The Blood Gospel

The monk shoved aside a stack of Nazi-era documents to reveal a modern keyboard. He began typing, and the wall of glass beside his desk bloomed to light, revealing it to be a giant computer monitor. Across the large screen, data scrolled at startling speeds. It appeared the Sanguinists had their share of both ancient and modern toys.

“If you’re looking for a lost Ahnenerbe artifact,” Leopold said as his fingers flew over the keyboard, “this is a map of Germany. I’ve been working on it for the better part of sixty years. The red arrows you see represent suspected Nazi bunkers and repositories. Green ones have been cleared.” He sighed. “Sadly there are more red arrows than green.”

Erin felt a sinking in her gut. Barely an inch of the map didn’t contain an arrow.

And yes, most were depressingly red.

“If all these are not cleared,” Erin said, “how come you know they’re even there? What do you mean by suspected Nazi bunkers?”

“We hear stories of them. Local folklore. Sometimes we can guess from half-destroyed Nazi documents.”

Jordan squinted at the screen. “But that’s not the only way you’re pinpointing these places, is it?” He nodded to the crowded screen. “From the sophistication of this survey, I’m guessing you must be using satellite telemetry and ground-penetrating radar to identify hidden, underground structures.”

Brother Leopold smiled. “It almost feels like cheating. But in the end, all that wonderful technology has only succeeded in adding more red arrows to the screen. The only way to know if there’s anything really there—or if those hidden structures contain anything significant—is to search them in person, one by one.”

Rhun’s eyes flicked from side to side as he scanned the map from top to bottom. “What we seek could be in any of those hundreds of locations.”

Brother Leopold pushed back his chair and crossed his legs. “I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.”

Rhun twitched. Erin sensed his impatience. The Belial were on the trail of the book as avidly as she and Jordan and Rhun were. Every minute mattered.

Jordan tapped one of the red arrows. “Then it’s grunt work from here, guys. We go through the sites and assign them high and low probabilities and work through them. Use a grid pattern. It won’t be quick, but it’ll be thorough.”

His idea sounded logical—but it felt wrong.

3:42 A.M.

Jordan watched Erin step to the desk and remove the medallion from under the magnifying lens. He could tell she was frustrated from the pinch of her brows and the stiffness of her back. He didn’t like the idea of searching hundreds of sites either, but what other choice did they have?

As Erin turned in his direction, a light flickered deep in her eyes. That usually meant things were about to change, not always for the better.

He touched her shoulder. “Erin, you got something?”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed the rune on the back of the medal with her thumbs.

Rhun cocked his head, his eyes fixed on Erin with an intensity that somehow rankled Jordan; as if that gaze would consume her.

Jordan shifted to stand between them. “Talk it out,” he said. “Maybe we can help.”

Erin’s brown eyes remained far away. “Symbols were crucial to the Ahnenerbe. Why that symbol on the stolen badge?”

Leopold’s chair creaked. “The Odal rune indicates inheritance. If the Odal rune was written next to a person’s name or an object, it meant ownership.”

“Like writing your name on your sneakers,” Jordan said. He looked over at the badge with the swastika in the center of the rune. “So does that emblem mean the Ahnenerbe owned the Nazis?”

He knew he probably sounded like an idiot to the scholars, but sometimes an idiot’s perspective ended up getting more things done.

“I think it’s more like the Ahnenerbe thought they owned the Third Reich,” Erin clarified. “They believed they were the true protectors of Aryan heritage.”

“But what does that signify?” Rhun pressed her, leaning toward her as if trying to draw the answer from her physically.

Erin leaned back. “I’m not sure, but at the end of the war, Berlin was being bombed. The Third Reich was on the run.” Her words came out slowly, as if she searched for words to a once-familiar story. “And the Ahnenerbe scientists would have known that the war was over long before the formal surrender.”

Leopold nodded. “They would have. But they thought in terms of centuries. To them, the present was a pale thing of little importance. They were interested in the history of the Aryan race going back ten thousand years—and forward the same number of millennia.”

“To the Fourth Reich!” Erin said, her eyes lighting up. “That group would have been planning for the long term. They would have wanted to keep their most important objects hidden until the coming of the Fourth Reich.”