She craned her neck, searching for any sign of Rasputin. He could be anywhere or nowhere. She would not put it past that mad monk to not show up, to leave them hanging here in the cold.
Jordan rubbed his arms, plainly not liking them all standing out here in the open, or maybe he was merely cold. “We should make a circuit of the market,” he suggested. “If Rasputin wants to find us, he will. This is clearly his game, and we’ll have to wait for him to make the first move.”
Christian nodded and headed out again.
Jordan slipped his gloved hand into hers. While he seemed to walk casually after the young Sanguinist, she felt the tension in his grip, knew from the set of his shoulders that he was anything but relaxed.
Together, they passed other stands selling pottery, knitted goods, and candy beyond counting. Bright colors and glowing yellow lights shone all around, but it became clear that the market was beginning to close down. More people headed out into the surrounding streets than were coming in.
There continued to be no sign of Rasputin or any of his strigoi followers.
Stopping by a stand that sold sweaters knitted from local wool, Erin considered buying one if they had to wait much longer. Behind her, the children’s choir started again, their strong innocent voices filling the air.
She glanced to the stage at the end of the market alley.
She listened as a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy” began. Again it was in Swedish, but the melody was unmistakable, telling the story of a poor child offering up the only gift he could to the Christ child: a drum solo.
She smiled, remembering how enraptured she was as a girl, allowed to watch an animated version of this story, a rare treat in the hard religious compound where she had been raised.
Her eyes were drawn to the singers, noting they were all boys, like the subject of the Christmas carol. Then she suddenly stiffened, staring at all those innocent faces.
“That’s where Rasputin will be,” she said.
She knew the monk’s penchant for children. His interest was not sexual, though it was still predatory in its own way. She pictured all those children of Leningrad whom the monk had found starving or near death during the siege of World War II. He had turned them into strigoi to keep them from dying.
Rasputin had once been a Sanguinist, but he had been excommunicated and banished for such crimes. In turn, he had set up a perverted version of their order in St. Petersburg, becoming its de facto pope, mixing human blood and consecrated wine to sustain his flock, mostly children.
“He’ll be with those boys,” she pressed. “Near that choir.”
Bathory arched a skeptical eyebrow, but Rhun nodded. He knew Rasputin better than any of them. Rhun’s gaze met hers, acknowledging her insight into the monk’s psyche.
Jordan gripped her hand again. “Let’s go watch the show.”
8:38 P.M.
Jordan kept tightly to Erin’s side as the group threaded through the thinning crowds toward the stage. His stomach ached at the smell of roasting chestnuts and mulled wine. It had been too long since he and Erin had any food. The Sanguinists often forgot that their human companions had to occasionally eat.
Once this was over, he planned on finding the largest and hottest bowl of soup in Stockholm. Or maybe two. One to eat and one to stick his numb feet into.
He glanced around at the civilians strolling the marketplace, carrying steaming cups, tied-up packages, or oily bags of chestnuts. What would happen to them if Rasputin attacked with his strigoi flock? He tried to imagine the collateral damage. It would not be good.
In fact, this entire setup stank. They had no weapons. And unreliable allies. He stared over at the countess, who strode with her hood tossed back, oblivious to the cold, her back pulled straight by her haughty, superior attitude.
If push came to shove, he didn’t know which side she would pick. Then he corrected himself. He did know.
She would pick her own side.
During the flight here, he’d had a quick conversation with Christian, holing up with the guy in the jet’s cockpit. Jordan had exacted a promise from Christian: that if things went to hell here, Christian would whisk Erin away as quickly as possible. Jordan wasn’t risking her life any more than he had to. He would not lose her.
He glanced over at Erin’s intent face. She would be mad if she knew of these plans. But he would rather have her angry at him—than gone.
Nearing the stage, Jordan passed a sign shaped like an outstretched arm. Its wooden finger pointed to a section of the market behind the choir.
