Far more than she could ever imagine.
3:03 P.M.
Erin’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She drew it out and held it next to her leg to conceal it from Lieutenant Perlman. She doubted he would want her texting from the helicopter.
Amy wrote her:
“Hey, Prof. Can u talk?”
The lieutenant seemed to be looking the other way.
Erin typed.
“Go.”
Amy’s answer came back so quickly she must have been typing while Erin was thinking.
“Took a look at that skeleton’s femur.”
“And?”
“It had gnaw marks.”
That confirmed Erin’s earlier assessment. She had noted what looked like teeth marks on the bone. She struggled to type as the helicopter jolted.
“Not uncommon … Lots of desert predators out here.”
Amy’s response was slow, her answer long to type out:
“But the bite marks match what I saw on that dig in New Guinea. Same dentition. Same pattern of gnawing.”
Erin’s heart sped up, knowing the subject of Amy’s last dig: the headhunters of New Guinea. That could mean only one thing …
But cannibalism? Here?
If true, the story behind this mass grave of children might be even worse than the tale of Herod’s massacre. But it still seemed unlikely. The newborn’s skeleton had been fairly large, with no obvious signs of malnutrition that might indicate a famine, which might warrant such depraved hunger.
“Evidence?”
she typed back.
“4 incisors. Continuous arch. It was HUMANS who gnawed that baby’s bones.”
Erin lifted her thumb, momentarily too shocked to type—then Lieutenant Perlman suddenly snatched the phone out of her grip, making her jump. He switched it off.
“No outside contact,” he yelled.
She swallowed her anger and crossed her arms, submitting. No point getting further on his bad side.
Yet.
The lieutenant dropped the phone into his shirt pocket. She missed it already.
She was relieved when the helicopter touched down at the pad at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center. Perlman had kept his word. White-suited hospital personnel sprinted toward them. She’d heard that they had a good trauma team, and she was grateful to see such a rapid response. She reached to unbuckle her harness, but Perlman covered her hand.
“No time,” he warned.
His men had already climbed out and unfastened the stretcher. Julia stood next to it on the ground, still holding Heinrich’s fingers. She lifted her free hand to wave to Erin. Heinrich’s chest rose and fell as they wheeled him off. Still breathing. She hoped that would be true the next time she saw him.
As soon as the soldiers were back on board, the chopper lifted fast and hard.
She turned her gaze from the hospital to stare at the spread of desert beyond Caesarea as her thoughts moved from her anxiety about Heinrich to another gnawing worry.
Where are they taking me?
4
October 26, 3:12 P.M., IST
Tel Aviv, Israel
Bathory Darabont stood poised in the shadows, hidden on a second-story landing above the hotel. She stared down to the tiled fountain that dominated the hotel lobby, water splashing from the wall into a half-round basin of monstrous green marble. She guessed the water was two or three feet deep. She stroked the ornate brass railing as she calculated the drop from where she stood.
Twenty-five feet. Probably survivable. Definitely intriguing.
The man next to her rattled on. With his masses of curly dark hair, huge brown eyes, and straight nose, he looked like he had just stepped out of a fresco depicting Alexander the Great. Of course, he knew that he was beautiful and rich, some distant prince of a distant land—and that made him accustomed to getting his own way.
This bored her.
He strove to talk her right out of her designer silk dress and into his bed, and she wasn’t necessarily averse to that, but she was more interested in action than in preliminaries.
She pushed back her waist-length red hair with one languid white hand, watching his eyes linger on the black palm tattooed across her throat. An unusual mark, and more dangerous than it looked.
“How about a bet, Farid?”
His brown eyes returned to her silver ones. He really did have the most amazing long dark lashes. “A bet?”
“Let’s see who can jump into that fountain.” She pointed one long finger down into the atrium. “Winner takes all.”
“The stakes?” He flashed her a perfect smile. He looked like he might like games.
She did, too, and held out one slender wrist. “If you win, I give you my bracelet.”
The diamond bracelet cost fifty thousand dollars, but she had no intention of losing it. She never lost.
He laughed. “I don’t need a bracelet.”
“And I give it to you in your hotel room.”
Farid looked over the railing and fell silent. She liked him better silent.
“If I win …” She stepped so close to him that her silk dress brushed his warm leg. “I get your watch—and you give it to me in my room.”
A Rolex; she suspected it cost about the same as her bracelet. She had no need of it either. But the jump would cut short the flirting and might lead to more inspired and passionate lovemaking than Farid was probably capable of.
“How can I lose?” he said.
She gave him a long and languorous kiss. He responded well. She slipped her phone into his pocket, fingers tracing a metal knife that she found there. Farid was not so defenseless as he appeared. She remembered her mother’s words.
Even a white lily casts a black shadow.
When she drew back, Farid slid both hands down her silk-covered back. “How about we skip the jump?”
She laughed. “Not on your life.”
