“When I was your age, I lived in one of the most gilded cages in the world.” The boy’s soft gray eyes traveled around the room. “But then I was set free, as you are.”
“I don’t call this free.” Tommy gestured around the room.
“I meant free of the prison of your flesh.” The boy sat up, crossed his legs, and reached for a game controller. “Many aspire to that.”
“Are you free?” Tommy reached over and picked up the other controller, as if this were the most natural thing to do.
The boy shrugged and started an Xbox game on the screen. “After a fashion.”
“What does that mean?”
Alyosha faced him as the game bloomed to life on the screen. “You are immortal, no?”
Tommy lowered his controller. “What?”
Alyosha prompted the game—Gods of War—to start. “You know this now, no? It was what I tried to teach you. Out in the desert. So you would understand.”
Tommy struggled to understand, seeking some frame of reference as the game’s theme music began, full of drumbeats and brass chords. “Are you immortal, Alyosha?”
“There are ways that my life can end. But if I avoid them, yes, I will live forever. So we will be friends for a very long time.”
Tommy heard a hint of the loneliness in that voice.
He spoke softly, despairing. “So I’m like you, then?”
Alyosha shifted as if this part of the conversation bothered him. “No, you are not. In all the long history of time, there has only ever been one other like you. You, my friend, are very special.”
“Is this other one still around?”
“Yes, of course, he is still around. Like you, he cannot die or take his own life.”
“Ever?”
“Until the end of time.”
Tommy took another long look around the room. Would he be a prisoner here forever? He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but some part of him knew that Alyosha had told him the truth—but maybe not the full enormity of it.
Tommy understood that on his own.
Immortality was not a blessing.
It was a curse.
40
October 27, 6:55 A.M., CET
Beneath Harmsfeld Lake, Germany
With Piers hauled over his shoulder, Jordan ran several steps sideways, chased down the concrete tunnel by the screams of pursuing strigoi, feral and terrifying.
He yelled back to Erin, who trailed twenty yards behind.
“Hurry!”
“Keep going!” she called back, both irritated and scared.
That was Erin.
To hell with that.
By now, Nadia had reached the far leg and vanished down it, aiming for the air lock with Rhun, limp and poisoned, in her arms. Apparently she felt no obligation to wait for the two, slower humans. And she didn’t seem too fond of Piers either. She probably wasn’t coming back.
Jordan lowered Piers to the concrete and freed his submachine gun. “Sorry, old man.”
Piers opened faded blue eyes. “Meine Kinder.”
My children.
“I’ll come back.” Jordan hoped he’d be able to keep that promise.
Before Jordan could come fully to standing, Piers seized his hand, his grip incredibly strong, still capable of breaking bone. “Icarops. Sie kommen. To help. I send them.”
From the broken doorway of the neighboring vestibule, a black cloud of bats burst forth into the tunnel, churning, squealing, and swooping over their heads.
Thousands poured into the passageway.
Jordan ducked under the wings, overwhelmed by the creatures’ stench, tasting it on the back of his tongue. He crouched with Piers against the wall.
Erin had almost reached him, one arm shielding her face against the winged onslaught.
But this time their fury was not directed at her.
She forged through them, ducking low.
Behind her, the black horde struck the strigoi like a raging torrent. Bats battled monsters in a kaleidoscope of black blood, fur, and pale skin. Amid the chaos, silver flashed like lightning. Some of the icarops fell, but more swooped in to take their places.
Jordan saw one huge bat sweep up and wrap its wings around one strigoi like a monstrous cloak.
Screams rang louder.
Then a jetting flame burst upward in the heart of that dark storm. A whoosh and a crackling filled the air, followed by a terrible screeching. A cloud of foul smoke rushed toward the three onlookers.
Burnt flesh and petroleum.
Flamethrower.
Piers moaned in sympathy for his children as the chorus of screams threatened to burst Jordan’s ears.
But Erin finally reached him.
Jordan grabbed her arm and pushed her around the corner. “Make for the air lock! I’ll be right behind you!”
