Innocent Blood (18 page)

23

December 19, 2:36
P.M.
CET

Castel Gandolfo, Italy

Jordan stretched beneath the bedsheets, every part of his naked body in contact with Erin’s. She murmured in her sleep, and he pulled her closer against him.

God, how he’d missed her.

A tap on the door woke Erin, clearly startling her. She sat up quickly. Blond hair brushed her shoulders, and the blanket fell down from her bare breasts. In the dim light coming through the shuttered windows, she looked beautiful.

He reached for her, unable to stop himself.

Christian called through the door, sounding very amused with himself. “You two have fifteen minutes! So finish what you started . . . or start what you want to finish. Either way, you’ve been given fair warning.”

“Thanks!” Jordan called back and grinned at Erin. “You know it’s a mortal sin to disobey a priest’s direct order.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s true,” she said with a relaxed smile—then pointed to the shower, to the promise of hot soapy water and naked skin. “But maybe for the sake of our souls, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

He matched her grin, hauled her into his arms, and carried her toward the bathroom.

By the time Christian knocked again, they were both showered, dressed, and strapped with their new weapons. Despite the scrapes and bruises, Jordan hadn’t felt so good in a long time.

Once out in the hall, Christian put a finger to his lips and handed each of them a small flashlight.

What is this about?
Jordan wondered.

Still, he trusted Christian enough not to question the man’s actions. Jordan and Erin followed him to the end of the corridor, down a series of stairs, and through a long tunnel that had no lights.

Jordan clicked on his flashlight, and Erin did the same.

Christian set a grueling pace down the passageway. It looked hewn out of the natural bedrock and stretched at least a mile. Finally Christian reached a steel door at the end and stopped. He entered digits in an electronic keypad and stepped back. The door swung soundlessly inward. It was a good foot thick and could probably withstand a mortar blast.

Bright sunlight flowed into the dark passageway.

Jordan smelled pine and loam.

Must be an emergency exit, one possibly designed to whisk the pope to safety in case of a threat at the castle.

Christian stepped through, then motioned for them to keep close.

Growing worried at all the subterfuge, Jordan shifted his assault rifle into a ready position and kept Erin between him and Christian. He wanted her protected front and back.

They stepped into a dense evergreen forest. It was cold beneath the shadowy bower. As he walked, his breath hung in the quiet air. A carpet of fallen pine needles muffled the sound of his feet.

Erin zipped up her wolf-leather jacket.

Even that small sound was too loud for this quiet forest.

Ahead of them, three figures melted out of the shadows. While Christian relaxed, Jordan kept firm hold of his rifle. Then he saw it was Nadia, leading Rhun and Bathory. Or at least he assumed it was the countess, as the woman was veiled from head to toe against the sun. But the silver handcuff secured to one of her thin wrists left little doubt that it was Bathory. The other cuff was fastened to Rhun.

The Sanguinists were taking no chances with the countess.

Personally, Jordan would rather be handcuffed to a cobra.

Nadia motioned Jordan behind the thick bole of a pine for a private meeting. It was unnerving that no one spoke. He gave Erin’s elbow a quick squeeze, leaving her with Christian, then followed Nadia.

Once out of sight. Nadia pulled out a single thick sheet of paper, folded and sealed with red wax, bearing the insignia of a crown with two crossed keys.

The papal seal.

With one long fingernail she broke the seal and unfolded the paper to reveal a hand-drawn map of Italy. A blue line traced north from Castel Gandolfo, ending near Rome. Highway numbers were marked, along with a timetable.

Nadia lifted a lighter and rasped a flame to life, ready to burn the paper, her eyes on him.

Clearly he was supposed to commit this map to memory.

Sighing silently, he memorized the highways and timetables. Once done, he met her eyes.

She mimed a driving motion and pointed to him.

Looks like I’m driving.

She lifted the lighter to the page. Yellow flames licked up the thick paper, consuming everything to ash. The purpose of all this pantomime was plain. Jordan, and Nadia, and whoever wrote the note—probably the cardinal—were the only ones who were supposed to know their destination and route.

