Innocent Blood (24 page)

31

December 19, 11:03
P.M.
CET

Stockholm, Sweden

Erin walked down a well-lit street, heading away from the shelter and warmth of the cathedral. Snow fell more thickly now, shrinking the world around her. Flakes soon dusted her hair, her shoulders. A few inches had accumulated underfoot.

A handful of cars flowed along the street at this late hour, tires rumbling over cobblestones, headlights poking holes through falling snow.

She kept a firm grip on Jordan—both to keep from slipping on the icy pavement and to make sure she was not dreaming. As they walked, she watched the warm breath huffing from his lips, turning white in the cold air.

Less than an hour ago, he had been dead—no breath and no heartbeat.

She studied Jordan sidelong.

Her logical mind struggled to understand this miracle, to put it into scientific context, to understand the rules. But for now, she simply held tight to him, grateful that he was warm and alive.

Rhun walked on the other side of her. He looked beaten down, weaker than even the recent loss of blood could explain. She could guess why. Bathory had done a great deal of damage to him—and not only to his body. He still clearly loved her, and the countess seemed intent on using those feelings to hurt him.

Finally, Christian stopped in front of a well-lit storefront.

“Where are we?” Jordan asked.

“An Internet café.” Christian opened the door, tinkling a bell attached to the door frame. “It was the closest one I could find this late.”

Happy to escape the snow, Erin hurried into the warm building. Inside, it looked more like a convenience store than an Internet café—shelves of food stretched off to her left and a refrigerator case covered one wall. But in the back, two metal folding chairs waited in front of computer monitors and keyboards set on a long card table.

Christian spoke to the bored woman behind the counter. She wore black, with a silver stud in her tongue that glinted as she talked. Christian purchased a cell phone, asking terse questions in Swedish. Once done, he handed her a hundred-euro note and headed for the back of the store.

At the counter, Jordan ordered four sausages from the roller grill, where it looked like they had been turning since the beginning of the millennium. Erin added two Cokes, a couple bags of potato chips, and a handful of chocolate bars to the pile.

She might not get a chance to eat again for a long time.

Jordan carried their dinner on a piled tray to the computer stations. Christian already sat in front of one monitor, his fingers flying, blurring over the keyboards.

Rhun hovered at his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Jordan asked, wolfing down a sausage.

“Checking the contingency plan I worked out with Cardinal Bernard.”

“What contingency plan?” Erin pressed, forgetting the unwrapped chocolate bar for the moment.

“The cardinal wanted our dear countess kept on a short leash,” Christian explained. “In case she broke her bonds and tried to escape. I devised a way to keep track of her.”

Jordan gripped the young Sanguinist’s shoulder with a greasy hand, smiling. “You planted a tracking device on her, didn’t you?”

Christian smiled. “Inside her cloak.”

Erin matched his grin. If they could track Bathory, there was a good chance they could track the boy.

Rhun glared down at the smaller man. “Why was I never informed of this?”

“You’ll have to take it up with Bernard.” Christian ducked his head lower, looking chagrined at his subterfuge.

Rhun sighed heavily, shedding his anger. Erin read the understanding that came to his eyes. The cardinal had not trusted that Rhun might not escape with the countess. After Rhun had hidden Bathory for centuries, Bernard could not be blamed for this bit of caution.

“It may take a few minutes to pick up her signal and gain a fix on it,” Christian warned. “So make yourselves comfortable.”

Erin did exactly that, slipping her arm around Jordan’s waist and resting her head against the warmth of his chest, listening to his heartbeat, appreciating each solid
lub-dub.

After ten minutes of keyboard tapping and mumbled complaints about connection speeds, Christian pounded a fist on the table—not in anger, but satisfaction.

“Got it!” he declared. “I’m picking up her signal at the airport.”

Rhun turned with a sweep of his black robe, drawing up Christian, who quickly logged out. The two Sanguinists rushed away, not bothering to hide their preternatural speed from the counter clerk.

