She returned again to a worry closer to her heart. “You said there was an attack.”
“A strigoi ambushed Jordan and his team down in that temple.”
She stood up and crossed to the coffee service, too anxious to keep sitting. She poured herself a cup, reminding herself that Jordan was fine.
Still . . .
Warming her palms on the cup, she faced Bernard. “Was this attacker one of these super strigoi?”
“It appears so. The good news is that the others are bringing the strigoi’s body back to Rome for study. We may learn something from the remains.”
“When?” she asked sharply, anxious to see Jordan, to make sure that he was safe.
“They should be here in the next hour. But they also found something else in the chamber, something they didn’t want to discuss over the phone. In fact, Jordan said that he wanted you to see it first.” The cardinal looked peeved that someone was withholding information from him. “He believed you might recognize it, because, as he adamantly insisted, you are the Woman of Learning.”
She took a sip of the coffee, allowing the heat to warm away the residual chill of her panic. She appreciated Jordan’s confidence, but she hoped it wasn’t misplaced. With no idea what he was bringing back from Cumae, she pondered the mystery of Leopold’s missing body and returned to Bernard’s cryptic assertion.
Something dug its way out of that temple.
7:02 P.M.
Rome, Italy
Legion sidled along the edge of a tall wall in the heart of Rome. He kept the barrier’s shadow over his form. Though the sun had sunk below the horizon, the surrounding streets still glowed with twilight. He preferred darker places to prowl. As an extra precaution, he pulled the hood of his coat farther over his head, knowing one certainty.
No one can look upon my bare face and not recognize my glory.
Yet, so much more remained unknown.
And that must end.
His vessel, the one called Leopold, has proven valuable. From that flickering flame that still glowed in the darkness inside his being, Legion had learned more about this prophecy and those who stood against him in his duty.
The words of that divination rang through him with each step.
Together, the trio must face their final quest. The shackles of Lucifer have been loosened, and his Chalice remains lost. It will take the light of all three to forge the Chalice anew and banish him again to his eternal darkness.
He pictured the face of the one known as the Warrior of Man, fixing that image of his blue eyes and hard planes of his face. The Warrior exuded all that masculinity represented, a true figure of a man.
As he continued along that tall wall, a large vehicle rushed past on the road beside him, stirring up trash, belching out foul fumes. From Leopold’s memories, he knew this was called a bus. But he retreated to his own memories. As a fallen one, he had spent endless years walking this garden of a world, well before man had trampled through it. Where once wild things grew, mankind had clad the land with artificial stone. Where once clear streams trickled under blue skies, now there was filth—both in the water and in the air.
Even from the beginning, he had known man was unfit to inherit this paradise. During the war of the heavens, where he had joined others against God’s plan for man, he had hoped to claim this garden for himself. But in the end, he and the others lost that battle and were cast down, and now mankind had proven, as he had envisioned, to be a blight in this garden, a weed that needed to be rooted out and burned.
I will take this paradise back.
He would let nothing stop him.
Not even prophecy.
To that end, he must learn more about this trio, enough to stop them. He ran his shadowy fingertips along the wall next to him, feeling the burn of holiness in those stones. This barrier separated Rome from Vatican City. He prowled its length for one determined purpose.
He had learned from Leopold the names of the remaining two members of the trio: the Woman of Learning and the Knight of Christ. They were likely nearby, hiding in this bastion of godliness. He pulled his fingers from the wall and stared down at his palm, swirling the darkness across his skin.
If he laid his hand upon one of the trio, he could possess them in an instant.
With a single touch, I can end this prophecy’s threat.
The first step toward that goal approached him now. He had hoped to find such a one haunting the edges of this holy city. The figure walked toward him on the sidewalk, looking like any other pedestrian. But with the sharpened senses, Legion registered one significant difference.
No heart thudded in this one’s chest.
He was a Sanguinist, a word learned from Leopold. This servant of God registered Legion’s own unnatural state a moment too late. Legion grasped the man’s bared forearm with his black fingers. His prey fell to his knees as Legion burned away his will, pushed his shadows into this one’s heart.
You will be my eyes and ears in that holy city.
Legion stared up at the wall. With this slave he could learn where his enemy was hiding, and end this threat.
I will not fail again.
7:15 P.M.
Vatican City
As she waited for Jordan’s return, Erin studied the map on Bernard’s computer monitor, noting the outward spread of the attack from Cumae.
“It’s like a plague,” she mumbled.
The cardinal glanced up from the reports he had been reviewing. “What was that?”
She pointed to the screen. “What if we consider the pattern of these strange strigoi attacks more like a disease, a pathogen that is spreading far and wide?”
“How does that help us?”
“Perhaps instead of trying to find a way to thwart these attacks, we should concentrate our efforts on finding Patient Zero. If we can find him—”
A short rap on the door cut her off.
“Come in,” Bernard called out, straightening the crimson skullcap of his station. The cardinal was vainer than he would ever admit.
She turned as the door swung wide and Father Gregory stepped inside, but he was only holding the way open for others. She caught sight of the first visitor and was out of her seat and halfway across the room before she realized it.
