The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  Jordan’s hand strayed to the side where his weapon usually hung. “So the men in the black rattletrap who have been following us since the airport … they belong to a Russian strigoi mobster with a shoot-on-sight order for all Sanguinists?”

  Erin jerked her head toward the distant street. “We’re being followed?”

  Jordan simply glared. “I had hoped they were Rhun’s people.”

  “I have no people,” Rhun said. “The Church does not know we are here. After the attack at Masada and then the events in Germany, I suspect the Belial have a traitor in the Sanguinist fold. So I had Nadia declare us all dead.”

  A muscle twitched in the soldier’s jaw. “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

  A new voice interrupted, scolding in tone but amused nonetheless. “Such vehemence is unbecoming here.”

  They all turned as a man in the long dark robe of a Russian Orthodox priest circled around the bronze statue and approached on stocky legs. The edges of his robe swept the tiles. Around his neck he wore a pectoral cross, a triple-barred crucifix of the same Church.

  He smiled as he closed upon them. His once-long hair had been cut an inch above his shoulders and was combed back to reveal a broad face and cunning blue eyes. His sable-brown beard was neatly trimmed, which it had not been during the years Rhun had spent with him.

  Erin smothered a gasp.

  Grigori, Rhun realized, must still look enough like his century-old photographs to put an end to her lingering doubt. He prayed that she and Jordan would remember his admonition to tell Rasputin nothing.

  Rhun greeted him with the slightest bow of his head. “Grigori.”

  “My dear Rhun.” Grigori inclined his square head toward Erin and Jordan. “You have new companions.”

  Rhun did not introduce them. “I do.”

  “As usual, you have chosen a wise meeting place.” Grigori gestured toward the mounds to either side of the path with one powerful hand. “I might have killed you elsewhere, but not here. Not among the bones of half a million of my countrymen.”

  Jordan swiveled his head around, as if looking for those bones.

  “He did not tell you where you are, perhaps?” Grigori clucked his tongue. “Ever the poor host, Father Korza. You are at Piskariovskoye Cemetery. It commemorates the lives of those lost during the siege of Leningrad. These mounds you see are mass graves. Precisely one hundred and eighty-six of them.”

  Erin stared aghast at the spread of grassy hummocks.

  “They contain the bones of half a million Russians. Four hundred and twenty thousand civilians. They died during the years that the Nazis surrounded our city. When we fought and prayed for help. But help did not come, did it, Rhun?”

  Rhun said nothing. If he said anything, it would fan to life the flame of Grigori’s smoldering temper.

  “Four years of unending slaughter. And yet do any of these graves weigh on your Cardinal’s conscience?”

  “I am sorry,” Erin said. “For your losses.”

  “Even the child can apologize, Rhun. Do you see?” Grigori pointed back toward a car idling near the entrance to the cemetery. “Shall we move your poor companions out of the cold? I can see that they suffer under its bite.”

  Rhun spared Erin and Jordan a quick glance. They did, indeed, look very cold. He had so little to do with humans that he often forgot their fragility.

  “Will you guarantee our safety?”

  “No more than you will guarantee mine.” Wind whipped Grigori’s dark hair across his white face. “You must know that the time of your death is at my choosing now.”

  5:12 P.M.

  Jordan wrapped an arm around Erin’s shoulder. She didn’t lean into it, but she didn’t move away from it either. He faced Rhun and Rasputin, sensing between them the tension of old hostilities mixed with a measure of respect, maybe even dark friendship.

  He kept his tone light. “How about we all talk about our imminent demise someplace warm?”

  Rasputin’s eyebrows rose high at his words, then he threw back his head and laughed. It sounded deep and merry and completely out of place in a snowy graveyard, especially after the threat to kill them. Jordan could see why they called him the Mad Monk.

  “I like this one.” Rasputin clapped a broad hand on Jordan’s back, almost knocking him off his feet. He smiled at Erin. “But not quite as much as the beauty here.”

  Jordan didn’t like the sound of that.

  Rhun stepped between them. “Perhaps my companion is right. We could find a more amenable location for our conversation.”