She nodded, breathing hard.
He collected up Piers and sprinted after her. He prayed that the remaining bats could buy them enough time to get free of this cursed place. After that, the sun ought to protect them.
At least, it was a theory.
They fled toward the open air lock. Out of the darkness ahead, Nadia came rushing toward them, empty-handed. She must have left Rhun at the air lock and come back to help. So she hadn’t abandoned them after all.
“Hurry!” the woman shouted, reaching Erin and grabbing her, almost lifting her off her feet.
A feral scream from behind drew Jordan’s attention. A strigoi—bloody, burned, and missing an eye—came charging around the corner at them, moving too fast, half climbing the walls in its haste to reach them.
The air lock loomed mere yards away.
But he’d never make it.
6:57 A.M.
Erin ground her heels against the inevitable force of Nadia’s pull toward the air lock. She twisted in her grip and lifted her Sig Sauer pistol.
“Jordan! Drop!”
From farther down the tunnel, he obeyed, sprawling headlong, rolling with Piers, keeping the priest protected.
She aimed her pistol at the monster as it leaped toward Jordan.
She took a single steadying breath, not holding it, and squeezed the trigger.
The blast of the pistol cracked like thunder, stinging her ears, setting them to ringing.
The back of the strigoi’s skull burst, smoking from the silver she had sent through its remaining eye. The creature’s momentum carried its bulk past Jordan. The body hit the ground and skidded to Erin’s feet.
She leaped back, but Nadia pronounced its sentence.
“It’s dead.”
Jordan hauled back up, lifting Piers. “Nice shooting.”
There was no condescending grin. He meant it. A surge of satisfaction warmed through her.
Together, they charged into the damp air lock.
Erin hurried over to Rhun, fearful at the sight of his white complexion—whiter than usual. His bared chest still seeped blood. Nadia and Jordan slammed the air lock with a resounding clank and dogged it shut.
The two went to open the outer hatch, hurrying.
Nadia rushed across the tiny room and spun open the handle for the outer door. As it cracked open, cold lake water surged inside before Erin had time to snatch a breath. In seconds the water rose above her head. Jordan switched on his waterproof flashlight, crouching by Piers.
Erin did the same, keeping one fist curled in Rhun’s jacket.
Nadia shouldered the door open as pressure finally equalized, and motioned them all out. She swam over to Erin and Rhun, grabbing her fellow Sanguinist by a wrist.
Freed of responsibility for him, Erin kicked off through the hatch and swam upward. She fought the weight of her leather duster—not to mention the pockets full of concrete fragments. She began to sink, but she refused to give up what had cost her so much to gain. In the distance, she made out the shimmering form of the fountain statue, a man on a rearing horse, draped in algae.
Would she join the others who had drowned in this fl
ooded town?
Then Jordan was by her side. He gathered a fistful of her jacket’s collar and pulled, kicking and dragging both Piers and her toward the silvery promise of dawn above.
What felt like an eternity later her head broke the surface.
She gasped.
Overhead, the sky had lightened to a dove gray. Sunrise was approaching, but it would be too soon for Piers. They would never reach the sanctuary of the Harmsfeld church in time.
Jordan pushed her toward the boat.
Nadia was already aboard with Rhun and helped pull Father Piers’s unconscious body into the stern. Jordan hauled up by himself, coming close to capsizing the dory.
Erin clutched the wooden gunwale near the bow and waited her turn. She took deep shuddering breaths, her body shaking. She had never been so cold in her life, but she was alive.
Balancing, Jordan stripped off his grimwolf leather coat and spread it over someone in the boat. He then reached a warm hand down to Erin and pulled her, one-armed, into the dory, causing her to land in a sprawl.
“Your coat,” Nadia said. “Hurry.”
Jordan helped peel off her sodden duster as if she were on fire.
She was shivering so hard she nearly fell over.
