James Rollins - Innocent Blood

She struggled to smile.

“Do not blame yourself,” he said. “If you can grant me but a single favor, grant me that. You are blameless in all this.”

Her chin firmed, as it always did when she held her feelings inside.

He reached up through the pain and curled a strand of her long hair around his finger. “We are but His instruments.”

She placed her palm against his wound. “I could fetch water from the spring to heal you.”

Fear shot through his body. He searched for clever words to persuade her against such a path, but she knew his ways. So he settled on one word, placing all his will into it, letting the truth shine in his eyes.

“Please.”

She bent and kissed his lips, then fell into his arms one last time.

Erin’s throat tightened as an angel wept for Judas.

Arella cradled him and stroked his gray hair back from his forehead while murmuring words in an ancient tongue. He smiled up at Arella, as if they were young lovers instead of two ageless creatures caught at the end of time.

Rhun touched Erin’s shoulder, looking to the darkening sky.

His single touch reminded her that, while the battle was won, the war was not over. She looked to the sun, sunk deep into the horizon to the west. They were nearly out of time to undo what Iscariot had set in motion.

She stared at the man who had started all of this.

Iscariot’s blood flowed from his side, weeping out his life. In the growing darkness, she noted the soft glow shining within the crimson, remembering seeing the same when he had accidentally cut his finger in the cavern under the ruins of Cumae, by a sliver of the same blade that slew him now.

She remembered Arella, casting out the same golden radiance when she rescued Tommy. And even Tommy’s blood had glowed faintly on the beach in Cumae.

What did that mean?

She looked from Tommy, who stood still by the well, to Judas.

Did that mean they both carried angelic blood?

She remembered that both Tommy and Judas had also encountered a dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, an echo of the bird Christ had killed. And both were about Christ’s same age at that time.

And then Arella’s words earlier.

Michael was rent asunder. You carry the best of the First Angel within you.

Erin began to understand.

Tommy didn’t carry all of Michael inside of him, only the best, the most shining and brightest, a force capable of granting life.

Another vessel carried his worst, his darkest, with a force that killed.

She saw that the shine of Iscariot’s blood was distinctly darker than Tommy’s blood.

Two different shades of gold.

She turned and gazed across the crater, at the glass exposed by their digging, at the round plug that once sealed the well. Like the crater itself, one half was dark gold, the other lighter.

She remembered thinking it looked like an Eastern yin-yang symbol.

Two parts that make a whole.

“We need them both,” Erin mumbled.

She peered at Arella. Earlier, the sibyl had stayed silent because she knew Iscariot needed to come here, too. Had Arella even drawn that symbol in the sand so he would know to come to this place?

Bernard drifted closer to Erin, his clothes ripped and bloodied, but he must have sensed the growing understanding inside her. “What are you saying?”

Rhun looked on, too.

She drew the two with her, along with Jordan. They needed to hear this, to tell her she was wrong.

Please, let me be wrong.

Rhun turned that dark, implacable gaze of his upon her. “What is it, Erin?”

“The First Angel isn’t Tommy. It’s the archangel Michael, the heavenly being rent asunder. Split in two .” She gestured to the crater’s glass. “He must be reunited. We must fix what was broken here.”

That was Arella’s warning to them — or the reign of man would end.

“But where’s his other half?” Bernard asked.

“In Judas.”

Shock spread through the group.

“Even if you’re right,” Jordan asked, “how are we going to get them back together?”

Erin focused on Iscariot, dying on the sands.

She knew that answer, too. “Their immortal shells must be stripped from them.”

Jordan gaped at her. “They have to die?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s the only way. That’s why the sword was left here, why we had to come here.”

“Iscariot has already received a mortal wound,” Rhun said. “So the blade must afflict one upon the boy?”

“Do we dare do that?” Jordan asked. “I thought we decided in Cumae that Tommy’s life was more important than even saving the world.”

Erin wanted to agree. The boy had done nothing wrong. He had tried to help an innocent dove, and in return he had seen his family ripped from him, and he had suffered countless tortures. Was it right that he must die here as well?

She could not send this child to his death.

But it was also one life against the lives of the just and unjust around the world.

Jordan stared at her.

She knew if she gave him the word that he would carry it out, reluctantly but he would. He was a soldier — he understood about sacrificing for the greater good. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one.

She covered her face.

She could not watch more innocent blood be spilled. She had watched her sister sacrificed to false belief. She had caused Amy’s death because of her own ignorance of the danger she had put her in. She would not take another innocent life, no matter how much her mind told her that she must.

“No,” she gasped out, decidedly. “We can’t kill a boy to save the world.”

Bernard suddenly moved toward Jordan, going for the sword. But Jordan was as swift now and lifted the blade to the cardinal’s chest, its point over his silent heart.

“This will kill you as surely as any strigoi, ” Jordan warned.

Bernard glanced at Rhun to back him up, to join him against Jordan. The cardinal wanted that sword.

Rhun folded his arms. “I trust the wisdom of the Woman of Learning.”

“The boy must die,” Bernard insisted. “Or the world dies with him. In horror beyond earthly imaginings. What is one boy against that?”

“Everything,” Erin said. “Murdering a boy is an evil deed. Every evil act matters. Every single one. We must stand against each and every one, or who are we?”

Bernard sighed. “What if it’s neither good nor evil, only necessary?”

Erin clenched her hands into fists.

She would not let Tommy be murdered.

“Erin.” Jordan’s worried blue eyes met hers. He nodded over to the well.

Tommy made a placating motion with his palms toward Elizabeth, keeping her there. He then stalked over and studied each of them.

“I know,” he said, looking exhausted. “When I touched the sword and decided to bring it out of the well… I knew.”

Erin remembered the fire in his eyes as he held the sword.

“It’s about choice,” he said. “I have to choose this, only then will all be set right.”

Hearing this now, Erin realized how close they had come to ruin. If she had unleashed Jordan or if Bernard had grabbed the blade, if either of them had thrust the sword into the boy without his consent, they would have lost all.

This thought gave her a small measure of comfort, but only very small.

What Tommy was saying meant that the ending would be the same.

A dead boy on the sands.

“But Iscariot didn’t agree to be stabbed,” Rhun warned.

Erin stiffened, realizing Rhun was right.

Have we already lost?

Jordan swallowed, lowering the sword, knowing Bernard could no longer force the matter. “I think Judas did agree,” Jordan said. “During the fight, he was matching me move by move. Then suddenly he let his guard down. I didn’t realize it at the time, just reacted, stabbing him.”