She raised her fingers now and felt the ring of scabs around her neck.
She always had a good internal clock, and now she wagered it must be somewhere around midafternoon in the world above.
She stretched out her other senses and heard the slow drip of water, the echoing giving her some indication that the space beyond her cell was cavernous. The air smelled old and stale, with a hint of mildew. She reached out and slid her palm along the floor. Stone. Her fingertips picked out chisel marks.
A tomb?
Erin’s hands slipped into her jacket pockets, searching. Of course, they had taken her flashlight, but she discovered the scrap of quilt in her pants pocket. At least they let her keep that.
Scooting up onto her hands and knees, she swept her hand from left to right in bigger and bigger arcs, stirring up a thick carpet of dust that made her eyes water and drew several sneezes. When she rubbed the dust between her fingers, it felt like wood slivers and rock dust.
Continuing on in a wider sweep, her fingers bumped against a rounded object. She picked it up and brought it to her lap. Bone. Her fingers filled in what her eyes could not see. A skull. She gulped, but still blindly examined its surfaces: an elongated nose, a small brainpan, long curved incisors.
Not human. Not even strigoi.
A giant cat. Probably a lion.
She sat back, pondering the implications of her discovery. She must be in some sort of Roman circus, an arena where gladiators and slaves fought one another and wild beasts. But the beast to which this skull had belonged had been buried with the remains of the spectacle in which it lost its life.
She paired that information with her knowledge of the path she had just taken through the city.
Toward Vatican City.
She knew of only one cavernous circus in that region. The Vatican itself had been built over half of the blood-drenched place.
The Circus of Nero.
Almost two thousand years ago, Nero had completed the circus started by Caligula. He had built enormous tiers of seating for the audience to watch his brutal games. At first, he sacrificed lions and bears to cheering crowds. But slaughtering animals hadn’t been enough for the ancient Romans, so he moved on to gladiators.
And eventually Christians.
The blood of Christian martyrs soon drenched the soil of the arena. They weren’t just ripped apart by animals and gladiators. Many were crucified. Saint Peter himself had been nailed upside down on a cross, near the obelisk in the center of the arena.
The circus was also famous for its vast network of underground tunnels, used to shuttle prisoners, animals, and gladiators to and fro. The builders had even installed crude elevators for delivering wild beasts or warriors directly to the sands above.
Erin stared up, picturing how St. Peter’s Basilica sat partly on top of this cursed place. During her postgraduate studies in Rome, she had read a text written a century ago—Pagan and Christian Rome by Rodolfo Lanciani. It depicted a map of the two overlapping structures—the horseshoe-shaped Circus below, the cruciform Basilica above.
In the dark, the schematic glowed again in her mind’s eye.
If she could get free of her cell, climb up, and reach the outside, she should be very near to St. Peter’s Basilica.
With help close at hand.
With renewed determination, she explored the edges of the room. It was about eight by ten feet, with a modern steel gate installed at the front. No weaknesses that she could detect.
She needed help. Two faces flashed before her: one as pale as his eyes were dark, but always shining with noble purpose; the other grinning, with flushed cheeks and laughing eyes the color of the sky.
What might have happened to Rhun and Jordan in that time?
She shied away from that thought.
Not in the dark.
After what seemed an eternity, Erin noticed a light approaching. She jammed her face next to the bars. Four figures and what looked like a huge dog were walking toward her down a stone tunnel, one carrying a flashlight. The dog walked next to a woman with long hair.
Bathory and her grimwolf.
Behind them, two taller figures who looked like brothers dragged along a third man, his arms slung over their shoulders. At the sight, her throat closed up. Was that Jordan? Or Rhun?
Reaching the cell without a word, Bathory unlocked the door and swung it open.
Erin tensed. She wanted to charge out, but she wouldn’t make it two steps down that tunnel.
The grimwolf padded into the cell.
