Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  After they left, he shook Jordan’s hand, noticing the fierce warmth of his palm, almost feverish, as if he were burning up. “Are you well?” he asked.

  “Considering I just came back from the dead, I’m doing fantastic.”

  Bernard noted a slight hesitation in the man’s manner. He was clearly holding something back, but Bernard let it go. “I am grateful you’re safe . . . and equally grateful for your work in helping us understand this unique threat posed by Iscariot’s moths.”

  Bernard still had trouble coming to terms with Judas Iscariot walking the earth, that Christ had cursed His betrayer with endless years. But the threat the man posed could not be denied or ignored.

  “With time and better facilities,” Jordan said, “I could learn more about his creations.”

  “It will have to do. Time runs short. We must find the First Angel and unite him with the book.”

  The words of the Gospel’s prophecy shone in his mind’s eye in lines of flaming gold: The trio of prophecy must bring the book to the First Angel for his blessing. Only thus may they secure salvation for the world.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Erin looked grim. “For that to happen, we must discover where Iscariot has hidden him and discern what he wants with the boy.”

  “And why the bastard came here with the kid,” Jordan added.

  Erin nodded. “It must be important.”

  Rhun and Christian returned, their robes tighter than before, hiding their new armor, a stab-resistant material suggested by Jordan as a defense against the sting of those moths.

  Bernard motioned to the door. “I have hired us a helicopter to take us to the coordinates where Christian last detected the countess. We will head west over the water along that same path and search for any clues.”

  Leading the way, Bernard piled them into a taxi van and drove them to a neighboring airfield, where the helicopter waited. It was a blue-and-orange craft, with a curiously long nose and swept-back windows, defining a large cabin.

  Christian exited the van and whistled his appreciation. “Nice. An AW-193.”

  “You can fly a chopper?” Jordan asked.

  “Been flying them since you were still in short pants.” He waved to the aircraft. “Hop in.”

  Erin was aboard first. She stopped short when she spotted a long black box strapped between their seats.

  “I readied a coffin for Countess Bathory,” Bernard explained. “In case we come upon her during this sojourn.”

  “We’re bringing her back?” Jordan asked.

  “She may still be the Woman of Learning,” Bernard answered.

  He was not about to take any chances.

  Rhun touched the box with one hand, an aggrieved look on his face. Bernard had heard reports from Christian about Nadia slashing the woman’s throat, a woman for whom Rhun still clearly had deep affection.

  Bernard needed to remain wary of that bond.

  4:44 A.M.

  Rhun strapped in next to Erin as Christian took the pilot’s seat. The engine roared to life and the blades began turning faster and faster. Moments later they were airborne and sweeping for the dark waters of the Mediterranean.

  As they reached the coastline, Christian called back. “Here is where they took to the sea! I lost her signal a few miles due west from here!”

  Rhun stared down at the black waves. Moonlight glinted silver off the whitecaps.

  They traveled in silence for several minutes, but the waters remained empty, showing no trace of the others. He pictured Iscariot dumping Elisabeta into the dark sea, ridding himself of her.

  Christian yelled. “This is the spot where the signal cut out.”

  He brought the craft into a slow circle over the water. All eyes searched below for any wreckage, any evidence as to where Iscariot’s group had gone.

  Jordan called forward. “We should consult maps of the local currents. If a boat sank or a helicopter or small plane crashed out here, we might have to follow the coastal currents—but for now I suggest that we continue along their original trajectory.”

  “Roger that.” Christian tipped the craft to its side and flew west.

  Rhun continued his vigil, his keen eyes searching every wave.

  He prayed for hope.

  He prayed for her.

  36

  December 20, 5:06 A.M. CET

  Mediterranean Sea

  Judas stood in his bedchamber, dressed again after a short hour’s nap.

  He felt refreshed, full of hope.

  As he secured his tie, he kept his back to the room’s massive four-poster bed. To assist him while dressing, he used the reflection in the giant clock that covered one wall. The crystal face stretched eight feet across. With his own hands, he had built and rebuilt it in twenty different homes. The dial of the clock was also glass, revealing its inner gears and cogs, all of brass, copper, and steel. He liked to watch the mechanisms tick away the endless passage of his life.

  Now with one careful hand, he stopped the clock. He no longer needed it. His life would end soon. After years of praying for this moment, soon he would rest.

  A knock on the door disturbed his thoughts.

  “Enter!” he called out.

  He turned to find Henrik pushing the First Angel into the room. With sunrise only a couple of hours off, he had summoned the boy to be brought before him.

  Tommy rubbed his eyes, clearly still sleep addled. “What do you want with me?”

  “Only to chat.”

  The boy looked like he would have preferred more sleep.

  Judas drew him to his small desk. He had a larger office to conduct business elsewhere on the rig, but he preferred sometimes the quiet intimacy of his own chamber. “The two of us, Tommy, are unique unto this world.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Judas picked up a sharp letter opener and pierced the center of his own palm. Blood welled thickly, but he used a handkerchief to wipe it away. The small wound sealed quickly, healing almost immediately.

