The Blood Gospel

His dark congregants surrounded Rhun and his companions, driving them toward the apse.

Rhun continued to stare toward the door, casting out his senses toward the mysterious visitor, but by now the smell of blood and burnt flesh wafting from Grigori’s acolytes had engulfed him, too. Frustrated, he took a deep breath and offered up a prayer for patience in adversity. It did nothing to calm him.

Grigori slipped away with an insolent wave and vanished into the vestibule and out the door into the cold night.

“I’m getting tired of being herded around,” Jordan said as he was elbowed closer to Erin.

“Like cows,” Rhun agreed.

“Not a cow,” the soldier said. “Like a bull. Let me keep my dignity.

Such as it is.”

As they waited, Erin crossed her arms. She seemed the calmest of the three. Did she trust that Grigori would keep his word, that they would come to no harm? Surely she was not so foolish. Rhun tried to shut out the sound of her heartbeat and listen, straining at the door, but Grigori and his late visitor had moved too far away.

“Do you think he knows where the book is?” she asked, making it plain how little she actually did trust Grigori.

“I don’t know. But if it is in Russia, we will never find it without his cooperation.”

“And after that?” Jordan asked. “What then? What will he do—to you, to us? I imagine that won’t be fun either.”

Rhun relaxed fractionally, relieved that Jordan had seen through the monk. “Indeed.”

Erin’s voice remained resolute. “I think Rasputin will keep his word. But that may be as worrisome as if he didn’t. He strikes me as someone who plays many levels of a chess game while always wearing a smiling face.”

Rhun nodded. “Grigori is a man of his word—but you must listen carefully to each utterance from his lips. He does not speak casually. And his loyalty is … complicated.”

Jordan glanced at the silent congregation, who kept their guard as they all waited. “Things would be easier here if the Church had kept its word. They should have helped during the siege, especially if strigoi came here to feed. Maybe then we wouldn’t have Rasputin as our enemy.”

Rhun fingered the worn beads of his rosary. “I pressed his case with Cardinal Bernard myself, told him that Christ had not saved us to show neutrality in the face of evil, that He made us to fight it always and in all of its forms.”

Rhun did not tell them that he had considered following Grigori back to St. Petersburg during the war. He believed his inability to convince Bernard to help the besieged city was one of his greatest failures as a Sanguinist, possibly rivaling what he had inflicted upon Elisabeta.

One of the congregants stepped closer. It was Sergei, his eyes hard as glass. “So you admit that he was right?”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Jordan folded his arms. “And right doesn’t always mean good.”

There, the argument stalled.

Erin seemed to spend the next hour studying the jewel-like mosaics, stopping to feel them where she could, as if she made sense of them through touch. Rhun could not stand to look at them. It was an affront to God to have such beautiful works of religious art in such a profane den.

Like a good soldier, Jordan returned to the table, sat down, and rested his head on the top, catching sleep when he could do nothing else. Rhun admired his practicality, but he could not settle to such calmness. He stretched his senses outside the church, listening to the rhythms of a city moving into night, the rumble of cars quieting, the muffled footfalls, the voices passing away, and underneath it all, the soft whisper of falling snow.

Then Rhun heard feet and a frantic heartbeat approaching the church’s outer entrance. Heads turned, but Grigori’s acolytes seemed to have already recognized the visitor, because they did not bother to herd Rhun and the others into hiding again.

Sergei disappeared into the vestibule and returned with a small greasy-haired man with a pointed nose. The stranger brought with him the icy smell of snow.

“It wasn’t easy to get, what you asked.” The man handed Sergei a sealed plastic case about the size of a shoe box.

Sergei gave him a roll of bills, which he counted with one nicotine-stained finger. He pocketed the roll, nodded once to Sergei, and on quick, furtive feet, disappeared back out into the night.

Sergei turned to them, to Jordan. “Now it is our turn to give gifts, da?”

6:38 P.M.

Jordan accepted the case, undid the small latch, and lifted the lid. He whistled appreciatively at what he found. Christmas had come early.

“What is it?” Erin brushed his elbow. The fresh laundry scent of the German hotel’s shampoo drifted up, and he remembered that first kiss. “Jordan?”

It took him an extra second to collect himself.

“It’s what I asked for earlier.” He tilted the box to reveal a blue electronic device packed into gray foam cushioning, along with battery packs, carrying straps, manuals, and sampling tools. “It’s a handheld explosives detector.”