Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  Rhun held out his hand. “Then perhaps it is private. And we should honor that.”

  Erin stayed her hand, remembering how disturbed she had been by the thought of Rasputin violating her sister’s grave to obtain the quilt.

  Am I performing a similar violation now?

  Jordan stirred next to her, plainly awake. “Something in there may offer us a clue to that bastard’s interest in the countess. It might save her life. It might save ours.”

  Erin raised her eyebrows at Rhun.

  The priest lowered his hand to his lap, conceding the point.

  While the plane pitched up and down, Erin unfolded the thick cloth with deliberate movements. She uncovered a book, bound in leather, marred by age spots. She ran a finger gently across a shield embossed on the cover.

  It was a heraldic symbol of a dragon wrapped around with three horizontal teeth.

  “It is the Bathory family crest,” Rhun said. “The teeth allude to a dragon allegedly slain by the warrior Vitus, the founder of the Bathory line.”

  Even more curious now, she gently parted the cover to reveal paper darkened to a brownish cream. A clear feminine script flowed across the page, written in iron gall ink. There was also a beautifully inscribed drawing of a plant: leaves, stems, even a detailed notation of its root system.

  Erin’s heart quickened.

  It must be her personal journal.

  “What’s it say?” Jordan asked, sitting straighter and leaning over.

  “It’s Latin.” She puzzled over the first sentence, getting used to the handwriting. “It describes an alder plant, listing various properties of its parts. Including remedies and the manner in which to prepare them.”

  “In her time, Elisabeta was a devoted mother and a healer.” Rhun spoke so softly that she barely made out his words.

  “In our time, she’s a killer,” Jordan added.

  Rhun stiffened.

  Erin turned to the next page. It contained a skillful drawing of a yarrow plant. The countess had reproduced its composite blooms, its feathery leaves, its taproot rendered with tiny tendrils curling from the sides.

  “It looks like she was also a gifted artist,” Erin said.

  “She was,” Rhun agreed, looking more aggrieved, likely reminded of the goodness he had destroyed by turning her.

  Erin scanned the text, reading the common medicinal uses for yarrow: as an aid in healing of wounds and to halt bleeding. A notation at the end caught her eye. It is also known as the Devil’s Nettle, due to its help in divination and to ward off evil.

  The last served as a reminder that Bathory had lived in superstitious times. Still, the countess had sought to understand plants, to bring them order, mixing science with the beliefs of her day. A grudging respect for the woman formed in her. The countess had defied superstitions of her time in order to search for ways to heal.

  Erin contrasted that with her father’s strict admonitions against modern medicine. He had adhered instead to superstition, grasping his beliefs with his hard-calloused hands and inflexible attitude, allowing no compromise.

  Such willing blindness had killed her baby sister.

  Erin settled into her seat and read, no longer noticing the turbulence as she learned about the ancient uses of plants. But halfway through, the illustrations suddenly changed.

  Instead of flower petals and roots, she found herself staring at a detailed rendition of a human heart. It was anatomically perfect, like one of da Vinci’s medieval sketches. She drew the book closer. Neat letters underneath the heart listed a woman’s name and her age.

  Seventeen.

  A chill spread through her as she continued to read. The countess had turned this seventeen-year-old girl into a strigoi—then killed her and dissected her corpse, trying to uncover why her own heart no longer beat. The countess noted that the strigoi heart looked anatomically identical to a human one, but that it no longer needed to contract. Bathory noted her speculations from her experiments in the same sweet script. She hypothesized that the strigoi had another method of circulation.

  She called it the will of the blood itself.

  Aghast, Erin read the page again. Bathory’s brilliance was undeniable. These pages predated European theories of circulation by at least twenty years. In her isolated castle, far from universities and courts, she had used macabre experiments to understand her new body in ways that few in Europe could have fathomed.

  Erin searched the next pages, as Bathory’s methods grew more horrific.

  The countess had tortured and murdered innocents to satisfy her insatiable curiosity, turning her talents as a healer and scientist to grisly ends. It reminded Erin of what the Nazi medical researchers had done to prisoners in their camps, acts just as callous and dismissive of the suffering.

  Erin touched the aged page. As an archaeologist, she was not supposed to judge. She often had to stare evil full in the face and record its deeds. Her job was to pull facts from history, to place them in a larger context, and to bring truths to light, no matter how horrible.

  So despite her queasiness, she read on.

