The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  Then he pictured Erin’s face, remembered her lips, her heated hands on his skin. He had to get free. He had to find her. Every second that passed, Bathory dragged her farther from Rasputin’s domain and closer to her death. He’d seen that look in Bathory’s eyes. She intended to kill Erin the minute she could do so without disobeying Rasputin.

  All to hurt Rhun.

  The tunnel ended a short way ahead, the stench of bear overpowering. Jordan spotted the elaborate gate depicting a woodland forest. He and Rhun were pushed forward until they were pressed against its fancy iron scrollwork.

  Inside the cage, the bear slumbered on. Maybe it would be too tired to eat them.

  Rasputin banged the flat of his palms against the gate, sounding the dinner bell.

  The creature lumbered to its feet.

  It was feeding time.

  9:18 P.M.

  Fueled by raw fury, Bathory tucked into a roll as she tumbled headlong down the stairs, pushed by that damned archaeologist. She felt each sharp step against her back, until she finally hit a landing and sprawled out.

  Above her, two thuds sounded. She heard a low growl, knew it was aimed at the cursed archaeologist, and felt a wash of satisfaction emanating from Magor, the pleasure of a predator who had cornered its prey.

  “Easy!” Bathory called out, sharing in the wolf’s joy. It helped dull the pain as she climbed to her feet. She would have some nasty bruises, but nothing serious. She had lived so long with pain she barely noticed it.

  She climbed with determination to the landing above. Magor had pinned the woman against the battered door, a paw on either side of her shoulders, his teeth bared at her neck. She felt his longing to tear out her throat. His claws scored the concrete wall.

  The archaeologist watched him with wide eyes. She looked ready to faint.

  In fact, Bathory was surprised she hadn’t.

  “Not yet, my pet.” She retrieved the end of the leather leash and drew the collar tight. “When we can, I promise you can play with her as long as you like.”

  Cowed and on shaking legs, the archaeologist trudged after her up the next flight of stairs, her shoulders low.

  “Such despair and hopelessness,” Bathory taunted. “This isn’t what you expected when you started out on this bold quest in Jerusalem, is it? You thought your life might have value because of the prophecy?”

  They reached a side door, and she unlocked it before pulling the woman out onto the empty street. Wind ruffled the sable fur of Bathory’s coat.

  “What prophecy are you talking about?” the archaeologist asked, feigning ignorance … badly.

  Lying took practice, and her prisoner clearly hadn’t had much of that.

  Moving suddenly, Bathory grabbed her shoulder and slammed her against the side of a silver SUV that was parked roadside.

  Magor growled.

  “Don’t even try to lie to me. I am not a fool. I don’t believe in prophecy. So don’t think your life has value to me because of a thousand-year-old poem.”

  The woman struggled to keep her feet on the icy cobblestones. Hauling the leash up, Bathory forced her higher up onto her tiptoes. If the woman should slip, the choke collar might kill her.

  Bathory glanced up and down the empty street. No witnesses. But Rasputin would still know. She was not safe from him until she was well off Russian soil.

  She loosened the leash, opened the SUV’s door, and shoved the archaeologist into the backseat. Magor jumped in after her, pushing his muzzle close to the prisoner’s throat. A tongue, frothing and thick with drool, licked the blood dribbling from under the spiked collar.

  The archaeologist smothered a scream. She was a brave one, Bathory thought, but she had limits, too.

  “Easy, Magor. If the Cardinal believes that she has a special destiny, she might have some use for us yet as a pawn in the game to come.”

  The woman twisted her face away from the wolf, her voice tight and hard. “I don’t think the Cardinal cares that much about me.”

  “Then you don’t know this Cardinal very well.” Bathory smiled. “Either way, remember that the prophecy never specified the condition you must be in when the book opens.”

  Bathory read the understanding, the fear, in the archaeologist’s eyes.

  Smart.

  Maybe she was indeed the Woman of Learning.

  “We will probably need you alive,” Bathory cruelly acknowledged. “But unwounded?”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  No.

