The Blood Gospel

She was shivering so hard she nearly fell over.

Jordan and Nadia worked quickly, arranging both coats over the wounded Sanguinists so that no sun would touch them. Sunlight would kill Piers, and Erin guessed Rhun must be too weak to withstand it as well. He had lost so much blood at the bunker door.

Once she was done, Nadia knelt and bowed her head. She shuddered and fell to one arm.

“Are you okay?” Jordan asked.

“I’ll be fine,” the woman whispered, sitting back but not sounding fine. She had a hole the size of a quarter in her right thigh, and it went clean through. Yet despite her wound, she had saved everyone.

Jordan raised the anchor and dropped it in the middle of the boat.

Feeling like a weakling, Erin fumbled with her paddle and helped Jordan row toward shore. Her hands shook so that she could barely hold the shaft.

From under one of the cloaks, a weak, muffled voice gasped. “Please. Take it off.”

It was Father Piers.

Nadia stared down at his covered figure, her face a study of agony. “You’ll die.”

“I know,” he said. “Release me.”

Nadia’s hand hovered over the coat, but she did not pick it up. “Please, Piers, don’t.”

“Can you grant me absolution?” His frail voice barely rose above the splashes of their paddle blades.

Nadia sighed. “I have not yet taken Holy Orders.” She lifted the other coat and peered under it. “Rhun cannot grant you absolution either in his state. I’m sorry.”

Beside Erin, Jordan raked his paddle through the water, methodical and fast. She paddled harder, her hands cold claws on the wood.

“Then please, let us pray together, Nadia,” Piers pleaded.

As Erin and Jordan worked slowly toward shore, the two Sanguinists prayed in Latin, but Erin did not translate the words. She stared straight at the water, orange in the rising sun, and she thought of Rhun, dead or dying under Jordan’s coat. Why had she acceded to this quest? The search for the Gospel had already cost so many lives, just as Rhun had warned her. They had gained nothing and lost much.

As they neared the shoreline, Nadia gently lifted the coat off Piers and drew him up, cradling his gaunt form against her. For the first time, she looked frightened.

Piers’s filmy blue eyes searched the landscape of the shore.

Erin followed his gaze to dark pines, to the silver trunks of lindens bared by fall, a lake turned copper, and the golden rays of light breaking through fog.

Piers raised his face to the sun. “Light is truly the most beautiful of His creations.”

Tears streamed down Nadia’s cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away, instead tightening her grip on Piers. “Forgive me,” she said in Latin. “You are blessed.”

Jordan’s face was set like stone. He did not break the rhythm of his paddling.

Piers’s face glowed iridescent in a wash of sunlight.

His back arched. The flush spread to his neck and hands.

He screamed.

Nadia held him close. “Lord our God, You are our refuge from generation to generation. Year and days vary, but You remain eternal.”

Piers grew silent, slumping in her arms and going still.

“Your mercy sustains us in life and in death,” Nadia continued. “Grant us to remember with thanks what You have given us through Piers and Emmanuel. Receive them together into Your kingdom after their long years of service to You.”

Erin finished with her, using a word she hadn’t spoken in years and doubted that she ever truly meant, until now.

“Amen.”

41

October 27, 7:07 A.M., CET

Harmsfeld, Germany

Jordan dug deeper with the paddle, working slowly across the lake’s surface. He stared up at the sun, marking a new day after the longest night of his life—but at least, he still had a life.

He pictured the faces of his men … of Piers … of Emmanuel.

When Jordan had spread his coat over Rhun, he could tell that the priest might not be far behind the others. And for what? They’d come out of their long nightmare empty-handed.

At the bow of the boat, Nadia removed the duster from Piers’s body and handed it to Erin. The priest no longer needed its protection, but Erin was shivering in the early morning chill.

Nadia laid Piers out in the boat as best she could and crossed his arms over his thin chest. Her hands lingered above the terrible wounds on his feet and hands, but she refused to touch them. She drew Emmanuel’s cassock over his lifeless form, tucking it lovingly around him, then bowed her head in prayer.

Jordan did the same, owing Piers that much.

Once this was done, Nadia made the sign of the cross.

The woman looked to the sun for a long breath, then scooped up Piers, lifted him over the gunwale, and gently rolled his body into the lake. He sank out of sight in the green water, a trail of bubbles rising from the black cassock.

Erin gasped at the unceremonious end of Father Piers.

“He cannot rest in hallowed ground, nor can his body be found,” Nadia explained, then she sat back down, picking up a paddle. “Let him find his peace and eternal rest in these highlands he loved so much.”