Jordan caught her in his arms and lifted her off her feet. She hugged him back, hard. Once he let her down, she leaned back, keeping her hands on his shoulders, while taking him all in.
Despite the cardinal’s prior reassurance, a knot of concern for his well-being had remained. But he did indeed look fine. In fact, he looked terrific, his tanned skin practically glowing with health.
She lifted on her toes, inviting a kiss. He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek. His lips burned, as if he were feverish. She settled back to her heels, a hand rising to touch her cheek.
A peck on the cheek?
Such a tepid sign of affection was out of character, and it felt like a rejection.
She studied his clear blue eyes and reached up to run a hand through his shock of short blond hair, wanting to ask him what was going on. He didn’t react to her touch. She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. His skin was burning hot.
“Do you have a fever?”
“Not at all. I feel great.” He stepped back and jerked his thumb toward his companion behind him. “Probably just overheated from chasing after this guy.”
It was Christian, but from the young Sanguinist’s expression, he was equally concerned. Jordan was definitely not telling her something.
Before she could press the issue, Christian entered the room. He was dressed casually in worn black jeans and dark blue windbreaker, beneath which showed a priest’s shirt and collar. He nodded to Bernard. “Sophia and Baako are bringing the strigoi’s body to the pope’s surgery.”
Erin let go of her worry about Jordan’s continuing estrangement and focused on the mystery he and the others had delivered to their doorstep. If they could discover the source of this s
trigoi’s unusual strength and speed, then maybe they could devise a way to short-circuit it in the future.
But apparently that would wait.
Christian pulled a khaki rag from his jacket pocket. He glanced guiltily toward Jordan. “Sophia asked me to show this to Erin.”
Erin caught her breath as she recognized the scrap. It was a piece of Jordan’s shirt—only it was caked in dry blood, with a clear slash through the middle. She looked anxiously at Jordan.
He grinned back. “Nothing to worry about. I just got nicked during the battle.”
“Nicked?” She sensed he was holding back. “Show me.”
Jordan lifted his palms. “I swear . . . there’s nothing to see.”
“Jordan . . .” A warning tone frosted her voice.
“Fine.” He reached a hand and lifted up his T-shirt. A set of six-pack abs came into view.
Definitely nothing wrong with them.
She ran a finger across his unusually warm skin, noting the thin line of a scar. That was new. Without taking her hand from Jordan’s belly, she looked back at the bloody shirt that Christian held. The cut in the front of the shirt matched the scar.
“Just a nick or not,” she said, “this shouldn’t have healed so quickly.”
Bernard came around to examine Jordan, too.
“According to Sophia and Baako,” Christian explained, “Jordan spontaneously healed, suffering no ill effects.”
No ill effects?
His skin blazed under her fingertips. He would barely meet her eyes. She remembered another time when he had burned so hotly. It was when he was healed by Tommy’s angelic blood. Was this evidence of the prophecy concerning the Warrior of Man? The words echoed in her head: The Warrior of Man is likewise bound to the angels to whom he owes his mortal life.
Jordan tugged his shirt back down, glancing at Erin. “I didn’t want you to worry. I was going to tell you when we were alone.”
Were you?
She hated that she doubted him, but she did.
“I figured we had a more important detail to address first,” Jordan continued.
He pulled something out of his camouflage pants and held it up for all to see. Its sharp edges flashed in the candlelight. It looked like two pieces of a broken green egg.
“We found this near the altar down in the sibyl’s temple,” Jordan explained.
He crossed the room and put the pieces down on the cardinal’s desk. They gathered around it. Its facets cast rainbows across their faces, brighter than she’d ever seen—yellows like sunshine, greens like the sun on the grass, blues like a summer sky. The pieces certainly weren’t made of ordinary glass.
“What kind of stone is it?” she asked.
“Diamond, I think,” said Christian, as he leaned closer. “A green diamond, more precisely. Exceedingly rare.”
Transfixed by its beauty, Erin gazed at the stone. The crystal cast dappled reflections around the desktop. Those glowing emerald teardrops reminded her of tiny leaves, dancing in a summer wind.
Jordan nudged the two pieces together. “We found it already broken into these two halves, but at one time, it must have been a single gemstone. And look at this . . .”
He rolled the stone over to reveal a symbol etched into the crystal.
Erin leaned closer, traced it with her index finger. It looked as if the design had been melted into the stone.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Jordan said, noting her attention. “It’s like the symbol was always part of the diamond, not carved in afterward.”
Erin frowned. “I’ve heard of flaws and inclusions in gems, but it’s hard to believe that such a precise emblem formed naturally.”
Christian nodded. “I agree.”
She straightened. “Besides, I’ve seen this symbol before.”
A small part of her enjoyed their shocked expressions.
“Where?” Bernard asked.
She pointed to the cardinal’s bookshelf. “Right here.”
Proving it, she stepped over and took down a small leather-bound tome. She herself had delivered this depraved book to the cardinal, picking it up from the snow in Stockholm after Elizabeth Bathory had dropped it. It was the Blood Countess’s personal diary, a record of her atrocities and macabre experiments.
