The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  “And you think that’s relevant?” Jordan protested. “Like one step across the threshold matters?”

  “If I am not the Woman of Learning, Bathory was.” Erin took another deep breath. “And I killed her.”

  Rhun strove to find a flaw in her logic, but, as usual, found none. Everyone had assumed that Erin was the Woman of Learning: she had been in Masada, in Germany, in Russia, and in Rome. But Bathory, too, had been in those places. She had been one step ahead of them. She had followed the clues that led to the book, and she had determined how and where it was to be opened. And she had been the one holding the book when it transformed.

  Rhun closed his eyes, sensing the truth.

  Could Cardinal Bernard have been correct all along about Elizabeth Bathory? Is that why the Belial had started collecting a Bathory of each generation and bonding her to their foul purpose, to preserve the Woman of Learning among their own fold?

  If this were true, how could they ever hope to find the First Angel?

  According to Cardinal Bernard, the woman killed in the necropolis was the last of the Bathory line.

  But Rhun knew that wasn’t entirely true.

  “You guys are nuts,” Jordan said, interrupting his thoughts. “Erin did all the heavy lifting on this. And Bathory is dead. If the book is so smart, why would it set an impossible task?”

  “The Warrior has wisdom,” Eleazar said. “Perhaps he speaks truth. Prophecy is often a two-edged sword that cuts down all who attempt to interpret it.”

  Erin looked unconvinced.

  Eleazar bowed his head, his gaze fixing on Rhun.

  Rhun knew that all was not lost.

  “I have another matter to discuss with Father Korza,” Eleazar said to the others. “If we might have a moment alone.”

  “Of course,” Erin said, and moved off with Jordan.

  When the two were no longer in sight, Eleazar spoke again, in a whisper. “Thou must forsake this woman, Rhun. I have seen thy heart, but it cannot be.”

  Rhun heard truth in those words; it settled in his bones. “I shall.”

  Eleazar stared long and hard at Rhun, as if peeling away his flesh and baring his bones. The feeling was not entirely fanciful, as Eleazar’s next words proved. “Is there another of the line of the Woman of Learning?”

  Rhun bowed from those penetrating eyes. He knew what was asked. He must own all his sins, unearth all his secrets, or all the world might be lost.

  He faced Eleazar with tears in his eyes. “You ask too much.”

  “It must be done, my son.” Eleazar’s voice held pity. “We cannot hide from our past forever.”

  Rhun knew how much Eleazar had also given up for the world—and knew it was time for Eleazar to face that past, too.

  Rhun reached into the deep pocket inside his cassock and drew out the doll he had retrieved from the dusty tomb in Masada. It was a tattered thing, sewn from leather, long gone hard, with one eye missing. He placed the bit of the painful past into Eleazar’s open palm.

  Eleazar had lived for so long that he was more like a statue than any of the Cloistered Ones, resolute, unmoving, more like marble than flesh.

  But now those stone fingers shook, barely able to hold aloft the tiny, frail toy. Instead, Eleazar brought it to his chest and cradled it close, as if it were a living child, one he mourned deeply.

  “Did she suffer?” he asked.

  Rhun thought about the small body hanging on the wall in Masada, pinned by silver bolts that would have burned inside her until she expired.

  “She died serving Christ. Her soul is at peace.”

  Rhun stood and left the Risen One to his grief.

  As Rhun turned away, he caught a glimpse of marble breaking.

  Eleazar bowed his head.

  A tear fell and spattered mournfully upon the doll’s stained face.

  66

  October 29, 6:15 A.M., CET

  The sanctuary below St. Peter’s Basilica, Italy

  Rhun ran through the darkness with unearthly speed, a hammer clenched in his hand. It had been many centuries since his feet had walked these pitch-dark tunnels, but the way opened before him as if his body had always known that it would return here.

  He descended deeper than the temple of the Cloistered Ones, deeper than most dared venture. Here he had hidden his greatest secret. He had lied to Bernard; he had broken his vows; he had done penance for it, but never enough.

