City of Screams

by James Rollins

  Shadows cast up from below danced on the walls around him, ahead of him, capering up from the fires of Hell.

  Heavy footfalls rushed up the tunnel behind him.

  No more howls now.

  Just the silent hunt.

  Jordan ran his palms along the wall to keep his legs under him. He tore his skin on the coarse stone, but he didn’t care. The pain meant he had abandoned the smooth natural cavern walls below for the excavated sharp edges of man-made work.

  Behind him, a harsh panting echoed.

  The penlight’s glow vanished.

  Darkness collapsed around him as the beasts closed in.

  He ran faster, his lungs burning.

  He smelled the creatures now, the stench blown up to him by the foul breath of the cave: stinking of meat and blood and horror.

  Then light shone ahead.

  The exit.

  He fled toward it, diving through it from a yard away to freedom, landing hard, almost forgetting to make that last leap to save his life.

  McKay caught him in his arms and rolled him to the side.

  A howl burst forth from the tunnel, full of frustration and the promise of bloody vengeance.

  As Jordan tumbled away, he caught sight of the male leopard stepping to the mouth of the tunnel—then the world exploded.

  Fire.

  Smoke.

  Pelting rocks and stinging grit.

  Jordan shook free of McKay’s embrace but stayed on his knees.

  He took in deep gulps of fresh air, trying to clear his head.

  He watched for any sign of the leopards through the smoke, but the tunnel had completely collapsed. As he stared, an avalanche of rock continued to flow down from above, further sealing the passageway, reburying those bones along with the two leopards inside.

  “How many land mines did you use?” Jordan gasped out, his ears still ringing from the blast.

  “Just one. Didn’t have time to dig up more than that. Plus, it was enough.”

  Before him, the mass of Shahr-e-Gholghola steamed and shuddered. Jordan pictured the subterranean cavern collapsing into stony ruin below. More explosions ripped through the ruins, blasting smoke and rock.

  “The quaking is triggering other land mines to blow,” McKay said. “We’d better haul ass out of the way.”

  Jordan didn’t argue, but he kept a wary eye on the ruins.

  They retreated to the thatched-roof house. Cooper came stumbling out to meet them. Blood ran down one side of his face.

  “What happened?” Jordan asked.

  But before Cooper could answer, Jordan hurried past his teammate to find the home empty.

  What the hell . . .

  Concern for the girl spiked through him.

  Cooper explained. “As soon as you went into the cave, the girl dove through the window. I tried to go after her, but that damned professor clubbed me, screaming, ‘Let her go! Let the demons take her.’ That guy was a whack job from the beginning.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know. I just woke back up.”

  Jordan sprinted out of the hut. Falling snows filled in their tracks but he could see that the girl’s tiny feet pointed west, the professor’s east. They’d gone in opposite directions.

  McKay caught up to him.

  A thump-thumping beat echoed in the distance.

  A helicopter, ablaze with light, came sweeping toward them from Bamiyan, drawn like moths to a flame. The Rangers had heard the explosions.

  “Great,” McKay said. “Now the cavalry comes.”

  “What’s next, Sarge?” Cooper asked.

  “We let someone else get the professor,” Jordan said, rediscovering his outrage. It flowed through him, warming him, telling him what he must do, centering him again at long last. “We go get that little girl.”

  THREE DAYS LATER, I sit in my nice warm office at the Afghan Criminal Techniques Academy. All the paperwork has been filed; the case is closed.

  The events surrounding that night were blamed on a single unusual finding at the ruins of Shahr-e-Gholghola: a gas signature emanating from deep underground. The gas was a hydrocarbon compound called ethylene, known to cause hallucinations and trancelike states.

  I remember my own confusion, the things I thought I saw, the things I wished I hadn’t. But they weren’t real. They couldn’t have been. It was the gas.

  The scientific explanation works for me. Or at least I want it to.

  The reports also attribute the leopards’ strange and aggressive behavior to the same hydrocarbon toxification.

  Other loose ends are also resolving.

  Professor Atherton was found a mile from the ruins of Shahr-e-Gholghola—barefoot, raving, and suffering from hypothermia. He ended up losing most of his toes.

  McKay, Cooper, and I had searched through the night for the little girl, and eventually I found her nestled in a shallow cave, unharmed and warm as toast in my coat. I’d been grateful to find her, relieved that I had cared enough to keep searching. Maybe I’d find my way back to those innocent Iowa cornfields someday after all.

  The girl had no memory of the events at the ruins, likely a blessing. I’d taken her to a doctor, then turned her over to her relatives in Bamiyan, thinking that was the end of it.

  But the cave where I found her, not far from the ruins, revealed itself to be the entrance to a small crypt. Inside rested the remains of a young man, entombed with the weapons and finery of a Mongol noble. Genetic studies are under way to determine if the body might not be that of Genghis Khan’s grandson, the emissary the king of Shahr-e-Gholghola had murdered centuries ago that set in motion the events that would lead to the citadel’s downfall.

  But it was the manner of that young man’s death that keeps me sitting at my desk this winter morning staring at the neatly filled out report and wondering.