  53

  October 27, 9:20 P.M., MST

  Under St. Petersburg, Russia

  Standing in the tunnel outside the cage’s gate, Rhun watched the Ursa, and the Ursa watched Rhun. Her red eyes glinted with old malice, her hatred of him undiminished across the past century. Drool slavered from her muzzle, and her impossibly long tongue slid across lips as black as rubber.

  He suspected she remembered how he tasted. His leg throbbed and threatened to buckle. His limb remembered her, too.

  Grigori wrapped his fingers around the branch of a wrought-iron oak sculpted into the gate. “If God loves you, Rhun, He will help you to escape the bear. Remember the lesson of Daniel and the lions? Perhaps your belief will close her mouth.”

  Rhun didn’t think it would be that simple.

  He studied the tiles that covered the chamber where the tunnels met, finding no break, no other way out. He shifted his attention to the iron gates.

  When unlocked, they parted down the middle into two halves, opening like French doors. Two thick iron rods, one on each side of the gateway, had been drilled into the concrete and attached each side of the gate to the floor and ceiling. Less than an inch of a gap surrounded the gateway, and the elaborate patterns woven through the bars left openings no bigger than a few inches.

  Once Rhun went into the room, there would be no escape.

  Jordan dropped a warm hand to his shoulder. Rhun met his questioning blue eyes. The soldier glanced surreptitiously to Grigori and the strigoi. It was plain that he was asking if they should make their stand here, go down fighting before Rhun could be thrown in with the bear.

  Affection rose in his breast. Jordan was a true Warrior of Man to the end. “Thank you,” Rhun whispered. “But no.”

  Jordan stepped back, his eyes scared—but less for his own safety than for Rhun’s.

  Unable to face that raw humanity any longer, Rhun turned to the gate. “I am ready, Grigori.”

  Acolytes grabbed Jordan’s arms; others held Rhun in place while Grigori unlocked the thick steel lock and wrenched open the door.

  Rhun was shoved bodily through the gate and into the cage.

  The Ursa’s head swung toward him.

  “Yes, my love,” Grigori called. “Sport with him as long as you like.”

  Keeping back and staying low, Rhun circled her. The room was large, about fifty feet by fifty. He must use that space wisely. Overhead, the creature’s shoulders brushed the ceiling. Rhun could not jump over her.

  A twig cracked under his shoe, releasing the sharp smell of spruce, the only natural scent in the cavern. He drank it in.

  Then the Ursa lunged.

  Her giant paw drove through the air with unnatural speed.

  He had expected it. Long ago, she had always led with her left paw. He dove under her claws and rolled. The movement took him to the center of the room.

  Ahead, a glint caught his eye. He ran forward and snatched it from the floor. A holy flask. Another Sanguinist had been sacrificed here. As he searched, he discovered other evidence: a pectoral cross, a silver rosary, a scrap of black cassock.

  “May God have mercy on your soul, Grigori,” Rhun called out.

  “God forsook my soul long ago.” Grigori rattled his gate. “As He did yours.”

  The Ursa spun to face Rhun.

  He swept the chamber swiftly with his eyes. If the murdered Sanguinist had been armed, perhaps his or her weapons remained. If he could—

  The Ursa charged ag
ain.

  He stood his ground.

  The floor shook under her paws. He listened as her old heart stirred to passion again, beating hard.

  When her carrion breath touched his cheek, he dropped flat to his back, letting her momentum carry her across his body. The sea of dark fur passed inches from his face. He lifted his own cross and let it drag across her stomach, setting her fur to smoldering.

  She shrieked.

  He had inflicted no serious damage, but he had given the bear a reminder that he was no mosquito to be squashed.

  Jordan cheered from outside the gates.

  Rhun rolled across the floor, his hands seeking the objects he had spotted before the attack. Two wooden staffs lay on the floor, both ends tipped with silver. He knew those unique weapons. His brother of the cloth—Jiang—had died here. Rhun had watched him practice with those staffs for hours, deep below the necropolis of Rome, where the Sanguinists made their home.

