Innocent Blood (40 page)

The burning pain in his side was unlike anything he had ever experienced, but he drank it in. He would soon be at peace. He welcomed it. He let his eyes drift closed.

Then a shadow fell over him, bringing with it the smell of lotus blossoms.

Arella.

He opened his eyes and looked upon her beauty, another reward for fulfilling his destiny.

Her warm hands took his. “My love.”

“It came to be just as you foretold,” he said.

As she leaned over him, her tears fell onto his face. He savored each warm drop.

“Oh, my love,” she said, “I curse the vision that brought you to this.”

He sought her dark eyes. “This was Christ’s will, not yours.”

“This was
your
will,” she insisted. “You could have walked a different path.”

He touched her wet cheek. “I always walked a different path. But I am grateful for the years that we walked that path together.”

She struggled to smile.

“Do not blame yourself,” he said. “If you can grant me but a single favor, grant me that. You are blameless in all this.”

Her chin firmed, as it always did when she held her feelings inside.

He reached up through the pain and curled a strand of her long hair around his finger. “We are but His instruments.”

She placed her palm against his wound. “I could fetch water from the spring to heal you.”

Fear shot through his body. He searched for clever words to persuade her against such a path, but she knew his ways. So he settled on one word, placing all his will into it, letting the truth shine in his eyes.

“Please.”

She bent and kissed his lips, then fell into his arms one last time.

4:49
P.M.

Erin’s throat tightened as an angel wept for Judas.

Arella cradled him and stroked his gray hair back from his forehead while murmuring words in an ancient tongue. He smiled up at Arella, as if they were young lovers instead of two ageless creatures caught at the end of time.

Rhun touched Erin’s shoulder, looking to the darkening sky.

His single touch reminded her that, while the battle was won, the war was not over. She looked to the sun, sunk deep into the horizon to the west. They were nearly out of time to undo what Iscariot had set in motion.

She stared at the man who had started all of this.

Iscariot’s blood flowed from his side, weeping out his life. In the growing darkness, she noted the soft glow shining within the crimson, remembering seeing the same when he had accidentally cut his finger in the cavern under the ruins of Cumae, by a sliver of the same blade that slew him now.

She remembered Arella, casting out the same golden radiance when she rescued Tommy. And even Tommy’s blood had glowed faintly on the beach in Cumae.

What did that mean?

She looked from Tommy, who stood still by the well, to Judas.

Did that mean they
both
carried angelic blood?

She remembered that
both
Tommy and Judas had also encountered a dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, an echo of the bird Christ had killed. And both were about Christ’s same age at that time.

And then Arella’s words earlier
.

Michael was rent asunder. You carry the best of the First Angel within you.

Erin began to understand.

Tommy didn’t carry
all
of Michael inside of him, only the best, the most shining and brightest, a force capable of granting life.

Another vessel carried his worst, his darkest, with a force that killed.

She saw that the shine of Iscariot’s blood was distinctly darker than Tommy’s blood.

Two different shades of gold.

She turned and gazed across the crater, at the glass exposed by their digging, at the round plug that once sealed the well. Like the crater itself, one half was dark gold, the other lighter.

She remembered thinking it looked like an Eastern yin-yang symbol.

Two parts that make a whole.

“We need them both,” Erin mumbled.

She peered at Arella. Earlier, the sibyl had stayed silent because she knew Iscariot needed to come here, too. Had Arella even drawn that symbol in the sand so he would know to come to this place?

Bernard drifted closer to Erin, his clothes ripped and bloodied, but he must have sensed the growing understanding inside her. “What are you saying?”

Rhun looked on, too.

She drew the two with her, along with Jordan. They needed to hear this, to tell her she was wrong.

Please
,
let me be wrong.

Rhun turned that dark, implacable gaze of his upon her. “What is it, Erin?”

“The First Angel isn’t Tommy. It’s the archangel Michael, the heavenly being rent asunder. Split in
two
.” She gestured to the crater’s glass. “He must be reunited. We must fix what was broken here.”

That was Arella’s warning to them—or the reign of man would end.

“But where’s his other half?” Bernard asked.

“In Judas.”

Shock spread through the group.

“Even if you’re right,” Jordan asked, “how are we going to get them back together?”

Erin focused on Iscariot, dying on the sands.

She knew that answer, too. “Their immortal shells must be stripped from them.”

Jordan gaped at her. “They have to die?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s the only way. That’s why the sword was left here, why we had to come here.”

“Iscariot has already received a mortal wound,” Rhun said. “So the blade must afflict one upon the boy?”

“Do we dare do that?” Jordan asked. “I thought we decided in Cumae that Tommy’s life was more important than even saving the world.”

Erin wanted to agree. The boy had done nothing wrong. He had tried to help an innocent dove, and in return he had seen his family ripped from him, and he had suffered countless tortures. Was it right that he must die here as well?

She could not send this child to his death.

But it was also
one
life against the lives of the just and unjust around the world.

Jordan stared at her.

