The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  “How does it work?” Erin looked like she wanted to take it right out of his hand to see.

  “It uses amplifying fluorescent polymers.” He pulled the detector out of the foam, earning a twinge from his bat-gnawed thumb. “The detector shoots a ray of ultraviolet light out and sees what happens in the fluorescent range after the particles are excited.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Rhun asked, eyeing it with suspicion.

  “Nope.” Jordan inserted the battery and turned on the device while they were talking. “May I have that piece of the book’s concrete jacket?”

  Erin fished it out of her pocket and put it in his hand, her cold fingers stroking across his palm. He didn’t know if she did this on purpose, but she could keep doing it all day long.

  Rhun cleared his throat. “Will it suffice for our needs?”

  “It should help.”

  Jordan examined the scorch marks along one side of the crumbling lime-ash concrete. Once satisfied that it should offer a decent test sample, he set everything down on the table and got to work.

  “I should be able to calibrate the device to match whatever explosive was used to shatter the cement jacket. It’ll turn this little unit into our own personal electronic bloodhound.”

  He had only just finished his calibrations when Rasputin returned, beaming. Jordan tensed, glancing up at him. Anything that made Rasputin that happy could not be good for them.

  6:46 P.M.

  Erin turned to Rasputin as Rhun hovered nearby.

  Jordan returned to doing some final adjustments on the explosives detector.

  “Good evening!” Rasputin strode across to them. He seemed energized and overly enthusiastic, even for him. “I trust that the equipment we obtained is satisfactory?”

  “It is,” Jordan admitted grudgingly. “And it’s ready to go.”

  “As am I.” Rasputin rubbed his hands together and smiled. He looked greedy and happy, like a child about to go to an ice-cream store.

  “You have a lead on the book?” Erin asked.

  “Possibly. I know where it might have been taken if it was brought back to St. Petersburg on the dates specified by the sergeant.”

  Rasputin stepped closer, touched the small of Erin’s back, and guided her toward the center of the church. She reached behind her and tried to pull his hand away. He left it there for a second, as solid as if it were made of stone. Then, with a tiny smile, he let her shift his arm aside. The message was clear: he was stronger than she was, and he would do with her as it suited him.

  Seeing this, Jordan collected the detector, stood, and moved to her side, sticking close, either jealous or worried. She found that this thought didn’t bother her as much as it had in Jerusalem. Body heat radiated across the small space between them.

  Jordan’s eyes darkened as it warmed him, too.

  Rasputin drew them to a halt in the center of the church. He knelt on a stone mosaic and pulled out a single tile from the center of a flower. Sergei handed him a metal rod with a hook on the end like a crowbar. Rasputin wedged it in the hole and lifted out a circular section of the floor one-handed, revealing a dark shaft leading down.

  With a gentlemanly flourish, he gestured to a metal ladder bolted in place on one side.

  Erin leaned over and couldn’t see the bottom, but it smelled rank.

  She bit back a sigh.

  They were going underground.

  Again.

  Rhun slipped around Jordan and mounted the ladder first, climbing down swiftly.

  Jordan dropped his detector into his pocket and waited for Erin to go second. He plainly intended to act as a buffer between her and Rasputin.

  And she was happy to let him.

  After first slipping her hand into her pocket to reassure herself that her flashlight was still there, she followed. Cold from the metal seeped into her fingers and palms as she grasped the rungs and began the longest ladder climb of her life.

  Jordan followed, clambering down one-handed. Was he showing off or favoring his bitten hand? The wound ran deep, but he hadn’t complained.

  Above him, Rasputin and his congregants flowed down after them.

  She turned her attention to the long journey down, counting the rungs. She had reached more than sixty when her toe stretched down and touched the icy floor.

  Rhun helped her off the ladder. She didn’t refuse. By now, her fingers had gone numb. She stepped aside to get out of Jordan’s way, jamming her hands in her pockets.

  Jordan gave her a quick grin as he hopped off the ladder. “When this is over, let’s spend a week at a sunny beach. Aboveground. And margaritas are on me.”

