The Blood Gospel

54

Erin jerked awake, chased by nightmares. She batted at the darkness around her, but it wouldn’t go away. Only now did the full desperation of her plight wash back over and fill her with an icy dread that did little to settle her waking panic. She stretched her eyes wider — not that it did any good. The place where they had imprisoned her was so dark that it made no difference whether her eyes were open or closed.

She pressed her palms against her cheeks, surprised that she had fallen asleep. But the exhaustion and total sensory deprivation here must have finally overwhelmed her.

How long have I been asleep?

She remembered the flight from St. Petersburg by private jet last night. They had kept her hooded the entire time, but she had overheard enough of the conversation around her to know that the destination was Rome. The trip had taken about four hours. Once they had landed, another hour’s ride brought them into the predawn city. Erin could hear the sound of honking horns and the shouts and curses in Italian, and smell the Tiber as they crossed one of the city’s major bridges.

If she wasn’t mistaken, they were heading in the general direction of Vatican City.

What was Bathory planning?

What does she want with me?

The SUV that had shuttled them from the private airstrip eventually stopped and Erin had been dragged, still hooded, into a cold early morning. She could see enough under the lower edge of the hood to determine that it was still before sunup.

Then back underground they went, using stairs, tunnels, and ladders — the last especially difficult when blindfolded. They must have traversed the subterranean world of Rome for a full hour. She was familiar enough with the city to know that a good portion of the ancient world still existed below its surface, in a series of interconnected catacombs, wine cellars, tombs, and secret churches.

But where had she ended up?

At the end of the journey, she had been thrust into this dark cell, with the bloody collar still clamped around her neck. She had sat against the wall for ten minutes, hugging her knees, hearing no one, before she tugged off the hood and discovered the collar unlocked. She removed it and tossed it aside gladly. Shortly after that, she must have fallen asleep.

She raised her fingers now and felt the ring of scabs around her neck.

She always had a good internal clock, and now she wagered it must be somewhere around midafternoon in the world above.

She stretched out her other senses and heard the slow drip of water, the echoing giving her some indication that the space beyond her cell was cavernous. The air smelled old and stale, with a hint of mildew. She reached out and slid her palm along the floor. Stone. Her fingertips picked out chisel marks.

A tomb?

Erin’s hands slipped into her jacket pockets, searching. Of course, they had taken her flashlight, but she discovered the scrap of quilt in her pants pocket. At least they let her keep that.

Scooting up onto her hands and knees, she swept her hand from left to right in bigger and bigger arcs, stirring up a thick carpet of dust that made her eyes water and drew several sneezes. When she rubbed the dust between her fingers, it felt like wood slivers and rock dust.

Continuing on in a wider sweep, her fingers bumped against a rounded object. She picked it up and brought it to her lap. Bone. Her fingers filled in what her eyes could not see. A skull. She gulped, but still blindly examined its surfaces: an elongated nose, a small brainpan, long curved incisors.

Not human. Not even strigoi.

A giant cat. Probably a lion.

She sat back, pondering the implications of her discovery. She must be in some sort of Roman circus, an arena where gladiators and slaves fought one another and wild beasts. But the beast to which this skull had belonged had been buried with the remains of the spectacle in which it lost its life.

She paired that information with her knowledge of the path she had just taken through the city.

Toward Vatican City.

She knew of only one cavernous circus in that region. The Vatican itself had been built over half of the blood-drenched place.

The Circus of Nero.

Almost two thousand years ago, Nero had completed the circus started by Caligula. He had built enormous tiers of seating for the audience to watch his brutal games. At first, he sacrificed lions and bears to cheering crowds. But slaughtering animals hadn’t been enough for the ancient Romans, so he moved on to gladiators.

And eventually Christians.

The blood of Christian martyrs soon drenched the soil of the arena. They weren’t just ripped apart by animals and gladiators. Many were crucified. Saint Peter himself had been nailed upside down on a cross, near the obelisk in the center of the arena.

The circus was also famous for its vast network of underground tunnels, used to shuttle prisoners, animals, and gladiators to and fro. The builders had even installed crude elevators for delivering wild beasts or warriors directly to the sands above.

Erin stared up, picturing how St. Peter’s Basilica sat partly on top of this cursed place. During her postgraduate studies in Rome, she had read a text written a century ago—Pagan and Christian Rome by Rodolfo Lanciani. It depicted a map of the two overlapping structures — the horseshoe-shaped Circus below, the cruciform Basilica above.

In the dark, the schematic glowed again in her mind’s eye.

If she could get free of her cell, climb up, and reach the outside, she should be very near to St. Peter’s Basilica.

With help close at hand.

With renewed determination, she explored the edges of the room. It was about eight by ten feet, with a modern steel gate installed at the front. No weaknesses that she could detect.

She needed help. Two faces flashed before her: one as pale as his eyes were dark, but always shining with noble purpose; the other grinning, with flushed cheeks and laughing eyes the color of the sky.

What might have happened to Rhun and Jordan in that time?

She shied away from that thought.

Not in the dark.

After what seemed an eternity, Erin noticed a light approaching. She jammed her face next to the bars. Four figures and what looked like a huge dog were walking toward her down a stone tunnel, one carrying a flashlight. The dog walked next to a woman with long hair.

Bathory and her grimwolf.

Behind them, two taller figures who looked like brothers dragged along a third man, his arms slung over their shoulders. At the sight, her throat closed up. Was that Jordan? Or Rhun?

Reaching the cell without a word, Bathory unlocked the door and swung it open.

Erin tensed. She wanted to charge out, but she wouldn’t make it two steps down that tunnel.

The grimwolf padded into the cell.

Bathory and the two men followed the wolf in. A blast of cold air came in with them. The two brothers were both strigoi.

They dumped the man at her feet. He moaned and turned over. A mass of bruises covered his face, his eyes were nearly swollen closed, dried blood soaked his shirtsleeves and a pant leg.

“Professor Granger?” asked a cracked, familiar voice, with a slight Texas twang.

She fell to her knees next to him, taking his hand. “Nate? Are you okay … why are you here?”

She knew the answer to both questions and despaired as she realized the result of her own shortsightedness. She had never considered that the Belial would go after her innocent students. What did they know? Then it all tumbled together. She had sent the pictures of the tomb, of the Nazi medallion. No wonder Bathory knew to track their team to Germany.

What have I done?

She didn’t know the answer to that one, nor another. “Amy?” she whispered.

Nate stared up at her, tears welling in his eyes. “I … I wasn’t there to protect her.”

Erin rocked back as if she had taken a blow to the face. She heard a sob escape Nate.

“It’s not your fault, Nate.”

It had been her fault. The students had been left in her care.

Nate’s voice was hoarse. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

A rush of affection rose in Erin for the tough Texas kid. She squeezed his hand.

“How touching,” sneered Bathory.

“Why did you take him?” Erin turned and glared at her, earning a threatening growl from the grimwolf. “You got the photos, I imagine. He knows nothing else. He has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Not quite,” said Bathory. “He has something to do with you.”

Guilt washed across Erin. “What do you want?”

“Information from the Woman of Learning, of course.” Bathory displayed her perfect white teeth in an unpleasant grin.

“I don’t believe in that damn prophecy,” Erin said, and meant it. So far, the trio seemed to have bungled more things than they got right. It didn’t feel like they had divine prophecy on their side.

“Ah, but others do.” Bathory stroked the grimwolf’s head. “Help us.”

“No.” She would die before she assisted the Belial in opening the book.

Bathory snapped her fingers. The grimwolf leaped and pinned Nate to the floor with his front paws, knocking his hand loose from Erin’s. The wolf bent his muzzle low over Nate’s throat.

The message was clear, but Bathory drove it home anyway. “I don’t need your cowboy.”

Bathory trained her flashlight on Nate. Erin tried not to look at him. She stared instead at the rough stone walls, the newly installed barred steel gate, and the black ceiling of the cell that seemed to extend upward forever.

But her gaze returned to Nate. He had closed his eyes, quaking, but looking so brave she wanted to hug him. Clearly terrified, he still didn’t ask for help. He just waited.

“What do you need?” Erin asked Bathory.

“Your thoughts about opening the lead casing that holds the book.” Bathory put both hands on her hips. “To start.”

“I don’t know.”

The dog lowered its head toward Nate’s exposed throat and snarled.

“But maybe we can talk it through, you and I.” Erin spoke as fast as she could. “But first, call off the grimwolf.”

As if obeying a silent command from its mistress, the wolf raised its head.

Nate shuddered with relief.

Erin had to give the woman something. “The lead box had a design on it. A skeleton and a man bound together by loops of rope.”

“Yes, we know. Along with the symbols for the Alpha and the Omega.”

Bathory turned to the taller of the two brothers, his flesh punctured and tattooed, his eyes hungry upon her. He shrugged off a satchel, pulled free the heavy artifact, and held it out to Erin.

“What else do you see?” Bathory asked.

Erin took the cold metal object, careful not to touch the fingers of the tattooed man. She wished she had something significant to add. What did she know about the book? She stroked the two figures carved into the front: the human skeleton and the naked man, crossed and locked in an embrace, bound together by a braided cord.

Drawing by Trish Cramblett

“The book is about miracles,” Erin started. “Christ’s miracles. How He harnessed His divinity.”

The wolf shifted its weight from paw to paw.

“We know that,” Bathory snapped. “How do we open it?”

Erin ignored her and tried to think. “Miracles. Like changing water to wine. Bringing the living back from the dead …”

She stopped, surprised.

Bathory understood at the same time. “All the major miracles are about transformations.”

“Exactly!” Erin was surprised at how quickly Bathory had made the connection. “Like transubstantiation, changing wine to the blood of Jesus.”

“So, perhaps this block of lead is the actual book.” Bathory crossed over and crouched next to her, like two colleagues conferring. She touched the lead, too. “Alchemists were always trying to find a way of turning lead to gold.”

Erin nodded, understanding the woman’s hypothesis. “Maybe that quest has its roots in this legend. Some old hint about the Gospel traveled up through the ages. Turning lead to gold.”

Bathory’s silver eyes locked on hers. “Maybe the Gospel needs to be transformed in the same way. From dull, worthless lead to the golden glory of the book?”

Erin suddenly remembered Piers’s words in the bunker.

The book is not yet a book. Not yet.

Had the old priest figured out the puzzle as he hung for decades on the cross with nothing else to ponder as he suffered?

Erin nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“It’s an interesting idea. But what are the alchemical ingredients needed to cause this transformation?” Bathory tapped the figure of the skeleton inscribed on the lead jacket. “I suspect the answer may lay in our bony friend here?”

“But what does the Alpha symbol above his head mean? It has to be a clue.” Erin stared at the skeleton under the Alpha symbol, then glanced at the naked man and the symbol above his head. “And what’s the meaning of the Omega symbol?”

“Alpha skeleton, Omega man.” Bathory slipped her finger into two small divots at the top of the block.

Erin hadn’t seen those before. They looked like tiny receptacles, meant to hold something, maybe something like those alchemical ingredients Bathory mentioned. She tried to get a better look at them.

Before she could, Bathory sprang to her feet, understanding flashing across her face. She ripped the lead block from Erin’s hands.

“What?” Erin asked. “What did you see?”

Bathory snapped her fingers, and the wolf abandoned Nate.

The young man sat up shakily, rubbing his throat.

The eerie silver eyes smiled at Erin. “Thank you for your help.”

With that, she and the strigoi brothers left the cell. The lock clicked closed, and light retreated down the tunnel. Erin leaned forward to watch it disappear. Bathory had figured out something, something important.

Nate drew in a shaky breath. “She’ll be back.”

Erin agreed, adding, “But we won’t be here.”

Rhun pulled his dark hood lower over his eyes, hiding from both the tourists and the late-afternoon sunlight that inundated St. Peter’s Square.

Here he waited with Jordan.

Across the travertine square rose St. Peter’s Basilica, its dome the highest point in all of Rome. To either side, Bernini’s double colonnade swept out in two wide arcs, framing the keyhole-shaped plaza between. According to Bernini, the colonnade was supposed to represent the arms of Saint Peter reaching out to embrace the faithful into the fold. Atop these arms, a hundred and forty stone saints perched and stared down upon the spectacle below.

Rhun hoped they didn’t see him. He had chosen this place for a rendezvous, out in the open, under the sun, to hide in plain sight, so that if Bathory had reached Rome, her strigoi wouldn’t be able to overhear any words he spoke. Possibly he was being too paranoid, but after the events in Russia, he dared take no chances.

Jordan rolled up his sleeves. The edge of a strigoi bite showed just above his elbow. The man had an incredible constitution. He’d been battered and bitten, but his obvious worry for Erin kept him going. A fine Warrior of Man, Rhun thought, and tried to be grateful that she had such a champion.

Humans swirled around him. A mother bounced a fat infant on her hip. Next to her, a young man watched her breasts, his heart rate giving away his response. A group of schoolgirls in navy-blue uniforms chattered under the watchful eye of a middle-aged teacher wearing brilliant red-framed eyeglasses.

A woman in long jeans, a tight-fitting black shirt, a floppy straw hat, and sunglasses meandered around the crowded square. She snapped a few pictures, then stuck a tiny camera into the backpack that dangled by one strap on her shoulder. She looked like a tourist, but she wasn’t.

Nadia.

At last.

Rhun waited, not daring to cross the square until she signaled it was safe. He hated skulking around Vatican City. Rome had been his home for centuries. It had been the one place in the world where he had always walked freely — until now. Before this quest had started, he had considered retreating from the world, ensconcing himself in the meditative world that existed deep below the Basilica. Would such peace ever be afforded him again?

He strolled along the curved colonnade toward the ancient three-tiered fountain. Like many things in Rome, it was older than he was. A young girl played hide-and-seek among the Doric columns, chased by an energetic mother. They probably sought to get in one more game before heading home for their dinners.

Rhun’s sharp eyes picked out the red porphyry stone set among the sea of gray cobblestones. The red stone had been placed there to mark the spot of Pope John Paul II’s shooting thirty years before. The bloodred stone reminded him of the cobblestones enshrined in the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, a thought that seemed to call the specter of Rasputin into this holy place.

Rhun stopped next to the tall stone obelisk. This very pillar had witnessed the crucifixion of countless Christians in Nero’s Circus, even Saint Peter himself. But since the late 1500s, it had watched over the center of the Christian world. He calculated the time by the long shadow it threw across the square. They had less than two hours before sunset. If the Belial had strigoi stationed in Rome, they must act before then.

Nadia paused next to him.

“Where is the woman?” She angled her head back as if studying the cross that topped the obelisk.

“Erin,” Jordan said. “Her name is Erin.”

“She was taken, along with the book.” Rhun filled her in on the events in Russia, ending by handing her Jiang’s rosary and flask. She could bring them to the sanctuary beneath the necropolis of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the Order of the Sanguines made their home.

Nadia’s hands lingered on the flask before she slipped it into her backpack. She had often worked with Jiang. “The Cardinal has returned to Rome from Jerusalem. He’s been with the Cloistered Ones since he received word of your alleged death. Praying.”

Guilt wormed its way into Rhun’s gut. He hated having lied to Bernard. He had known that after Nadia told him of his death, Bernard would grieve. He would be furious and hurt when he found out how Rhun and Nadia had deceived him. But there had been no other way to conceal their actions from the Belial spy in their midst. Still, it would not get any easier to face Bernard. Rhun glanced toward the imposing stone Apostolic Palace rising above the colonnade. A few windows had been left open to let in the light and air.

