Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

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

  9:44 P.M.

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

  How can I choose?

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

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

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

  No one moved, captured by its beauty.

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

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

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

  The whirring Rhun had noted before grew more evident.

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

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

  But whose?

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

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

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

  Yet he did not seem the least nervous.

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

  Rhun went cold.

  Nothing of this world ever unnerved Rasputin.

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

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

  The other Sanguinists closed ranks to either side of Rhun.

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

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

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

  Rhun struggled to understand.

  Another immortal such as I . . .

  He stared at the man. How could that be?

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

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

  Another rarity for the clever-tongued monk.

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

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

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

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

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

  Behind him, Erin sucked in a quick breath.

  Rhun also could not keep the shock from his face.

  Why would Jesus grant this man immortality?

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

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

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

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

  Rhun wanted the answers to both.

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

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

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

  Nadia gasped, while Rhun stumbled back in horror.

  It could not be.

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

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

  To his horror, Rhun understood.

  He intends to bring about Armageddon.

  28

  December 19, 10:02 P.M. CET

  Stockholm, Sweden

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

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

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

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

  The sirens grew louder, closing in on them.

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

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

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

  Jordan pulled Erin behind him.

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

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

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

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

  What the hell?

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

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

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

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

  Poison.

  The butterflies carried some form of venom.

  She rubbed at her arm, but she remained unaffected.

  So did Jordan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She stared across the snow.

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

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

  Christian bent over her, his eyes shining with tears.

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

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

  She stood and faced Iscariot. “Why?”

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

  So it was his tainted blood inside the moths.

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

  And not just her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Wait,” Erin said. “Please.”

  Iscariot turned to her.

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

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

  It had been agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Erin let out her held breath, closing her eyes.

  Rhun would live.

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

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

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

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

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

  “That is none of your concern.”

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

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

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

  “Release her.”

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

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