Innocent Blood

by James Rollins

  Warm.

  She placed her full palm to his throat, remembering doing the same with Jordan. “He’s still warm.” She reached down and tore open his shirt, ripping buttons. “His wound is gone!”

  Tommy suddenly jerked, sitting half up, pushing away from her, clearly startled, his gaze sweeping over them. The fear there faded to recognition.

  “Hey . . .” he said and stared down at his bare chest.

  His fingers probed there, too.

  Elizabeth burst away from Rhun and landed on her knees, taking his other hand. “Are you fine, boy?”

  He squeezed her fingers, shifting closer to her, still scared.

  “I . . . I don’t know. I think so.”

  Jordan smiled. “You look fine to me, kiddo.”

  Christian joined them with Wingu. The pair had finished a fast canvass of the crater and its rim to make sure all was safe. “I can hear his heartbeat.”

  Rhun and Bernard confirmed this with nods.

  Relief shattered through Erin. “Thank God.”

  “Or in this case, maybe thank Michael.” Jordan slipped an arm around her.

  The countess scolded Tommy. “Don’t ever do something like that again!”

  Her seriousness drew a shadow of a smile from Tommy. “I promise.” He lifted up a hand. “I’ll never impale myself on another sword.”

  Christian moved closer to Erin. “His blood doesn’t smell . . . angelic anymore. He is mortal again.”

  “I think it’s because we released the spirit inside him. So it could rejoin its other half.” She glanced over to Iscariot. “Does that mean Judas is healed, too?”

  Christian shook his head. “I checked as I made my circuit with Wingu. He lives yet, but only barely. Even now I can feel his heart about to give out.”

  Rhun fixed his eyes on Judas. “His reward was not life.”

  5:07 P.M.

  For the first time in thousands of years, Judas knew his death was near. A tingling sensation spread from the wound in his side and coursed through his veins like icy water.

  “I’m cold,” he whispered.

  Arella drew him tighter into her warm embrace.

  With great effort, he lifted his arm in front of his failing eyes. The back of his hand was covered in brown age spots. His skin hung in loose wrinkles from his bones.

  It was the fragile limb of an old man.

  With trembling fingers, he felt his face, discovering furrows where there had once been smooth skin, around his mouth, at the corners of his eyes. He had withered to this.

  “You are still beautiful, my vain old man.”

  He smiled softly at her words, at her gentle teasing.

  He had replaced the curse of immortality with the curse of old age. His bones ached, and his lungs rattled. His heart lurched along like a drunken man walking in the dark.

  He stared at Arella, as beautiful as ever. It seemed impossible that she had ever loved him, that she loved him still. He had been wrong to let her go.

  I have been wrong about everything.

  He had thought that his purpose was to bring Christ back to Earth. All his thoughts had been directed toward nothing else. He had spent centuries in service of this holy mission.

  But that had not been his purpose, only his conceit.

  Christ had granted him this gift, not to end the world, not as penance for his own betrayal, but to undo the mistake that Christ Himself had made as a boy.

  To fix what was broken.

  And now I have.

  That was his true penance and purpose, and it was better than he deserved. He had been called to restore life, instead of bringing death.

  Peace filled him as he closed his eyes and silently confessed his sins.

  There were so many.

  When he opened them again, gray cataracts clouded his vision. Arella was a blur, already cruelly fading from his sight as the end neared.

  She hugged him tighter, as if to hold him there.

  “You always knew the truth,” he whispered.

  “No, but I hoped,” she whispered back. “Prophecy is never clear.”

  He coughed as his lungs shriveled inside him. His voice was a croak. “My only regret is that I cannot spend eternity with you.”

  Too weak now, Judas closed his eyes—not onto darkness, but onto a golden light. Cold and pain receded before that radiance, leaving only joy.

  Words whispered in his ear. “How do you know how we shall spend eternity?”

  He opened his eyes one last time. She blazed through his cataracts now, in all her glory, shining with heavenly grace.

  “I am forgiven, too,” she intoned. “I am called at last home.”

  She drifted up from him, away from him. He reached for her, discovering his arm was only light. She took his hand and pulled him from his mortal shell and into her eternal embrace. Bathed in love and hope, they sailed to their final peace.

  Together.

  5:09 P.M.

  No one spoke.

  Like Erin, they had all witnessed Arella bursting to light, washing the crater with a warmth that smelled of lotus blossoms. Then there was nothing.

  Judas’s body remained, but even now it was crumbling to dust, stirred by the desert wind, mixing with the eternal sand, marking his final resting place.

  “What happened to him?” Tommy’s voice was tight with worry.

  “He aged to his natural years,” Rhun answered. “From young man to old in a handful of heartbeats.”

  “Will that happen to me?” Tommy looked aghast.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, kid,” Jordan answered. “You were only immortal for a couple months.”

  “Is that true?” He turned to the countess.

  “I believe so,” Elizabeth said. “The soldier’s words are sound.”

  “And what about the angel?” Tommy studied the empty spot in the desert. “What happened to her?”

  “If I had to guess,” Erin said, “I would say that she and Judas were taken up together.”

