The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  Slaves rolled the caged animals on top of the platform. Later, on cue from above, other slaves used an elaborate rope-and-pulley elevator system to lift the platform and the cage from deep under the earth to the ground-level arena.

  Erin and Nate had to hope that this shaft led to someplace safer than the prison they were stuck in now.

  “Come over here,” she urged Nate, taking him by hand. “We can climb the steel gate to reach the shaft above.”

  She helped him mount and clamber up the horizontal braces. Still, he trembled. Beaten and poorly fed, he was noticeably weak.

  “Now for the interesting part.” Erin held him against the bars with one arm. “I saw a small vertical slot running up one wall of the shaft. Once upon a time, the slot held the pulley chains used to lift the elevator platform up that shaft. With any luck, we can climb that slot all the way to the surface. I’m going to go first. You come up after me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nate’s voice had a sarcastic tone, and she was glad to hear it.

  Her fingers explored the shaft overhead and found the slot. It was wide enough to jam into: legs on one side, back on the other. The climbing technique was called chimneying.

  She pushed off with her legs from the cell’s gate and lifted herself up into the slot. Before she could fall back down, she jammed one leg against the side. Her back rested hard against the other side. She was in.

  She moved up one foot, then another. “Okay, Nate. Your turn.”

  Blind in the dark, she heard him hoist himself off the bars toward her—then fall back down to the stone floor with a thud.

  She jumped down. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” He didn’t sound fine.

  “This time, you go first.”

  Erin found his hand and directed him back to the bars. Nate climbed up again, fell again.

  “Leave me,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

  “You mean to tell me that a strapping Texas boy like you doesn’t have the guts to outclimb a scrawny old lady like me?”

  “It’s not about guts.” His quiet voice sounded defeated.

  She hated to poke him again, but she did. “Damn right it is. Stop whining, and get your ass up that shaft. I am not going up there just to tell your kid sister that you were killed here because you were too lazy to climb out of a hole.”

  Nate stood back up. “I used to like you.”

  “Up you go.”

  This time she supported his feet when he pushed himself upward. Once braced across the slot, he didn’t need to use his wounded arms, just his back and his legs.

  Dirt and stone chips rained down on her as Nate made slow progress upward. She followed, straightening one leg, lifting it up a few inches, then forcing herself to pry the other foot off the wall. Over and over. Inching upward. She had done chimneying before, but always with a rope belay and a flashlight.

  “How’re you doing, Nate?”

  “Best time I’ve had in days.” He shifted up another few inches.

  She smiled grimly. Probably true.

  A few more precious feet, and then he slipped.

  She caught his calf, forcing it against the wall. He pushed out and stopped his slide.

  Her heart raced. She and Nate had almost fallen all the way back down to the cell. With any luck, they would have died on impact. If not, they’d have had the fun of being torn apart by the grimwolf.

  But at least they would have died trying.

  Dim gray light shone up the shaft.

  Someone was coming.

  4:05 P.M.

  In a private room in the Apostolic Palace, Jordan gritted his teeth. Naked from the waist up, he was lying on his face on a thick wool rug covering a polished wood floor.

  Nadia played nursemaid, swabbing the bite wounds on his arm and back—and none too gently.

  “Strange tattoo,” she said, noting the Lichtenberg design from the lightning strike.

  “I know,” he said, wincing. “You got to die to get one.”

  Nadia had sneaked him and Rhun out of St. Peter’s Square through some secret doorway into the Apostolic Palace, where, apparently, the pope lived. She’d rushed them into this simple room with whitewashed walls. The room held an old-fashioned, long wooden table, six heavy chairs, and a macabre crucifix on the wall. After his meeting with Piers, he could hardly stand to look at crucifixes anymore.

  Instead, he kept his eyes on the rug. It smelled like a wet sheep.

  Nadia wrung out a brown washcloth into a copper basin, its water stained pale pink from Jordan’s blood.

  “Where is Bernard?” Rhun paced the room, stopping only long enough to peer out the window into the courtyard below.

  “I’ve sent word.” Nadia poked Jordan again.

