Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  As soon as the skids touched ground, the Sanguinists rushed Erin and Jordan off the helipad. Ambrose’s body remained on board, although each Sanguinist touched him as they disembarked, even Rhun. According to Christian, the pilot and copilot would attend to the priest’s body.

  Erin and Jordan followed the others down a gravel path through a rose garden, the plants long off their bloom. A few minutes later, they reached a spade-shaped door set into the stucco garden wall. Christian opened it and led them down a corridor with a gleaming terrazzo floor. Salons and rooms opened to either side, decorated with medieval tapestries and gilt-edged furniture.

  At an intersection, Nadia beckoned Rhun to the left with his burden. Christian pointed Erin and Jordan to the right.

  “I’m taking you to rooms where you can wash up,” he said.

  “I’m not letting Erin out of my sight,” Jordan said.

  She tightened her grip on his hand. She wasn’t letting him out of her sight either.

  “Already figured as much,” Christian said. “And I’m not letting either of you out of my sight until you are safe in that room. The plan is to wait for the cardinal’s return. We’ll recover and regroup, then figure out what to do next.”

  With the matter settled, Jordan followed Christian. Tall windows on one side of this corridor looked out over the lake. White sails glided across the blue water, and seagulls soared above. It was a serene view, almost surreal after all the devastation and death.

  Jordan was clearly less captivated, his mind elsewhere. “What do you think happened to Leopold?”

  Christian touched his cross. “He was closer to the source of the explosion. His body may never be found. But the cardinal will keep searching until rescue personnel and police arrive. If Leopold’s body is found, the cardinal will claim him and bring him here.”

  Reaching an oaken door, Christian unlocked it and ushered them both through, then followed them inside. He quickly crossed and closed the shutters over the windows that looked out upon the lake. He switched on a few wrought-iron lamps. The room held a double bed with a white duvet, a marble fireplace, and a seating area in front of the windows.

  Christian disappeared through a small side door. Erin followed after him, trailed by Jordan. She found a simple bathroom with white walls, toilet, and sink. A shower stood in the corner, tiled in the same marble as the floor. Two thick towels rested on a low wooden table, topped by a fresh change of clothes.

  It looked like she would be wearing tan pants and a white cotton shirt. Jordan would have on jeans and a brown shirt.

  Hanging against the back of the bathroom door were a pair of familiar leather jackets. On their prior mission, she and Jordan had worn this very set of outerwear, constructed from the hides of grimwolves—slash-proof and tough enough to withstand strigoi bites. She stroked her hand down the battered brown leather, remembering the battles of the past.

  Christian opened the medicine cabinet and took out a first-aid kit. “This should have what you need.”

  He turned and marched back to the hall door. He lifted up a stout brace that leaned against the wall next to the exit and handed it to Jordan. “This is reinforced with a core of steel.”

  Jordan hefted the bar. “Feels like it.”

  “Once I’m on the other side, use it to brace the door.” Christian pointed to a chest at the foot of the bed. “You’ll also find weapons there. I don’t expect you’ll need them, but it’s better not to be caught off guard.”

  Jordan nodded, eyeing the chest.

  “Let no one in besides me,” Christian said.

  “Not even the cardinal or Rhun?” she asked.

  “No one,” Christian repeated. “Someone knew we were on that train. My best advice for both of you is to trust no one except each other.”

  He stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Jordan lifted the heavy bar and secured it in place.

  “So much for Christian’s pep talk,” she said. “That wasn’t exactly reassuring.”

  Jordan moved to the chest and opened it up. He took out a machine gun and examined it. “Beretta AR 70. At least this is reassuring. Fires up to six hundred fifty rounds per minute.” Then he checked the ammunition supply in the chest and smiled as he came up with another weapon, a Colt 1911. “It’s not my own pistol, but it looks like someone did their research.”

  He handed it to her.

