Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series (36 page)

But how could she vanquish it?

Sunlight clearly had no effect.

And why should it?

Millennia ago, these drops of Lucifer’s blood had fused with the Egyptian sand, creating a black glass that sealed in their malevolence, protected the darkness within from the light of the sun. If two thousand years of desert heat hadn’t harmed them, then simple Italian sunlight wouldn’t have any effect.

But what if—

Her eyes fell on a toppled stone paperweight on the corner of Bernard’s desk. It was in the shape of an angel—but more important, it was
heavy
.

She grabbed it, lifted it high, and smashed it down on a dull black drop, shattering it to dust.

Across the room, Bernard howled and hissed.

So you feel that, do you?

She lifted the paperweight again and again, crushing drop after drop. With each strike, a tendril of black smoke rose up from the crystalline powder. It swirled in a circle, snaking away from the exposure of the sun, then over the edge of the desk, where it plunged through the floor.

She remembered Elizabeth’s recounting how the essence of a
strigoi
would do the same upon the beast’s death, returning to its source.

Lucifer
.

As she shattered the last obsidian piece, Cardinal Bernard gave out a final gasp, toppling over, his body thudding to the floor.

8:12
A
.
M
.

Rhun knelt over Bernard’s body, his knife at the cardinal’s throat, ready to kill his old friend. Jordan had collected the abandoned sword and stood guard by his shoulder. By now, the two cloaked guards had rushed into the room, sweeping in with weapons bared, drawn by the clatter of the brief fight.

Fearing what other evil might be about, Rhun shouted. “Guard the doors! Let no one in without my word!”

They gave him curt nods and returned to their posts.

As Rhun watched, madness faded from the cardinal’s eyes. It was replaced with something that Rhun had never seen there before.

Doubt
.

Rhun leaned back, lifting his blade away, but keeping it ready.

Bernard sat up, gathering the shreds of his robes around himself, as if trying to do the same with his dignity. He ended with his hands trembling in his lap.

Erin came over, still holding a small angelic sculpture. The bottom was cracked, coated with black dust. “It was those drops of Lucifer’s blood.”

Rhun nodded, understanding. “I left them after I returned from Egypt. Locked up in the cardinal’s safe. It’s my fault.”

“No . . .” Bernard shook his head. “It was my hubris, believing I could dabble with such darkness and remain untouched.”

“But why mess with them in the first place?” Jordan asked.

“I hoped to learn something from them, something about Lucifer.” Bernard stared at Rhun. “Last night, when Father Gregory brought word that you were headed back from Prague, that you were coming with questions about stones associated with Lucifer, I remembered what you had brought back from Egypt.”

“The glass stones,” Rhun said.

“I was going to wait until you were all here before examining them, but after Father Gregory fetched them for me from my safe in my old offices, they called to me. I could not resist.”

Rhun nodded, turning to the others. “I saw the same affliction strike members of the team who had traveled with me to Egypt.”

Bernard stared around, a hand rising to touch his forehead in confusion. “I don’t know how long I was under its power. It took me, but it gave nothing in return.”

“But you’re free now,” Erin said. “And we have questions.”

“About Hugh de Payens,” Bernard said with a sad nod. “Father Gregory informed me of this, too. You want the truth about my friend.”

Erin brought a gentler tone to her voice, possibly responding to the pain and sorrow in the cardinal’s voice when he mentioned this figure from his past. “So Hugh didn’t die, as you claimed, during the Second Crusades?”

Bernard’s voice was barely above a whisper. “He did not.”

Erin held an arm toward the cardinal, helping him up. “Jordan, fetch him a blanket.”

Rhun guided Bernard to a set of chairs by the fireplace, careful of the broken pieces of vase on the floor. Jordan returned from a neighboring bedroom with a woolen throw and handed it to Bernard, who wrapped his nakedness, sighing his gratitude, slowly regaining some of his dignity. He looked, again, like the man Rhun had known so long.

Erin sat in a chair across from Bernard, leaning forward. “Tell us what really happened.”

