James Rollins - Innocent Blood

But now he had returned to Venice to banish her from his thoughts, fifty years after he had danced with her across these floorboards. By this time, he knew, she was likely dead, or a wizened and blind old woman who had long forgotten their magical night. All he had left of it himself was his memory and her old leather mask.

He turned the mask over in his hands now. Black and glossy, it was a thick flat ribbon of leather that slashed across her eyes, with a tiny paste jewel glittering near the corner of each eye. A daring design, its simplicity at odds with the ornate masks worn by the women of those times.

But she had needed no further adornment.

He had returned to these bright halls to cast that dark mask into the canal tonight and banish her ghost to the library of his past. Gripping the old leather, he glanced out the open window. Below, a gondolier poled his slim craft through the dark water, ripples lit silver by moonlight.

Beyond the canal’s banks, figures hurried across stone tiles or over bridges. People on mysterious errands. People on everyday ones. He did not know, did not care. Like everything else, it wearied him. For one moment, he had believed that he might find connection, until she left.

Reluctant now to part with it, he stroked the mask with his index finger. It had rested in the bottom of his trunk for years, wrapped in the finest silk. At first he’d been able to smell the scent of lotus blossoms, but even that had faded. He brought the mask now to his nose and sniffed — one last time — expecting to inhale the odors of old leather and cedar from his trunk.

But the scent of lotus blossoms bloomed instead.

He turned his head, fearful of looking, the movement so slow that he would not startle even a timorous bird. His heart thumped in his ears, so loud that he expected the sound to draw all eyes to him.

She stood before him, unmasked and unchanged, her serene smile the same as a half century before. The mask slipped from his fingers to the floor. His breath held in his throat. Dancers swirled around, but he remained motionless.

It could not be.

Could this be the same woman’s daughter?

He dismissed this possibility.

Not with such an exact likeness.

A darker thought intruded. He knew of the ungodly beasts that shared his march through time, as undying as himself, but of craven bloodlusts and madness.

Again he banished this prospect from his mind.

He could never forget the heat of her body through her velvet dress when he danced with her.

So what was she? Was she cursed like him? Was she immortal?

A thousand questions danced in his head, replaced finally by the only one that truly mattered, the question he had failed to ask fifty years ago.

“What is your name?” he whispered, afraid to shatter the moment into shards like the one that she wore around her slender neck.

“This evening, it is Anna.” Her voice sounded with the same, queer accent.

“But that is not your real name. Will you share it with me?”

“If you will.”

Her glittering brown eyes looked long into his, not flirting, instead assessing his measure. He slowly nodded his agreement, praying she would find him worthy.

“Arella,” she said in hushed tones.

He repeated her name, matching her voice syllable for syllable. “Arella.”

She smiled. She had probably not heard her name spoken aloud by another in many mortal lifetimes. Her eyes sought his, demanding he settle the promised price for learning her one true name.

For the first time in a thousand years, he said his aloud, too.

“Judas.”

“The cursed son of Simon Iscariot,” she finished, looking unsurprised, wearing only a faint smile.

She held out a hand toward him. “Would you care to dance?”

With secrets revealed, their relationship began.

But those secrets hid others, deeper and darker.

Secrets without end, to match each eternal life.

Oversize doors swung open behind him, reflected in the window, drawing him back from ancient Venice to modern-day Rome. Judas tapped his fingers against the cold ballistic glass, wondering what the medieval Venetian glassblowers would have made of it.

In the reflection, he watched Renate stand framed in the doorway. She wore a mulberry-colored business suit and a brown silk top. Even though she had grown from a young woman to middle-aged in his service, he found her attractive. He realized suddenly that it was because Renate reminded him of Arella. His receptionist had the same brown skin and black eyes, the same calm.

How have I not seen this before?

The blond monk stepped into the room behind her, wearing a face much younger than his years. Nervous, the Sanguinist pinched the edge of his small spectacles. His round face fell into lines of worry that looked out of place on one so youthful, betraying a hint of the hidden decades behind that smooth skin.

Renate left and soundlessly closed the door.

Judas waved him forward. “Come, Brother Leopold.”

The monk licked his lips, smoothed the drape of his simple hooded brown robe, and obeyed. He passed the fountain and came to a stop in front of the massive desk. He knew better than to sit without being told.

“As you ordered, I took the first train from Germany, Damnatus .”

Leopold bowed his head, using an ancient title that marked Judas’s past. The Latin roughly translated as the condemned, the wretched, and the damned . While others might take such a title as an insult, Judas wore it with pride.

Christ had given it to him.

Judas shifted a chair behind his desk, returning to his workspace, and sat. He kept the monk waiting as he focused his attention back on his earlier project. With deft and practiced skill, he unclipped the forewing he had ripped earlier and dropped it onto the floor. He opened his specimen drawer and removed another luna moth. He detached its forewing and used it to replace the one he had damaged, returning his creation to flawless perfection.

Now he must repair something else that was broken.

“I have a new mission for you, Brother Leopold.”

The monk stood silent in front of him, with the stillness that only Sanguinists could attain. “Yes?”

“As I understand it, your order is certain that Father Korza is the prophesied Knight of Christ and that this American soldier, Jordan Stone, is the Warrior of Man . But there remains doubt as to the identity of the third figure mentioned in the Blood Gospel’s prophecy. The Woman of Learning . Am I to understand that it is not Professor Erin Granger, as you originally surmised during the quest for Christ’s lost Gospel?”

Leopold bowed his head in apology. “I have heard such doubts, and I believe that they may be true.”

“If so, then we must find the true Woman of Learning.”

“It will be done.”

Judas pulled a silver razor from another drawer and sliced the tip of his finger. He held it over the moth he had constructed of metal and gossamer wings. A single shiny drop of blood fell onto the back of his creation, seeping through holes along the thorax and vanishing away.

The monk stepped back.

“You fear my blood.”

All strigoi did.

Centuries ago, Judas had learned that a single drop of his blood was deadly to any of these damned creatures, even those few who had converted to serve the Church as Sanguines.

“Blood holds great power, does it not, Brother Leopold?”