  Still addled by the burn, the Ursa swept her head from side to side.

  Rhun crouched perfectly still and measured the sides of his prison with his eyes.

  With the hint of a plan in his mind, he darted to the iron gate that was farthest from Grigori.

  The Ursa caught his movement and barreled toward him.

  Leaping and twisting at the last moment, he cracked one of the staffs across her muzzle and rolled to the side.

  Her enormous bulk plowed straight into the gate, knocking one of the two iron support rods loose from the floor. That corner of the gate bent, creating an opening too small for Rhun to squeeze through, but such an escape was not his intent.

  He led her around toward where Grigori and Jordan watched the blood sport.

  She came after him. He performed the same maneuver, but this time she skidded and stopped less than an inch from the gate. Her paw swatted through the air and caught him across the back as he leaped away. A glancing blow, but it cut through his leather armor and ripped into the flesh of his back.

  A gasp escaped him, equal parts pain and defiance.

  The Ursa sank onto her rear haunches and pulled her bloodied paw to her maw. With tiny eyes watching him, she licked each drop of his blood from her claws, huffing with pleasure.

  He waited at the far side of the room, next to the damaged gate. The iron smell of his own blood coated his nostrils. He slid one staff down his bleeding back and through his belt, hooking the top through his priestly collar. That left him a staff in one hand, and the other hand free.

  He broke the staff across his knee and set both pieces on the ground.

  Then he dropped to that same knee, bowed his head, and muttered a prayer, calming his mind. A holy kiss on his pectoral cross burned his lips. His pain drew to a single point, centering him.

  He touched his forehead with his index finger. “In nomine Patris …”

  He touched his breastbone. “Et Filii …”

  He touched first his left shoulder, then his right. “Et Spiritus Sancti.”

  Then he crossed his thumb across his index finger and kissed it.

  He gathered up the two pieces of the staff.

  The bear came.

  He whispered, “By the sign of the cross, deliver me from my enemies, O Lord.”

  The Ursa thundered toward him, almost upon him.

  At the last moment he leaped straight toward the ceiling, flattening his body against the roof as only a Sanguinist could, sliding between the bear’s back and the roof. He found narrow passage, only inches to spare.

  Below him, the Ursa hit the gate with a tremendous crack. The second rod holding it to the floor broke away, and the gate was now bent more than a foot. If Rhun had been willing to abandon Jordan, he could have escaped.

  Instead, he twisted in midair and fell back down upon the dazed beast. Before the Ursa had time to shake her stunned head, he stabbed one half of his broken staff toward one shaggy paw.

  His aim was true.

  His weight and momentum thrust the silver-tipped piece of the staff through her paw and deep into the hole that had been drilled into the concrete long ago for the gate’s iron rod.

  She bellowed in pain, from the wound and the precious silver.

  Before the beast had a chance to move, Rhun leaped onto her back and rolled across to her other side, shifting the second piece of the broken staff into his right hand.

  He drove it through her other paw and into the other hole on the floor, imprisoning both limbs.

  The Ursa collapsed forward, her muzzle knocking under the broken gate into the tunnel. With her forelegs splayed to each side, her body formed the sign of a cross.

  Rhun had crucified the bear.

  She howled.

  He jumped atop her head and drew the unbroken staff from behind his back. Kissing the silver end first, he jammed it through her eye and deep into her brain. She twitched and heaved, dying. He read her demise in the vast chambers of her ancient heart.

  Dominus vobiscum.

  He bowed his head and made the sign of the cross over the beast’s massive form. As he finished his prayer, the red glow faded from her remaining eye, leaving it black.

  After centuries, she was finally freed of her tainted servitude.

  Rhun turned to this nemesis, his face defiant, triumphant in his glory.

  9:33 P.M.

  Jordan’s arms were let free. He stared around, surprised. He swiped his hand down his jacket, as if dusting off the places where Rasputin’s congregants had touched him. Would that Russian monk keep his word and let Rhun and him go? If not, he intended to go down fighting side by side with Rhun.

