James Rollins - Blood Infernal

As if knowing this, Lucifer shifted higher in his throne, breaking more links in the chains that bound him.

The ground quaked and trembled with his efforts.

Legion faced Jordan, the demon’s smile triumphant. “The time of man is finally at an end.”

Erin huddled under Rhun as the quakes subsided. She had watched the emerald column go dark, saw the ice on the far side shatter open exposing a roil of monstrous beasts. New cracks skittered across the lake.

Christian and Sophia dragged the chest to a patch of solid ice, hounded by more creatures, the beasts plainly growing bolder at the change of circumstance.

Erin searched for Jordan, but a heavy black steam rose from the lake by that shore, obscuring her view.

Rhun still clutched her throat with his one hand as he leaned back. “Erin, what do you mean you know what to do?” he asked.

She understood the subtext to his question: What do you believe you can do this close to death?

She answered him silently, What I can .

She clutched the Blood Gospel to her chest with one arm, picturing the lines of Enochian script filling its pages. She knew the truth with absolute certainty, but still the words refused to come out. She was too stunned at what she had come to understand: the true purpose behind this lost Gospel of Christ.

The book was not written to help humans unleash their divinity. It had been written for a single being, one angel, to redeem himself: Lucifer . She remembered the tablet Lazarus had revealed to her in the Sanguinist library, telling an alternate version of the story of the Garden of Eden, how Eve had promised to share the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge with the serpent, but in the end, she had broken that promise.

Lazarus’s words returned to her now, as the world grew darker around her.

When Lucifer stands before you, your heart will guide you on your path. You must fulfill the covenant .

She hadn’t understood those words back then, but she did now.

The serpent — Lucifer — had been denied secret knowledge, knowledge that might have led the dark angel to make different choices: the knowledge of good and evil . He had asked for that understanding, been promised it by Eve herself, but she had not given it to him, and so he had never learned it.

But Christ had sent it here for him.

“I must fulfill the covenant of Eve,” she muttered with dry, cold lips.

Beyond the edge of the sphere, the lion stared back at her, stirring as if he had heard her, mewling softly. The cub reminded her of her first cat, a giant barn tom named Nebuchadnezzar. He’d been snowy white, too.

“Hey there, Neb,” she whispered, momentarily lost in time.

Rhun bent closer, drawing back her attention. The sorrow in his eyes made her want to reach up and touch him, to comfort him. “What covenant do you speak of?” he pressed her.

She forced her eyes to focus. “The book… the gospel… must go to Lucifer.”

Rhun’s eyes widened with disbelief, even outrage. “How can Christ’s gospel go to an angel cast out of Heaven by God himself?”

She didn’t have the strength to argue, but she exhaled faint words with each fading breath, knowing his sharp Sanguinist ears would hear them. “Christ wrote it to redeem Lucifer. If Eve had given him the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he would have known good. He could have chosen good. The covenant of Eve must be fulfilled. Rhun, you must give him this knowledge.”

Rhun looked up at the blackened sky. “I cannot leave you to die alone.”

“You must… this is what we were chosen for.”

Rhun lifted the gospel from her as she let it go, glad to be free of this burden. Her empty fingers returned to clutching her throat, as useless as that gesture was by now. She concentrated on Rhun. His face told her how much he wanted to stay with her, and what it cost him to leave her. His eyes flicked to the book hanging open in his one hand, then his face looked scared.

What’s wrong?

He answered her silent question. “The writing is gone.” He tipped the book, fluttering through the pages, all blank. “Remember, the gospel is bound only to you, Erin. The words are not revealed to any other.”

She was so cold now. She didn’t know what to do, what to say.

“Perhaps I can carry you and the book to Lucifer,” Rhun suggested. “We can give it to him together.”

No…

He quickly understood, too, sagging over her. “That won’t work. While you live, the light will burn you to ash. Only Sanguinists or strigoi may pass through such barriers unharmed.”

Erin’s vision faded. She used her last breath to whisper the ultimate truth.

“You have to turn me… it’s the only way.”

I must become a strigoi.

Jordan had lost sight of Erin as a heavy black mist rolled across the shattered lake, rising with distant screams and howls, its darkness broken by flares of blacker flames. Giant forms stirred that fog, things he knew whose very sight would strip him of his sanity, what little there remained.

Still, even with the emerald sphere collapsed around him, he remained on his knees. The gate was forever damaged with the gem’s destruction, never to be closed again.

Jordan saw no reason to keep fighting, especially knowing Erin was likely dead.

If not now, soon .

Without Erin, Jordan wasn’t sure if he wanted to live or die.

But he did know one thing with absolute certainty.

He wanted revenge.

Jordan stared up as Legion fell upon him. The demon lifted the monk’s sword high, his face shining with triumph. That blade still steamed with the demon’s own blood.

It was what had given Jordan this idea.

Retreating from that assault, Jordan sprawled backward to the ground, as if prostrating himself before Legion, accepting death. Instead, Jordan threw himself atop the blade he had propped up a moment ago behind him. The blade pierced his back and thrust out of his belly. That black obsidian sword burned through him like a spike of ice. It was Legion’s own sword, abandoned in the snow earlier, the blade now slick with Jordan’s fiery blood.

As the demon came at him, hobbled by the broken knee, Jordan kicked out again. His crampon struck Legion’s good ankle — not enough to break it, but enough to trip the demon, to send him crashing atop Jordan.

Jordan opened his arms in a giant bear hug. Legion crashed into him, impaling his body on the bloody sword, coated with Jordan’s angelic blood. The demon screamed and writhed on that pike, but Jordan wrapped his arms around Legion and rolled to the side, pouring the pool of fiery blood from his belly wound into Legion’s cold black body. Jordan willed all of his angelic essence to follow, to burn this demon from Leopold’s body.

“Go back to Hell, you bastard.”

Legion thrashed and howled, casting out gouts of dark smoke, as if the demon blazed atop the coals of Jordan’s body. Slowly, the black drained from Legion’s face, from his body. Leopold’s watery blue eyes looked at Jordan.

“ Mein Freund …” Leopold said, lowering his forehead to Jordan’s cheek. “You have freed me.”

Jordan held him, not to keep the man from escaping, but to let Leopold know he wasn’t alone, that he was forgiven in the end, even loved. Jordan held him, until the body of his friend fell limp in his arms, finding true peace at last.

Rhun watched as Erin’s hands fell slackly from her neck, too weak now to hold them to the ruins of her throat. Rhun lifted his hand to apply that pressure for her, but he knew from each feeble beat of her fading heart that such an effort was useless. Instead, he scooped her into his lap, cradling her body against his, and clutched her blood-slicked fingers. Her head lolled back, her face bathed in the crimson fire of the stone.