  According to Atherton’s stories, the Shansabani king had slain his daughter’s suitor by decapitating him after he discovered their planned elopement. And the Mongolian body in the tomb had no head.

  Could the emissary and the lover have been the same man? Had the king’s daughter fallen in love with the Khan’s grandson? Had that tragic love triggered the massacre that followed? Everyone always said that love led to good things, but it didn’t always. I find myself playing with my wedding ring again and make myself stop.

  I don’t know, but as I sit here, stuffing the reports in a folder, I remember more details. How Azar told me that leopards were the royal symbol of the Shansabani kings. How Farshad screamed about the girl being possessed by a djinn and hunted by ghosts.

  Was he right after all?

  With the opening of the tombs, had something escaped?

  Had the wisp of a long-dead princess slipped into the girl, seeking another to help carry her to her lost love?

  Had her father, still mired in anger and vengeance, possessed those two leopards, the royal sigils of his family, and tried to drag her back to the horrors hidden under Shahr-e-Gholghola?

  And in the end, had the explosions that resealed that tomb reburied his grave along with the bones of the leopards, ending the angry king’s ghostly pursuit of his daughter?

  Or were the pair of hunters merely leopards, not possessed by anything more than hunger, their aggression fueled by the toxic gas in their new den?

  And those voices. Had it just been the cats? I hadn’t been able to track down another Bactrian scholar, so no one but the professor had translated those eerie sounds into words. Maybe he was unhinged by his colleagues’ deaths or already affected by the gas from his earlier work at the dig site.

  I shake my head, trying to decide between the logical explanation and the supernatural one. Usually, I’m a logical guy.

  These crazy thoughts must be the aftereffects of all the gas I breathed in the
cavern. But when I think back to the professor’s words, I can’t be so sure: Things happen out here in the mountains that you cannot believe when you are safe in the city.

  A knock at the door interrupts my train of thought, and I’m grateful for it.

  McKay comes in, steps to the desk. He carries a paper in hand. “New orders, Sarge. Looks like we’re shipping out.”

  “Where?”

  “Masada, Israel. Some strange deaths reported following an earthquake out there.”

  I reach to the folder on my desk and close it, ending the matter.

  “I bet this assignment will be easier than the last one.”

  McKay frowns. “What’s the fun of that?”

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  The Blood Gospel

  an exciting new novel from James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell, featuring archaeologist Erin Granger, Vatican priest Father Rhun Korza, and Army Ranger Jordan Stone in his next adventure

  On sale January 2013

  Prologue

  Spring, AD 73

  Masada, Israel

  THE DEAD CONTINUED to sing.

  Three hundred feet above Eleazar’s head, the chorus of nine hundred Jewish rebels rang out in defiance of the Roman legion at their gates. The defenders had sworn to take their own lives rather than be captured. Those final prayers, chanted to Heaven on high, echoed down to the tunnels below, carved out of the heart of the mountain of Masada.

  Abandoning the doomed men to their bitter sunlight, Eleazar tore his gaze from the roof of the limestone passageway. He wished that he could chant beside them, that he could give up his own life in a final battle. But his destiny lay elsewhere.

  Another path.

  He gathered the precious block into his arms. The sun-warmed stone stretched from his hand to his elbow, the length of a newborn baby. Cradling the stone block against his chest, he forced himself to enter the rough-hewn passage that sliced into the heart of the mountain. Masons sealed the way behind him. No living man could follow.

  The seven soldiers who accompanied him forged ahead with torches. Their thoughts must still be with their brothers, the nine hundred above on the sun-scoured plateau. The stronghold had been under siege for months. Ten thousand Roman soldiers, split into enormous camps, surrounded the mesa, ensuring no one could leave or enter. The rebels had vowed, when their chant was complete, to take the lives of their families and then their own, before the Romans overran their walls. They prayed and readied themselves to kill the innocent.

  As must I.

  Eleazar’s task weighed upon him as heavily as the stone in his arms. His thoughts turned to what awaited below. The tomb. He had spent hours praying in that subterranean temple, knees pressed against stone blocks fitted so close together that not even an ant might escape. He had studied its smooth walls and high, arched ceiling. He had admired the careful handiwork of the craftsmen who had labored to make the space sacred.

  Even then, he had not dared to look upon the sarcophagus in the temple.

  That unholy crypt that would hold the most holy word of God.

  He hugged the stone tighter to his chest.

  Please, God, take this burden from me.

  This last prayer, like the thousands before it, remained unanswered. The sacrifices of the rebels above must be honored. Their cursed lifeblood must serve a higher purpose.

  When he reached the arched doorway to the temple, he could not step through. Others jostled past to their posts. He rested his forehead against the cold wall, praying for solace.

  None came.

  His gaze swept inside. Torchlight flickered, dancing shadows across the stone bricks that formed an arched roof overhead. Smoke swirled above, seeking escape, but there would be none.

  Not for any of them.

  At last, his eyes settled on the small girl, on her knees, held down by soldiers. His heart ached at the piteous sight of her, but he would not forsake the task that had been asked of him. He hoped that she would shut her eyes so that he might not have to look into them at the end.

