The Blood Gospel (48 page)

“Wondrous, yes?” the driver said with reverence.

“Stunning,” she answered honestly.

“You see here the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood,” Rasputin said, leaning forward from the backseat. “Erected over the spot of Czar Alexander the Second’s assassination in 1881. But he would not be the
last
Romanov to fall to the wrath of the people. Inside that church, you will see cobblestones once stained with Alexander’s blood.”

Despite the church’s rich history, it lost some of its splendor in Erin’s eyes as she listened to Rasputin’s words. She had seen enough stones stained with blood, enough to last a lifetime. Still, she pushed open the car door and stepped into cold wind, more frigid than even the cemetery. She stared at dirty gray snowdrifts pushed up along the wall of the church by the stiff wind coming off the nearby river.

Jordan moved close enough to her to block the wind. He stared up at the elaborate construction. “Looks like someone had a gingerbread kit and a lot of spare time.”

Rhun scolded in a low voice, “He is proud. Do not insult him.”

Rasputin’s answer carried through the wind and across the car. “They could do no more to insult me than you and those whom you love have done already, Rhun. But they would be wise not to anger me themselves. For now, I am feeling generous enough to grant them immunity because they are not Sanguinists.”

“Guess it’s good to be human,” Jordan muttered with a crooked, wry smile.

Proving this, he reached down and threaded warm fingers through Erin’s cold ones.

Together, they followed the two black-clad priests toward the twin arches of the church’s entrance.

5:27
P.M
.

Once they passed the entrance vestibule, Rhun stepped into the main nave. He knew what to expect, but what he saw still struck his senses deeply—as Grigori knew it would.

His gaze was immediately drawn to the mosaics covering every surface inside the space. Bright blues and golds and crimsons swam in Rhun’s vision. Tiles depicting biblical stories shouted from every wall and ceiling: Jesus and the apostles, the stylized brown eyes of saints, the brilliant wings of angels. Millions of minuscule tiles formed and re-formed into biblical scenes. He closed his eyes, but they burned anew when he opened them.

His stomach roiled from the smells here, too: warm humans in the nave, incense, wine, old death seeping from the floor and cracks, and, somewhere, fresh human blood. He struggled against an urge to flee.

Rhun turned back toward the entrance, his eyes falling upon a vast mosaic over the doorway. Hundreds of thousands of small tiles depicted the greatest moment of Sanguinist history. He knew that Grigori himself had commissioned this very work, showing the rising of Lazarus from his tomb, the first of the Sanguinist Order to greet Our Lord, making his pact to serve Christ, to partake only of His blood.

Except for Rhun, Lazarus was the only member of the Order who had been converted before ever tasting human blood, before ever taking a single life.

How far I have fallen …

Rhun cast his eyes down. The majesty of the story of Lazarus helped him find his center amid the din and clamor of the vibrant church.

“Wondrous, is it not?” Grigori beamed at the monstrous home he had created.

“The mosaics are masterful,” Erin agreed, striding past him, her head tilted up, studying all.

“Yes, they are.”

Grigori clapped his hands, and shadowy figures appeared from doorways and alcoves, whirling into activity.

Rhun returned his attention to the room, noting that those who did Grigori’s bidding had no heartbeats; most looked like their driver, so very young in face but so very old in years. These were
strigoi
who had made a pact with Grigori as their pope, creating a dark version of the Sanguinist order on Russian soil.

Upon Grigori’s orders, the tourists in the church were hustled out the doors, which thudded closed and locked. Within minutes, only two human hearts still beat in the church.

Besides Rhun and his companions, the church held only Grigori’s followers, fifty in all: men, women, and children whom he had turned into his own dark congregation, forever trapping them between salvation and damnation. They were not as feral as most
strigoi
, yet neither were they striving toward holiness like the Sanguinists.

A new shade of darkness had been brought into the world by Grigori.

Wooden pews were carried into the nave and lined up facing the altar. Electric lights were switched off, and long yellow beeswax candles flamed to life. The summer scent of honey fought the tainted odors of the dark congregation.

Erin and Jordan stayed close to Rhun near the back of the church. Jordan shifted warily from side to side, as if he expected an attack at any moment. Erin turned her focus to one fantastical mosaic after another. Even here, they each amply demonstrated their roles as Warrior of Man and Woman of Learning.

Rhun kept between them and Grigori’s congregation, filling his own role.

Knight of Christ.

But his head whirled at the deep sense of
wrongness
here, as sacred images looked down upon Grigori’s profaned flock.

Accompanied by young acolytes, Grigori climbed the black marble stairs to the altar with a stately tread. Ornate bloodred columns, lit by tall candles, flanked him. Behind his shoulder, the last light of day, a feeble orange glow, shone through high windows onto a mosaic of Christ feeding the apostles with the host and the wine, while angels beamed from above.

In this space, Grigori intoned his dark Mass.

The choir chanted ancient Russian prayers, clear voices soaring to faraway ceilings in rhythms and tones that humans could never attain, would never hear.

At last, hands led Rhun and the others to a pew. He followed, still unable to adjust to the bone-deep wrongness of this spectacle.

Then a warm hand touched his bare wrist.

“Rhun?” whispered a voice.

He turned and looked into Erin’s questioning eyes. Their naturalness, their humanity, helped to ground him.

“Are you all right?” She tilted her head as they took seats in the pew.

He put his hand atop hers, closed his eyelids, and concentrated on the quick, sure beat of her heart, letting it blot out the profane music. One true human heartbeat was enough to keep it all at bay.

The singing stopped.

