Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  Christian pointed to a second helicopter parked on the beach. It must have been brought in by the cardinal’s reinforcements. “I’ll grab the first-aid kit. There should be enough fuel in that chopper to make it to Vatican City. It’s no more than an hour’s flight. Once in the air, I’ll alert the doctors on staff to be ready for us.”

  Bathory scoffed. “The boy bears no natural wound. It cannot be cured through your modern medicines.”

  For once, Erin found herself agreeing with the countess. Even without Tommy’s healing powers, the wound should have begun to clot.

  She considered the symbol again.

  You are all wrong.

  As Christian ran for the first-aid kit, Bernard tried pouring consecrated wine onto the wound, murmuring Latin prayers. He wiped it clean with his sleeve.

  Blood welled up, flowing thicker now.

  Erin noted a faint golden glow, only evident because of the gloom. Perhaps it marked his special angelic essence, the miracle that sustained his life, the same miracle that possibly saved Jordan in Stockholm.

  “You do not know what you are doing,” Bathory said, pushing Bernard’s hands off the boy. She pointed to Arella. “She carried that blade that cut him. She must know more about it. Wake her.”

  Erin tried, shaking the woman’s shoulder, but she got no response.

  “We must remove the boy from these cursed sands and take him to Rome,” Bernard demanded as Christian returned. “There we will save him.”

  Erin flashed to Arella’s earlier warning.

  Neither you nor the priests can save the boy. Only I can.

  Erin turned to Bernard and voiced aloud what she grew to believe. “You are all wrong.”

  As if hearing her own message spoken aloud, Arella stirred. Her arm weakly flopped to Tommy, to his bloody throat. With her touch, a drop of blood stopped welling up from his wound. It hovered there. Then those fingers slipped away, and the drop swelled and rolled down his pale skin.

  “She can heal him,” Erin insisted.

  Bathory nodded. “It is an angelic weapon that pierced him. It will take an angel to heal him.”

  “How?” Bernard asked.

  Erin stared at the symbol, knowing it was important. The woman wouldn’t have drawn it without purpose. The sibyl never drew anything that was not important. She pictured the sketch found in Iscariot’s safe.

  “A torch!” Erin drew the others to her and pointed to the sand. “It was one of the five symbols depicted on the drawing, representing the five sibyls.”

  “What of it?” Bernard asked as Christian returned.

  “She’s trying to tell us where to go, how to heal him. The flaming torch is the symbol for the Libyan Sibyl, another of the seers who prophesied the coming of Christ. According to the mythology of that area, the waters are said to have miraculous healing properties. Some believe Christ stayed there with Mary and Joseph after fleeing Herod’s slaughter.”

  “I know those stories,” Bernard said. “But the Libyan Sibyl made her home in Siwa, an oasis in the deserts of present-day Egypt. Far across the Mediterranean. The boy will never make such a long journey and live.”

  Erin recognized this truth and remained silent.

  Taking this as acquiescence, Bernard drew straighter. “We’ll take them both to Rome.” He waved to Christian. “Carry the boy. I’ll take the woman.”

  Bathory stepped between Christian and Tommy. “You shall not.”

  Bernard looked upon her with fury. “If the boy cannot be healed here, if he can’t reach Siwa, what then?” he pressed. “At least if we can get him to Rome, to St. Peter’s Basilica, he may yet live long enough to bless the book and reveal its secrets.”

  “So you don’t really care if the kid lives or dies?” Jordan asked, placing a hand on Erin’s shoulder. “As long as he delivers the goods.”

  Bernard’s angry expression answered that.

  Erin joined Bathory. “This child’s life is more important than any secrets.”

  Bernard confronted them, waving an arm to the spreading pall in the sky. “Ash still falls. What has been broken has not been set to right. We have seen the gates of Hell cracking open beneath the boy. It has slowed, but it is inevitable. What has been opened must be closed. We have until the sun sets this day to stop it.”

  “Why sunset?” Erin asked.

  Bernard looked to the skies. “I have read the stories of this place. If the gates of Hell are cracked open during the day, they must be closed before the day’s last light or nothing will close them again. This is more important than any single life, including the boy’s. Unless we act now, innocents beyond counting will surely die.”

  “But it is that act that I find suspect,” she said.

  Jordan kept to her side. “I’m with Erin on this.”

  The countess stood firm. “As am I.”

  Rhun looked uncertainly at them, hovering between them and Bernard, who had the weight of a dozen Sanguinists at his back. “So what do you propose to do, Erin?”

  “We forget about the Gospel, about prophecy, about saving the world. We turn all our strength to saving this one boy, a child who has suffered beyond measure. We owe him that much. He was afflicted with immortality because of a single act of trying to save an injured dove. He is that dove to me. I will not let him perish.”

  Bathory’s cold hand found hers. Jordan’s warm fingers grasped her other.

  “Siwa’s healing waters were said to be so strong that the sibyl herself used them to regenerate herself, to keep herself immortal.” Erin stared down at the woman, wondering how an angel could look so ashen and frail. “We can still get them there before sunset. Heal them both.”

