The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  He worried that her heart might explode, its pace barely pausing between beats. He had to get her out of the water before she panicked and drowned. If the bunker beyond the air lock was flooded, he would have to rush her back to the surface himself.

  On the far side of the small chamber, Emmanuel worked at the steel dogs that locked down the inner hatch. As he twisted the last one, the door burst open on its own, shoved by the water pressure from inside the air lock. As the water flooded out of the chamber, they were all swept along with the draining torrent—and spilled into the dry Nazi bunker.

  33

  October 27, 5:07 A.M., CET

  Beneath Harmsfeld Lake, Germany

  Erin stood shakily, soaked to the skin, her teeth already beginning to chatter.

  Everyone else was on their feet, weapons drawn, sweeping their lights down the dark concrete tunnel ahead. She rested her hand on the cold stock of her own holstered pistol and pulled out her waterproof flashlight from the wet pocket of her long leather coat.

  Her heart still thudded in her throat. She glanced back into the air lock. She did not want to ever have to do that again. She hoped there was some hidden landward exit to this bunker.

  Clicking on the flashlight, she shone its beam on the floor, where drains were already reclaiming the water that had flooded in with the new arrivals. She swept the beam around the tunnel. Its rounded sides rose from a level floor, climbing fifteen feet, large enough to drive a Sherman tank down without scraping the concrete from the walls.

  She imagined the teams of skeletal concentration-camp inmates working on this tunnel in near-total darkness, only to be killed when the structure was complete, their blood shed to keep its secrets.

  She sniffed the air: dank and moldy, but not stale. She searched the ceiling. Likely some passive ventilation system was still intact.

  She joined the others. Based on the satellite map, they should be standing in the right leg of the Odal rune. But where should they go from here?

  “What now?” Jordan asked, mirroring Erin’s concern. “We just wander around looking?”

  The triad of Sanguinists formed a silent wedge-shaped shield a few steps away: Emmanuel, at the head, pulled his wet cassock back over his leather armor. Nadia and Rhun flanked him. All three were clearly casting out their senses, gaining their bearings, and judging the threat level.

  Erin moved closer to Jordan, into the shelter of their protection.

  She knew her role, too—as scholar, the alleged Woman of Learning.

  “I think the most symbolically powerful place to store a sacred object here,” she offered, “would be at an intersection, like where this leg intersects with the bottom of the diamond. Or maybe the top of the diamond.”

  “Agreed,” Nadia said, and urged Emmanuel forward, to take point.

  She and Rhun moved in sync behind him, as if the three were connected by invisible wires.

  “You go in front of me, Erin,” Jordan said. “I’ll take the rear.”

  Erin didn’t argue, happy to comply with military protocol in this instance.

  Together, they all moved down the tunnel—too swiftly for Erin’s taste, but likely too slowly from the triad’s perspective. While the Sanguinists kept to their formation perfectly, she kept following first too close and then too far.

  Emmanuel stopped at the first door they came to—a nondescript gray metal hatch on the side of the tunnel. He tried the handle. It was clearly locked, but that didn’t seem to deter the stoic Spaniard. He flexed black-gloved fingers and yanked the handle out of the door. He tossed it aside with a skittering clunk.

  Jordan’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

  Emmanuel nudged the door open with one leather boot. A short silver sword appeared in his hand. He and Nadia stepped through together.

  Rhun stayed outside next to Erin. She glanced up the hall, pointing her flashlight. Empty as far as her beam would reach.

  “Safe,” called Nadia from inside.

  Erin and Jordan went in next, Rhun last.

  Inside, Erin’s light revealed a dusty-looking desk on which sat an old-fashioned radio assembly. A code book lay open in front of it. Next to the desk, a chair had been pushed out. Beside it sprawled the skeleton of a Nazi soldier. He had probably been transmitting or receiving when he died.

  Jordan’s light picked out a pewter Ahnenerbe pin on his lapel. The decoration was in the shape of the Odal rune, an exact match of the one etched on the Nazi medal found in the tomb at Masada.