  “I am immortal, but not like your countess. I am like you.” As proof, he took the boy’s hand in his firm grip and placed his palm against his own chest. “Do you feel my heartbeat?”

  Tommy nodded, plainly intimidated but intrigued.

  “Like you, I was born an ordinary boy. It was a curse that granted me my immortality, but I would like to know what you did to be so similarly afflicted.”

  Judas had heard a rough accounting of the boy’s story, but he wanted to hear the details from the source.

  Tommy chewed on his lower lip, clearly hesitant, but the boy likely ached to understand what he had become. “It happened in Israel,” he began and slowly told the story of visiting Masada with his parents, of the earthquake and the gas.

  None of this accounting explained his sudden immortality.

  “Tell me more about what happened before the earthquake,” Judas pressed.

  A guilty look swept his countenance. “I . . . I went into a room that I wasn’t supposed to. I knew better. But there was a white dove on the floor, and I thought it was hurt. I wanted to take it out and get some help for it.”

  Judas’s heart thumped against his ribs. “A dove with a broken wing?”

  “How did you know that?” Tommy’s eyes narrowed.

  Judas sank back against his desk, his words full of memory. “Two thousand years ago, I saw a dove like that. When I was a boy.”

  He had not thought the encounter important, barely considered it, except the event occurred on the morning that he had first met Christ, when Judas was only a boy of fourteen years, when they became fast friends.

  I was the same age as Tommy, he suddenly realized.

  He remembered that early morning now in immediate detail: how the streets were still shadowy as the sun had not quite risen, how the sewage in the drains had stunk, how the stars still shone.

  “And the dove you saw,” the boy said, “it also had a broken wing?”

  “Yes.” Judas pictur
ed the ghostly white of its feathers in the night, the only thing moving on that dark street. “It dragged its wing across the muddy stones. I picked it up.”

  He felt the plumage now, brushing his palms. The bird had lain quiet, its head against Judas’s thumb, staring up at him out of a single green eye.

  “Did you try to help it?” Tommy asked.

  “I wrung its neck.”

  The boy took a half step back, his eyes wide. “Just like that?”

  “There were rats, dogs. It would have been torn apart. I saved it from that misery. It was an act of mercy.”

  Still, he remembered how stricken he felt afterward. He had fled to the temple for comfort, to his father, who was a Pharisee. It was there he saw Christ for the first time, a lad of the same age, impressing his father and many others with His words. Afterward, the two of them became friends, seldom parted.

  Until the end.

  Now I must correct that.

  The boy, the dove, they were all signs that his path was the correct one.

  Judas drew Tommy back to the door, back into the care of Henrik. “Ready him for our departure.”

  Once Tommy was gone, Judas returned to his desk. He picked up a crystal block that fit neatly in his palm. It was his most prized possession. He had taken it from his office safe and would return it before he left. But he needed its reassurance this early morning, needed its physicality and weight in his hands.

  The block held a fragile brown leaf suspended inside, protected across the centuries by the glass. He lifted it to his eyes and read the words that had been cut into its once green surface with a sharp stone knife.

  He cupped the block in both palms, thinking of the woman who had written these words, picturing her luminous dark skin, her eyes that glowed with a peaceful radiance. Like him, she understood truths that no one else could. Like him, she had lived many lifetimes, watched many friends die. Alone on Earth, she was his equal.

  Arella.

  But this simple leaf had ended the best century of his long life—the one that he shared with her. It had been in Crete, where their house looked over the ocean. She hated to be far from the sea. He had moved with her from Venice to Alexandria to Constantinople to other cities that looked out over other waves. He would have lived anywhere to see her happy. That particular decade she had wanted simplicity and quiet.

  So he chose Crete.

  He looked out his bedroom window now, staring at the dark waves. Since those days he, too, had never been far from the sea. But back then he had watched her more often than the endlessly changing water. That night she had stood by a window with the shutters thrown open to the night.

  Judas cranked his own window now and breathed in the salt air, remembering the sounds and smells of that long-ago night.

  From his bed, he watched her silhouette move against the starry sky.

  The scent of the ocean filled their bedroom, along with the soft hush of the waves against the sand. Close at hand, an owl called to its mate and was answered in turn. A week before, he had seen the pair in an olive tree, each bird not much larger than two fists pressed together.

  “Do you hear our owls?” she asked, turning toward him.

  Moonlight glinted off her ebony hair, one wayward lock falling across her face. She reached her hand to push it away, a gesture he had seen thousands of times. But her hand stopped, her body going rigid in an all-too-familiar manner.

  Judas smothered a curse and quickly stood.

  As he came to her, he saw her beautiful eyes were empty.

  This, too, was familiar.

  The prophecies would now spill through her. Each time, he hated it, for in this state she was beyond his reach, and beyond her own, swept by the waves of time, those tidal pulls that could never be resisted.

  As usual, he followed her instructions. He drew fresh leaves from a rush basket in the corner and pressed them into her warm left hand. Every day she gathered leaves for this purpose, although the prophecies came but once or twice a year.

  He folded the fingers of her right hand around the ancient stone knife.

