Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  He wanted to sound brave, defiant, but his words came out a strained whisper. A flash caught his eyes as the silver shard, stolen from the woman, was lifted high. Torchlight glimmered along its sharp edge. Everything else in the room disappeared except for that small blade.

  Iscariot leaned to his ear. “This may hurt and—”

  He stabbed the shard into Tommy’s neck before he could even brace for it. Though that was likely the goal, to spare him pain.

  It failed.

  Tommy screamed as fire lanced into him, radiating throughout his entire body. Blood welled down his throat, washing as hotly as fiery magma. He writhed and bucked under the netting, fierce enough to break one corner free. He twisted his head to see his blood flowing across the stone, over its edge, and dripping into the black crack below.

  He wailed from a pain that refused to subside.

  His vision closed around him, darkness filling the edges. He wanted that oblivion, to escape this pyre of agony. Under his back, he felt the stone tremble. The rock ground and cracked.

  Distantly, Iscariot extolled in a booming voice, “The gate is opening! Just as foretold!”

  The bound woman responded, her very voice beating back the edge of his pain. “There is yet time to show mercy. You can end this!”

  “It is too late. By the time all his blood is cast below, no one can end it.”

  Tommy felt himself sinking into darkness—only to realize that darkness was rising to take him. A black mist roiled from the crack below, enveloping him in its dark embrace, swirling around him like a living thing. With every drop of his blood, more blackness surged upward and flowed into the world.

  He stared toward the source, watching the crack below him split wider. He flashed to the chamber in Masada, to another crack splitting the earth, to other smoke rising from below.

  No . . . not again . . .

  Then the ground shook—same as before—jolting with great quakes, strong enough to break mountains. The boiling river surged up from its banks in a great font, splashing high and crashing back down again. During all this, a massive rumbling grew louder and louder, filling the world and bursting outward.

  Tommy let it wash over him—until there was only silence and darkness.

  And he was gone.

  43

  December 20, 7:15 A.M. CET

  Mediterranean Sea

  As Erin crossed the main salon, her stomach suddenly churned, as if she were getting seasick. She weaved on her feet, her hand slapping atop a display case to keep her balance. She turned back to Jordan as he closed the door to the private office, making sure no stray butterfly or bee sailed out with them.

  His gaze met hers as the entire platform began to ominously tremble, like a herd of elephants were rampaging across the deck.

  “Earthquake!” Jordan yelled, rushing toward her.

  Erin turned to see Rhun and Bernard helping Christian to stand. The cardinal must have managed to revive the young Sanguinist with the freshly consecrated wine, at least enough to get him up on his feet.

  A huge jolt bumped under her, tossing her a foot in the air. She landed on one knee as Jordan skidded beside her. Books fell from the shelves. Fiery sparks blew through the grate of the cast-iron hearth.

  Jordan picked her up as the rig shook ever more violently.

  Steel groaned through the walls. A tall, thin display cabinet toppled with a crash of glass. Jordan rushed her to the others.

  “We have to get off this rig!” he yelled above the low roar.

  Seemingly oblivious, Bernard’s gaze remained fixed on the tall windows. Erin turned to see what so captured his attention. Off to the east, the horizon had brightened with the new day, rising in a steam of pinks and oranges. But the beauty was marred by a black cloud pushing through it, churning high and spreading outward, as if trying to eat away the day.

  “A volcanic eruption,” Jordan said.

  Erin pictured the direction in which Iscariot had flown with Tommy. Her fingers crumpled the one sheet of paper in her hand, holding an old drawing. She had come out here to show it to Rhun and Bernard.

  Were they too late?

  As if punctuating this worry, a loud shake rose through the rig, throwing them to the floor. The lights went out. Crack! The deafening sound of stressed rock echoed up from below. The entire deck began a slow tilt.

  She pictured one of the platform’s concrete legs shattering at the knee.

  “Move!” Jordan bellowed. “Now!”

