Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  Farther ahead, two milky-blue lakes framed the village. He spotted fishing boats and the zip of a jet ski, so incongruous here in the middle of such a large desert. Beyond the lakes, a series of taller, flat-topped mesas split the desert.

  Christian circled the lake to the west and swung out toward one of the neighboring hills. Atop it sat a tumble of crumbling stone buildings, the ruins surrounding an old tower. It pointed at the sky like an accusatory finger.

  It was all that was left of the oracle’s temple.

  Erin had instructed Christian to take them here.

  Jordan looked back at Arella, who continued to stare out, a tear streaking down one perfect cheek.

  “I have not seen it in so very long,” she said.

  Jordan didn’t know how to reply.

  “This was your home?” Erin asked.

  The woman bowed her head in acknowledgment.

  “That would make you both the Sibyl of Cumae and Sibyl of Libya.” Erin’s eyes widened with sudden insight. “Those five symbols, the five seers who predicted Christ’s birth, they’re all you.”

  Again a lowering of a chin answered her. “I made my homes in many places in the ancient world.” She stared eagerly out the window again as Christian circled toward the ruins. “This was one of my favorites. Though it was, of course, once much grander. You should have seen it in the days of Alexander.”

  “As in Alexander the Great?” Rhun asked, surprise in his voice.

  Erin looked at Arella. “History says he came here. That he consulted you.”

  She smiled. “He was a beautiful man, with curly brown hair, shining eyes, so young, so full of the need to find his destiny, to make it come true. Like so many others who came before . . . and after him.”

  She grew pensive.

  Rhun imagined she was thinking of Judas.

  Arella sighed. “The young Macedonian came to confirm that he was the son of Zeus, that his fate was one of conquest and glory. Which I told him was true.”

  Jordan knew Alexander had created one of the largest empires in the ancient world by the time he was thirty and died undefeated in battle.

  “What about the other son of a god?” Erin said. “Legends say the holy family came here, after fleeing Herod’s wrath.”

  She smiled softly. “Such a handsome boy.”

  Rhun shifted nervously. Jordan didn’t blame the guy. Was she remembering Christ as a boy?

  Erin studied Arella. “The Bible states that it was an angel that came to Mary and Joseph and warned them to flee to Egypt, to escape the slaughter to come. Was that also you?”

  Arella smiled. The woman turned to the window, gazing out at the trees and lakes. “I brought Him here, so that He could grow up in peace and safety.”

  From his Sunday school classes, Jordan knew about Christ’s lost years, how He had vanished into Egypt shortly after He was born, only to reappear at about the age of twelve, when Jesus visited a temple in Jerusalem and scolded some Pharisees.

  Erin stared out the window now, too, likely picturing Christ as a boy, running those streets, splashing in that lake. “I want to know everything . . .”

  Arella said, “Even I can’t claim that. But I will share with you Christ’s first miracle. To understand all, you must start there.”

  Erin’s brows drew down in puzzlement. “His first miracle? That was when he turned water into wine, at the wedding in Cana?”

  Arella turned sad eyes upon Erin. “That was not his first miracle.”

  2:07 P.M.

  Not his first miracle?

  Erin sat stunned, wanted to ask more, but that secret must wait. She had scolded Bernard for putting such secrets above the life of a boy. She refused to do the same.

  “What about Tommy?” she asked, placing a palm over his cold forehead. “You said back in the cavern that you could save him. Is that true?”

  “I can,” Arella agreed. “But we must do it forthwith.”

  The sibyl turned and leaned to Christian, speaking rapidly and pointing farther to the west, past the ruins of her temple.

  Christian nodded and tilted the aircraft in that direction.

  Below their skids, they swept over a village of mud-brick houses that had stood for nine hundred years, some continuously occupied. Erin tried to imagine living in the same house, generation after generation. Her current university apartment was younger than she was. It certainly did not have the breathtaking accretion of history that surrounded her now.

