The Blood Gospel (61 page)

“What does a man have that a skeleton doesn’t?” She started listing. “Life. Flesh. Blood.”

“Blood?” Jordan interrupted. “Piers mentioned that, too, but in German.
Blut
.”

“The second ingredient …” Erin’s hands turned to ice as the full realization dawned on her. She looked at the others. “They need the
blood
of the current pope.”

4:48
P.M
.

Rhun and Nadia ran behind Bernard, flanking him, forming their own triad. No longer concerned about revealing their unnatural heritage, they moved at top speed, shadows sweeping the halls of the Apostolic Palace. The humans fell behind. But this was no affair of theirs.

Rhun sprinted down the long hall that led to His Holiness’s bedroom. Walls covered in rich wood flashed by. Crucifixes and dark religious paintings hung throughout the hall. A fortune in art, but that would not be enough to save an old man’s life. Only they could do that.

Grant, O God, Thy protection, and in protection, strength.

The pope’s bedroom door stood open, spilling light into the dark hall.

Shadows flickered inside.

Bernard ran into the room without pause or a knock, he and Nadia in formation close behind him. A wave of blood assaulted his senses. They were too late.

His Holiness lay on his side on the floor. Blood flowed from his opened neck onto his holy white cassock. On the floor next to his body lay a straight razor, probably his own. Near his old white head were his red papal shoes, neatly lined up next to his bed. His usually carefully combed hair was tousled, his lined face pale with shock, his warm blue eyes closed.

Ambrose was kneeling by him. Blood coated his palms. He was trying, ineffectually, to stanch the wound.

Bernard joined Ambrose on the floor, Nadia stepped into the adjoining bathroom, and Rhun assessed the bedroom for threats. Thick velvet curtains were drawn tight, the simple brass bed rumpled and empty, the chair pushed straight into the antique desk, bookshelf orderly behind it.

Rhun understood.

They had taken him in his bed as he rested, and with little struggle.

Rhun closed his eyes and reached out with other senses. The only heartbeats in the room belonged to Ambrose and His Holiness. The only smells were familiar ones: Ambrose, His Holiness, the other Sanguinists, paper, dust, and a trace of incense. And, overlying it all, the old man’s spilled blood.

He returned his attention to His Holiness. His face had lost even the small amount of color it had when they’d arrived. His breath rasped out through his partially opened mouth.

“I came to tell him and he … he …” Ambrose stuttered. “He needs a doctor. Get him a doctor!”

Bernard pressed a firm palm on the pope’s wound. Nadia nodded once to let the Cardinal know that the bathroom was clear, then ran from the room, as fleet as the wind.

Ambrose wiped his hands down his black cassock. His heart tripped along in fear or shock. He looked so pale and lost that Rhun pitied him.

Rhun dropped his hand to Bernard’s shoulder. “We must take him to the surgery. Perhaps his physician can help him there.”

Bernard’s shocked eyes met his.

“Bernard!” he said sharply.

The Cardinal’s eyes cleared. “Of course.”

Bernard kept one hand tight against His Holiness’s throat and slid the other under his shoulders. Rhun put his own arms under the pope, too. The slight weight would be easy to bear. The old man’s heart stumbled, weakness in every beat. Without help, he did not have long to live.

Rhun and Bernard lifted the wounded man and bore him toward the emergency surgery. Nadia would bring the physician there.

This time their progress down the hall was slow. Rhun had time to see the ancient paintings, framed in heavy wood. This was the wall of saints, and each picture told a story of pain and martyrdom.

Swiss Guardsmen pounded down the hall, arriving with Erin, Jordan, and Nate.

“His Holiness is grievously wounded.” Bernard spoke in the formal Italian of his long-ago boyhood. Rhun had not heard that accent for many years. Bernard must be still in shock.

The guards parted like water to let them through.

As Rhun had hoped, Nadia waited at the surgery, a disheveled man in a white coat next to her. He looked as if she had dragged him from his bed, running every step.

He blanched when he saw whom they carried.

They stepped past him into the sleek modern surgery. Stainless-steel surfaces gleamed and modern machines waited under plastic covers. On the wall was only a simple round clock and a heavy iron cross.

Rhun and Bernard laid His Holiness gently on the clean white bed. Bernard still held his wound closed. “A razor did this,” he explained.

A second doctor rushed in.

“Everyone must leave,” the first doctor said. “Only medical staff allowed.”

As the physicians began to administer to His Holiness, Rhun prayed that they would find a way to save him. There was nothing more for the Sanguinists to do.

He stepped out into the hall. Drops of the pope’s blood gleamed against the wooden floor. “Where did Nadia go?”

“She took a division of the guardsmen back down the hall,” Jordan said. “To look for the guy who did this.”

If the attacker could be found, Nadia would find him. Rhun leaned against the wood paneling. Bernard reached an arm around his shoulders, and he leaned against him. A successful papal assassination had not occurred in centuries.

“What does this mean for Bathory, Erin?” Jordan asked.

Her eyes told Rhun all he needed to know. “It means that Bathory has both ingredients necessary to open the book.”

October 28, 5:05
P.M
., CET

Vatican City, Italy

Standing outside the surgery room, Erin wished that she had better news. The Belial had the book and the means to open it. Would that be enough for them to transfigure it? Had evil already won?

Nate slumped and sat on the floor next to her. Fresh blood soaked his pant leg. She had never seen him so pale. He leaned his head back against the wall.

Jordan pulled a water bottle out of his coat pocket and pressed it into the kid’s hands.

Nate downed it in one long swallow. How long had it been since he’d had a drink? It had never even occurred to Erin to ask if he was thirsty, and she’d basically had him sprinting from the moment he had been tossed into her cell.

