James Rollins - Blood Infernal

She leaned forward. “Show me.”

He opened a file, and soon grainy footage showed a handful of dancers moving around on a dark floor. Lights strobed, and though the footage had no audio, she could imagine the heavy bass beat of that music.

“Watch these two,” Bernard said, pointing.

He indicated two men, both dressed in dark clothing, at the edge of the screen. They moved slowly out onto the dance floor. One had white skin, one black. She squinted closer, studying the dark figure. The video quality was too poor to pick out features, but it seemed as if his skin drank in the light. His face looked unnatural somehow, more like a mask than human skin.

As if the dancers sensed the hunters in their midst, the small crowd parted, keeping a ragged circle of free space around the two creatures. They were right to be wary. A moment later, the two strigoi lashed out, moving so quickly that their images blurred on the screen. She had never seen strigoi move at such speeds.

In less than ten seconds, only the two strigoi remained standing. Broken and bloody bodies lay at their feet. Each figure picked up a wounded woman from the floor, slung her over his shoulder, and disappeared out of the frame.

Erin shuddered to think what lay in wait for those poor girls.

The cardinal tapped a key, and the image froze.

Erin swallowed hard, thinking of the pain and fear those people must have felt in their final moments. None of them had stood a chance.

“Are the police looking for these killers?” she asked.

The cardinal moved his monitor back around. “They are searching, but they don’t understand what they’re hunting.”

“What do you mean?”

“The police were never allowed to see this footage. As you know, we cannot allow proof of the existence of strigoi to be revealed to the world at large.”

She sat back in her chair. “Then how can the people protect themselves?”

“We have sent additional teams out. They patrol the city night and day. We’ll find this pair of killers and destroy them. That is our sacred duty.”

Erin wondered how many innocent lives would be claimed before that happened. “Those strigoi were fast, like nothing I’ve seen before.”

The cardinal grimaced. “And they aren’t the only ones. We have similar reports globally. For some reason, the strigoi have begun to change, to grow more powerful.”

“So I’ve heard, but why is this happening? Why now?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I fear that it is related to the prophecy.”

She bunched her brows, guessing what he was referring to. “That Lucifer’s shackles have somehow loosened.”

“And because of that, more evil is entering our world. A fundamental balance has begun to shift, giving additional strength to evil creatures, while sapping holy forces at the same time.”

She stared harder at the cardinal, sizing him up. “Do you feel weaker?”

He clenched one hand atop his desk. “Here, on these blessed grounds, I do not. But we have lost eighteen Sanguinists in the field over the past twelve weeks.”

Eighteen? The order had already begun fading in numbers over the past decades, much like the Catholic priesthood. The Sanguinists could not afford to lose more foot soldiers, especially if a war was coming.

“Do the attacks have any geographic pattern?” she asked. “Perhaps if we knew where all of this started, it could offer us a clue to stopping it.”

His eyes narrowed, studying her. “Dr. Granger, as usual, you always seem to hit the nail on the head.”

She sat straighter. “You figured something out.”

“We’ve been meticulously recording dates and locations of these attacks.”

“To build a database,” she said. “Smart.”

He nodded acknowledgment of her compliment and tilted his monitor toward her again. He quickly brought into view a map of Europe. Small red dots bloomed, marking attack sites. She balked at the sheer number, but she kept her focus.

“If you extrapolate backward,” Bernard said, demonstrating on the map, “it appears these attacks have been expanding outward from a single location.”

He zoomed into the epicenter of the attacks.

She read the name written there, feeling the blood sink into the pit of her gut. “Cumae… that’s where the sibyl’s temple is located.”

And where Jordan is working .

She stared over at Bernard. “Have you heard anything from Jordan and his team? Did they learn anything?”

The cardinal sank heavily into his seat. “That was the other reason I summoned you. I thought you should hear it from me first. There was an attack—”

He was interrupted as Father Gregory arrived with a silver coffee service. Erin glanced back, a light-headed panic rushing through her. Gregory must have heard the frantic flutter of her heartbeat and froze at the door.

Erin turned back to Bernard. “Is Jordan okay?”

Bernard motioned to Father Gregory. “Leave the coffee on the table over there. That will be all.”

Erin didn’t bother waiting for Bernard’s assistant to leave. Her days of waiting until the Sanguinists got around to telling her things were over.

“What happened?” she blurted out, leaning aggressively forward.

Bernard held up a palm, plainly urging her to calm down. “Do not fear, Jordan and his team are unharmed.”

Erin settled back. She let out a shaky breath, but she also sensed that the cardinal was holding something back. But with her most important concern addressed, she waited until Father Gregory left to confront Bernard.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

“This morning, Jordan’s team discovered a new tunnel, one that looked recently excavated. It appears something may have dug its way out of that buried temple.”

“ Something? What does that mean?”

“We don’t know. But we do know that Brother Leopold’s body is missing from that temple.”

She took this all in. During the battle in that temple last winter, Leopold had been killed by Rhun… or at least, it sure looked that way. But if his body was now missing, that meant either he was still alive or someone had taken his body.

She returned again to a worry closer to her heart. “You said there was an attack.”

“A strigoi ambushed Jordan and his team down in that temple.”

She stood up and crossed to the coffee service, too anxious to keep sitting. She poured herself a cup, reminding herself that Jordan was fine.

Still…

Warming her palms on the cup, she faced Bernard. “Was this attacker one of these super strigoi ?”

“It appears so. The good news is that the others are bringing the strigoi ’s body back to Rome for study. We may learn something from the remains.”

“When?” she asked sharply, anxious to see Jordan, to make sure that he was safe.

“They should be here in the next hour. But they also found something else in the chamber, something they didn’t want to discuss over the phone. In fact, Jordan said that he wanted you to see it first.” The cardinal looked peeved that someone was withholding information from him. “He believed you might recognize it, because, as he adamantly insisted, you are the Woman of Learning.”

She took a sip of the coffee, allowing the heat to warm away the residual chill of her panic. She appreciated Jordan’s confidence, but she hoped it wasn’t misplaced. With no idea what he was bringing back from Cumae, she pondered the mystery of Leopold’s missing body and returned to Bernard’s cryptic assertion.

Something dug its way out of that temple .

Legion sidled along the edge of a tall wall in the heart of Rome. He kept the barrier’s shadow over his form. Though the sun had sunk below the horizon, the surrounding streets still glowed with twilight. He preferred darker places to prowl. As an extra precaution, he pulled the hood of his coat farther over his head, knowing one certainty.