Jordan and Nadia worked quickly, arranging both coats over the wounded Sanguinists so that no sun would touch them. Sunlight would kill Piers, and Erin guessed Rhun must be too weak to withstand it as well. He had lost so much blood at the bunker door.
Once she was done, Nadia knelt and bowed her head. She shuddered and fell to one arm.
“Are you okay?” Jordan asked.
“I’ll be fine,” the woman whispered, sitting back but not sounding fine. She had a hole the size of a quarter in her right thigh, and it went clean through. Yet despite her wound, she had saved everyone.
Jordan raised the anchor and dropped it in the middle of the boat.
Feeling like a weakling, Erin fumbled with her paddle and helped Jordan row toward shore. Her hands shook so that she could barely hold the shaft.
From under one of the cloaks, a weak, muffled voice gasped. “Please. Take it off.”
It was Father Piers.
Nadia stared down at his covered figure, her face a study of agony. “You’ll die.”
“I know,” he said. “Release me.”
Nadia’s hand hovered over the coat, but she did not pick it up. “Please, Piers, don’t.”
“Can you grant me absolution?” His frail voice barely rose above the splashes of their paddle blades.
Nadia sighed. “I have not yet taken Holy Orders.” She lifted the other coat and peered under it. “Rhun cannot grant you absolution either in his state. I’m sorry.”
Beside Erin, Jordan raked his paddle through the water, methodical and fast. She paddled harder, her hands cold claws on the wood.
“Then please, let us pray together, Nadia,” Piers pleaded.
As Erin and Jordan worked slowly toward shore, the two Sanguinists prayed in Latin, but Erin did not translate the words. She stared straight at the water, orange in the rising sun, and she thought of Rhun, dead or dying under Jordan’s coat. Why had she acceded to this quest? The search for the Gospel had already cost so many lives, just as Rhun had warned her. They had gained nothing and lost much.
As they neared the shoreline, Nadia gently lifted the coat off Piers and drew him up, cradling his gaunt form against her. For the first time, she looked frightened.
Piers’s filmy blue eyes searched the landscape of the shore.
Erin followed his gaze to dark pines, to the silver trunks of lindens bared by fall, a lake turned copper, and the golden rays of light breaking through fog.
Piers raised his face to the sun. “Light is truly the most beautiful of His creations.”
Tears streamed down Nadia’s cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away, instead tightening her grip on Piers. “Forgive me,” she said in Latin. “You are blessed.”
Jordan’s face was set like stone. He did not break the rhythm of his paddling.
Piers’s face glowed iridescent in a wash of sunlight.
His back arched. The flush spread to his neck and hands.
He screamed.
Nadia held him close. “Lord our God, You are our refuge from generation to generation. Year and days vary, but You remain eternal.”
Piers grew silent, slumping in her arms and going still.
“Your mercy sustains us in life and in death,” Nadia continued. “Grant us to remember with thanks what You have given us through Piers and Emmanuel. Receive them together into Your kingdom after their long years of service to You.”
Erin finished with her, using a word she hadn’t spoken in years and doubted that she ever truly meant, until now.
“Amen.”
41
October 27, 7:07 A.M., CET
Harmsfeld, Germany
Jordan dug deeper with the paddle, working slowly across the lake’s surface. He stared up at the sun, marking a new day after the longest night of his life—but at least, he still had a life.
He pictured the faces of his men … of Piers … of Emmanuel.
When Jordan had spread his coat over Rhun, he could tell that the priest might not be far behind the others. And for what? They’d come out of their long nightmare empty-handed.
At the bow of the boat, Nadia removed the duster from Piers’s body and handed it to Erin. The priest no longer needed its protection, but Erin was shivering in the early morning chill.
Nadia laid Piers out in the boat as best she could and crossed his arms over his thin chest. Her hands lingered above the terrible wounds on his feet and hands, but she refused to touch them. She drew Emmanuel’s cassock over his lifeless form, tucking it lovingly around him, then bowed her head in prayer.
Jordan did the same, owing Piers that much.