Bernard made eye contact with a Swiss Guardsman. He pointed at Nate. “This man must be taken to medical care. The woman, too.”

“Take Nate now,” Erin said. “I’ll follow along in a minute.”

Bernard hesitated, then nodded in agreement. The guardsman helped Nate to his feet.

“I’m fine.” Nate pulled himself up straighter, but his back began to slide down the dark oak paneling.

“Of course you are,” she said. “So am I. But let’s just humor them. I’ll be right behind you.”

Nate raised a skeptical eyebrow but didn’t protest as two guardsmen herded him down the hall. The kid was tough. He’d be fine. She tried not to think of watching Heinrich being carried away. She would see Nate again soon.

Jordan pulled out his first-aid kit. “Sure you don’t want to go with the kid?”

“The neck looks more dramatic than it is,” she said.

“Looks pretty dramatic.” Jordan pulled out an alcohol wipe, the smell all too familiar to Erin.

She gritted her teeth when he reached for her, but the touch of his hands on her neck was featherlight.

“So what’s next?” His familiar blue eyes looked into hers.

Her heart sped up. “Next?”

“What will Bathory do now? Where will she open the book?” From the way he asked, it sounded as if he thought she knew the answer.

She tried to talk, not to think about how close he stood, how gently he touched her throat. “The book cares very much about how it is to be opened and where.”

“You make it sound like a person.” Jordan stroked hair back from her neck and cleaned the side, stroking the wipe down from her jawline to her collarbone.

She shivered and shifted her feet to cover the movement. “I wonder if it doesn’t have some kind of awareness, some part of its maker tied to it.”

“I agree.” Bernard straightened the scarlet zucchetto he was wearing atop his white hair. “Always that has been my interpretation of the prophecy. And the book must be opened in Rome. But where in Rome?”

“If holy ground is important to the Sanguinists,” Erin said, sensing she was onto something, “it matters to the book, too. What’s the holiest place in Rome? Saint Peter’s tomb.” She stepped away from Jordan. She needed to think, which meant moving clear of his warmth, his musky scent. “But if the Belial wanted to open the book down there, they would have taken the pope’s blood first, then the bone so they could open it right there where the bones are.”

“Makes sense,” Jordan said. “Why break in twice, once to steal the bones and once to open the book?”

A bell tolled. Rhun and Bernard exchanged a glance.

“What does that mean?” Jordan pulled out a roll of gauze.

“The Swiss Guard are sounding the alarm,” Bernard answered. “They are evacuating tourists from Vatican City.”

“Then Bathory doesn’t have much time.” If only she had a better idea of where that witch might be. Then a ray of hope dawned. “Wait! The basilica. It’s built
above
Peter’s tomb. The holiest part of the holiest church in Rome.”

Before she even finished her sentence, Rhun and Bernard vanished from her side, like a pair of apparitions. They fled down the hall with eerie speed. No one watching them would think for a second that they were human.

Jordan shook his head. “Guess they’re giving up the secret identity thing.” He lifted an eyebrow and held out a hand. “Feel like one more run?”

She nodded and let him pull her to her feet.

He broke into a jog after collecting his Heckler & Koch submachine gun, which Nadia had been kind enough to return from Germany, along with his Colt pistol. Erin followed Jordan through the spacious halls of the Apostolic Palace and toward the square. No one tried to stop them.

They bounded down a flight of stairs, taking two at a time, to the wide hall that led to a bronze door and out to St. Peter’s Square.

Ahead, two Swiss Guards in formal blue-, red-, and yellow-striped tunics and tights swung the doors open for Rhun and the Cardinal.

Jordan sped up, trying to catch them.

“We’re with those two!” Jordan yelled.

“Let them pass,” the Cardinal called over his shoulder, already out onto the square.

The guardsmen stood aside as the couple ran through.

Behind them, the doors slammed closed with a resounding
thud
. No one would be allowed to enter again so easily.

Erin hurried down the steps, already out of breath. Marble pillars rose on either side of her, climbing more than twenty-five feet into the air. The scale of everything made her feel like a child who had broken into the home of a giant.

They raced down into the open square, where Jordan skidded to a halt.

The plaza teemed with people. They streamed from the basilica and the colonnades; they parted in riptides around the obelisk and the fountains, all heading for the exit and the streets. The setting sun washed their faces a warm orange.

Swiss Guard troops jostled them forward, as if they were herding cattle.

Far ahead, Bernard and Rhun’s progress had slowed as they tried to force their way forward against that current of humanity.

“Grab my belt!” Jordan yelled over his shoulder.

Erin wrapped her fingers around the thick leather.

Jordan pushed himself out into the square like a fullback. Instead of cutting straight through the crowd like the Sanguinists, he hugged its edges, one arm up. The crowd rippled to the side around him.

Erin kept pace, trying to match his stride. Jordan’s left shoulder knocked against a fleeing tourist. It was his wounded side, but he didn’t even flinch.

Reaching the basilica, he cut left toward the door. Just ahead, Rhun and the Cardinal sprinted through the entrance in a flash of scarlet and black.

Erin glanced up. Above the massive dome of the basilica, the sky glowed amber orange.

The sun had set.

Distracted by what that implied, she didn’t see the monk until it was too late. He slammed into her, knocking her hand off Jordan’s belt. The monk muttered what sounded like an apology in Polish, his hands reaching to pat her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said.

Jordan didn’t seem to notice that she was gone as he pushed through the door ahead of her. The two Swiss Guardsmen manning the doors were too distracted by the tourists coming out, but they collected their wits enough to collar her when she tried to follow.

Already inside, Jordan turned back.

“Go on!” she called. He could do more good against Bathory than she could anyway.