  “The boy will surely die before you reach there,” Bernard argued. “Rome is only—”

  Rhun cut him off. “How do you plan to cure the boy in Rome?”

  “We have doctors. We have priests. But even if there were none, the most important thing is blessing the book at St. Peter’s.”

  Rhun frowned his dissatisfaction. “What makes you certain that the book will reveal its secrets in Rome?”

  “Because it must.” The cardinal touched his pectoral cross. “Or all is truly lost.”

  Rhun’s gaze moved from Erin to Bathory. “Bernard, you place too much weight on reaching St. Peter’s.”

  “It is where the Blood Gospel was opened and returned to the world.”

  “But the book was taken there based upon the words of both Erin and Bathory Darabont. Yet, now, here we stand, with Erin again and another of the Bathory family, both telling you to take the boy to Siwa. While we do not know with certainty who the Woman of Learning is, in this instance it does not matter. They both command the boy be taken to Egypt.”

  “Not just us,” Erin added, and she pointed to Arella. “Another woman does, too. An angel who, by your own word, found you unworthy in the past.”

  Bernard fell back a step from her words, but they only seemed to inflame his anger. “Rome is only an hour away,” he insisted. “We go to St. Peter’s and get the boy whatever care he needs. If I’m wrong, he can be prepped there for the long journey to Siwa.”

  “By then it may be too late,” Erin said, waving to the cloaked sun.

  Christian headed off, eyeing those same skies. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll get the bird warming up. You tell me where to go.”

  “Christian is right,” Jordan said, as ash fell ever heavier around them. “This foul air may make the decision for us. If the ash gets any thicker, no one’s going anywhere.”

  Recognizing this truth, they all headed after Christian. Rhun carried Arella, while Bathory kept possession of the boy. Moments later, the helicopter’s engine sputtered coarsely on the beach, choking on ash, before rumbling loudly to life. Erin shielded her eyes from the sand and ash kicked up by the rotors.

  It became impossible to talk.

  Once at the helicopter, they all climbed in. Bathory passed Tommy to her, while Bernard helped Rhun settle Arella acr
oss a row of seats. Christian barely let them find their seats before gunning the stressed engines. He lifted them off the beach and turned them over the leaden waters, fleeing the maelstrom of fire and smoke.

  “Where to?” Christian bellowed back.

  “Rome!” Bernard called out, staring across the cabin, daring them to argue.

  Bathory glanced to Erin with a glint of mischief in her eye. Erin leaned away, fearing the worst. But she was not the countess’s target. Moving in a swift blur, Bathory twisted to her neighbor, wrapped one arm around his waist, and crashed open the door next to him. Neither were buckled in yet, and both Bathory and Bernard went tumbling headlong out the door, still clutched together.

  Erin leaned over in her harness, as Christian tilted the helicopter, the door banging open and closed in the wind. She saw the pair splash into the water below, then come sputtering up, still fighting.

  Jordan reached and caught the door and got it latched. “Guess that settles it,” he said, grinning, plainly appreciating Bathory’s bold move to break the stalemate.

  The three of them looked at one another.

  Christian stared back at them, a question shining in his green eyes.

  Erin leaned forward and touched the young Sanguinist’s shoulder.

  “Siwa,” she said firmly.

  Christian glanced to Rhun, to Jordan, getting confirmatory nods. He turned back around and shrugged. “Who am I to argue with the trio of prophecy?”

  47

  December 20, 8:38 A.M. CET

  Cumae, Italy

  Judas stood vigil in a crevice up the cliff face. He remained locked deep in shadow, hidden from the sharp senses of Sanguinists on the beach below, shielded by the stink of sulfur and the rumble of the earth as the gates of Hell threatened to open. He had barely made it out of the lower tunnels before the passageways collapsed around that smoky cavern, sealing it off. Now not even the Sanguinists could reach those gates in time.

  There was nothing anyone could do to stop the inevitable.

  Still, moments ago, he had watched the helicopter thump into the heavy pall of smoke and vanish, taking the boy and Arella with it.

  His heart panged at seeing her brought so low, recognizing how much she had risked to rescue the boy. He pictured her ravaged body, her hair gone white. Still, even from this distance, he recognized her beauty as she lay in the sand.

  My love . . .

  From the rocks, he now spied as the cardinal and the countess waded from the leaden waves, their clothing clinging wetly to them. Both their eyes were on the skies, where the helicopter had vanished.

  But where were the others going?

  He had watched Bernard and Elizabeth plunge from the craft, clearly jettisoned like so much unwanted baggage.

  “You have doomed us all!” Bernard’s shout echoed up to him.

  As answer, Elizabeth simply brushed sand from her wet clothing.

  “We will go after them!” the cardinal insisted. “You have changed nothing!”

  She took off a boot and dumped out sand. “Can you not admit the possibility that you were wrong, priest?”

  “I will not let you judge me.”

  “Why not? You created me as much as Rhun. Your meddling with prophecies in the past forced Rhun and I together.”

  Bernard’s shoulders grew rigid at Bathory’s words. He angrily stalked away, rallying the other Sanguinists and retreating from the beach, putting the countess again in chains.