“Can you take us to Bernard? We have no time for secrecy now that the Belial have the book.”

“And Erin,” Jordan put in. “They have Erin, too.”

55

“What do you mean we’re getting out of here?” Nate asked.

Erin stumbled over to him in the oily darkness and caught his hand to reassure him. “We’re going to climb out.”

“What? How?”

She told him.

Earlier, when Bathory had waved her flashlight around the cell, Erin had spotted a possible way out. They certainly could never breach the stone walls, and the new steel bars looked strong, and the floor had been carved from solid rock. They wouldn’t be leaving by any of those ways.

But the ceiling!

Under the glow of Bathory’s flashlight, she had noted that the cell had no roof. It was just a sheer-walled black shaft that headed straight up.

Erin knew what that meant. In ancient times, Roman slaves used long poles to push caged animals down the stone tunnel that Bathory had sauntered along before. They were animals meant for the arena, but first their cages had to be pushed into the very cell that she and Nate now occupied.

Back then, a wooden platform would have covered the cell’s stone floor. Over the centuries, the platform had disintegrated into the slivers Erin had felt when she first woke up in the cell. Originally, planks had been nailed together in the shape of this room. Chains would have been attached to both sides of the platform and run up to pulleys at the top. Those chains would have traveled up slots on either side of the black rectangle above her.

Slaves rolled the caged animals on top of the platform. Later, on cue from above, other slaves used an elaborate rope-and-pulley elevator system to lift the platform and the cage from deep under the earth to the ground-level arena.

Erin and Nate had to hope that this shaft led to someplace safer than the prison they were stuck in now.

“Come over here,” she urged Nate, taking him by hand. “We can climb the steel gate to reach the shaft above.”

She helped him mount and clamber up the horizontal braces. Still, he trembled. Beaten and poorly fed, he was noticeably weak.

“Now for the interesting part.” Erin held him against the bars with one arm. “I saw a small vertical slot running up one wall of the shaft. Once upon a time, the slot held the pulley chains used to lift the elevator platform up that shaft. With any luck, we can climb that slot all the way to the surface. I’m going to go first. You come up after me.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nate’s voice had a sarcastic tone, and she was glad to hear it.

Her fingers explored the shaft overhead and found the slot. It was wide enough to jam into: legs on one side, back on the other. The climbing technique was called chimneying.

She pushed off with her legs from the cell’s gate and lifted herself up into the slot. Before she could fall back down, she jammed one leg against the side. Her back rested hard against the other side. She was in.

She moved up one foot, then another. “Okay, Nate. Your turn.”

Blind in the dark, she heard him hoist himself off the bars toward her — then fall back down to the stone floor with a thud.

She jumped down. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” He didn’t sound fine.

“This time, you go first.”

Erin found his hand and directed him back to the bars. Nate climbed up again, fell again.

“Leave me,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

“You mean to tell me that a strapping Texas boy like you doesn’t have the guts to outclimb a scrawny old lady like me?”

“It’s not about guts.” His quiet voice sounded defeated.

She hated to poke him again, but she did. “Damn right it is. Stop whining, and get your ass up that shaft. I am not going up there just to tell your kid sister that you were killed here because you were too lazy to climb out of a hole.”

Nate stood back up. “I used to like you.”

“Up you go.”

This time she supported his feet when he pushed himself upward. Once braced across the slot, he didn’t need to use his wounded arms, just his back and his legs.

Dirt and stone chips rained down on her as Nate made slow progress upward. She followed, straightening one leg, lifting it up a few inches, then forcing herself to pry the other foot off the wall. Over and over. Inching upward. She had done chimneying before, but always with a rope belay and a flashlight.

“How’re you doing, Nate?”

“Best time I’ve had in days.” He shifted up another few inches.

She smiled grimly. Probably true.

A few more precious feet, and then he slipped.

She caught his calf, forcing it against the wall. He pushed out and stopped his slide.

Her heart raced. She and Nate had almost fallen all the way back down to the cell. With any luck, they would have died on impact. If not, they’d have had the fun of being torn apart by the grimwolf.

But at least they would have died trying.

Dim gray light shone up the shaft.

Someone was coming.

In a private room in the Apostolic Palace, Jordan gritted his teeth. Naked from the waist up, he was lying on his face on a thick wool rug covering a polished wood floor.

Nadia played nursemaid, swabbing the bite wounds on his arm and back — and none too gently.

“Strange tattoo,” she said, noting the Lichtenberg design from the lightning strike.

“I know,” he said, wincing. “You got to die to get one.”

Nadia had sneaked him and Rhun out of St. Peter’s Square through some secret doorway into the Apostolic Palace, where, apparently, the pope lived. She’d rushed them into this simple room with whitewashed walls. The room held an old-fashioned, long wooden table, six heavy chairs, and a macabre crucifix on the wall. After his meeting with Piers, he could hardly stand to look at crucifixes anymore.

Instead, he kept his eyes on the rug. It smelled like a wet sheep.

Nadia wrung out a brown washcloth into a copper basin, its water stained pale pink from Jordan’s blood.

“Where is Bernard?” Rhun paced the room, stopping only long enough to peer out the window into the courtyard below.

“I’ve sent word.” Nadia poked Jordan again.

Ouch. Now she was just being mean.

She drew a glass jar from her backpack. “This might sting.”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” Jordan groused. “You’re supposed to lie.”

“Lying is a sin.”

“Like telling the Cardinal we died.”

Nadia unscrewed the top of a jar that smelled like pitch mixed with horse manure.

“What’s in that stuff?” he asked, changing the tender subject.

She scooped the goop onto her index and middle fingers. “It’s best you don’t know.”

He opened his mouth to insist — then thought better and shut it again. If something made Nadia squeamish, he didn’t want to know.

She slathered the balm into a bite wound on his back. Fire followed in its wake.

He gasped, immediately breaking out into a sweat. “Feels like napalm.”

“I know.” She worked fast, sealing each wound.

He studied a bite on his arm. It had been oozing blood since they’d left Russia, but the stinking salve had stopped the bleeding. He took deep breaths, hoping that the burning would subside. “What’s the plan for finding Erin?”

Rhun kept pacing, his steps quiet on the old rug. “Once the Cardinal arrives, we will put together a team to search for her and the book. The Sanguinists have a wide net of informants, especially in Rome. We’ll find them.”

Near as Jordan could tell, the Sanguinists’ net of informants had been useless so far, but saying that wouldn’t help. He stayed quiet as Nadia roughly bandaged his wounds. She had no future as a nurse.

Nadia tossed him a clean gray T-shirt, and he sat up to put it on. He now looked like a normal guy with a couple of big Band-Aids, instead of the survivor of a strigoi attack.

Progress.

Someone tapped on the door. Before anyone could reach it, it burst open.

The Cardinal stood in the doorway. Scarlet cassock and all.

He was flanked by men wearing blue pantaloons tucked into high black leather boots, blue long-sleeved shirts with flat white collars, white gloves, and black berets. They looked like they had stepped out of another century.

But the Sig Sauers in their hands were plenty modern.

Erin froze as the light grew brighter below. She didn’t want anyone to hear — then realized how ridiculous that was.

The cell had a single exit, and she and Nate were jammed in it, about ten feet up. The strigoi could hear heartbeats, so hiding was useless. The only chance of escape lay in flight.

Above her, Nate scrambled faster. His labored breathing expressed how much this effort cost him. And, since neither he nor Erin knew the length of the shaft, she had no idea if it made any difference. She kept close behind him, hoping for a miracle.

The grimwolf barked up the shaft.

The sound bounced off the stone, as if a pack of hellhounds were coming to get them.

Nate slipped.

Erin braced herself hard against both sides of the slot.

No use.

The impact of his body knocked her loose. She and Nate hurtled downward. Her head and arms glanced off the sides as she tried to slow them.

Then she dropped through empty air, Nate on top of her.

Her back struck not stone, but a figure that crashed to the floor underneath her.

She tried to push Nate off to roll free, but he was too heavy.

A woman snarled Slavic-sounding curses and with sharp elbows drove Erin to the side. Erin rolled off Bathory with no small amount of grim satisfaction.

A hulking strigoi picked Erin up in his left hand, Nate in his right. He must have been seven feet tall, bald, with beady eyes. He was dark-skinned, for a strigoi, and wore dirty cargo pants with a stained white T-shirt. The shirt hugged the contours of his muscular chest. He definitely didn’t have a weapon on his upper body. She looked lower. A dagger in a leather sheath was strapped to his waistband.

He tossed Nate against the wall, then reached a hand down to Bathory.

And stopped.

He jerked his hand back.

Blood was seeping from a wound in Bathory’s arm. A dirty white bandage had slid down to her elbow. Erin must have knocked it off when she hit her. Stitches had pulled out of a cut across her triceps. Blood trickled down her arm. Bathory glanced down and swore, then yanked the bandage up. It slid back down.

The grimwolf nuzzled her leg and whimpered.

“Back.” Bathory pushed the wolf away roughly, almost frantically. “Magor, stay away.”

The creature retreated a pace and sat.

Erin’s eyes narrowed. Interesting.

Bathory struggled to her feet unaided. A drop of blood fell from her arm to the floor. The color looked strange, but Erin couldn’t bend to look closer because the strigoi held her arm fast.

“You are an enterprising one.” Bathory dusted off her pants.

“The first duty of any prisoner is to escape,” Erin said.

With wide eyes, the strigoi stared at Bathory’s wounded arm.

Erin had never seen a strigoi react to blood with fear rather than excitement. Clearly, injuring Bathory was a bad thing to do.

“I shall get my wound seen to.” Bathory picked up her flashlight. “And return.”

What would happen then?

Bathory turned to the strigoi who was holding Erin. “Mihir, stay and watch them. Don’t let them even think of escaping.”

Mihir bowed his head.

Bathory whistled for the grimwolf and headed down the tunnel. Another strigoi waited outside. He closed the door and tugged on the bars, probably to make sure that it was locked before following Bathory.

Erin was trapped in the cell again, but this time with an angry strigoi for a roommate. He tossed her to the side, and she twisted to keep from landing on Nate.

Mihir played his flashlight up the shaft and along the slot from which Erin and Nate had just fallen.

Erin bent over Nate. “You okay?”

His eyelids fluttered open. “This is the worst dig ever.”

She smiled. “When we get out of this, I promise to write you one hell of a recommendation.”

Mihir walked over, giving the single drop of Bathory’s blood on the floor a wide berth. He loomed over them. “No more talking.”

His eyes lingered on the fresh blood that oozed down Erin’s neck. She, too, had torn open her wounds in the fall. She could see the hunger rise in his eyes.

She clenched her jaw. She would not be afraid. Her heart ignored her comforting words and raced. Afraid or not, she would use his bloodlust for her own advantage.

Instead of shrinking back like she wanted to, she stepped toward Mihir, tilting her neck to the side, knowing that he could smell the blood, hear the frightened heartbeat behind it. Rhun had barely been able to restrain himself when faced with flowing blood. Surely Mihir was weaker than the priest.

His eyes stayed locked on her neck, and his breathing roughened. She kept her left hand low. She would have only one chance — if she was lucky.

Mihir licked his lips, but he held back.

He needed a better invitation. Steeling herself, she dragged her fingers across her wounded throat. Never taking her eyes off his, she brushed her bloody fingertips across his lips.

Lightning-fast, Mihir reached a hand for her throat. Nate called out a warning, drawing the monster’s attention for a flicker.

A flicker was long enough.

Erin dropped to one knee, jerked the strigoi’s dagger from its belt sheath, and drove it under his sternum.

He staggered forward. Blood spread across his shirt.

Nate pushed past her. He wrenched the knife from Mihir’s body and, in one quick movement, slashed it across the strigoi’s throat. Mihir collapsed to the floor, dark lifeblood spurting wet across the stone. A puff of smoke rose in the air when his blood touched the drop of Bathory’s.

Nate stood over him with the weapon, shaking from head to toe.

Mihir’s eyes went glassy and dead. Blood pooled around him.

“Nate?”

He spun on her, knife high.

“Nate,” she said soothingly. “It’s me.”

He lowered the dagger. “Sorry. What he did to me … with his teeth …”

“I know,” she said. She didn’t know, not really, but Nate needed to hear the words. “Let’s get up the shaft before that witch comes back.”

This time she took the lead, playing the beam of Mihir’s flashlight along the walls. Nate tucked the bloody knife into his waistband and followed with greater strength than before, apparently fueled by the adrenaline from the battle.

Erin shone the light straight up. The shaft didn’t lead to the arena, as she’d hoped. It ended in what looked like a metal plate, trapping them inside. They couldn’t climb straight out.

She sagged back against the wall, catching herself before she slipped onto Nate.

Then she checked the walls of the shaft and her eyes lit upon a secondary shaft that opened off the side. It had probably housed a second tier of animal cages. It might lead somewhere.

And even that slim hope was better than staying here.

“Nate!” she called, and pointed the beam toward the secondary shaft. “Look!”

He smiled. “Let’s get going.”

With proper illumination and renewed determination, they chimneyed up the vertical slot and reached the side passageway. It was more like a small anteroom than a cross shaft.

She played her light around the cell. Bars had once sealed the way out, but now only piles of rust and the stumps of rods remained.

Erin climbed over them into the next passageway.

She squinted and covered her hand over the flashlight to darken the way.

Far ahead, a thin line of pale yellow light beckoned.

A way out.

56

Cardinal Bernard swept through the halls of the Apostolic Palace like a thundercloud.

Rhun followed, herded by a cadre of Swiss Guards with their weapons drawn. Nadia walked on his left, seemingly unconcerned; Jordan tromped on his right, looking more angry than worried. Rhun was grateful to have them both beside him.

Cardinal Bernard’s straight back conveyed his wrath. His scarlet cassock twitched behind him. He was no doubt furious that Nadia had lied to him about Rhun’s death.

Rhun looked back at the line of Swiss Guardsmen. At the tail end marched Father Ambrose, not bothering to hide his gleeful smirk.

With Nadia’s help, Rhun could have easily overpowered them all, but he had no wish to escape. He wanted to make Bernard understand what had happened and to enlist his aid in recovering Erin and the book. He prayed that there was still time.

Bernard unlocked the door to a receiving room and led them in.

The Cardinal crossed and dropped heavily at a round mahogany table, then gestured for Rhun to sit at his right, his usual place. Perhaps he was not so angry, after all, Rhun thought as he pulled out a spindly antique chair, its cushion covered in amber fabric, and sat.

“Rhun.” Bernard’s stern tone dispelled that momentary hope. “You lied to me. To me.”

“I lied to you,” Nadia corrected. “The blame rests on my shoulders.”

Bernard waved a hand at her dismissively. “He allowed it to happen.”

“I did.” Rhun bowed his head. “I take full responsibility.”

Nadia folded her arms. “Very well. If I bear no responsibility, may I leave?”

“No one leaves until this situation is explained to my satisfaction.”

“Do you want a confession?” Rhun asked. “None of that matters now. The Belial have the book.”

Bernard sat back in his chair. “I see.”