  “Looks like we came to the right place,” he said.

  Erin stepped over and examined the dead soldier, keeping a professional attitude.

  He’s just like any mummy I’ve encountered on digs.

  That was what she kept reminding herself as she studied the dried blood staining the front of his uniform. It had run in great gouts down his chest.

  What had happened?

  She shifted behind the body, turned, and directed her light back at the doorway. A second body lay off to the side. She shuddered to think that she had practically stepped on it on her way in.

  The Sanguinists ignored both corpses and searched the shelves next to the radio.

  There wasn’t room to help them, so Erin walked to the remains by the door. A neat round hole in the center of the man’s skull left no question as to how he had died. His uniform differed from the radio operator’s. His was khaki brown and of a rougher fabric.

  She panned her light across it.

  “Russian,” Jordan said. “See the five-pointed red star? It’s an emblem from the World War Two era, too.”

  Russian?

  “What was he doing here?” Erin asked. “And how did he get in?”

  Jordan crouched next to her and went through the soldier’s pockets, setting items on the thick dust that covered the floor: cigarette pack, matchbox, an official-looking document in Cyrillic, a letter, and a picture.

  Jordan held up the faded black-and-white photo of a Slavic woman holding a thin girl with pigtails in front of a haystack.

  Probably the dead man’s wife and daughter.

  She wondered how long the woman had had to wait to learn of her husband’s fate. Had she mourned him or been relieved that he was gone? The man’s wife surely must be dead by now, but the little girl might well be alive.

  Erin turned to Rhun, needing to do something. “Is there any way for Brother Leopold to notify the soldier’s family?”

  Rhun spared her a quick glance. “Take the letter. Knowing Leopold, he will try.”

  She collected the note and stood up. She pictured the scene from long ago.

  The radio operator at his desk, perhaps calling for help. The Russian soldier bursts in. Shots are exchanged. Afterward, someone seals the place without anyone retrieving the bodies.

  But why?

  Nadia stood over Jordan, holding out her gloved hand. “Show me the other document.”

  When he handed her the paper with the Cyrillic writing, she scanned it, folded it, and put it in her pocket.

  “What did it say?” he asked.

  “Orders. His unit had been ordered to deploy from St. Petersburg to southern Germany near the end of the war. To ‘retrieve items of interest’ from the bunker before the American invasion.”

  “From St. Petersburg?” Rhun asked.

  He and Nadia exchanged a long glance, both their faces worried.

  Then Nadia waved toward the door. “We’ve learned what we can here,” she said. “We move on.”

  Erin looked around in dismay. The archaeologist in her hated that she had not photographed the room, mapped things properly, and made an inventory of the contents. “But there might be more clues to—”

  “We must search as many rooms as we can before the Belial find us.” Rhun stopped halfway out the door. “Brother Leopold will do a more thorough inventory later, if there is time.”

  Jordan stayed close behind Erin as she followed Rhun back into the long tunnel.

 
The Sanguinists proceeded more quickly now. Something had clearly spooked them. Erin shared an uneasy look with Jordan. Anything that made a trio with powers like theirs nervous had to be terrifying.

  Moving down the tunnel, they cleared another room: sleeping quarters filled with bunks. Erin counted four dead German soldiers, two still in their bunks, two halfway to the door. Two dead Russians were slumped against the wall.

  Whatever transpired here, it had been hard fought.

  Metal chests next to the bunks stored folded clothes, cigarette packs, matches, a few risqué postcards, more letters, and plenty of pictures of women and children, a sad reminder of those who had sat at home awaiting word on their loved ones.

  Erin collected as many letters as she could and crammed them into her pockets, hoping that the water wouldn’t cause the faded ink to run.

  They also discovered books—a manual on caring for a rifle, a novel in German, an instruction pamphlet on venereal diseases—but nothing that fit the description of the Blood Gospel.

  Defeated and heavyhearted from all the slaughter, Erin returned to the corridor. The others filed out with her.