  Ouch. Now she was just being mean.

  She drew a glass jar from her backpack. “This might sting.”

  “That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” Jordan groused. “You’re supposed to lie.”

  “Lying is a sin.”

  “Like telling the Cardinal we died.”

  Nadia unscrewed the top of a jar that smelled like pitch mixed with horse manure.

  “What’s in that stuff?” he asked, changing the tender subject.

  She scooped the goop onto her index and middle fingers. “It’s best you don’t know.”

  He opened his mouth to insist—then thought better and shut it again. If something made Nadia squeamish, he didn’t want to know.

  She slathered the balm into a bite wound on his back. Fire followed in its wake.

  He gasped, immediately breaking out into a sweat. “Feels like napalm.”

  “I know.” She worked fast, sealing each wound.

  He studied a bite on his arm. It had been oozing blood since they’d left Russia, but the stinking salve had stopped the bleeding. He took deep breaths, hoping that the burning would subside. “What’s the plan for finding Erin?”

  Rhun kept pacing, his steps quiet on the old rug. “Once the Cardinal arrives, we will put together a team to search for her and the book. The Sanguinists have a wide net of informants, especially in Rome. We’ll find them.”

  Near as Jordan could tell, the Sanguinists’ net of informants had been useless so far, but saying that wouldn’t help. He stayed quiet as Nadia roughly bandaged his wounds. She had no future as a nurse.

  Nadia tossed him a clean gray T-shirt, and he sat up to put it on. He now looked like a normal guy with a couple of big Band-Aids, instead of the survivor of a strigoi attack.

  Progress.

  Someone tapped on the door. Before anyone could reach it, it burst open.

  The Cardinal stood in the doorway. Scarlet cassock and all.

  He was flanked by men wearing blue pantaloons tucked into high black leather boots, blue long-sleeved shirts with flat white collars, white gloves, and black berets. They looked like they had stepped out of another century.

  But the Sig Sauers in their hands were plenty modern.

  4:12 P.M.

  Erin froze as the light grew brighter below. She didn’t want anyone to hear—then realized how ridiculous that was.

  The cell had a single exit, and she and Nate were jammed in it, about ten feet up. The strigoi could hear heartbeats, so hiding was useless. The only chance of escape lay in flight.

  Above her, Nate scrambled faster. His labored breathing expressed how much this effort cost him. And, since neither he nor Erin knew the length of the shaft, she had no idea if it made any difference. She kept close behind him, hoping for a miracle.

  The grimwolf barked up the shaft.

  The sound bounced off the stone, as if a pack of hellhounds were coming to get them.

  Nate slipped.

  Erin braced herself hard against both sides of the slot.

  No use.

  The impact of his body knocked her loose. She and Nate hurtled downward. Her head and arms glanced off the sides as she tried to slow them.

  Then she dropped through empty air, Nate
on top of her.

  Her back struck not stone, but a figure that crashed to the floor underneath her.

  She tried to push Nate off to roll free, but he was too heavy.

  A woman snarled Slavic-sounding curses and with sharp elbows drove Erin to the side. Erin rolled off Bathory with no small amount of grim satisfaction.

  A hulking strigoi picked Erin up in his left hand, Nate in his right. He must have been seven feet tall, bald, with beady eyes. He was dark-skinned, for a strigoi, and wore dirty cargo pants with a stained white T-shirt. The shirt hugged the contours of his muscular chest. He definitely didn’t have a weapon on his upper body. She looked lower. A dagger in a leather sheath was strapped to his waistband.

  He tossed Nate against the wall, then reached a hand down to Bathory.

  And stopped.

  He jerked his hand back.

  Blood was seeping from a wound in Bathory’s arm. A dirty white bandage had slid down to her elbow. Erin must have knocked it off when she hit her. Stitches had pulled out of a cut across her triceps. Blood trickled down her arm. Bathory glanced down and swore, then yanked the bandage up. It slid back down.

  The grimwolf nuzzled her leg and whimpered.

  “Back.” Bathory pushed the wolf away roughly, almost frantically. “Magor, stay away.”