“The Belial are in Rome.” Rhun placed his palms on the gleaming table as if to stand. “We must search for them.”

“Stay,” Bernard ordered, as if Rhun were a dog. “First, tell me how this came to be.”

Rhun bristled. He fingered his rosary, seeking to calm himself before he recounted the events in Russia. He spoke quickly, but Bernard slowed him down with question after question, picking at the story for flaws. His theologian’s mind sought inconsistencies, tried to uncover lies.

And all the while minutes ticked away.

No longer able to sit as he told the story, Rhun began to pace, stopping to stare out the window at the darkening square below. Out on the plaza, people were reaching for jackets, gathering up belongings. Sunset was close, another half hour or so away; then the strigoi would be free. Every second decreased the chances that Rhun and Jordan would find Erin alive or recover the book. Still, the Cardinal pressed him.

“If you’re going to interrogate us all day,” Jordan broke in, “how about you send out a team to look for Erin and the book, just in case we haven’t come all this way simply to spin you a tale?”

“You do not speak to the Cardinal that way!” Ambrose glared at him.

“Don’t I?” Jordan pushed back from the table, clearly ready to make short work of Ambrose. Nadia shifted in her seat. If Rhun gave the word, both she and Jordan were ready to fight.

Rhun held up a restraining hand. “Calm yourselves. We—”

A light knock sounded on the door.

Rhun listened. Five men and a woman. He smiled as he recognized one of the heartbeats. He had to resist falling to his knees and giving thanks to the Lord. That would come later.

Nadia heard it, too, catching his eye.

Jordan looked from one to the other, his handsome face contorted with confusion.

Ambrose put on his most supercilious expression and opened the door.

In walked Erin.

Bathory’s collar had left wounds and trails of dried blood on her throat. Dirt smudged her face and hands, and she looked exhausted. The young man following her looked worse.

But she was alive.

Jordan swept Erin into the best hug she’d had in a very long time. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his chest. She wished that she could rest there for a very, very long time.

“How did you get here?” Rhun spoke. “And who is your companion?”

Erin disentangled herself from a grinning Jordan. “This is Nate Highsmith. He was part of my team in Caesarea. Bathory captured him and brought him to Rome.”

Nate shook hands all around, casting a suspicious, jealous glare at Jordan after that unmistakably warm hug.

Jordan didn’t seem to notice, remaining all smiles. He kept looking at Erin, and she couldn’t help but smile back. When Bathory had dragged her away and left Jordan and Rhun in Rasputin’s clutches, she had feared she might never see either of them again.

Jordan quickly caught her up on what had happened in the past few hours.

In turn, she explained how she and Nate had escaped by following the tunnels out of Nero’s Circus and into Vatican City. Once here, she had demanded to see Cardinal Bernard, whereupon the Swiss Guard took them into immediate custody.

“The ruins of the Circus!” Rhun said. “Of course. That cursed warren of tunnels would offer the perfect shelter for the Belial.”

“Why?” Jordan asked.

“It’s underground, and protected from the light, so Bathory’s strigoi can roam freely during the day,” Rhun said. “But more important, the circus is the most unholy place in Rome, its sands forever tainted by the blood of the Christians who were martyred there. That unholiness would strengthen her forces and weaken ours.”

Cardinal Bernard gestured to one of the guardsmen and Ambrose. “Send troops to the circus. Sanguinists and humans. They must sweep the tunnels and retrieve the book. And inform His Holiness.”

The soldier and the priest nodded and left.

The Cardinal walked Erin and Nate through the events again, matching details. It took him a long time, but eventually he looked like he believed they were telling the truth.

“Describe the book to me again.” The Cardinal closed his eyes and steepled his fingers.

“It’s better if I draw you a sketch,” Erin said, and waved for paper and pen.

Nodding, the Cardinal passed her some papal stationery and a pen. Working quickly, she began drawing a crude representation of the images atop the book.

“It’s a block of lead about the size of a Gutenberg Bible,” Erin said, and quickly described the strange imagery that was etched into it: the skeleton and the man, embracing each other and bound by a braided rope, along with the inkwell-like indentations and the Greek symbols.

“Alpha and Omega,” the Cardinal muttered as she finished. “That stands for Jesus, of course.”

“I’m not so sure.” Erin hated to pick a fight, but something told her that the Cardinal was wrong.

“Of course it does! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. From the Book of Revelation.” His brown eyes looked angry.

“But Alpha and Omega are also the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet.” Something moved around in the shadows of her mind. “The first and the last.”

As she finished her sketch, something nagged at her about the drawing — then she suddenly knew the answer. A cold certainty spread through her. She had seen a similar image as the one depicted on the book throughout the Apostolic Palace. That iconic symbol was found everywhere — even at the top of the piece of stationery in her hand.

She stared at the others, her eyes widening. “I think—”

Just then, a Swiss Guardsman slammed open the door behind her, making her flinch. He came running inside, his cheeks bright with panic. “Your Eminence, someone has broken into the papal tomb in the necropolis!”

Erin twisted around, meeting the guard’s eyes. “And they did something with the bones of Saint Peter, didn’t they?”

He took a full step back in surprise. “S-someone stole them.”

The Cardinal gasped, while Rhun and Nadia leaped to their feet.

“Of course they did!” Erin practically shouted, her heart racing. “Of course!”

All eyes turned to her.

“I know how to open the book!” she exclaimed.

She remembered the look on Bathory’s face when they had been talking about the transformation of the book, and about how alchemical ingredients were needed in order to catalyze the transformation of ordinary lead into the golden word of Christ.

Bathory had already figured out the Alpha and Omega.

All heads turned to Erin.

“Go ahead,” Jordan said.

“The book has the clues to open it on the cover.” Her voice trembled. “And Bathory figured it out.”

“You’d better explain quickly,” Jordan said.

Erin bent to the stationery and circled the papal seal at the top.

It depicted two keys — the gold and silver keys of Saint Peter — crossed at the middle and bound by loops of crimson rope. The papal seal and the image on the book bore an uncanny resemblance to each other — but instead of keys representing the popes, the book had two figures crossed in a similar fashion.

Erin explained: “Saint Peter hid the book two millennia ago. He must have seen the design on the Gospel, a design that was to become better and better known as the centuries passed — moving out of secrecy into the open sometime during the twelfth century when the crossed keys began to appear as heraldic symbols of the popes. But the source for that design must have come from the images inscribed on the Blood Gospel and borne by Saint Peter.”

She tapped the papal seal. “The keys represent the papacy. So do the figures. The skeleton and the man.” She pushed hair back off her face. “Alpha stands for first. Under that is the drawing of a skeleton.”

“Yes?” Rhun leaned in close, dark eyes staring at her as if he could read the answer in her face.

“That symbol represents the bones of the first pope.”

“Saint Peter!” the Cardinal said. “That’s why they stole his bones.”

“To be used as the first ingredient in opening the book. I believe some of Saint Peter’s ground-up bone is meant to fill that first inkwell-like hole on the cover.”

Jordan stirred. “Piers might have been trying to tell us that in Germany. He kept saying ‘book’—and ‘bones.’ ”

“Exactly.” She tapped the other half of the picture. “This depiction of a living man represents the current pope. The Omega pope. The last pope.”

“So they need the current pope’s bones, too?” Jordan asked, looking squeamish.

She shook her head.

“Then what do they need?” Rhun asked.

“What does a man have that a skeleton doesn’t?” She started listing. “Life. Flesh. Blood.”

“Blood?” Jordan interrupted. “Piers mentioned that, too, but in German. Blut.”

“The second ingredient …” Erin’s hands turned to ice as the full realization dawned on her. She looked at the others. “They need the blood of the current pope.”

Rhun and Nadia ran behind Bernard, flanking him, forming their own triad. No longer concerned about revealing their unnatural heritage, they moved at top speed, shadows sweeping the halls of the Apostolic Palace. The humans fell behind. But this was no affair of theirs.

Rhun sprinted down the long hall that led to His Holiness’s bedroom. Walls covered in rich wood flashed by. Crucifixes and dark religious paintings hung throughout the hall. A fortune in art, but that would not be enough to save an old man’s life. Only they could do that.

Grant, O God, Thy protection, and in protection, strength.

The pope’s bedroom door stood open, spilling light into the dark hall.

Shadows flickered inside.

Bernard ran into the room without pause or a knock, he and Nadia in formation close behind him. A wave of blood assaulted his senses. They were too late.

His Holiness lay on his side on the floor. Blood flowed from his opened neck onto his holy white cassock. On the floor next to his body lay a straight razor, probably his own. Near his old white head were his red papal shoes, neatly lined up next to his bed. His usually carefully combed hair was tousled, his lined face pale with shock, his warm blue eyes closed.

Ambrose was kneeling by him. Blood coated his palms. He was trying, ineffectually, to stanch the wound.

Bernard joined Ambrose on the floor, Nadia stepped into the adjoining bathroom, and Rhun assessed the bedroom for threats. Thick velvet curtains were drawn tight, the simple brass bed rumpled and empty, the chair pushed straight into the antique desk, bookshelf orderly behind it.

Rhun understood.

They had taken him in his bed as he rested, and with little struggle.

Rhun closed his eyes and reached out with other senses. The only heartbeats in the room belonged to Ambrose and His Holiness. The only smells were familiar ones: Ambrose, His Holiness, the other Sanguinists, paper, dust, and a trace of incense. And, overlying it all, the old man’s spilled blood.

He returned his attention to His Holiness. His face had lost even the small amount of color it had when they’d arrived. His breath rasped out through his partially opened mouth.

“I came to tell him and he … he …” Ambrose stuttered. “He needs a doctor. Get him a doctor!”

Bernard pressed a firm palm on the pope’s wound. Nadia nodded once to let the Cardinal know that the bathroom was clear, then ran from the room, as fleet as the wind.

Ambrose wiped his hands down his black cassock. His heart tripped along in fear or shock. He looked so pale and lost that Rhun pitied him.

Rhun dropped his hand to Bernard’s shoulder. “We must take him to the surgery. Perhaps his physician can help him there.”

Bernard’s shocked eyes met his.

“Bernard!” he said sharply.

The Cardinal’s eyes cleared. “Of course.”

Bernard kept one hand tight against His Holiness’s throat and slid the other under his shoulders. Rhun put his own arms under the pope, too. The slight weight would be easy to bear. The old man’s heart stumbled, weakness in every beat. Without help, he did not have long to live.

Rhun and Bernard lifted the wounded man and bore him toward the emergency surgery. Nadia would bring the physician there.

This time their progress down the hall was slow. Rhun had time to see the ancient paintings, framed in heavy wood. This was the wall of saints, and each picture told a story of pain and martyrdom.

Swiss Guardsmen pounded down the hall, arriving with Erin, Jordan, and Nate.

“His Holiness is grievously wounded.” Bernard spoke in the formal Italian of his long-ago boyhood. Rhun had not heard that accent for many years. Bernard must be still in shock.

The guards parted like water to let them through.

As Rhun had hoped, Nadia waited at the surgery, a disheveled man in a white coat next to her. He looked as if she had dragged him from his bed, running every step.

He blanched when he saw whom they carried.

They stepped past him into the sleek modern surgery. Stainless-steel surfaces gleamed and modern machines waited under plastic covers. On the wall was only a simple round clock and a heavy iron cross.

Rhun and Bernard laid His Holiness gently on the clean white bed. Bernard still held his wound closed. “A razor did this,” he explained.

A second doctor rushed in.

“Everyone must leave,” the first doctor said. “Only medical staff allowed.”

As the physicians began to administer to His Holiness, Rhun prayed that they would find a way to save him. There was nothing more for the Sanguinists to do.

He stepped out into the hall. Drops of the pope’s blood gleamed against the wooden floor. “Where did Nadia go?”

“She took a division of the guardsmen back down the hall,” Jordan said. “To look for the guy who did this.”

If the attacker could be found, Nadia would find him. Rhun leaned against the wood paneling. Bernard reached an arm around his shoulders, and he leaned against him. A successful papal assassination had not occurred in centuries.

“What does this mean for Bathory, Erin?” Jordan asked.

Her eyes told Rhun all he needed to know. “It means that Bathory has both ingredients necessary to open the book.”

57

Standing outside the surgery room, Erin wished that she had better news. The Belial had the book and the means to open it. Would that be enough for them to transfigure it? Had evil already won?

Nate slumped and sat on the floor next to her. Fresh blood soaked his pant leg. She had never seen him so pale. He leaned his head back against the wall.

Jordan pulled a water bottle out of his coat pocket and pressed it into the kid’s hands.

Nate downed it in one long swallow. How long had it been since he’d had a drink? It had never even occurred to Erin to ask if he was thirsty, and she’d basically had him sprinting from the moment he had been tossed into her cell.

Bernard made eye contact with a Swiss Guardsman. He pointed at Nate. “This man must be taken to medical care. The woman, too.”

“Take Nate now,” Erin said. “I’ll follow along in a minute.”

Bernard hesitated, then nodded in agreement. The guardsman helped Nate to his feet.

“I’m fine.” Nate pulled himself up straighter, but his back began to slide down the dark oak paneling.

“Of course you are,” she said. “So am I. But let’s just humor them. I’ll be right behind you.”

Nate raised a skeptical eyebrow but didn’t protest as two guardsmen herded him down the hall. The kid was tough. He’d be fine. She tried not to think of watching Heinrich being carried away. She would see Nate again soon.

Jordan pulled out his first-aid kit. “Sure you don’t want to go with the kid?”

“The neck looks more dramatic than it is,” she said.

“Looks pretty dramatic.” Jordan pulled out an alcohol wipe, the smell all too familiar to Erin.

She gritted her teeth when he reached for her, but the touch of his hands on her neck was featherlight.

“So what’s next?” His familiar blue eyes looked into hers.

Her heart sped up. “Next?”

“What will Bathory do now? Where will she open the book?” From the way he asked, it sounded as if he thought she knew the answer.

She tried to talk, not to think about how close he stood, how gently he touched her throat. “The book cares very much about how it is to be opened and where.”

“You make it sound like a person.” Jordan stroked hair back from her neck and cleaned the side, stroking the wipe down from her jawline to her collarbone.

She shivered and shifted her feet to cover the movement. “I wonder if it doesn’t have some kind of awareness, some part of its maker tied to it.”

“I agree.” Bernard straightened the scarlet zucchetto he was wearing atop his white hair. “Always that has been my interpretation of the prophecy. And the book must be opened in Rome. But where in Rome?”

“If holy ground is important to the Sanguinists,” Erin said, sensing she was onto something, “it matters to the book, too. What’s the holiest place in Rome? Saint Peter’s tomb.” She stepped away from Jordan. She needed to think, which meant moving clear of his warmth, his musky scent. “But if the Belial wanted to open the book down there, they would have taken the pope’s blood first, then the bone so they could open it right there where the bones are.”

“Makes sense,” Jordan said. “Why break in twice, once to steal the bones and once to open the book?”

A bell tolled. Rhun and Bernard exchanged a glance.

“What does that mean?” Jordan pulled out a roll of gauze.

“The Swiss Guard are sounding the alarm,” Bernard answered. “They are evacuating tourists from Vatican City.”

“Then Bathory doesn’t have much time.” If only she had a better idea of where that witch might be. Then a ray of hope dawned. “Wait! The basilica. It’s built above Peter’s tomb. The holiest part of the holiest church in Rome.”

