James Rollins - Innocent Blood

“Someone want to explain this to me?” Jordan asked.

In retrospect, she should have told him about the blackouts. But she hadn’t wanted to think about them, let alone share them.

Christian explained to both of them. “When a strigoi feeds on someone and the victim lives — which is a rare occurrence — the blood forms a bond between them. It lasts until the strigoi feeds again and erases that bond with a wash of new blood.”

Jordan looked sick.

A young server came by at that moment, his hair in blond dreadlocks, with a pad in hand, a pencil behind his ear. He was waved off after a round of black coffee was ordered.

Erin waited until the kid was out of earshot, then pressed on. “But what I’ve been experiencing makes no sense. It’s dark. Totally black. I have an intense claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. It’s as if I’m encased in a sarcophagus or coffin.”

“Like back in Masada?” Jordan asked.

She took his hand again, appreciating the heat of his palm, partially apologizing for snubbing him a moment ago. “That’s what I thought. I thought it was a panic attack. I dismissed the episodes as flashbacks to that moment when we were stuck in that ancient crypt. But certain details of those visions had struck me as odd. The box was cold, but it felt like I was lying in acid. It soaked through my clothes and burned my skin. And even stranger, everything smelled like wine.”

“Wine?” Christian asked, sitting straighter.

She nodded.

“If you were channeling Rhun during those visions, a bath of consecrated wine would burn.” Christian fixed her with his sharp green eyes. “Do you have any idea where this box might be? Could you hear anything?”

She slowly shook her head, trying to think of more details, but failing. “I’m sorry.”

All she remembered was that pain, sensing that what she had felt was only the tiniest fraction of what Rhun must be experiencing. How long had he been trapped there? Christian had said Rhun had gone missing shortly after the battle. That was two months ago. She couldn’t abandon him to that.

Another insight chilled her. “Christian, with each of these visions I feel weaker, more leaden. In the last, I could barely lift my arms.”

Christian’s expression confirmed her worst fear.

It likely meant Rhun was dying.

Christian reached and touched her arm, trying to reassure her. “The best plan is to get to Rome. Cardinal Bernard has more knowledge of this kind of bond than I do. It was more common in the early days of the Church.”

They were scheduled to leave by chartered plane in another two hours.

“And if we do find Rhun,” Erin asked, “what do we do after that?”

She feared she would be tossed aside again, summarily dismissed, like before.

“Then we all go in search of the First Angel,” Christian said.

The First Angel.

She knew all too well the prophecy concerning that mythic figure. She pictured the words inscribed on the first page of the Blood Gospel, words written by Christ, a prediction of a coming war — and a way to avert it.

A great War of the Heavens looms. For the forces of goodness to prevail, a Weapon must be forged of this Gospel written in my own blood. The trio of prophecy must bring the book to the First Angel for his blessing. Only thus may they secure salvation for the world.

“The time for waiting is past,” Christian pressed. “Especially after someone moved against you, Erin. They clearly know now how valuable you are.”

“Valuable?” She couldn’t keep a scoffing, bitter tone from that word.

“The prophecy says the trio must carry the book to the First Angel. The Knight of Christ, the Warrior of Man, and the Woman of Learning. Jordan and you are the last two. Rhun the first.”

“But I thought it was clear that I am not the Woman of Learning.” She kept her voice steady and forced out the next sentence. “I’m pretty sure I killed her.”

Jordan squeezed her hand. She had shot Bathory Darabont in the tunnels under Rome. Not only had she taken the woman’s life, but the Bathory family was long thought to be the true line from which the Woman of Learning would emerge. Erin’s bullet had ended that line, murdering the last living descendant.

“Darabont is indeed dead and with her that cursed line.” Christian sighed, leaning back with a shrug. “So it looks like you’re the best we’ve got, Dr. Erin Granger. What’s the point in second-guessing?”

The coffee finally arrived, allowing them to collect their thoughts.

Once the server was gone, Jordan took a sip, winced at the blistering heat, and nodded to Christian. “I agree with him. Let’s go find this angel dude.”

As if it could be so easy.

No one had the faintest idea who the First Angel was.

Tommy Bolar’s teeth ached from the cold. He hadn’t known that was possible. Standing at the ship’s rail in the darkness of the early Arctic morning, a rigid wind burned his exposed cheeks. White ice stretched to the horizon ahead. Behind the ship, a crushed wake of blue ice and black water marked the passage of the icebreaker through the frozen landscape.

He stared out, despairing. He had no idea where he was.

Or for that matter, what he was.

All he knew was that he was no longer the same fourteen-year-old boy who had watched his parents die in his arms atop the ruins of Masada, victims of a poison gas that killed them and healed him. He glanced at the bit of bare skin showing between his deerskin gloves and the sleeves of his high-tech down parka. Once, a brown patch of melanoma had stuck out on his pale wrist, showing his terminal condition — now it was gone, along with the rest of his cancer. Even his hair, lost to chemo, had begun to grow back.

He had been cured.

Or cursed. Depending on how you looked at it.

He wished he had died on that mountaintop with his parents. Instead, he had been kidnapped from an Israeli military hospital, stolen from the faceless doctors who had been trying to understand his miraculous survival. His latest jailers claimed he had more than survived the tragedy at Masada, insisted he had been more than cured of his cancer.

They said he could never die.

And worst of all, he had begun to believe them.

A tear rolled from his cheek, leaving a hot trail across his frozen skin.

He wiped it away with the back of his glove, growing angry, frustrated, wanting to scream at the endless expanse — not for help, but for release, to see his mother and father again.

Two months ago, someone had drugged him, and he woke up here, on this giant icebreaker in the middle of a frozen ocean. The ship was newly painted, mostly black, the cabins stacked on top like red LEGO bricks. So far he had counted roughly a hundred crewmembers aboard, memorizing faces, learning the ship’s routine.

For now, escape was impossible — but knowledge was power.

It was one of the reasons he spent so much time in the ship’s library, sifting through the few books in English, trying to learn as much as he could.

Any other inquiries fell on deaf ears. The crew spoke Russian, and none of them would talk to him. Only two people aboard the icebreaker ever spoke to him — and they terrified him, though he did his best to hide it.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Alyosha joined him at the rail. He carried two rapiers and passed one over. The Russian boy looked the same age as Tommy, but that face was a lie. Alyosha was lots older, decades older. Proving his inhumanity, Alyosha wore a pair of gray flannel pants and a perfectly pressed white shirt, open at the collar, exposing his pale throat to the frigid wind that raked across this empty corner of the icy deck. A real person would freeze to death in that outfit.