  And now his sin was the only thing that might save them.

  He stopped before a featureless wall, ran one hand across it, felt no seam. He had covered it well, four hundred years before.

  Rhun raised the hammer above his head and struck the wall. Stone shuddered under the blow. It gave. A mere hairsbreadth, but it gave.

  He struck again and again. Bricks crumbled until a small opening appeared. Barely large enough to admit him. That was all he needed.

  He climbed through the rough stone, not caring how it scratched his skin. He had to reach the dark room beyond.

  Once there, he lit a candle he had brought along with him. The scent of honey and beeswax unfolded in the chamber, driving back the odors of stone, decay, and staleness.

  The pale yellow flame reflected off the polished surface of a black marble coffin.

  He worked the lid off and lowered it to the rough stone floor of the cell.

  The smell of sacramental wine bloomed free. The wet black surface drank the light.

  Before he drew out the contents, Rhun cupped his hand and drank of the wine. He would need every ounce of holy fortification for the task ahead. But before the strength, as always, came the penance.

  Rhun walked to Rome. Weeks of trekking day and night through cold dark mountain passes had shredded his shoes and then his feet. When he could walk no farther, he sought sanctuary in remote mountain churches, drinking a mouthful of wine before driving himself out into the wild again.

  Bernard met him in Rome and took him deep under St. Peter’s Basilica, where only the eldest of their kind dared to go. There Rhun did his penance. He fasted. He prayed. He mortified himself. None of his actions lightened the stain of his sin.

  A decade later, Bernard sent him out into the world of men again, this time on a new mission to Čachtice Castle, a final penance to rid the world of what his sin created.

  Armed men around him kept their swords drawn. Fear shone in their faces, beat through their racing hearts. They were right to be afraid.

  The Palatine and Counts led, casting nervous glances back at their men, as if they feared that their men could not save them. They could not. But Rhun could. He prayed that he would not have to. That the stories were false. That his corrupted love had not caused this.

  But he had also heard other stories … of macabre experiments in the dead of night, hinting that there remained some dark purpose to her atrocities, some semblance of her intelligence, of her healing arts, turned to foul intention. That scared him most of all—that some part of her true nature still existed within that monster, degraded now to evil ends.

  As they reached the entrance to the castle, men shifted, quick breaths forming clouds in cold air.

  The Palatine knocked on a stout oak door built to withstand battering rams. For a moment Rhun prayed that no one would answer, and they would be forced to lay siege to the castle, but Anna opened it. Her birthmark still stained her face, but she was otherwise unrecognizable. Gaunt as a skeleton and covered in scars, she wore only a stained chemise against the biting cold.

  The Palatine forced the door open wide. Darkness cloaked the interior, but Rhun smelled what they would find there. Deep underneath that, he also caught the odor of rotten chamomile.

  Count Zríni fumbled to light a torch, the burning pitch smell a sharp note in the bouquet of death.

  The Palatine took the torch and stepped into the castle. Torchlight fell on a young girl lying stone-cold on the floor. Bruises marred her white flesh. Frozen blood coated her wrists, her neck, the inside of her thighs.
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  The Palatine crossed himself.

  Behind them, a soldier retched into the snow. Rhun took off his cassock and covered the body. But the Church did not have enough cassocks to hide his shame. He had killed this girl as surely as if he had opened her throat himself.

  A few steps farther in, two girls huddled under a filthy wooden table. The blond one was barely clinging to life. Her heartbeats fading. He knelt in front of her and administered Last Rites.

  “Thank you, Father.” The dark-haired girl’s voice rasped from a damaged throat.

  He lowered his eyes in shame. The deaths here weighed on his conscience, as did all those whom Elisabeta had killed. The love of a Sanguinist brought only death and suffering.

  A soldier picked up the still-living girl and carried her to the barren fireplace. He gave her his coat and lit a fire, his eyes focused on his task. Rhun closed her friend’s eyes for the last time. Both so young, barely out of girlhood.