Bernard looked at the cold fireplace, his gaze still lost, slipping into the past. “Hugh took me in when I was a savage beast. He prayed for me when I was lost.”

Rhun had not heard this story. “Are you saying he was the one who converted you, brought you into the Sanguinist fold?”

A small nod confirmed this.

Rhun knew such a monumental act’s significance, how it could deeply bond a pair. It was, in fact, Bernard who had brought Rhun to this holy path, becoming his mentor and friend, and despite the cardinal’s recent actions, he would always owe Bernard a debt of gratitude. The bonds between Bernard and Hugh de Payens must have been equally strong.

“I was a lost savage until he saved me,” Bernard continued. “Together we brought many into the order. Many. We founded the Knights Templar. We did much good.”

“Nine men, bound by blood,” Erin said quietly. “A Sanguinist order of warrior monks.”

“What were these Sanguinist Templars exactly?” Jordan asked.

Bernard glanced to the big man, a touch of pride stiffening his bowed back. “We were a knighthood within a knighthood, capable of fighting a double battle against both the adversaries born of flesh and those spirits risen out of evil. Our armor was our faith, as much as it was our chain mail. We feared neither men nor demons.”

“So you truly are Bernard of Clairvaux?” Erin asked.

“I am. And together, Hugh and I performed great acts, uniting the scattered Templars under a single banner, giving them unity and strength of purpose.” Bernard stared around at them. “You must understand, Hugh was a great leader. Charismatic, sympathetic, empathetic. Men and Sanguinist fell in line behind him, willing to give their lives upon his word. But over time, it became too much.”

“I knew men like that,” Jordan said. “The characteristics that make a man a good leader—like empathy—sometimes make them more susceptible to battle fatigue, to PTSD.”

“What happened to Hugh?” Erin asked.

Bernard sighed heavily. “He abandoned the Templars. After the Second Crusades.” He stared at Rhun. “In truth, he left our order entirely.”

“He left the Sanguinists?” Rhun could not hide his shock.

Sanguinists didn’t
leave
. They were either killed in service to the Church, or they forsook from their vows, returning to their unholy natures so that they had to be hunted down and slain. The only Sanguinist who had escaped such a fate was Rasputin, who had built his own twisted version of the order within the Russian Orthodox Church, safely entrenched in the city of St. Petersburg, beyond the reach of the Sanguinists.

But apparently there had been one other.

“Where did he go?” Rhun asked.

Bernard looked to his hands. “He sojourned far and wide at first, alone, both hermit and nomad. Eventually he settled in the remote mountains of France, to a hermitage of his own making. There, he found some measure of peace, discovering grace in the wild places of the world.”

“So what are you saying?” Rhun asked. “That he reverted to a
strigoi
?”

Bernard shook his head.

Rhun struggled to understand. “Then how did he come to live beyond the protection of the Church?”

“He simply did,” Bernard answered evasively, not meeting Rhun’s eye.

It was Erin who clarified some of this story. “That’s why you spread the lie of his death, wasn’t it? Hugh de Payens abandoned the order, but he didn’t return to his savage ways. He found his own path to grace, independent of the Church.”

Rhun stared at her, unable to accept her words. There could be no other path to grace than humble service to the Church. He and all the Sanguinists had been taught this simple truth since the days of Lazarus.

“I could let no one know,” Bernard explained. “What if more Sanguinists were to leave the order? So I made up a story of a noble death, of a life given in service to the Church. But that was only half the reason for the lie”

“What’s the other half?” Erin asked.

“When Hugh spoke of leaving the order, I knew that they would kill him for it. To save him, I made up that story.” Bernard looked to Rhun, as if searching for absolution. “I lied to the order. I lied to the Church. But they would have hunted him down like an animal, and he was no animal. He was my friend.”

Rhun settled heavily to another chair, weakened both by his injuries and by the revelations.

This Sanguinist had found grace outside the Church
.