Before she even finished her sentence, Rhun and Bernard vanished from her side, like a pair of apparitions. They fled down the hall with eerie speed. No one watching them would think for a second that they were human.

Jordan shook his head. “Guess they’re giving up the secret identity thing.” He lifted an eyebrow and held out a hand. “Feel like one more run?”

She nodded and let him pull her to her feet.

He broke into a jog after collecting his Heckler & Koch submachine gun, which Nadia had been kind enough to return from Germany, along with his Colt pistol. Erin followed Jordan through the spacious halls of the Apostolic Palace and toward the square. No one tried to stop them.

They bounded down a flight of stairs, taking two at a time, to the wide hall that led to a bronze door and out to St. Peter’s Square.

Ahead, two Swiss Guards in formal blue-, red-, and yellow-striped tunics and tights swung the doors open for Rhun and the Cardinal.

Jordan sped up, trying to catch them.

“We’re with those two!” Jordan yelled.

“Let them pass,” the Cardinal called over his shoulder, already out onto the square.

The guardsmen stood aside as the couple ran through.

Behind them, the doors slammed closed with a resounding thud. No one would be allowed to enter again so easily.

Erin hurried down the steps, already out of breath. Marble pillars rose on either side of her, climbing more than twenty-five feet into the air. The scale of everything made her feel like a child who had broken into the home of a giant.

They raced down into the open square, where Jordan skidded to a halt.

The plaza teemed with people. They streamed from the basilica and the colonnades; they parted in riptides around the obelisk and the fountains, all heading for the exit and the streets. The setting sun washed their faces a warm orange.

Swiss Guard troops jostled them forward, as if they were herding cattle.

Far ahead, Bernard and Rhun’s progress had slowed as they tried to force their way forward against that current of humanity.

“Grab my belt!” Jordan yelled over his shoulder.

Erin wrapped her fingers around the thick leather.

Jordan pushed himself out into the square like a fullback. Instead of cutting straight through the crowd like the Sanguinists, he hugged its edges, one arm up. The crowd rippled to the side around him.

Erin kept pace, trying to match his stride. Jordan’s left shoulder knocked against a fleeing tourist. It was his wounded side, but he didn’t even flinch.

Reaching the basilica, he cut left toward the door. Just ahead, Rhun and the Cardinal sprinted through the entrance in a flash of scarlet and black.

Erin glanced up. Above the massive dome of the basilica, the sky glowed amber orange.

The sun had set.

Distracted by what that implied, she didn’t see the monk until it was too late. He slammed into her, knocking her hand off Jordan’s belt. The monk muttered what sounded like an apology in Polish, his hands reaching to pat her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said.

Jordan didn’t seem to notice that she was gone as he pushed through the door ahead of her. The two Swiss Guardsmen manning the doors were too distracted by the tourists coming out, but they collected their wits enough to collar her when she tried to follow.

Already inside, Jordan turned back.

“Go on!” she called. He could do more good against Bathory than she could anyway.

He nodded and hurried deeper into the basilica.

“The building is being evacuated, miss.” The guardsman’s polite words contrasted with the hard fingers digging into her arm. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to—”

A flash of gold radiated from inside the basilica, bursting with the blinding brilliance of a supernova. Along with it came a sweet scent, and a hint of music just beyond hearing, causing the ear to strain toward it.

The guard dropped her arm and turned to stare inside.

It’s happening …

Needing to bear witness, Erin quickly sidestepped the guard and slipped over the threshold. Once inside, she raced through the portico, knocking aside a tourist who stood as transfixed as the guard.

She hurried through the inner doors and into the main nave. A forest of massive stone pillars rose ahead, holding up the elaborately decorated roof of the basilica. She stared across the expansive floor to the distant papal altar in the center of the church. Golden light flowed from beneath the massive black-and-gilt baldachin that sheltered the altar. The bronze structure seemed to tremble within that glow, like a shimmering mirage above hot desert sands. Or maybe the power behind that brilliance was too much for any man-made structure to contain within it.

Without thinking, Erin ran toward that light, dodging straggling tourists heading in the opposite direction. But already most of the basilica had emptied out, leaving the way open.

It was like sprinting across a football field, except that she was indoors. She knew that St. Peter’s Basilica had the largest interior of any church in the world. She had visited it many times in the past, but she had never run through it. As she did so now, her eyes remained fixed on the glowing brilliance flowing out from under the baldachin.

As she got closer, she was struck by the sheer size of the baldachin. Marble plinths as tall as a man supported twisted black Solomonic columns that rose sixty feet into the air. They held up its massive bronze canopy, edged with fanciful borders and topped by statues and a cross.

Under that canopy, in the very center of the basilica, stood Bathory.

Her red hair blazed in the golden light that was blasting from the object in her hands. The brilliance illuminated every alcove and corner of the church. All the statues and frescoes pulsed with a deep, mystical light as if they sought to merge with the radiance flowing from the baldachin.

In Bathory’s hands, the book had transformed from lead to gold.

Transfiguration, Erin thought.

I was right.

She sprinted past the last of the statues lining the nave. Ahead, Jordan slowed to let her catch up. He caught her hand, and they ran together down the aisle toward the light.

Farther ahead, Rhun and Bernard stood frozen at the edge of the baldachin.

Stopped by a holiness that frightened even them.

58

Bathory’s blood sang with joy as golden light bathed her body.

She breathed in warmth and love. The pain that had flowed through her veins since she had reached womanhood began to recede. She felt the black mark on her throat fading, washed away by the brilliance. How could any darkness withstand this light?

The lead block warmed within her palms. It pulsed with its own heartbeat, like any living thing. With each passing second, it weighed less and less, until it felt as if it were floating above her fingers.

In her hand, the block had been replaced by pure golden light.

The radiance mesmerized her. It lit her eyes but did not burn them. She could gaze upon it forever, dwell forever in its light, explore its mystery for all time. Far above, the golden sun painted on the bottom of the baldachin outlined the painting of a white dove. The dove flew, free, in the light.

As did she.

But not for long.

The archaeologist and the soldier rushed toward her. The knights circled, closing in. Swiss Guard troops rushed down the nave. She was trapped. They would kill her, spill her blood on the book, steal its light from her.

As if sensing her fear, the radiance died away, fading until only an actual book rested in her palms, weighing down her hands.

She stared at the book, transfixed.

The tome was bound in ordinary sheepskin, its surface unadorned. Her fingertips caressed the worn leather while the scent of ancient sands rose up to her nostrils.

How could such brilliance shine from something so simple and ordinary?

Then she knew the answer.

She pictured Christ’s visage — an ordinary man’s face, hiding a wellspring of divinity.

Tears ran down her cheeks as a heavy ache returned to her blood.

Without touching her throat, she knew that the black mark had returned.

She shook her head to clear the glow that still filled her mind. It felt as if she had just awakened from a deep dream. But she did not have the luxury of distraction.

She stared out across the basilica, knowing what she had to do. She needed a way out and intended to create her own exit.

Moving swiftly, she leaped away from the altar into the apse behind her and retreated back toward the giant black marble throne high on the wall. It was the throne of Saint Peter, surrounded by popes and angels and rays of golden light that seemed cheap in comparison to what she had just witnessed.

Once far enough away from the altar, she reached into her pocket, found the transmitter she had hidden there, and pressed the detonator button.

The blast was a distant echo, like a clap of thunder beyond the horizon. The floor jolted under her feet. She’d planted charges deep in the necropolis below, beneath the very altar where she had been standing.

She watched with satisfaction as the marble floor shattered in front of her, cracking like broken ice under the heavy baldachin. The massive bronze canopy shook — then, as she watched, the entire structure crashed under its own weight through the floor, dropping cleanly through the hole.

Its base struck the floor of the necropolis below with the resounding boom of Heaven’s gate slamming shut.

So be it.

She waved rock dust and smoke from her eyes and watched as the baldachin came to a shuddering rest, sunk most of the way through the floor. Only the canopy still remained visible in the nave, tilted crookedly.

Her charges had worked perfectly.

On the far side of the hole, a Swiss Guardsman fell screaming into the crater as the edge broke under him.

To the left, the Sanguinists jumped back like startled lions, leaping into the transept on that side. The archaeologist and soldier took shelter to the right. More Swiss Guardsmen came rushing down the center of the nave toward the site of the destruction.

But the strigoi army below in the necropolis did not wait. With the sunset here, they swarmed up the twisted columns of the fallen baldachin, a horde of demons rising out of the Stygian darkness. They swarmed over the metal canopy and boiled into the basilica like ants fleeing from an anthill. Even weakened by the holiness of the sanctuary, they would make short work of the Swiss Guards and buy Bathory time to escape.

She leaped from the broken edge of the floor onto one of the huge angels atop the baldachin’s canopy. Holding the book in one hand, she wrapped the other around a gilded wing.

Gunshots cracked at her.

She swung, keeping the angel between herself and the sniper. She quickly tucked the book into the front of her shirt to free her hands — then stretched out on her stomach and lowered her legs over the edge of the canopy, her feet searching for toeholds in the ornamented capital of a column. With all of its fanciful decorations, the baldachin made a lovely hundred-foot-tall ladder leading down into the tunnels of the necropolis, the city of the dead that lay beneath the basilica.

Finding her footing, Bathory clambered down a twisted column of the baldachin, finding additional handholds among the metal garlands sculpted on the surface.

Far below, Magor howled for her.

She smiled, feeling the weight of the book against her breasts.

Together, they would escape Rome — and maybe even Him.

59

Jordan rolled off Erin. Had he hurt her? He had knocked her to the marble floor with some force when the explosion hit.

“Erin?”

She pointed behind him.

A cloud of dust obscured most of the basilica behind him, but Jordan swung his Heckler & Koch submachine gun out of his coat as he turned. He fired once, striking a strigoi in the shoulder as it stepped free of the pall of smoke. Dark blood sprayed against white stone. The strigoi backed off, more slowly than Jordan had expected, like it was walking through water. He trained his gun on it, but he hated to let loose in the basilica.

Had all the civilians gotten out?

He couldn’t see far through the dust to be sure, but he did spot the gaping hole with the black sculpture resting crookedly down its throat. He had to admire the skill of the enemy’s demolitions expert.

With his left hand he pulled Erin to her feet and handed her his Colt 1911 pistol.

She took it, her eyes on the wounded strigoi. “They seem dazed.”

“Must be the sanctified ground weakening them.” He kept his gun up and ready to fire. “But dazed or not, they’re blocking our way to the exits.”

“What do we do?”

He pulled her with him. “Let’s get into a corner where nobody can circle behind us.”

Erin resisted, pointing to the smoking crater in the floor. “We have to follow Bathory. She can’t escape with the Gospel.”

He sighed, resigned, knowing Erin would go after the woman anyway if he balked. “You’re the boss.”

She smiled at his tone.

Using the dust from the explosion as cover, the two of them circled around to the apse, edging closer to the hole. Erin kept one step behind, her pistol up, moving in tandem with him.

Most of the strigoi forces were concentrating their attention on the Swiss Guardsmen racing into the basilica with their guns blazing. Their lack of caution suggested that the civilians had been cleared out.

Good to know, Jordan thought.

He and Erin reached the back of the crater without drawing any attention. The entire baldachin leaned drunkenly before them, the canopy canted to one side. From the basilica floor, the bronze structure had appeared to be a hundred feet tall. Now only twenty feet stuck out, which meant an eighty-foot climb down into the darkness — with strigoi waiting at the bottom.

The dust to the right swirled, revealing two black-cloaked figures.

Rhun and the Cardinal.

“Take that woman out of St. Peter’s,” Bernard ordered.

“You try telling her that,” Jordan said.

Proving the impossibility of ordering “that woman” to do anything, Erin jumped from the crumbling marble edge out onto the bronze canopy. She teetered backward, then clutched at one of the smaller angels, one who held a crown aloft.

Jordan and Rhun jumped at the same time, landing to either side of her, both reaching to steady her. The Cardinal landed an instant later, higher up the canopy, next to the sphere that was topped by a cross. That seemed fitting.

“If you follow,” Rhun warned, “stay behind me.”

Without waiting for a response, the priest clambered down one side of the canopy.

Jordan gripped Erin’s shoulder before she moved, catching her eye. “As soon as you’re over the edge, get to the inside of the columns. Use that bronze bulk to shield you as much as possible if there is any shooting.”

She leaned forward and kissed him quick on the lips — then freed her grip on the angel, slid down the tilted bronze surface, and vanished over the edge.

With his heart in his throat, Jordan stood still for a moment, shocked, then hustled after her. No matter what, he had to keep her safe.

Reaching the edge, he flipped to his belly, lowered his legs, and discovered plenty of footholds and handholds. In moments, he was leaving the light above for the blackness below. Once this was over, he vowed to climb the tallest building he could find, sit up on its roof, and spend an entire day staring at the sun and enjoying a clean breeze on his face. But for now, he kept climbing down, again, following the blond crown of Erin’s head. She heeded his advice and got to the inside of the column.

He fitted his fingers into the shallow golden swirls decorating the column, moving fast, hoping to get as far down as he could in case he his lost his grip and fell.

Then a dark shadow, tinged with red, stormed past him.

The Cardinal.

“Be warned!” Bernard yelled as he passed. “The enemy is on all sides!”

Great.

Moments later, Jordan’s boots hit the stone floor. He clicked on the flashlight attached to his machine pistol. All around, black shapes converged upon him, boiling out of the dark passageways of the necropolis.

To the right, he spotted Bathory — shadowed by her massive grimwolf. The pair rounded a corner and disappeared into a black tunnel.

“Over there!” Jordan yelled, and pointed.

Rhun and the Cardinal stepped into formation, with Bernard at the head. Jordan took the left side, pushing Erin between him and Rhun. It wasn’t much, but it was the safest place for her. She brought her pistol up and fired once into the darkness.

Jordan turned and opened up with his machine pistol.

Dark blood splattered rough stone walls.

Ahead, the Cardinal grappled hand to hand with three strigoi, proving his spryness.

But at this rate, they’d never reach that tunnel.

Then a voice spoke at his ear, seemingly arriving out of thin air.

“I bring reinforcements.”

He turned to discover the cherubic, bespectacled Brother Leopold at his shoulder. Beyond his small frame, a cadre of Sanguinist monks — twenty strong — fell like rain from the baldachin and landed in a circle around Jordan’s group, already fighting before their feet hit the floor.

Leopold joined Jordan, pushing his eyeglasses higher on his nose, looking more like a kid brother than an undying warrior of Christ.

As if zeroing in on a weaker target, a strigoi lunged out of the darkness behind the short scholar; the flash of sword was the only warning.

Jordan reacted on pure muscle memory. He jerked his machine pistol up and caught the blade, deflecting it from Leopold’s neck. The edge still grazed a bloody line across the young Sanguinist’s shoulders.

The scholar’s eyes grew round.

Angered, the strigoi turned toward Jordan. He was a hulking figure with dark skin and pale tattoos, studs puncturing his nose and ears. Jordan remembered seeing the guy in Germany, at Bathory’s side. He figured him to be some sort of lieutenant for the Belial — which meant he must have helped orchestrate the attack on Jordan’s men in Masada.

The beast smiled, showing teeth.