They weren’t giving the bomber another chance to take them all out.

With the matter settled, Nadia led him back to where the others waited.

Once they were all together, they set off across the forest to a parking lot. Only two vehicles were parked there: a black Mercedes SUV with dark tinted windows and a Ducati motorcycle, also black and with lines that screamed speed.

He looked longingly at the bike, but he knew he would end up with the SUV.

Proving this, Nadia hiked a leg over the motorcycle and raised an eyebrow toward him. He grinned, remembering their wild ride through Bavaria a few months back. He’d never been so scared or exhilarated. Her preternatural reflexes had let her handle the bike at speeds he had not imagined possible.

But that wasn’t going to be today.

She tossed him the keys to the SUV before starting up her bike and roaring off.

Jordan’s group headed for the SUV. Rhun helped the countess into the back, flanked on her other side by Christian. Jordan held open the front passenger door for Erin. He was not about to let her sit in the back with Rhun and the countess.

Even the front seat was too close to that pair.

3:14
P.M.

As the vehicle fled up a road paved to a smooth black finish, Elizabeth clenched her free hand into a fist. Automobiles terrified her. In Rome, she had avoided their foul smells, their grumbling engines. She had no desire to get near one, and now she sat inside one.

It was very like a carriage from her day, except such carriages were never so fast. Never had a horse traveled across the ground at such a pace. How did the soldier maintain control over it? She knew the vehicle was a mechanical device, like a clock, but she couldn’t help thinking of it spilling them from its warm leather cocoon and dashing their brains against the hard road.

She monitored the hearts of the humans in the front, using them to measure the potential danger. Right now, both hearts beat at a slow, relaxed pace. They did not fear this belching, growling beast.

She did her best to mirror their emotions.

If they do not show fear, she could not allow herself to either.

As the minutes passed, her initial terror dulled into simple boredom. The black ribbon of road unspooled before her with an eerie sameness. Trees, villages, and other automobiles passed to either side, unremarkable and unremarked.

Once her fear settled, her thoughts returned to Rhun. She remembered him holding her hand, his lips on her throat. He was not so passionless and dedicated to the Church as he seemed—not now or before. He had come so close again to betraying his vows in the cell.

She knew it was not mere bloodlust.

He wanted
her
.

He still loves me.

Of all the strangeness of this modern world, that struck her as the oddest. She considered this now, knowing she would wait for the right opportunity to exploit it.

To break free.

Perhaps to break them
both
free.

The automobile passed a row of rustic Italian houses. In a few windows, she glimpsed people moving about inside. She envied them the simplicity of their existence—but she also recognized how stifled they were, trapped by the span of one lifetime, living lives of frailty, forever worn down by passing years.

Such fragile and fleeting creatures, these humans were.

After more driving, the automobile entered a vast field of the same hard material as the road and pulled beside a giant metal structure with massive open doors. The soldier turned the key, and the automobile’s growling ended.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Rhun answered, “A hangar. A place that houses airplanes.”

She nodded. She knew airplanes, having seen their lights in the night sky often over Rome. In her small apartment, she had pored over pictures of them, fascinated by such wonders of this age.

In the shadows of the hangar, she spotted a small white airplane with a blue stripe on its hull.

From a doorway in its side, Nadia appeared at the top of a short set of stairs. Elizabeth’s fangs drew a fraction longer, her body remembering the countless small humiliations the tall woman had subjected her to.

Rhun guided Elizabeth out of the automobile, their movements clumsy because of the burning shackles that bound them together. They followed the others into the deep shadows of the building.

Nadia joined them. “I’ve checked the aircraft thoroughly. It is clean.”

Rhun turned to Elizabeth. “It is dark enough inside here. If you like, you can remove your veil for now.”

Happy to do so, she reached up with her free hand and pulled the cloth away. Cool air flowed across her face and lips, bringing with it the smell of tar and pitch and other scents that were acrid, bitter, and burnt. This was an era that seemed to run on fire and burning oil.