Oblivious, the girl had her nose buried in a dog-eared paperback, her iPod earbuds firmly in place.

Jordan hurried after them, grousing. “Sometimes I really wish those guys needed to eat and sleep.”

She grabbed his hand again and jogged with him toward the door, waving good-bye to the girl behind the counter. Erin was equally ignored by the disdain of youth.

She suppressed a smile, suddenly missing her students.

11:18
P.M.

Elizabeth settled into a seat by the airplane’s window. The space was much like the one she had traveled in earlier to come here: rich leather seats, small bolted tables. Only this time, she was not trapped in a coffin. As she touched the scarf around her neck, anger flared inside her.

She stared out the round window. The lights of the airport glowed, each wreathed in a glittering halo of snow. She clipped the unfamiliar belt into place across her lap. She had never worn such a restraint, but Iscariot and the boy had both fastened theirs, so she assumed that she should as well.

She glanced at the child seated next to her, trying to understand what made him so special. He was the First Angel, another immortal, but he seemed outwardly to be just a normal boy. She even heard his heart beating in fear and pain. After bandaging the worst of his outer wounds, his new captors had given him a set of gray clothes to wear, soft and loose so as not to abrade his raw skin.

Sweats,
they had called them.

She turned her attention to the mystery seated across from her.

Judas Iscariot.

He had removed his overcoat and wore a modern cashmere suit, well tailored. On the small table between them rested a glass box, holding his collection of moths, save three that flitted about the cabin. She knew they remained loose as a reminder of the price of any disobedience, as if she had not been paying that price for centuries.

The plane accelerated across the snowy black field. She clasped her hands in her lap, letting her cloak fall over them so that Iscariot could not see her nervousness. She tried not to imagine this metal contraption flinging itself into the air and hurling itself hundreds of miles across land and sea.

Nature never intended such a thing.

Next to her, the boy reclined his seat, clearly indifferent to the airplane and how it functioned. Several spots of crimson stained his gray sweats, weeping from the hundreds of cracks in his thawed skin. The scent of his blood filled the cabin, but oddly it held no temptation for her.

Was the blood of angels different from all others?

He brushed brown hair out of his eyes. He was older than she had first thought, perhaps fourteen. The anguish in his face reminded her of her son, Paul, whenever he was hurt. Sadness welled up in her at the memory, knowing her son was now dead, along with all her children. She wondered what had happened to her son.

Did he have a long life? Was he happy? Did he marry and father children?

She wished that she might know these simple facts. Bitterness rose in her throat. Rhun stole that from her with a single careless act. She had lost her daughters, her son, everyone whom she had loved.

The boy shifted in his seat with a small groan. Like her, he had also lost everything. Rhun had told her how his parents had died in front of him, poisoned by a horrible gas.

She gently touched his shoulder. “Are you in much pain?”

Incredulous eyes met hers.

Of course he was in pain.

A cut above one brow had clotted and dried. Already he was healing. She touched her throat, still throbbing from the wound Nadia had given her. She was also healing, but it would take more blood.

As if reading her thoughts, Iscariot flicked her a quick glance. “Refreshments will be served in a moment, my dear.”

Beyond their cabin, the engines rose in pitch, and the plane took a smooth jump into the sky. She held her breath, as if that would help hold the plane aloft. The craft rose higher. Her stomach fell and settled. The feeling reminded her of jumping her beloved mare across fences.

Finally, their course settled into a smooth glide, like a hawk through the air.

She slowly released her breath.

Iscariot lifted an arm, and the blond bear of a man who had accompanied them from the maze lumbered into the back of the plane.

“Please, Henrik, bring drinks for our guests. Perhaps something warm after all the ice and cold.”

The man bowed his head and departed.

Her attention returned to the window, captivated by the lights growing smaller and smaller below. They flew higher than any bird. Exhilaration flared through her.

Henrik returned a few minutes later.

“Hot chocolate,” he said, bending to place a steaming mug into the boy’s hands.