Words on the sign were written in both Swedish and English, indicating the presence of an ice maze. It seemed the Swedes were definitely capitalizing on the cold.
Jordan passed the sign and approached the choir stage. Two rows of young boys wore white robes, their hands tucked into their sleeves, their noses red with cold. As they sang, he examined their earnest young faces, pale with winter. His eyes stopped on the last boy in the front row, a songbook grasped in his young hands, half obscuring his face.
This kid stuck out from the others. He looked to be thirteen or fourteen, a year or two older than the others. But that wasn’t what struck Jordan as odd.
Jordan touched Christian’s arm.
“The one on the end,” he whispered. “That kid isn’t wearing gloves.”
The boy sang with the others, harmonizing well, clearly experienced with singing in a choir—just maybe not this one. His nearest neighbor leaned away from him, as if he didn’t know him.
Jordan pictured Rasputin’s stronghold in St. Petersburg—the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood—where he conducted his own dark masses, had his own choir.
Jordan studied the singer’s half-hidden features. Dark brown hair framed a face as white as his immaculate robe. There was no rosiness to those cheeks at all.
The young boy noticed his attention and finally lowered his choir book. That was when Jordan recognized him. He was the boy from the video: Alexei Romanov.
Jordan suppressed an urge to grab Erin and haul ass out of there. He examined the other kids in the choir with a keener eye. They seemed cold, tired, and human. Nobody in the neighboring crowd stood out either.
He would see how this played out before reacting.
A small girl approached their group, wearing a blue hat with a white pom-pom. She fiddled with a stringed puppet. It was the child whom Erin had bought a gift for earlier. Jordan noted the girl also wasn’t wearing any gloves or mittens.
Christian followed his gaze to her bare fingers. He seemed to listen for a moment with his head slightly cocked, then nodded.
No heartbeat.
So she was another of Rasputin’s strigoi kids, her innocent face hiding a creature twice as old as Jordan and twice as deadly.
Nadia and Rhun grew stiffer to either side, ready for a fight. The countess simply held one graceful hand to a scarf that covered her damaged throat; her other remained handcuffed to Rhun. She sized up the square in a leisurely way, as if looking for advantages instead of enemies.
As the singing ended, the choirmaster gave a speech in Swedish, wrapping things up, signaling the end of the festival for this night. More of the crowd dispersed toward the streets. A young mother picked up a white-robed boy from the stage, bundled him up in a winter coat, and gave him a thermos full of a steaming beverage.
Lucky kid.
Other parents claimed other children until only Rasputin’s boy remained. With a slight bow toward them, he jumped off the platform and strode toward them with all the pride of Russian nobility.
Christian confronted the boy as he reached them. “Where is your master?”
The kid smiled, drawing a chill down Jordan’s spine. “I have two messages, but first you must answer a question. His Holiness has been watching you since you arrived. He says that you have come with two Women of Learning. The one he met in Russia and another from the true line of Bathory.”
It unnerved Jordan to learn how much Rasputi
n already knew about them.
But maybe that was the monk’s goal.
“And why does this concern him?” Rhun asked.
Alexei put his hands on his hips. “He said that there must be a test.”
Jordan didn’t like the sound of that.
“By his sworn word to your cardinal, His Holiness will only give the First Angel to the true Woman of Learning. Such is the bargain struck.”
Rhun looked ready to argue, but Erin stopped him.
“What kind of test?” she asked.
“Nothing too dangerous,” Alexei answered. “I will take two of you with one Woman of Learning, and Olga”—he motioned to the young girl with the blue hat—“will take two with the other.”
“What happens then?” Jordan asked.
“The first woman to find the First Angel wins.”
The countess shifted closer, sensing the game afoot, perhaps seeking a way to betray them. “What happens to the one who loses?”
Alexei shrugged. “I do not know.”
“I’m not putting Erin at risk,” Jordan said. “Find another way.”
