The Blood Gospel (64 page)

He ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed. He took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her down.

She tensed, knowing she could still stop him in his weakened state. Her body continued to scream for her to flee. Instead, she took a deep breath and gave in to her
faith
.

Rhun shifted, laying her down on the stone floor beside him while he raised up on one elbow, a question glowing in his dark eyes.

She trembled from her bones outward.

“Erin.” He lingered on the
n
at the end of her name. “No. Not even for this price.”

She pleaded, “I can’t catch Bathory and the grimwolf. Only you can save the Gospel.”

She read defeat in his eyes, knew he could not fault her logic.

“But—”

“I know the consequences,” she said, repeating the same words she’d spoken before climbing down into the fissure in Masada. These
were
the consequences. “You must do it.”

His lips slowly lowered toward her, his face softened by tenderness. She marveled at his expression.

Still, he stopped. “No … not you …”

“It serves your vows.” She clenched her hands into fists. She thought of all those lives that would be destroyed if either of them balked from this act of duty. “The book is more important than the rules.”

“I understand … were you someone else, perhaps. But.” He tightened his hand on her shoulder. “I can’t feed on
you
.”

She stared into his face, seeing what was hidden behind that collar, behind those hidden fangs—a
man
.

He stroked strands of hair off her face, his fingers cold but very gentle, his hand cupping her cheek.

She had no words to convince him to break his vows as a priest.

She had no actions that would stir his bloodlust as a Sanguinist.

She had only one recourse.

To treat him as a man.

And she a woman.

She lifted her head from the stone, her eyes fixed on Rhun’s dark ones. She read the sudden flash of fear in their depths. He was as frightened as she was, perhaps even more. She ran her fingers through his thick hair, drew his mouth to hers. Rhun closed his eyes, and she kissed him. His cold lips brought the taste of blood into her mouth.

As she drew him to her, she felt the last of his resistance give way—the hardness in his lips softening and letting her come closer. His mouth parted, as did hers, as natural as a flower opening at dawn.

He shifted farther over her, his weight settling on top of her.

He should have been cold, but the heat in her was enough to warm both of them.

Her tongue found his, encouraging him. He moaned between their lips—or maybe the sound came from her. She felt the slow push of sharpness within his mouth, like a gate closing against her, but she held fast. Her tongue reached, punctured so sweetly on a point as sharp as a thorn.

Her blood welled, filling both their mouths.

But rather than tasting iron and fear, her senses burst with the essence of her life, a sweetness and burning heat that swept aside all fear. She could almost taste her own divinity—and she wanted more.

She pulled him tighter.

He clung to her, with the promise of cold iron and ecstasy.

The intensity of the sensation stunned her. Her body could not hold it, arching under him, with the rapture of life coursing between them, quick and rhythmic as her heartbeat.

He lifted his lips from hers, exquisitely close but not touching. Even such a slight distance left her feeling an aching emptiness. He moaned as if he felt it, too. His breath whispered across her lips.

He stared down, his eyes larger and darker than she’d ever seen them, offering glimmers of what lay beyond the grave.

Rather than feeling fear, she glowed against that darkness with the blaze of her own light, with the heat of her body.

She arched her neck, offered him her throat, daring him to drink from that blazing font—desiring it with every fiber of her being.

He took it.

A prick of fangs, testing—then plunging deep.

Heat flowed out of her, warming those cold lips at her throat.

She writhed beneath him, opening herself to the pleasure. Darkness closed around the edges of her vision. With each pulse, he swallowed her into his body.

Ecstasy filled those empty spaces between her heartbeats. Shatteringly fast at first as her body gave itself over to pure sensation. Then time slowed, and the pleasure expanded and grew even more intense. She waited for her heart to stop so that she could dwell in that feeling forever. Nothing else mattered.

Only bliss.

Then slowly, a soft light surrounded her, enveloped her—along with a love unlike any she had ever known. Here was the love she had wanted from her mother, from her father, from a baby sister who never had a chance to grow.

Somewhere far back, Erin knew she was dying—and she was so grateful for it.

She breathed in that light, as if taking her first breath.

Then she saw them.

Her mother stood in the tunnel of light. A little girl stood next to her. Emma. She had her baby quilt slung over her arm, the missing corner facing Erin. Her father stood behind them wearing his old red flannel shirt and jeans, as if he had just come back from the stable. He raised his arm and beckoned to her to join them. For the first time in many years, she felt no anger when she saw him, only love.

She reached her arms toward them all. Her father smiled, and she smiled back. She forgave him—and herself.

He had been bound by his
faith
, she by her
logic
.

At this moment they were beyond both.

Then that innocent light fractured.

And cold darkness rushed in.

She opened her eyelids. Rhun had pulled away from her. He rolled off of her and leaned against the wall, shaking. With the back of his hand, he wiped his mouth. Wiping away blood.

Her blood.

Her eyelids drifted closed, feeling a sting of rejection.

“Erin?” His chill fingertips brushed her cheek.

She trembled from cold and loneliness, consumed by the ache of all that she had lost.

“Erin.” Rhun lifted her into his lap and rocked her, his hands stroking through her hair, running along her back.

She forced herself to open her eyes, to look into his, to say the impossible. “Go.”

He held her so tightly that it hurt.

“Go,” she insisted.

“Will you be all right?”

