Innocent Blood (21 page)

But someone had.

Likely the same someone who brought it to this maze, left it for her to find.

Who? And why?

“What are you doing?” Rhun asked, noting her interest.

“That book is mine,” she said. “I want it back.”

Nadia shoved her forward. “We have no time for such diversions.”

Elizabeth stepped back to the ice window, standing her ground. She wanted it back. Her work might yet have value.

“Oh, but we do,” she said, scraping the edge of her manacle down the ice, removing the top layer. “I am the Woman of Learning, and I choose how we spend our time. I am the one being tested.”

“She is right,” Rhun added. “Rasputin would not want us to interfere. She must succeed or fail on her own.”

“Then be quick about it,” Nadia said.

Rhun added his strength to Elizabeth’s. Together, they quickly bored through the clear ice until the book was free. With both hands, Elizabeth plucked the precious book from its cold prison.

As she held it, she noticed shadowy shapes on the far side. Though distorted by the ice, the forms clearly were men or women. Again she heard no heartbeats.

They must be the
strigoi
she had sensed before.

She suddenly realized there was no need to follow this damnable maze any longer. There was a more direct path to victory. Hauling her free arm back, she slammed her elbow into the ice window, shattering through it to the far side.

Shards of ice danced across the dirty snow of the maze’s heart.

Rhun and Nadia bowed next to her, peering through the hole.

Elizabeth laughed between them. “We have won.”

27

December 19, 9:21
P.M.
CET

Stockholm, Sweden

Erin tore her eyes from the frozen quilt. She could not let her personal feelings distract from her goal. She had to leave this piece of her past behind and press on. She guessed its purpose here: Rasputin wanted to throw her off balance, to slow her down.

She would not give him the satisfaction.

“Erin?” Jordan’s soft voice breathed in her ear.

“I’m fine.” The words sounded strange, plainly a lie. “Let’s keep going.”

“Are you sure?” His warm hands cupped her shoulders. Jordan knew her well enough to see through her brave words.

“I’m sure.”

She sounded more confident that time. She could not let Rasputin see how he had affected her. If he sensed any weakness in her, he would use it to tear a deeper wound. So she buried that pain and kept marching.

We must be near the center by now.

She hurried forward, again running her fingertips along the left wall, moving ever closer to the heart of the maze. In another two turns of the passageway, she entered a spacious round room, the walls made of packed snow, again open to the sky above, the edges of the walls overhead crenellated.

They had reached the central turreted tower of the ice palace.

In the middle of the space rose a life-size ice sculpture of an angel. It stood atop a plinth, also carved from ice. The craftsmanship was extraordinary. It looked as if the angel had just landed there, using its massive wings to alight on this frozen perch. Moonlight shimmered through its diamond wings, each feather perfectly defined. The body itself was glazed by frost to a pure white, its snow-dusted face turned up toward the heavens.

As beautiful as the sight was, Erin only felt disappointment.

Gathered below the sculpture was Rhun’s group, with the countess wearing a smug smile.

I lost.

The judge of this contest stood beside the victor.

Rasputin lifted his arm in greeting toward her. “Welcome, Dr. Granger! About time you joined us!”

The monk looked the same as always, in a simple black robe that draped below his knees. From his neck hung a prominent Orthodox cross, in gold instead of the Sanguinist’s silver. His shoulder-length hair looked oily in the dim light, but his light blue eyes stood out, dancing with amusement.

She met his gaze defiantly as she crossed toward them.

He clapped bare white hands, the sound too loud for the quiet space. “Alas, it seems you have come in second, my dear Erin. It was close, I must say.”

Bathory gave her a cold triumphant smile, here again proving she was the true Woman of Learning.

Rasputin continued, turning to Jordan. “But what is that clever expression, Sergeant Stone? Close only counts with hand grenades?”

“Or horseshoes,” Jordan added. “Which is this?”

Rasputin laughed, deep from his belly.

Rhun scowled. “We did not come here to play games, Grigori. You promised us the First Angel. As Bernard agreed, your home in St. Petersburg—the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood—will be reconsecrated by the pope himself. His Holiness will also give you a full pardon and rescind your excommunication. If you wish, you may take the vows of a Sanguinist again and—”

“Why would I want that?” Rasputin said, cutting him off. “An eternity of pious suffering.”

Bathory tilted her head. “Indeed.”

Erin kept back, ignoring Rhun and Rasputin as their argument grew more heated. The masterful sculpture captured her attention. Closer now, she saw the expression of anguish on that white face, as if this winged creature had been cast from the heavens to land atop this plinth, banished to this earthly realm.

