The Blood Gospel

In the center of the room, he saw Erin crouching atop a stage behind a tall pedestal, her face upturned to the bats. Her guardian, Jordan, leaped atop the dais, ready to shelter her. A futile gesture. The soldier could not hope to defeat the number of icarops gathered here.

None of them could.

As if knowing this, the icarops horde crashed down upon the exposed pair.

“Arrêtez …!”

The single word of command shattered through the hissing screams of the bats and drove back their attack. The black horde shredded apart around Erin and Jordan and wheeled away, flapping to the streaked walls and the ceiling. There, sharp claws scrabbled for pitted roosts. Wings folded over fur, and the icarops hung from every surface. Oily red-black eyes stared down.

With his first indrawn breath, the stench hit Rhun. He drew breath again. Another smell lurked under the tainted blood of the icarops and the sharp smell of their waste.

A familiar one.

Across the chamber, Jordan scanned the room, his shoulders hunched against the fluttering mass above. “Who yelled?”

The answer came from Erin, who pointed toward the crucifix. “Look!”

There on the cross, the marble sculpture moved. A head lifted, revealing a ravaged face, skin shriveled tight around hard-edged bone. Erin’s hand rose to cover her throat, as if she knew what hung there.

Nadia stopped still next to Rhun, and Emmanuel staggered back a pace.

The Sanguinists knew, too.

As if obeying a silent command, Rhun rushed forward, flanked by Emmanuel and Nadia.

On the cross, eyelids opened, rough slits in that leathery visage. And from those cracks, a glimmer of life still shone—the little that remained. The glassy blue stare found Rhun and settled on him with a look of bottomless grief.

Those despairing eyes left no doubt about who it was that hung on that ghastly cross.

Rhun filled out the face, crowned it with silver hair, made the sunken lips smile with the knowledge of untold ages. In his mind, he heard that once-vigorous voice explaining the mysteries of history, the destiny of the Sanguinists. In its time, this body had housed a powerful priest.

Father Piers.

A friend for centuries.

The scholar had disappeared seventy years ago on an expedition to find the Blood Gospel. When he had not returned, the Church had declared him dead. Instead, it seemed that the Nazis had captured him, then abandoned him to suffer here for decades.

Emmanuel fell to his knees in supplication. “Father Piers … how can it be … ?”

The old priest’s head sagged again, as if he were unable to hold his heavy skull up any longer. Faded eyes found Emmanuel. “Mein Sohn?” he croaked, throat clearly unaccustomed to forming words.

My son.

Tears ran down Emmanuel’s face, reminding Rhun that Father Piers had found and recruited Emmanuel into the Sanguinist fold. He was as much Emmanuel’s father as his savior.

Emmanuel reached toward the blackened spike hammered through the priest’s bare feet. Another nail impaled each palm. Droplets of dark, dried blood caked around his wounds.

“Careful.” Nadia stood near them. “He’s been secured with silver.”

Emmanuel pulled on the thick spike that bound the priest’s feet, burning his own fingers.

Nadia yanked him back. “Not yet.”

He hissed at her, showing fangs. “Look at him. Has he not suffered enough?”

“The question,” Nadia said evenly, “is why has he suffered? Who nailed him here and why?”

“Libri … verlassen …” It seemed that Piers struggled as much with his tongue as with his mind, tripping through various languages as madness danced behind the glaze of his eyes.

Rhun stared up at the ruins of the Sanguinist scholar. “Take him down.”

Nadia looked ready to object, but Rhun knelt and gently supported the old priest’s feet. Emmanuel pulled the spike from the priest’s feet and tossed it aside, then stood, reaching for the hands.

Piers remained oblivious. His eyes rolled toward the arched roof and its black decorations. “Meine Kinder … they have brought you.” An exultant tone threaded through his feeble words. “To save me …”

Nadia’s face hardened. She looked in the direction of the battered priest’s gaze—to the horde of the icarops. “It was Father Piers who created these unholy creatures.”

“Blasphemare?” Emmanuel’s fingers hesitated over the nail that lanced Piers’s left palm. “But that is forbidden.”

Rhun was less interested in blasphemy than he was in answers. “He had no choice. He must have had to feed to survive all those decades alone on the cross. What else would he have here to feed upon but the bats.”

He pictured the priest drawing what little sustenance he could from the dark denizens of this tomb, eventually bending them to his will as the decades passed, twisting them to serve him, using their companionship to anchor what little sanity he could retain in this dark isolation.