“Get back, Leopold,” Jordan warned, ready to square off with this bastard, who only kept smiling.

The young monk’s eyes became huge as he stared at Jordan — or rather behind Jordan.

Caught in the reflection of Leopold’s eyeglasses, Jordan spotted movement.

He twirled, his American Bowie knife appearing in his fingers.

A gaunt, skeletal version of the larger lieutenant lunged at him, impossibly wide jaws going for his throat.

Jordan continued his spin and drove the silver-plated blade between those snapping jaws, punching it hilt-deep.

Chew on that.

The creature screamed, jerking straight up into the air like a jack-in-the-box, ripping the knife’s haft from Jordan’s fingers. As it flew high, smoke and boiling blood erupted from its mouth, from the back of its skull.

The body fell and struck the stone, already dead.

A scream of rage erupted behind him. “Rafik!”

Feral, grief-filled eyes fixed on Jordan.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Jordan growled. “Losing someone you love.”

The strigoi launched himself at Jordan, flying through the air, his cloak billowing wide, like a man-size icarops.

Jordan dropped to a knee, tilted his submachine gun up, and unloaded at full auto, shredding the monster in the chest with pure silver. “That’s for my men.”

The strigoi lieutenant clattered to the stone, his body steaming. But he was still alive, in agony, dragging himself toward the impaled Rafik.

Leopold scooped up the monster’s abandoned sword, the very weapon that had come close to killing him. He strode to the struggling strigoi.

The creature had almost reached his goal, extending a bloody arm, his fingers scrabbling to reach the one called Rafik, to touch him one last time.

Mercilessly, Leopold swung the sword in a blurring flash.

The strigoi’s head flew off his body, and the stretching arm fell limply to the floor.

The fingers dropped short, never reaching the other, the two remaining forever separated.

Leopold turned and stared around the cavern, his brow pinched in confusion. “Where did everyone else go?”

Jordan spun, searching the spot where Erin had been a half minute ago.

She was gone.

And Rhun with her.

60

Erin twisted to the side as a strigoi’s blade thrust toward her.

Then Rhun was there. He yanked her nearly off her feet and hauled her behind him. With one quick step forward, he slashed his blade across the strigoi’s throat, felling him like a sapling.

She stared around, realizing they were momentarily alone in the tunnel down which Bathory had fled. She glanced back. Out in the main necropolis, Sanguinists were flowing down the columns to join the subterranean battle.

“Return to Jordan when it’s safe,” Rhun said fiercely, brooking no argument as he nodded back to the fighting. “I shall overtake Bathory.”

With a swirl of his cassock, he disappeared down the dark tunnel.

With no choice, Erin faced the battlefield, heard the screams, smelled the blood. She searched the carnage until she spotted Jordan. He stood with his back to one of the metal plinths, firing at another tunnel that disgorged a flow of strigoi.

It was chaos, a hellish Bosch painting come to life.

She would never make it through that gauntlet. If the strigoi didn’t get her, friendly fire might. She turned back toward the empty tunnel that Rhun had taken. It seemed the safest choice.

She kept her light low and to the left, running her right hand along the side of the tunnel, feeling for a side tunnel. If she came to a crossroads and she didn’t know which direction Rhun had taken, she’d have to turn back.

Shots echoed ahead of her, coming from a place where a gray light flowed from around a bend in the tunnel.

She hurried forward — then a fierce, guttural growling flowed back to her, slowing her feet to a more cautious pace.

She brought up Jordan’s Colt, loaded with silver ammunition. She moved more warily as she reached the turn in the tunnel. Step-by-step, she edged around the bend.

The crack of a pistol made her jump.

A short way down the tunnel, she watched Rhun leap with unnatural speed past the bulk of the grimwolf, his gun smoking. Landing beyond it, he lunged down the tunnel, away from the wolf, ready to continue his pursuit of Bathory, who was nowhere in sight — but then he skidded to a stop, turning as he did so with incredible grace.

Over the bulk of the wolf, his eyes found her. No doubt he had heard her heartbeat or noted the shift in shadows as she arrived with her flashlight.

He wasn’t the only one.

The grimwolf jerked around, facing her, its teeth bared, its muscles bunched to spring.

“Erin, run!”

The beast’s ears twitched toward Rhun, but it didn’t turn from Erin.

Rhun came sprinting back, his pistol up, firing at the monster’s hind end.

That got its attention.

With a deafening howl, it surged around, and with a heave of its back legs, bowled into Rhun. Erin lost sight of him, blocked by the body of the wolf.

More shots were fired.

She pointed her Colt but didn’t fire, fearing she might strike Rhun with its silver bullets.

Then the wolf tossed its thick neck — with Rhun clutched in its jaws. The massive beast shook him like a rag doll. Blood sprayed the walls of the tunnel. Rhun lost his handgun and struggled to free a knife.

Knowing she had to help, Erin fired her pistol at the wolf, striking it in the shoulder. It twitched, but otherwise remained unfazed. She fired over and over, hoping that the cumulative load of silver might affect it. Pieces of fur ripped off its hide, but still it ignored her and slammed Rhun to the floor, its jaws clamped around his neck.

Rhun didn’t move.

Erin began to run forward — when she heard a high-pitched whistle slice down the tunnel.

Bathory.

The grimwolf dropped Rhun, shook blood from its muzzle, and bounded off down the dark tunnel.

Holstering her useless pistol, Erin rushed forward and skidded on her knees to reach him. Blood soaked her jeans — but it was not her own.

She shone her flashlight on Rhun. Blood wept down both sides of his torn throat. It bubbled from his lips as he tried to speak.

She pressed both hands against his wound. Cold blood covered her palms and seeped between her fingers.

He coughed his throat clear enough to issue a command: “Go back.”

“When you stop the bleeding.” The wounds were so deep that she did not see how he could do so, but she remembered how he had controlled his blood back in the Cardinal’s residence in Jerusalem.

He closed his eyes, and the blood from his neck slowed to a trickle.

“Good, Rhun, good.” She fumbled for the wineskin that was tied to his thigh.

“Not enough …”

The flask slipped from her blood-slicked hands and thumped to the floor. She picked it up, wiped one hand on her pants, and twisted the cap. It took three tries before it opened. Should she pour it on his wounds? Have him drink it? She remembered that Nadia had put it on his wounds first.

Following her example, Erin doused the wound.

Rhun groaned and seemed to fade away.

She shook his shoulder to keep him conscious. “Tell me what to do. Rhun!”

He opened his eyelids slowly, but his gaze slid past hers, staring at the ceiling before his eyes rolled back in his head.

Back in Russia, Rasputin had mixed human blood with the wine. That concoction had seemed to heal Rhun better than the holy wine alone.

Erin knew what he needed.

Not wine.

Not now.

Rhun needed human blood.

She swallowed. Her hand ran across the puncture wounds left by the collar Bathory had forced her to wear.

She looked down the tunnel. No sign of Bathory or the wolf. Erin knew she could never catch the woman. The best hope to secure the Gospel was still Rhun. If Bathory escaped Rome with the book, the world would be forever changed.

But was she ready to do this? To risk everything on her faith that her blood would cure Rhun? Every fiber of her scientific mind rebelled at the thought.

After escaping the compound, she had refused to succumb to superstition, finding no value in mere faith. She knew too well what had happened when her father and mother had stopped thinking logically. They had placed the fate of her infant sister, Emma, in the hands of an indifferent God — and Emma had died for those blind beliefs.

But over the past days, Erin had seen extraordinary things. She could not discount them; she could not explain them with logic and science. But was she ready to trust her life to a miracle?

She stared down at Rhun.

What choice did she have?

Even if she could fight her way back to Bernard and the other Sanguinists, to warn them, Bathory would be long gone by the time Erin fetched them here.

Bathory must not escape with the book. The stakes for the world were too high for Erin not to try everything — even the power of faith.

She leaned over Rhun, baring her neck to his cold mouth.

He did not move.

Reaching up, she raked her fingernails across the soft scabs on her throat, ripping them away. Blood began to flow. Again she pressed her bleeding throat against his open lips.

He snarled and turned his head, refusing to drink.

“You have to.”

His voice was a pained whisper. “Once I start, I might not …”

She finished his sentence: once started, he might not be able to stop.

Might was the important word.

It seemed, in order to do this, that she must put her trust not only in faith, but also in Rhun.

If I do not try, then the Belial will have already won.

She tilted her head, lowered her throat to his mouth.

Her blood pattered onto his lips.

He groaned deep in his throat, but this time he did not turn away.

Erin’s heart raced. She was still animal enough to want to run away — but in the end she wasn’t an animal. She remained steadfast, her mind flashing to Daniel entering the lion’s den.

I can do this.

Shifting her gaze, she forced herself to look at Rhun. His eyes grew alert, as if those few drops of blood had revived him.

He ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed. He took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her down.

She tensed, knowing she could still stop him in his weakened state. Her body continued to scream for her to flee. Instead, she took a deep breath and gave in to her faith.

Rhun shifted, laying her down on the stone floor beside him while he raised up on one elbow, a question glowing in his dark eyes.

She trembled from her bones outward.

“Erin.” He lingered on the n at the end of her name. “No. Not even for this price.”

She pleaded, “I can’t catch Bathory and the grimwolf. Only you can save the Gospel.”

She read defeat in his eyes, knew he could not fault her logic.

“But—”

“I know the consequences,” she said, repeating the same words she’d spoken before climbing down into the fissure in Masada. These were the consequences. “You must do it.”

His lips slowly lowered toward her, his face softened by tenderness. She marveled at his expression.

Still, he stopped. “No … not you …”

“It serves your vows.” She clenched her hands into fists. She thought of all those lives that would be destroyed if either of them balked from this act of duty. “The book is more important than the rules.”

“I understand … were you someone else, perhaps. But.” He tightened his hand on her shoulder. “I can’t feed on you.”

She stared into his face, seeing what was hidden behind that collar, behind those hidden fangs — a man.

He stroked strands of hair off her face, his fingers cold but very gentle, his hand cupping her cheek.

She had no words to convince him to break his vows as a priest.

She had no actions that would stir his bloodlust as a Sanguinist.

She had only one recourse.

To treat him as a man.

And she a woman.

She lifted her head from the stone, her eyes fixed on Rhun’s dark ones. She read the sudden flash of fear in their depths. He was as frightened as she was, perhaps even more. She ran her fingers through his thick hair, drew his mouth to hers. Rhun closed his eyes, and she kissed him. His cold lips brought the taste of blood into her mouth.

As she drew him to her, she felt the last of his resistance give way — the hardness in his lips softening and letting her come closer. His mouth parted, as did hers, as natural as a flower opening at dawn.

He shifted farther over her, his weight settling on top of her.

He should have been cold, but the heat in her was enough to warm both of them.

Her tongue found his, encouraging him. He moaned between their lips — or maybe the sound came from her. She felt the slow push of sharpness within his mouth, like a gate closing against her, but she held fast. Her tongue reached, punctured so sweetly on a point as sharp as a thorn.

Her blood welled, filling both their mouths.

But rather than tasting iron and fear, her senses burst with the essence of her life, a sweetness and burning heat that swept aside all fear. She could almost taste her own divinity — and she wanted more.

She pulled him tighter.

He clung to her, with the promise of cold iron and ecstasy.

The intensity of the sensation stunned her. Her body could not hold it, arching under him, with the rapture of life coursing between them, quick and rhythmic as her heartbeat.

He lifted his lips from hers, exquisitely close but not touching. Even such a slight distance left her feeling an aching emptiness. He moaned as if he felt it, too. His breath whispered across her lips.

He stared down, his eyes larger and darker than she’d ever seen them, offering glimmers of what lay beyond the grave.

Rather than feeling fear, she glowed against that darkness with the blaze of her own light, with the heat of her body.

She arched her neck, offered him her throat, daring him to drink from that blazing font — desiring it with every fiber of her being.

He took it.

A prick of fangs, testing — then plunging deep.

Heat flowed out of her, warming those cold lips at her throat.

She writhed beneath him, opening herself to the pleasure. Darkness closed around the edges of her vision. With each pulse, he swallowed her into his body.

Ecstasy filled those empty spaces between her heartbeats. Shatteringly fast at first as her body gave itself over to pure sensation. Then time slowed, and the pleasure expanded and grew even more intense. She waited for her heart to stop so that she could dwell in that feeling forever. Nothing else mattered.

Only bliss.

Then slowly, a soft light surrounded her, enveloped her — along with a love unlike any she had ever known. Here was the love she had wanted from her mother, from her father, from a baby sister who never had a chance to grow.

Somewhere far back, Erin knew she was dying — and she was so grateful for it.

She breathed in that light, as if taking her first breath.

Then she saw them.

Her mother stood in the tunnel of light. A little girl stood next to her. Emma. She had her baby quilt slung over her arm, the missing corner facing Erin. Her father stood behind them wearing his old red flannel shirt and jeans, as if he had just come back from the stable. He raised his arm and beckoned to her to join them. For the first time in many years, she felt no anger when she saw him, only love.

She reached her arms toward them all. Her father smiled, and she smiled back. She forgave him — and herself.

He had been bound by his faith, she by her logic.

At this moment they were beyond both.

Then that innocent light fractured.

And cold darkness rushed in.

She opened her eyelids. Rhun had pulled away from her. He rolled off of her and leaned against the wall, shaking. With the back of his hand, he wiped his mouth. Wiping away blood.

Her blood.

Her eyelids drifted closed, feeling a sting of rejection.

“Erin?” His chill fingertips brushed her cheek.

She trembled from cold and loneliness, consumed by the ache of all that she had lost.

“Erin.” Rhun lifted her into his lap and rocked her, his hands stroking through her hair, running along her back.

She forced herself to open her eyes, to look into his, to say the impossible. “Go.”

He held her so tightly that it hurt.

“Go,” she insisted.

“Will you be all right?”

He heard her heartbeat. He knew that she wouldn’t be. “Don’t waste my blood, Rhun. Don’t let this be in vain.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t—”

“I forgive you,” she breathed out. “Now go.”

He tore off his pectoral cross and laid it upon her chest. She felt the weight of it over her heart. It felt warm.

“May God protect you,” he whispered. “As I could not.”

He lowered her onto the filthy stone floor, covered her with his cassock, and left her.

61

On the hunt, Rhun ran.

Erin’s blood pulsed warm and strong through his veins. Her life sang within him. He had never felt such power surge through his limbs. He could run forever. He could defeat any foe.

His shoes skimmed the stone floor, not seeming to need even to touch it. Fast, and faster still. Air caressed his face, tendrils of wind stroked through his hair.

Even in his rapture, he grieved for Erin. She had given everything for the Gospel. And for him. Her learning, her compassion — they lay waning behind him. It should have been his darkness dying on the floor, not her light.

He would not waste her sacrifice.

Mourning would come later.

The musky odor of grimwolf painted the trail before him. In that scent, he read each heavy-pawed footfall, smelled each drop of blood, even as the creature healed and the drops grew smaller.

It could never escape him.

He would find them. He would retrieve the book. He would honor Erin’s sacrifice.

She would not be forgotten, not for one of all his endless days to come.

Jordan jogged along the tunnel, searching for Erin.

Leopold kept close behind.

The two had fought their way through the first wave of strigoi in order to open a path to this tunnel. Jordan hoped that Erin and Rhun had reached Bathory and retrieved the book.