It was horrible and beautiful at the same time.

Rhun continued. “You may return to St. Petersburg knowing that your soul has been forgiven by the Church. But you must first deliver us the boy, Grigori.”

“But I brought you what I promised,” Rasputin said, waving toward the statue. “A beautiful angel.”

“We did not ask for this mockery of holiness,” Rhun said, taking a threatening step toward Rasputin, stirring the handful of
strigoi
who gathered at the room’s edges.

“So are you then saying you don’t want my gift?” Rasputin asked. “Are you declining my generous offer and breaking our bargain?”

Something in the monk’s eyes went dark, hinting at a danger, a trap.

Oblivious to this, too angered to note it, Rhun began to tell Rasputin where he could shove this frozen angel.

Erin cut him off. “We want it!” she called out before Rhun could say otherwise.

Rasputin turned to her, his face going hard, angry.

Erin moved to the statue, beginning to fathom the level of the monk’s cruelty. She took off her gloves and touched the angel’s foot. Frost melted under the warm fingertips. She wiped her palm up the statue’s leg, wiping away more of the surface to reveal the clear ice underneath.

She brought up her flashlight, shining the beam of her light into the heart of the clear sculpture. She swore and stared daggers at Rasputin.

“What is it?” Jordan asked.

She shifted aside to show him, to show them all.

Through the space she had cleared, a bare human leg shone within the ice.

A boy’s leg.

A boy who could not die.

Even if frozen.

With her stomach heaving, she whirled to face Rasputin. “You froze him inside a block of ice and carved a statue out of him.”

Rasputin shrugged, as if this were the most natural thing to do. “He is an angel, so of course I gave him
wings
.”

9:24
P.M.

Jordan pointed to the statue and grabbed Christian by the arm. “Help me! We need to get that kid free!”

The boy must be in agony.

Frozen to death, but unable to die.

Together, they rammed their shoulders at the statue’s midsection. It toppled backward off the plinth and crashed to the snow. A crack shattered down the torso. Erin joined them, dropping to her knees. They worked to clear the ice from the frozen form, each taking a side, pulling and breaking away chunks of ice
.

Jordan removed a piece from the boy’s chest, taking some of his skin with it.

He prayed the boy slept in this icy slumber, trying not to picture the kid being dropped into cold water, sealed there, drowning as the ice formed around him. He could only imagine the suffering.

Erin worked very gently on his face, exposing his cheeks, his eyelids, cracking ice from his hair. His lips and the tip of his nose had split, leaking blood and freezing again.

Rasputin looked on, his arms crossed. “Of course, this presents a problem,” he said. “The countess reached the center of the maze first, but Erin found the angel. So then who is the winner?”

Jordan scowled at him, as if that mattered now. He watched as Erin concentrated on freeing the boy’s face, pressing her hands against his cheeks and chin and across his closed eyes. It seemed a futile process. It could take hours to thaw the boy out, even with a fire nearby.

But Erin glanced over to him, her expression amazed. “His skin is frozen, but once warmed, the flesh below seems soft, pliable.”

Intrigued, Rasputin stepped closer. “It seems the grace that grants Thomas his immortality resists even the touch of ice.”

Still, from the grimace frozen on the boy’s face, such grace had clearly not kept him from suffering.

Jordan pulled a small med kit from his pocket. He had taken it from the bathroom at Castel Gandolfo. He snapped it open and took out a syringe. “This is morphine. It’ll help with the pain. Do you want me to inject it? If his core is not frozen and his heart beats—even slowly—it might offer him some relief, especially as he wakes up.”

Erin nodded. “Do it.”

Jordan placed a hand over the boy’s bare chest, over his heart. He waited for his palm to warm the skin below. As he waited, he felt a feeble beat.

He glanced up.

“I heard it, too!” Rhun said. “He is stirring.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Jordan mumbled.

He lifted the syringe high and pounded the needle through the thawed palm print on his chest, aiming for the heart. Once set, he pulled back on the plunger, got a reassuring flush of cold blood into the syringe, indicating a good stick. Satisfied, he pushed the plunger home.

Erin brushed his frosty hair and whispered a litany into his cold ear, warming him with her breath. “I’m so sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

They waited a full minute, but nothing seemed to happen.

After rubbing his thighs, calves, knees, Jordan worked the boy’s legs, bending them with great care. Christian did the same with his arms.

Erin suddenly jerked back as his thin chest gave a heave, then another.