  He grabbed her arm. Rhun and Bernard slung Christian between them.

  They fled out of the salon and down the central passageway. The shaking continued, throwing them against the wood-paneled walls. The darkness amplified her terror. They finally reached the exterior doors and fled into a world of swaying steel and crumbling concrete. An arm of a crane swung past overhead, unmoored and unmanned.

  “The hydrofoil!” Jordan said, pointing to the stairs as they tumbled forward. “We need to get down to it! Get as far from this heap as possible.”

  Christian broke free from the others. “I’ll . . . I’ll see to it.”

  Even in his weakened state, he was fast, vanishing in a blur of black down the stairs. Bernard followed at his heels, while Rhun kept with Erin and Jordan.

  The trio hit the staircase at a dead run, hurdling steps, sometimes tossed. Debris rained around them, crashing to the water below. Erin saw the surrounding seas had gone strangely flat, no waves, just a trembling surface like a pot about to boil. That more than anything drove her faster. She hit the next landing hard, slamming her belly against the far railing and bouncing away.

  Around and around they fled as the platform above continued its slow tilt, crushing down upon the pillar on that side, compressing concrete with loud blasts of rock.

  Another violent quake tossed her high, throwing her toward the rail. Her fingers scrambled to grab hold before her body heaved over the side—then Rhun’s iron fingers grabbed her leather jacket and jerked her back to the steps, back to her feet.

  “Thanks,” she said, huddling for a breath.

  Then they rushed onward again as the world crashed around them. Another pillar on the far side exploded with cracks, skittering upward.

  But a new noise intruded through the chaos: the high-pitched rumble of an engine. A final turn around the pillar, and they reached the dock. Several sections of its length had been blasted away by falling debris. They hopped across the open gaps as the hydrofoil slipped backward out of its berth. The ship had not escaped unscathed: a length of catwalk had slammed across its stern deck and still rested there.

  Suddenly an arm scooped around her waist and yanked her forward across the last of the dock. A length of twisted strut fell like a spear and pierced cleanly through the section of dock where she had been standing.

  Rhun again.

  Jordan hopscotched around the length of deadly steel to join them.

  The hydrofoil backed next to the dock, allowing them to scramble aboard, ducking under the catwalk.

  “Go!” Jordan screamed toward the cabin ahead.

  The engines roared, thrusting the ship forward, knocking Erin back into Jordan’s arms. They both looked upward as the craft fled from beneath the toppling platform. Giant steel pieces of shrapnel rained around them, but they finally escaped the deadly onslaught and made it to open water.

  “Don’t slow!” Jordan yelled. “Give it everything!”

  Erin failed to understand his urgency, until a glance back showed the entire platform falling toward them, ready to crush them. Christian heeded Jordan’s warning, racing ahead, lifting the ship up on its twin foils, skimming across the water.

  She watched in horror and awe as the platform struck the sea, casting up a huge wave, sending that wall of water chasing after them. But by now their speed was such that they easily outran it. The tidal wave faded behind, sinking back into the sea.

  Erin finally allowed herself to breathe, gasping, wiping a tear from one eye.


  “C’mon,” Jordan said. “Let’s join Christian and Bernard.”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  They climbed into the pilothouse, saw Christian at the wheel, Bernard at his shoulder. They both faced forward, staring toward the coastline.

  A black cloud filled the world ahead, rolling toward them. At its heart danced a small fountain of fire. Definitely a volcano. Already ash flakes began to fall, collecting on the glass like foul snow.

  Erin knew this section of Italy’s coast was a geothermic hot spot. She pictured the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the shadow of Vesuvius. But even that deadly mountain was but a small blip compared to the monster lurking under that entire region, a supervolcano called Campi Flegrei, with a caldera four miles wide. If that sleeping dragon ever blew, most of Europe would be destroyed.

  A chunk of ash slipped down across the window, leaving a sooty streak.

  Bernard leaned closer to the same. “It’s crimson colored,” he said.