  She smiled back at him and fought down the urge to pinch her nose against the stench down here. It reeked of human waste.

  Russian voices from above directed their attention back to Rasputin, his figure outlined in the circle of light as he climbed down. Behind the monk’s shoulder, ten of his congregants followed him. Then someone replaced the metal cover over the hole and plunged them into darkness.

  A half second later, Jordan’s flashlight flared brightly, and Erin followed suit with her own.

  Their twin beams showed them enclosed by a dingy gray concrete tube, with a ceiling so low that Jordan’s head almost touched it. Green-and-brown frozen slime covered the floor and climbed the walls.

  Erin fought against gagging. The reek of waste filled her mouth and crawled down her throat. She told herself she could stand it. It must be much worse during the summer.

  Rasputin smiled grimly. “Not so pleasant as an ancient tomb, is it?”

  Erin shook her head.

  “This warren continues to serve as a tomb, I’m afraid,” he said. “Each winter, the homeless children of St. Petersburg flee to the sewers. Tens of thousands of them. We bring them hot food and keep the sewers free of strigoi, but it is not enough. Innocents still die here in the dark, and still your precious Church does not care, Rhun.”

  Rhun tightened his lips but did not speak.

  Rasputin lifted the hem of his robes with one hand, like a lady with a ball gown, and led them forward. Five of his acolytes trailed at his heels and another five brought up the rear behind Rhun, Erin, and Jordan.

  Erin concentrated on watching where she stepped and on not slipping. She shuddered to think of any part of her touching the floor. It was comforting to have Rhun on one side and Jordan on the other, although the three of them could not hold their own against the ten who accompanied them—eleven if she counted Rasputin.

  Rhun stumbled and caught himself against the wall.

  Jordan shone his light toward him. “Are you all right?”

  The acolytes pushed them forward, keeping them moving.

  Rhun sniffed the air, as if to double-check something. He called up to Rasputin: “Is that an ursus I scent? Down here?”

  Erin sniffed, but didn’t smell anything.

  “Not just any ursus.” Rasputin’s answer boomed down the tunnel. “The Ursa herself. Since we’re down here, I think we should pay her a visit, for old time’s sake.”

  The monk turned abruptly into a side tunnel, forcing them to follow.

  Erin caught Rhun rubbing his right leg. She read worry there, along with fear.

  Jordan must have seen it, too, because he took her hand again.

  After trudging a few minutes more, she then smelled it, too. She had grown up in the California woods, and she recognized the familiar musky odor.

  Bear.

  Jordan’s grip tightened on her fingers.

  Ahead, Rasputin stopped at the crossing of two tunnels.

  Like in the bunker, X marked the spot.

  The tunnels came together in a chamber about fifty feet square. Wrought-iron gates blocked each of the four ways into the intersection, forming a massive cage. The metal had been worked into fanciful trees with connecting branches and leaves, like a forest. The pattern continued on the concrete walls with glass mosaics of trees and birds. The deep jewel tones and artistic ren
derings reminded Erin of the mosaics in the church far above.

  In spite of the beauty, she fought down bile. A fouler stench underlay the musk of bear—the stench of rotting meat and old blood.

  Jordan played his flashlight’s beam into the cage and picked out a black mound of fur curled atop a nest of gray bones and spruce boughs.

  Rasputin smacked both palms against the gate blocking them. “My dear Ursa! Awake!”

  The blackness shifted into life—cracking branches and bones underneath it—as it rolled lugubriously to its stomach.

  A scarred muzzle rose and sniffed the air. Then the creature lifted itself onto four unsteady legs and lurched upright.

  Erin gasped at its sheer size. Its shoulders scraped the arched roof inside. She put the creature’s height at around seven feet at the shoulder, probably fifteen feet when upright, if it could stand.

  It shook itself once and came fully awake, turning the black wells of its eyes toward them, revealing a deep crimson glowing out of the bottomless depth. The shine spoke to its corruption and raised all the hairs over Erin’s body.