Grasping the cold railing with both hands, she vaulted over the side.
She opened into a swan dive, falling, arms out straight and back arched. Her dress fluttered against her thighs. For a moment she thought that she had misjudged the depth and the fall would kill her, and in that moment she felt more relief than fear. She hit the water flat, distributing her weight.
The violent slap stole her breath.
For a second, she floated facedown in the cool blue, breasts and belly stinging, her unsettled blood finally quiet. Then she rolled over, pushing her now transparent bodice out of the water while dipping her head to slick back her hair, laughing brightly.
When she stood up, the entire lobby stared. A few onlookers applauded, as if she were part of a show.
Far above, Farid gaped.
She climbed out of the fountain. Water streamed from her body and spread across the expensive woolen carpet. She bowed to Farid, who returned the gesture with a slight nod, followed by the dramatic unbuckling of his Rolex and the lift of an eyebrow, conceding she had won the bet.
Minutes later, they stood outside her door. She shivered slightly in her damp clothes in the air-conditioned hallway. Farid’s bare palm, as soft as silk but as hot as a coal, ran up her back under her thin dress, raising an entirely different shiver. She sighed and glanced darkly toward him, craving the heat of his flesh far more than any companionship he could offer.
She retrieved her key card, the newly won Rolex dangling from her wrist.
As she unlocked the door and pushed it open, her phone buzzed, but it came from Farid’s pants. She turned, slipped her hand into his pocket, and tugged it free.
“How did that get there?” he asked, surprised.
“I put it there when I kissed you.” She smiled at him. “So it wouldn’t get wet. I knew you’d never jump.”
A wrinkle of hurt pride blemished his perfect forehead.
Standing in the doorway, she checked her phone. It was a text message, an important one from the name of the sender. She went cold all over, beyond anything a shiver could warm through or a he
ated touch could soothe.
No more time for play.
“Who is Argentum?” Farid asked, reading over her shoulder.
Oh, Farid … a woman likes to keep her secrets.
It was why she traveled under so many false names, like the one she used to book this room.
“It appears I have some pressing business to attend,” she said, stepping through the doorway and turning. “I must bid you good-bye here.”
A dark disappointment showed in his face, a flicker of anger.
He abruptly shoved her deeper into the room, following close. He grabbed her roughly and shoved her against the wall, kicking the door shut.
“I’ll say when we’re finished,” he said huskily.
She lifted an eyebrow. So there was some hidden fire in Farid after all.
Smiling up at him, she tossed her phone to the bed, pulled him even closer, their lips almost touching. She swung him around so he was now the one with his back to the wall. She reached to his pants, which widened his dark smile. But he mistook what she searched for—she removed his hidden knife instead.
She opened it one-handed, and with a quick thrust, she buried it in his eye socket, punching it up and back. She kept hold of his body, pressed against the wall, feeling his body’s heat through her thin clothes, knowing that warmth would quickly expire, snuffed out with his life. She savored that waning heat, held him tightly as the death tremors shook through him.
As they ended, she finally let go.
His body sagged to the ground, his life spent.
She left him there, stepped to the bed, and sat down, crossing a long leg. She retrieved her phone and opened the attached image file that had been sent to her.
On the screen, a single photo appeared, of a piece of paper covered with a strange script. The handwriting stemmed from another time, better suited to being scratched on parchment with a sliver of bone. More code than language, it was written in an archaic form of Hebrew.
As part of her training, she had studied ancient languages at Oxford and now read ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as easily as her native Hungarian. She deciphered the message carefully, ensuring she made no mistake. Her breath quickened as she worked.
A quake destroyed Masada.
A great death came with it,
brutal enough to mark Its possible unearthing.
She brought a hand to her white throat, fingertips brushing the mark that blackened her skin, thinking of the night she received it and became forever tainted. Her blood burned still.
She read on.
Go. Search for
A Knight has been dispatched to retrieve it.
Let nothing stop you.
You must not fail.
She stared at the phrase in Herodian Aramaic. The Belial had waited long for this message.
Her lips shaped impossible words, not daring to speak them aloud.
The Book of Blood
A surge of unfamiliar fear pulsed through her fingertips.
He whom she served had long suspected the Jewish mountain stronghold might hide the precious book. Along with a handful of other sites. It was one of the reasons she had been sequestered here, deep within the Holy Land. A few hours’ distance from dozens of possible ancient landmarks.
But was he correct? Did Masada mark the true resting place for the Book of Blood? Once she and her team revealed their presence, they could not be hidden again. Was this enough of a sign to warrant that risk?
She knew the answer to only the last question.
Yes.
If the book were truly unearthed, it offered a singular opportunity—a chance to end the world and forge a new one in His name. Although she had been trained from a young age, she had never truly expected this day to arrive.
Preparations must be made.
She pressed the second number on her speed dial and pictured the large muscular man who would answer on the first ring.
Her second in command, Tarek.