  Then again, more than anywhere, Egypt held a sense of timelessness and mystery, a land of grand kingdoms and fallen dynasties, home to a multitude of gods and heroes. She touched the piece of amber in her pocket, remembering Amy’s fascination with this country’s history. Like every archaeologist, Amy had wanted to someday oversee a dig in Egypt, to make her mark here.

  But unfortunately for Amy, that someday would never come.

  Erin kept a hold on Tommy’s shoulder as the helicopter banked for a turn past the temple ruins.

  Never again, she promised.

  The temple swelled before her. The walls were tumbled, the roofs gone, and the rooms open to the ashen sky. Even in its current state, a hint of its original grandeur remained. Had the woman seated across from her really lived within those stone walls and determined the fate of the world with her prophecies? Had she convinced Alexander the Great that he could conquer the world? Had she met Cleopatra when she bathed in these waters? If so, what had she told the queen?

  Erin had a thousand questions, but they would all have to wait.

  Christian skimmed past the ruins and out toward a section of the outlying desert.

  Where was Arella taking them?

  The woman continued to navigate for Christian, her back to them.

  Rhun gave Erin a puzzled look, just as confused, but she shrugged. They had come this far based upon the word of this angelic woman. It was too late to distrust her now.

  The helicopter skirted past the occasional broken hill and flew over undulating dunes of sand. Overhead, the sky continued to grow a deeper gray as the ash cloud moved farther upon them.

  Finally, the helicopter began to lower. Erin searched for any landmarks, but it appeared they were picking a random stretch of dunes on which to land. Their rotors tore ribbons of sand from the closest ridges.

  The pitch of the engines changed, and the helicopter hovered in place.

  But why here?

  Jordan sounded no happier. “Looks like the hundreds of miles of desert we’ve already flown over.”

  Erin was tempted to agree with him, but then her eyes began to detect subtle differences. The closest ridge of dunes did not follow the pattern of the surrounding desert. She glanced out both windows to confirm it. The ridge curved completely around, to form a circle, framing a giant bowl a hundred feet across and about twenty deep.

  “Looks like a crater,” Erin said, pointing Jordan to the raised lip all around.

  “Another volcano?” Jordan asked.

  “I think it might be a meteor strike.”

  Erin looked to Arella for an answer, but the woman simply directed Christian down.

  A moment later the skids touched the sand. The helicopter came to a rest, canted slightly at an angle inside the bowl, not far from the center. Christian kept the rotors turning, as if deliberately blowing sand from the crater.

  That’s one way to excavate.

  Golden-tan sand whirled in the wash of the rotors, momentarily blinding them.

  Then the engines finally stopped, the rotors slowing. After so many hours of constant droning, the silence rushed over her like a wave. The blown-up sand settled, pattering to the ground like a golden rain.

  Arella finally faced them again, placing a hand on Christian’s shoulder, thanking him. “We may go now.”

  Rhun cracked open the door and hopped out first. He held them back, ever wary, which Erin knew was well warranted.

  “There is nothing to fear here,” Arella assured them.

&n
bsp; After Rhun confirmed this with an all-clear, the woman climbed out next, followed by Erin.

  Once on her feet, Erin stretched, drawing in a deep breath, sucking the dryness deep into her lungs, smelling the rocky scent of pure desert. She let herself bask for a moment in the heat. Sand meant the luxury of time at excavations—hours spent in the sun digging to free secrets long buried from the patient grains that had concealed them.

  She didn’t have that luxury now.

  She squinted at the sun. This late in winter, it would set at five o’clock, less than three hours from now. She recalled Bernard’s warning about the gates of Hell opening, but she pushed such fears aside for now.

  Tommy certainly did not have even those three hours.

  She turned as Jordan’s boots hit the sand next to her, helping Christian carry Tommy’s body into the desert, into this strange crater.

  “Where are we?” Christian asked, his eyes narrowing in the sunlight, even though it was dimmed by ash to a harsh glare.