Bathory and the two men followed the wolf in. A blast of cold air came in with them. The two brothers were both strigoi.
They dumped the man at her feet. He moaned and turned over. A mass of bruises covered his face, his eyes were nearly swollen closed, dried blood soaked his shirtsleeves and a pant leg.
“Professor Granger?” asked a cracked, familiar voice, with a slight Texas twang.
She fell to her knees next to him, taking his hand. “Nate? Are you okay … why are you here?”
She knew the answer to both questions and despaired as she realized the result of her own shortsightedness. She had never considered that the Belial would go after her innocent students. What did they know? Then it all tumbled together. She had sent the pictures of the tomb, of the Nazi medallion. No wonder Bathory knew to track their team to Germany.
What have I done?
She didn’t know the answer to that one, nor another. “Amy?” she whispered.
Nate stared up at her, tears welling in his eyes. “I … I wasn’t there to protect her.”
Erin rocked back as if she had taken a blow to the face. She heard a sob escape Nate.
“It’s not your fault, Nate.”
It had been her fault. The students had been left in her care.
Nate’s voice was hoarse. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
A rush of affection rose in Erin for the tough Texas kid. She squeezed his hand.
“How touching,” sneered Bathory.
“Why did you take him?” Erin turned and glared at her, earning a threatening growl from the grimwolf. “You got the photos, I imagine. He knows nothing else. He has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Not quite,” said Bathory. “He has something to do with you.”
Guilt washed across Erin. “What do you want?”
“Information from the Woman of Learning, of course.” Bathory displayed her perfect white teeth in an unpleasant grin.
“I don’t believe in that damn prophecy,” Erin said, and meant it. So far, the trio seemed to have bungled more things than they got right. It didn’t feel like they had divine prophecy on their side.
“Ah, but others do.” Bathory stroked the grimwolf’s head. “Help us.”
“No.” She would die before she assisted the Belial in opening the book.
Bathory snapped her fingers. The grimwolf leaped and pinned Nate to the floor with his front paws, knocking his hand loose from Erin’s. The wolf bent his muzzle low over Nate’s throat.
The message was clear, but Bathory drove it home anyway. “I don’t need your cowboy.”
Bathory trained her flashlight on Nate. Erin tried not to look at him. She stared instead at the rough stone walls, the newly installed barred steel gate, and the black ceiling of the cell that seemed to extend upward forever.
But her gaze returned to Nate. He had closed his eyes, quaking, but looking so brave she wanted to hug him. Clearly terrified, he still didn’t ask for help. He just waited.
“What do you need?” Erin asked Bathory.
“Your thoughts about opening the lead casing that holds the book.” Bathory put both hands on her hips. “To start.”
“I don’t know.”
The dog lowered its head toward Nate’s exposed throat and snarled.
“But maybe we can talk it through, you and I.” Erin spoke as fast as she could. “But first, call off the grimwolf.”
As if obeying a silent command f
rom its mistress, the wolf raised its head.
Nate shuddered with relief.
Erin had to give the woman something. “The lead box had a design on it. A skeleton and a man bound together by loops of rope.”
“Yes, we know. Along with the symbols for the Alpha and the Omega.”
Bathory turned to the taller of the two brothers, his flesh punctured and tattooed, his eyes hungry upon her. He shrugged off a satchel, pulled free the heavy artifact, and held it out to Erin.
“What else do you see?” Bathory asked.
Erin took the cold metal object, careful not to touch the fingers of the tattooed man. She wished she had something significant to add. What did she know about the book? She stroked the two figures carved into the front: the human skeleton and the naked man, crossed and locked in an embrace, bound together by a braided cord.
Drawing by Trish Cramblett
“The book is about miracles,” Erin started. “Christ’s miracles. How He harnessed His divinity.”
The wolf shifted its weight from paw to paw.
“We know that,” Bathory snapped. “How do we open it?”