  The creature retreated a pace and sat.

  Erin’s eyes narrowed. Interesting.

  Bathory struggled to her feet unaided. A drop of blood fell from her arm to the floor. The color looked strange, but Erin couldn’t bend to look closer because the strigoi held her arm fast.

  “You are an enterprising one.” Bathory dusted off her pants.

  “The first duty of any prisoner is to escape,” Erin said.

  With wide eyes, the strigoi stared at Bathory’s wounded arm.

  Erin had never seen a strigoi react to blood with fear rather than excitement. Clearly, injuring Bathory was a bad thing to do.

  “I shall get my wound seen to.” Bathory picked up her flashlight. “And return.”

  What would happen then?

  Bathory turned to the strigoi who was holding Erin. “Mihir, stay and watch them. Don’t let them even think of escaping.”

  Mihir bowed his head.

  Bathory whistled for the grimwolf and headed down the tunnel. Another strigoi waited outside. He closed the door and tugged on the bars, probably to make sure that it was locked before following Bathory.

  Erin was trapped in the cell again, but this time with an angry strigoi for a roommate. He tossed her to the side, and she twisted to keep from landing on Nate.

  Mihir played his flashlight up the shaft and along the slot from which Erin and Nate had just fallen.

  Erin bent over Nate. “You okay?”

  His eyelids fluttered open. “This is the worst dig ever.”

  She smiled. “When we get out of this, I promise to write you one hell of a recommendation.”

  Mihir walked over, giving the single drop of Bathory’s blood on the floor a wide berth. He loomed over them. “No more talking.”

  His eyes lingered on the fresh blood that oozed down Erin’s neck. She, too, had torn open her wounds in the fall. She could see the hunger rise in his eyes.

  She clenched her jaw. She would not be afraid. Her heart ignored her comforting words and raced. Afraid or not, she would use his bloodlust for her own advantage.

  Instead of shrinking back like she wanted to, she stepped toward Mihir, tilting her neck to the side, knowing that he could smell the blood, hear the frightened heartbeat behind it. Rhun had barely been able to restrain himself when faced with flowing blood. Surely Mihir was weaker than the priest.

  His eyes stayed locked on her neck, and his breathing roughened. She kept her left hand low. She would have only one chance—if she was lucky.

  Mihir licked his lips, but he held back.

  He needed a better invitation. Steeling herself, she dragged her fingers across her wounded throat. Never taking her eyes off his, she brushed her bloody fingertips across his lips.

  Lightning-fast, Mihir reached a hand for her throat. Nate called out a warning, drawing the monster’s attention for a flicker.

  A flicker was long enough.

  Erin dropped to one knee, jerked the strigoi’s dagger from its belt sheath, and drove it under his sternum.

  He staggered forward. Blood spread across his shirt.

  Nate pushed past her. He wrenched the knife from Mihir’s body and, in one quick movement, slashed it across the strigoi’s throat. Mihir collapsed to the floor, dark lifeblood spurting wet across the stone. A puff of smoke rose in the air when his blood touched the drop of Bathory’s.

  Nate stood over him with the weapon, shaking from head to toe.

  Mihir’s eyes went glassy and dead. Blood pooled around him.

  “Nate?”

  He spun on her, knife high.

  “Nate,” she said soothingly. “It’s me.”

  He lowered the dagger. “Sorry. What he did to me … with his teeth …”

  “I know,” she said. She didn’t know, not really, but Nate needed to hear the words. “Let’s get up the shaft before that witch comes back.”

  This time she took the lead, playing the beam of Mihir’s flashlight along the walls. Nate tucked the bloody knife into his waistband and followed with greater strength than before, apparently fueled by the adrenaline from the battle.

  Erin shone the light straight up. The shaft didn’t lead to the arena, as she’d hoped. It ended in what looked like a metal plate, trapping them inside. They couldn’t climb straight out.

  She sagged back against the wall, catching herself before she slipped onto Nate.

