James Rollins - Innocent Blood

She did not.

A rustle on the far side of the thick door brought his thoughts back to this room, to the dead girl on the bed, to the many others who had shared her fate.

He knocked on the door with the toe of his boot, and the servants unlocked the way. He shouldered it open as they fled down the dark stairs of the tower.

Left behind in their wake, placed outside the door, a marble sarcophagus rested atop the rush-covered floor. Earlier, he had filled the coffin with consecrated wine and left it open.

Seeing what awaited her, she raised her head, dazed by bloodlust. “Rhun?”

“It will save you,” he said. “And your soul.”

“I don’t want my soul saved,” she said, her fingers clutching to him.

Before she could fight him, he lifted her over the open sarcophagus and plunged her down into wine. She screamed when the consecrated wine first touched her skin. He set his jaw, knowing how it must pain her, wanting even now to take the agony from her and claim it for himself.

She thrashed under his hands, but in her weakened state, she was no match for his strength. Wine splashed over the sides. He forced her against the stone bottom, ignoring the fiery burn of the wine. He was glad he could not see her face, drowned under that red tide.

He held her there — until at last, she lay quiet.

She would now sleep until such a time as he could find a way to reverse what he had done, to return life to her dead heart.

With tears in his eyes, he fitted the heavy stone lid in place and secured it with silver straps. Once done, he rested his cold palms against the marble and prayed for her soul.

And his own.

Slowly Rhun returned to himself. He remembered fully how he had come to be here, imprisoned in the same sarcophagus he had used to trap the countess centuries ago. He recalled returning to his sarcophagus, to where he had entombed the coffin inside a bricked-up vault far beneath Vatican City, hiding his secret from all eyes.

He had come here upon the words of a prophecy.

It seemed the countess still had a role to play in this world.

Following the battle for the Blood Gospel, he had ventured alone to where he had buried his greatest sin. He had hammered through the bricks, broken the seals of the sarcophagus, and decanted her from this bath of ancient wine. He pictured her silver eyes opening for the first time in centuries, gazing into his. For that brief moment, he allowed his defenses to fall, slipping back to long-ago summers, to a time when he dared to believe that he could become more than what he was, that one such as he could love without destruction.

In that lapse, he had failed to see the shattered brick clutched in her hand. He moved too slowly as she swung the hard rock with a hatred that spanned centuries — or perhaps he simply knew he deserved it.

Then he awoke here, and now he finally knew the truth.

She sentenced me to this same prison.

While a part of him knew he deserved this fate, he knew he must escape.

If for no other reason than that he had loosed this monster once again upon the unsuspecting world.

Still, he pictured her as he once knew her, so full of life, always in sunlight. He had always called her Elisabeta, but history now christened her by another name, a darker epitaph.

Elizabeth Bathory —the Blood Countess.

As befit her noble station, the apartment Elisabeta had chosen was luxurious. Thick red velvet drapes cloaked tall arched windows. The oak floor beneath her cold feet glowed a soft gold and breathed warmth. She settled into a leather chair, the hide finely tanned, with the comforting scent of the long dead animal under the chemical smell.

On the mahogany table in front of her, a white taper sputtered, near to expiring. She held a fresh candle to its dying flame. Once the wick caught fire, she pressed the tall taper into the soft wax of the old one. She leaned close to the small flame, preferring firelight to the harsh glare that blazed in modern Rome.

She had claimed these rooms after killing the former tenants. Afterward, she had ransacked drawers full of unfamiliar objects, trying to fathom this strange century, attempting to piece together a lost civilization by studying its artifacts.

But her clues to this age were not all to be found in drawers.

Across the table, candlelight flickered over uneven piles, each gathered from the pockets and bodies of her past kills. She turned her attention to a stack crowned by a silver cross. She reached toward it but kept her fingers from the fiery heat of the metal and the blessing it carried.

She let a single fingertip caress the silver. It burned her, but she did not care — for another suffered far more because of its loss.

She smiled, the pain drawing her into memory.

Strong arms had lifted her from the coffin of wine, pulling her from her slumber, awakening her. Like any threatened beast, she had stayed limp, knowing stealth to be her best advantage.

As her eyes opened, she recognized her benefactor as much from his white Roman collar as from his dark eyes and hard face.

Father Rhun Korza.

It was the same man who had tricked her into this coffin.

But how long ago?

As he held her, she let her arm fall to the ground. The back of her hand came to rest against a loose stone.

She smiled up at him. He smiled back, love in his shining eyes.

With unearthly speed, she smashed the stone against his temple. Her other hand slipped up his sleeve, where he always kept his silver knife. She palmed it before he dropped her. Another blow, and he fell.

She quickly rolled atop him, her teeth seeking the cold flesh of his white throat. Once she pierced his skin, his fate lay at her mercy. It took strength to stop drinking before she killed him, patience to empty half the wine from the coffin before she sealed him inside it. But she must. Fully immersed in wine, he would merely sleep until rescued, as she had done.

Instead, she had left only a little wine, knowing he would soon wake in his lonely tomb and slowly starve, as she had while imprisoned in her castle tower.

Lifting her finger from his stolen cross, she allowed herself a moment of cold satisfaction. As she moved her arm, her fingers dragged over a battered shoe atop another pile.

This tiny bit of leather marked her first kill in this new age.

She savored that moment.

As she fled the dark catacombs — blind to where she was, when she was — rough stones cut through the thin leather soles of her shoes and sliced her feet. She paid them no heed. She had this one chance of escape.

She knew not where she ran to, but she recognized the feel of holy ground underfoot. It weakened her muscles and slowed her steps. Still, she felt more powerful than she ever had. Her time in the wine had strengthened her, how much she only dared to guess.

Then the sound of a heartbeat had stopped her headlong flight through the dark tunnels.

Human.

The heart thrummed steady and calm. It had not yet sensed her presence. Faint with hunger, she rested her back against the tunnel wall. She licked her lips, tasting the Sanguinist’s bitter blood. She lusted to savor something sweeter, hotter.

The flicker of a faraway candle lightened the darkness. She heard the pad of shoes drawing nearer.

Then a name was called. “Rhun?”

She flattened against the cold stone. So someone was searching for the priest.