  “Don’t know,” Erin said softly, feeling like she should whisper for some reason.

  She studied the sides that curved up around her, noting the ridgeline was not as smooth as she had thought from the air, but looked rather more jagged, forming a natural palisade at the bowl’s rim. Heat radiated underfoot, more than she would have expected from this ash-covered day. It shimmered across the sand-filled crater, dancing with motes of dust.

  Arella stepped away from them, heading toward the center of the crater. “Quickly with the boy” was all she said.

  They followed her, mystified and confused—especially when she dropped to her knees in the sand and began digging with both hands.

  Jordan cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe we should help her.”

  Erin agreed. As Christian stood with Tommy in his arms, she joined Jordan and Rhun, digging shoulder to shoulder, scooping out the hot sand. Thankfully, the deeper she dug, the cooler the sand became.

  Arella knelt back, letting them work, clearly still weak.

  A half foot down, Erin’s fingertips hit something hard. A heady mix of anticipation and wonder rolled through her. What lay hidden here? How many times had it been buried and uncovered by passing sandstorms?

  “Careful,” she warned the others. “It might be fragile.”

  She slowed her movements, removing smaller amounts of sand, wishing that she had her digging tools, her whisks and brushes. Then a flake of black ash fell and stung her eye, reminding her that they needed to hurry.

  Her pace picked up again, the others following her example.

  “What is it?” Jordan asked, as it became clear that a layer of glass lay beneath them, swirling and rough, natural, as if something had melted the sand.

  “I think it’s impact glass, maybe secondary to a meteor strike.” Erin tapped the surface with a fingernail, making it clink. “There’s a large deposit of such meteoric glass out in the Libyan desert. The yellow scarab on King Tut’s pendant was carved from a chunk of it.”

  “Cool,” Jordan mumbled and returned to his labors.

  Erin took a breath to wipe her brow with the back of her wrist. As Jordan and Rhun continued to clear the sand off the glass, she realized who worked so hard to free what lay buried here.

  They were the prophesied trio . . . together again.

  Taking heart in that, she redoubled her efforts, and in a few more minutes, they had cleared enough sand away to reveal edges to the glass—though more extended outward. Erin glanced all around.

  Was the entire crater glass?

  Had some meteor hit and melted this perfect bowl?

  Was that possible?

  It seemed unlikely. When the meteor hit Libya twenty-six million years ago, giving birth to Tut’s pendant, it had scattered broken glass for miles around.

  With no answers at hand, she returned her attention to what they had exposed. It was as if someone had taken a diamond-tipped knife and cut a perfect circle in the glass floor here, forming a disk four feet across.

  It looked not unlike a plug in a bathtub.

  Erin bent to examine its surface closer, cocking her head at various angles. The disk was translucent amber, darker on one side than the other, the two shades split by an S-shaped line of faint silver, forming a melted version of a yin-yang symbol.

  She noted the same pattern extended outward from here.

  The glass on the eastern half of the crater appeared to be dark amber, the western half distinctly lighter.

  But what was this in the center?

  “Looks like a giant manhole cover,” Jordan said.

  She saw he was right. She carefully fingered the edges of the large plate of glass, feeling enough of a ridge that someone might be able to lift it free if they were strong enough.

  “But what’s under it?” Erin glanced to Arella. “And how does this help Tommy?”

  Arella turned her face from the skies to the north and nodded to Erin. “Place the boy near my feet,” she instructed. “Then lift the stone you have uncovered.”

  Christian gently lowered Tommy to the sand. Then he and Rhun took to opposite sides of the disk-shaped plug. They grabbed hold with the very tips of their fingers and lifted it cleanly up with a grating of glass and sand. The plate looked to be a foot thick and must have weighed hundreds of pounds, reminding Erin yet again of the herculean strength of the Sanguinists.

  Carrying it at waist height, they stepped it over a few paces and dropped it to the sand. Erin crawled forward and looked down at what was revealed. It appeared to be a shaft, with a mirror shining back at her from a few feet down, reflecting the sky and her face.