  Rasputin shrugged heavily and led them back down the path to the waiting car. Once there, he indicated that Jordan and Erin should take the front seat. He and Rhun took the back.

  Jordan opened the door to a wave of warmth. It smelled like vodka and cigarettes. He climbed in before Erin, to sit between her and Rasputin’s driver.

  The driver held out his hand. He looked around fourteen, and his snow-white hand felt colder than Jordan’s.

  “Name’s Sergei.”

  “Are you old enough to drive?” It slipped out before Jordan could stop it.

  “I am older than you.” The boy spoke with a slight Russian accent. “Perhaps older than your mother.”

  Jordan suddenly missed his submachine gun, his dagger, and the days when all his enemies were human.

  47

  October 27, 5:15 P.M., MST

  St. Petersburg, Russia

  As the large sedan wound away from the cemetery, Erin held her outstretched fingers over the car’s heater vent. Jordan had one arm across the back of the seat behind her. He was the only one in the car whom she trusted—and in truth, she barely knew him.

  But at least he was human.

  Right now that meant one hell of a lot.

  Rhun and Rasputin spoke in measured tones in the backseat. As civil as they sounded, she could tell that they were arguing, even if she didn’t understand a word of Russian.

  The car screeched through the late-afternoon streets, bright Russian facades peeking like fairy-tale houses through plumes of swirling snow. They had at best another hour of daylight. If the Belial had followed them to Russia, would they attack again after nightfall? Was Rasputin at war with them, as he seemed to be with the Sanguinists?

  Any answers would have to wait until she could get Rhun away from Rasputin.

  After another ten minutes, the car slowed to a stop in front of a magnificent Russian-style church. Erin pushed her face closer to the window to see.

  Onion-shaped domes topped with golden crosses soared into the sky, each dome more fantastical than the last—two gilt, one with bright swirls of color, others blue and encrusted with designs of gold and white and green. The facade sported columns, raised squares, arches, and an enormous mosaic of Jesus bathed in a golden light. Such fanciful opulence stole her breath away.

  “Wondrous, yes?” the driver said with reverence.

  “Stunning,” she answered honestly.

  “You see here the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood,” Rasputin said, leaning forward from the backseat. “Erected over the spot of Czar Alexander the Second’s assassination in 1881. But he would not be the last Romanov to fall to the wrath of the people. Inside that church, you will see cobblestones once stained with Alexander’s blood.”

  Despite the church’s rich history, it lost some of its splendor in Erin’s eyes as she listened to Rasputin’s words. She had seen enough stones stained with blood, enough to last a lifetime. Still, she pushed open the car door and stepped into cold wind, more frigid than even the cemetery. She stared at dirty gray snowdrifts pushed up along the wall of the church by the stiff wind coming off the nearby river.

  Jordan moved close enough to her to block the wind. He stared up at the elaborate construction. “Looks like someone had a gingerbread kit and a lot of spare time.”

  Rhun scolded in a low voice, “He is proud. Do not insult him.”

  Rasputin’s answer carried through the w
ind and across the car. “They could do no more to insult me than you and those whom you love have done already, Rhun. But they would be wise not to anger me themselves. For now, I am feeling generous enough to grant them immunity because they are not Sanguinists.”

  “Guess it’s good to be human,” Jordan muttered with a crooked, wry smile.

  Proving this, he reached down and threaded warm fingers through Erin’s cold ones.

  Together, they followed the two black-clad priests toward the twin arches of the church’s entrance.

  5:27 P.M.

  Once they passed the entrance vestibule, Rhun stepped into the main nave. He knew what to expect, but what he saw still struck his senses deeply—as Grigori knew it would.

  His gaze was immediately drawn to the mosaics covering every surface inside the space. Bright blues and golds and crimsons swam in Rhun’s vision. Tiles depicting biblical stories shouted from every wall and ceiling: Jesus and the apostles, the stylized brown eyes of saints, the brilliant wings of angels. Millions of minuscule tiles formed and re-formed into biblical scenes. He closed his eyes, but they burned anew when he opened them.