  She checked the magazine. The bullets were made of silver—fine against humans, essential against strigoi. The silver reacted with their blood, helping to even the odds. Strigoi were hard to kill—tougher than humans, able to control their blood loss, and possessing supernatural healing abilities. But they weren’t invulnerable.

  Jordan next eyed the bathroom. “I’ll let you take first crack at the shower, while I see about getting a fire started.”

  It was a fine plan, the best she had heard all day.

  But first, she stepped close to him, inhaling his musky scent, smelling soot underneath. She tilted up and kissed him, glad to be alive, to be with him.

  As she leaned away, Jordan’s eyes were pinched with concern. “You okay?”

  How could I be? she thought.

  She was no soldier. She couldn’t walk through fields of bodies and keep going. Jordan had trained himself, the Sanguinists, too, but she wasn’t so sure she ever wanted to be that tough, even if she could. She remembered the thousand-yard stare that Jordan sometimes got. It cost him, and she bet it cost the Sanguinists, too.

  He whispered, still holding her, “I don’t mean about today. I feel like you’ve been holding something back since we met in California.”

  She slipped out of his embrace. “Everyone has secrets.”

  “So tell me yours.”

  Panic fluttered in her chest.

  Not here. Not now.

  To hide her reaction, she turned and headed for the bathroom. “I’ve had my fill of secrets today,” she said lamely. “Right now, all I want is a hot shower and a warm fire.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” But despite his words, he sounded disappointed.

  She entered the bathroom and closed the door. She gladly shed her clothes, happy to rid herself of the smell of soot and smoke and replace it with lavender soap and a citrus shampoo. She stood for a long time under the hot spray, letting it burn away the day, leaving her skin raw and sensitive.

  She toweled and slipped into a soft robe. Barefooted, she returned to the main room. The lamps had been switched off, and the only illumination came from the crackling fire.

  Jordan straightened after jabbing and rolling a log into better position in the flames. He had shed his suit coat and shredded shirt. His skin shone in the firelight, bruised and crisscrossed with scratches and cuts. Across the left side of his chest, his tattoo almost seemed to glow. The artwork wrapped around his shoulder and sent tendrils partway down his arm and across part of his back. It looked like the branching roots of a tree, centered on a single dark mark on his chest.

  She knew the history of that mark. Jordan had been struck by lightning when he was in high school. He had died for a short period of time before being resuscitated. The surge of energy had left its fractal mark across his skin, bursting capillaries, creating what was called a Lichtenberg figure, or a lightning flower. Before it faded, he had the pattern tattooed as a reminder of his brush with death, turning the near tragedy into something beautiful.

  She drew closer, as if drawn by that residual energy.

  He faced her, smiling. “Hope you didn’t use all the hot—”

  She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. Words weren’t what she wanted right now. She tugged her belt loose and shrugged out of the robe. It slithered to the floor, brushing against her breasts and pooling at her ankles.

  With one hand, he stroked her hair back from her neck. She arched her throat in invitation. He took it, trailing slow kisses down to her collarbone. She moaned, and he drew back, his eyes dark with passion and an unspoken question.


  In answer, she pulled him by the waistband of his pants toward the bed.

  Once there, he shed the last of his clothes, ripping them off and kicking them away.

  Naked, aroused, he lifted her up in his arms. Her legs wrapped around his muscular thighs as he lowered her to the bed. He loomed over her, as wide as the world, shoving away everything, leaving only them, this moment.

  She pulled him down for an urgent kiss, tasting him, her teeth finding his lower lip, his tongue with her own. His warm hands ran over her skin, across her breasts, leaving a trail of electricity in their wake—then slid around to her lower back to lift her higher.

  She arched under him, needing him, knowing she would always need him.

  His lips moved to her throat, brushing across the scars on her neck.

  She moaned, pulling his head hard against her, as if begging him to bite her, to open her again. A name rose to her lips, but she trapped it inside before it escaped into the world.

  She remembered Jordan begging for her secret.

  But the deepest secrets are the ones we don’t know we’re keeping.