  Then in one lightning-fast leap, it charged at them.

  Rhun swept in front of Erin, his arms raised, ready to protect her. She appreciated the gesture, but it would be futile if the bear broke through that gate.

  “Darling Ursa,” Rasputin crooned as the bear skidded to a halt before him. “One more meal before your winter’s sleep?”

  Erin’s heart raced. Did he intend for them to be that meal? A quick look at Jordan and Rhun told her that they were thinking the same thing. Even the acolytes hung back, maintaining a healthy distance.

  Reaching the gate, the bear rubbed its massive head against the iron, revealing gray fur interspersed with black. It was old.

  Rasputin reached through the bars and fondled its ears. The bear huffed at him warmly, then swiveled its head toward Rhun, fixing him with those unnatural red eyes—and growled.

  “Ah, see, she remembers you!” Rasputin chucked the bear under the chin. “After all these years. Imagine!”

  Rhun ran his hand again down his leg. “I remember her, too.”

  Based on his expression, it was no happy memory.

  “Your leg seems to have healed well,” Rasputin said. “And you should not have been so careless.”

  “Why is she here, Grigori?” Anger hardened Rhun’s voice.

  “There was no safe place for her to overwinter in the wilderness,” he said. “Humans might find her den. At her age, she is slow to wake. She deserves a quiet place to spend the cold months.”

  Rasputin rolled up his long black sleeve, drew a short dagger from his robes, and slit his own wrist. Dark blood welled out. He slipped his muscular forearm through the gate. The creature huffed again, sniffed, and licked his wrist. A long pink tongue wrapped around the monk’s arm with each stroke.

  All the while Rasputin murmured to the bear in Russian.

  Erin covered her mouth in disgust, and Jordan swallowed hard.

  As the bear nuzzled Rasputin’s arm, its huge front foot kicked a round object through a gap in the gate’s ornamentation. The sphere rolled to a stop in front of Erin’s sneakers. She shone her light on it.

  A human skull.

  Judging by the tiny strips of flesh still clinging to it, it had come from a recent kill.

  She danced back in horror.

  Rhun spoke, his voice thick with command. “Enough, Grigori.”

  Rasputin withdrew his white arm from the fawning bear and tugged his sleeve down. He glanced back at the others. “Does the time press at you so, Rhun?”

  “We are here to find the Gospel and leave.” Rhun’s dark eyes never left the bear. “As you promised.”

  “So I did.” Rasputin drew a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his palms. “Follow me.”

  He headed back down the tunnel, slipping past the others, smelling of blood and bear.

  They resumed their journey. Erin needed no urging to put distance between herself and the bear.

  “Rhun?” she asked, keeping next to him. “What was that about you and the bear?”

  He sighed impatiently. “The Ursa was once known as the Bear of Saint Corbinian. Do you know the story?”

  Erin nodded. During her youth, she’d been forced to memorize all the saints and their stories. “Saint Corbinian, on his way back to Rome, encountered a bear who ate his mule. Afterward, Corbinian forced the bear through the will of God to accept a saddle, and it carried him home. But surely the monster here can’t be that bear. That story goes back to the eighth century.”

  “The beast is a blasphemare, and they can live very long lives. Corbinian encountered the monster on the road and got it to serve him, a very rare event for a blasphemare creature to bow to the will of a Sanguinist.”

  Erin thought about Piers and the bats but remained silent.

  Jordan glanced back over his shoulder. “That bear definitely looked big enough to ride.”

  “How did you encounter it?” she pressed.

  “Eighty years ago there was word of a huge bear, one that was devouring peasants in Russia. Piers, Grigori, and I were sent to dispatch it.”

  “Looks like you didn’t,” Jordan said.

  Rasputin dropped back and joined in the conversation, clapping a hand on Rhun’s shoulder. “Not for want of trying. Rhun tracked her to her winter den. Piers was displeased by the mission and refused to help. But the Father proved most helpful after she nearly took off Rhun’s leg.”

  Rhun touched his leg again. “That took over a decade to heal.”