  Not a mirror, she realized.

  It was the still surface of dark water.

  She glanced to Arella. “It’s a well.”

  The woman smiled, stepping closer, growing visibly stronger, more radiant, her body responding to some essence from this well.

  Arella knelt reverentially at the edge and plunged her arm down. When she drew it back, silvery water spilled from her hand.

  It must be a natural spring, possibly once a part of the neighboring oasis.

  Arella moved to Tommy and dripped water from her fingertips into the wound in his neck, then gently washed his throat. The blood cleared from his skin, stopped seeping from the cut, and even the wound’s pink edges began to knit together.

  Erin stared in amazement. The scientist in her needed to understand, but the woman inside simply rejoiced, sagging to her knees in relief.

  Arella returned to the well, cupping her palms full of water. She lifted the double handful over Tommy.

  Erin held her breath.

  When the clear water splashed onto Tommy’s pale face, his eyes startled open, as if suddenly woken from a nap.

  He sputtered and wiped his face, looking around. “Where am I?” he croaked.

  “You’re safe,” Erin said, moving closer, hoping that was true.

  His eyes found hers, and he relaxed. “What happened?”

  Erin turned to Arella. “I can’t explain it, but maybe she can.”

  Arella stood and wiped her hands on her shift. “The answers are writ in the glass. The story is here for any to see.”

  “What story?” Erin asked.

  The woman swept her arm to encompass the entire crater. “Here lies the untold story of Jesus Christ.”

  49

  December 20, 3:04 P.M. EET

  Siwa, Egypt

  Rhun turned in a slow circle, gaping at the sand-washed crater, picturing its foundation of mysterious glass. Even as he’d helped Erin and Jordan clear the opening to the well of healing waters, he had felt a slight burn from the glass. He wanted to dismiss it as heat from the sands, from the baking sun, but he recognized that familiar sting, from his centuries of gripping his cross.

  The glass burned with holiness.

  He felt the same from the well . . . and from this strange angelic woman. When she brushed past him to heal Tommy, water dripped from her fingertips, splashing to
the sand with such holiness that he had to take a step back, fearing it.

  Christian clearly felt the same, eyeing her with a glance of wonder and awe.

  Rhun trembled, sensing the sheer weight of the crater’s sacred nature.

  His very blood, tainted as it was, burned against the godliness of this place.

  “We must clear the sand away!” Erin called.

  She was already on her knees brushing away a test patch, revealing the edge of something etched higher on the glass. She waved them to spread out in a circle around the well.

  Everyone set to work, even Tommy.

  Only Arella hung back, showing no interest in digging. Then again, she already knew the secrets buried here for ages. Instead, her eyes remained on the ash-tinged skies, staring to the north, almost expectantly.

  “It’s easier if you don’t fight the sand,” Erin said. “Work with its natural tendency to flow down.”

  She demonstrated, shoving sand between her legs like a dog, pushing it to the lower slope. Rhun and the others followed suit. The grains of sand burned under his palms with a heat that came from more than the sun overhead.

  Rhun dug down to the glass bedrock of the crater. More of the design that Erin had revealed appeared, incised deeply into the exposed surface. He brushed grains away, recognizing an Egyptian style to the artwork. He pushed aside more sand to reveal a square panel holding a single scene.

  The rest of the team unearthed similar tableaus, etched into the golden surface. They formed a ring of panels around the wellspring, telling a long-hidden story.

  They all gained their feet, trying to understand.

  Seemingly drawn by their confusion, Arella stepped to the panel closest to Erin. She bent down and gently brushed dust off a tiny figure. The small body faced them, but the face was in profile, typical of Egyptian design.

  “Looks like hieroglyphics,” Tommy mumbled.

  But the tale here was not of Egyptian kings or gods. On the glass, a boy with curly hair wandered up a stylized dune with a pool of water waiting on the far side.

  But it was not any boy.