  Slowly the countess’s quest turned from the physical to the spiritual. Erin came upon a passage dated November 7, 1605. It concerned a conversation Elizabeth had had with Rhun, about how the strigoi did not have souls.

  Bathory wanted to know if it was true. Erin read what she wrote.

  I trust him to tell me the truth that he believes, but I do not think that he has ever turned beyond faith to seek to understand the simple mechanics of this state that has been forced upon us.

  Seeking evidence of this claim, Bathory experimented and observed. First, she weighed girls before and after their deaths, to see if the soul had weight. It had cost four girls their lives to determine it did not.

  On another page was an architecturally precise depiction of a sealed glass casket. Bathory had it crafted to be waterproof. She even filled it with smoke to make sure no gases could escape. Once satisfied, Bathory locked a young girl inside and let her suffocate, trying to capture the dead girl’s soul inside her box.

  Erin pictured the girl pounding on the glass sides, begging for her life, but the countess had no mercy. She let her die and took her notes.

  Afterward, the countess kept the box sealed for twenty-four hours, examining it by candlelight, by sunlight. She found no shred of a soul in the glass box.

  The countess did the same with a strigoi girl, mortally wounding her before sealing her to her death. Erin wanted to skip past these gruesome experiments, but her eye caught upon a passage at the bottom of the next page. Despite the horror, it intrigued her.

  Upon the death of the beast, a small black shadow rose from her body, barely visible in the candlelight. Long into the night, I watched the shadow flit throughout the box, seeking an escape. But at dawn, a ray of sunlight fell upon it, and it shriveled to nothingness and vanished from my sight, never to return.

  Shocked, Erin read that passage several times. Was Bathory deluded, seeing something that wasn’t there? If not, what did that mean? Did some dark force animate the strigoi? Did Rhun know?

  Erin read Bathory’s conclusion.

  I surmise that the human soul is invisible, perhaps too light for my eyes to see, but the souls of beasts such as I are as black as tarnished silver. In its attempt to escape, where did it seek to go? That I must discover.

  Erin studied the last page, where Bathory neatly rendered a picture of her experiment. It showed a girl with fangs sprawled dead in a box. Light from a window fell across the foot of the glass coffin, while a black shadow hovered at the other end, as if trying to stay away from the light.

  Rhun stared at that page, too, visibly shaken. But which upset him more: the shadow or the murdered girl? He held out his hand for the book.

  “Please, may I see it?”

  “Did you know about this? What she was doing? What she discovered?”

  Rhun would not meet her eye. “She sought to discover what kind of creature she wa
s . . . what manner of beast I had turned her into.”

  Erin flipped through the remaining pages, finding them all blank. Clearly Bathory must have been caught and imprisoned shortly after this last experiment. She was about to hand the book over to Rhun when she spotted one final drawing, on the last page, looking as if it had been drawn in great haste.

  It looked like some form of cup, but what was its meaning?

  “May I see it?” Rhun asked again.

  She closed the book and handed it to him.

  He slowly looked through the pages now himself. She watched his jaw grow tighter and tighter.

  Does he blame himself for the countess’s actions?

  How could he not?

  Rhun finally closed the book, his face lost and defeated. “Once she was not evil. She was full of sunlight and goodness.”

  Erin questioned how much of that was true, wondering if love blinded Rhun to the true nature of the countess. For Bathory to have performed these gruesome experiments, there must have been some shadow behind that sunlight, buried deep, but there.

  Jordan scowled. “I don’t care what that countess was like in the past. She’s evil now. And none of us had better forget that.”

  He gave Rhun a scathing look, then turned his back toward them, ready to sleep.

  Erin knew he was right. Given the chance, Bathory would kill them all—probably slowly, while taking notes.

  PART IV

  Her house is the way to hell,

  going down to the chambers of death.

  —Proverbs 7:27

  33

  December 20, 2:33 A.M. CET

  Near Naples, Italy

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

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

  She had to stop looking to that past.

  It was a new world.

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

  She smiled at the heaving black waves.

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

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

  She let it go, freeing herself of her past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He looked little swayed.

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

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

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

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

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

  He finally grinned.

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

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

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

  “I don’t like tea,” Tommy said.

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

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

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

  “What is our destination?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

  “It is certainly of value to him.”

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

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

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

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

  More riddles.

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

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

  “It’s an oil rig,” Tommy said.

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

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

  Is this to be my new cage?

  2:38 A.M.

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

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

  “What’s wrong?” Erin yelled back.

  For once, Jordan was hoping for engine
trouble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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