  A scream cut through the castle. The Palatine cocked his head, as if to locate the sound. Rhun knew where it came from. Elisabeta’s private chambers.

  He stood and led.

  One of the men at arms followed close on his heels. The Palatine seemed to have lost his taste for leadership and trailed near the back. Elisabeta had once called him cousin. The Palatine had chosen the other noblemen because of their ties to her. Each was married to one of her daughters. She would be taken in the presence of nobility, as her stature required.

  Rhun pushed open Elisabeta’s bedroom door. Inside, a child sobbed in a black corner. Another girl stood in a spiked cage suspended high in the air. Elisabeta stood, naked under it. Two servants swung it from side to side, slamming the girl’s soft body against the cage’s sharpened spikes. Crimson dripped on Elisabeta’s white skin.

  Horrified, Rhun fought back tears. He had brought them to this.

  The men at arms rushed to apprehend the servants and stop the cage from swinging.

  Now the Palatine stepped forward again. “Lady Widow Nádasy, I arrest you in the name of the king.”

  “You shall pay dearly for this intrusion.” Elisabeta made no attempt to cover her nakedness. Dark hair swung across her white back as she turned to face the men.

  Her face set when she recognized them. “So.” A smile hardened her lips. “You have come to die.”

  Rhun stepped between her and the men. She could kill them all, but not him. He drew a knife from his sleeve.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t make me do this.”

  She stumbled back. “What more would you take from me, Rhun?”

  He flinched, then held the knife out where she could see it.

  Her lovely silver eyes lingered on the blade. “That is all you have to pierce me with, priest?”

  He moved closer. The warm blood smell rising off her skin intoxicated him. He fought his desires.

  “Careful, darling,” she whispered. “I have seen that look on your face before.”

  He murmured a prayer, then looped a silk cord around her bare wrists and bound them together.

  “There is blessed silver inside,” he told her. “If you try to break free, it will burn to the bone.”

  “Cover her,” ordered the Palatine.

  The Palatine threw a soiled blanket across her bloodstained shoulders.

  She interlaced her fingers as if in prayer. Her eyes found his. He read sorrow there and regret and, still yet, love.

  He waited to come back from the past, to inhabit this dank cell.

  Once fully returned, he dipped his arms deep into the scalding bath of holy wine. At the bottom, his cold hands found what he sought and drew her forth, back into the world after centuries of slumber.

  Wine had stained her fine green cloak burgundy, but her alabaster face shone as white as the day he had immersed her here instead of killing her as Bernard had ordered. He stroked long, dark hair off her still face, caressed her high forehead, her curved cheeks. She was as beautiful as she had been the moment he first saw her, four hundred years ago. Before he destroyed her soul and made her a strigoi, she had been a good woman. She had been a healer. She had almost healed him.

  Almost.

  Rhun whispered a prayer.

  Elisabeta’s soft storm-gray eyes opened, found him.

  Lips moved, no words, only air.

  Still Rhun understood what she tried to say, still lost in her dream, her anger still somewhere in the past, leaving only those two words formed by perfect lips.

  My love …

  6:30 A.M.

  Erin stumbled up the long dark tunnel. Without the golden light of the book to guide them, Jordan had clicked on his flashlight. Compared with the book, its pale blue light looked cold and feeble. He kept an arm across her shoulder all the long way up.

  They came at last to the collapsed baldachin, its base resting on the floor of the tunnel, its canopy extending up into the basilica. The bodies were gone, and the Sanguinists had strewn sand over the blood.

  Erin tried to step around the piles, but sand was everywhere. It felt gritty under her shoes, reminding her of the desert around Masada, of her dig site in Caesarea. How would things have played out if she had stayed in the trench with Heinrich, had pulled him out of the way of the horse, had never gotten into the helicopter? He would still be alive, but the Belial would have the book. There would be no hope. They had opened Pandora’s box, and the evil had escaped, but hope remained. Not just hope, but a path forward to keep the world safe.