He then lifted a small bowl toward her. The heady fragrance of warm blood wafted to her. She noted the white tape at the crook of the brute’s thick arm, stained with a drop of blood. It seemed there was little that his servants would not do for their master. Her opinion of Iscariot grew.

She accepted the bowl and drained its warm contents in a single draught. Heat and bliss spread outward from her belly, into her arms, her legs, the ends of her fingertips. The lingering ache in her neck faded. She now throbbed with strength and delight.

How could the Sanguinists refuse such pleasure?

Rejuvenated, she turned her attention to her young companion. She remembered the conversation aboard the train. “I understand your name is Thomas Bolar.”

“Tommy,” he answered softly, offering something more intimate.

She offered the same. “Then you may call me Elizabeth.”

His gaze focused a bit more strongly on her. In turn, she studied him. He might be a valuable ally. The Church wanted him, and if he was truly the First Angel, he might have powers that she yet failed to comprehend.

“You should drink,” she said, nodding to the mug in his hands. “It will warm you.”

Still looking at her, he lifted the cup and sipped gently, wincing a bit from the heat.

“Good,” she said and turned to Henrik. “Fetch clean towels, hot water.”

The blond man seemed taken aback at her tone. He glanced at his master.

“Bring her what she wants,” Iscariot ordered.

She savored this small victory, and moments later, Henrik returned with a basin and a pile of white towels. She soaked the first towel and held it toward Tommy.

“Clean your face and hands. Gently now.”

Tommy seemed ready to refuse, but she kept her arm out until, with a tired sigh, he took the towel. After placing his mug down, he wrung the towel’s heat in his hands and pressed it to his face. Soon he was rubbing a second towel up his arms, tucking it under his shirt and across his chest. His face softened with the simple pleasure of the damp heat.

His gaze, also softened now, found hers again. “Thank you.”

She nodded her head very slightly and turned her attention to the gray-haired man across from her. When she had last seen him, four hundred years ago, he had worn the gray silk tunic of a nobleman. It felt like only months ago, after slumbering away the centuries in Rhun’s trap. Back then a ruby ring had adorned one of his fingers, a ring that he had given to Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, Anna, marking his oath to protect the Bathory family.

But why?

She asked that now. “Why did you come to me when I was imprisoned in Čachtice Castle?”

He studied her for a long breath before responding. “Your fate interested me.”

“Because of the prophecy?”

“Many spoke of your skills at healing, your sharp mind and keen eye. I heard whispers of the Church’s interest in you, in your family. So I came to see for myself if the rumors of your wisdom were true.”

So he came sniffing at the edges of prophecy, like a dog on a coattail.

“And what did you find?” she asked.

“I found the Church’s interest of possible worth. I decided to watch over the women of your lineage.”

“My daughters. Anna and Katalin.”

He bowed his head. “And many after that.”

A yearning ached in her, to fill in the gaps of her past, to know the fate of her family. “What became of them? Of Anna and Katalin?”

“Anna had no children. But your eldest, Katalin, had two daughters and a son.”

She turned away, wishing she might have seen them, the seed and blood of the noble house of Bathory. Had they possessed Katalin’s simple beauty and easy grace? She would never know, because they were also long dead.

All because of Rhun.

“And what of my son, Paul?”

“He married. His wife bore him three sons and a daughter.”

Relief washed through her, knowing now they had all lived, had lives after her. She was afraid to ask how
long
they had lived, how their lives had unfolded. For now, she was content to know that her line had not been broken.

Tommy dropped the towel into the bowl next to his seat and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, looking more settled.

“You should finish your drink,” she scolded him, motioning to the mug. “It will help to restore your strength.”

“What do I care about my strength?” he mumbled. “I’m just a prisoner.”

She lifted the mug and held it out to him. “As am I. And prisoners must keep up their strength at all costs.”

He took the mug from her hands, his brown eyes curious. Perhaps he had not realized that she was as much a prisoner as he.

Iscariot shifted in his seat. “You are
not
my prisoners. You are my guests.”