The Blood Gospel

Rhun tried to focus past their endless chatter. He heard a creature rustle among the trees a few yards off. But it was only a field mouse searching for grain before winter buried everything in snow. He hoped that the creature might find some.

“Then what is he?” Jordan asked.

Rhun sighed, knowing only answers would silence them. “Grigori was once a Sanguinist. He and Piers and I served as a triad for many years, before he was defrocked.”

Jordan frowned. “So your order defrocked this guy, then punished him with eternal banishment?”

“An order of Vitandus,” Erin reminded him.

The soldier nodded. “No wonder this guy doesn’t like the Church. Maybe you need to work on your PR.”

Rhun turned his back on them. “That is not the entire reason for his hatred of the Church.”

He touched his pectoral cross. Grigori had many reasons—hundreds of thousands of reasons—to hate the Church, reasons that Rhun understood far too well.

“So why was Rasputin excommunicated?” Erin asked.

He could still hear the doubt in her voice as she spoke Grigori’s name. She would not believe the truth until she could touch it. In this case, she might regret needing such reassurances.

Jordan pressed Rhun with more questions. “And what happens to an excommunicated Sanguinist? Can he still perform holy rites?”

“A priest is said to have an indelible mark on his soul,” Erin said. “So I’m guessing he can still consecrate wine?”

Rhun rubbed his eyes—with such short lives, their impatience was understandable, their need for answers insatiable. He wished for silence, but it was not to be.

“Grigori can consecrate wine,” Rhun answered tiredly. “But unlike wine blessed by a priest from the true Church, it does not have the same sustaining power of Christ’s blood. Because of that, he is forever trapped in a state between cursed strigoi and blessed Sanguinist.”

Erin brushed her hair out of her face. “What does that mean for his soul?”

“At the moment,” Jordan said, “I’m more concerned about what it means for his body. Like can he come out during the day?”

“He can and does and will.”

And soon.

“So why do we need his permission to be here?” Jordan asked.

“We need his permission because he has not let a Sanguinist leave Russian soil alive for many decades. He knows we are here. He will have us brought to him when it is time.”

Jordan turned on him, his heart spiking with anger. “And you couldn’t have told us this sooner? How much danger are we in?”

Rhun faced his fury. “I believe that we stand a good chance of leaving Russia alive. Unlike the others who have come here, the Vitandus and I have a more nuanced relationship because of our shared past.”

Jordan’s hand strayed to the side where his weapon usually hung. “So the men in the black rattletrap who have been following us since the airport … they belong to a Russian strigoi mobster with a shoot-on-sight order for all Sanguinists?”

Erin jerked her head toward the distant street. “We’re being followed?”

Jordan simply glared. “I had hoped they were Rhun’s people.”

“I have no people,” Rhun said. “The Church does not know we are here. After the attack at Masada and then the events in Germany, I suspect the Belial have a traitor in the Sanguinist fold. So I had Nadia declare us all dead.”

A muscle twitched in the soldier’s jaw. “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

A new voice interrupted, scolding in tone but amused nonetheless. “Such vehemence is unbecoming here.”

They all turned as a man in the long dark robe of a Russian Orthodox priest circled around the bronze statue and approached on stocky legs. The edges of his robe swept the tiles. Around his neck he wore a pectoral cross, a triple-barred crucifix of the same Church.

He smiled as he closed upon them. His once-long hair had been cut an inch above his shoulders and was combed back to reveal a broad face and cunning blue eyes. His sable-brown beard was neatly trimmed, which it had not been during the years Rhun had spent with him.

Erin smothered a gasp.

Grigori, Rhun realized, must still look enough like his century-old photographs to put an end to her lingering doubt. He prayed that she and Jordan would remember his admonition to tell Rasputin nothing.

Rhun greeted him with the slightest bow of his head. “Grigori.”

“My dear Rhun.” Grigori inclined his square head toward Erin and Jordan. “You have new companions.”

Rhun did not introduce them. “I do.”

“As usual, you have chosen a wise meeting place.” Grigori gestured toward the mounds to either side of the path with one powerful hand. “I might have killed you elsewhere, but not here. Not among the bones of half a million of my countrymen.”

Jordan swiveled his head around, as if looking for those bones.

“He did not tell you where you are, perhaps?” Grigori clucked his tongue. “Ever the poor host, Father Korza. You are at Piskariovskoye Cemetery. It commemorates the lives of those lost during the siege of Leningrad. These mounds you see are mass graves. Precisely one hundred and eighty-six of them.”