Erin ignored her and tried to think. “Miracles. Like changing water to wine. Bringing the living back from the dead …”
She stopped, surprised.
Bathory understood at the same time. “All the major miracles are about transformations.”
“Exactly!” Erin was surprised at how quickly Bathory had made the connection. “Like transubstantiation, changing wine to the blood of Jesus.”
“So, perhaps this block of lead is the actual book.” Bathory crossed over and crouched next to her, like two colleagues conferring. She touched the lead, too. “Alchemists were always trying to find a way of turning lead to gold.”
Erin nodded, understanding the woman’s hypothesis. “Maybe that quest has its roots in this legend. Some old hint about the Gospel traveled up through the ages. Turning lead to gold.”
Bathory’s silver eyes locked on hers. “Maybe the Gospel needs to be transformed in the same way. From dull, worthless lead to the golden glory of the book?”
Erin suddenly remembered Piers’s words in the bunker.
The book is not yet a book. Not yet.
Had the old priest figured out the puzzle as he hung for decades on the cross with nothing else to ponder as he suffered?
Erin nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“It’s an interesting idea. But what are the alchemical ingredients needed to cause this transformation?” Bathory tapped the figure of the skeleton inscribed on the lead jacket. “I suspect the answer may lay in our bony friend here?”
“But what does the Alpha symbol above his head mean? It has to be a clue.” Erin stared at the skeleton under the Alpha symbol, then glanced at the naked man and the symbol above his head. “And what’s the meaning of the Omega symbol?”
“Alpha skeleton, Omega man.” Bathory slipped her finger into two small divots at the top of the block.
Erin hadn’t seen those before. They looked like tiny receptacles, meant to hold something, maybe something like those alchemical ingredients Bathory mentioned. She tried to get a better look at them.
Before she could, Bathory sprang to her feet, understanding flashing across her face. She ripped the lead block from Erin’s hands.
“What?” Erin asked. “What did you see?”
Bathory snapped her fingers, and the wolf abandoned Nate.
The young man sat up shakily, rubbing his throat.
The eerie silver eyes smiled at Erin. “Thank you for your help.”
With that, she and the strigoi brothers left the cell. The lock clicked closed, and light retreated down the tunnel. Erin leaned forward to watch it disappear. Bathory had figured out something, something important.
Nate drew in a shaky breath. “She’ll be back.”
Erin agreed, adding, “But we won’t be here.”
3:35 P.M.
Rhun pulled his dark hood lower over his eyes, hiding from both the tourists and the late-afternoon sunlight that inundated St. Peter’s Square.
Here he waited with Jordan.
Across the travertine square rose St. Peter’s Basilica, its dome the highest point in all of Rome. To either side, Bernini’s double colonnade swept out in two wide arcs, framing the keyhole-shaped plaza between. According to Bernini, the colonnade was supposed to represent the arms of Saint Peter reaching out to embrace the faithful into the fold. Atop these arms, a hundred and forty stone saints perched and stared down upon the spectacle below.
Rhun hoped they didn’t see him. He had chosen this place for a rendezvous, out in the open, under the sun, to hide in plain sight, so that if Bathory had reached Rome, her strigoi wouldn’t be able to overhear any words he spoke. Possibly he was being too paranoid, but after the events in Russia, he dared take no chances.
Jordan rolled up his sleeves. The edge of a strigoi bite showed just above his elbow. The man had an incredible constitution. He’d been battered and bitten, but his obvious worry for Erin kept him going. A fine Warrior of Man, Rhun thought, and tried to be grateful that she had such a champion.
Humans swirled around him. A mother bounced a fat infant on her hip. Next to her, a young man watched her breasts, his heart rate giving away his response. A group of schoolgirls in navy-blue uniforms chattered under the watchful eye of a middle-aged teacher wearing brilliant red-framed eyeglasses.
