The Blood Gospel

“It looks like an oversize remote control.” She touched the blue casing with one bare finger. “One without enough buttons.”

“This has enough buttons,” Jordan said. “If it works properly, it can detect trace levels of explosive materials in the parts-per-quadrillion range. Anything from C-4 to black powder to ammonium and urea nitrates. Actually pretty much anything it can sample, it can search for.”

“How does it work?” Erin looked like she wanted to take it right out of his hand to see.

“It uses amplifying fluorescent polymers.” He pulled the detector out of the foam, earning a twinge from his bat-gnawed thumb. “The detector shoots a ray of ultraviolet light out and sees what happens in the fluorescent range after the particles are excited.”

“Is it dangerous?” Rhun asked, eyeing it with suspicion.

“Nope.” Jordan inserted the battery and turned on the device while they were talking. “May I have that piece of the book’s concrete jacket?”

Erin fished it out of her pocket and put it in his hand, her cold fingers stroking across his palm. He didn’t know if she did this on purpose, but she could keep doing it all day long.

Rhun cleared his throat. “Will it suffice for our needs?”

“It should help.”

Jordan examined the scorch marks along one side of the crumbling lime-ash concrete. Once satisfied that it should offer a decent test sample, he set everything down on the table and got to work.

“I should be able to calibrate the device to match whatever explosive was used to shatter the cement jacket. It’ll turn this little unit into our own personal electronic bloodhound.”

He had only just finished his calibrations when Rasputin returned, beaming. Jordan tensed, glancing up at him. Anything that made Rasputin that happy could not be good for them.

6:46 P.M.

Erin turned to Rasputin as Rhun hovered nearby.

Jordan returned to doing some final adjustments on the explosives detector.

“Good evening!” Rasputin strode across to them. He seemed energized and overly enthusiastic, even for him. “I trust that the equipment we obtained is satisfactory?”

“It is,” Jordan admitted grudgingly. “And it’s ready to go.”

“As am I.” Rasputin rubbed his hands together and smiled. He looked greedy and happy, like a child about to go to an ice-cream store.

“You have a lead on the book?” Erin asked.

“Possibly. I know where it might have been taken if it was brought back to St. Petersburg on the dates specified by the sergeant.”

Rasputin stepped closer, touched the small of Erin’s back, and guided her toward the center of the church. She reached behind her and tried to pull his hand away. He left it there for a second, as solid as if it were made of stone. Then, with a tiny smile, he let her shift his arm aside. The message was clear: he was stronger than she was, and he would do with her as it suited him.

Seeing this, Jordan collected the detector, stood, and moved to her side, sticking close, either jealous or worried. She found that this thought didn’t bother her as much as it had in Jerusalem. Body heat radiated across the small space between them.

Jordan’s eyes darkened as it warmed him, too.

Rasputin drew them to a halt in the center of the church. He knelt on a stone mosaic and pulled out a single tile from the center of a flower. Sergei handed him a metal rod with a hook on the end like a crowbar. Rasputin wedged it in the hole and lifted out a circular section of the floor one-handed, revealing a dark shaft leading down.

With a gentlemanly flourish, he gestured to a metal ladder bolted in place on one side.

Erin leaned over and couldn’t see the bottom, but it smelled rank.

She bit back a sigh.

They were going underground.

Again.

Rhun slipped around Jordan and mounted the ladder first, climbing down swiftly.

Jordan dropped his detector into his pocket and waited for Erin to go second. He plainly intended to act as a buffer between her and Rasputin.

And she was happy to let him.

After first slipping her hand into her pocket to reassure herself that her flashlight was still there, she followed. Cold from the metal seeped into her fingers and palms as she grasped the rungs and began the longest ladder climb of her life.

Jordan followed, clambering down one-handed. Was he showing off or favoring his bitten hand? The wound ran deep, but he hadn’t complained.

Above him, Rasputin and his congregants flowed down after them.

She turned her attention to the long journey down, counting the rungs. She had reached more than sixty when her toe stretched down and touched the icy floor.

Rhun helped her off the ladder. She didn’t refuse. By now, her fingers had gone numb. She stepped aside to get out of Jordan’s way, jamming her hands in her pockets.

Jordan gave her a quick grin as he hopped off the ladder. “When this is over, let’s spend a week at a sunny beach. Aboveground. And margaritas are on me.”

She smiled back at him and fought down the urge to pinch her nose against the stench down here. It reeked of human waste.