James Rollins - Blood Infernal

The one meant for Rhun .

Xao nodded to one of his brothers, who returned to the belly of the Buddha and removed another box, also white, but painted with a sky full of fluffy clouds. It was easily held in the palms of the monk, who carried it to Rhun and offered it to him.

Rhun began to open it, but Erin stopped him.

“Don’t,” she warned, remembering the effect that the Sanguis stone had on Jordan back in Hugh’s church. She didn’t want this holy gem singing Jordan into a swoon like before.

Instead, she pointed in the direction of the open gate.

“Xao, take us where we must go.”

Rhun hurried with the others out of temple and back through the stone village. His inner clock felt the approach of the noon hour, while the holiness in his blood responded to the moon’s passage across the sun. As darkness approached, his strength faded with each passing second, like sand sifting through the pinch of an hourglass.

Ahead, beyond the open gate, the day’s brightness had dimmed to a dull twilight as the moon’s shadow swept over these mountains. The group rushed forward and bowed their way back into that wintry valley, the evil even more palpable now.

As Rhun straightened, he looked to the sky, noting only a thin crescent of sun remained. The brilliance burned his eyes, searing him with certainty.

We’re out of time.

Under the bower of the two massive trees, the group quickly divided. One monk led each of the trio. Rhun split away with the tallest of the brothers, who hurried him at a fast clip along the base of the icy cliffs toward the western bank of that black lake. Xao took Erin by the hand, and another marched with Jordan. Both headed in the other direction, toward their respective positions on the eastern and southern shores.

Between their parties, Sophia and Christian strained under the weight of the chest and its sacred silver chains and climbed straight down, staying in the shadow of the trees at the north end.

The two remaining members of their party followed at Rhun’s heels. One did not surprise him. The young lion padded through the snow behind him, growling softly, his head lowered from the evil wafting off the lake. Clearly this valley assaulted the cub’s senses as thoroughly as Rhun’s.

His last companion surprised him. Elizabeth strode behind him, taking large steps, her back straight, her eyes on the lake. Unlike Rhun and the lion, he read a longing in her face, as if she wished to run to that lake and skate across its dark surface.

Why does she seem so little bothered by the evil here?

She noted his attention, reading the question on his face, but misinterpreting it. “I’m not about to let you do this without someone at your back. Especially with you missing an arm.”

He offered her a grateful smile.

She scowled at him. “Watch your step, Rhun, or you and that stone will go rolling away.”

He turned around as the monk led them down a thin path to a tall marker that stuck upward from the shoreline. It was a plinth of gray granite, frosted with ice, rising as high as his chest.

The monk brushed the snow off the pillar’s crown with reverent fingers, revealing the sculpture of a small cup, identical to the chalices depicted in the mosaic back in Venice. Like the structures in the Buddhist temple, the base of the stone chalice merged with the stone, making cup and pillar one piece.

Rhun imagined if he cleared the snow from around the foot of plinth that it, too, would be a part of this mountain.

The monk stepped to Rhun’s side, collected the box from his one hand, then turned it so the latch faced Rhun.

“The Sky Stone is for you,” the monk intoned, bowing slightly. “You must place the sacred gem in its place. At the same time as the others.”

The monk nodded toward the chalice.

Rhun understood.

I must set the Aqua stone into this receptacle .

Rhun reached his hand to the box, undid the latch with his thumb, and tilted the lid open. For a breath, he expected to find nothing, some final act of betrayal by these monks. But instead, resting in a bed of silk, lay a perfect gem. It shone with the brilliance of a bright blue sky, as if the most perfect day had been captured in that stone, preserved for eternity.

A small sigh of reverence slipped his lips.

The lion stepped closer, placing his paw on Rhun’s knee to lift his nose higher so that he could peer at the stone. Elizabeth merely crossed her arms.

Rhun pushed the lion off his leg and closed his fingers over the gem, feeling a sinking sense of unworthiness.

How could such beauty be meant for me?

Still, he knew his duty and took the stone in hand, feeling the holiness warm his fingers, his wrist, and up his arm. As it suffused his chest, he almost expected it to start his heart beating again. When it did not, he turned and faced the pillar and that carved chalice.

Across the lake, he saw the others were already at their positions. Xao was bent near Erin’s ear, whispering, likely passing on the same instructions to her.

Erin looked up toward him. Though she was fifty yards away, he could see the fear in her face. He knew the source of her anxiety and turned toward it now, too. The trio needed to act in unison, but there remained one final task.

Rhun stared over at Jordan.

Would the man’s blood purify and heal the broken gem?

Jordan touched the cold point of the dagger against the skin of his wrist.

This had better work .

A glance up revealed what was left of the sun: a fiery crimson blaze shooting from the edge of the moon’s dark shadow. The brilliance stung his eyes, leaving his vision dazzled when he glanced back to the blade poised at his wrist. By now, the valley was smothered in the moon’s umbra, turning the snow a soft crimson and the ice of the lake an even darker shade of black, reminding him of those drops of Lucifer’s blood.

The lake looks like a hole in this world .

His blood ran cold at the sight of it, sensing its wrongness .

Knowing what he must do, he pressed the point of the dagger into his flesh and drew its edge along his wrist. A thick line of blood welled up. He sheathed the knife and withdrew the pieces of the green stone, handing one to the monk at his side. Jordan took the remaining piece and held it under his wrist, catching the first falling drop into the gem’s hollow center.

He steeled himself against some dramatic reaction, but when nothing happened, he continued filling that stone’s cavity. Once his blood was spilling over the gem’s lip, he exchanged that half for the still-empty one and repeated the same.

Still, there was no blinding flash of light, no crescendo of song.

Jordan looked at the monk for help, but the guy appeared equally lost — and scared.

Only one thing left to do…

Pushing aside his worries, Jordan took the two halves in hand. With his blood sloshing over the facets, he fitted the two pieces back together.

C’mon…

For a moment, there was no better outcome — then the stone began to warm between his palms, growing quickly hotter, not unlike the feverish heat when his body healed. Jordan prayed this was a good sign. Soon the inner fire grew to a burn, as if he had plucked a coal from a campfire. Still, he held tight, grimacing from the pain.

He watched new crimson lines appear across the back of his hands, burning whorls across his skin, twining up his fingers. He almost expected his hands to fuse together over the stone, to become a husk for the burning seed he held.