He heard her heartbeat. He knew that she wouldn’t be. “Don’t waste my blood, Rhun. Don’t let this be in vain.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t—”

“I forgive you,” she breathed out. “Now go.”

He tore off his pectoral cross and laid it upon her chest. She felt the weight of it over her heart. It felt warm.

“May God protect you,” he whispered. “As I could not.”

He lowered her onto the filthy stone floor, covered her with his cassock, and left her.

October 28, 5:44
P.M
., CET

Necropolis below St. Peter’s Basilica, Italy

On the hunt, Rhun ran.

Erin’s blood pulsed warm and strong through his veins. Her life sang within him. He had never felt such power surge through his limbs. He could run forever. He could defeat any foe.

His shoes skimmed the stone floor, not seeming to need even to touch it. Fast, and faster still. Air caressed his face, tendrils of wind stroked through his hair.

Even in his rapture, he grieved for Erin. She had given everything for the Gospel. And for him. Her learning, her compassion—they lay waning behind him. It should have been his darkness dying on the floor, not her light.

He would not waste her sacrifice.

Mourning would come later.

The musky odor of grimwolf painted the trail before him. In that scent, he read each heavy-pawed footfall, smelled each drop of blood, even as the creature healed and the drops grew smaller.

It could never escape him.

He would find them. He would retrieve the book. He would honor Erin’s sacrifice.

She would not be forgotten, not for one of all his endless days to come.

5:55
P.M
.

Jordan jogged along the tunnel, searching for Erin.

Leopold kept close behind.

The two had fought their way through the first wave of
strigoi
in order to open a path to this tunnel. Jordan hoped that Erin and Rhun had reached Bathory and retrieved the book.

After all of this bloodshed and horror, he just wanted to go home.

And when he pictured home—he pictured Erin’s face.

“There!” Leopold said, pointing ahead, spotting with his sharper eyes a body crumpled along the side of the tunnel.

Don’t let it be Erin. Don’t let it be Erin.

Jordan hurried forward, for once outpacing a Sanguinist. He led with his flashlight, sweeping his beam across the still figure.

Oh no …

With his heart thundering in his ears, he crashed next to her, reaching immediately for her throat to take her pulse. Her skin was cold, but a weak heartbeat throbbed in her neck.

“She’s alive,” he told Leopold.

“But barely.”

The young monk knelt and tore open Erin’s grimwolf jacket. Blood stained her white shirt, running down to her waist. Leopold drew a balm from his robes. As he opened the container, Jordan noticed that it stank like the ointment Nadia had used on his own bite wounds.

But would it be enough?

Leopold intoned a prayer in Latin as he spread it over Erin’s wound.

Jordan watched, holding his breath, shaking all over.

Within seconds, the bleeding slowed, then stopped.

Still, Erin lay unconscious on the ground, ghost white against the dark stone.

Leopold examined her arms and legs, probably looking for more bites. “Only her neck.”

Jordan shrugged off his coat and spread it over her body to warm her. He rubbed her cold hands. “Erin?”

Her eyelids fluttered as if she were dreaming—then slowly opened. “Jordan?”

“Right here.” He caressed her icy cheek. “You’re going to be fine.”

Her lips curved up ever so slightly. “Liar.”

“I never lie,” he said. “Eagle Scout, remember?”

But he did lie. She wasn’t going to be fine at all.

Leopold reached Jordan and touched a bite on his arm from which blood was oozing; the bite was from one of Rasputin’s minions and the wound had been torn open again during the struggle in the basilica. “Your blood type?”

“O negative. Universal donor.” Jordan’s heart leaped and he turned to the monk. “Can you do a direct transfusion from me to her?”

Leopold pulled his first-aid kit out of his pocket, muttering instructions. His hands moved with impossible swiftness, breaking apart a syringe, hooking it up to a tube, and placing a second tube on the other end.

As the young monk worked, Jordan stroked wisps of hair off Erin’s face. His hands lingered on her forehead, her cheeks. “Hang in there.”

He couldn’t tell if she heard him or not.
What
had attacked her? And where was Rhun? He looked up the tunnel, expecting to see the priest’s body. But the tunnel was empty. Had Rhun been taken?

Leopold ripped open an alcohol patch and swabbed Erin’s arm, then used another for Jordan’s.

“I must ask you to be silent, Jordan.” Leopold’s tone was no-nonsense. “I must hear both your heartbeats to see how much blood passes between you. I don’t want to kill you in this process.”

“Just save her.” Jordan leaned against the stone wall, watching Erin’s pale face.

Leopold stuck a needle in her arm, then Jordan’s. He barely felt it.

Time passed, interminable, in the dark.

To the side, Leopold attached a bandage to Erin’s neck. “We are fortunate. It’s a simple wound.
Strigoi
are not usually so careful when they feed.”

Jordan shivered at the thought of one of those monsters at Erin’s throat.

I should have been guarding her better.

After several minutes, Leopold pulled the needle from Jordan’s arm and taped a cotton ball over the hole. “That is all you can spare.”

“I can spare whatever she needs.” He pushed up straighter. “Do this right.”

Light glinted off Leopold’s round glasses as he shook his head. “You cannot bully me, Sergeant.”

Before Jordan could come up with a better argument, Erin opened her eyes; she looked bleary but still she seemed stronger than she’d been a few minutes ago. “Hey.”

Jordan slumped next to her against the wall and smiled. “Welcome back.”

“Her pulse is strong,” Leopold said. “With a little rest, she should be fine.”