  “The Ursa was merely frightened,” Rasputin said. “She is a gentle soul.”

  Erin thought about the pile of human bones in her cage.

  “She didn’t look too gentle to me,” Jordan added.

  “After Piers and I removed Rhun from the Ursa’s playful embrace, she escaped into the forest.” Rasputin shook his head. “We never found her. Eventually we were recalled to Rome.”

  “But you found her now,” Rhun said. “How?”

  “She called to me,” Rasputin said. “Once I left the Sanguinists and embraced my true nature, blasphemare began to seek me out.”

  “Abominations seeking kinship.” Rhun sounded bitter.

  “We are what we are, Rhun. Accepting your fate instead of fighting it grants you more power than you can imagine.”

  “I do not seek power. I seek grace.”

  Rasputin chuckled. “And, in all these centuries of striving, have you found it yet? Perhaps the grace you seek is within your heart, not within the walls of a church.”

  Rhun clamped his jaw closed tightly.

  No one spoke for several minutes. They hurried along. The only sounds were the crunch of shoes against foul ice.

  They passed several other tunnels leading off in both directions, also ladders leading up and down to other levels. Erin usually had a good sense of direction underground, but she would never be able to find the church again. Jordan seemed to be counting, so she hoped he had a better sense of where they were.

  Finally, Rasputin stopped and mounted a metal ladder. Erin shone her light up, but couldn’t see the end.

  “Up we go,” Jordan said, craning his neck. “Is it too much to hope that this takes us to a Starbucks?”

  In short order, they all mounted the rungs and climbed.

  The ladder emptied out into a clean concrete room. Erin was glad to leave the stench far below. She took a deep breath of the fresher air, clearing her lungs. The only feature in the small space was a gray metal box on one wall connected to cables running into the ceiling.

  Rasputin ignored it and crossed to a gunmetal-gray door. He used a huge old-fashioned key to unlock it and led them into another room. Another door blocked the way from here, this time guarded by a modern keypad on the wall. His fingers darted across the keys, entering digits so quickly that Erin could not keep track.

  The thick steel door, like a bank vault, trundled open.

  Ras
putin crossed gingerly over the threshold and waved them all into a darkened corridor with ocher walls. Other hallways branched off in many directions. It felt like stepping into a giant labyrinth.

  Rasputin’s pace hurried from there. Soon even Jordan gave up counting as they delved deeper into the maze.

  After another ten minutes of traversing halls, climbing short staircases, and crossing dusty rooms, Rasputin stopped before an unremarkable wooden door with a black glass doorknob. It looked no different from a hundred others that they had passed.

  Rasputin pulled free a massive key ring out of the folds of his robes. He fumbled through what must have been fifty keys before finally selecting one.

  As he inserted the key, Rhun stationed himself between Erin and Rasputin. Jordan stood on her other side. The congregants from the Russian church stood in a semicircle behind them.

  Rasputin twisted the key with a tired creak and pushed open the door. “Come!”

  They followed him into a shadowy room that smelled of rust and mildew. Erin’s throat itched, drawing a cough out of her. She wondered how long it had been since the room had been aired out. The scientist in her wanted to ask for a dust mask.

  A few steps away, Rasputin pulled a string attached to a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Dim flickering light fell on piles of junk stacked against the walls. It looked like a hoarder’s living room.

  “Here we are!” Rasputin turned to his followers. “Wait outside. I think we are already too many for this space.”

  “Where are we?” Jordan asked as the lightbulb buzzed overhead.

  “We are beneath the Hermitage,” Rasputin said. “One of the largest and oldest art museums in the world.”

  Jordan glanced around the crowded room. “It doesn’t look like much.”

  “These are the museum’s storage areas,” Rasputin said with a glare. “Above, the actual museum is quite lovely.”

  Erin felt a twinge of professional irritation. Like most academics, she had heard of the sorry state of the Hermitage’s long-buried and decaying collection, but never had she imagined it would be this neglected. As she stepped forward, mice erupted from a pile of mildewed quilts.