  “He would have liked that,” Tommy said.

  “I think so, too.”

  Erin threaded her fingers through Jordan’s.

  He tightened his grip. “But that means we’re out of angels here. Isn’t at least one of them supposed to have blessed the book?”

  Erin turned to Bernard. “Maybe they already have. The skies are clear overhead again.”

  Bernard reached through his shredded clothes to the armor beneath. He tugged the zipper, looking ready to rip it clean off. Finally, he got it open and pulled free the Blood Gospel.

  He held it atop trembling palms, his eyes worried.

  The leather-bound volume looked unchanged.

  But they all knew any truth lay inside.

  Bernard carried it to Tommy and placed it reverently in the boy’s hands, his expression apologetic. “Open it. You have earned it.”

  He sure had.

  Tommy dropped to his knees and put the book on his lap. With one finger, he slowly lifted the cover, as if afraid of what it might reveal.

  Erin watched over his shoulder, equally unnerved, her heart racing.

  Tommy lowered the cover to his knee, revealing the first page. The original hand-scrawled passage glowed with a soft radiance in the dark, each letter perfectly clear.

  “Nothing new is there,” Bernard said, sounding forlorn and distraught.

  “Maybe that means everything is over,” Jordan said. “We don’t have to do anything else.”

  If only . . .

  Erin knew better. “Turn the page.”

  Tommy licked his upper lip and obeyed, lifting the first page and exposing the next.

  It, too, was blank—then darkly crimson words appeared, marching across it in finely scribbled lines. She pictured Christ writing those Greek letters, his quill dipped in His own blood to enact this miraculous gospel.

  Line after line quickly filled the page, far more than the first time the book had revealed its message. Three short cantos formed, ac
companied by a final message.

  Tommy held the book up to Erin. “You can read it, right?”

  Jordan placed a hand on her good shoulder. “Of course she can. She’s the Woman of Learning.”

  For once, Erin didn’t feel the urge to correct him.

  I am.

  As she took the book, a strange strength surged from the cover through her palms. The words shone brighter before her eyes, as if she were always destined to read what was written here. She felt suddenly possessive of the book, of its words.

  She translated the ancient Greek and read aloud the first canto. “The Woman of Learning is now bound to the book and none may part it from her.”

  “What does that mean?” Bernard asked.

  She shrugged lightly, as clueless as he was.

  Jordan slipped the book from her hands. As soon as the Gospel was lifted from her fingers, the words vanished.

  Bernard gasped.

  Erin quickly took the book back, and words blew back to life.

  Jordan flashed a grin at Bernard. “Still doubt who she is?”

  Bernard simply stared at the book, looking anguished, as if the love of his life had been torn from him. And maybe it had been. Erin remembered how she had felt when sent back to California, deemed unworthy to be involved with this miraculous book.

  “What else does it say?” Tommy asked.

  She drew in another breath and moved to the second canto. “The Warrior of Man . . .” She glanced at Jordan, hoping it was something good. “The Warrior of Man is likewise bound to the angels to whom he owes his mortal life.”

  With the uttering of the last word, Jordan suddenly flinched, ripping away the rest of the torn sleeve from his left arm. He gasped. The tattoo traced there had turned to fire, glowing golden. Then in another breath it blew out, leaving only the blue-black lines of ink on his skin.

  He rubbed his arm and shook his fingers. “I can still feel that burn down deep. Like after Tommy revived me.”

  “What does that mean?” Erin asked, looking to the others.

  From their expressions, no one knew.

  Christian offered the only counsel. “Jordan’s blood still smells the same, so he’s not immortal or anything.”

  Jordan frowned at him. “Quit smelling me.”

  Leaving that mystery for now, Erin turned to the third and final canto and read it aloud. “But the Knight of Christ must make a choice. By his spoken word, he may undo his greatest sin and return what was thought forever lost.”

  She faced Rhun.

  His gaze met hers, his dark eyes as hard as obsidian. She read some understanding in that dark glint, but he remained silent.

  Tommy pointed to the bottom of the page. “And what’s that written at the bottom?”

  She read that, too. It was separate from the three cantos, clearly some final message or warning.

  “Together, the trio must face their final quest. The shackles of Lucifer have been loosened, and his Chalice remains lost. It will take the light of all three to forge the Chalice anew and banish him again to his eternal darkness.”

  Jordan sighed heavily. “So our work isn’t done yet.”

  Erin held the warm book in her hands and reread that last passage several times. What was this Chalice? She knew that she would spend many long hours trying to pick meaning out of those few lines, to wring some sense out of them.

  But that could wait for now.

  Jordan stared over at Rhun. “What’s all that about your greatest sin?”

  Rhun remained silent and turned to the empty desert.

  Bernard answered, “His greatest sin was when he became a strigoi.” He took firm hold of Rhun’s shoulder. “My son, I believe that the Book is offering you mortal life, to restore your soul to you.”

  But would he take it?

  Erin read that final canto again.

  The Knight of Christ must make a choice . . .