After all of this bloodshed and horror, he just wanted to go home.

And when he pictured home — he pictured Erin’s face.

“There!” Leopold said, pointing ahead, spotting with his sharper eyes a body crumpled along the side of the tunnel.

Don’t let it be Erin. Don’t let it be Erin.

Jordan hurried forward, for once outpacing a Sanguinist. He led with his flashlight, sweeping his beam across the still figure.

Oh no …

With his heart thundering in his ears, he crashed next to her, reaching immediately for her throat to take her pulse. Her skin was cold, but a weak heartbeat throbbed in her neck.

“She’s alive,” he told Leopold.

“But barely.”

The young monk knelt and tore open Erin’s grimwolf jacket. Blood stained her white shirt, running down to her waist. Leopold drew a balm from his robes. As he opened the container, Jordan noticed that it stank like the ointment Nadia had used on his own bite wounds.

But would it be enough?

Leopold intoned a prayer in Latin as he spread it over Erin’s wound.

Jordan watched, holding his breath, shaking all over.

Within seconds, the bleeding slowed, then stopped.

Still, Erin lay unconscious on the ground, ghost white against the dark stone.

Leopold examined her arms and legs, probably looking for more bites. “Only her neck.”

Jordan shrugged off his coat and spread it over her body to warm her. He rubbed her cold hands. “Erin?”

Her eyelids fluttered as if she were dreaming — then slowly opened. “Jordan?”

“Right here.” He caressed her icy cheek. “You’re going to be fine.”

Her lips curved up ever so slightly. “Liar.”

“I never lie,” he said. “Eagle Scout, remember?”

But he did lie. She wasn’t going to be fine at all.

Leopold reached Jordan and touched a bite on his arm from which blood was oozing; the bite was from one of Rasputin’s minions and the wound had been torn open again during the struggle in the basilica. “Your blood type?”

“O negative. Universal donor.” Jordan’s heart leaped and he turned to the monk. “Can you do a direct transfusion from me to her?”

Leopold pulled his first-aid kit out of his pocket, muttering instructions. His hands moved with impossible swiftness, breaking apart a syringe, hooking it up to a tube, and placing a second tube on the other end.

As the young monk worked, Jordan stroked wisps of hair off Erin’s face. His hands lingered on her forehead, her cheeks. “Hang in there.”

He couldn’t tell if she heard him or not. What had attacked her? And where was Rhun? He looked up the tunnel, expecting to see the priest’s body. But the tunnel was empty. Had Rhun been taken?

Leopold ripped open an alcohol patch and swabbed Erin’s arm, then used another for Jordan’s.

“I must ask you to be silent, Jordan.” Leopold’s tone was no-nonsense. “I must hear both your heartbeats to see how much blood passes between you. I don’t want to kill you in this process.”

“Just save her.” Jordan leaned against the stone wall, watching Erin’s pale face.

Leopold stuck a needle in her arm, then Jordan’s. He barely felt it.

Time passed, interminable, in the dark.

To the side, Leopold attached a bandage to Erin’s neck. “We are fortunate. It’s a simple wound. Strigoi are not usually so careful when they feed.”

Jordan shivered at the thought of one of those monsters at Erin’s throat.

I should have been guarding her better.

After several minutes, Leopold pulled the needle from Jordan’s arm and taped a cotton ball over the hole. “That is all you can spare.”

“I can spare whatever she needs.” He pushed up straighter. “Do this right.”

Light glinted off Leopold’s round glasses as he shook his head. “You cannot bully me, Sergeant.”

Before Jordan could come up with a better argument, Erin opened her eyes; she looked bleary but still she seemed stronger than she’d been a few minutes ago. “Hey.”

Jordan slumped next to her against the wall and smiled. “Welcome back.”

“Her pulse is strong,” Leopold said. “With a little rest, she should be fine.”

Jordan asked a question, knowing the answer. “Who did this to you?”

Erin closed her eyes, refusing to speak.

Jordan lifted his hand, revealing what he’d found as Leopold ripped off her coat. He showed her the pectoral cross. “Rhun?”

Leopold flinched, aghast.

“Erin?” Jordan tried to control his anger so she wouldn’t hear it. “Did Rhun do this to you?”

“He had to.” Her fingertips traced the bandage at her neck. “Jordan, I begged him to.”

He barely heard her words as fury engulfed him.

That bastard had drained Erin and left her alone to die.

She struggled to sit up, to explain.

Jordan scooped her up in his arms and cradled her against his chest. He wrapped her in his arms. She was still so cold but had a little color back.

“We had to do this, Jordan, to heal him so he could keep Bathory from getting away with the Gospel. Rhun was almost dead.”

Jordan pulled her closer as she dropped her head against his shoulder.

Leopold readjusted the coat over them both, then turned his back. Crouched next to them, he swung his head from one side of the tunnel to the other.

Jordan rested his chin on top of Erin’s head. She smelled like blood. Under the coat, she curled up to nestle closer against his chest. He took in a shaky breath and let it go.

Leopold stood — a bit too swiftly.

“What is wrong?” Jordan asked.

Leopold faced him. “More strigoi are coming. It is not over.”

Erin winced when Leopold hauled her upright. With the other arm, he hoisted Jordan up onto his feet as if he weighed no more than a doll. Jordan staggered a step and caught himself. He was weaker than he let on. The blood transfusion had cost him.

Jordan pulled Erin’s arm over his shoulder and wrapped his other arm around her waist. She wanted to argue that she could walk on her own, but she suspected that she wouldn’t make it more than a few steps. This was no time for false pride.

“Go forward.” Leopold pushed them ahead, his eyes fixed on the tunnel behind.

She struggled to stay on her feet. She and Jordan did their best to run, but even by human standards they were slow.

Leopold guarded their rear, his blade drawn.

Echoing snarls grew louder behind them.

“There’s a bend up ahead,” Jordan said. “We can face them there.”

Leopold herded them forward — then waved them onward. “I stay. You go on.”

“No.” Jordan’s stride broke.

“You are the prophesied trio,” Leopold said simply. “My duty is to serve you. Find Rhun. Retrieve the book. That is your duty.”

Jordan set his jaw, but he said nothing.

“Go with God.” Leopold stopped at the bend in the tunnel, his sword flashing silver as he turned to face the enemy.

With no other choice, Erin fled with Jordan, chased by guilt at leaving Leopold. But how many others had already given up their lives to keep them moving forward? They had to honor that debt of blood by not giving up.

Savage screaming rose behind her, accompanied by the clash of steel.

Behind her, the boyish scholar was facing down the savage strigoi alone — but how long could he keep them at bay?

She concentrated on moving each heavy leg, refusing to surrender.

Jordan’s flashlight jolted up and down as they walked, illuminating the smooth stone floor, the massive blocks on the bottom of the tunnel, the rough stone arch that curved above their heads.

She lost track of time and distance. Her world narrowed down to the next step.

Far ahead, a light appeared, glowing dimly.

Jordan pulled her forward, drawing her toward it.

The light grew brighter.

The source appeared as they rounded a corner. It came from a flashlight, attached to the barrel of a pistol. Silhouetted against that light was the lithe form of Bathory, her red hair loose around her shoulders, her back to them.

She was pointing the weapon at Rhun.

Yards away, Rhun fought the grimwolf — pinned under its bulk.

The beast growled into his face, throwing slather, ready to tear his throat out. Only this time Rhun was strong enough to hold it back, the two now equally matched. But it took all of the priest’s renewed power to do so.

Riveted by the fighting, Bathory remained oblivious to Jordan and Erin’s sudden arrival. She stalked toward the warring pair with her pistol, intending to end the impasse between priest and wolf with a barrage of silver.

Trembling with weakness, Erin nudged Jordan with a silent command.

Help him!

Jordan’s face stayed hard. He stood, rigid, and did not reach for his gun.

Enough of this …

Erin slipped behind him and yanked out the Colt pistol. Earlier, she had fired almost an entire magazine at the grimwolf. The bullets had barely made it twitch. She couldn’t kill it with a pistol.

But she had to do something.

With her back still to them, Bathory stepped near the wolf, aiming her pistol at Rhun’s face.

“Now to set us both free.”

Erin noted the bandage on Bathory’s upper arm. It glowed white in the gloom.

The sight made her flash back to the Circus of Nero. She remembered the reopening of Bathory’s wound, how she pushed the wolf away from her in a panic, and how Mihir had kept his distance from the dripping blood. Erin had never seen a strigoi react in such a way to blood. Mihir had been afraid to step on even a single drop. Then she pictured Mihir’s blood smoking when it touched that silvery-crimson drop on the floor of the cell.

She knew what she had to do.

Erin shifted away from Jordan, putting Bathory between her and the wolf, calculating angles. She held the pistol steady in front of her with both hands, lined up the sights, and took a deep breath.

On the exhale, her left index finger squeezed the trigger.

The shot blasted loudly.

Bathory lurched forward, and the grimwolf howled in agony.

Jordan turned in surprise, but Erin kept her eyes on Bathory and lined up a second shot.

The grimwolf hurled its body away from Rhun and ran in a circle, snapping at its shoulder. The bullet had passed through Bathory’s body before it struck the wolf, carrying her blood with it. The wolf’s coat rippled, smoke boiling out from the bullet wound.

Bathory’s blood was toxic to the strigoi—and the blasphemare created by them.

Bathory swung around to face Jordan and Erin. Blood seeped through her shirt, low, above her right hip. Her eyes fastened on her enemies. Her lip raised in a sneer. She lifted her gun toward them.

Holding steady, Erin squeezed the trigger three more times.

The cluster of shots struck Bathory through the chest — and from there into the grimwolf’s flank.

Bathory fell backward, stumbling against the wall, crimson spreading across her chest. She slid to the floor, her silver eyes wide with surprise. Her gun clattered to the floor next to her limp arm.

The grimwolf collapsed with a mighty shudder. Blood smoked from its body and frothed from its mouth. Unable to stand now, it dragged itself on its belly, whimpering. A dark smear of blood trailed behind it.

The wolf reached Bathory and dropped its head into her lap. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around its head.

Beyond them, Rhun struggled to his feet and retrieved Bathory’s gun.

Straightening, he turned in Erin’s direction. When he saw her, his lips moved into a shadow of a tired smile, relieved to see her — and maybe something more. Either way, it was the first genuine and honest smile she had ever seen him give.

He looked young, vulnerable, and very human.

She stumbled toward him, but Jordan pulled her back. “That’s close enough.”

His gun was out and pointed at Rhun.

That smile fled Rhun’s face.

And the world was darker for it.

62

Magor …

Bathory cradled the wolf’s huge head in her lap. She felt his agony, heard his moan, poisoned by her blood. More silvery crimson flowed down her chest, pooling on her lap where he lay, boiling his skin, burning him in agony.

Please go … don’t die like this …

She tried to push him away, but he nuzzled closer into that pain so he could be with her.

Too weak to fight him, she leaned over as he rolled one eye up at her. She sang him a final lullaby. It had no words. She had no breath to form them. Her song came from somewhere deeper than language, where summer suns still shone on a little boy catching butterflies in a white net among tall green grasses. Her song was laughter and love and the simple warmth of one body holding another.

The world darkened at the edges, until it was reduced to just that pained eye staring lovingly up at her. She watched that crimson glow within it fade, becoming only a soft gold as the curse inside him faded, and Magor became, again, just wolf … leaving all the grimness behind.

The pain also faded from his great, loving bulk as she sagged over him.

The pain fled her blood, too, leaving only peace.

As darkness consumed them both, she willed one last message to her friend.

Let’s go find Hunor …

63

Rhun knelt before the ghost of Elisabeta.

He held the Gospel in his lap and prayed for her soul. How soft and young her face looked in death, the fire of hatred snuffed out, leaving a purity and innocence that had been corrupted in part by his act centuries ago.

He stared at the paleness of her long throat.

A black mark had once marred its beauty, a strangling imprint from some unknown hand. Rasputin’s words in the Hermitage came back to him, words about one woman from every generation of the Bathory line who was sentenced to a lifetime of pain and servitude.

Going back to the time of his defilement of Elisabeta.

But who could do such a thing? The Belial? If so, what interest was Elisabeta’s line to them; surely it could not just be to torture him? What was he not seeing here? Why prey upon the descendants of Elisabeta Bathory?

To what end?

Now, with this woman dead, he realized that he might never know the answers to these questions, that perhaps the chain had finally been broken.

As he stood, his prayers done, he stared down at the humble book that he’d taken from her.

Though a creature whose life was damned, he had brought this great goodness into the world. Perhaps the Gospel held the secret to restoring his own soul. He feared even wishing for such a thing, to be human again, with a heartbeat and warm flesh to share.

Erin stood several paces to his right, waiting, Jordan beside her, his machine pistol up and ready. After what the Sanguinist himself had done to her, he could not blame the man.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Erin asked.

Rhun opened the book and turned it around so that Erin and Jordan could see the pages. “I have,” he said.

The first page contained only a single paragraph, written in Greek. The rest of the pages remained empty, possibly awaiting further miracles before more text would come to light. But what was there was frightening enough.

The two came closer, drawn by the curiosity that burned so brightly in those with the shortest lives.

“What the hell?” Jordan groaned. “All of this for one paragraph. It had better be good.”

Erin stared at the page as if she might cause more words to appear by force of will alone. She translated what she saw. “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.”

“You’re supposed to be a priest.” Jordan shifted back a pace. “If the book needs a blessing, then go ahead and bless it.”

“I am not the First Angel.” Rhun ran his hand down the smooth leather cover, longing to know what else might be revealed, sensing he held only the beginning of a greater truth. “The book must be blessed by the first one, someone pure in heart and deed. Only then will more be learned.”

“That leaves you right out, doesn’t it?” Jordan said.

“Jordan!”

“He is correct.” Hating to part with it, Rhun handed the book to Erin. “I am not pure. Even today my actions showed this to be so.”

“If we had not done what we did, then the book would be gone.”

Rhun watched a blush rise to Erin’s cheeks and heard her heart beat faster. What had it been like for her when he’d fed on her, that it shamed her so to think of it? He thought back to the long-ago night when he had been turned.

“I don’t approve of the price Erin paid.” Jordan glared at him.

“It wasn’t your choice.” Erin hugged the book and turned away. “It was ours.”

She walked back the way they had come, one steadying hand on the wall. Rhun wanted to pick her up and carry her, but he did not trust himself to touch her.

Jordan fought the urge to shoot Rhun.

As if he knew, Rhun held out his hands. “She needs us both now.”

The bastard was right; he and Erin needed Rhun’s protection to get out of this subterranean charnel house. Jordan could not protect her down here. Rhun could.

He lowered the gun. “But not forever.”

Rhun nodded. “When she is safe, you must follow your conscience.”

Jordan went after Erin. She stumbled forward, sliding along the wall. He pulled her arm over his shoulder and slid another one around her waist.

She tensed, displaying her anger.

Why is she mad at me? I didn’t leave her to die.

He gritted his teeth and started walking. She leaned against him, probably because she couldn’t help herself.

Rhun ghosted past them and settled into a position a few yards in front. He looked fresh, ready to take on a pack of strigoi single-handed. If Erin was right and he had been near death, her blood had definitely given him a shot of energy.

