The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  Even Nadia did not dare to speak his name.

  He had once been a Sanguinist, but he had broken the Church’s laws so violently that he had been excommunicated—and not an ordinary excommunication, but a banishment that could not be undone, one so severe that all who knew him must shun him forever after.

  In the end, his name had become his curse: Vitandus.

  10:08 A.M.

  Erin smiled when Jordan lifted her over the leather jacket and onto his lap. She now straddled him, staring down at his impish smile. “What happened to staying on your side?”

  “You’re the one who came over to my side.” He kissed her lightly on the lips and a shiver ran down her spine.

  She couldn’t argue with that. With one foot, she kicked the grimwolf jacket onto the floor.

  Jordan grinned up at her. “Problem solved.”

  She stroked a hand across his jaw. Smooth from his recent shave. She kissed him again. He smelled like eucalyptus shaving cream, and he tasted like coffee.

  She pulled back and gazed into those beautiful blue eyes. “Your eyes are Egyptian blue, like the sun god Ra.”

  “I’m taking that as a compliment.”

  He slid one warm palm around the small of her back, then pulled her so tightly against his chest that she felt his heartbeat against her breast.

  She relaxed against him, feeling safe.

  Then he shifted his lips, found her mouth, and kissed her hard. A yearning urgency flowed from his lips to hers. She moaned between them and threaded her fingers through his hair, pulling him even closer.

  She wanted to forget everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, blot out every bad memory. The only thing she had room for in her head was the two of them. He stroked his hands along her body.

  With one arm around her back, he used the other to ease her around and under him on the bed.

  She stretched under his weight, feeling his muscular bulk settle upon her. Her hands stroked down his broad back. She slid them under his shirt, felt the smooth warmth of his skin. He pulled his T-shirt over his head in one quick movement, revealing the blaze of his tattoo down one side, the branching fractal marking the lightning strike, a testament to his brief experience of death.

  Her finger traced one of the forking lines, raising a shiver over his flesh.

  He was far from dead now: his breath heaved, heat radiated from him, his eyes shone deep into hers.

  Never breaking from her gaze, he undid the belt of her robe and smoothed back both sides. Only then did his eyes drift down, devouring her body, leaving heat in their wake without him even touching her.

  “Wow,” he silently mouthed.

  She drew him down to her, gasping when his bare skin touched hers. His mouth found hers again. Erin lost herself in the kiss. Her heart raced against his, and her breath caught, held, then sped, too.

  He raised his lips from hers, just a finger’s breadth, and she lifted up to meet them again. He kissed down her throat. She tilted her neck and arched her head back against the pillow, feeling strands of wet hair fall across her face but not wanting to take her hands from his body for even a second to brush them away. His lips moved lower, grazed along the top of her collarbone, ending on the hollow of her throat.

  “Erin?” His question brushed soft against her neck.

  She knew what he asked, and she knew what she wanted to answer. But she didn’t speak. “Wait.” The word came out breathless. She pushed him away and pulled the robe closed. “Too fast.”

  “Slower,” he said. “Got it.”

  She tied the robe. Her heart raced, and she wanted nothing more than to flee back to the warmth of his arms. But she didn’t trust that. She couldn’t.

  A fist pounded the door.

  A voice called through.

  Nadia.

  “Time to go.”

  45

  October 27, 10:10 A.M., CET

  Munich, Germany

  As the jet lifted off, Bathory settled into the plane’s soft seat with a sigh. In the darkness of the cargo hold, she felt Magor relax.

  Sleep, my darling, she told him. We are safe.

  For the first time in years, she was flying during the day, and without her strigoi. Where she was going, they had more to fear than just sunlight; their very existence put them at risk. It was a dangerous destination, but she felt safer without them.

  She had chartered a plane, one whose pilot did not question her when the ground crew loaded the wolf into the cargo hold. He had stayed silent in his covered crate, as ordered, but they must have smelled him, known that he was a huge beast. For the right price, they had said nothing. She stretched luxuriantly in the wide seat of the jet. She had the plane to herself. The only others on board were the captain and the copilot.

  How long since she had been so alone? Far from Him and His tools? Years.

  She stroked the leather seat appreciatively and pulled up the window shade. Sunlight flooded into the cabin, falling across her legs, warming them. She held her hand palm up to the light, as if she could grasp hold of it. When she tired of that, she turned her attention to the bright landscape below.

  The city of Munich gave way to farms, forests, and tiny, one-family homes that spread ever farther apart as the jet headed east. In each house, a family had just had breakfast. A father had kissed a mother good-bye, a child had gathered up a schoolbag and left. Those houses were empty now, but later they would fill again.

  What would it be like to live in one of them?

  Her destiny had been fated at birth. No simple life of husbands and children and domesticity. She usually felt only contempt for those living such a simple existence, but today she was drawn to its humble charm.

  She shook her head. Even if she were free, she would not settle into another prison as a wife and mother. Instead she and Magor would hunt. They could range as far as they liked, living alone, never having to worry that He would punish her, that Tarek would finally have the revenge he had so long sought, not fighting every day for respect, for the right to live to see another sunrise.

