The Blood Gospel

The Cardinal walked Erin and Nate through the events again, matching details. It took him a long time, but eventually he looked like he believed they were telling the truth.

“Describe the book to me again.” The Cardinal closed his eyes and steepled his fingers.

“It’s better if I draw you a sketch,” Erin said, and waved for paper and pen.

Nodding, the Cardinal passed her some papal stationery and a pen. Working quickly, she began drawing a crude representation of the images atop the book.

“It’s a block of lead about the size of a Gutenberg Bible,” Erin said, and quickly described the strange imagery that was etched into it: the skeleton and the man, embracing each other and bound by a braided rope, along with the inkwell-like indentations and the Greek symbols.

“Alpha and Omega,” the Cardinal muttered as she finished. “That stands for Jesus, of course.”

“I’m not so sure.” Erin hated to pick a fight, but something told her that the Cardinal was wrong.

“Of course it does! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. From the Book of Revelation.” His brown eyes looked angry.

“But Alpha and Omega are also the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet.” Something moved around in the shadows of her mind. “The first and the last.”

As she finished her sketch, something nagged at her about the drawing—then she suddenly knew the answer. A cold certainty spread through her. She had seen a similar image as the one depicted on the book throughout the Apostolic Palace. That iconic symbol was found everywhere—even at the top of the piece of stationery in her hand.

She stared at the others, her eyes widening. “I think—”

Just then, a Swiss Guardsman slammed open the door behind her, making her flinch. He came running inside, his cheeks bright with panic. “Your Eminence, someone has broken into the papal tomb in the necropolis!”

Erin twisted around, meeting the guard’s eyes. “And they did something with the bones of Saint Peter, didn’t they?”

He took a full step back in surprise. “S-someone stole them.”

The Cardinal gasped, while Rhun and Nadia leaped to their feet.

“Of course they did!” Erin practically shouted, her heart racing. “Of course!”

All eyes turned to her.

“I know how to open the book!” she exclaimed.

She remembered the look on Bathory’s face when they had been talking about the transformation of the book, and about how alchemical ingredients were needed in order to catalyze the transformation of ordinary lead into the golden word of Christ.

Bathory had already figured out the Alpha and Omega.

All heads turned to Erin.

“Go ahead,” Jordan said.

“The book has the clues to open it on the cover.” Her voice trembled. “And Bathory figured it out.”

“You’d better explain quickly,” Jordan said.

Erin bent to the stationery and circled the papal seal at the top.

It depicted two keys—the gold and silver keys of Saint Peter—crossed at the middle and bound by loops of crimson rope. The papal seal and the image on the book bore an uncanny resemblance to each other—but instead of keys representing the popes, the book had two figures crossed in a similar fashion.

Erin explained: “Saint Peter hid the book two millennia ago. He must have seen the design on the Gospel, a design that was to become better and better known as the centuries passed—moving out of secrecy into the open sometime during the twelfth century when the crossed keys began to appear as heraldic symbols of the popes. But the source for that design must have come from the images inscribed on the Blood Gospel and borne by Saint Peter.”

She tapped the papal seal. “The keys represent the papacy. So do the figures. The skeleton and the man.” She pushed hair back off her face. “Alpha stands for first. Under that is the drawing of a skeleton.”

“Yes?” Rhun leaned in close, dark eyes staring at her as if he could read the answer in her face.

“That symbol represents the bones of the first pope.”

“Saint Peter!” the Cardinal said. “That’s why they stole his bones.”

“To be used as the first ingredient in opening the book. I believe some of Saint Peter’s ground-up bone is meant to fill that first inkwell-like hole on the cover.”

Jordan stirred. “Piers might have been trying to tell us that in Germany. He kept saying ‘book’—and ‘bones.’ ”

“Exactly.” She tapped the other half of the picture. “This depiction of a living man represents the current pope. The Omega pope. The last pope.”

“So they need the current pope’s bones, too?” Jordan asked, looking squeamish.

She shook her head.

“Then what do they need?” Rhun asked.

“What does a man have that a skeleton doesn’t?” She started listing. “Life. Flesh. Blood.”

“Blood?” Jordan interrupted. “Piers mentioned that, too, but in German. Blut.”

“The second ingredient …” Erin’s hands turned to ice as the full realization dawned on her. She looked at the others. “They need the blood of the current pope.”

4:48 P.M.