“Your wish?” His deep voice still bore traces of a Tunisian accent, although he had not spoken with a countryman for a lifetime.
“Wake the others,” she ordered. “At long last, the hunt begins.”
5
October 26, 3:38 P.M., IST
Airborne above Israel
Erin longed to be on the ground, away from the heat and noise and dust, and from the priest. She was too hot herself, and the priest must have it worse in his long cassock and hood. She tried to remember when Catholic priests stopped wearing hoods. Before she was born. Between his hood and his sunglasses, she saw only his chin, square with a cleft in the middle.
A movie-star chin, but he made her uneasy. As far as she could tell, he had not moved in more than half an hour. The helicopter dropped a few feet, but her stomach stayed up in the air. She swallowed. She wished that she had thought to bring water. The soldiers didn’t seem to have any, but they didn’t seem to care. The priest didn’t either.
Monotonous arid landscape slipped by below. Since the helicopter left the hospital, it had been flying east and north, toward the Sea of Galilee. Every minute of flight changed their possible destination, but Erin had lost interest in trying to guess where she might land.
They closed in on a familiar flat-topped mountain that climbed steeply out of the desert. She made out the white finger of the ramp that the Romans had built to finally breach its walls.
Masada.
It hadn’t even been on her list of possible sites. Masada had been thoroughly excavated in the sixties. Nothing new had come out of the site in decades. Tourists had been tramping all over it.
Perhaps the earthquake had uncovered something nearby. A Roman camp? Or the remains of the nine hundred Jewish rebels? Only thirty or so bodies had ever been recovered. They had been reburied with full military honors in 1969.
She craned her neck to get a better view. Unbroken sand stretched in all directions. No sign of activity around the base, but she spotted a large helicopter on the summit. That must be where she was headed. She sat straighter, eager to discover what required her immediate attention.
The priest moved almost imperceptibly, a slight shift of his handsome chin. So he still lived. She had forgotten to take him into account while guessing their destination. Though primarily a Jewish landmark, Masada was also home to the ruins of a Byzantine church, circa AD 500. The earthquake might have exposed Christian relics. But, if the Israelis planned to turn the relics over to the priest, why bring her in the first place? Something didn’t add up.
The helicopter descended toward the summit, kicking sand through the open doorway. She squinted against the hot grit and cupped her hands around her eyes. She should have brought protective goggles. And water. And dinner. And a backup phone.
She wished Perlman hadn’t taken her cell phone. Surely her students had reported in by now to let her know Heinrich’s condition. Otherwise … well, she didn’t want to think about otherwise. He had been at the site as her grad student. Whatever happened to him was her responsibility.
Erin brought her pinkie finger and thumb to her ear to pantomime the word phone.
Perlman fished it out of his pocket. He yelled over the noise. “Keep it off.”
“Yes, sir.” At this decibel level, he wouldn’t hear the sarcasm.
He handed the phone to her, and she stuck it into her back pocket. The second he turned his back, she intended to turn it on and check her messages.
The summit came into view.
She leaned out, searching below, stunned. It took her a thundering moment to understand what she was seeing.
Masada was … gone.
The walls, the buildings, the cisterns were piles of rocks. The casemate wall that had surrounded the fortress for thousands of years had been completely destroyed. Rubble stood in place of the columbarium and synagogue. The mountain had practically been cleaved in two. She had never seen such devastation up close.
The pilot slowed the engines, and they whined out in a lowering pi
tch as the skids scraped the top of the mountain and the helicopter settled to a stop.
She strained to see through the cloud of dust surrounding them. Black rectangles had been lined up near the edge of the plateau. They were too regularly shaped to be natural. Two people dropped a new one next to the others.
Body bags. Full ones.
Masada was one of the most popular tourist sites in Israel. It had probably been teeming with tourists when the quake struck. How many more lives had the cursed mountain claimed? Her stomach lurched again, but this time not from the helicopter.
A cool hand fell on her shoulder, and she jumped. The priest. He, too, must have noted the dead. Maybe she had been wrong all along. Maybe he was here to perform Last Rites or look after the dead at the behest of the Church.
She felt sick at the thought of how excited she had been a few minutes before. This was no archaeological site. It was a disaster scene. She wished that she were back in Caesarea.
Lieutenant Perlman jumped out and barked orders in Hebrew. Men spilled from both sides of the chopper and headed toward the body bags. They must have been summoned to collect the bodies. No wonder the officer had been so tight-lipped about it. She didn’t envy him his task.
The priest sprang out of the helicopter, graceful as a desert cat. His long cassock swirled in the rotor wash. He pulled his hood closer to his face and turned his head from side to side as if searching.
She fumbled with sweat-slick hands to unclip her safety harness. The floor seemed to lurch when she stood. She steadied herself against the seat back and took a few deep breaths. The Israelis had had a reason to bring her here, and she’d best calm down and find out what it was.
The Blood Gospel Page 5