  His stomach roiled from the smells here, too: warm humans in the nave, incense, wine, old death seeping from the floor and cracks, and, somewhere, fresh human blood. He struggled against an urge to flee.

  Rhun turned back toward the entrance, his eyes falling upon a vast mosaic over the doorway. Hundreds of thousands of small tiles depicted the greatest moment of Sanguinist history. He knew that Grigori himself had commissioned this very work, showing the rising of Lazarus from his tomb, the first of the Sanguinist Order to greet Our Lord, making his pact to serve Christ, to partake only of His blood.

  Except for Rhun, Lazarus was the only member of the Order who had been converted before ever tasting human blood, before ever taking a single life.

  How far I have fallen …

  Rhun cast his eyes down. The majesty of the story of Lazarus helped him find his center amid the din and clamor of the vibrant church.

  “Wondrous, is it not?” Grigori beamed at the monstrous home he had created.

  “The mosaics are masterful,” Erin agreed, striding past him, her head tilted up, studying all.

  “Yes, they are.”

  Grigori clapped his hands, and shadowy figures appeared from doorways and alcoves, whirling into activity.

  Rhun returned his attention to the room, noting that those who did Grigori’s bidding had no heartbeats; most looked like their driver, so very young in face but so very old in years. These were strigoi who had made a pact with Grigori as their pope, creating a dark version of the Sanguinist order on Russian soil.

  Upon Grigori’s orders, the tourists in the church were hustled out the doors, which thudded closed and locked. Within minutes, only two human hearts still beat in the church.

  Besides Rhun and his companions, the church held only Grigori’s followers, fifty in all: men, women, and children whom he had turned into his own dark congregation, forever trapping them between salvation and damnation. They were not as feral as most strigoi, yet neither were they striving toward holiness like the Sanguinists.

  A new shade of darkness had been brought into the world by Grigori.

  Wooden pews were carried into the nave and lined up facing the altar. Electric lights were switched off, and long yellow beeswax candles flamed to life. The summer scent of honey fought the tainted odors of the dark congregation.

  Erin and Jordan stayed close to Rhun near the back of the church. Jordan shifted warily from side to side, as if he expected an attack at any moment. Erin turned her focus to one fantastical mosaic after another. Even here, they each amply demonstrated their roles as Warrior of Man and Woman of Learning.

  Rhun kept between them and Grigori’s congregation, filling his own role.

  Knight of Christ.

  But his head whirled at the deep sense of wrongness here, as sacred images looked down upon Grigori’s profaned flock.

  Accompanied by young acolytes, Grigori climbed the black marble stairs to the altar with a stately tread. Ornate bloodred columns, lit by tall candles, flanked him. Behind his shoulder, the last light of day, a feeble orange glow, shone through high windows onto a mosaic of Christ feeding the apostles with the host and the wine, while angels beamed from above.

  In this space, Grigori intoned his dark Mass.

  The choir chanted ancient Russian prayers, clear voices soaring to faraway ceilings in rhythms and tones that humans could never attain, would never hear.

  At last, hands led Rhun and the others to a pew. He followed, still unable to adjust to the bone-deep wrongness of this spectacle.

  Then a warm hand touched his bare wrist.

  “Rhun?” whispered a voice.

  He turned and looked into Erin’s questioning eyes. Their naturalness, their humanity, helped to ground him.

  “Are you all right?” She tilted her head as they took seats in the pew.

  He put his hand atop hers, closed his eyelids, and concentrated on the quick, sure beat of her heart, letting it blot out the profane music. One true human heartbeat was enough to keep it all at bay.

  The singing stopped.

  For a heartbeat, silence swallowed the church.

  Then Grigori called everyone forward to accept the Eucharist, holding high a golden chalice. Disciples filed forward to receive their wine, their boots soft on the dark marble floor. Rhun remained seated with Jordan and Erin.

  When the consecrated liquid touched their lips, smoke rose from their mouths as if they had just breathed fire. With bodies too impure to accept Christ’s love, even the pale version of it that Grigori could offer, they moaned in agony.