  Judas waited a full quarter hour before climbing down, scaling the cliffs back to the beach. He had a specific goal in mind. He had witnessed Arella writing something in the sand, saw how it had affected Dr. Granger and the others. He crossed to that spot now, to where Arella had lain so still. He noted the depression in the sand where her head had rested.

  He knelt and brushed his fingertips across that hollow.

  Worry for her ached in him.

  He saw what she had etched in the sand. He would recognize her handiwork anywhere, having spent a century recording her words and sketching what she had drawn. He looked upon what was inscribed here now, with as much of an eye to prophecy as at any other time.

  A flaming torch.

  He smiled, understanding.

  She had drawn the others a map, telling them where to go.

  Certainty calmed his mind. He knew all the symbols associated with her throughout the centuries, including this one.

  She had lured them to Siwa.

  He stood, thanking her, a conviction firming inside him. He knew this message had been left in the sand for him as much as them.

  She was calling him, too.

  But why?

  PART V

  . . . Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

  —Matthew 2:13–15

  48

  December 20, 1:49 P.M. EET

  Airborne over Egypt

  Jordan leaned his forehead against the window of yet another helicopter. The constant drone of the engine and the endless expanse of featureless sand lulled him into a drowse. The persistent burn that etched his left shoulder, tracing fire along his tattoo, kept him from sleeping. It wasn’t so much painful as an annoyance, an itch that couldn’t be scratched away.

  Still, he rubbed it even now, barely aware he was doing it.

  But someone else was.

  “Is something wrong with your shoulder?” Erin asked.

  “ . . . mm . . .” he said noncommittally, not wanting to bother her with such minor complaints when they had greater worries.

  Like the boy draped across the seats next to Erin.

  She cradled Tommy’s head, one hand holding a folded gauze pad to his neck. During the five-plus hours of travel, her efforts had seemed to slow the bleeding, but she still had to regularly swap out gauze pads for fresh ones.

  But at least they were almost to their destination.

  After leaving the beach, Christian had returned to Naples and secured their same jet, freshly refueled, and lifted off immediately for the small city of Mersa Matruh along the Egyptian coast, where they transferred to their current helicopter, a former military craft turned civilian charter. From there, Christian piloted them south over the sands.

  Jordan had seen a lot of desert in his tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, but nothing the size of this one. It was as if he had traded the battleship gray of the Mediterranean Sea for this tan Saharan Ocean. No matter how long the helicopter flew, the ground below never changed.

  But worst of all, the ash cloud continued to pursue them, chasing them across the sea and out into the desert. According to reports on the radio, it was spreading in a wide swath, moving faster than weather patterns predicted. They had escaped European airspace just in time, before most of the area was locked down due to the foul air.

  By now, he had little trouble believing the ash blew straight out of Hell.

  But at least the boy still lived—though barely. His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat so faint Jordan could not discern a pulse, but Rhun assured him it was there.

  Finally, something caught Jordan’s attention out the window, near the horizon, a stripe of green.

  He rubbed his gritty eyes and looked again.

  Still there.

  At least my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me.

  He stared at Rhun, at the woman sprawled next to him, covered with a navy-blue blanket. Like Tommy, she never stirred. It was upon her unspoken word that they were all out there.

  Let it not be for nothing.

  If the kid died, Erin would be crushed, knowing it had been upon her urging that they made this long detour to nowhere with a dying boy.

&nb
sp; Jordan turned back to the window and watched the green stripe grow larger.

  According to Erin, Siwa was an oasis, not far from the Libyan border. It had flowing water, palm trees, and a small village surrounding it. Ancient sites also dotted this emerald of the desert, including the ruins of the famous oracle’s temple, and a cluster of tombs, called Gebel al Mawta, or the Mountain of the Dead.

  Hopefully, they would not be burying their two passengers at that last site.

  Not knowing what they might face in Siwa, Jordan turned to the one person who had those answers. He stared at the blanketed body of the sibyl across from him—only to discover her gazing back at him, her eyes open.

  He stiffened in surprise and touched Erin’s arm.

  She glanced over and had the same startled reaction as him. “Arella . . . ?”

  Erin looked down at Tommy, but he was still out.

  Rhun freed the harness that held the woman secure and helped her to sit up.

  She kept the blanket draped around her shoulders despite the warmth of the cabin, plainly still chilled, still recovering. She weaved a bit shakily as she sat.

  “How do you feel?” Jordan asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise of the helicopter.

  She turned to the window, staring at the stretch of trees sweeping toward them. “Siwa . . .”

  “We’re almost there,” Erin said.

  Arella closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “I smell it.”

  As they watched, color slowly returned to her, darkening her skin away from its ashen gray. Even her ghostly hair had begun to gather shadows. She was plainly reviving, like a dry plant after watering.

  “She must be gaining strength as we near the oasis,” Erin whispered next to him.

  “It comes from the water,” Arella said, opening her eyes again, some of the glow shining there once more. “It’s in the very air.”

  Jordan glanced out. He saw palm trees rushing under them now, along with flowering bushes, courtyard gardens, and glints of blue water from fountains and man-made pools, all likely spring fed from the local aquifer.