The girl, Olga, spoke. Her voice was childishly sibilant, but her words were much too sophisticated and formal for someone of her apparent young age. “His Holiness has informed us to remind you that he possesses the First Angel. If you do not accede to his demands, you will never see him.”
Jordan frowned. Rasputin had them by the shorthairs and knew it.
“Where do we go?” Jordan asked, taking firm hold of Erin, refusing to be separated, irrevocably choosing which team he was going to play on. “Where do we begin this hunt?”
Alexei simply pointed to the sign Jordan had passed earlier.
The one shaped like an outstretched arm.
They were going into the ice maze.
26
December 19, 8:59 P.M. CET
Stockholm, Sweden
Erin followed Olga’s bobbing white pom-pom around the side of the choir stage and toward a narrow alleyway. The festival’s ice maze had been constructed in a neighboring square, hidden for now by the apartment buildings to either side.
Of course, Rasputin would pick such a maze for his test—a place both cold and confusing. And at this late hour with the market now closed, the Russian monk would merely need to post guards at the various entrances to the maze to ensure privacy inside. But what waited for them at the heart of this labyrinth? She pictured the giant blasphemare bear that Rasputin had kept caged below his church in St. Petersburg. What monsters waited for them inside here?
As she headed toward the entrance to the alley, Erin was flanked by Christian and Jordan. A glance to the left showed Alexei leading Rhun, Bathory, and Nadia. They appeared on the far side of the choir stage and headed for a different street. Likely it led to another entrance to the hidden ice maze, another starting point.
Rhun glanced toward her as he reached the mouth of his alley.
She lifted an arm, wishing his group well.
Then the two teams vanished into the narrow streets, ready to face the challenge ahead, to outrace each other for the prize at the center of the maze: the First Angel.
As Erin’s group entered the narrow lane, Jordan’s gaze traced the straight rooflines to either side. He kept watch on the heavy doors, ready for any sudden attack. From frosted windows, light spilled onto the snowy cobblestones. Blurred shadows moved about in the warm rooms, the occupants oblivious of the danger beyond their stone walls and wooden doors, blind to the monsters that still haunted the night.
For a moment, Erin wished for such simple ignorance.
But lack of knowledge was not the same as safety.
With her hands in her pockets, she felt Amy’s keepsake, the chunk of warm amber preserving a fragile feather. Her student had been equally unaware of this secret world—and it had killed her just the same.
After a few more steps, the street ended at another square. Erin stopped abruptly, halted by the sheer beauty of what lay ahead. It seemed this labyrinth was not a simple mimic of a hedge maze. Ahead rose a veritable palace of ice, filling the entire square, rising a hundred feet into the air, composed of spires and turrets all made of ice. Hundreds of sculptures topped its walls, etched with hoarfrost and dusted with snow.
Unaffected by the beauty, Olga led them toward a gothic archway in the nearest wall, one of the many entrances into the maze hidden inside. Drawing closer, Erin admired the skill of the artisans who had carved it, the clever way they had cut ice blocks and mortared them together with frozen water, like stonemasons of old.
Lit by yellow streetlights behind her, the gateway glowed citrine.
Olga halted at the entrance. “I leave you to your journeys. The angel awaits you in the center of the castle.”
The girl folded her arms, stepped her legs apart, and stood as still as the statues atop the walls. Even her eyes went blank. A chill ran up Erin’s spine, reminded that this little girl was a strigoi. The child had probably been killing for half a century or more.
“I’ll go first,” Christian said, stepping under the archway, his black robe dark against the gold light.
“No.” Erin stopped him with a touch on his sleeve. “It’s my test. I should go first. When it comes to Rasputin, we’d best follow his rules. As the Woman of Learning, I must be the one to find the safe passage to the heart of the maze.”
Jordan and Christian exchanged uneasy glances. She knew that they wanted to protect her. But they couldn’t protect her from this.
Erin turned on her flashlight, stepped past Christian, and entered the passageway.
