James Rollins - Blood Infernal

The Sanguinists behind him chanted a prayer. If she tried to escape, they would kill her — and if she died, then Tommy would die along with her. Down this burning path lay the only chance to save the boy’s life and her own.

“I do have faith,” she told Rhun, which was the truth. It just wasn’t the faith he wanted her to possess. She had faith in herself, in her ability to survive this and save Tommy.

“If you don’t believe,” Rhun warned, “if you don’t believe Christ can save your damned soul, you will die with the first sip of His blood. It has ever been so.”

Has it?

Rasputin had been excommunicated from the Church, yet she had seen with her own eyes that he still lived outside of the realm of the Church. Likewise, the German monk, Brother Leopold, had betrayed the Church for fifty years, yet he had drunk the wine countless times and never been burned.

Was it the monk’s belief in his purpose, in the one he served, that had sustained him?

She hoped it was so. For her sake, and for Tommy’s. She had to trust that there were other pathways to the salvation offered by that holy blood. While her heart was not pure, surely helping Tommy was a noble enough goal.

But if I am wrong…

She reached to Rhun’s bare wrist, touching it with a finger. “I want you to give me the wine. No one else.”

If I’m to die, let it be by the hands of someone who loves me .

Rhun swallowed, fear darkening his face, but he didn’t refuse her. “Your heart must be pure,” he warned. “You must come to Him with openness and love. Can you do that?”

“We will see,” she said, shying from his question.

Satisfied but reluctant, Rhun gestured to the silver chalice resting on the altar. The sharp smell of wine rose from it, cutting through the incense. It was difficult to fathom that such a simple substance, a fermentation of grapes, could hold the secret of life. Or that it might destroy her newfound immortal power and her along with it.

Rhun stood before the altar, facing her. “First, you must publicly repent your sins, all of your sins. Then you may partake of His holy Blood.”

With no other choice, she listed sin after sin, seeing how each one fell onto Rhun’s shoulders, how he took the blame for her acts onto himself. He bore it in front of her, and she recognized pain and regret in his eyes. In spite of everything, she would have spared him that if she could.

By the time she had finished, her throat was hoarse. Many hours had passed. Her strigoi body sensed that daylight was not far away.

“That is all?” Rhun asked.

“Is it not enough?”

He turned, picked up the silver chalice from the altar, and held it above his head. He chanted prayers necessary to transform the wine into the blood of Christ.

All the while, Elizabeth searched her conscience. Did she feel fear that these were her last moments? That she might soon be burned to ash and scattered across the clean floor? She came to only one conclusion.

Whatever must come would come .

She knelt before Rhun.

He bent down and brought the chalice to her lips.

Jordan stretched a knot out of his back. He had fallen asleep, sprawled across one of the wooden pews of the basilica. He stood now and twisted his spine to and fro, forcing circulation back through his body. He bent down and massaged a spasm in his calf.

I can miraculously heal a mortal wound, but I got nothing for a charley horse .

He hobbled toward Erin, who studied a piece of artwork a few yards away. She stood with Christian, who had kept them company during this long vigil, all of them waiting for word about Elizabeth. From the slight hunch in Erin’s shoulders and the puffiness of her red eyes, he doubted she had gotten any sleep.

Christian could have joined his fellow Sanguinists and participated in the rite, but he remained here, either to guard them from some kind of threat or to keep them from interfering with what was happening down below. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to watch the countess burn to death any more than Rhun did.

All night long, Christian had been straightforward with them, answering Erin’s questions about what was likely going on below. And more important, he also fetched Jordan more beer.

“What are we looking at anyway?” Jordan asked as he joined them.

Erin pointed to the mosaic straight above their head.

He craned his neck. “Is that Jesus sitting on a rainbow?”

She smiled. “Actually, it is. He’s ascending to heaven. Giving this section of the basilica its name: the Ascension Cupola.”

The three of them continued along the nave. Erin questioned Christian about various pieces of art, but clearly there was a greater question hanging above all three of their heads.

Jordan finally asked it. “Do you think she’ll survive the wine?”

Christian stopped, sighing loudly. “She will survive if she truly repents of her sins and accepts Him into her heart.”

“That’s not likely to happen,” Erin said.

Jordan agreed.

Christian had a more compassionate response. “We can never know the heart of another. No matter how much we think that we might.” He turned to Jordan. “Leopold had us all fooled, serving as agent of the Belial within our own folds for decades.”

Erin nodded. “And he was able to drink holy wine without burning to ash.”

Jordan frowned, realizing there was one subject he’d never had the time to address. He had told everyone about Leopold’s body missing from that subterranean temple, but he never elaborated on the stranger aspect of that story.

“Erin,” he said, “there is something I never mentioned about that attack in Cumae. That strigoi who… who wounded me… just before he died, he said he was sorry. He knew my name.”

“What?”

Christian turned sharply to him. Apparently Baako and Sophia had also failed to share this detail with the Sanguinists. Perhaps all of them had been ready to simply dismiss it as a coincidence. Maybe the dead strigoi was German, which would explain the accent. Maybe he knew Jordan’s name because whoever sent that monster down there knew the Warrior of Man was in that buried temple.

Still, he wasn’t buying it.

Jordan, mein Freund…

“I swear the voice that came out of the strigoi was Leopold’s,” he said.

“That’s impossible,” Erin muttered, but she had witnessed enough of the impossible to be unsure now.

“I know how it sounds,” he said. “But I think Leopold was using that body like a mouthpiece.”

Erin remained silent, her gaze distant as she digested this information. “What sort of connection could there be between them to allow that to happen?”

Christian offered one theory. “Maybe when Leopold died, his spirit leaped into this other strigoi .”

Erin turned to him. “Has that ever happened before?”

Christian shrugged. “Not that I know, but since meeting the two of you, I’ve witnessed many things I thought would have been impossible.”

Erin nodded at the truth of his words. She eyed Jordan. “Was there anything else unusual about that strigoi , anything that might explain such a psychic link?”

“Besides being supersized in strength and speed?” he asked.

“Besides that.”

Jordan remembered one last detail. “Actually there was one other odd thing. He had a black mark on his chest.” He mimicked with his own palm. “It was shaped like a hand.”

Erin’s hunched shoulders grew straighter. “Like Bathory Darabont had?”