The Blood Gospel (67 page)

The door opened. Alyosha stood there, holding a snow-white fur coat. The strange kid wore only pants and a light shirt, not bothering even with a jacket. Probably why he was always so cold.

Tommy shrugged into the unusual coat. “What’s it made of?”

“Ermine. Very warm.”

Tommy stroked his hand along the front. It was the softest thing he’d ever felt. How many little creatures had been killed and skinned to make it?

Alyosha led the way down a long hall, up a flight of stairs, and through a thick steel door painted black. Paint flaked off into the snow when Alyosha slammed it behind him.

Tommy spun in a slow circle. They were in a city, in a deserted parking lot. Dirty snow had been crossed by many feet. The sky was overcast and dark gray, as if a storm or night threatened.

Seeing his chance to escape, Tommy made a break for it, but Alyosha was suddenly in front of him. Tommy cut to the right, hoping to get around him and run along the side of the building. Alyosha jumped in front of him again. Tommy dodged left.

But Alyosha stopped him yet again.

Tommy pulled out the knife. “Out of my way!”

Alyosha threw back his head and laughed to the uncaring gray clouds.

Tommy tried to turn, to flee, but he slipped on the ice and caught himself before he fell into the dirty snow. Alyosha had just been playing with him. He would never be able to escape. He’d be stuck here forever, eternally bound to this cruel kid.

Alyosha’s gray eyes glittered with malice. He reminded Tommy of a shrike. Shrikes were cute little birds, but they survived by impaling their prey on thorns and waiting for them to bleed to death. Skeletons of smaller birds and mice littered the ground around their nests.

“You won’t let me go, will you?” Tommy asked.

“He cannot let you go,” boomed a voice from behind them.

Tommy spun around so fast he fell. Gray slush stained his coat. Alyosha dragged him up painfully by one arm.

A priest in a black robe crunched across the snow toward them. At first, Tommy thought it was the priest from Masada because he wore the same kind of uniform, but this one was taller and broader, and his eyes were blue instead of brown.

“I have been waiting a very long time for you, Tommy,” the priest said.

“Are you the one who Alyosha says is like me?”

“Alyosha?” The man frowned, then smiled as if at a private joke. “Ah, that is a—how do you Americans call it?—a
slang
name. His full title is Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, prince of Russia, heir to the true throne of the Russian Empire.”

Tommy frowned, believing the man was joking. “You didn’t answer my question.”

The priest smiled. A cold chill ran down Tommy’s back. “How rude of me. No, I am not like
you
. I am like
Alyosha
.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. And we are going to be great friends.”

Above the man’s head, a flock of gray pigeons wheeled—and in their midst, a snow-white bird danced high, finding a beam of light in this gray day. Tommy’s gaze caught upon it, while he remembered the wounded bird back in Masada, the dove with the broken wing. He remembered picking up that injured bird—just before his life fell apart.

Had that act of kindness and mercy doomed him?

He squinted up as the white bird swooped low, passing over the scene. It stared down at Tommy—first with one eye, then the other.

Tommy shuddered and tore his gaze away from the skies.

The bird’s eyes had shone green, like slivers of jeweled malachite.

Same as the dove in Masada.

How could that be? How could
any
of this be?

Any moment now, I’ll wake in a hospital room with tubes and drugs running into me.

“I want to go back to my old friends,” he said, not caring if he sounded like a petulant child.

“You shall make a great many
new
friends over the course of your long, long life,” Mr. Rasputin said. “That is your destiny.”

Tommy looked back at the birds. He longed to be up there, flying free with them. Why couldn’t that be his destiny?

To have wings.

October 29, 5:54
A.M
., CET

The sanctuary below St. Peter’s Basilica, Italy

Rhun touched his cross. They had won the battle. He shuddered to think how close they had come to losing it all. But they had triumphed.

Eleazar paused. He turned the book back to face him and ran his finger under the lines, reading it again, as if he had gotten it wrong the first time. But the words were the same.

“So we won the first battle,” Jordan said.

“But what about this ‘War of the Heavens’ … and the ‘First Angel’?” Erin asked.

“We found the book,” Jordan said with firm conviction. “We can find an angel. I bet the angel is bigger than the book was. How hard can it be, right?”

Erin laughed and leaned against him. “Right.”

The soldier was correct. They had accomplished the impossible once already. Rhun looked to Eleazar. “Where shall we begin?”

Eleazar furrowed his brow. “The prophecy. Return to the prophecy.”

Rhun waited.

Eleazar recited it. “
The day shall come when the Alpha and the Omega shall pour his wisdom into a Gospel of Precious Blood that the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve may use it on the day of their need.

“Until such day, this blessed book shall be hidden in a well of deepest darkness by a Girl of Corrupted Innocence, a Knight of Christ, and a Warrior of Man
.

“Likewise shall another trio return the book to the light. Only a Woman of Learning, a Knight of Christ, and a Warrior of Man may open Christ’s
G
ospel and reveal His glory to the world.”

“We did that,” Jordan said. “What do we need to do
next
to find the angel?”

Eleazar closed the book. “That may never come to pass.”

“Why not?” Jordan said with a frown. “We found the book, didn’t we?”

Eleazar sighed and hope drained from Rhun with that exhaled breath. “There is a chance that the trio has already been sundered,” Eleazar warned.

What was the Risen One saying?
Rhun asked himself.
How could the trio have been sundered? They were all here.
He put one hand on Jordan’s sleeve, the other on Erin’s.

Then Erin closed her eyes. She grew pale.

“What is it, Erin?” Jordan asked.

