The Blood Gospel

Back then, a wooden platform would have covered the cell’s stone floor. Over the centuries, the platform had disintegrated into the slivers Erin had felt when she first woke up in the cell. Originally, planks had been nailed together in the shape of this room. Chains would have been attached to both sides of the platform and run up to pulleys at the top. Those chains would have traveled up slots on either side of the black rectangle above her.

Slaves rolled the caged animals on top of the platform. Later, on cue from above, other slaves used an elaborate rope-and-pulley elevator system to lift the platform and the cage from deep under the earth to the ground-level arena.

Erin and Nate had to hope that this shaft led to someplace safer than the prison they were stuck in now.

“Come over here,” she urged Nate, taking him by hand. “We can climb the steel gate to reach the shaft above.”

She helped him mount and clamber up the horizontal braces. Still, he trembled. Beaten and poorly fed, he was noticeably weak.

“Now for the interesting part.” Erin held him against the bars with one arm. “I saw a small vertical slot running up one wall of the shaft. Once upon a time, the slot held the pulley chains used to lift the elevator platform up that shaft. With any luck, we can climb that slot all the way to the surface. I’m going to go first. You come up after me.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nate’s voice had a sarcastic tone, and she was glad to hear it.

Her fingers explored the shaft overhead and found the slot. It was wide enough to jam into: legs on one side, back on the other. The climbing technique was called chimneying.

She pushed off with her legs from the cell’s gate and lifted herself up into the slot. Before she could fall back down, she jammed one leg against the side. Her back rested hard against the other side. She was in.

She moved up one foot, then another. “Okay, Nate. Your turn.”

Blind in the dark, she heard him hoist himself off the bars toward her—then fall back down to the stone floor with a thud.

She jumped down. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” He didn’t sound fine.

“This time, you go first.”

Erin found his hand and directed him back to the bars. Nate climbed up again, fell again.

“Leave me,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

“You mean to tell me that a strapping Texas boy like you doesn’t have the guts to outclimb a scrawny old lady like me?”

“It’s not about guts.” His quiet voice sounded defeated.

She hated to poke him again, but she did. “Damn right it is. Stop whining, and get your ass up that shaft. I am not going up there just to tell your kid sister that you were killed here because you were too lazy to climb out of a hole.”

Nate stood back up. “I used to like you.”

“Up you go.”

This time she supported his feet when he pushed himself upward. Once braced across the slot, he didn’t need to use his wounded arms, just his back and his legs.

Dirt and stone chips rained down on her as Nate made slow progress upward. She followed, straightening one leg, lifting it up a few inches, then forcing herself to pry the other foot off the wall. Over and over. Inching upward. She had done chimneying before, but always with a rope belay and a flashlight.

“How’re you doing, Nate?”

“Best time I’ve had in days.” He shifted up another few inches.

She smiled grimly. Probably true.

A few more precious feet, and then he slipped.

She caught his calf, forcing it against the wall. He pushed out and stopped his slide.

Her heart raced. She and Nate had almost fallen all the way back down to the cell. With any luck, they would have died on impact. If not, they’d have had the fun of being torn apart by the grimwolf.

But at least they would have died trying.

Dim gray light shone up the shaft.

Someone was coming.

4:05 P.M.

In a private room in the Apostolic Palace, Jordan gritted his teeth. Naked from the waist up, he was lying on his face on a thick wool rug covering a polished wood floor.

Nadia played nursemaid, swabbing the bite wounds on his arm and back—and none too gently.

“Strange tattoo,” she said, noting the Lichtenberg design from the lightning strike.

“I know,” he said, wincing. “You got to die to get one.”

Nadia had sneaked him and Rhun out of St. Peter’s Square through some secret doorway into the Apostolic Palace, where, apparently, the pope lived. She’d rushed them into this simple room with whitewashed walls. The room held an old-fashioned, long wooden table, six heavy chairs, and a macabre crucifix on the wall. After his meeting with Piers, he could hardly stand to look at crucifixes anymore.

Instead, he kept his eyes on the rug. It smelled like a wet sheep.

Nadia wrung out a brown washcloth into a copper basin, its water stained pale pink from Jordan’s blood.

“Where is Bernard?” Rhun paced the room, stopping only long enough to peer out the window into the courtyard below.

“I’ve sent word.” Nadia poked Jordan again.

Ouch. Now she was just being mean.

She drew a glass jar from her backpack. “This might sting.”