Jordan’s head throbbed, his wounds ached, and his arms and legs were done for the day. He’d come out on the short end of this transfusion party.

Rhun sped up, and Jordan lost sight of him.

Jordan tightened his grip around Erin and tried his best to follow Rhun, cursing his damnable speed.

The reason for Rhun’s haste became clear as they rounded a corner.

Rhun was kneeling next to a prone black-clad figure.

Brother Leopold.

Rhun reached out and pulled him upright. Leopold looked terrible, but he was still alive.

“The book?” Leopold croaked hoarsely.

“Safe,” Rhun assured him.

Upon hearing that single word, the monk collapsed. Rhun lifted him in his arms and trotted down the tunnel toward the necropolis.

At the end of the tunnel, he was greeted by the sight of corpses that littered the ground around the sunken baldachin. Strigoi and Sanguinist blood ran slick across the floor, making for treacherous footing as they worked their way across the killing field. A handful of Sanguinists searched and patrolled, but apparently the war was over.

So many casualties for the sake of the book Erin carried.

How could it possibly be worth it?

Jordan drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Erin tightened her arms around him, pulling him close to her. The book in her hands pressed against his back. When he lowered his head to her shoulder, his cheek brushed the bandage on her throat.

He would never forgive Rhun for that.

64

Half the night later, Erin walked between Jordan and Rhun as they descended beneath Rome, far deeper than the necropolis where the battle had been fought and won. The remaining strigoi had been slaughtered or driven away. One of the enemy had even been converted to the order, beginning his long road to donning the cloth of the Sanguines.

Erin continued down the steps, carrying the book. A soft glow had begun to shine again from its leather cover, illuminating the smooth stone walls. Its light grew brighter the deeper they went, as if it were drawn toward a power source. But where were they headed? Rhun had yet to reveal their destination.

As they continued ever deeper, she felt stronger than she had in days. She and Jordan had spent a few hours being nursed back to health, learning that the pope had pulled through his surgery and was expected to make a full recovery. The old man was tougher than he looked.

Nate, too, was doing well.

Erin had eaten, napped, showered, and now finally wore clothes that were not saturated with blood. Next to her, Jordan looked revitalized. Was it the rest or the grace of the book’s golden glow that suffused them now? With each step, strength surged through her. Warmth and light spread not just through the hall, but through her body and, maybe, her soul.

Still, she remembered Bathory, bent in death over her wolf. Though her death had been necessary, Erin could not escape a measure of guilt at taking her life, sensing that Bathory was less villain than pawn. But she kept such thoughts pushed back for now and focused on the task ahead.

Golden light bathed the limestone walls around her, walls that had been cut through the earth with ancient hammers and chisels, forming an arched point high above, like a Gothic cathedral that stretched down for miles. This must have taken lifetimes to build.

Underfoot, the floor was ice-smooth, worn down the center by the passage of many soles. Here was a new kind of ancientness, neither that of a deserted tomb nor that of an old street that now supported cars where it had once supported only hooves and feet. Down in this subterranean cathedral, the slow rhythms of the air seemed changeless but alive.

The tunnel ended at a vast chamber. The vaulted ceiling soared fifty feet above them, reminding Erin of St. Peter’s Basilica.

But this room had none of the opulence of the church far above. This place was unadorned. Its beauty came from the simplicity of its lines, the smoothness of the curves that drew the eyes ever upward. No man-made objects strove to distract or to glorify.

Torches guttered in wrought-iron holders were fastened to the stone. Far above, lines of soot streaked the ceiling.

Rounded alcoves lined the walls. Each space held a simple round plinth. On most of the bases stood detailed statues of men and women, most as emaciated as Piers had been, but these looked peaceful and beatific, not anguished.

Erin paused to stare at one. Gold light from the book washed across a beautiful woman, her hair loose to her waist, eyes closed, cheekbones high, with an enigmatic smile and slender hands folded in prayer beneath her chin. A silver cross around her neck caught the book’s light.

Erin had never seen anything more beautiful. The expression etched on that face reminded her of her mother when she sang a lullaby late at night, her father long since gone to sleep, and she and her mother cuddled together in Erin’s bed.

The book pulsed against her, drawing away her sense of loss, reminding her that nothing was ever truly lost.

As she stared at the woman, she knew then that it was no statue; it was a Sanguinist in deep meditation. Rhun had mentioned such people in passing.

The Cloistered Ones.

She smiled and moved forward again, heading deeper into the cathedral.

“We should stay near the exit,” Jordan said, his wary suspicion shining in the dark.

She glanced to him. He had not spoken to Rhun since they found Leopold.

“I want to learn about the First Angel.” She turned to Rhun. “That’s why we’re down here, isn’t it?”

Rhun bowed his head in acknowledgment. “We seek the oldest of all. The only one who can bless the book. The Risen One.”

Erin’s heart skipped a beat. Even Jordan looked shaken.

The Risen One?

She had seen enough miracles in the past few days not to dismiss Rhun’s words. She pictured the crucifix that used to hang above her bed at the compound.

Could she be about to meet the figure on that cross?

The one who rose from the dead three days after his crucifixion?

Rhun fingered his rosary, running through prayers to calm his mind. He was in awe of the Risen One, the one who had made their order possible, the one who had taught those such as Rhun that even the damned could seek forgiveness. Without him, Rhun would have become no more than a tainted animal.

He pushed forward into the sanctuary.

Jordan started when a figure in one of the alcoves moved, the face turning toward them. “The statues are alive. Like Piers.”

“No.” Rhun shook his head. “Not like Piers. They are not trapped and suffering. They have sought out this sanctuary.”

Erin’s eyes took in the scene. “Why?”

“After many long years of service, many choose to retire here, to spend their eternal existence in contemplation.”

He knew some had been here a millennium, sustained by no more than the smallest sips of sacramental wine.

Jordan’s eyebrows lifted.

Rhun smiled. “I, too, sought to shed the world in this place.”

“What happened to that plan?” Jordan didn’t sound pleased that Rhun hadn’t abided by that choice.

“Cardinal Bernard called me to service.”

Rhun was grateful that he had answered the call. He had discovered the book, yes, but he had also found Jordan and Erin, and a new life. Perhaps, with the aid of the book, he might shed his curse, walk in sunlight without pain, partake of simple meals, and live the life of a mortal priest.

Erin shifted, warm next to him.

Or perhaps he could live the life of a mortal man, outside the walls of the Church.

The book glowed brighter in her hands.

Rhun knelt and bowed his head in supplication.

The book knew his deepest desires.

Then footsteps approached out of the darkness ahead, out of the blackness of time.

The Risen One had come.

Erin dropped to her knees next to Rhun, and Jordan followed suit. The book trembled in her arms. She wasn’t ready.

“Rise,” commanded a hoarse voice.

As one, all stood, heads still bowed.

“Thou hast brought me the book, Rhun?”

“Yes, Eleazar.”

Erin smothered a gasp. Eleazar? She remembered that this was the name of the one who had first hidden the book in Masada. Here was not the risen Jesus Christ, but a different miracle come to life.

Someone else who had risen long ago.

Jordan tilted his head to look at her, his eyes asking a question. He didn’t know who faced them.

She did. They did not stand before Christ.

Eleazar was the ancient form of a name now translated as Lazarus.

Here was the spiritual leader of the Sanguinist branch of the Catholic Church, just as the pope was the spiritual leader of the human branch of the Catholic Church.

Keeping her head bowed, she offered him the book, and he took it.

“Ye all may look upon it.”

She raised her head, still afraid to look upon him. But she did. The figure before her was tall, taller than Jordan. Long white hair flowed back from an unlined face. Deep-set eyes were dark brown, like olives, and his stern face smiled at her.

He turned the book so that all could see it, then opened the cover.

Golden light flowed from the page, but the crimson letters, written in ancient Greek by Christ’s own hand, could be easily read. Erin had them already memorized.

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.

Lazarus seemed to take the words in at a glance. “As you see, the book is safe. Ye have done well. This battle is won, and without that victory all hope would have been lost.”

“That sounds promising,” Jordan said.

“But war still looms. To prevail, ye must seek out the First Angel.”

Erin stared at him in disbelief.

“Isn’t that you?” Jordan asked.

“No,” Lazarus said. “It is not.”

Erin looked around the vast cavern. “Then who is the First Angel?”

Tommy fiddled with his bootlaces. Alyosha had promised that today he could go outside. He’d only been cooped up for a few days, but it felt like forever. He wanted to see the sky, feel the wind, and he wanted to escape.

A pearl-handled knife had dropped from Alyosha’s pocket when he was playing video games a few days ago. Tommy had covered it with a pillow, then hid it under his mattress. It was in his pocket now. He didn’t know if he could hurt anyone. He’d never even been in a fight at school.

His parents had always taught him that violence didn’t solve anything, but he thought it might solve this problem. Asking politely sure hadn’t helped.

The door opened. Alyosha stood there, holding a snow-white fur coat. The strange kid wore only pants and a light shirt, not bothering even with a jacket. Probably why he was always so cold.

Tommy shrugged into the unusual coat. “What’s it made of?”

“Ermine. Very warm.”

Tommy stroked his hand along the front. It was the softest thing he’d ever felt. How many little creatures had been killed and skinned to make it?

Alyosha led the way down a long hall, up a flight of stairs, and through a thick steel door painted black. Paint flaked off into the snow when Alyosha slammed it behind him.

Tommy spun in a slow circle. They were in a city, in a deserted parking lot. Dirty snow had been crossed by many feet. The sky was overcast and dark gray, as if a storm or night threatened.

Seeing his chance to escape, Tommy made a break for it, but Alyosha was suddenly in front of him. Tommy cut to the right, hoping to get around him and run along the side of the building. Alyosha jumped in front of him again. Tommy dodged left.

But Alyosha stopped him yet again.

Tommy pulled out the knife. “Out of my way!”

Alyosha threw back his head and laughed to the uncaring gray clouds.

Tommy tried to turn, to flee, but he slipped on the ice and caught himself before he fell into the dirty snow. Alyosha had just been playing with him. He would never be able to escape. He’d be stuck here forever, eternally bound to this cruel kid.

Alyosha’s gray eyes glittered with malice. He reminded Tommy of a shrike. Shrikes were cute little birds, but they survived by impaling their prey on thorns and waiting for them to bleed to death. Skeletons of smaller birds and mice littered the ground around their nests.

“You won’t let me go, will you?” Tommy asked.

“He cannot let you go,” boomed a voice from behind them.

Tommy spun around so fast he fell. Gray slush stained his coat. Alyosha dragged him up painfully by one arm.

A priest in a black robe crunched across the snow toward them. At first, Tommy thought it was the priest from Masada because he wore the same kind of uniform, but this one was taller and broader, and his eyes were blue instead of brown.

“I have been waiting a very long time for you, Tommy,” the priest said.

“Are you the one who Alyosha says is like me?”

“Alyosha?” The man frowned, then smiled as if at a private joke. “Ah, that is a — how do you Americans call it? — a slang name. His full title is Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, prince of Russia, heir to the true throne of the Russian Empire.”

Tommy frowned, believing the man was joking. “You didn’t answer my question.”

The priest smiled. A cold chill ran down Tommy’s back. “How rude of me. No, I am not like you. I am like Alyosha.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. And we are going to be great friends.”

Above the man’s head, a flock of gray pigeons wheeled — and in their midst, a snow-white bird danced high, finding a beam of light in this gray day. Tommy’s gaze caught upon it, while he remembered the wounded bird back in Masada, the dove with the broken wing. He remembered picking up that injured bird — just before his life fell apart.

Had that act of kindness and mercy doomed him?

He squinted up as the white bird swooped low, passing over the scene. It stared down at Tommy — first with one eye, then the other.

Tommy shuddered and tore his gaze away from the skies.

The bird’s eyes had shone green, like slivers of jeweled malachite.

Same as the dove in Masada.

How could that be? How could any of this be?

Any moment now, I’ll wake in a hospital room with tubes and drugs running into me.

“I want to go back to my old friends,” he said, not caring if he sounded like a petulant child.

“You shall make a great many new friends over the course of your long, long life,” Mr. Rasputin said. “That is your destiny.”

Tommy looked back at the birds. He longed to be up there, flying free with them. Why couldn’t that be his destiny?

To have wings.

65

Rhun touched his cross. They had won the battle. He shuddered to think how close they had come to losing it all. But they had triumphed.

Eleazar paused. He turned the book back to face him and ran his finger under the lines, reading it again, as if he had gotten it wrong the first time. But the words were the same.

“So we won the first battle,” Jordan said.

“But what about this ‘War of the Heavens’ … and the ‘First Angel’?” Erin asked.

“We found the book,” Jordan said with firm conviction. “We can find an angel. I bet the angel is bigger than the book was. How hard can it be, right?”

Erin laughed and leaned against him. “Right.”

The soldier was correct. They had accomplished the impossible once already. Rhun looked to Eleazar. “Where shall we begin?”

Eleazar furrowed his brow. “The prophecy. Return to the prophecy.”

Rhun waited.

Eleazar recited it. “The day shall come when the Alpha and the Omega shall pour his wisdom into a Gospel of Precious Blood that the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve may use it on the day of their need.

“Until such day, this blessed book shall be hidden in a well of deepest darkness by a Girl of Corrupted Innocence, a Knight of Christ, and a Warrior of Man.

“Likewise shall another trio return the book to the light. Only a Woman of Learning, a Knight of Christ, and a Warrior of Man may open Christ’s Gospel and reveal His glory to the world.”

“We did that,” Jordan said. “What do we need to do next to find the angel?”

Eleazar closed the book. “That may never come to pass.”

“Why not?” Jordan said with a frown. “We found the book, didn’t we?”

Eleazar sighed and hope drained from Rhun with that exhaled breath. “There is a chance that the trio has already been sundered,” Eleazar warned.

What was the Risen One saying? Rhun asked himself. How could the trio have been sundered? They were all here. He put one hand on Jordan’s sleeve, the other on Erin’s.

Then Erin closed her eyes. She grew pale.

“What is it, Erin?” Jordan asked.

She cleared her throat. “What if I am not part of the trio? What if I am not the Woman of Learning?”

“What are you talking about? Of course you are. You solved the mystery of the Gospel. Without you, we never would have found it. You were there when we turned it into a book.” The soldier spoke patiently, no worry in his voice.

But fear crept up Rhun’s spine.

“Remember the wording of the prophecy,” she said. “It says the trio opens Christ’s Gospel and reveals His glory to the world.”

“And?” Jordan asked.

Erin shook her head miserable. “I wasn’t there when the book opened. I didn’t cross the threshold of the basilica before the golden light burst from the book. You did. Rhun did. But I didn’t. I was still outside with the guard.”

“And you think that’s relevant?” Jordan protested. “Like one step across the threshold matters?”

“If I am not the Woman of Learning, Bathory was.” Erin took another deep breath. “And I killed her.”

Rhun strove to find a flaw in her logic, but, as usual, found none. Everyone had assumed that Erin was the Woman of Learning: she had been in Masada, in Germany, in Russia, and in Rome. But Bathory, too, had been in those places. She had been one step ahead of them. She had followed the clues that led to the book, and she had determined how and where it was to be opened. And she had been the one holding the book when it transformed.

Rhun closed his eyes, sensing the truth.