  54

  December 20, 5:33 P.M. EET

  Siwa, Egypt

  Rhun felt Bernard’s urgent fingers on his shoulders. The cardinal’s breath brushed his neck when he spoke. He heard the shift of cloth and the creak of leather armor as his mentor shifted his stance. But what he didn’t hear was a heartbeat.

  Rhun’s chest was just as silent.

  Neither of them was truly human, nor mortal.

  His blood still burned from the blast, reminding him of another essential difference between them and all humankind.

  We are cursed.

  Though blessed and bound to service in the Church, they remained tainted creatures, best left to the dark.

  He took in Bernard’s words, wondering if they could be true. Could his heart stir again? Could he have his soul back? Could he rejoin a simpler world, one where he might father children, where he could feel the touch of a woman’s hand without fear?

  He seldom allowed himself to entertain such a hope. He had accepted his lot as a Sanguinist. He had served without question for long, long years. His only possible escape from this curse was death.

  But then he met Erin, who questioned everything and everyone. She gave him the will not only to challenge his fate—but to hope for something more.

  But dare I grasp it?

  Elisabeta stepped before him, turning his eyes from the desert to her soft face. He expected rancor, vitriol that he should be offered this gift. Instead, she did something far worse.

  She touched his cheek. “You must take this boon. It is what you always wanted.” Her cold hand lingered there. “You have earned it.”

  He stared into her eyes, seeing that she truly wished this for him. He gave a small nod, knowing what he must do, what he had truly earned.

  He moved her hand from his cheek and kissed her palm in thanks.

  He turned to Erin, to the book shining gently in her hands, where it had always belonged.

  To each, their place.

  He knew all he had to do was touch that book and state his greatest sin, and it would be taken from him, allowing a soul to return to the damned.

  Erin smiled at him, happy for him.

  Bernard followed him, clearly thrilled to witness this miracle. “I am so proud of you, my son. I always knew that if any of our order were to be restored to grace, it would be you. You will be free.”

  Rhun shook his head.

  I will never be free.

  He lifted his hand over the book, remembering that moment when he writhed in the holy brilliance of an angel restored, where his every sin was exposed—including his greatest, that black blight beyond any forgiveness.

  The words of the Gospel echoed through him.

  . . . he may undo his greatest sin . . .

  He turned his face up to the heavens. His friends were wrong. Rhun knew his greatest sin, as did the one who wrote those words upon that page.

  He placed his palm there now. “I take it upon myself to give up my greatest sin,” Rhun prayed. “To let it be undone and give back that which I had stolen.”

  Erin looked troubled at his words—as she should be.

  Behind him, he heard Elisabeta gasp and then crash to her knees.

  Erin whispered to him. “What have you done?”

  As answer, he glanced back to Elisabeta. She clapped her hands over her mouth and nose, as if she could hold back the hands of fate. But black smoke seeped between her fingers, expelling from mouth and nose, and formed a dark cloud in front of her startled eyes. Then in a breath it spiraled downward and vanished from this world.

  She moved her hands from her mouth to her throat.

  And screamed.

  She screamed and screamed.

  The sound rang across the desert again and again.

  Rhun took her in her arms, calming her, holding her.

  “It is as it must be,” he said. “As it should always have been.”

  He watched her anguished, frightened face grow pinkish. And for the first time in centuries, he heard her heart beat again.

  Rhun lost himself in
the rhythm of it, wanting to weep.

  Elisabeta’s eyes were wide upon him. “This cannot be.”

  “It can, my love.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Destroying your soul was my greatest sin. Always.”

  Her face grew redder, not with returning life, but anger. Her silver eyes darkened into storm clouds. Sharp nails scratched down his arm. “You made me mortal?”

  “You are,” Rhun said, hesitant now.

  She shoved him away, her strength the barest fraction of her former might. “I did not wish it!”

  “W-what?”

  “I did not ask you to turn me into a beast, nor did I ask you to return me to this.” She held out her arms. “A frail and mewling human.”

  “But you are forgiven. As am I.”

  “I care nothing about forgiveness. Yours or mine!” She retreated from him. “You play with my soul as if it were a trinket that you can give and take at will. Both then and now. Where is my choice in any of this? Or does that not matter?”

  Rhun searched for words to explain it to her. “Life is the greatest gift.”

  “It is the greatest curse.”

  She turned and stalked away, heading for the open desert.

  Tommy chased after her. “Wait! Don’t leave me!”

  The boy’s lonely and plaintive cry stopped her, but she did not turn to face Rhun again. Tommy ran up to her and hugged her from behind. She pulled him forward and drew him closer, her shoulders quaking as she cried, her chin on his head.

  Bernard touched Rhun’s shoulder. “How could you have squandered such a gift on her?”

  “It was not squandered.”

  Anger blew through him. How could Bernard be such a fool? Did he not understand that the greatest sins are those that we commit ourselves, not those that are committed upon us?

  The countess kept her back toward him.

  She would come to understand and forgive him.

  She must.

  5:48 P.M.

  Erin closed the book and stepped away from the others. Jordan moved to follow her, but she asked for a moment of privacy. She stared up at the stars, at the rising moon as she strode across the crater, to the only place where there were no bodies, away from the chaos of emotions behind her.