Once this was done, Nadia made the sign of the cross.
The woman looked to the sun for a long breath, then scooped up Piers, lifted him over the gunwale, and gently rolled his body into the lake. He sank out of sight in the green water, a trail of bubbles rising from the black cassock.
Erin gasped at the unceremonious end of Father Piers.
“He cannot rest in hallowed ground, nor can his body be found,” Nadia explained, then she sat back down, picking up a paddle. “Let him find his peace and eternal rest in these highlands he loved so much.”
Erin shivered, her blue lips pressed into a thin line, but she kept paddling.
Jordan checked behind his shoulder. The shore loomed out of the fog. He spotted the dock to the right. In the forest ahead, a bird called, greeting the morning, and another answered.
It seemed that life went on.
He did not slow the boat as the bank swept up to its bow. He used their momentum to shove the boat into the mud.
“Wait here,” he warned.
Erin shivered and nodded.
Nadia did not respond.
He drew his Colt and vaulted off the side. Mud sucked at his boots, but it felt good to be on land, outside in the sunlight.
He hurried to the spot where they’d hidden their Ducati bikes. They could be back at the abbey in less than an hour. Maybe Brother Leopold had some kind of medicine to help Rhun heal.
But as Jordan stepped behind the sheltering tree, he stopped, staring down at the wreckage of the trio of bikes. He tensed, searching around. The strigoi were surely hiding from the sun, but he knew that the Belial also employed humans.
At that moment he realized a horrible truth.
They were still not safe—even in the brightness of a new day.
7:12 A.M.
Standing on the muddy shore, Erin pulled her leather duster tightly around her body. She turned her gaze at the trees that had swallowed up Jordan. She saw no movement out there, which burned an ember of worry in her chest.
To the side, Nadia unstrapped the wineskin from her leg and ducked under the coat covering Rhun, still keeping the sunlight off his body
as she checked on him.
Erin longed to peek beneath, too, and see how Rhun fared, but she didn’t dare. Nadia knew best how to care for him. She had probably known him longer than Erin had been alive.
Jordan’s familiar form reappeared out of the woods, and Erin let out a deep breath. But she could tell by the slump of his shoulders that he had bad news. Very bad. It took a lot to defeat him, and Jordan looked crestfallen.
Nadia sat back up, one hand resting on Rhun’s covered head.
“Someone destroyed the bikes,” Jordan said, casting her an apologetic look, as if it were his fault.
“All of them?” Nadia asked.
Jordan nodded. “Not fixable without parts and tools and time.”
“None of which we have.” Nadia’s hand stroked her wounded leg. She suddenly looked frail. “We’ll never get Rhun back to the abbey alive if we have to walk.”
“What about the Harmsfeld church?” Erin pointed to the steeple poking above the forest. “You thought it could offer Piers sanctuary. What about Rhun?”
Nadia leaned back. She stroked a hand along the coat covering Rhun.
“We must pray it has what we need.”
7:14 A.M.
From the shoreline, Jordan watched the fog disperse in tatters in the early morning sunlight. Once it was gone, they’d be exposed beside the lake: three adults with a stolen dory and a badly wounded man.
Not easy to explain that one.
Nadia stepped over to the beached boat and began to haul the unconscious Rhun up in her arms. It was a short hike to the picturesque hamlet of Harmsfeld.
Jordan stepped in to intervene. “Please give him to me.”
“Why? Do you think me too weak for such a task?” Her dark eyes narrowed.
“I think that if anyone sees a woman as small as you carrying a full-grown man as easily as if he were a puppy, it’ll raise questions.”
Reluctantly, she allowed Jordan to hoist Rhun on his shoulder. The priest was deadweight in his arms. If he were a human, he’d be simply dead: cold, no heartbeat, and no breath. Was he even still alive?
Jordan had to trust that Nadia would know.
The woman led them through the surrounding forest at a punishing pace. Jordan soon wished he’d let her carry Rhun until they got within sight of the village.
The Blood Gospel Page 29