  “Halt!” A Sanguinist blocked their path. He was thin, with long spidery fingers. “What is your business here?”

  “Sergeant Jordan Stone,” Jordan said. “And Dr. Erin Granger.”

  “Two parts of the trio.” The man’s voice was reverent. “My apologies.”

  The Sanguinist gestured to a ladder that had been leaned against the baldachin.

  “Ladies first,” Jordan said.

  Erin climbed, and at the top, needed help to awkwardly step from the ladder back onto the marble floor of the basilica. The immense scale of the building hit her all at once. Everything here was many times larger and grander than life. From the baldachin that now rested on the graves below to the soaring ceilings of Michelangelo that formed a false sky above. She spun in a slow circle, taking in white walls, opulent gilding, graceful statues, and sophisticated art. Men had accomplished great things in this place.

  Resolution settled inside her breast at the sights.

  They would find the First Angel and make sure that such wonders were protected.

  Jordan climbed up next to her and took her hand. Here, too, piles of sand on the polished floor soaked up blood, marking the spots where strigoi, Sanguinists, and men had died.

  She kept her eyes on the elaborate designs worked into the marble floor and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding the sand. The energy she had received from the book was long gone.

  Jordan’s legs moved them steadily toward the front door.

  He stopped before they reached the portico and veered left.

  She raised her eyes from the floor to see what had captured his attention. Michelangelo’s Pietà. The marble sculpture depicted Mary on the rock of Golgotha, cradling her recently crucified son. Christ lay spread across her lap, head back, arm dangling limply. Mary’s head was tilted down, her face marked by sadness. She mourned the loss of her precious son. The death that set these events in motion all those years ago.

  Jordan stared at the sculpture.

  Erin cleared her throat. “Jordan?”

  “Just thinking of the families I’ll have to visit when this is over: the Sandersons, the Tysons, the Coopers, and the McKays. The mothers who will look just like that.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist.

  Eventually, he took her hand again and they stepped out of the basilica into the fresh air of an Italian morning.

  He led her to the stairs that rose to the top of the dome.

  “It’s a long climb.”
His eyes asked if she wanted to make it.

  “I’ll go first,” she answered, and wended her way up the 320 steps. The sky had lightened to pale gray. Soon the sun would break free of the horizon.

  She reached the top, breathing hard. Jordan marched to the east side of the cupola and flung himself down. He patted the floor next to him, and she sat.

  The sky paled to almost white.

  “You know you’re probably wrong, right?” he asked.

  She tried to give him a smile. She appreciated the effort. “If I’m not?”

  “I want you on my team whether you’re part of some prophecy or not. We bumble around like a bunch of knuckleheads when you’re not around.”

  “People sacrificed their lives to save the Woman of Learning,” she said. “But all they saved was me.”

  “You’re not so bad.” He kissed the top of her head. “It was war, Erin. They were soldiers. Mistakes happen in battle. People die. You forge on—for you as much as for them. The key is to keep fighting.”

  She tensed in his arms. “But the prophecy—”

  “Look.” He started a count. “One: who found the medallion in the little girl’s hand? You did. Two: who figured out where the bunker was? You again. Three: who figured out the blood and the bone stuff to open the book? You again. It’s practically giving me a complex, how good you are at this.”

  She smiled. He might be onto something. Up until the very end, it had been Bathory who had followed their trail, not the other way around.

  She took the scrap of baby quilt out of her pocket and held it in her palm. For the first time, no anger rose in her at the sight of it. The anger had flown when, at death’s door, she forgave her father in the tunnels.

  “What’s that?” Jordan asked.

  “A long time ago I made a promise to someone.” She stroked the quilt with one fingertip. “I promised that I would never stand by when my heart told me that something was wrong.”

  “What does your heart say now?”

  “That you’re right.”

  He grinned. “I like the sound of that.”