The Blood Gospel (25 page)

“I could not leave them there to die.” Rhun looked down at his shredded garments, smelled again the blood on his skin.

“Don’t you see? The prophecy is a living force now.” Bernard lifted the silver cross that hung around his neck and kissed it, his lips reddening from the heat of silver and holiness. “We each have our role to play. We must each humbly bow to our own destinies. And whether I’m right or wrong, you know we must keep the Gospel from the hands of the Belial at all costs.”

“Why?” Bitterness tinged Rhun’s next words. “A moment ago, you were certain that the Belial could not open it. Yet now you seem to doubt that part of the prophecy.”

“I do not presume to understand God’s will, merely to interpret it as best I can.”

Rhun thought of Elisabeta’s silvery-gray eyes and Erin’s amber ones.

Never again will I fall so low.

“And if I refuse this destiny?” Rhun asked.

“Now who presumes to know God’s heart better than He?”

The words stung, as they were meant to.

Rhun bowed his head and prayed for guidance. Could this truly be a challenge that God had placed before him? A chance for absolution? What greater task could God ask of him than to protect His son’s final Gospel? Rhun still did not trust Bernard’s deeper motives, but perhaps the Cardinal was correct to see the hand of God in today’s actions.

He considered all that had come to pass.

The final resting place of the book had been sundered open, heralded by quakes, bloodshed, and the survival of one boy, an innocent child spared.

But with the lavender scent of Erin’s hair fresh in his nostrils, Rhun resisted that path. He would surely fail her—as he had failed another long ago.

“Even if I were to consent to aid in your search for the Gospel—” Rhun stopped at the smile on Bernard’s face. “Even so, we cannot force the two here to go after it, not with the Belial in play.”

“That is true. We can force no one. The two must enter the search of their own free will. And to do so, they must give up their worldly attachments. Do you think that they are ready for such a sacrifice?”

Rhun pictured the pair that Bernard believed to be the Woman and the Warrior. When he first met the two, he considered them, much as the Cardinal had done, to be little more than what was revealed by their roles: an archaeologist and a soldier.

But now he knew that was no longer true.

Such labels were pale reflections of the two who had bled and fought at his side.

There were truer ways to describe them, and one was by their given names.

Erin and Jordan.

The Cardinal’s last question plagued him.
Do you think they are ready …?

Rhun hoped, for their sakes, that the answer was no.

October 26, 9:33
P.M
., IST

Jerusalem, Israel

Hallelujah for small miracles.

Jordan discovered several gifts waiting for him on the bed of his small, monastic cell. A set of clean clothes had been folded atop the pillow—and on the blanket rested his weapons, returned to him.

He crossed quickly and examined his Heckler & Koch machine pistol and his Colt 1911. They were loaded—which both relieved him and disturbed him. His hosts either trusted him or were plainly not worried about any threat he might pose.

But that trust was a one-way street.

Standing in place, he gave the small room a once-over. It had been dug out from solid rock. The space contained a single bed that had been jammed against one wall to make room for a wide washstand topped with a copper basin full of steaming water.

He did a fast and thorough search for surveillance equipment. Considering the spartan accommodations, there weren’t many places to hide a listening device. He searched the mattress, felt along the edges of the raw wood bed frame, and examined the washstand.

Nothing.

He even stepped to the crucifix on the wall, took it down, and checked behind it, feeling vaguely blasphemous for doing so.

But still nothing.

So, they apparently weren’t listening in—at least not with modern technology. He eyeballed the door. How sharp was the hearing of a Sanguinist?

Considering his level of paranoia, he wondered how wise it had been to come here after all. Should he and Erin have waited in the desert and taken their chances with the jackals? Or maybe another grimwolf?

That didn’t sound any better.

And at least by coming here, they were still alive. Others had not been so lucky. He pictured his teammates’ broken bodies, buried now under tons of stone.

He thought of the calls and visits he would have to make once this ordeal was all over: to the parents, to the widows, to the children.

He sank to the bed in defeat and grief.

What in the hell could he tell them?

9:52
P.M
.

Cramped
was a generous description for Erin’s room.

She kept hitting her elbow on the wall as she tried to scrub herself clean at the washbasin. She had stripped down to a bra and panties, and once clean, she faced the clothes that had been laid out for her.

It was no problem to slip into the white cotton shirt she found on her bed—but what to do about that long black skirt? It was just like the ones she’d worn as a girl, the ones that always tripped her up, kept her from climbing trees, made it almost impossible to ride horses. In her former world, women wore skirts, while men enjoyed the freedom of pants.

She had worn a skirt or dress throughout her childhood and balked at returning to one. But with her jeans cut to shreds and covered in blood, sweat, and sand, she’d have to wear the dress—unless she wanted to run around in front of Jordan and the priests in her underwear.

That settled it.

She transferred the contents of her jeans to her skirt pocket: the Nazi medallion from the tomb, her wallet, and a faded scrap cut from a quilt many years before, no bigger than a playing card.

Her fingertips lingered over the last item, drawing both strength and anger from it. She always carried the scrap with her, along with the anger and guilt it represented. She pictured the baby’s quilt from which it had been cut, how she’d stolen it before it was buried with her infant sister. She shut down that memory before it overwhelmed her and stuffed it away, shoving the piece of cloth deep into the skirt’s pocket.