  Just thinking about it made her tired.

  Magor stirred in the cargo hold, sensing her worries.

  Rest, she told him, and he settled back down.

  Her fingers stroked the black mark on her neck, the proof that set her apart from others. It would take a miracle for her to erase it, to escape Him.

  What if the book could show her just such a miracle?

  PART IV

  Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.

  Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.

  Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land …

  Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in,

  And cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

  —Deuteronomy 26:16–19

  46

  October 27, 4:45 P.M., Moscow Standard Time

  St. Petersburg, Russia

  Erin had trudged through Russian customs half asleep, but she woke up fully when she and the two men reached the freezing sidewalk in front of the St. Petersburg airport. Rhun hustled them into a taxi with a broken heater and a driver who obviously had no fear of death. She was too scared to be cold as the driver careened through the thickening snowstorm, talking all the while in Russian.

  Eventually the cab slid to a stop in front of what looked like a city park, a large space that was probably green in summer, with tall trees lining both sides. Right now the trees had naked limbs, and the frozen grass would soon be buried under thick white snow.

  She could not believe how far she had come from the searing heat of Masada. Yesterday morning, her biggest weather worry had been sunburn; today it was hypothermia. As she climbed from the taxi, the St. Petersburg wind cut through her grimwolf leather coat and sucked warmth from the marrow of her bones. Instead of sand, gritty snowflakes stung her cheeks.

  Overhead, the sun had changed into a pearly disk struggling to cast a wh
ite glow through banks of cloud, providing little light and less warmth.

  Jordan walked close at her side as they crossed under a stone arch and into the park. She suspected that he wanted to take her hand, but she punched her fists deep in her pockets and kept walking. He looked hurt, and she couldn’t blame him, but she didn’t know what to do with him. She had been very close to making love to him back in Germany and was terrified by what would have happened if she had. She liked Jordan far too much already.

  With each step, her sneakers slipped on the ice-glazed stone tiles of the path. To either side, the earth had been raised into knee-high grassy mounds. She eyed them, wondering what they were for.

  Jordan had turned up his collar, his nose and cheeks already red. She remembered the feel of his jaw under her lips, the heat of his lips against her skin, and quickly looked away.

  A few steps ahead, Rhun hadn’t bothered with a coat and strode in a billowing black cassock, white hands at his sides, looking as comfortable as he had in hundred-degree heat atop Masada. In one hand, he carried the long leather cylinder that Nadia had left for them in Germany. Erin had no idea what it contained and suspected that Rhun didn’t either. Before Nadia had given it to him, she had sealed the cylinder with golden wax and imprinted it with the papal seal—two crossed keys tied with a band and topped by the triple crown of the pope.

  “Okay, Rhun.” Jordan stepped up on the priest’s right side. “Why are we here? Why did we come to this freezing park?”

  Erin moved to Rhun’s other side to hear the answer. He had told them only that their destination was St. Petersburg, that Russian forces might have brought the book to the city after the war. Erin had already surmised as much, picturing the dead Russian soldier in the bunker, remembering Nadia reading the Cyrillic orders. The soldier had been dispatched from this city.

  Erin also knew the man had a wife and a child, a daughter who might still be alive, living in St. Petersburg, unaware that some strangers knew more about her father’s death than she did.

  Erin was glad that she had given Nadia the letters from the bunker to pass along to Brother Leopold. Maybe their efforts would bring the woman a small measure of peace.

  “Rhun?” Erin pressed him, wanting to know more, deserving to know more.

  The priest stopped and looked across the snow-covered mounds toward a copse of skeletal trees. Wind rattled stubborn and ragged leaves. “We have come here to ask permission to seek the book on Russian soil.”

  “Why?” Jordan said. “I thought Sanguinists didn’t ask for permission.”

  Rhun’s poker face concealed his emotions, but Erin sensed fear from him. She hated to imagine something terrible enough to frighten Rhun.

  “St. Petersburg is not in our domain,” he answered cryptically.

  “Then whose is it?” Jordan asked. “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Catholic Church has a renewed presence here.”

  Erin stuffed her hands deeper into cold pockets and stared at the path’s end, where she saw a large bronze statue of a woman in a broad skirt holding an object up into the air. Erin squinted, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. She searched around the space. She had thought this was a city park, but an air of sadness permeated the air. She could not imagine children ever playing here.

  “The Vitandus rules this land,” Rhun answered Jordan. The priest touched the leather cylinder slung over his shoulder as if to reassure himself that he had not lost it. “And he has no love for the Church. When he comes, tell him nothing about our mission or yourselves.”

  “What’s a Vitandus?” Jordan asked.

  Erin knew that answer. “It is a title given as a punishment. There is no worse religious condemnation from the Church. It’s worse than excommunication. More like a permanent banishment and shunning.”

  “Great. Can’t wait to meet the guy. Must be a real charmer.”

  “He is,” Rhun added. “So beware.”

  Jordan made an involuntary move for his holster, but they had been forced to leave their weapons in Germany. They flew here by commercial airlines, using false papers prepared by Nadia. But there was no way to smuggle in their weapons.

