The Blood Gospel

Jordan rolled up his sleeves. The edge of a strigoi bite showed just above his elbow. The man had an incredible constitution. He’d been battered and bitten, but his obvious worry for Erin kept him going. A fine Warrior of Man, Rhun thought, and tried to be grateful that she had such a champion.

Humans swirled around him. A mother bounced a fat infant on her hip. Next to her, a young man watched her breasts, his heart rate giving away his response. A group of schoolgirls in navy-blue uniforms chattered under the watchful eye of a middle-aged teacher wearing brilliant red-framed eyeglasses.

A woman in long jeans, a tight-fitting black shirt, a floppy straw hat, and sunglasses meandered around the crowded square. She snapped a few pictures, then stuck a tiny camera into the backpack that dangled by one strap on her shoulder. She looked like a tourist, but she wasn’t.

Nadia.

At last.

Rhun waited, not daring to cross the square until she signaled it was safe. He hated skulking around Vatican City. Rome had been his home for centuries. It had been the one place in the world where he had always walked freely—until now. Before this quest had started, he had considered retreating from the world, ensconcing himself in the meditative world that existed deep below the Basilica. Would such peace ever be afforded him again?

He strolled along the curved colonnade toward the ancient three-tiered fountain. Like many things in Rome, it was older than he was. A young girl played hide-and-seek among the Doric columns, chased by an energetic mother. They probably sought to get in one more game before heading home for their dinners.

Rhun’s sharp eyes picked out the red porphyry stone set among the sea of gray cobblestones. The red stone had been placed there to mark the spot of Pope John Paul II’s shooting thirty years before. The bloodred stone reminded him of the cobblestones enshrined in the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, a thought that seemed to call the specter of Rasputin into this holy place.

Rhun stopped next to the tall stone obelisk. This very pillar had witnessed the crucifixion of countless Christians in Nero’s Circus, even Saint Peter himself. But since the late 1500s, it had watched over the center of the Christian world. He calculated the time by the long shadow it threw across the square. They had less than two hours before sunset. If the Belial had strigoi stationed in Rome, they must act before then.

Nadia paused next to him.

“Where is the woman?” She angled her head back as if studying the cross that topped the obelisk.

“Erin,” Jordan said. “Her name is Erin.”

“She was taken, along with the book.” Rhun filled her in on the events in Russia, ending by handing her Jiang’s rosary and flask. She could bring them to the sanctuary beneath the necropolis of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the Order of the Sanguines made their home.

Nadia’s hands lingered on the flask before she slipped it into her backpack. She had often worked with Jiang. “The Cardinal has returned to Rome from Jerusalem. He’s been with the Cloistered Ones since he received word of your alleged death. Praying.”

Guilt wormed its way into Rhun’s gut. He hated having lied to Bernard. He had known that after Nadia told him of his death, Bernard would grieve. He would be furious and hurt when he found out how Rhun and Nadia had deceived him. But there had been no other way to conceal their actions from the Belial spy in their midst. Still, it would not get any easier to face Bernard. Rhun glanced toward the imposing stone Apostolic Palace rising above the colonnade. A few windows had been left open to let in the light and air.

“Can you take us to Bernard? We have no time for secrecy now that the Belial have the book.”

“And Erin,” Jordan put in. “They have Erin, too.”

55

October 28, 3:40 P.M., CET

Circus of Nero, Rome, Italy

“What do you mean we’re getting out of here?” Nate asked.

Erin stumbled over to him in the oily darkness and caught his hand to reassure him. “We’re going to climb out.”

“What? How?”

She told him.

Earlier, when Bathory had waved her flashlight around the cell, Erin had spotted a possible way out. They certainly could never breach the stone walls, and the new steel bars looked strong, and the floor had been carved from solid rock. They wouldn’t be leaving by any of those ways.

But the ceiling!

Under the glow of Bathory’s flashlight, she had noted that the cell had no roof. It was just a sheer-walled black shaft that headed straight up.

Erin knew what that meant. In ancient times, Roman slaves used long poles to push caged animals down the stone tunnel that Bathory had sauntered along before. They were animals meant for the arena, but first their cages had to be pushed into the very cell that she and Nate now occupied.