  His lips moved to below her ear, his breath heating the nape of her neck. His next words groaned out of him, full of his truth, felt in the bones of her skull.

  “I love you.”

  She felt tears rise to her eyes. She drew his mouth to hers and whispered as their lips brushed. “And I love you.”

  It was her truth, too—but perhaps not her whole truth.

  18

  December 19, 1:34 P.M. CET

  Castel Gandolfo, Italy

  Rhun carried Elisabeta down a dark passageway that smelled of wood and aged wine. This corner of the castle’s subterranean levels had once served as the pope’s personal wine cellar. Some long-forgotten rooms still held huge oak casks or racks of green bottles thick with dust.

  He followed Nadia down yet another set of stairs, heading toward the floor reserved for their order. He felt his arms trembling as he held Elisabeta. He had taken a quick sip of consecrated wine aboard the helicopter. It had fortified him enough to make this journey below, but weakness still plagued him.

  At last, passing down a stone passageway dug out of the volcanic bedrock, Nadia stopped at a bricked-up archway, a seeming dead end.

  “I can pay the penance,” Rhun offered.

  Nadia ignored him and touched four bricks, one near her head, one near her stomach, and one near each shoulder—forming the shape of a cross.

  She then pressed the centermost stone and whispered words that had been spoken by members of their order since the time of Christ, “Take and drink you all of this.”

  The center brick slid back to reveal a tiny basin carved in the brick below it.

  Nadia unsheathed her dagger and poked its tip into the center of her palm, in the spot where nails had once been driven into the hands of Christ. She cupped her palm until it held several drops of her blood, then tipped the crimson pool sideways into the basin.

  In his arms, Elisabeta tensed, likely smelling Nadia’s blood.

  He stepped back a few paces, allowing Nadia to finish.

  “For this is the Chalice of My blood,” she said, “of the new and everlasting Testament.”

  With the last word of the prayer, cracks appeared between bricks in the archway, forming the shape of a narrow door.

  “Mysterium fidei,” Nadia finished and pushed.

  Stone grated against brick as the door swung inward.

  Nadia slipped through first, and he followed, taking care not to brush Elisabeta’s body against the walls to either side. Once across the threshold, Elisabeta softened in his arms. She must have sensed that she was deep underground now, where sun could never reach her.

  Nadia’s thin form glided ahead, revealing how much effortless speed and strength of limb she possessed compared to him. She hurried past the entrance to the castle’s Sanguinist Chapel and led Rhun toward a region seldom trespassed—toward the prison cells.

  He followed. No matter how grievous her wounds, Elisabeta remained a prisoner.

  Though the cells were rarely used in this age, the stone floor had been worn smooth and shiny by the centuries of boots passing this way. How many strigoi had been imprisoned down here and put to the question? Such prisoners entered as strigoi and either accepted the offer to join the Sanguines or they died down here as damned souls.

  Nadia reached the nearest cell and hauled open a thick iron door. Its heavy hinges and stout lock were strong enough to hold even the most powerful strigoi.

  Rhun carried Elisabeta inside and placed her atop the single pallet. He smelled fresh straw and bedding. Someone had made the room ready for her. Next to the bed, a beeswax candle sat atop a rough wooden table, casting a flickering light across the cell.

  “I will fetch healing ointments for her burns,” Nadia said. “Are you safe to be alone with her?”

  At first, anger rose in him, but he brought it under control. Nadia was correct to worry. “Yes.”

  Satisfied, she swept away, the door thudding closed behind her. He heard the key turn in the lock. Nadia was taking no chances.

  Alone now, he sat next to Elisabeta on the pallet and gently shifted the cloak to expose her small hands. He winced from the fluid leaking from broken blisters, the skin beneath them burned pink. He felt the heat radiating from her body, as if it were trying to expel the sunlight.

  He drew the rest of the cloak off, but she turned away, her head hidden in the hood of her velvet cape.