A woman in long jeans, a tight-fitting black shirt, a floppy straw hat, and sunglasses meandered around the crowded square. She snapped a few pictures, then stuck a tiny camera into the backpack that dangled by one strap on her shoulder. She looked like a tourist, but she wasn’t.
Nadia.
At last.
Rhun waited, not daring to cross the square until she signaled it was safe. He hated skulking around Vatican City. Rome had been his home for centuries. It had been the one place in the world where he had always walked freely—until now. Before this quest had started, he had considered retreating from the world, ensconcing himself in the meditative world that existed deep below the Basilica. Would such peace ever be afforded him again?
He strolled along the curved colonnade toward the ancient three-tiered fountain. Like many things in Rome, it was older than he was. A young girl played hide-and-seek among the Doric columns, chased by an energetic mother. They probably sought to get in one more game before heading home for their dinners.
Rhun’s sharp eyes picked out the red porphyry stone set among the sea of gray cobblestones. The red stone had been placed there to mark the spot of Pope John Paul II’s shooting thirty years before. The bloodred stone reminded him of the cobblestones enshrined in the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, a thought that seemed to call the specter of Rasputin into this holy place.
Rhun stopped next to the tall stone obelisk. This very pillar had witnessed the crucifixion of countless Christians in Nero’s Circus, even Saint Peter himself. But since the late 1500s, it had watched over the center of the Christian world. He calculated the time by the long shadow it threw across the square. They had less than two hours before sunset. If the Belial had strigoi stationed in Rome, they must act before then.
Nadia paused next to him.
“Where is the woman?” She angled her head back as if studying the cross that topped the obelisk.
“Erin,” Jordan said. “Her name is Erin.”
“She was taken, along with the book.” Rhun filled her in on the events in Russia, ending by handing her Jiang’s rosary and flask. She could bring them to the sanctuary beneath the necropolis of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the Order of the Sanguines made their home.
Nadia’s hands lingered on the flask before she slipped it into her backpack. She had often worked with Jiang. “The Cardinal has returned to Rome from Jerusalem. He’s been with the Cloistered Ones since he received word of your alleged death. Praying.”
Guilt wormed its way into Rhun’s gut. He hated having lied to B
ernard. He had known that after Nadia told him of his death, Bernard would grieve. He would be furious and hurt when he found out how Rhun and Nadia had deceived him. But there had been no other way to conceal their actions from the Belial spy in their midst. Still, it would not get any easier to face Bernard. Rhun glanced toward the imposing stone Apostolic Palace rising above the colonnade. A few windows had been left open to let in the light and air.
“Can you take us to Bernard? We have no time for secrecy now that the Belial have the book.”
“And Erin,” Jordan put in. “They have Erin, too.”
55
October 28, 3:40 P.M., CET
Circus of Nero, Rome, Italy
“What do you mean we’re getting out of here?” Nate asked.
Erin stumbled over to him in the oily darkness and caught his hand to reassure him. “We’re going to climb out.”
“What? How?”
She told him.
Earlier, when Bathory had waved her flashlight around the cell, Erin had spotted a possible way out. They certainly could never breach the stone walls, and the new steel bars looked strong, and the floor had been carved from solid rock. They wouldn’t be leaving by any of those ways.
But the ceiling!
Under the glow of Bathory’s flashlight, she had noted that the cell had no roof. It was just a sheer-walled black shaft that headed straight up.
Erin knew what that meant. In ancient times, Roman slaves used long poles to push caged animals down the stone tunnel that Bathory had sauntered along before. They were animals meant for the arena, but first their cages had to be pushed into the very cell that she and Nate now occupied.
Back then, a wooden platform would have covered the cell’s stone floor. Over the centuries, the platform had disintegrated into the slivers Erin had felt when she first woke up in the cell. Originally, planks had been nailed together in the shape of this room. Chains would have been attached to both sides of the platform and run up to pulleys at the top. Those chains would have traveled up slots on either side of the black rectangle above her.
The Blood Gospel Page 40