  “What did this Vitandus do?” Erin asked, stamping her cold feet against the stone as if that would warm them. “Who is he?”

  Rhun kept his gaze on the bare trees, watchful, wary, with a frightened cast to his eyes. He responded matter-of-factly—though the answer stunned her.

  “You know the man better as Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.”

  4:52 P.M.

  Moving slowly down the tiled path, Rhun fingered his icy rosary and offered a prayer that Grigori would not order them immediately slaughtered, as he had murdered every Sanguinist sent to Russia since 1945. Perhaps the tube that Nadia had handed him offered some hope. She had instructed him to give it to Grigori unopened.

  But what was it?

  Did he bear a gift or a weapon?

  Erin broke into his worries. “Rasputin?” Disbelief rang in her voice, shone in her narrowed eyes. “The Mad Monk of Russia? Confidant to the Romanovs?”

  “The same,” he answered.

  Such details were what most historians noted about Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. He had been a mystic monk rumored to have healing powers, his fate tied to Czar Nicholas II and his family. In the early 1900s, he had used those powers to ingratiate himself with the czar and his family, seemingly the only one capable of helping their son through his painful illness of hemophilia. For such tender care, they had overlooked his sexual eccentricities and political machinations, until eventually a British secret-service agent and a group of nobles had assassinated him.

  Or so it was thought.

  Rhun, of course, knew far more.

  He drew in a deep breath of cold air. He smelled the fresh tang of snow, the underlying carpet of frostbitten leaves, and the faint tinge of old death.

  Here was Russia.

  He had not breathed its scent in a hundred years.

  Jordan, meanwhile, surveyed the park, ever vigilant as he strode at Rhun’s side.

  Rhun followed his gaze. The soldier’s eyes lingered on the dark tree trunks, the low stone wall, the plinth supporting a statue, all places where enemies might hide. He appreciated Jordan’s wariness and suspicion, two valuable traits while standing on Russian soil. But their adversary had not yet arrived. For perhaps another few moments they were still safe.

  They stopped at the grim dark statue of a woman staring into the distance, proffering a wreath to the lost citizens of St. Petersburg: the symbol of a mourning motherland.

  Jordan blew into his hands to warm them, a gesture that spoke to his humanness and the fire burning inside him. He faced Rhun. “I thought Rasputin died during World War One?”

  Erin answered him. “He was assassinated. Poisoned with cyanide, shot four times, beaten with a club, wrapped in a rug, and thrown in the Neva River, where he supposedly drowned.”

  “And this guy survived all that?” Jordan said with thick sarcasm. “Sounds like a strigoi to me.”

  Erin shook her head. “There are plenty of pictures of him in daylight.”

  Rhun tried to focus past their endless chatter. He heard a creature rustle among the trees a few yards off. But it was only a field mouse searching for grain before winter buried everything in snow. He hoped that the creature might find some.

  “Then what is he?” Jordan asked.

  Rhun sighed, knowing only answers would silence them. “Grigori was once a Sanguinist. He and Piers and I served as a triad for many years, before he was defrocked.”

  Jordan frowned. “So your order defrocked this guy, then punished him with eternal banishment?”

  “An order of Vitandus,” Erin reminded him.

  The soldier nodded. “No wonder this guy doesn’t like the Church. Maybe you need to work on your PR.”

  Rhun turned his back on them. “That is not the entire reason for his hatred of the Church.”

  He touched his pectoral cross.
Grigori had many reasons—hundreds of thousands of reasons—to hate the Church, reasons that Rhun understood far too well.

  “So why was Rasputin excommunicated?” Erin asked.

  He could still hear the doubt in her voice as she spoke Grigori’s name. She would not believe the truth until she could touch it. In this case, she might regret needing such reassurances.

  Jordan pressed Rhun with more questions. “And what happens to an excommunicated Sanguinist? Can he still perform holy rites?”

  “A priest is said to have an indelible mark on his soul,” Erin said. “So I’m guessing he can still consecrate wine?”

  Rhun rubbed his eyes—with such short lives, their impatience was understandable, their need for answers insatiable. He wished for silence, but it was not to be.

  “Grigori can consecrate wine,” Rhun answered tiredly. “But unlike wine blessed by a priest from the true Church, it does not have the same sustaining power of Christ’s blood. Because of that, he is forever trapped in a state between cursed strigoi and blessed Sanguinist.”

  Erin brushed her hair out of her face. “What does that mean for his soul?”

  “At the moment,” Jordan said, “I’m more concerned about what it means for his body. Like can he come out during the day?”

  “He can and does and will.”

  And soon.

  “So why do we need his permission to be here?” Jordan asked.

  “We need his permission because he has not let a Sanguinist leave Russian soil alive for many decades. He knows we are here. He will have us brought to him when it is time.”

  Jordan turned on him, his heart spiking with anger. “And you couldn’t have told us this sooner? How much danger are we in?”

  Rhun faced his fury. “I believe that we stand a good chance of leaving Russia alive. Unlike the others who have come here, the Vitandus and I have a more nuanced relationship because of our shared past.”