  “I don’t wish you to see my face,” she said, her voice a harsh rasp.

  “But I can help you.”

  “Let Nadia do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because”—she shifted farther away—“my appearance will disgust you.”

  “Do you think I care about such things?”

  “I care,” she whispered, her words barely louder than a breath.

  Honoring her wishes, he left her hood alone and took one of her burnt hands in his, noticing her palm was untouched. He pictured her clenching her hands in agony as the sunlight engulfed her in fire. He leaned against the stone blocks and rested, keeping hold of her hand.

  Her fingers slowly closed over his own.

  A deep weariness filled the marrow of his bones. Pain told him where he had been wounded—lacerations across his shoulders, scrapes on his forearms, a few burns on his back. His eyes began to drift closed when a quick knock thumped the door. A key turned in the lock, and the hinges complained.

  Nadia stepped into the room. She frowned upon seeing Rhun’s hand clasped to Elisabeta’s, but she said nothing. She carried an earthenware bowl covered with a brown linen cloth. The smell rolled across the cell, filling the space.

  His body quickened, and Elisabeta growled next to him.

  Blood filled that bowl.

  Warm, fresh, human blood.

  Nadia must have collected it from a volunteer among the castle staff.

  She crossed to the pallet and handed him the bowl.

  He refused to take it. “Elisabeta would prefer it if you tend to her wounds.”

  Nadia arched one eyebrow. “And I would prefer not to. I already saved her royal life. I will do no more.” She slipped free a leather flask and held it out to him. “Consecrated wine for you. Do you wish to drink it now or after you have tended to Countess Bathory?”

  He set the flask down on the table. “I will not let her suffer a moment longer.”

  “Then I will fetch you soon.” She retreated to the door and out again, relocking the cell.

  A moan from Elisabeta returned him to his task.

  He soaked the linen cloth in the bowl, sopping it heavily with blood. The iron scent drifted into his nostrils, even as he held his breath against it. To steady himself against a craving that rose from his bones, he touched his pectoral cross and muttered a prayer for strength.

  He then picked up the hand he had been holding and slid the cloth along it, the fabric grazing her skin.

>   She gasped, her voice muffled by the hood.

  “Have I hurt you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”

  He bathed one hand, then the other. Where he touched, blisters fell away and raw skin healed. Once done, he finally reached for the edge of her hood.

  She grabbed his wrist with her bloodstained fingers. “Look away.”

  Knowing he could not, he drew the hood back, revealing first her white chin, streaked with grime and pink from the burn. Her soft lips had cracked and bled. The blood had dried in black rivulets from the corners of her mouth.

  He steeled himself and pulled the hood fully away. Candlelight fell on her high cheekbones. Where once clear white skin had invited his touch, now he saw blackened and blistered ruin, all overlaid with soot. The soft curls of her hair were mostly gone, burned away by the sun.

  Her silver eyes met his, the corneas cloudy, nearly blind.

  Still, he read the fear there.

  “Am I hideous to you now?” she asked.

  “Never.”

  He soaked the cloth and brought it to her ravaged face. Keeping his touch light, he ran it across her forehead, down her cheeks and throat. Blood smeared her skin, soaked into blisters, and stained the white pillow under her head.

  The smell intoxicated him. Its warmth tingled his cold fingers, heated his palms, inviting him to taste it. His whole body ached for it.

  Just one drop.

  He stroked the cloth down her face again. The first pass had mostly just washed the soot away. He now attended to her damaged skin. He bathed her face over and over again, watching in wonder each time as he wiped away the damage—and unblemished skin slowly appeared. A field of black curls took root, shadowing her scalp with the promise of new growth. But it was her face that enchanted him, as flawless as the day he had fallen in love with her, in a long dead rose garden beside a now ruined castle.

  He traced her lips with the soft fabric, leaving behind a thin sheen of blood. Her silver eyes opened to him, clear once again, but now smoky with desire. He bent his head toward her lips and crushed them with his own.