She kept her face away from the open doors. Even the diffuse sunlight hurt her, but she did her best to conceal her pain.

Instead, she watched the soldier as he stretched his back and stamped blood back into his legs after the drive. He reminded her of a restless stallion, loosed after being stabled for too long. His title—
the Warrior of Man
—fit him well.

He kept close to the woman, Erin Granger. He was clearly besotted with her, and even Rhun seemed more aware of the woman’s presence than Elizabeth liked.

Still, Elizabeth had to admit the historian had an athletic grace about her and a fine mind. In another time, another life, they might have been friends.

Nadia headed back toward the airplane. “If we’re to make our rendezvous, we must leave now.”

The group followed her up the stairs and into the aircraft.

Ducking inside, Elizabeth glanced to the left, to a small room with two tiny chairs, angled windows, and red and black switches and buttons.

“That’s called the cockpit,” Rhun explained. “The pilot flies the plane from in there.”

She saw the youngest of the Sanguinists, the one called Christian, taking a seat inside. It seemed the skills of the Sanguinists had adapted to this new age.

She turned her back and headed into the main space. Rich leather seats lined each side of the small airplane with a narrow aisle down the middle. She paid heed to the small windows, imagining how it would be to view the world from the air, the clouds from above, the stars from the sky.

This was indeed a time of wonders.

Her eyes strayed past the seats and settled on a long black box in back, with handles on the ends. The box was plainly of modern construction, but its shape had not changed since long before her time.

It was a coffin.

She stopped so suddenly that Rhun collided with her.

“Forgive me,” he said quietly.

Her eyes had not left the coffin. She sniffed. The box did not contain a corpse, or she would have smelled it.

Why is it here?

Then Nadia smiled—and Elizabeth immediately understood.

She lunged back, bumping hard into Rhun. With her left hand, she pulled Rhun’s hooked blade from its wrist sheath. In one quick motion, she swept it at Nadia. But her target danced back, the blade catching her on the chin, drawing blood.

But not nearly enough.

Elizabeth cursed the clumsiness of her left hand.

Behind her, a door slammed. She turned and saw that Christian had stuffed the two humans in the cockpit for safekeeping. She was flattered that he thought her such a threat.

She tightened her grip on the knife and faced Nadia.

The woman had slipped free a length of silver chain, readying it like a whip, and carried a short sword in the other.

“Stop!” Rhun yelled, his voice booming in the small space.

Elizabeth held her ground. She pictured the sarcophagus from which she was birthed into this new world. She remembered the bricked-up cell in her castle tower where she had slowly starved. She could not stand to be confined again, to be trapped.

“The last time you put me in a coffin,” she spat at Rhun, “I lost four hundred years.”

“It’s just for this trip,” Rhun promised her. “The plane will be traveling above the clouds. There will be no escaping the sun where we fly.”

Still, she panicked at the thought of being shut away again, unable to control herself. She thrashed against the silver that bound her to him. “I’d rather die.”

Nadia stepped closer. “If you prefer.”

With a quick flick of her short sword, the woman slashed Elizabeth’s throat. Silver burned her skin, and blood poured from the wound, trying to purge the holiness from her body. Elizabeth stopped fighting, the blade falling from her fingertips. Rhun was there, clamping his hand over her throat, holding in the blood.

“What have you done?” he hissed at Nadia.

“She’ll live,” Nadia said. “I cut shallow. It will make it easier to get her into the box without more needless fighting.”

Nadia lifted the hinged lid.

Elizabeth moaned, but crippled by silver, she had the strength to do nothing more.

Rhun lifted her and carried her to the coffin.

“I promise that I will fetch you from here,” he said. “Within hours.”

He lowered her into the coffin gently. A
click
and the manacle left her wrist.

She willed herself to sit up, to fight, but she could not summon the strength.

The lid came down on the box, smothering her again into darkness.