The Blood Gospel

Her six crossbowmen stood rock-still, three to each side of her, silver arrows at the ready. The larger bolts of a crossbow delivered a deadlier dose of silver than a simple bullet, plus the arrows had the tendency to remain impaled in place rather than passing harmlessly through.

She was not taking any chances with Rhun Korza.

Tarek’s head swiveled to the door. All her troops went on alert.

She heard nothing, but she knew they must.

The bunker door moved forward, pushing its way along the path they had carefully cleared for it.

Three Sanguinists stepped into the forest, Rhun Korza among them.

Bathory counted three more figures behind them, still in the bunker, one carried by another, apparently wounded. But that made no sense—and she didn’t like surprises. Only five had left the abbey, and only five tracks were found at the water’s edge.

So who was this sixth?

Had Korza found someone alive in the bunker?

Then she remembered the icarops.

Was this the mysterious denizen of the bunker?

She kept her hand held high, telling her troops to wait until everyone was out of the bunker. But the last three stayed inside, plainly suspicious.

Korza looked at the ground and knelt, clearly noting where Bathory’s men had disturbed the soil. Before any further suspicions could be raised, she slashed her arm down.

Crossbow bolts whistled with a twang of taut strings. The volley struck the Sanguinist in the lead, nailing him to the large bole of an ancient black pine.

He struggled to free himself, smoke already steaming from his wounds into the cold night.

The bowmen shot another volley, all the bolts striking true, piercing chest, throat, and belly.

The Sanguinist writhed in a fog of his own boiling blood.

That took care of one priest.

Now to kill Korza.

38

October 27, 6:47 A.M., CET

Harmsfeld Mountains, Germany

“Stay inside!” Rhun shouted, diving through a rain of deadly silver.

A crossbow bolt struck his arm, embedded itself into his forearm. Its touch burned deep into his flesh with the poison of silver. He had known the danger as soon as he found the fresh loam turned at the foot of the door—but he had reacted too slowly.

Someone had been waiting in ambush.

Someone who had expected to fight Sanguinists.

He reached the shelter of a thick linden tree and rolled behind it.

Safe behind the broad trunk, he yanked out the crossbow bolt. More blood than he could spare flowed from the wound, trying to purge his body of the silver’s taint.

He sagged against the tree and glanced left.

As he had hoped, Nadia had reached the shelter of a boulder next to the doorway.

But not Emmanuel.

A dozen silver bolts had skewered him to a pine a few yards away. Smoke boiled from his wounds, enfolding him in a ghostly shroud of his own pained essence.

Rhun knew he could not reach him—and even if he could, death had already laid claim to his old friend and brother of the cloth.

Emmanuel knew this, too. He reached an arm back toward the bunker.

Piers’s voice rasped from out of the darkness. “My son.”

“I forgive you,” Emmanuel whispered.

Rhun hoped that Piers had heard the words and cast a silent prayer to his dying friend.

Then Emmanuel slumped, only the cruel bolts holding him upright.

Behind the boulder, Nadia wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. Like Rhun, she had to accept that Emmanuel was dead, but with that grief came a sliver of joy. He had met the most honorable end for any Sanguinist: death in battle.

Emmanuel had freed his soul.

When he was finished with his prayer, Rhun’s attention snapped to the sound of a single human heart beating out in the forest. There was a human among the strigoi attackers, revealing the true nature of those who attacked them.

The Belial.

But how had they come to find Rhun and his party here?

And how many were hidden in the woods?

Behind him, Erin’s and Jordan’s heartbeats echoed out of the bunker, where they remained sheltered with Piers. They were safe, at least for another moment.

Rhun reached to his thigh and pulled out his wineskin. He needed Christ’s blood to replace what he had just lost. Without it, he could not continue to do battle. But with such a drink, he risked being thrust into the past, helpless and exposed.

Still, he had no choice. He lifted the skin and drank.

Heat burned through him, fortifying him, pushing back the burn of silver with the purity of Christ’s fire. Crimson crept into the edges of his vision.

He fought against the looming threat of penance.

Elisabeta in the fields. Elisabeta by the fire. Elisabeta’s rage.

He tightened his hand around his pectoral cross, begging the pain to keep him present. The world became a shadowy mix of past and present. Images flashed:

… a long bare throat.

… a brick plastered in a closing wall.

… a young girl with a raspberry blemish screaming silently.

No.