  Erin’s heart squeezed to a faster beat, in sympathy with their pain, especially that of those who seemed no more than children.

  Rhun stared at a young girl, who in life had been no more than ten or eleven, step away, her lips blistering, each breath a steaming gasp of agony and ecstasy. She crossed back to her pew and knelt with her head bowed in supplication.

  Here was Grigori’s greatest evil, his willingness to convert the young. Such an act stole their souls and cut them off from receiving Christ’s love for all eternity.

  Grigori’s voice cut through Rhun’s musings. “And now, Rhun. You, too, must accept my Communion.”

  He remained seated, refusing to take such darkness into his body. “I will not.”

  Grigori snapped his fingers, and Rhun’s party was suddenly surrounded by a group of Rasputin’s disciples, fouling his nostrils with the odors of wine and burnt flesh.

  “That is my price, Rhun.” Grigori’s words boomed through the church. “Accept my hospitality. Drink of the sacred wine. Only then will I listen.”

  “If I refuse?”

  “My children will not go hungry.”

  The disciples moved closer.

  Erin’s heart raced. Jordan’s hands formed fists.

  Grigori smiled paternally. “But your companions will fight, won’t they? It will be no easy death. The man is a soldier, is he not? Dare I say, he is a warrior?”

  Rhun flinched.

  “And the woman,” Grigori continued. “A true beauty, but with hands callused from work in the field, and also, I suspect, from holding a pen. I believe that she is most learned.”

  Rhun glared across the dark congregation toward Grigori at the altar.

  “Yes, my friend.” Grigori laughed his familiar mad laugh. “I know that you are here seeking the Gospel. Only prophecy would send you to my doorstep. And perhaps I will even help you—but not without a price.”

  Grigori cupped the tainted chalice in his palms and raised it.

  “Come, Rhun, drink. Drink to save your companions’ souls.”

  With no choice, Rhun stood. On stiff legs, he walked between the pews, mounted the hard stone stairs, and opened his mouth.

  He braced himself against the pain.

  Grigori came forward, lifted his chalice high, poured fr
om that height.

  Bloodred wine struck and filled Rhun’s mouth, his throat.

  To his surprise, this black sacrament did not burn. Instead, a welcoming warmth coursed through his body. Strength and healing surged within him, quickening even his still heart to beat—something it had not done in many centuries. With that quiver of muscle in his chest, he knew what was mixed in that wine, but still he did not turn his face away from the flowing chalice.

  It filled him, quieting that endless hunger inside him. He felt the wounds that had been opened in the bunker pull closed. But best of all, he was enveloped in a deep contentment.

  He moaned at the rapture of it.

  Grigori stepped back, taking his chalice with him.

  Rhun struggled to form words as the world around him wavered. “You did not—”

  “I am not so holy as you,” Grigori explained, looming over him as Rhun slumped to the marble floor. “Not since my excommunication from your beloved Church. So, yes, any wine that I give my followers must be fortified. With human blood.”

  Rhun’s eyes rolled back, taking away the world and leaving only his eternal penance.

  At Elisabeta’s throat, Rhun swallowed blood. In all his long years as a young Sanguinist, he had never tasted its rich iron against his tongue, save that first night when he became cursed, feeding on tainted strigoi blood.

  Panic at the blasphemy gave him strength to swim against that bloodred tide, to pull his vision clear. The beating of his own heart, quickened by her surge of blood through him, slowed … slowed … and stopped.

  Elisabeta lay under him, her soft body golden in the firelight. Dark hair spilled over her creamy shoulders, across the stone floor.

  Silence now filled the room. But that could not be.

  Always he heard the steady beat of her heart.

  He whispered her name, but this time she did not answer.

  Her head fell to the side, exposing the bloody wound on her throat. Rhun’s hand rose to his mouth. For the first time in many years, he touched fangs.

  He had done this. He had taken her life. In his blind lust, he had lost himself, believing himself strong enough—special enough, as Bernard always claimed—to break the edict placed upon those of his order, to maintain chastity lest they free the beast inside them all.