He took another breath, then another.
Slowly the room slipped back into focus. Nothing seemed to have changed. He still lay in a pool of his own cooling blood. Baako continued to press hard against his wound.
Jordan met the African’s concerned gaze and pushed at his hands. “I think I’m okay.”
Better than okay.
Baako shifted his palms and glanced at the spot where the sword had impaled Jordan. Strong fingers wiped the residual blood away.
A low whistle escaped Baako.
Sophia joined him. “What is it?”
Baako glanced up at her. “It’s stopped bleeding. I swear the wound even looks smaller.”
Sophia examined him, too. Only her expression grew more worried than relieved. “You should be dead,” she said baldly, gesturing to the spread of blood. “You received a mortal wound. I’ve seen many over the past centuries.”
Jordan pushed up into a seated position. “People have counted me out before. I even died once. No, make that twice. But who’s keeping track?”
Baako sighed. “You healed, just as the book said you would.”
Sophia quoted from the Blood Gospel. “ ‘The Warrior of Man is likewise bound to the angels to whom he owes his mortal life.’ ”
Baako clapped him on the shoulder. “It seems those angels are still watching over you.”
Or they’re not done with me yet.
Sophia returned her attention to the dead strigoi. “It knew your name.”
Jordan was glad for the distraction, remembering the last words spoken from those dying lips.
Jordan, mein Freund . . . I’m sorry.
“That voice,” he said. “I swear it was Brother Leopold’s.”
“If you’re right,” Sophia said, “that is one miracle that can wait. We should get you to the medics at camp.”
Jordan fingered open his shirt. The wound was now just a sticky scab. He wagered even that would be gone in a few hours. Still, he pictured that sword piercing through him, which raised another mystery.
“Have you guys ever seen a strigoi move like that?”
Baako looked to Sophia, as if she had more experience.
“Never,” she answered.
“It was not just fast,” Baako said. “But strong, too.”
Sophia moved to the dead creature’s side, rolled it to its back, and began to strip away its clothes. Three bullet holes decorated the corpse’s center mass. Jordan was pretty impressed that he’d hit the creature at all. As Sophia peeled the shirt away, Jordan sucked in a surprised breath.
Emblazoned on the strigoi’s pale chest was the imprint of a black hand. Jordan had seen one like it once before—burned on the neck of the now dead Bathory Darabont. Her mark had bound her to her former master, branding her as one of his own.
The presence of it here now meant only one thing.
“Someone sent this creature down here.”
5:28 P.M.
Rome, Italy
I am Legion . . .
He stood before a silvered mirror, drawing himself fully back into his vessel to center himself after his sojourn to that dread cavern. In that reflection, he saw an unremarkable body: weak limbs, sunken chest, soft belly. But his mark graced this one’s form, painting his skin as dark as the void between stars. Eyes as blackened as dead suns stared back out of that mirror.
He let those eyes close and searched the shadows that made up his true essence. Six hundred and sixty-six spirits. He let those tendrils run through his awareness, reading what still remained, looking for answers. He caught glimpses of a common pain from the past, of a glass prison, of a white-bearded figure staring inward with disgust.
But from such pain came his birth.
I am many . . . I am plural . . . I am Legion.
Within those swirls of darkness that made up his being, a single flame glowed, flickering in those endless shadows. He drew closer to that fire, reading the smoke that came from it as the spirit that sustained it slowly smothered.
He knew that one’s name, the vessel that he possessed.
Leopold.
It was from the smoke of that weakening flame that Legion had learned the ways of this present world. He had rifled through those memories, those experiences, to ready himself for the war to come. He had built an army, enslaving others with merely a touch of his hand. He let the strength of his darkness flow into them. With each touch, his eyes and ears in this world multiplied, allowing his awareness to grow ever larger across the land.
He had one purpose.
He pictured a being of immensely dark angelic power, seated on a black throne.
Centuries ago, those six-hundred-and-sixty-six spirits had been woven by that black angel, securing Legion inside that gemstone. He was left there as a harbinger for what was to come, a dark seed waiting to take root in this new world and spread.
When he was finally freed from the gem, he attached himself to the creature who broke that stone. Leopold. Legion rooted himself deep into his new vessel, attaching himself to Leopold, taking possession, the two becoming one. The vessel was the pot from which he could grow into this world, spreading his branches far and wide, claiming others, branding them, enslaving them. And while his foothold in this world depended on Leopold living, he could still travel along those branches and control them from afar.
His duty was to open the way for his master’s return, to ready this world for its purification, when the vermin known as mankind would be purged out of this earthly garden. The dark angel had promised Legion this paradise, but before he could be awarded this prize, he must first complete his task.
And now he knew there were forces aligned against him.
That he also learned from the flickering flame inside him.
Legion did not fully understand that threat, but he recognized that his vessel fought to keep certain scraps hidden from him. Moments ago, he felt that flame of Leopold’s spirit flare brighter with shock, saw it shudder in the darkness, drawing his attention. From that smoke, he learned a name, put a face to it.
The Warrior of Man.