  A heavy rustling, like the shaking of curtains, accompanied by a faint and distant squeaking filled the corridor. The hairs on the back of her neck immediately stood on end.

  “Jordan?”

  “I hear it, too,” he said. “Rats?”

  Nadia herded them behind her. “No.”

  A pace ahead of them, Emmanuel sniffed the air, shoulders thrown back, neck arched, and head raised, like a dog.

  Or a grimwolf.

  Erin drew in a deep breath, but she only smelled mildew and wet concrete. What could he smell that she could not?

  “What is it?” Jordan asked.

  “Blasphemare,” Nadia said. “The tainted ones.”

  “Another grimwolf?” Jordan moved his machine pistol into ready position.

  “No.” Nadia’s eyes flashed at Erin, wholly inhuman at that moment. “Icarops.”

  Jordan looked confused by the foreign word.

  Rhun clarified, cold and matter-of-fact. “Icarops are bats whose nature has been twisted by strigoi blood.”

  Erin’s heart clenched into a knot.

  He was talking about blasphemare bats.

  Erin remembered the monstrous wolf in the moonlit desert—its fetid breath, its teeth, its muscled bulk. This time, with wings. She shuddered.

  “Just when you think it can’t get any weirder.” Jordan switched on the light attached to the barrel of his Heckler & Koch machine pistol. “How do we proceed?”

  “Quickly, I would recommend,” Nadia said. “And quietly.”

  They set off down the tunnel—toward the source of the noise.

  Jordan kept his weapon fixed in front, readying himself.

  “Will guns kill them?” Erin whispered.

  Emmanuel snorted.

  Not helpful.

  “Even silver bullets will only enrage them,” Nadia said. “A knife is a better tool.”

  Jordan leaned down and pulled the silver Bowie knife from his boot sheath.

  Erin drew her knife, too.

  “I don’t like the idea of a corrupted bat getting close enough to kill it with a blade,” Jordan said. “I think I’d rather take them out with an intercontinental ballistic missile.”

  “When they come,” Nadia warned, her voice low and her tone matter-of-fact, “lie down on the floor. We’ll keep them off you as best we can.”

  “Not happening.” Jordan hefted his knife. “But thanks for the offer.”

  Nadia lifted her thin shoulders in a shrug.

  Erin agreed with Jordan. She had no intention of lying on her stomach, waiting for a bat to chew through her spinal cord. She’d rather take her chances standing up, with a knife in her hand.

  The Sanguinists were now moving so quickly that she and Jordan had to run to keep up with them.

  Soon they arrived at the intersection of another cross tunnel.

  “We must have reached the base of the diamond,” she said, picturing the Odal rune, running a map of their progress in her head like a schematic.

  From the air, this crossing of the two tunnels must look like a giant X—hopefully as in X marks the spot, Erin thought.

  “This feels like the most likely place to hide something,” she said.

  She cast her light across the floor but found only featureless concrete. She splashed her beam across the walls and ceiling. Nothing indicated a special or sacred hiding place at this intersection.

  Jordan understood. “We’ll have to check all three of these next corridors. Search every door.”

  Before they could take another step, though, screeches filled the air—coming from all three tunnels ahead.

  There was no escape.

  5:29 A.M.

  The smell reached them first, thrust forward by the muscular beat of hundreds of wings. The stench threatened to knock Jordan to his knees—a foul combination of the fetid bite of urine and the bloated ripeness of corpses left in the sun. He fought his heaving stomach, wondering if this reek was as much a weapon of these beasts as their teeth and claws, meant to incapacitate their prey.

  He refused to succumb.

  It was more than his life in danger.

  With a shaky hand he pushed Erin behind him so that she was shielded both by him and the Sanguinist triad. Her flashlight beam cut across the tunnel to the left, to the right, searching for a door.

  No such luck.

  Then darkness consumed the light, flowing up the tunnels on all sides. A handful of winged pieces of shadow broke from the pack and rushed forward. They swept high, over the heads of the Sanguinists, as if they had no interest in creatures without heartbeats.