She cleared her throat. “What if
I
am not part of the trio? What if
I
am not the Woman of Learning?”

“What are you talking about? Of course you are. You solved the mystery of the Gospel. Without you, we never would have found it. You were there when we turned it into a book.” The soldier spoke patiently, no worry in his voice.

But fear crept up Rhun’s spine.

“Remember the wording of the prophecy,” she said. “It says the trio
opens
Christ’s Gospel and reveals His glory to the world.”

“And?” Jordan asked.

Erin shook her head miserable. “I wasn’t there when the book
opened
. I didn’t cross the threshold of the basilica before the golden light burst from the book. You did. Rhun did. But I didn’t. I was still outside with the guard.”

“And you think that’s relevant?” Jordan protested. “Like one step across the threshold matters?”

“If I am not the Woman of Learning,
Bathory
was.” Erin took another deep breath. “And I killed her.”

Rhun strove to find a flaw in her logic, but, as usual, found none. Everyone had assumed that Erin was the Woman of Learning: she had been in Masada, in Germany, in Russia, and in Rome. But Bathory, too, had been in those places. She had been one step ahead of them. She had followed the clues that led to the book, and she had determined how and where it was to be opened. And she had been the one
holding
the book when it transformed.

Rhun closed his eyes, sensing the truth.

Could Cardinal Bernard have been correct all along about Elizabeth Bathory? Is that why the Belial had started collecting a Bathory of each generation and bonding her to their foul purpose, to preserve the Woman of Learning among their own fold?

If this were true, how could they ever hope to find the First Angel?

According to Cardinal Bernard, the woman killed in the necropolis was the last of the Bathory line.

But Rhun knew that wasn’t entirely true.

“You guys are nuts,” Jordan said, interrupting his thoughts. “Erin did all the heavy lifting on this. And Bathory is dead. If the book is so smart, why would it set an impossible task?”

“The Warrior has wisdom,” Eleazar said. “Perhaps he speaks truth. Prophecy is often a two-edged sword that cuts down all who attempt to interpret it.”

Erin looked unconvinced.

Eleazar bowed his head, his gaze fixing on Rhun.

Rhun knew that all was not lost.

“I have another matter to discuss with Father Korza,” Eleazar said to the others. “If we might have a moment alone.”

“Of course,” Erin said, and moved off with Jordan.

When the two were no longer in sight, Eleazar spoke again, in a whisper. “Thou must forsake this woman, Rhun. I have seen thy heart, but it cannot be.”

Rhun heard truth in those words; it settled in his bones. “I shall.”

Eleazar stared long and hard at Rhun, as if peeling away his flesh and baring his bones. The feeling was not entirely fanciful, as Eleazar’s next words proved. “Is there
another
of the line of the Woman of Learning?”

Rhun bowed from those penetrating eyes. He knew what was asked. He must own all his sins, unearth all his secrets, or all the world might be lost.

He faced Eleazar with tears in his eyes. “You ask too much.”

“It must be done, my son.” Eleazar’s voice held pity. “We cannot hide from our past forever.”

Rhun knew how much Eleazar had also given up for the world—and knew it was time for Eleazar to face that past, too.

Rhun reached into the deep pocket inside his cassock and drew out the doll he had retrieved from the dusty tomb in Masada. It was a tattered thing, sewn from leather, long gone hard, with one eye missing. He placed the bit of the painful past into Eleazar’s open palm.

Eleazar had lived for so long that he was more like a statue than any of the Cloistered Ones, resolute, unmoving, more like marble than flesh.

But now those stone fingers shook, barely able to hold aloft the tiny, frail toy. Instead, Eleazar brought it to his chest and cradled it close, as if it were a living child, one he mourned deeply.

“Did she suffer?” he asked.

Rhun thought about the small body hanging on the wall in Masada, pinned by silver bolts that would have burned inside her until she expired.

“She died serving Christ. Her soul is at peace.”

Rhun stood and left the Risen One to his grief.

As Rhun turned away, he caught a glimpse of marble breaking.

Eleazar bowed his head.

A tear fell and spattered mournfully upon the doll’s stained face.

October 29, 6:15
A.M
., CET

The sanctuary below St. Peter’s Basilica, Italy

Rhun ran through the darkness with unearthly speed, a hammer clenched in his hand. It had been many centuries since his feet had walked these pitch-dark tunnels, but the way opened before him as if his body had always known that it would return here.

He descended deeper than the temple of the Cloistered Ones, deeper than most dared venture. Here he had hidden his greatest secret. He had lied to Bernard; he had broken his vows; he had done penance for it, but never enough.

And now his sin was the only thing that might save them.

He stopped before a featureless wall, ran one hand across it, felt no seam. He had covered it well, four hundred years before.

Rhun raised the hammer above his head and struck the wall. Stone shuddered under the blow. It gave. A mere hairsbreadth, but it gave.

He struck again and again. Bricks crumbled until a small opening appeared. Barely large enough to admit him. That was all he needed.

He climbed through the rough stone, not caring how it scratched his skin. He had to reach the dark room beyond.

Once there, he lit a candle he had brought along with him. The scent of honey and beeswax unfolded in the chamber, driving back the odors of stone, decay, and staleness.

The pale yellow flame reflected off the polished surface of a black marble coffin.

He worked the lid off and lowered it to the rough stone floor of the cell.

The smell of sacramental wine bloomed free. The wet black surface drank the light.

Before he drew out the contents, Rhun cupped his hand and drank of the wine. He would need every ounce of holy fortification for the task ahead. But before the strength, as always, came the penance.