But not just that name. Others slipped free, too, as memories burned away to smoke.
The Knight of Christ.
The Woman of Learning.
Whispers of prophecy rose with that smoke, along with an image of a book written by the very Son of God. He studied that flame now, trying to learn more.
Who else stands in my way?
March 17, 8:32 P.M. PST
Santa Barbara, California
Talk about an exercise in futility . . .
With gritted teeth, Tommy shinnied up another couple of inches on the knotted rope that hung from the center of the gymnasium. Below his toes, his classmates yelled either words of encouragement or insults. He couldn’t really tell which from up there, especially past the pounding of his heart and gasping of his breath.
Not that it would matter anyway.
He had always hated gym, even before his cancer diagnosis. Uncoordinated and not particularly fast on his feet, he was usually picked last for most sports. He also quickly discovered that he would rather stay away from any ball than jump after it.
I mean what’s the point?
Only one activity truly interested him: climbing. He was actually good at it, and he liked the simplicity of it. It was all about him and the rope. Whenever he climbed, his worries and fears faded away.
Or at least most of them.
He clamped his knees on the rope and tugged up higher. Sweat trickled down his back. The weather was always warm in Santa Barbara, and almost always sunny. He liked that. After spending time in Russia and aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic, he never wanted to be that cold again.
Of course, after being frozen solid in an ice sculpture of an angel, anyone would appreciate the Southern California sunshine.
He stared up toward that sunshine now, where it flowed through a row of windows at the top of the gymnasium.
Almost there . . .
<
br /> In another two yards, he should be able to touch the wire cages that protected the lights that hung from the ceiling. Touching the dusty wires was a badge of honor in the ninth-grade class, and he intended to reach them.
He stopped for a moment, readying himself for the last bit of the ascent. Lately, he got out of breath so easily. It was worrisome. Half a year ago, he had been touched by an angel . . . literally. Angelic blood had flowed through him, curing him of his cancer, strengthening him, even making him temporarily immortal. But that was gone, burned away in the sands of Egypt.
He was just an ordinary boy again.
And I plan to stay that way.
He hung for a moment, staring upward and taking a deep breath.
I can do this.
A sharper shout reached him from below. “That’s far enough! Come back down!”
That would be Martin Altman, Tommy’s only friend at the new school. He’d lost his old friends when he had moved in with his aunt and uncle. After Tommy’s parents had died, they were his only blood relatives.
He pushed that thought away before dark memories overwhelmed him. Glancing between his toes, he saw Martin staring up at him. His friend was tall and lanky, with long arms and legs. Martin was always ready with a corny joke, and laughter came easily out of him.
Of course, Martin’s parents hadn’t died in his arms.
Tommy felt a flare of anger at his friend, but he knew it came from a place of petty jealousy, so he stamped it back down. Still, the rope slipped between his sweaty palms. He clutched tighter.
Maybe Martin’s right.
A wave of dizziness further convinced him. He started back down, but everything grew steadily fuzzier. He struggled to hold on as he descended more rapidly, sliding now, burning his palms.
Whatever you do, don’t let—
Then he was falling. He stared up at the sunshine flowing through the windows above, remembering another time he had plummeted through the air. Then, he had been immortal.
Not so lucky today.
He slammed into the pile of mats at the base of the rope. Air burst from his chest. He gasped, trying to refill his lungs, but they refused to cooperate.
“Move!” shouted Mr. Lessing, the gym teacher.
Everything went gray—then he found his breath again. He heaved in great gulps of air, sounding like a hoarse seal.
His classmates stared down at him. Some were laughing, others looked concerned, especially Martin.
Mr. Lessing pushed through them. “You’re okay,” he said. “Just got the wind knocked out of you.”
Tommy fought to slow his breath. He wanted to sink through the floor. Especially when he spotted Lisa Ballantine’s face among the others. He liked her, and now he’d made a fool of himself.
He tried to sit up, tweaking a spike of pain up his bruised back.
“Go slow,” Mr. Lessing said, helping him to his feet, which only made Tommy’s face heat up even more.
Still, the room tilted a little, and he clutched the gym teacher’s arm. This day couldn’t get any worse.
Martin pointed to Tommy’s left hand. “Is that a rope burn?”
Tommy looked down. His palms certainly were red, but Martin pointed to a dark mark on the inside of his wrist.
“Let me see that,” Mr. Lessing said.
Tommy shook free and stumbled away, covering the blemish with his other hand. “Just a rope burn. Like Martin said.”
“Okay, then everyone clear out,” Mr. Lessing ordered. “Showers. Double time.”
Tommy hurried away. He was still light-headed, but it wasn’t from the fall. He kept the lesion covered. He didn’t want anyone else to know, especially not his aunt and uncle. He would keep it secret for as long as he could. While he didn’t understand what was happening, he knew one thing for sure.
No chemotherapy this time around.
He rubbed the spot on his wrist with his thumb, as if trying to erase it away, because he knew he was out of miracles.
His cancer was truly back.