That done, she wiggled into the garment, hating how it felt against her legs. The sandals she left by the bed. Her sneakers were staying with her.

Once dressed, she returned to the door, found it unlocked, and peeked out into the hallway. She found it empty and stepped out of the room. As she turned to shut her door—something scraped across stone, sounding like nails clawing out of a grave.

Spooked, already on edge, she bolted across the hall. She didn’t want to be caught outside of her room, especially by whatever made that scraping noise. She pictured the slavering jaws of the grimwolf.

Without knocking, she burst through Jordan’s door.

She found him wearing only a towel and a surprised expression. In his right hand he jerked up a pistol—but then lowered it immediately.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She blushed. “I shouldn’t have … I didn’t mean to …”

“It’s all right,” he said, smiling at her fluster, which only drew more heat to her cheeks. “I’m glad you came over. I wanted to talk to you alone anyway. Away from the others.”

She nodded. That was why she had headed over here, too, but she had expected that conversation to be one during which they were both
clothed
.

She stepped against the door, trying not to look at Jordan’s muscular chest, at the thin line of hair that split his washboard abs, or at the length of his tan legs.

She wanted to turn away, but her eyes caught on an unusual tattoo that spanned his left shoulder and ran partway down his arm and across a corner of his chest and back. It looked like the branching roots of a tree, all rising from a single dark spot on his upper chest. There was a certain flowery beauty to it, especially etched on such a masculine physique.

He must have noted the object of her attention. He drew a finger down one of those branching lines. “I got this when I was eighteen.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called a Lichtenberg figure. It’s a fractal pattern that forms after something gets struck by a lightning bolt. In this case that something was
me
.”

“What?” She stepped toward him, both intrigued by and glad for the distraction.

“I was playing football in the rain. Got hit near the goalpost after catching a touchdown.”

She stared up at his blue eyes, half smiling, trying to judge if he was making fun of her.

He lifted three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Of course he was a Boy Scout.

“I was pronounced dead for three minutes.”

“You were?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“What was it like being dead?”

“I didn’t have that whole dark-tunnel, bright-light thing, but I came back different.”

“Different how?” He seemed pretty grounded, but was he going to tell her that he’d seen God or been touched by an angel?

“It’s like my number was up.” He flattened his palm over his heart. “And everything after that moment was a bonus.”

She stared at the design on his chest. That’s how close he’d gotten to death. He went through and came out the other side, like the Sanguinists.

He grinned and traced down one of the lines. “These patterns are sometimes called lightning flowers. They’re caused by the rupture of small capillaries under the skin due to the passage of electric current following the discharge of a lightning strike. I got hit here.” He touched the center of the branching on his chest. “The pattern spread outward. It was bright red for a while, but it faded and left a little scar.”

“But then?”

“I had the original pattern tattooed to remind me that this life is a bonus.” He laughed. “Drove my parents crazy.”

She lifted a finger, wanting to examine the design, to touch it—like she did all things she found incredible, then realized what she was about to do and stopped, leaving her finger hovering over the black mark on his chest.

He reached up and drew her hand closer. “It’s raised up a bit where the original scar was.”

She wanted to resist but couldn’t. As her fingertip touched his skin, a jolt shook her, as if some of the lightning’s energy were still trapped in his scar—but she knew it was something more than electrical discharge.

He must have felt it, too. His skin tightened where she made contact, the thick muscle hardening underneath her finger. His breath drew in deeper.

He still held her hand. She looked up into those blue eyes, those lips—the upper lip with a divot at the top like a bow.

His eyes darkened, and he leaned down toward her, as if wanting to assert that he was alive now.

She held her breath and let him, wanting the same after the long day of horrors.

His kiss started gentle and featherlight, lips barely brushing hers.

Heat flashed through her, as electric as it was warm.

She rose up on her toes and deepened the kiss, needing to explore it further, to explore
him
further. She wrapped her hands around his bare shoulders and pulled him closer, wanting more of him, more connection, more warmth. She dissolved into the kiss, letting it fill her and blot out the horrible events in the tomb.

Then she flashed on the pale ring of skin around his tanned finger.

It was a kind of tattoo that marked him as readily as the lightning scar.

He was a married man.

She leaned back, bumping into the washstand. “I’m sorry.”

His voice was hoarse. “I’m not.”

She turned her head away, angry at herself, at him. She needed to catch her breath and get her head on straight. “I think we need to step back from this.”

Jordan took a careful step backward. “Far enough?”

That wasn’t exactly what she meant, but it would do. “Maybe another step.”

Jordan gave her a quick, embarrassed smile, then retreated another step and sat down on the bed.

She sat on the other end, her arms crossed over her chest, needing to change the subject. Her voice came out too high. “How’s your other shoulder?”

He had hurt it while being yanked through the hole as they escaped the collapsing tomb.

Jordan swiveled his arm around and winced. “Hurts, but I don’t think it’s serious. Less serious than being pancaked in the mountain.”

“Being pancaked in the mountain might have been easier.”

“Who says the easy path is the right one?”

She blushed, still feeling the heat, the pressure, of his kiss. She looked down at her hands. She spoke after the silence stretched for too long, glancing toward the door. “What do you think they want with us?”

He followed her gaze. “Don’t know. Maybe to debrief us. Swear us to secrecy. Maybe give us a million dollars.”