back. “So what do you propose to do, Erin?”

“We forget about the Gospel, about prophecy, about saving the world. We turn all our strength to saving this one boy, a child who has suffered beyond measure. We owe him that much. He was afflicted with immortality because of a single act of trying to save an injured dove. He is that dove to me. I will not let him perish.”

Bathory’s cold hand found hers. Jordan’s warm fingers grasped her other.

“Siwa’s healing waters were said to be so strong that the sibyl herself used them to regenerate herself, to keep herself immortal.” Erin stared down at the woman, wondering how an angel could look so ashen and frail. “We can still get them there before sunset. Heal them both.”

“The boy will surely die before you reach there,” Bernard argued. “Rome is only—”

Rhun cut him off. “How do you plan to cure the boy in Rome?”

“We have doctors. We have priests. But even if there were none, the most important thing is blessing the book at St. Peter’s.”

Rhun frowned his dissatisfaction. “What makes you certain that the book will reveal its secrets in Rome?”

“Because it must.” The cardinal touched his pectoral cross. “Or all is truly lost.”

Rhun’s gaze moved from Erin to Bathory. “Bernard, you place too much weight on reaching St. Peter’s.”

“It is where the Blood Gospel was opened and returned to the world.”

“But the book was taken there based upon the words of both Erin and Bathory Darabont. Yet, now, here we stand, with Erin again and another of the Bathory family, both telling you to take the boy to Siwa. While we do not know with certainty who the Woman of Learning is, in this instance it does not matter. They both command the boy be taken to Egypt.”

“Not just us,” Erin added, and she pointed to Arella. “Another woman does, too. An angel who, by your own word, found you unworthy in the past.”

Bernard fell back a step from her words, but they only seemed to inflame his anger. “Rome is only an hour away,” he insisted. “We go to St. Peter’s and get the boy whatever care he needs. If I’m wrong, he can be prepped there for the long journey to Siwa.”

“By then it may be too late,” Erin said, waving to the cloaked sun.

Christian headed off, eyeing those same skies. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll get the bird warming up. You tell me where to go.”

“Christian is right,” Jordan said, as ash fell ever heavier around them. “This foul air may make the decision for us. If the ash gets any thicker, no one’s going anywhere.”

Recognizing this truth, they all headed after Christian. Rhun carried Arella, while Bathory kept possession of the boy. Moments later, the helicopter’s engine sputtered coarsely on the beach, choking on ash, before rumbling loudly to life. Erin shielded her eyes from the sand and ash kicked up by the rotors.

It became impossible to talk.

Once at the helicopter, they all climbed in. Bathory passed Tommy to her, while Bernard helped Rhun settle Arella across a row of seats. Christian barely let them find their seats before gunning the stressed engines. He lifted them off the beach and turned them over the leaden waters, fleeing the maelstrom of fire and smoke.

“Where to?” Christian bellowed back.

“Rome!” Bernard called out, staring across the cabin, daring them to argue.

Bathory glanced to Erin with a glint of mischief in her eye. Erin leaned away, fearing the worst. But she was not the countess’s target. Moving in a swift blur, Bathory twisted to her neighbor, wrapped one arm around his waist, and crashed open the door next to him. Neither were buckled in yet, and both Bathory and Bernard went tumbling headlong out the door, still clutched together.

Erin leaned over in her harness, as Christian tilted the helicopter, the door banging open and closed in the wind. She saw the pair splash into the water below, then come sputtering up, still fighting.

Jordan reached and caught the door and got it latched. “Guess that settles it,” he said, grinning, plainly appreciating Bathory’s bold move to break the stalemate.

The three of them looked at one another.

Christian stared back at them, a question shining in his green eyes.

Erin leaned forward and touched the young Sanguinist’s shoulder.

“Siwa,” she said firmly.

Christian glanced to Rhun, to Jordan, getting confirmatory nods. He turned back around and shrugged. “Who am I to argue with the trio of prophecy?”

47

Judas stood vigil in a crevice up the cliff face. He remained locked deep in shadow, hidden from the sharp senses of Sanguinists on the beach below, shielded by the stink of sulfur and the rumble of the earth as the gates of Hell threatened to open. He had barely made it out of the lower tunnels before the passageways collapsed around that smoky cavern, sealing it off. Now not even the Sanguinists could reach those gates in time.

There was nothing anyone could do to stop the inevitable.

Still, moments ago, he had watched the helicopter thump into the heavy pall of smoke and vanish, taking the boy and Arella with it.

His heart panged at seeing her brought so low, recognizing how much she had risked to rescue the boy. He pictured her ravaged body, her hair gone white. Still, even from this distance, he recognized her beauty as she lay in the sand.

My love…

From the rocks, he now spied as the cardinal and the countess waded from the leaden waves, their clothing clinging wetly to them. Both their eyes were on the skies, where the helicopter had vanished.

But where were the others going?

He had watched Bernard and Elizabeth plunge from the craft, clearly jettisoned like so much unwanted baggage.

“You have doomed us all!” Bernard’s shout echoed up to him.

As answer, Elizabeth simply brushed sand from her wet clothing.

“We will go after them!” the cardinal insisted. “You have changed nothing!”

She took off a boot and dumped out sand. “Can you not admit the possibility that you were wrong, priest?”

“I will not let you judge me.”

“Why not? You created me as much as Rhun. Your meddling with prophecies in the past forced Rhun and I together.”

Bernard’s shoulders grew rigid at Bathory’s words. He angrily stalked away, rallying the other Sanguinists and retreating from the beach, putting the countess again in chains.

Judas waited a full quarter hour before climbing down, scaling the cliffs back to the beach. He had a specific goal in mind. He had witnessed Arella writing something in the sand, saw how it had affected Dr. Granger and the others. He crossed to that spot now, to where Arella had lain so still. He noted the depression in the sand where her head had rested.

He knelt and brushed his fingertips across that hollow.

Worry for her ached in him.

He saw what she had etched in the sand. He would recognize her handiwork anywhere, having spent a century recording her words and sketching what she had drawn. He looked upon what was inscribed here now, with as much of an eye to prophecy as at any other time.

A flaming torch.

He smiled, understanding.

She had drawn the others a map, telling them where to go.

Certainty calmed his mind. He knew all the symbols associated with her throughout the centuries, including this one.

She had lured them to Siwa.

He stood, thanking her, a conviction firming inside him. He knew this message had been left in the sand for him as much as them.

She was calling him, too.

But why?