Fear and despair welled through him. He wished he could speak to his mother or father, but that was impossible. Still, there was one person he could call, one person he could trust with his secret.
Another immortal who, like him, had lost her immortality.
She’ll know what to do.
6:25 P.M. CET
Venice, Italy
Standing in the middle of the convent’s garden, Elizabeth Bathory adjusted her broad-brimmed straw hat to cover her face, to shade her eyes from the low-hanging spring sun. To protect her skin, she always wore a hat when she worked outside, even here in the tiny herb garden inside the walled courtyard that served as her prison.
She had been taught centuries ago that those of royal blood should never have skin the same hue as the peasants who worked the fields. Back then she had her own gardens at Čachtice Castle, where she had grown medicinal plants, studying the arts of healing, plying cures out of a flower’s petals or a stubborn root. Even then, she had not gone outside with her clippers and baskets without some manner of shade.
Though this small herb garden paled next to her former fields, she appreciated her time among the convent’s fragrant collage of thyme, chives, basil, and parsley. She had spent the past afternoon clearing out old, woody growths of rosemary to fill in those new spaces with lavender and mint. Their homely scents drifted up into the warm air.
If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that it was a summer day back at her castle, that her children would soon run out to meet her. She would pass them her gathered herbs and walk with them through the grounds, hearing their stories of the day.
But that world had ended four hundred years ago.
Her children were dead; her castle in ruins. Even her name was whispered as a curse. All because she had been made into an accursed strigoi.
She pictured Rhun Korza’s face, remembering him atop her, the taste of her own blood on his lips. In that moment of weakness and desire, her life had been forever changed. After her initial shock at her transformation into a strigoi, she had come to embrace that damned existence, to appreciate all it offered. But even that had been stripped from her this past winter—stolen away by the same hand that had given it.
Now she was simply human again.
Weak, mortal, and trapped.
Curse you, Rhun.
She bent down and savagely clipped a branch of rosemary and tossed it to the flagstone path. Marie, an elderly nun, worked the gardens with her, sweeping the path behind her with a handmade broom. Marie was a wrinkled-up apricot of a woman, eighty if she was a day, with blue eyes filmed with age. She treated Elizabeth with a kind condescension, as if the nun expected her to grow out of her troublesome behavior. If only she knew that Elizabeth had lived more centuries than this old woman would ever see.
But Marie knew nothing of Elizabeth’s past, not even her full name.
None at the convent was given this knowledge.
A twinge in one knee caused Elizabeth to shift her weight to the other, recognizing the pain for what it was.
Aging.
I’ve had one curse replaced with another.
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Berndt Niedermann crossing the courtyard on his way to the dining hall for dinner. The elegant German lodged in one of the convent’s guest rooms. He was dressed in what passed in this era for formal: pressed trousers and a well-tailored blue jacket. He raised a hand in greeting.
She ignored him.
Familiarity was not yet called for.
At least for the moment.
Instead, she stretched a kink from her back, glancing everywhere but in Berndt’s direction. The Venetian convent was not without its charm. In the past, the convent had been a grand house with a stately entrance overlooking a wide canal. Tall columns flanked a stout oaken door that led to the dock. She had spent many hours staring out her room’s window, watching life travel by on the canals. Venice had no cars or horses—only boats and peo
ple on foot. It was a curious anachronism, a city largely unchanged from her own past.
Over the last week, she had chatted with the German lodger on occasion. Berndt was an author visiting Venice to research a book, which seemed to entail walking around the stone streets and eating fine food and drinking expensive wine. If she had been allowed to accompany him for one day, she could have shown him so much more, filled him with the history of this flooded city, but that was never to be.
She was always under the watchful eye of Sister Abigail, a Sanguinist who made it clear that Elizabeth must never leave the convent grounds. To keep her life—mortal as it was now—Elizabeth had to remain a prisoner within its stately walls.
Cardinal Bernard had been clear on that point. She was imprisoned here to atone for her past crimes.
Still, this German might prove useful. To that end, she had read his books, discussed them with the author over wine, careful to praise them when she could. Even these brief conversations were not private. She was only allowed to speak to guests while closely supervised, usually by Marie or Abigail, that gray-haired battle-ax of a Sanguinist.
Still, Elizabeth found gaps in their supervision, especially lately. As the months of her imprisonment ticked away, the others had begun to let their guard down.
Two nights ago, she had been able to slip into Berndt’s room while he was out. Among his private belongings, she had discovered a key to his rented canal boat. Rashly, she had stolen it, hoping he would think he had misplaced it.
So far, no alarm had been raised.
Good.
She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief as a small boy in a blue messenger cap appeared at the other end of the courtyard. The child moved in the careless modern way that she had seen Tommy use, as if children today were not in control of their limbs, allowing them to flop uselessly when they moved. Even at a younger age than this boy, her long dead son Paul would never have traipsed so artlessly.
Marie hobbled over to greet the messenger, while Elizabeth strained to overhear their conversation. Her Italian was passable now, as she’d had little to do beyond work in the garden and study. She studied far into the night. Everything she learned was a weapon that she would one day wield against her captors.
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