James Rollins - Blood Infernal

It cannot be…

Rhun studied the long dark hair, the high pale brow, those full lips. He remembered those lips upon his throat, those teeth in his flesh. He could still taste the man’s blood on his tongue. Even now, his body remembered that bliss. Even now, they were still connected.

Here was the strigoi who had attacked him by his sister’s gravesite, who ripped his soul from his body, ending his life as a mortal. Rhun had thought the beast had been killed. He remembered seeing the creature being dragged away by Sanguinist guards loyal to Bernard.

But now that monster wore the robes of the order.

The man opened his eyes and looked on Rhun with great tenderness. He touched the side of Rhun’s neck, where his teeth had pierced Rhun’s flesh. His fingers lingered there. “I thought I served when I committed this sin upon you.”

“Served? Served whom?”

That arm dropped away, and those eyes drifted closed again, awareness fading. “Forgive me, my son,” the man said, his voice whispering away. “I knew not what I did.”

Rhun waited for more, some words that would make sense of this impossibility.

“He is the symbol for a lie,” Lazarus explained. “The lie that turned you from your pious path of service to a long road of servitude within our order.”

“I don’t understand,” Rhun said. “What is this lie?”

“You must ask Bernard,” Lazarus said, taking Rhun’s elbow and leading him back toward the entrance to the Sanctuary. At the gate, Lazarus ushered him out.

Rhun faltered at the threshold, fearful of leaving the shelter of the Sanctuary, suddenly not wanting to know these last secrets.

But Lazarus blocked the way back, leaving him no choice. “Understand your past, my son, to know your future. Learn who you truly are. Then make your choice of where to spend your days.”

Rhun left. He could not say how his feet found their way up the tunnels to St. Peter’s Basilica, but as he climbed, a picture formed of that night when he was turned, how he had been found by Sanguinists before he could sin, how he was brought before Bernard, and how the cardinal convinced him to forsake his evil nature and lead the life of the Sanguinists.

All paths led back to Bernard.

The words of the man below echoed over and over in Rhun’s head.

I thought I served when I committed this sin upon you .

Rhun knew the meaning behind those words.

Bernard had known of Rhun’s nocturnal visits to his sister’s grave. He had known that Rhun would be out in the night, alone and vulnerable. It was Bernard who had sent one of the order — masquerading as a strigoi —to the graveyard to turn him, to recruit Rhun, to force prophecy into existence, to create the Chosen One, a Sanguinist who had never tasted human blood. Bernard knew from centuries-old prophecies that only a Chosen One of the order could find the lost Blood Gospel.

So Bernard created one.

As understanding grew in him, rage burned through Rhun like a cleansing fire. Bernard had stolen his soul, and Rhun had thanked him for it, a thousand times over.

My whole existence has been a lie .

As if in a dream, Rhun found himself stalking through the Apostolic Palace, toward Bernard’s offices, where the cardinal was still allowed to work while awaiting his trial for his blood sin against Elizabeth. Rhun did not knock when he reached that door. He barged inside like a storm.

Bernard looked up from a desk strewn with papers, his face wide with surprise. The man wore his scarlet cassock, his red gloves, all the trappings of his office.

“Rhun, what has happened?”

Rhun could barely speak, his rage strangling him. “You gave the order that robbed me of my soul.”

Bernard stood. “What are you saying?”

“You commanded the monster who turned me into an abomination. You drove me into Elizabeth’s arms and took her soul. My life, my death, all of this, was engineered by you, to force the will of God. To bend prophecy to your will.”

Rhun watched as Bernard sifted his words carefully, searching how to best answer these accusations.

Finally, Bernard settled on the truth. “Then you know that I was right.”

“ Right? ” the word burst from Rhun’s lips, ripe with bitterness and pain.

“Now that all of the prophecies have come to pass, would you have had matters go otherwise? You know the price the world would have paid had we failed.”

Rhun shook with fury. Bernard had stripped Rhun from his family, condemned him to an eternity of bloodlust, led him to believe that his only path was service to the Church, and turned the woman he loved from a healer into a killer.

All to save the world on Bernard’s own terms. To fulfill a prophecy that might never have come to pass without his meddling. To keep all the Sanguinists in darkness about their choices beyond the Church, and beyond his control.

To Bernard’s eyes, any sacrifice was worth that end. What was the suffering of one man when the world hung in the balance? One countess? A few hundred Sanguinists?

Disgusted and betrayed, Rhun turned on his heel and left Bernard’s office.

Bernard called after him. “Act not in haste, my son!”

But it was not in haste. His betrayal had been centuries in the making.

Rhun fled into the papal gardens, needing fresh air, the open sky above him. With the night fallen, the air was crisp and cold. Stars swept the skies. A large moon loomed high.

Lazarus had sent him aboveground to learn the truth so that he could freely choose his fate, a choice that Bernard had denied him. Denied him and all other Sanguinists. The truth about Hugh and the Buddhist strigoi had already spread within the order, and others were facing the choice Rhun faced tonight — how and where to spend eternity.

He ran far into the gardens — until a familiar scent reached him.

The lion came bounding over the grounds, a piece of silvery moonlight running over the dark grass, chased by an irritated caretaker.

“Get back here, Nebuchadnezzar!”

The cub raced up to Rhun and hit him hard in the shins, then rubbed furiously at his legs. The lion was scheduled to be taken to Castel Gandolfo tomorrow, to be looked after by Friar Patrick, but it seemed someone had decided she owed the lion at least a final romp in the gardens after saving Tommy’s life.

Elizabeth ran up to him, wearing black jeans, white sneakers, and a crimson sweater under a light jacket. Her hair was loose, curls blowing about her face as a gust wafted through the garden. She had never looked so beautiful.

She swore in Hungarian. “Cursed beast won’t listen.”

“Yet, you gave him a name,” Rhun said. “Nebuchadnezzar.”

“The King of Babylon,” Elizabeth said, combing her hair back, challenging him to make fun of her. “It was Erin’s suggestion. I thought it fitting. And just so you know, I’m taking him with me when I leave.”

“Are you?”

“He shouldn’t be cooped up in some horse stable. He needs open fields, wide skies. He needs the world.”

Rhun stared at her, loving her with all his heart. As he stepped forward and took her hand, her strong fingers intertwined with his. She tilted her face and looked harder at him, perhaps sensing how much he had changed since this morning.

“Show me,” he whispered.

She leaned closer, beginning to understand.

“Show me the world.”

He bent down and kissed her, deeply and fully with no uncertainty. It was not the chaste kiss of a priest.

For he was a priest no longer.

Peace, at last…

As the sun rested low on the horizon, Erin stepped into the redwood gazebo and breathed in the delicate scent of the cottage roses that climbed the surrounding trellises. She sat on a bench and leaned back.