The Blood Gospel (20 page)

How she loved the sun—whether it be the warmth of a summer afternoon or merely the cold promise of a bright winter’s day.

She continued across the garden now, gathering lavender and thyme to make a poultice for her mare, all the while instructing him on the uses of each. In the months since he had known her, he had learned much about medicinal plants. He had even begun to write a book on the subject, hoping to share her gifts as a healer with the world.

She brushed his palm with her soft fingertips as she handed him stalks of lavender. A thrill surged through his body. A priest should not feel such a thing, but he did not move away. He stepped closer, admiring the sunlight on her jet-black hair, the sweep of her long white neck down to her creamy shoulders, and the curves of her soft silk gown.

Elisabeta’s maidservant held up the basket for the lavender. The wisp of a girl turned her head to the side to hide the raspberry-colored birthmark that covered half her face.

“Anna, take the basket back to the kitchen and empty it,” Elisabeta instructed, dropping in one more sprig of thyme.

Anna retreated across the field, struggling under the heavy load. Rhun would have helped the small girl carry such a burden, but Elisabeta would never allow it, considering it not his place.

Elisabeta watched her maid leave. Once they were alone, she turned to Rhun, her face now even brighter—if that were possible.

“A moment’s peace!” she exclaimed gladly. “It is so lonely with my servants constantly around me.”

Rhun, who often chose to spend days alone in dark prayer, understood all too well the loneliness of false company.

She smiled at him. “But not you, Father Korza. I never feel lonely in your company.”

He could not hold her gaze. Turning away, he knelt and cut a stalk of lavender.

“Don’t you ever tire of it, Father Korza? Always wearing a mask?” She adjusted her wide-brimmed hat. She always took great pains to keep sunlight from her fair skin. Women of her station must not look as if they needed to work in the sun.

“I wear a mask?” He kept his face impassive. If she knew all that he hid, she would run away screaming.

“Of course. You wear the mask of priest. But I must wear many masks, too many for one face to bear easily. Lady, mother, and wife. And others still.” She turned a heavy gold ring around and around on her finger, a gift from her husband, Ferenc. “But what is under all of those masks, I wonder.”

“Everything else, I suppose.”

“But how much truth … how much of our true nature can we conceal, Father?” Her low voice sent a shiver down his spine. “And from whom?”

He studied the shadow she cast on the field next to him and mumbled as if in prayer, “We conceal what we must.”

Her shadow retreated a pace, perhaps because she was unhappy with his answer—a thought that crushed him as surely as if she ground him under that well-turned heel.

The dark shape of a hawk floated across the field. He listened to its quick heartbeat above and the faint heartbeats of mice below. His service to the Church, the verdant field, the bright sun, the blooming flowers … all were bounteous gifts, given freely by God to one as lowly as himself.

Should that not be enough?

She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress. “You are wise, Father. An aristocrat who lowers his mask does not survive long in these times.”

He stood. “What is it that troubles you so?”

“Perhaps I am simply weary of the intrigues.” Her eyes followed the hawk as it fell. “Surely the Church struggles amidst the same cauldron of ambitions, both great and small?”

He touched his pectoral cross with one fingertip. “Bernard shields me from the worst, I think.”

“Never trust those who would be your shield. They feed on your ignorance and darkness. It is best to look at things directly and be unafraid.”

He offered her some consolation. “Perhaps it is best to trust those who would shield you. If they do it out of love, to protect you.”

“Spoken like a man. And a priest. But I have learned to trust very few.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Except I trust you, Father Korza.”

“I am a priest, so you must trust me.” He offered her a shy smile.

“I trust no other priests. Including your precious Bernard. But you are different.” She placed her hand on his arm, and he savored the touch. “You are simply a friend. A friend where I have so very few.”

“I am honored, my lady.” He stepped back and bowed, an exaggerated gesture to lighten the mood.

She smiled indulgently. “As you should be, Father.”

They both laughed at her tone.

“Here comes Anna, returned again. Tell me once more about the time you had a footrace with your brother and how you both ended up in the stream with fish in your boots.”

He told her the story, embellishing it with more details than he had in the last telling to make her laugh.

They had happy times, with much laughter.

Until, one day, she had stopped laughing.

The day that he betrayed her.

The day he betrayed God.

Back in his body, where cold sand pressed against his knees, dry wind chased tears from his cheeks. His silver cross had burned through his glove and left a scarlet welt on his palms. His shoulders bowed under the weight of his sins, his failures. He tightened his grip on the searing metal.

“Rhun?” A woman’s voice spoke his name.

He raised his head, half expecting to see Elisabeta. The soldier watched him with suspicion, but the woman’s eyes held only pity.

He fixed his eyes on the soldier. He found the man’s hard gaze easier to bear.

“Time to start explaining,” the soldier said, training his weapon on Rhun’s heart—as if that had not been destroyed long ago.

8:08
P.M
.

“Jordan, look at his teeth … they’re normal again.”

Amazed, Erin stepped forward, wanting to examine the miraculous transformation, to understand what her mind still refused to believe.

Jordan blocked her with a muscled arm.

She didn’t resist.

Despite her curiosity as a scientist, Rhun still scared her.

The priest’s voice came out shaky, his Slavic accent thicker, as if he’d returned from a long distance, from a place where his native tongue was still spoken. “Thank you … for your patience.”

“Don’t expect that patience to last,” Jordan said, not unfriendly, just certain.

