James Rollins - Innocent Blood

Arella waved her arm around the crater. “Jesus stood then where we stand now.”

Rhun pictured the well and the pool it must have once held. He imagined the bird and the boy along its banks. But what happened after that?

Arella moved along the ring of panels. The next revealed the boy casting his arms high. Rays, inscribed into the glass, shot upward from his palms. And amid those beams, the dove flew high, wings straight out.

“He healed it,” Erin said.

“No,” Arella said. “He restored it to life.”

“His first miracle,” Rhun breathed.

“It was.” She did not sound exulted by this act. “But the light of this miracle caught the dark eyes of another, someone who had been searching for him since the moment the angel came to Mary with his joyous message.”

“King Herod?” Jordan asked.

“No, a far greater enemy than Herod could ever be.”

“So not a man, I’m guessing?” Erin said.

Arella drew them to the next panel, where the boy faced a figure of smoke with eyes of fire. “It was indeed no man, but rather an implacable enemy, one who ambushed the boy not because of his hatred of the Christ child, but because he sought always to undo His father.”

“You’re talking about Lucifer,” Erin said, her voice hushed by dread.

Rhun stared at the glass, at the dark angel challenging the young Christ child — as Satan would do once again, when he would tempt Christ in the desert, when the Savior was a man.

“The Father of Lies came here, ready to do battle,” Arella explained. “But someone came to the boy’s defense.”

She stepped along the ring of art to reveal the boy now enfolded in the wings of an angel, just as the sibyl had enfolded Tommy that very morning.

“Another angel came to help him.” Erin turned to Arella. “Was it you?”

The other’s face softened. “Would that it had been, but it was not.”

Rhun understood the regret in her voice. What a privilege it would have been to have saved Christ.

“Who was it then?” Erin asked.

Arella nodded to the panel. It was still partially obscured by drifting sand. Rhun helped Erin clear it, the holiness burning his palms.

Erin pinched away a few final grains, noticing that it wasn’t only wings that guarded over the boy, but a sword, clutched in the hand of the angel.

Erin looked up at Arella. “The archangel Michael. The angel who fought Lucifer during the war in Heaven. The only one to ever wound Lucifer, striking him in the side with a sword .”

Arella took a deep breath. “Michael was always Heaven’s first and best sword, and so it was this time. He came down and shielded the boy from his former adversary.”

“What happened?” Jordan asked.

Arella bowed her head, as if unwilling to say. Rhun listened to the whisper of wind against sand, to the humans’ heartbeats. Sounds as eternal as the sibyl herself.

When he was certain that she would speak no more, he stepped by himself to the next sun-warmed panel. It depicted an explosion emanating from the boy, the lines shattering out from his thin form, stripping anything else off the panel.

Rhun lifted his face and swept his gaze around the crater. He tried to imagine a blast fierce enough to melt sand to glass. What could survive that? He pictured the angel’s wings shielding the mortal boy from the backlash.

But what of Christ’s defender?

Rhun turned to Arella. “How could Michael withstand such a miraculous blast from the child?”

“He could not.” She sighed softly, turning her back on the ring of art. “Michael was rent asunder.”

Rent asunder?

“All that remained of him was his sword, left abandoned here in the crater.”

Rhun reached the last panel. It showed only a chipped sword embedded point down in the crater. He scanned the arc of this story, trying to comprehend it fully.

Christ’s merciful act of restoring the life of a simple dove had resulted in the very destruction of an angel. How had the boy been able to forgive himself? Had it haunted him?

Rhun found himself on his knees before this last panel, covering his face. He had destroyed Elisabeta, a mere woman, and it still plagued him across the centuries. He was responsible for destroying her life and all those lives that followed in her bloody wake. Yet, in this moment, his hands did not hide his grief and shame, but his relief, recognizing the small measure of comfort offered by this tale.

Thank you, Lord.

Simply knowing that Christ himself could make a mistake lightened his own burden. This realization did not forgive Rhun’s sins, but it made them easier to carry.

Erin spoke up. “What became of Michael’s sword?”

“The boy came to me afterward, carrying a splinter of that sword in his hands.”

Arella touched her chest.

“That was the shard that you wore,” Erin said. “The one used to stab Tommy.”

She looked apologetically upon the boy. “It was.”

A piece of that angelic sword.

“Where is the rest of it?” Jordan asked, ever the warrior.

Arella’s serene voice grew shaky, as if the memory troubled her. “The boy told me that he had sinned when he killed the dove… and sinned again when he brought it back. That he was not ready for such responsibility of miracles.”

“So you’re saying Christ’s first miracle was a sin?” Jordan asked.

“He thought it was. But then again, in many ways, he was simply a scared, guilt-ridden boy. The truth is not for me to judge.”

Erin urged her to continue. “What happened after that?”

“He told me the rest of his story.” She waved an arm. “Then I calmed the boy and put him to bed, and I searched for the truth behind his words. I found this crater, the sword in its smoking center. Searching farther out, I discovered Lucifer’s footsteps to the south, stained by drops of his black blood.”

Rhun looked to the south. Now brought to his attention, he discovered a taint cutting through the holiness from that direction, faint but present.

Were those drops still out there?

“But of Michael,” Arella continued, “I found no trace.”

“And his sword?”

“It remains hidden,” she said. “Until the First Angel returns to Earth.”

“But isn’t that me?” Tommy asked.

Arella’s dark eyes lingered on Tommy for a silent moment, then she spoke. “You carry the best of him within you, but you are not the First Angel.”

“I don’t understand,” Tommy said.

Erin glanced at Rhun.

None of them did.

No wonder the boy could not bless the book.

Bitter disappointment coursed through Rhun. All the deaths to bring Tommy here had been in vain. So many had suffered and bled and died in pursuit of the wrong angel. And with the gates of Hell continuing to open, the world’s doom was now certain.

They had failed.

“Helicopter,” Christian said, stiffening in warning next to him.

Arella turned her eyes to the north, where she had been gazing frequently, as if she had expected as much. “So they all come at last. To see if what was once broken can be mended.”

“And what if it can’t?” Erin asked. She noted the sun sitting not far from the horizon. Sunset was little more than an hour away.

Rhun dreaded the answer.

“If it cannot”—Arella brushed her hands across her soiled white dress—“then the reign of man on Earth is over.”

December 20, 3:28 P.M. EET

Siwa, Egypt

If I only had their ears…

Jordan cocked his head, trying to discern any sign of a helicopter’s approach, but all he heard was the swish of wind across sand. He tried his eyes, but he found only a featureless tan horizon, sand dunes spreading in all directions, and a few flat-topped hills in the distance. Above him, the sky had turned a dark gray, the sun a wan brightness through the murk, sitting low this time in winter.