  Erin joined him, noting he was right. The streak was distinctly dark red.

  Like blood.

  It was probably just due to the color of the regional rock, known to be rich in iron and volcanic copper.

  Still, Erin quoted a passage from Revelation 8: “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth.”

  Bernard glanced at her. “The start of the end of the world.”

  Erin nodded, quoting what followed. “And the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”

  She pictured the caldera of Campi Flegrei. If that ignited, far more than a third of Europe would burn.

  “Can we stop it?” Jordan asked, unwilling to give up without a fight.

  “There may still be time,” Bernard said. “If we can find the First Angel, perhaps we might yet right this wrong.”

  “But he might be anywhere,” Rhun said.

  “Not necessarily,” Jordan countered. “If Iscariot did something to trigger this—and that’s a big if, by the way—then he can’t have gone far with the boy. The attack helicopter was headed east. It’s only been ninety minutes since he shot us down.”

  “And Iscariot would have needed time to prepare once he reached the coast,” Rhun agreed. “He likely timed it to match the rise of the new day.”

  Bernard pointed to the dance of lava at the heart of the ash cloud. “He must be near there, but where?”

  Erin reached to the inner pocket of her jacket and removed the drawing she had stolen from the safe. She flattened it on the ship’s chart table. “Look at this.”

  The drawing depicted two men—one older, one younger—in a sacrificial pose with an angel looking over the man’s shoulder, her face concerned, and rightfully so. A stream of blood ran down the younger man’s side and dripped into a black crack near the bottom of the page. A hand with four claws protruded from that crack.

  “What’s it mean?” Jordan asked.

  Erin tapped the two men. The older of the two had dark hair, the other lighter. Otherwise, they looked fairly identical, like they could be related to each other.

  She pointed to the younger man, maybe an older boy. “What if that’s Tommy?”

  Rhun leaned at her shoulder. “It looks as if his blood is being spilled onto the floor, into that black fissure.” His dark eyes met hers. “You think he’s being sacrificed by Iscariot?”

  “And his blood is being used to open a door. Like your Sanguinist blood opens your hidden gates.”

  “And that thing with the claws coming out?” Jordan asked. “That can’t be good.”

  7:26 A.M.

  Bernard stared at the demon climbing from the pit and despaired. How could they hope to stop Armageddon if it had already begun? He turned toward the smoke and conflagration. Where to even begin?

  He voiced that aloud. “If you’re correct, Erin, this still does not tell us where the sacrifice is taking place.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  He stared harder at her.

  She circled a finger across the five symbols that ringed this sacrificial tableaux: an oil lamp, a torch, a rose, a crown of thorns, and a bowl. “Five icons. I knew they weren’t just decorative. Nothing in this drawing is here by chance.”

  He studied them, knowing she was right, nagged by the familiarity of those same symbols, but unable to place them. Then again, he was not as steeped in ancient history as Dr. Granger.

  She explained, “These symbols represent five famous seers out of the distant past. Five women, five ancient sibyls.”

  Bernard gripped the edge of the table. Of course!

  “From the Sistine Chapel,” he said, awed. “Those five women are painted there.”

  “Why?” Jordan asked.

  Bernard reached and took Erin’s hand gratefully. “They are the five women who predicted the birth of Christ. They came from various times and places, but each prophesied his coming.”

  Erin touched each symbol, naming them aloud. “The Persian Sibyl, the Erythraean Sibyl, the Delphic Sibyl, the Libyan Sibyl . . .”

  She stopped last at the symbol at the top. “The bowl always represents the Cumaean Sibyl. It is said to represent the nativity of Christ.” She studied the coast. “She made her home outside Naples. And according to numerous ancient accounts—from Virgil through Dante—it is said her throne guarded the very gates of Hell.”

  Referring to the claw rising from below, Bernard said, “I believe he seeks to release Lucifer, the Fallen One.”

  “That’s how he intends to trigger Armageddon,” Erin said.

