The Blood Gospel

Accompanied by young acolytes, Grigori climbed the black marble stairs to the altar with a stately tread. Ornate bloodred columns, lit by tall candles, flanked him. Behind his shoulder, the last light of day, a feeble orange glow, shone through high windows onto a mosaic of Christ feeding the apostles with the host and the wine, while angels beamed from above.

In this space, Grigori intoned his dark Mass.

The choir chanted ancient Russian prayers, clear voices soaring to faraway ceilings in rhythms and tones that humans could never attain, would never hear.

At last, hands led Rhun and the others to a pew. He followed, still unable to adjust to the bone-deep wrongness of this spectacle.

Then a warm hand touched his bare wrist.

“Rhun?” whispered a voice.

He turned and looked into Erin’s questioning eyes. Their naturalness, their humanity, helped to ground him.

“Are you all right?” She tilted her head as they took seats in the pew.

He put his hand atop hers, closed his eyelids, and concentrated on the quick, sure beat of her heart, letting it blot out the profane music. One true human heartbeat was enough to keep it all at bay.

The singing stopped.

For a heartbeat, silence swallowed the church.

Then Grigori called everyone forward to accept the Eucharist, holding high a golden chalice. Disciples filed forward to receive their wine, their boots soft on the dark marble floor. Rhun remained seated with Jordan and Erin.

When the consecrated liquid touched their lips, smoke rose from their mouths as if they had just breathed fire. With bodies too impure to accept Christ’s love, even the pale version of it that Grigori could offer, they moaned in agony.

Erin’s heart squeezed to a faster beat, in sympathy with their pain, especially that of those who seemed no more than children.

Rhun stared at a young girl, who in life had been no more than ten or eleven, step away, her lips blistering, each breath a steaming gasp of agony and ecstasy. She crossed back to her pew and knelt with her head bowed in supplication.

Here was Grigori’s greatest evil, his willingness to convert the young. Such an act stole their souls and cut them off from receiving Christ’s love for all eternity.

Grigori’s voice cut through Rhun’s musings. “And now, Rhun. You, too, must accept my Communion.”

He remained seated, refusing to take such darkness into his body. “I will not.”

Grigori snapped his fingers, and Rhun’s party was suddenly surrounded by a group of Rasputin’s disciples, fouling his nostrils with the odors of wine and burnt flesh.

“That is my price, Rhun.” Grigori’s words boomed through the church. “Accept my hospitality. Drink of the sacred wine. Only then will I listen.”

“If I refuse?”

“My children will not go hungry.”

The disciples moved closer.

Erin’s heart raced. Jordan’s hands formed fists.

Grigori smiled paternally. “But your companions will fight, won’t they? It will be no easy death. The man is a soldier, is he not? Dare I say, he is a warrior?”

Rhun flinched.

“And the woman,” Grigori continued. “A true beauty, but with hands callused from work in the field, and also, I suspect, from holding a pen. I believe that she is most learned.”

Rhun glared across the dark congregation toward Grigori at the altar.

“Yes, my friend.” Grigori laughed his familiar mad laugh. “I know that you are here seeking the Gospel. Only prophecy would send you to my doorstep. And perhaps I will even help you—but not without a price.”

Grigori cupped the tainted chalice in his palms and raised it.

“Come, Rhun, drink. Drink to save your companions’ souls.”

With no choice, Rhun stood. On stiff legs, he walked between the pews, mounted the hard stone stairs, and opened his mouth.

He braced himself against the pain.

Grigori came forward, lifted his chalice high, poured from that height.

Bloodred wine struck and filled Rhun’s mouth, his throat.

To his surprise, this black sacrament did not burn. Instead, a welcoming warmth coursed through his body. Strength and healing surged within him, quickening even his still heart to beat—something it had not done in many centuries. With that quiver of muscle in his chest, he knew what was mixed in that wine, but still he did not turn his face away from the flowing chalice.

It filled him, quieting that endless hunger inside him. He felt the wounds that had been opened in the bunker pull closed. But best of all, he was enveloped in a deep contentment.

He moaned at the rapture of it.

Grigori stepped back, taking his chalice with him.

Rhun struggled to form words as the world around him wavered. “You did not—”

“I am not so holy as you,” Grigori explained, looming over him as Rhun slumped to the marble floor. “Not since my excommunication from your beloved Church. So, yes, any wine that I give my followers must be fortified. With human blood.”

Rhun’s eyes rolled back, taking away the world and leaving only his eternal penance.