James Rollins - Blood Infernal

Definitely no Garden of Eden .

Working circulation back into her legs, Erin stomped her heavy snow boots. The steel ice crampons clanged against the metal floor. Even though she was warmed by the cabin heater and decked out in winter gear, the cold of these mountains found its way down to her bones.

Or maybe it was simply the fear.

She glanced to the others, huddled in white parkas. While the cold-blooded Sanguinists had no need for such insulated gear, the snowy color offered good camouflage for this wintry terrain. Even the lion cub, with his white ruff and fur, seemed built for this expedition.

Everyone stirred, readying themselves for what was to come.

Erin craned her neck by the window and stared up at the sun. It hung in a bright blue sky, marred by a few smudges of cirrus clouds. It was a little more than an hour until noon.

Jordan noted her glance skyward and reached to squeeze her knee. “Who says the deadline is midday anyway? We may have more time than that to close the gates of Hell.”

She turned to him. His face bore only faint scars from the recent attack, but now his pale skin whorled and ran with crimson lines, covering half his face. Jordan had his parka unzipped, seemingly oblivious of the cold. Erin imagined if she took off her snow gloves, she could warm her hands off the heat flowing from him.

She took a deep breath and turned away, unable to stare at those lines any longer, knowing they marked how little of Jordan’s humanity remained. Still, a part of her felt guilty, even selfish, at her reaction to Jordan’s state. He had come back from the edge of death in France because of his angelic power and his human stubbornness. When the time came, he would have to decide which path to walk. And she would have to let him, no matter how much she feared to lose him.

To distract from these worrisome thoughts, she answered his question. “We have only until noon today.”

“Why do you sound so certain?” Rhun asked from across the cabin. His lion stretched on the neighboring seat, arching his spine into a bent bow.

Elizabeth answered Rhun before Erin could. “Look at the moon.”

Faces turned toward the various windows. A full moon hovered at the sun’s blazing edge.

Jordan leaned against Erin to see out. “Bernard mentioned that there would be an eclipse today,” he muttered. “But only a partial one, if I’m remembering right.”

“A partial one in France,” Erin corrected him. “This far east, it will be a total eclipse. I checked during the flight here. Totality will reach the Himalayas at one minute past noon.”

She remembered the mural painted on Edward Kelly’s wall. That bloodred sun above that black lake could have been the artist’s representation of a full eclipse.

Knowing this, she wished they had made better time getting here. Piloted by Christian, their Citation X jet had raced across Europe and Asia. En route, Bernard had regularly updated them by satellite phone on the conditions on the ground, about the surge of attacks erupting across the dark cities they flew over. The strigoi and blasphemare had grown bolder and stronger as the tide of evil spread, shifting the balance in their favor. But those monsters were only the spark of this firestorm. Simple panic did the rest, stoking those flames of chaos even higher.

As Christian swung them around a shoulder of a mountain, a small village appeared, tucked against the slope. Atop the peaked slate roofs, chimneys cast ribbons of smoke into the air, showing people inside cooking, laughing, living. It reminded her of what they were fighting to preserve.

A lone yak walked along a narrow snow-covered path. A brightly clad figure walked at its side, a cap pulled tightly over a round head. Both the dark-skinned man and the yak stopped to stare up at their helicopter.

Erin pressed a palm against the glass, wishing them both a long and happy life.

As the village vanished behind them, the last sight of habitation was a Buddhist temple, its gutters strewn with lines of fluttering prayer flags.

But it was not the temple they had come to find.

Christian continued onward, heading for the spot marked on Hugh’s map. “I don’t see any lake, unless it’s under all that snow. I might have to circle around.”

As he lifted their aircraft higher, Erin spotted a bowl-shaped gorge to the right. “Over there!” she called to Christian, leaning forward and pointing.

Christian nodded. “Got it. Let’s check it out.”

He angled toward that basin, sweeping between two peaks. At the bottom of this smaller valley spread a flat expanse of snow, about half the size of a football field, but its surface was not unbroken. Black ice reflected up at them, like dark cracks in the glaze of a white vase.

“That’s got to be it,” Erin said.

“Only one way to find out.” Christian manipulated the helicopter’s stick and lowered their aircraft to a hover over the snow.

Wind from the rotors blew the fine snow away to reveal an expanse of frozen lake. Its surface was black, like obsidian, like the black lake painted on the mural in the Faust House. But here there were no monsters crawling forth.

At least not yet .

Erin checked the sky, noting the moon had already taken a bite out of the sun.

“Think we got the right place?” Christian asked.

Sophia spoke up from the far side of the cabin and pointed. “Look up by the cliffs on this side.”

Erin wriggled to see better. It took her a moment to note what had drawn the small nun’s attention. But then she spotted it, too. Half hidden by the shadow of the sheer rock face, two giant trees hugged the cliff. Both were leafless with pale gray trunks, their branches crusted with ice and frosted with snow.

Sophia faced them. “Didn’t Hugh de Payens mention that the valley home of those strigoi monks had two mighty trees growing in it?

Possibly the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Eternal Life .

Erin felt a sinking of disappointment at the sight of them. The pair looked like ordinary trees, certainly old, but nothing spectacular. Still, they matched Hugh’s description.

“Put us down,” Erin said. “This must be the right place.”

Christian obeyed, warning them. “Let’s hope the ice is thick enough to hold us. It’s the only place to land.”

He was right. All around, the banks sloped steeply, rising and merging with the cliffs of rock. He lowered their craft cautiously until the skids gently kissed the ice. Only when the surface seemed to support their weight did he allow the aircraft to fully settle.

“Looks good,” he said and powered the aircraft down.

Erin took off her headphones and waited while the Sanguinists, even Elizabeth, exited first, wary of any dangers. As soon as the door was open, a frigid breeze blasted inside, sweeping around as if trying to flush her out. She shuddered in her parka, but not from the cold. Instead, every hair on her body seemed to suddenly stand on end.

The Sanguinists reacted even more strongly: Christian crashed to a knee out on the ice, Sophia gasped loudly enough that Erin heard her above the sharp whistling of the wind, Rhun clutched for the cross hidden under his coat, wavering drunkenly as he took a few steps. Elizabeth caught his elbow and steadied him, frowning at the others.

Erin remembered seeing the Sanguinists react the same at the Faust House. The unholiness here was much stronger.

Even I feel it , she thought, shivering with unease.

Next to her, Jordan clenched his shoulders toward his ears and cocked his head, wincing. “That noise… like fingernails on a chalkboard. No, make that steel claws digging into a blackboard. Gawd…”