  Then he left her alone.

  He kept a silent vigil in front of her door. Sometimes the visions lasted for mere minutes, others for hours. No matter how long, she was not to be interrupted.

  Thankfully this night she was spared.

  After a single minute, she came to herself and bade him to return.

  As he entered the room, she lay in their bed curled into a ball. He took her in his arms and stroked her long thick hair. She turned her face into his chest and wept. He rocked her from side to side and waited for the storm to pass. He knew better than to ask the source of her sorrow. This curse she must bear alone.

  Usually the leaves on which she wrote her prophecies lay scattered across the floor, and he would gather them together while she slept and burn each in a fire.

  It was as she wished, as she begged of him. No good had ever come from her gift, she had told him. The prophecies were mere shadows, holding no certainty, but the knowledge of them had driven many a man to force them into being, often in their most evil guise.

  Still, in secret, he read each leaf before burning it, recording many of her words, even pictures she had drawn, in a thick leather journal that he used for the household accounts. She never read from that book, never concerned herself with financial details.

  She trusted him.

  This night, after her breaths slowed to sleep, he disentangled himself from her embrace and rose to pick up the single leaf that lay at the edge of the fire.

  Only one prophecy tonight.

  The leaf felt supple under his fingertips. The smell of green trees drifted up to his nose. The scribbled phrases beckoned him. Holding the leaf near the fire’s flames, he read the words that marched across its surface in uneven lines.

  After His words, written in blood, are lifted from their prison of stone, the one who took Him from this world will serve in bringing Him back, sparking an era of fire and bloodshed, casting a pall over the earth and all its creatures.

  Disbelieving, he traced each word with a trembling fingertip. He read them again and again, wishing that their meaning was not so plain. He already knew that Christ had written a Gospel in His own blood and imprisoned it in stone. Judas had recorded other prophecies concerning that book that she had written over the past century, but he had not thought them important. He had never thought that her prophecies might concern him until the line that read: the one who took Him from this world.

  That could be none other than the one who had betrayed Christ.

  Everyone else involved in the death of Jesus was long since turned to dust, but Judas endured. He had been spared for a purpose.

  For this purpose.

  So few words, but each one confirmed his worst fears about his curse. Once the lost Gospel was unearthed, Judas must seek to bring Christ back. To do that, it was Judas’s duty to start the end of days—a time of fire and blood.

  A rustling of sheets drew his attention around. She sat up, as beautiful in the firelight as she was in every light.

  Her eyes saw what his fingers held. “You read this?”

  He looked away, but he felt her gaze burning into him.

  “Have you read them all?” she asked.

  He could not lie to her, turning to her. “I wanted to preserve them in case you should change your mind, so that your gift was not lost to the world.”

  “Gift? It is no gift. And it was my choice to decide what to do with it. I trusted you, alone of every man in the world, to understand that.”

  “I thought that I was serving you.”

  “How? When? For one hundred years, you have betrayed me.”

  A line of tears glistened in the firelight. She wiped the back of her hand across one smooth cheek. He had gone against her deepest wishes, again and again. He read in her eyes that there could be no forgiveness for his actions.

  “I did it for you,” he whispered.

  “Fo
r me?” Her voice hardened. “Not for your own curiosity?”

  He had no answer to that question, so instead asked another. He lifted the leaf. “How long? How long until this prophecy is fulfilled?”

  “It is but a prophecy.” Her face was a blank slate on which he could read nothing. “One possible shadow of the future. It is not certainty, nor necessity.”

  “This shall come to pass,” he insisted.

  He had known its truth the instant that he read her words.

  He had betrayed Jesus.

  Now he must betray the world of man.

  “You cannot know this.” She crossed the room to stand before him. “You must not do this dark thing based on my words. Nothing in this world is set. As all men, you were imbued by God with free will.”

  “My will does not matter. I must find Christ’s Gospel. I must set these events in motion.”

  “A prophecy cannot be forced.” Her voice rose in rare anger. “Even with all your arrogance, you must know this.”

  He lifted the leaf again, matching her anger. “I see this. I know this. We must do what we were created to do. I am a betrayer. You are a prophetess. Did you not defy God by failing to share your prophecy of Lucifer’s betrayal? Were you not cast down because of it? And now you seek to defy Him again!”

  Stricken, she stared at him. He knew that he had spoken her greatest fear aloud, and he wished that he could call his words back.

  Tears shone in her bright eyes, but she blinked them away. She turned from him, lifted the hood of the cloak so that it hid her face, and ran out the door into the starry night.

  He waited for her to come back to him, for her anger to be spent, that he might beg her forgiveness. But by the time the morning sun rose, she had not returned, and he knew that she never would.

  Judas breathed deeply of the night air, remembering all.

  After Arella left him, he traveled to Europe where he spent many years researching whispered rumors of Christ’s lost Gospel. He learned of another prophecy concerning the book, one that spoke of a sacred trio.

  So he sought them, too.

  One fall evening, following a rumor among the Sanguinists, he sought out Countess Elizabeth Bathory—the learned woman married to a powerful warrior and bound to a knight of Christ.