Erin stepped back to the desk and opened the book’s brittle cover. It was centuries old. Still, she swore she could smell the scent of blood wafting forth from its pages. She flipped past drawings of medicinal plants until she reached Bathory’s later experiments, those that held detailed drawings of human and strigoi anatomy. Her eyes were drawn to the neatly written notes of horrific tests performed on living women and strigoi, grisly acts that must have caused terrible suffering and death.
She hurried past them.
At the end of the book, Erin found what she sought. Scrawled as if in great haste on the last page was a symbol.
It matched the one on the stone exactly.
“What does it mean?” Bernard asked.
“We’ll have to ask the woman who wrote it,” Erin said.
Jordan groaned. “Something tells me she’s not going to be that cooperative, especially after what Rhun did to her. She’s not exactly the forgiving type.”
“Still,” Erin said, “Rhun might be the only one who could convince her.”
Jordan sighed. “In other words, it’s time to put the band back together again.”
He didn’t look happy, but Erin felt a flicker of relief at the thought of them all together again, the trio of prophecy reunited.
She pictured Rhun’s ashen face, his haunted dark eyes, and turned to Bernard.
“So where exactly is our missing Knight of Christ?”
March 17, 8:37 P.M. CET
Castel Gandolfo, Italy
One last duty, and I’ll be free to return to Rome.
Though in truth, Rhun was not in any particular hurry. After returning from Egypt, he had stopped first at the pope’s summer residence in the rural countryside of Castel Gandolfo. With the pontiff rarely visiting, the residence was run like a country estate. The pace was slow and deliberate, changing only with the seasons.
Rhun stood at a window and stared across the spring fields and down to the moonlit waters of Lake Albano. He did not realize how much he had missed the sight of water after his months in the desert. He drew in a deep breath filled with the scent of water, green things, and fish.
Then a sharp pain flared in his heel, drawing his attention back to the stone floor and the mischievous lion cub chewing on the back of his shoe. The snowy-white cub was lying flat on the floor, his paws stretched in front of him like the sphinx. Except a sphinx normally didn’t have its head tilted to the side, its teeth embedded in leather.
“Enough of that, my friend.” Rhun shook the determined cub off his foot.
The young lion had tolerated the journey from Egypt. Before the flight to Italy, the cub had devoured a huge breakfast of milk and meat, then slept curled up for hours in the crate.
Apparently you’re hungry again . . . for shoe leather.
A knock on the door caused them both to look in that direction. Rhun hurried over, hoping it was the person he had privately asked to meet him in this remote corner of the papal residence. He opened the door to discover a chubby priest, with gray hair shaved into a friar’s tonsure. His head barely reached Rhun’s shoulder.
“Friar Patrick, thank you for coming.”
The fellow Sanguinist ignored Rhun’s formal manner and pushed into the room. He clasped both of Rhun’s hands in his cold ones. “When they said you had come to see me, I did not believe it. It has been so many years.”
Rhun smiled at his enthusiasm. “Friar Patrick, you shame me. Has it been so long?”
The man scrunched his face in thought. “I believe the last time we spoke, man had just set foot on the moon. I know you were here recently, but you came and went so quickly.” He scolded him with the wag of a finger. “You should have stopped by.”
; Rhun nodded. He had been busy at the time, dealing with the threat of a traitor in the order, but he didn’t bother trying to explain. Luckily, Friar Patrick’s attention was quickly diverted to the castle’s other guest.
“Oh my!” Patrick dropped to a knee and reached for the cub, his fingers fondling those soft ears. “This certainly makes up for your long absence. It’s been ages since I’ve seen such a magnificent beast.”
The friar had long cared for the pope’s menagerie, from the days when it had consisted of horses, cattle, pigeons, and falcons. In spite of his small stature and well-padded frame, he could harness a team of horses faster than anyone. Over a century ago, Rhun had worked alongside him in the stables. No one had a better kinship with God’s creatures than Patrick.
“This little one looks hungry,” Patrick said, proving that natural affinity now.
“And I just fed him a huge meal not long ago.”
The old friar chuckled. “That’s because he’s a growing lad.” Patrick stood and motioned to the door. “Come. Follow me. I already have a cozy place picked out for him. After you sent word about your charming companion, I made sure everything was ready.”
With the cub loping happily behind them, Patrick led Rhun out of the room, down a set of stairs, and outside to the papal grounds. He marched them across the back acres to where an old set of stables stood.
As soon as Rhun stepped inside, the smell of horse, leather, and hay took him back a hundred years. The strong slow heartbeats of the horses surrounded him like music. Only a few beasts lived in the stable now, nowhere near as many as in times past, when every journey required something with four legs.
The horses whickered at the sight of Patrick, who deftly produced a lump of sugar from his pocket for each, stroking one nose after another as he bustled past the stalls.
Rhun picked up the curious lion cub to keep him from darting into the stalls.
Finally, Patrick reached the door to his office and ushered them inside. Pictures of horses lined the walls—both photographs and pencil drawings. Rhun recognized a horse from his own day, a champion that Patrick had bred.
The friar followed his gaze. “You remember Holy Fire, don’t you? What a champion, that one was. I swear he fell from his mother’s womb and landed sure on his feet.”
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