Rhun’s mind whirled. He had joined the Sanguinists because he had thought that it was the only way to live with his curse. The choice offered to him had been a simple one: die as a
strigoi
or live as a man of the cloth, helping to protect others. At the time, centuries ago, Rhun had already been on the road to the priesthood, studying in a seminary, so his decision had been an easy one: he would serve. He had thought it the only way.

When Rasputin had left the Church nearly a century ago and built up an army of followers strong enough to protect him from the Church’s justice, Rhun’s faith had not faltered. Rasputin’s life was one of wickedness and deceit, and Rhun would not follow his example. But to hear that there might be another path frightened him and made him angry.

He stared toward the sunlight flowing through the windows.

Has my entire existence been a lie?

8:25
A
.
M
.

Erin noted how Rhun sagged in his chair, reading the forlorn look etched on his face. She knew he had been through too much. He had nearly died and lost his arm, but she suspected this news was a deeper wound, one that would take some time to heal, if it ever did. She could almost see Rhun’s foundation and faith in the Church crumbling beneath him.

But for now, they had more pressing matters to discuss.

She confronted Bernard. “Does Hugh still live?”

“He does.”

Rhun looked sharply at Bernard, but the cardinal would not meet his eye.

“He still maintains his remote hermitage in those mountains,” Bernard admitted.

“Do you know anything about the stones?” Erin nodded to Jordan, who pulled out the pieces of green diamond. “Hugh gave this one to John Dee, and maybe two more like it.”

“I know nothing. It was why I thought to dabble with those cursed drops.”

Jordan pocketed the diamond. “So it sounds like we’re going to have to go to the horse’s mouth. Pay this old guy a visit, if we want any answers.”

Exactly
.

“Tell us how we can find him,” Erin urged.

Bernard lifted a hand, but he let it drop to his knee in a gesture of defeat. “One does not simply
request
an audience with Hugh de Payens. He has no interest in worldly concerns, and his hermitage is well guarded.”

“Guarded?” Jordan frowned. “How?”

“What you must understand, what made Payens such a great leader, was his ability to read another’s heart, to know them often better than they know themselves. And it wasn’t just the hearts of men. He had a keen affinity for all God’s creatures and became a great admirer of St. Francis of Assisi.”

“The patron saint of nature and animals,” Erin said.

She knew of the legends associated with the Italian saint, how even the birds would flock to listen to his preaching, landing on his shoulders. It was said Francis even tamed a wild wolf that was terrorizing a village. It made sense that Hugh would admire such a figure.

Bernard looked down, a wistful smile on his face, revealing how much he truly loved this man. “It was said in jest that Hugh could talk to animals. During the Crusades, the warhorses would follow him around like dogs. They would do anything for Hugh—charge into the thickest fighting or even into fire if he commanded it. I think . . . I think their blood stained his hands more heavily than the blood of the men who died alongside him. To Hugh’s mind, they were innocents, slaughtered for their loyalty to him. Eventually, it became too much.”

Erin could understand that all too well, flashing back to the deaths of her former students in Egypt.

“Eventually Hugh could not bring himself to kill even the
blasphemare
.”

“I thought you had to kill all cursed creatures,” Jordan said. “That you had shoot-on-sight orders.”

“We do,” Rhun said. “They are beasts corrupted by evil. And, unlike
strigoi
, they cannot be turned to good. To end their suffering, they must be destroyed.”

“But do you know that for sure?” Erin asked, recognizing now more than ever how many of these set-in-stone edicts were wrong. “Why can’t there be different paths to salvation for those poor animals? Maybe even for the
strigoi
themselves?”

“Hugh would have agreed with you,” Bernard said. “I suspect it is that sentiment that perhaps explains why
blasphemare
are drawn to his hermitage. They come from far and wide, lone creatures severed from their blood-bonded creators, who seek the comfort and protection he offers.”

“What?” Rhun sat straighter, looking horrified.

“And not just such tainted creatures,” Bernard said, “but
strigoi
, too.”

Rhun stood up. “And you kept this secret from us all?”

“Let me guess,” Jordan exclaimed, “when you said his place was
guarded
, that’s what you meant. He has an army of
strigoi
and
blasphemare
loyal to him, guarding him.”