  Then she checked the walls of the shaft and her eyes lit upon a secondary shaft that opened off the side. It had probably housed a second tier of animal cages. It might lead somewhere.

  And even that slim hope was better than staying here.

  “Nate!” she called, and pointed the beam toward the secondary shaft. “Look!”

  He smiled. “Let’s get going.”

  With proper illumination and renewed determination, they chimneyed up the vertical slot and reached the side passageway. It was more like a small anteroom than a cross shaft.

  She played her light around the cell. Bars had once sealed the way out, but now only piles of rust and the stumps of rods remained.

  Erin climbed over them into the next passageway.

  She squinted and covered her hand over the flashlight to darken the way.

  Far ahead, a thin line of pale yellow light beckoned.

  A way out.

  56

  October 28, 4:30 P.M., CET

  Vatican City, Italy

  Cardinal Bernard swept through the halls of the Apostolic Palace like a thundercloud.

  Rhun followed, herded by a cadre of Swiss Guards with their weapons drawn. Nadia walked on his left, seemingly unconcerned; Jordan tromped on his right, looking more angry than worried. Rhun was grateful to have them both beside him.

  Cardinal Bernard’s straight back conveyed his wrath. His scarlet cassock twitched behind him. He was no doubt furious that Nadia had lied to him about Rhun’s death.

  Rhun looked back at the line of Swiss Guardsmen. At the tail end marched Father Ambrose, not bothering to hide his gleeful smirk.

  With Nadia’s help, Rhun could have easily overpowered them all, but he had no wish to escape. He wanted to make Bernard understand what had happened and to enlist his aid in recovering Erin and the book. He prayed that there was still time.

  Bernard unlocked the door to a receiving room and led them in.

  The Cardinal crossed and dropped heavily at a round mahogany table, then gestured for Rhun to sit at his right, his usual place. Perhaps he was not so angry, after all, Rhun thought as he pulled out a spindly antique chair, its cushion covered in amber fabric, and sat.

  “Rhun.” Bernard’s stern tone dispelled that momentary hope. “You lied to me. To me.”
r />   “I lied to you,” Nadia corrected. “The blame rests on my shoulders.”

  Bernard waved a hand at her dismissively. “He allowed it to happen.”

  “I did.” Rhun bowed his head. “I take full responsibility.”

  Nadia folded her arms. “Very well. If I bear no responsibility, may I leave?”

  “No one leaves until this situation is explained to my satisfaction.”

  “Do you want a confession?” Rhun asked. “None of that matters now. The Belial have the book.”

  Bernard sat back in his chair. “I see.”

  “The Belial are in Rome.” Rhun placed his palms on the gleaming table as if to stand. “We must search for them.”

  “Stay,” Bernard ordered, as if Rhun were a dog. “First, tell me how this came to be.”

  Rhun bristled. He fingered his rosary, seeking to calm himself before he recounted the events in Russia. He spoke quickly, but Bernard slowed him down with question after question, picking at the story for flaws. His theologian’s mind sought inconsistencies, tried to uncover lies.

  And all the while minutes ticked away.

  No longer able to sit as he told the story, Rhun began to pace, stopping to stare out the window at the darkening square below. Out on the plaza, people were reaching for jackets, gathering up belongings. Sunset was close, another half hour or so away; then the strigoi would be free. Every second decreased the chances that Rhun and Jordan would find Erin alive or recover the book. Still, the Cardinal pressed him.

  “If you’re going to interrogate us all day,” Jordan broke in, “how about you send out a team to look for Erin and the book, just in case we haven’t come all this way simply to spin you a tale?”

  “You do not speak to the Cardinal that way!” Ambrose glared at him.

  “Don’t I?” Jordan pushed back from the table, clearly ready to make short work of Ambrose. Nadia shifted in her seat. If Rhun gave the word, both she and Jordan were ready to fight.

  Rhun held up a restraining hand. “Calm yourselves. We—”

  A light knock sounded on the door.

  Rhun listened. Five men and a woman. He smiled as he recognized one of the heartbeats. He had to resist falling to his knees and giving thanks to the Lord. That would come later.