  Eyes of water . . .

  That was how his long-dead sister had described those innocent eyes, her daughter’s eyes, her little Azubah.

  Eleazar stared now at his niece’s eyes.

  A child’s eyes still—but it was not a child who glared back at him. She had seen what a child should never see. And soon would see no more.

  Forgive me, Azubah.

  With one last murmured prayer, he stepped into the torchlit tomb. Guttering flames reflected off the haunted eyes of the seven soldiers who were waiting for him. They had fought the Romans for days, knowing that the battle would end with their own deaths, but not like this. He nodded to them, and to the robed man in their midst. Nine grown men gathered to sacrifice a child.

  The men bowed their heads to Eleazar, as if he were holy. In truth, they did not know how unclean he was. Only he and the one he served knew that.

  Every man bore bloody wounds, some inflicted by the Romans, others by the small girl they held captive.

  The purple robes she’d been forced to wear were too large, making her appear even smaller. Her dirty hands clutched a tattered doll, sewn from leather, tanned the color of the Judean desert, one button eye missing.

  How many years ago had he given it to her? He remembered the delight bursting from that tiny face when he knelt and offered it to her. He recalled thinking how much sunlight could be trapped in such a little body, that it could shine so brilliantly, fuel such simple joy at a gift of leather and cloth.

  He searched her face now, looking for that sunshine.

  But only darkness stared back at him.

  She hissed, showing teeth.

  “Azubah,” he pleaded.

  Eyes, once as calm and beautiful as a fawn’s, glared at him with feral hatred. She drew in a deep breath and spat hot blood in his face.

  He staggered, dazed by the silken feel, the iron smell of the blood. With one shaking hand, he wiped his face. He knelt before her and used a cloth to gently brush blood from her chin, then flung the soiled rag far away.

  Then he heard it.

  So did she.

  Eleazar and Azubah both jerked their heads. In the tomb, they alone heard screams from atop the mountain. They alone knew that the Romans had broken through the stronghold’s defenses.

  The slaughter above had begun.

  The robed one noted their movement and knew what it meant. “We have no more time.”

  Eleazar looked to the older man in the dusty brown robe, their leader, the one who had demanded that this child be baptized amid such horror. Age etched the leader’s bearded face. Solemn, impenetrable eyes closed. His lips moved in silent prayer. His face shone with the surety of a man free of doubt.

  Finally, those blessed eyes opened again and found Eleazar’s face, as if searching for his soul. It made him recall another stare from another man, many, many years before.

  Eleazar turned away in shame.

  The soldiers gathered around the open stone sarcophagus in the center of the tomb. It had been carved out of a single block of limestone, large enough to hold three grown men.

  But it would soon imprison only one small girl.

  Pyres of myrrh and frankincense smoldered at each corner. Through their fragrance Eleazar smelled darker scents: bitter salts and acrid spices gathered according to an ancient Essene text.

  All lay in terrible readiness.

  Eleazar bowed his head one final time, praying for another way.

  Take me, not her.

  But the ritual called for them all to play their roles.

  A Girl Corrupted of Innocence.

  A Knight of Christ.

  A Warrior of Man.

  The robed leader spoke. His graveled voice did not waver. “What must be done is God’s will. To protect h
er soul. And the souls of others. Take her!”

  But not all had come here willingly.

  Azubah yanked free of her captors’ hands and sprang for the door, swift as a fallow doe.

  Eleazar alone possessed the speed to catch her. He grabbed her thin wrist. She struggled against his grip, but he was stronger. Men closed in around them. She pulled the doll to her chest and sank to her knees. She looked so wretchedly small.

  Their leader gestured to a nearby soldier. “It must be done.”

  The soldier stepped forward and snatched Azubah’s arm, wrenching her doll away and tossing it aside.

  “No!” she cried, her first word, forlorn, still sounding so much like a child, coming from her thin throat.

  She tore free again and surged forth with furious strength. She leaped upon the offending soldier, locking her legs around his waist. Teeth and nails tore at his face as she knocked him hard to the stone floor.

  Two solders rushed to his aid. They pulled the wild girl off and pinned her down.

  “Take her to the sepulcher!” the leader commanded.

  The two men holding her hesitated, plainly fearing to move. The child thrashed under them.

  Eleazar saw that her panic was not directed toward her captors. Her gaze remained fixed on what had been stolen from her.

  He retrieved the tattered figure of her doll and held it in front of her bloody face. It had quieted her many times when she was younger. He strove to block out memories of her playing in the clear sunshine with her laughing sisters and this doll. The toy trembled in his hand.

  Her gaze softened into a plea. Her struggles calmed. She disentangled one arm from the men’s grasps and reached for the doll.

  When her fingers touched it, her body sagged as she succumbed to her fate, accepting that escape was not possible. She sought her only solace, as she had as an innocent child, in the companionship of her doll. She did not want to go into the darkness alone. She lifted the figure to her face and pressed her small nose against its own, her shape a sigil of childlike comfort.

  Waving his men away, he lifted the now-quiet girl. He cradled her cold form against his chest, and she nestled against him as she used to. He prayed for the strength to do what was right.