Erin pushed Jordan’s arm down, willing to listen, but she didn’t step forward. “You said that you were ‘Sanguinist,’ not
strigoi
. What does that mean?”

Rhun looked out to the dark desert for that answer. “
Strigoi
are wild, feral creatures. Born of murder and bloodshed, they serve no one but themselves.”

“And the Sanguinists?”

“All members of the Order of the Sanguines were once
strigoi
,” Rhun admitted, looking her square in the eye. “But now those in my order serve Christ. It is His blessing that allows us to walk under the light of God’s brightness, to serve as His warriors.”

“So you can walk in daylight?” Jordan asked.

“Yes, but the sun is still painful,” the priest admitted, and touched the hood of his cassock.

She remembered her first sight of Rhun, buried in his cassock, most of his skin covered, wearing dark sunglasses. She wondered if the tradition of Catholic monks wearing hooded robes might not trace back to this Order of the Sanguines, an outward reflection of a deeper secret.

“But without the protection of Christ’s blessing,” Rhun continued, “the touch of the sun will kill a
strigoi
.”

“And what exactly are these
blessings
of Christ?” Erin asked, surprised at the mocking edge to her tone, but unable to stop it.

Rhun stared at her for a long moment, as if he were struggling to find the right words to explain a miracle. When he finally spoke, his words were solemn, weighted by a certainty that had been missing from most of her life.

“I follow Christ’s path and have sworn an oath to forsake the drinking of human blood. Such an act is forbidden to us.”

Jordan remained ever practical. “Then what do you
feed
on, padre?”

Rhun straightened. Pride radiated from him, beating across the desert air toward her. “I am sworn to partake only of His blood.”

His blood …

She heard the emphasis in those last words and knew what that meant.

“You’re talking about the
blood of Christ
,” she said, surprised now by the absence of mockery in her tone. Raised in a devout sect of Roman Catholicism, she even understood the source of that blood. She flashed to her childhood, kneeling on the dirt floor by the altar, the bitter wine poured on her tongue.

She stared at the water skin in Rhun’s grasp.

But it did not hold
water
.

Nor did it hold
wine
—despite what she herself had sipped only moments ago.

She knew what filled Rhun’s flask. “That’s
consecrated
wine,” she said, pointing to what he held.

He reverentially stroked the wineskin. “More than consecrated.”

She understood that, too. “You mean it’s been
transubstantiated
.”

She had been taught that word during her earliest catechism and believed it once herself. Transubstantiation was one of the central tenets of Catholicism. That wine consecrated during a Mass became the literal blood of Christ, imbued with His very essence.

Rhun bowed his head in agreement. “True, my blessed vessel holds wine converted into the blood of Christ.”

“Impossible,” she muttered, but the word lacked conviction.

Jordan also wasn’t buying it. “I drank from your flask, padre. It looks like wine, smells like wine, tastes like wine—”

“But it is not,” Rhun broke in. “It is the Blood of Christ.”

The mocking edge returned to Erin’s tone, and it helped to steady her. “So you’re claiming transubstantiation results in a
real
change, not a metaphorical one?”

Rhun held out his arms. “Am I myself not proof? It is His blood that sustains my order. The act of transubstantiation was both a pact and a promise between Christ and mankind, but even more so for the
strigoi
whom He sought to save. For a chance to regain our souls, we have sworn off feeding on humans and survive only upon His blessed blood, becoming Knights of Christ, bound by an oath of fealty to serve the Church to the end of our days, when we will be welcomed again to His side. That is our pact with Christ and the Church.”

Erin couldn’t bring herself to believe any of this. Her father would turn over in his grave at the mere thought of Christ’s blood being used in such a way.

Rhun must have read the doubt on her face. “Why do you think the early Christians referred to Communion wine as the ‘medicine of immortality’? Because they knew what has long since been forgotten—but the Church has a much
longer
memory.”

He turned his wineskin over so that they could see the Vatican seal inscribed on the back: two crossed keys bound with a cord under the triple crown of the triregnum.

His gaze fell upon Erin. “I ask you to believe nothing but what you see with your own eyes and feel with your own heart.”

She sat heavily on a boulder and dropped her head into her hands. She had tasted the wine in his flask. As a scientist, she refused to believe it was anything but wine. Still, she had watched the
strigoi
feed on blood, watched him drink his wine.

Both had been strengthened.

She struggled to fit the miraculous into a scientific equation.

It was
impossible
to turn wine into blood, so it must be
belief
that allowed Rhun to drink wine as if it were blood. It must be some sort of placebo effect.

“You okay, Doc?” Jordan asked.

“Transubstantiation is just a legend.” She tried to explain it to him. “A myth.”

“Like the
strigoi
?” Rhun interjected. “Those who walk in the night and drink the blood of humans? You could accept them, but you cannot accept that blessed wine is the blood of Christ. Have you no faith at all?”

He sounded more upset by that last detail than by all of her arguments.

“Faith did not serve me well.” She clenched her hands in front of her. “I saw the Church used as a tool of the powerful against the weak, religion used as an obstacle to the truth.”

“Christ is more than the actions of misguided men.” Rhun spoke urgently, as if trying to convert her, as priests so often had. “He lives in our hearts. His miracles sustain us all.”

Jordan cleared his throat. “That’s all well and good, padre. But back to
you
. How did you become one of these Sanguinists?”

“There is little to tell. Centuries ago, I was bitten by a
strigoi
, then forced to drink quantities of its blood.” Rhun shuddered. “I was corrupted into one of them, a creature of base desires, a devourer of men.”