  Still, silver flashed through the air, slicing through wing and body.

  Black blood rained.

  Furred bodies fell, twisting, screeching, tumbling.

  One creature made it through the silver gauntlet, diving through its dying brethren. Blinded by the light here, it struck a wall behind them and slid to the floor, flipping immediately around. It might be driven sightless by the shine, but it could still hear.

  It hissed at Jordan, who again sheltered Erin behind him.

  It was the size of a large cat, with a massive wingspan of two meters. It rushed at him, scrabbling on its hind legs and the hard angle of its wings. The bat’s eyes glowed red, and its needlelike teeth shimmered in the light. A high-pitched screech burst from its slathering jaws as it launched itself at him.

  Jordan lashed out with his Bowie knife, slicing across the creature’s throat. Blood burst from the wound, but the bat’s bulk still struck at him, knocking him back a step. He had come close to decapitating the beast in a single blow. Still, leathery wings tried to fold around him. Claws dug at his body, but the thick skin of his duster protected him.

  Finally, death claimed the creature, and it fell away.

  Jordan turned to find a hellish winged fury sweeping in a dark tide from three directions, breaking upon the triad in front. Each Sanguinist faced a different tunnel.

  Erin stood in the center of them, her face a mask of terror.

  Jordan ducked to her side, ready to defend her as devoutly as the trio.

  Bats now swirled overhead in a shadowy cluster of wings, claws, and glowing eyes. The horde held back for the moment, possibly smelling the blood of their foul brothers, hearing their death cries.

  Even now, the shrill squeaks set Jordan’s teeth to aching.

  He tried to find a single animal to focus on, but they darted back and forth too quickly.

  Erin shone her light above. The bats shied from the beam, swooping away, as if it stung—and maybe the brightness did.

  “Vespertilionidae,” she gasped, as if the word were an incantation. “Vesper bats. Never seen them more than a tenth of this size.”

  “How do you—”

  “I work in caves a lot,” she explained.

  Her light jumped back and fort
h. Each time it struck a bat’s eyes, the animal retreated.

  “They’re never aggressive like this.”

  Jordan pointed his submachine gun up, the beam from the weapon scattering them, too. “Because you work around normal bats, not friggin’ tainted ones.”

  “They’re regrouping faster each time.” Erin spoke like an objective researcher, but her voice was pitched an octave higher than usual. “They’re growing accustomed to the light.”

  “Let them come.” Nadia had pulled off her silver chain belt and held it in one gloved hand. She fingered each silvery link like the beads of a rosary. “Waiting is wearing to my nerves.”

  “Patience,” Rhun said. “Let’s walk farther ahead, search for a door, somewhere to shelter. Perhaps they won’t attack.”

  “If you can,” Erin suggested, “look for a door on the right side of the passageway, something that might lead into the center of the Odal diamond.”

  Jordan had to hand it to her. Even shrouded within a black cloak of shrieking death, she never took her eye off the ball. She still sought the treasure that was hidden in the bunker.

  Emmanuel took a step forward, one hand upraised. A dagger glinted from his fist.

  Nadia moved next to him, weight balanced, graceful as a ballerina.

  Together, the five of them made slow progress down the tunnel, all eyes intent on the bats massed above them.

  Jordan longed to fire his weapon, but he was worried about ricochets, and concerned, too, about provoking the bats. He remembered Nadia’s earlier warning that bullets would not kill them. Their best chance lay in reaching—

  Without a sound, the bats dove.

  Again, they ignored the Sanguinists and zeroed in on the pair at the center of the triad.

  They came for Erin’s face.

  And Jordan’s.

  Overhead, Nadia twirled her belt. Jordan now recognized it as a silver chain whip. With her preternatural speed and strength, she wielded the weapon like it was a Cuisinart. Bats who came too close were shredded and torn apart.

  Learning its lesson, the horde retreated.

  Nadia’s whip caught one last straggler across its gray back, snagging the creature from the air and smashing it against the concrete wall.