  Rasputin stepped back from the cage’s gate, his blue eyes wide. “God truly loves you, Rhun. You are indeed His most chosen one.”

  Rhun knelt down and gathered a rosary, a silver cross, and a flask. Jordan bet they had belonged to another Sanguinist, someone killed by the bear.

  Rasputin unlocked the cage.

  Rhun’s hatred for Rasputin burned so palpably that the monk fell back a step. His minions retreated as if blown by a fierce wind.

  “Where has Bathory taken Erin?” Rhun asked, biting off each word.

  Rasputin’s voice cracked. “To Rome.”

  Rhun glared, searching the other’s face for the truth. “Are we done here with your challenges to God, Grigori?”

  Rasputin tilted his head. “Why do you scold me so, Rhun? Your dear Bernard sought to force the prophecy. He thrust you next to Elisabeta in the past, his alleged Woman of Learning … and her husband, that mighty Warrior. Look how that meddling turned out.” He lifted his hands in supplication of forgiveness. “I merely sought to test the prophecy here today. If you were truly one of the prophesied, God would spare you from the bear.”

  “And here I stand,” Rhun said. “But your test is not over, is it? That is why you sent Erin off. You sundered the trio, to test if the three of us would find one another again and fulfill our duties. In this way, you continue to challenge God, as you once challenged the Church.”

  Rasputin shook his head. “Not at all. I challenge only you, my friend. The one whom the Church loves as much as it hates me.”

  Turning on a heel, Rasputin swept his minions aside with a wave of his hand, opening up a path to freedom.

  Jordan waited for Rhun to reach him. Together, they walked through the gauntlet of Rasputin’s dark flock. With each step, Jordan’s bite wounds throbbed. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. He tensed, waiting for an attack from behind, a final betrayal by Rasputin.

  None came.

  “Find your woman, Rhun,” Rasputin called after them. “Prove that the Church placed its faith in the correct bloodstained hands.”

  Rhun swept down the tunnel toward the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, not seeming to notice that his own blood pattered onto the frozen ground behind him.

  PART V

  And they sang a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us
to God by thy blood …

  —Revelation 5:9

  54

  October 28, 2:55 P.M., Central European Time

  Rome, Italy

  Erin jerked awake, chased by nightmares. She batted at the darkness around her, but it wouldn’t go away. Only now did the full desperation of her plight wash back over and fill her with an icy dread that did little to settle her waking panic. She stretched her eyes wider—not that it did any good. The place where they had imprisoned her was so dark that it made no difference whether her eyes were open or closed.

  She pressed her palms against her cheeks, surprised that she had fallen asleep. But the exhaustion and total sensory deprivation here must have finally overwhelmed her.

  How long have I been asleep?

  She remembered the flight from St. Petersburg by private jet last night. They had kept her hooded the entire time, but she had overheard enough of the conversation around her to know that the destination was Rome. The trip had taken about four hours. Once they had landed, another hour’s ride brought them into the predawn city. Erin could hear the sound of honking horns and the shouts and curses in Italian, and smell the Tiber as they crossed one of the city’s major bridges.

  If she wasn’t mistaken, they were heading in the general direction of Vatican City.

  What was Bathory planning?

  What does she want with me?

  The SUV that had shuttled them from the private airstrip eventually stopped and Erin had been dragged, still hooded, into a cold early morning. She could see enough under the lower edge of the hood to determine that it was still before sunup.

  Then back underground they went, using stairs, tunnels, and ladders—the last especially difficult when blindfolded. They must have traversed the subterranean world of Rome for a full hour. She was familiar enough with the city to know that a good portion of the ancient world still existed below its surface, in a series of interconnected catacombs, wine cellars, tombs, and secret churches.

  But where had she ended up?

  At the end of the journey, she had been thrust into this dark cell, with the bloody collar still clamped around her neck. She had sat against the wall for ten minutes, hugging her knees, hearing no one, before she tugged off the hood and discovered the collar unlocked. She removed it and tossed it aside gladly. Shortly after that, she must have fallen asleep.