Could Cardinal Bernard have been correct all along about Elizabeth Bathory? Is that why the Belial had started collecting a Bathory of each generation and bonding her to their foul purpose, to preserve the Woman of Learning among their own fold?

If this were true, how could they ever hope to find the First Angel?

According to Cardinal Bernard, the woman killed in the necropolis was the last of the Bathory line.

But Rhun knew that wasn’t entirely true.

“You guys are nuts,” Jordan said, interrupting his thoughts. “Erin did all the heavy lifting on this. And Bathory is dead. If the book is so smart, why would it set an impossible task?”

“The Warrior has wisdom,” Eleazar said. “Perhaps he speaks truth. Prophecy is often a two-edged sword that cuts down all who attempt to interpret it.”

Erin looked unconvinced.

Eleazar bowed his head, his gaze fixing on Rhun.

Rhun knew that all was not lost.

“I have another matter to discuss with Father Korza,” Eleazar said to the others. “If we might have a moment alone.”

“Of course,” Erin said, and moved off with Jordan.

When the two were no longer in sight, Eleazar spoke again, in a whisper. “Thou must forsake this woman, Rhun. I have seen thy heart, but it cannot be.”

Rhun heard truth in those words; it settled in his bones. “I shall.”

Eleazar stared long and hard at Rhun, as if peeling away his flesh and baring his bones. The feeling was not entirely fanciful, as Eleazar’s next words proved. “Is there another of the line of the Woman of Learning?”

Rhun bowed from those penetrating eyes. He knew what was asked. He must own all his sins, unearth all his secrets, or all the world might be lost.

He faced Eleazar with tears in his eyes. “You ask too much.”

“It must be done, my son.” Eleazar’s voice held pity. “We cannot hide from our past forever.”

Rhun knew how much Eleazar had also given up for the world — and knew it was time for Eleazar to face that past, too.

Rhun reached into the deep pocket inside his cassock and drew out the doll he had retrieved from the dusty tomb in Masada. It was a tattered thing, sewn from leather, long gone hard, with one eye missing. He placed the bit of the painful past into Eleazar’s open palm.

Eleazar had lived for so long that he was more like a statue than any of the Cloistered Ones, resolute, unmoving, more like marble than flesh.

But now those stone fingers shook, barely able to hold aloft the tiny, frail toy. Instead, Eleazar brought it to his chest and cradled it close, as if it were a living child, one he mourned deeply.

“Did she suffer?” he asked.

Rhun thought about the small body hanging on the wall in Masada, pinned by silver bolts that would have burned inside her until she expired.

“She died serving Christ. Her soul is at peace.”

Rhun stood and left the Risen One to his grief.

As Rhun turned away, he caught a glimpse of marble breaking.

Eleazar bowed his head.

A tear fell and spattered mournfully upon the doll’s stained face.

66

Rhun ran through the darkness with unearthly speed, a hammer clenched in his hand. It had been many centuries since his feet had walked these pitch-dark tunnels, but the way opened before him as if his body had always known that it would return here.

He descended deeper than the temple of the Cloistered Ones, deeper than most dared venture. Here he had hidden his greatest secret. He had lied to Bernard; he had broken his vows; he had done penance for it, but never enough.

And now his sin was the only thing that might save them.

He stopped before a featureless wall, ran one hand across it, felt no seam. He had covered it well, four hundred years before.

Rhun raised the hammer above his head and struck the wall. Stone shuddered under the blow. It gave. A mere hairsbreadth, but it gave.

He struck again and again. Bricks crumbled until a small opening appeared. Barely large enough to admit him. That was all he needed.

He climbed through the rough stone, not caring how it scratched his skin. He had to reach the dark room beyond.

Once there, he lit a candle he had brought along with him. The scent of honey and beeswax unfolded in the chamber, driving back the odors of stone, decay, and staleness.

The pale yellow flame reflected off the polished surface of a black marble coffin.

He worked the lid off and lowered it to the rough stone floor of the cell.

The smell of sacramental wine bloomed free. The wet black surface drank the light.

Before he drew out the contents, Rhun cupped his hand and drank of the wine. He would need every ounce of holy fortification for the task ahead. But before the strength, as always, came the penance.

Rhun walked to Rome. Weeks of trekking day and night through cold dark mountain passes had shredded his shoes and then his feet. When he could walk no farther, he sought sanctuary in remote mountain churches, drinking a mouthful of wine before driving himself out into the wild again.

Bernard met him in Rome and took him deep under St. Peter’s Basilica, where only the eldest of their kind dared to go. There Rhun did his penance. He fasted. He prayed. He mortified himself. None of his actions lightened the stain of his sin.

A decade later, Bernard sent him out into the world of men again, this time on a new mission to Čachtice Castle, a final penance to rid the world of what his sin created.

Armed men around him kept their swords drawn. Fear shone in their faces, beat through their racing hearts. They were right to be afraid.

The Palatine and Counts led, casting nervous glances back at their men, as if they feared that their men could not save them. They could not. But Rhun could. He prayed that he would not have to. That the stories were false. That his corrupted love had not caused this.

But he had also heard other stories … of macabre experiments in the dead of night, hinting that there remained some dark purpose to her atrocities, some semblance of her intelligence, of her healing arts, turned to foul intention. That scared him most of all — that some part of her true nature still existed within that monster, degraded now to evil ends.

As they reached the entrance to the castle, men shifted, quick breaths forming clouds in cold air.

The Palatine knocked on a stout oak door built to withstand battering rams. For a moment Rhun prayed that no one would answer, and they would be forced to lay siege to the castle, but Anna opened it. Her birthmark still stained her face, but she was otherwise unrecognizable. Gaunt as a skeleton and covered in scars, she wore only a stained chemise against the biting cold.

The Palatine forced the door open wide. Darkness cloaked the interior, but Rhun smelled what they would find there. Deep underneath that, he also caught the odor of rotten chamomile.

Count Zríni fumbled to light a torch, the burning pitch smell a sharp note in the bouquet of death.

The Palatine took the torch and stepped into the castle. Torchlight fell on a young girl lying stone-cold on the floor. Bruises marred her white flesh. Frozen blood coated her wrists, her neck, the inside of her thighs.

The Palatine crossed himself.

Behind them, a soldier retched into the snow. Rhun took off his cassock and covered the body. But the Church did not have enough cassocks to hide his shame. He had killed this girl as surely as if he had opened her throat himself.

A few steps farther in, two girls huddled under a filthy wooden table. The blond one was barely clinging to life. Her heartbeats fading. He knelt in front of her and administered Last Rites.

“Thank you, Father.” The dark-haired girl’s voice rasped from a damaged throat.

He lowered his eyes in shame. The deaths here weighed on his conscience, as did all those whom Elisabeta had killed. The love of a Sanguinist brought only death and suffering.

A soldier picked up the still-living girl and carried her to the barren fireplace. He gave her his coat and lit a fire, his eyes focused on his task. Rhun closed her friend’s eyes for the last time. Both so young, barely out of girlhood.

A scream cut through the castle. The Palatine cocked his head, as if to locate the sound. Rhun knew where it came from. Elisabeta’s private chambers.

He stood and led.

One of the men at arms followed close on his heels. The Palatine seemed to have lost his taste for leadership and trailed near the back. Elisabeta had once called him cousin. The Palatine had chosen the other noblemen because of their ties to her. Each was married to one of her daughters. She would be taken in the presence of nobility, as her stature required.

Rhun pushed open Elisabeta’s bedroom door. Inside, a child sobbed in a black corner. Another girl stood in a spiked cage suspended high in the air. Elisabeta stood, naked under it. Two servants swung it from side to side, slamming the girl’s soft body against the cage’s sharpened spikes. Crimson dripped on Elisabeta’s white skin.

Horrified, Rhun fought back tears. He had brought them to this.

The men at arms rushed to apprehend the servants and stop the cage from swinging.

Now the Palatine stepped forward again. “Lady Widow Nádasy, I arrest you in the name of the king.”

“You shall pay dearly for this intrusion.” Elisabeta made no attempt to cover her nakedness. Dark hair swung across her white back as she turned to face the men.

Her face set when she recognized them. “So.” A smile hardened her lips. “You have come to die.”

Rhun stepped between her and the men. She could kill them all, but not him. He drew a knife from his sleeve.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t make me do this.”

She stumbled back. “What more would you take from me, Rhun?”

He flinched, then held the knife out where she could see it.

Her lovely silver eyes lingered on the blade. “That is all you have to pierce me with, priest?”

He moved closer. The warm blood smell rising off her skin intoxicated him. He fought his desires.

“Careful, darling,” she whispered. “I have seen that look on your face before.”

He murmured a prayer, then looped a silk cord around her bare wrists and bound them together.

“There is blessed silver inside,” he told her. “If you try to break free, it will burn to the bone.”

“Cover her,” ordered the Palatine.

The Palatine threw a soiled blanket across her bloodstained shoulders.

She interlaced her fingers as if in prayer. Her eyes found his. He read sorrow there and regret and, still yet, love.

He waited to come back from the past, to inhabit this dank cell.

Once fully returned, he dipped his arms deep into the scalding bath of holy wine. At the bottom, his cold hands found what he sought and drew her forth, back into the world after centuries of slumber.

Wine had stained her fine green cloak burgundy, but her alabaster face shone as white as the day he had immersed her here instead of killing her as Bernard had ordered. He stroked long, dark hair off her still face, caressed her high forehead, her curved cheeks. She was as beautiful as she had been the moment he first saw her, four hundred years ago. Before he destroyed her soul and made her a strigoi, she had been a good woman. She had been a healer. She had almost healed him.

Almost.

Rhun whispered a prayer.

Elisabeta’s soft storm-gray eyes opened, found him.

Lips moved, no words, only air.

Still Rhun understood what she tried to say, still lost in her dream, her anger still somewhere in the past, leaving only those two words formed by perfect lips.

My love …

Erin stumbled up the long dark tunnel. Without the golden light of the book to guide them, Jordan had clicked on his flashlight. Compared with the book, its pale blue light looked cold and feeble. He kept an arm across her shoulder all the long way up.

They came at last to the collapsed baldachin, its base resting on the floor of the tunnel, its canopy extending up into the basilica. The bodies were gone, and the Sanguinists had strewn sand over the blood.

Erin tried to step around the piles, but sand was everywhere. It felt gritty under her shoes, reminding her of the desert around Masada, of her dig site in Caesarea. How would things have played out if she had stayed in the trench with Heinrich, had pulled him out of the way of the horse, had never gotten into the helicopter? He would still be alive, but the Belial would have the book. There would be no hope. They had opened Pandora’s box, and the evil had escaped, but hope remained. Not just hope, but a path forward to keep the world safe.

“Halt!” A Sanguinist blocked their path. He was thin, with long spidery fingers. “What is your business here?”

“Sergeant Jordan Stone,” Jordan said. “And Dr. Erin Granger.”

“Two parts of the trio.” The man’s voice was reverent. “My apologies.”

The Sanguinist gestured to a ladder that had been leaned against the baldachin.

“Ladies first,” Jordan said.

Erin climbed, and at the top, needed help to awkwardly step from the ladder back onto the marble floor of the basilica. The immense scale of the building hit her all at once. Everything here was many times larger and grander than life. From the baldachin that now rested on the graves below to the soaring ceilings of Michelangelo that formed a false sky above. She spun in a slow circle, taking in white walls, opulent gilding, graceful statues, and sophisticated art. Men had accomplished great things in this place.

Resolution settled inside her breast at the sights.

They would find the First Angel and make sure that such wonders were protected.

Jordan climbed up next to her and took her hand. Here, too, piles of sand on the polished floor soaked up blood, marking the spots where strigoi, Sanguinists, and men had died.

She kept her eyes on the elaborate designs worked into the marble floor and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding the sand. The energy she had received from the book was long gone.

Jordan’s legs moved them steadily toward the front door.

He stopped before they reached the portico and veered left.

She raised her eyes from the floor to see what had captured his attention. Michelangelo’s Pietà. The marble sculpture depicted Mary on the rock of Golgotha, cradling her recently crucified son. Christ lay spread across her lap, head back, arm dangling limply. Mary’s head was tilted down, her face marked by sadness. She mourned the loss of her precious son. The death that set these events in motion all those years ago.

Jordan stared at the sculpture.

Erin cleared her throat. “Jordan?”

“Just thinking of the families I’ll have to visit when this is over: the Sandersons, the Tysons, the Coopers, and the McKays. The mothers who will look just like that.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist.

Eventually, he took her hand again and they stepped out of the basilica into the fresh air of an Italian morning.

He led her to the stairs that rose to the top of the dome.

“It’s a long climb.” His eyes asked if she wanted to make it.

“I’ll go first,” she answered, and wended her way up the 320 steps. The sky had lightened to pale gray. Soon the sun would break free of the horizon.

She reached the top, breathing hard. Jordan marched to the east side of the cupola and flung himself down. He patted the floor next to him, and she sat.

The sky paled to almost white.

“You know you’re probably wrong, right?” he asked.

She tried to give him a smile. She appreciated the effort. “If I’m not?”

“I want you on my team whether you’re part of some prophecy or not. We bumble around like a bunch of knuckleheads when you’re not around.”

“People sacrificed their lives to save the Woman of Learning,” she said. “But all they saved was me.”

“You’re not so bad.” He kissed the top of her head. “It was war, Erin. They were soldiers. Mistakes happen in battle. People die. You forge on — for you as much as for them. The key is to keep fighting.”

She tensed in his arms. “But the prophecy—”

“Look.” He started a count. “One: who found the medallion in the little girl’s hand? You did. Two: who figured out where the bunker was? You again. Three: who figured out the blood and the bone stuff to open the book? You again. It’s practically giving me a complex, how good you are at this.”

She smiled. He might be onto something. Up until the very end, it had been Bathory who had followed their trail, not the other way around.

She took the scrap of baby quilt out of her pocket and held it in her palm. For the first time, no anger rose in her at the sight of it. The anger had flown when, at death’s door, she forgave her father in the tunnels.

“What’s that?” Jordan asked.

“A long time ago I made a promise to someone.” She stroked the quilt with one fingertip. “I promised that I would never stand by when my heart told me that something was wrong.”

“What does your heart say now?”

“That you’re right.”

He grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

Erin let the tiny quilt flutter in the wind, holding it between just her thumb and index finger. Then she let it go. The scrap of fabric floated away into the bustle and life that was Rome.

She turned back to Jordan. “It’s about more than spirituality and miracles. It’s about logic, too, and having a questioning heart. We will find this First Angel.”

Jordan pulled her close. “Of course we will. We found the book, didn’t we?”

“We did.” She leaned her head against his chest, listened to his steady heartbeat. “And because we did, we have hope.”

“Sounds like a good day’s work to me.” Jordan’s voice was husky.

The sun broke over the horizon. Gold rays heated her face.

She tilted her head up toward his. He ran the back of his hand along her cheek, cupped the nape of her neck.

Then she stretched up to kiss him. His lips were warm and soft, different from Rhun’s, natural. She slipped her hands under his shirt, sliding her palms along the heat of his skin. He moaned and pulled her in closer, his hands now on her back.

Eventually, she pulled back. Both she and Jordan were breathing hard.

“Too fast?” Jordan asked.

“No.” Erin reached for him again. “Too slow.”