  Ash lashed against the window like sleet as they drew ever nearer the coast. The sky above had closed off with smoke, keeping the day from showing its face here. Bernard quailed against the doom that must surely follow.

  Jordan cleared his throat, his nose close to the drawing. “So if everything in this drawing is important, how come there’s an angel looking over Judas’s shoulder, doing nothing but looking sad?”

  Bernard pulled his attention from the burning coastline back to the drawing.

  “Her face,” Jordan continued. “It looks a lot like the woman painted in Iscariot’s office. Like they could be the same woman. In the oil portrait, Judas had his arm around her, like they were man and wife.”

  Bernard peered closer at the drawing with Erin. He examined the face, then a shudder of recognition swept through him, turning him cold.

  How could this be . . . ?

  Erin noticed his reaction. “Do you know her?”

  “I met her once myself,” he said softly, going back to that warren of tunnels beneath Jerusalem, to the woman shining with such grace at the edge of that dark pool. He remembered her lack of heartbeat, yet the fierce heat that flowed from her in that cold cave. “Back during the Crusades.”

  Erin frowned at him, plainly doubtful. “How . . . where did you meet her?”

  “In Jerusalem.” Bernard touched his pectoral cross. “She was guarding a secret, something buried far below the Foundation Stone of that ancient city.”

  “What secret?” Erin asked.

  “A carving.” He nodded to the sketch before them. “It was the history of Christ’s life told through His miracles. The story was supposed to reveal a weapon that could destroy any and all evil. I sought it out at great cost.”

  Screams of the city’s dying filled his ears even now.

  “What happened?” Erin asked, sounding far away.

  “She found me unworthy. She destroyed the most crucial part before I could see it.”

  “But who is she?” Jordan asked. “If she was around during the Crusades, then again during the Renaissance with Judas, she must be immortal. Does that mean she is a strigoi? Or someone like Judas or the boy?”

  “Neither,” Bernard realized aloud. He pointed to the wings drawn over her shoulders. “I believe she is an angel.”

  He stared at Erin, his eyes welling with tears.

  And she found me unworth
y.

  44

  December 20, 7:38 A.M. CET

  Off the coast of Italy

  Rhun stood at the pilothouse door as the hydrofoil raced toward the shore. Following Erin’s advice they had plotted a course northwest of the city of Naples, aiming for a dark bay in the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the shadow of the volcanic cone that the Cumaean Sibyl made her home.

  Black waves churned past their hull, and ash blasted Rhun’s bare face. It did not smell of blood, only of iron and cinders and sulfur. When he wiped it from his brow, grit coated his fingertips.

  The quakes had stopped, but the eruption continued, churning smoke and ash into the world, jetting sprays of fiery lava into the darkness beyond the rim of the cone. Erin had told them that this caldera lay in the center of a larger supervolcano called Campi Flegrei. She warned that if this smaller burning match set off that monstrous well of magma beneath it, much of Europe was doomed.

  How much time did they have?

  He raised his eyes to the sky for an answer—and found none. Sunrise was upon them, but under the cloak of the volcano’s shroud, it remained a moonless night. The lights of the ship tunneled through the black snow.

  Inside the cabin, Erin and Jordan covered their noses and mouths with scraps of ripped cloth, like thieves in this endless night, protecting themselves against the ash fall.

  Jordan shouted and pointed his arm. “To the left, is that a helicopter parked on the beach?”

  Rhun saw he was correct, slightly irked that the soldier had noted it first. With Rhun’s sharper eyes, he picked out its unique shape, its markings, both a match to the aircraft that had attacked them.

  “It’s Iscariot’s helicopter!” he confirmed for the others.

  Christian turned the hydrofoil toward it, sweeping his lights across its bulk.

  In return, gunfire spat at them, taking out one of their lights, chattering across the bow. Jordan and Erin ducked. Christian gunned the engines, looking as if he intended to ram the chopper as they beached.