The Blood Gospel

The cross and column rested upon a dais, a square marble base six feet across. That both objects should have been placed on a stage demonstrated their importance. But why would the Nazis erect a life-size crucifix? Were they guarding something they considered sacred and holy?

Erin had to find out.

She jumped up onto the stage, wincing when her feet ground into pieces of broken rock. Careful not to step on anything else, she circled the pedestal.

As she came around, holding her breath, her light glowed across the upper surface of the marble lectern.

Then her heart sank.

It was empty.

“What did you find?” Jordan called to her from the base of the dais, but his face remained turned toward the vestibule, where the Sanguinists fought to keep the bats at bay.

Erin stepped forward and ran her fingertips across the empty surface of the lectern. She felt the indentation along the top, as if something was meant to rest there, an object roughly of the dimensions described by Rhun.

“The book was here,” she mumbled.

“What?” Jordan asked.

Defeated, she stepped back, her heel crushing another chunk of debris underfoot. She glanced down, shining her light. Fragments of gray rock lay scattered around the pedestal. Focused now, she saw that they were not natural stone, but something man-made. She knelt and carefully picked up one shard.

Most of the others strewn on the floor were less than an inch thick and ashy in hue. She retrieved a larger piece and rolled it around in her palm, judging the material.

Gray. Concrete. If ancient, probably lime and ash.

Could these pieces date to the time of the Blood Gospel? To know for sure, she would have to do a proper analysis somewhere else, but for now she improvised.

She scratched a thumbnail over one corner and sniffed at the abraded edge.

A familiar spicy scent struck her deeply, almost causing her eyes to tear.

Frankincense.

Her heartbeat sped up. There had been traces of frankincense in the tomb in Masada, common enough in ancient burials.

But not in Nazi bunkers.

She fought to keep her composure, kicking herself mentally for jumping on the dais like a lumbering ox, especially after years of scolding her students for the most minor violations of the integrity of a site.

She turned the shard over. The piece was roughly triangular, like the corner of a box. Frozen in place, as if she were crouching in the middle of a minefield, she studied the other pieces on the floor. Three other triangles rested nearby, along with other pieces.

What if the triangles were corners?

If so, maybe they had been part of a box.

A box that might have held a book.

She stared up at the empty lectern. Had the marauding Russians come upon what was hidden here? Smashed open what they found and stole what was inside?

Despairing, she looked to the crucifix for answers. The figure on the cross was as skeletal as a concentration-camp victim, thinner than any representation of Christ she had ever seen. Black nails pinned each bony hand to the cross, and a larger spike had been driven deep through the figure’s overlapping feet. Burgundy paint glistened around his wounds. She moved the light up, drawn to the nearly featureless face, eyes and mouth barely demarcated by slits, the nostrils even thinner—depicted here was a perfect rendition of endless suffering.

She had an irrational urge to cut the statue down, to comfort that figure.

Then a sharp pain burst in her hand. She raised it to the light, realizing she had sliced her thumb on the shard from clenching her fist too hard.

Reminded of her duty, she turned her back on the cross and began gathering the broken pieces from the dais, scooping them up and stuffing them in her pockets. She noted that some had writing on one side, but she would have to decipher them later.

Jordan noted her work and began to climb onto the stage with her.

“Don’t!” she warned, fearful of any further destruction to the clues left here by the Russians.

With enough time, she might—

Rhun’s shout reached them, full of hopelessness. “The bats are through the door.”

36

October 27, 6:04 A.M., CET

Beneath Harmsfeld Lake, Germany

Rhun fled from the front edge of a furious storm behind him.

Wings battered his body; claws and teeth tore at flesh and clothes.

He burst through the arched doorway, shadowed by Nadia and Emmanuel. The horde of icarops thundered past him, beating by with muscular wings. The mass fled upward and filled the arched dome of the room with fluttering shadows.

Rhun’s sharp eyes took in the chamber with a glance, recognizing a dark mirror of the Masada tomb, a despoiled ruin of that sacred space. Fury stoked inside him, but fear extinguished it.