Massive blue-white walls rose on both sides, about twelve feet high, looking two feet thick, open to the dark sky above. The walkway between the blocks was so narrow that she could touch both sides with her outstretched fingertips. Her boots crunched on snow turned dirty gray by countless visitors.
She shone her light around. Every few feet, the builders had inserted clear ice windows to provide distorted glimpses into neighboring passageways. She reached an archway on the left and peered through it, expecting it to be another leg of the maze, but instead she discovered a miniature courtyard garden, where all the flowers and trellises and bushes were made of ice.
Despite the danger, a smile rose on her face.
The Swedes knew how to put on a winter pageant.
Continuing on, she glanced up at the cloudy sky. There were no stars to guide her steps. A light snow now fell, quiet and clean. Reaching an intersection, she set off toward her left, running her gloved fingertips along the left wall, remembering a child’s trick. The surest way to traverse all the parts of a maze was to keep a hand on one side and follow it through. She might reach dead ends, but the path would eventually end in the center.
Not the fastest route, but the surest.
With Jordan and Christian trailing, she picked up the pace, her glove gliding over ice windows, snagging on the parts of the walls made of snow. Her flashlight revealed other chambers. She came upon a space holding a sculpted four-poster bed of ice with two pillows, overhung by an ice chandelier that had been wired with real bulbs. It was dark now, but she tried to imagine it lit, its brilliance shining off all the polished ice.
In another room, she found herself staring at a massive ice elephant, its tusks toward the door, serving as a perch for a line of finely carved birds, some settled in sleep, others with wings outstretched ready to take flight.
Despite the wonders found here, trepidation inside Erin grew with every step, her eyes searching for any traps. What game was Rasputin playing here? The test could not be as simple as solving a path through this maze.
She even searched some of the graffiti carved into the ice by tourists, likely teenagers from all the inscribed hearts holding initials. She found nothing menacing, no clue to some deeper intent by the Russian monk.
She rounded another corner, sure that she was close to the center of the maze by now—then she saw it.
One of the ice windows, i
ts surface polished to the clarity of glass, held an object frozen inside it. She lifted her flashlight in disbelief. Hanging in that window, perfectly preserved by the ice, was a dirty ivory-colored quilt, missing a square in the bottom left corner.
Horrified, Erin stopped and stared.
“What is it?” Jordan asked, adding his light.
How could Rasputin know about this? How had he found it?
“Erin?” Jordan pressed. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Are you okay?”
She peeled off her glove and pressed her bare palm against the ice, the heat of her hand melting the surface, remembering the last time she saw this quilt.
Erin’s small fingertip traced across the ivory-colored muslin. Interlocking squares of willow-green fabric formed a pattern across its surface. Her mother had called the pattern an Irish chain.
She remembered helping her mother make it.
After the day’s work was done, she and her mother would cut and piece squares by candlelight. Her mother’s stitching wasn’t as fine as it once had been, and toward the end, her mother was often too tired to work on it. So Erin took responsibility for the task, carefully sewing each square into place, her young fingers growing faster with each one.
She had finished it in time for her sister Emma’s birth.
Now, only two days old, Emma lay atop that same quilt. Emma had lived her entire life wrapped in it. She was born weak and feverish, but their father forbade that a doctor be called. He decreed that Emma would live or die by God’s will alone.
Emma died.
As Erin could only watch, the pink flush faded from Emma’s tiny face and hands. Her skin grew paler than the ivory of the quilt underneath her. It was not supposed to happen that way. The wrongness of it struck Erin, told her that she could no longer accept her father’s words, her mother’s silences.
She would have to speak her heart, and she would have to leave.
Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that no one saw her, Erin pulled scissors from her dress pocket. The metal snicked together as she cut out one square from the corner of the precious quilt. She folded the square and hid it in her pocket, then wrapped her sister in her quilt for the last time, the missing corner tucked deep inside so that no one would ever know what she had done.
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