Jordan stared over as the boy’s eyelids pulled open. Despite the dimness, the boy’s pupils remained fixed and tiny, constricted by the morphine. His lips gasped open, and a gargled cry escaped, half weeping, half pain.

Erin cradled him in her lap. Jordan shed his leather jacket and wrapped Thomas’s body and limbs as a violent trembling shook through his wan form.

Rhun loomed over Rasputin. “We will take the boy from here. You have won your pardon, but our business here is concluded.”

“No,” Rasputin said. “I’m afraid, it is not.”

More
strigoi
entered from the various archways around the room, joining the handful already there, quickly outnumbering their group. Many carried automatic weapons.

The Sanguinists moved together to face the threat.

“Do you break your word?” Rhun asked.

“I almost got
you
to break it for me by nearly refusing my gift,” Rasputin said with a smile. “But it seems Erin saw through my little ruse here. Which only makes your decision harder, Rhun.”

“What decision?”

“I told Bernard I would hand the boy over to the Woman of Learning.” He waved an arm to encompass both Erin and Bathory. “So which woman is it? You must choose.”

“Why?”

“The prophecy allows for only
one
Woman of Learning,” said Rasputin. “The false one must die.”

Jordan stood up, moving to stand over Erin.

Rasputin smiled at this motion. “Clearly the Warrior of Man will choose his lady love, guided by his heart not his head. But my dear Rhun, you are the Knight of Christ. So you must choose. Who is the
true
Woman of Learning? Which woman shall live? Which shall die?”

“I will not become part of your evil, Grigori,” Rhun said. “I will not choose.”

“That is also a
choice,
” Rasputin said. “Rather the more interesting one.”

The monk clapped his hands once.

His
strigoi
brought up their guns.

Rasputin faced Rhun. “Pick or I will kill them both.”

9:44
P.M.

Rhun glanced between Elisabeta and Erin, recognizing the cruel trap set by Rasputin. The monk was a spider who wove words to snare and torture. He knew now that Rasputin had come here as much to torment Rhun as for Bernard’s promised absolution. The Russian would hand over the boy, but not before making Rhun suffer.

How can I choose?

But with the fate of the world in balance, how could he
not
?

He saw how battle lines were drawn in the snow:
strigoi
on one side, Sanguinists on the other. They were outnumbered, caught without weapons. Even if victory could be achieved, both women would likely be killed or the boy whisked away by Rasputin’s forces during the fighting.

Into the silence that stretched, a strange intruder arrived in their midst, wafting through the drift of snowflakes, crossing between their two small armies. The brilliance of its emerald-green wings caught every mote of light and reflected it back. It was a large moth, so strange to see in this icy landscape. Rhun’s sharp ears picked out the faintest whirring coming from it, accompanied by the soft beat of its iridescent wings.

No one moved, captured by its beauty.

It fluttered closer to the Sanguinists, as if picking a side in the battle to come. It landed on Nadia’s black coat, on her shoulder, displaying swallowtails at the ends of its wings, the emerald scales dusted with a hint of silver.

Before anyone could react, to speak out at the strangeness, more of its brethren blew into the space, some from the various passageways all around, some drifting down with the snowflakes from above.

Soon, the entire room stirred with these tiny shreds of brilliance, dancing about the air, alighting here and there, wings beating.

The whirring Rhun had noted before grew more evident.

Rhun studied the moth perched on Nadia, noted the metallic hue to its body.

Despite the real wings, these trespassers were not living creatures, but artificial constructs, built by some unknown hand.

But whose?

As if answering this question, a tall man entered the ice tower from the same entrance used by Erin. Rhun heard his heartbeat now, having failed to note it earlier amid all the strangeness. He was human.

The man wore a light green scarf and a gray cashmere coat that reached to his knees. The colors set off his gray hair and his silver-blue eyes.

Rhun noted Bathory stir at the sight of him, stiffening slightly, as if she knew this man. But how could she? He was plainly human, of this time. Had she met this stranger during the months that she roamed free in the streets of Rome? Had she called him here to free her? If so, this stranger could hardly hope to win against Rasputin’s
strigoi
and the Sanguinists.

Yet he did not seem the least nervous.

Rasputin also reacted to the man’s arrival with an expression more worrisome than Bathory’s. The monk fled away, toward the farthest wall, his normal darkly amused expression turned to horror.

Rhun went cold.

Nothing of this world ever unnerved Rasputin.

Knowing this, Rhun turned a wary eye on the stranger. He shifted to stand over Erin and the boy, ready to protect them against this new threat.