For a heartbeat, silence swallowed the church.

Then Grigori called everyone forward to accept the Eucharist, holding high a golden chalice. Disciples filed forward to receive their wine, their boots soft on the dark marble floor. Rhun remained seated with Jordan and Erin.

When the consecrated liquid touched their lips, smoke rose from their mouths as if they had just breathed fire. With bodies too impure to accept Christ’s love, even the pale version of it that Grigori could offer, they moaned in agony.

Erin’s heart squeezed to a faster beat, in sympathy with their pain, especially that of those who seemed no more than children.

Rhun stared at a young girl, who in life had been no more than ten or eleven, step away, her lips blistering, each breath a steaming gasp of agony and ecstasy. She crossed back to her pew and knelt with her head bowed in supplication.

Here was Grigori’s greatest evil, his willingness to convert the young. Such an act stole their souls and cut them off from receiving Christ’s love for all eternity.

Grigori’s voice cut through Rhun’s musings. “And now, Rhun. You, too, must accept my Communion.”

He remained seated, refusing to take such darkness into his body. “I will not.”

Grigori snapped his fingers, and Rhun’s party was suddenly surrounded by a group of Rasputin’s disciples, fouling his nostrils with the odors of wine and burnt flesh.

“That is my price, Rhun.” Grigori’s words boomed through the church. “Accept my hospitality. Drink of the sacred wine. Only then will I listen.”

“If I refuse?”

“My children will not go hungry.”

The disciples moved closer.

Erin’s heart raced. Jordan’s hands formed fists.

Grigori smiled paternally. “But your companions will fight, won’t they? It will be no easy death. The man is a soldier, is he not? Dare I say, he is a
warrior
?”

Rhun flinched.

“And the woman,” Grigori continued. “A true beauty, but with hands callused from work in the field, and also, I suspect, from holding a pen. I believe that she is most
learned
.”

Rhun glared across the dark congregation toward Grigori at the altar.

“Yes, my friend.” Grigori laughed his familiar mad laugh. “I know that you are here seeking the Gospel. Only prophecy would send you to my doorstep. And perhaps I will even help you—but not without a price.”

Grigori cupped the tainted chalice in his palms and raised it.

“Come, Rhun, drink. Drink to save your companions’ souls.”

With no choice, Rhun stood. On stiff legs, he walked between the pews, mounted the hard stone stairs, and opened his mouth.

He braced himself against the pain.

Grigori came forward, lifted his chalice high, poured from that height.

Bloodred wine struck and filled Rhun’s mouth, his throat.

To his surprise, this black sacrament did not burn. Instead, a welcoming warmth coursed through his body. Strength and healing surged within him, quickening even his still heart to beat—something it had not done in many centuries. With that quiver of muscle in his chest, he knew what was mixed in that wine, but still he did not turn his face away from the flowing chalice.

It filled him, quieting that endless hunger inside him. He felt the wounds that had been opened in the bunker pull closed. But best of all, he was enveloped in a deep contentment.

He moaned at the rapture of it.

Grigori stepped back, taking his chalice with him.

Rhun struggled to form words as the world around him wavered. “You did not—”

“I am not so holy as you,” Grigori explained, looming over him as Rhun slumped to the marble floor. “Not since my excommunication from your beloved Church. So, yes, any wine that I give my followers must be fortified.
With human blood
.”

Rhun’s eyes rolled back, taking away the world and leaving only his eternal penance.

At Elisabeta’s throat, Rhun swallowed blood. In all his long years as a young Sanguinist, he had never tasted its rich iron against his tongue, save that first night when he became cursed, feeding on tainted
strigoi
blood.

Panic at the blasphemy gave him strength to swim against that bloodred tide, to pull his vision clear. The beating of his own heart, quickened by her surge of blood through him, slowed … slowed … and stopped.

Elisabeta lay under him, her soft body golden in the firelight. Dark hair spilled over her creamy shoulders, across the stone floor.

Silence now filled the room. But that could not be.

Always he heard the steady beat of her heart.

He whispered her name, but this time she did not answer.

Her head fell to the side, exposing the bloody wound on her throat. Rhun’s hand rose to his mouth. For the first time in many years, he touched fangs.

He had done this. He had taken her life. In his blind lust, he had lost himself, believing himself strong enough
—special
enough, as Bernard always claimed—to break the edict placed upon those of his order, to maintain chastity lest they free the beast inside them all.

In the end, he had proven to be as weak as any.

He stared down at Elisabeta’s still form.

Pride had killed her as surely as his teeth.

He gathered her cooling body into his lap. Her skin was paler than it had been in life, long lashes soot black against white cheeks. Her once-red lips had faded to pink, like a baby’s hand.

Rhun rocked and wept for her. He had broken every commandment. He had loosed the creature buried within him, and it had devoured his beloved. He thought of her vibrant smile, the mischief in her eyes, her skill as a healer. The lives she would have saved now withering as surely as hers had.

And the sad future of her motherless children.

He had done this.

Under the fire’s hissing a faint
thump
sounded. A long breath later, another.

She lived! … But not for long.

Perhaps only long enough to save her. He had failed her so many times and in so many ways, but he must try.

The act was forbidden. It defiled his most basic oaths. Already he had defiled his priestly vows, at a terrible cost. The cost would be even greater if he also broke the vows of a Sanguinist.

The penalty for him would be death.

The cost for her would be her soul.

The first law
:
Sanguinists may not create
strigoi.
But she would not be
strigoi.
She would join him. She would serve the Church as he did, at his side. As Sanguinists, they would share eternity. He would not fall again.