James Rollins - Innocent Blood

She drew her pistol from the ankle holster and clicked off the safety, searching the live oaks for a target. But it was too dark to see anything. With her heart thundering in her ears, she cast a glance toward the distant stables.

Nate was probably there by now.

Blackjack suddenly reared, almost tossing her from the saddle. She leaned low over his neck as he tore away toward the stables. She didn’t try to slow or stop him.

Fear tightened her vision, while she struggled to search in all directions. She tasted blood on her tongue as she bit her lip.

Then the smell of wine filled her nostrils.

No, no, no…

She fought to keep from slipping away, sensing another attack coming on. Panic tightened her grip on Blackjack’s reins. If she lost control now, she’d pitch to the ground.

Then came a worse terror.

A low growl rumbled out of the night, rolling across the hills toward her. The guttural cry rose from no natural throat, but something horrid—

— and close.

Rhun lurched up and away. His head smashed against smooth stone. The blow opened a wound on his temple and knocked him back into the scalding bath of wine with a splash. He had awakened like this many times, trapped inside a stone sarcophagus, his body half submerged in wine — wine that had been blessed and consecrated into Christ’s blood.

His cursed flesh burned in that holiness, floating in a sea of red pain. Part of him wanted to fight it, but another part of him knew that he had earned it. He had sinned centuries ago, and now he had found his true penance.

But how much time had passed?

Hours, days, years?

The pain refused to abate. He had sinned much, so he must be punished much. Then he could rest. His body craved rest — an end to pain, an end to sin.

Still, as he felt himself slipping away, he fought against it, sensing he must not surrender. He had a duty.

But to what?

He forced his eyes to stay open, to face a blackness even his preternatural vision could not pierce. Agony continued to rack his weakened body, but he beat it back with faith.

He reached a hand for the heavy silver cross he always wore on his breast — and found only wet cloth. He remembered. Someone had stolen his crucifix, his rosary, all the proofs of his faith. But he did not need them to reach the heavens. He breathed another prayer into the silence and pondered his fate.

Where am I? When…

He had a weight of years behind him, more than humans could fathom.

Lifetimes of sin and service.

The memories plagued him as he hung within that burning sea. He drifted into and out of them.

… a horse cart stuck in the mud. He shoved bark under the wooden wheels while his sister laughed at him, her long braids flying from side to side.

… a gravestone with a woman’s name on it. That same laughing sister. But this time he wore the garb of a priest.

… gathering lavender in a field and talking of court intrigues. Pale white hands placed the purple stalks into a handwoven basket.

… trains, automobiles, airplanes. Traveling ever faster across the surface of the earth, while seeing ever less.

… a woman with golden hair and amber eyes, eyes that saw what his could not.

He pulled free of the crush of these memories.

Only this moment mattered.

Only this place.

He must hold on to the pain, to his body.

He felt around, his hands plunging into cold liquid that burned as if it boiled. He was a Knight of Christ, ever since that moonlit evening he had visited his sister’s grave. And while Christ’s blood had sustained him over the long centuries since, the same consecrated wine blazed against him always, its holiness at war with the evil deep inside him.

He took a deep breath, smelling stone and his own blood. He stretched his arms and ran his palms along the polished surfaces around him. He stroked the marble — slick as glass. Across the roof of his prison, his fingertips found a tracery of inlaid silver. It burned his fingertips.

Still, he pressed his palms to that design and pushed against the sarcophagus’s stone lid. He vaguely sensed he had done this many times before — and like those prior attempts, he failed again. The weight would not be shifted.

Weakened by even this small effort, he collapsed limply back into the wine.

He cupped his hands and lifted the scalding bitter liquid to his lips. The blood of Christ would lend him strength, but it would also force him to relive his worst sins. Steadying himself against the penance that must follow, he drank. As his throat burned with fire, he folded his hands in prayer.

Which of his sins would the wine torture him with this time?

As he drifted into it, he realized his penance was revealing a sin that was hundreds of years old.

The servants of Čachtice Castle huddled outside the steel door of the windowless tower room. Inside, their former mistress had been imprisoned, charged with the deaths of hundreds of young girls. As a member of Hungarian nobility, the countess could not be executed, only shut off from the world for her crimes, where her bloodlust could be bottled up behind brick and steel.

Rhun had come here for one purpose: to rid the world of this creature, to atone for his role in her transformation from a woman of sweet spirit, one skilled in the healing arts, into a beast who ravaged the surrounding countryside, stripping young girls of their lives.

He stood before the countess now, locked inside the room with her. He had bought the servants’ silence with gold and promises of freedom. They wanted her gone from the castle as much as he.

They, too, knew what she was and cowered outside.

Rhun had also arrived with a gift for the countess, something she had demanded to gain her cooperation. To appease her, he had found a young girl, sick with fever, soon to die, in a neighboring orphanage, and brought her to this monster.

Standing beside the prison cot, Rhun listened as the young girl’s heart stumbled and slowed. He did nothing to save her. He could not. He must wait. He hated himself, but he remained still.

At last, the weak heart stuttered its final beat.

You will be the last one she kills, he promised.

Near to death herself, starved for so long in this prison, the countess raised her head from the girl’s throat. Pearls of blood dripped from her white chin. Her silver eyes held a dreamy and sated look, an expression he had seen there once before. He would not dwell on that. He prayed that she was distracted enough for him to end this, and that he would be strong enough to do so.

He could not fail again.

He bent to the cot, untangled her thin limbs from the dead girl. He gently lifted the countess’s cold form in his arms and carried her away from the soiled bed.

She leaned her cheek against his, her lips near his ear. “It is good to be in your arms again,” she whispered, and he believed her. Her silver eyes shone up at him. “Will you break your vows once more?”

She favored him with a slow, lazy smile, mesmerizingly beautiful. He responded, trapped for a moment by her charm.

He remembered his love for her, how in a moment of hubris he had believed himself capable of breaking his vow as a Sanguinist, that he could lie with her like any ordinary man. But in his lust of that moment, locked to her, inside her, he had lost control and let the demon in him burst its bonds. Teeth ripped her soft throat and drank deeply until that font was nearly empty, the woman under him at death’s door. To save her, he had turned her into a monster, fed her his own blood to keep her with him, praying she would take the same vows he did and join the Sanguinist order alongside him.