James Rollins - Innocent Blood

Past the beast’s bulk, Jordan spotted Christian. The Sanguinist crouched inside the back of his town car. He leaned over the front seat, an arm stretched to the steering wheel, and laid into the car horn, pressing it over and over again.

All the sedan’s windows were down.

What are you doing?

The cat bounded toward the noise.

Jordan braked hard and shoved the car out of reverse and back into drive. He sped after the cougar, chasing its tail. He knew he couldn’t reach the car before the beast did, but he intended to be there to help Christian.

The cougar slammed into the flank of the town car, knocking it aside a full foot, denting it deeply. Christian was bowled across the backseat. The blare of the horn immediately died away, leaving only the growling hiss of the monstrous cat.

The cougar spotted its prey inside and forced its head and shoulders through the window, going after the priest.

Jordan floored the gas, intending to ram the beast from behind if necessary.

Get out of there, buddy!

The cat squirmed and kicked its hindquarters, pulling its full length through the back window and into the car. It was a tight squeeze, but the beast was determined.

Then on the other side, Christian squirted out of the far window.

“There!” Erin yelled, spotting him, too.

Jordan turned and skidded the Rover past the rear bumper of the sedan.

Christian stumbled away from the town car, pointing the key fob back at the car. He pressed a button — and all the windows rolled up, and the car beeped twice.

Jordan stifled a laugh at Christian’s sheer audacity.

He’d locked the cougar in the car.

The cat snarled and furiously flung itself about inside, rocking the sedan.

Jordan pulled up next to Christian. “Need a lift?”

Christian opened the front passenger door and climbed inside. “Drive. And fast. I don’t know how long my trap will hold it.”

Jordan understood. He gunned the engine, raced the Land Rover out of the stable yard, and ricocheted along the dirt road toward the highway. He needed to put as much distance as possible between them and that angry cat.

Christian pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and barked orders in Latin.

“What’s he saying?” Jordan asked Erin.

“Calling for backup,” she said. “For someone to dispatch that cougar.”

Christian finished his call, then glanced back at the stable. “I hope the beast doesn’t have enough space inside that car to get up a good enough swing to break through the safety glass.”

Erin cleared her throat. “But why was it even here? Why was it after me?”

Jordan glanced over to Christian.

“My apologies,” Christian said, looking crestfallen. “But I believe someone must have caught wind that Jordan and I were seeking your help. Word might have reached the wrong ears. As you know, the order has suspicions that there are Belial traitors hidden among our fold. I fear I might not have been careful enough.”

The Belial…

She pictured that force of strigoi and humans, united under a mysterious leader. Even the tight ranks of the Sanguinist order were not impervious to that group’s reach and infiltration.

“It might not be you,” Erin said, reaching forward and squeezing his shoulder. “Cardinal Bernard called for me earlier today, too. Maybe he let something slip. But either way, let’s table this until we get Nate somewhere safe.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Nate sounded aggrieved.

“You do not,” Christian answered. “My orders are clear and specific. I am to take Erin and Jordan back to Rome. That’s it.”

Jordan wondered if that was true, or if he was just trying to take the pressure off Erin.

“Why Rome?” Erin asked.

Christian swung to face her. “It seems, in all this tumult, we’ve forgotten to tell you. Father Rhun Korza has gone missing. He vanished shortly after that bloody battle in Rome.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Jordan noted the concern in Erin’s eyes, the way a hand rose to her throat. She still had scars there from where Rhun had bitten her, fed on her. But from her worried expression, she plainly cared deeply for the Sanguinist priest.

“What does that have to do with me?” she asked.

Christian smiled at her. “Because you, Dr. Granger, are the only one who can find him.”

Jordan didn’t care about the disappearance of Rhun Korza. As far as he was concerned, the guy could stay lost. Instead, there remained only one mystery he wanted solved.

Who sent that damned cat?

With a pair of antique watchmaker’s tweezers in hand, the leader of the Belial hunched over the workspace on his desk. He pinched a magnifying loupe to one eye. With exquisite care, he carefully wound a tiny brass spring inside the heart of a thumbnail-size mechanism.

The spring tightened and caught.

He smiled his satisfaction and closed the two halves of the mechanism, forming what appeared to be the metal sculpture of an insect, with six jointed legs and an eyeless head. The latter was spiked with a needle-sharp silver proboscis and crowned by the gentle sweep of a pair of feathery brass antennae.

Blessed with steady hands, he shifted to another corner of his workspace and tweezed up the disarticulated forewing of a moth from a bed of white silk. He lifted the iridescent petal toward the glow of his halogen work light. The moth’s scales shone silvery green, barely hiding the delicate lace of its internal structure, marking the handsome pattern of Actias luna, the luna moth. With a total wingspan of four inches, it was one of the world’s largest moths.

With patient and clever motions, he fitted the fragile wing into tiny clips lining the brass-and-silver thorax of his mechanical creation. He repeated the same with the other forewing and two more hind wings. The mechanism inside the thorax held hundreds of gears, wheels, and springs, waiting to beat life back into these beautiful organic wings.

Once finished, his eyes lingered on each piece. He loved the precision of his creations, the way each cog caught another, meshed into a larger design. For years he had made clocks, needing to see time measured on a device as it was not measured on his own body. He had since moved his interest and skill toward the creation of these tiny automatons — half machine and half living creatures — bound for eternity to his bidding.

Normally he found peace in such intricate work, settling into easy concentration. But this night, that perfect calm escaped him. Even the soft tinkling of a neighboring fountain failed to soothe him. His centuries-old plan — as intricate and delicate as any of his mechanisms — was at risk.

As he made a tiny correction upon his latest creation, the end of the tweezers quivered, and he tore the delicate forewing, sprinkling iridescent green scales upon the white silk. He uttered a curse that had not been heard since the days of ancient Rome and threw the tweezers to his glass desktop.

He drew in a long breath, searching again for that peace.

It eluded him.

As if on cue, the telephone on his desk rang.

He rubbed his temples with his longer fingers, seeking to work calm into his head from the outside. “ Sì, Renate?”

“Father Leopold has arrived in the downstairs lobby, sir.” The bored tone of his beautiful receptionist strummed through the speaker. He had rescued her from a life of sexual slavery on the streets of Turkey, and she repaid him with loyal, yet indifferent, service. In the years he had known her, she had never once expressed surprise. A trait he respected.