She knew if she gave him the word that he would carry it out, reluctantly but he would. He was a soldier—he understood about sacrificing for the greater good. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one.

She covered her face.

She could not watch more innocent blood be spilled. She had watched her sister sacrificed to false belief. She had caused Amy’s death because of her own ignorance of the danger she had put her in. She would not take another innocent life, no matter how much her mind told her that she must.

“No,” she gasped out, decidedly. “We can’t kill a boy to save the world.”

Bernard suddenly moved toward Jordan, going for the sword. But Jordan was as swift now and lifted the blade to the cardinal’s chest, its point over his silent heart.

“This will kill you as surely as any
strigoi,
” Jordan warned.

Bernard glanced at Rhun to back him up, to join him against Jordan. The cardinal wanted that sword.

Rhun folded his arms. “I trust the wisdom of the Woman of Learning.”

“The boy must die,” Bernard insisted. “Or the world dies with him. In horror beyond earthly imaginings. What is one boy against that?”

“Everything,” Erin said. “Murdering a boy is an evil deed.
Every
evil act matters.
Every
single one. We must stand against each and every one, or who are we?”

Bernard sighed. “What if it’s neither good nor evil, only necessary?”

Erin clenched her hands into fists.

She would not let Tommy be murdered.

“Erin.” Jordan’s worried blue eyes met hers. He nodded over to the well.

Tommy made a placating motion with his palms toward Elizabeth, keeping her there. He then stalked over and studied each of them.

“I know,” he said, looking exhausted. “When I touched the sword and decided to bring it out of the well . . . I knew.”

Erin remembered the fire in his eyes as he held the sword.

“It’s about choice,” he said. “I have to
choose
this, only then will all be set right.”

Hearing this now, Erin realized how close they had come to ruin. If she had unleashed Jordan or if Bernard had grabbed the blade, if either of them had thrust the sword into the boy without his consent, they would have lost all.

This thought gave her a small measure of comfort, but only very small.

What Tommy was saying meant that the ending would be the same.

A dead boy on the sands.

“But Iscariot didn’t agree to be stabbed,” Rhun warned.

Erin stiffened, realizing Rhun was right.

Have we already lost?

Jordan swallowed, lowering the sword, knowing Bernard could no longer force the matter. “I think Judas did agree,” Jordan said. “During the fight, he was matching me move by move. Then suddenly he let his guard down. I didn’t realize it at the time, just reacted, stabbing him.”

“I suspect he always sought death,” Rhun said.

“So then what do we do?” Jordan asked. “From here I mean?”

Erin saw how his eyes could not even meet the boy’s.

Tommy shifted, apparently to keep his back to Elizabeth, glancing over his shoulder to be sure, to keep her from seeing. Tommy noted Erin’s attention. “She will try to stop it from happening.”

Tommy lifted the tip of Jordan’s sword and placed it to his chest. He looked up at Jordan, trying to smile, but his lower lip trembled with his fear, struggling to look so brave, so sure in the face of the unknown.

Jordan finally found the boy’s face, too. Erin had never seen such agony and heartbreak etched in the hard, wry planes of his face.

“I can’t do this,” he moaned.

“I know that, too,” Tommy said quietly, his voice quavering. His eyes looked toward the west, to the sun, to the last light he would ever see.

A wail rose from beside the well. “Noooo . . .”

Elizabeth rushed toward them, suddenly sensing what was about to happen.

Tommy sighed and thrust himself upon the sword—taking the last light of the day with him as he died.

53

December 20, 4:49
P.M.
EET

Siwa, Egypt

Rhun caught Elisabeta around the waist as she ran up to them.

Tommy collapsed to the ground, sliding off the blade, spilling red blood across the dark sand. A bright golden brilliance pooled there, too. Across the crater, a similar radiance shone from that side, a darker gold that framed the figures of Judas and Arella.

“Why?” Elisabeta sobbed, clutching him.

Rhun drew her down next to the boy.

The sword had pierced his heart clean through. Rhun heard now its last feeble quiver, then it stopped.

Jordan crashed to his knees across from him, dropping his sword, clutching his left side.

Erin leaned down. “What’s wrong—?”

Rhun felt it a moment before it happened—a welling of great power beyond measure—and threw his arm over his eyes, shielding Elisabeta with his body.

Then came a bright explosion.

Glory seared his eyes.

His blood boiled in his veins.

Elisabeta screamed in his arms, the sound echoed by the others in a chorus of pain and fear.

Brought low by this radiance, on his knees, Rhun begged for forgiveness as he prayed through the pain. His every sin was a blight against that holy brilliance, nothing could be hidden from it. His greatest sin was a blackness without boundaries, capable of consuming him fully. Even this light could not vanquish it.

Please
,
stop . . .

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the light gave way to a merciful darkness. He opened his eyes. Lifeless bodies of
strigoi
and
blasphemare
were scattered around the crater; even those that had fled beyond it had fallen dead at the explosion. Rhun stirred as pain still raged in his body.

It burned with the holiest of fires.

He searched the crater. Erin was crouched over a fallen Tommy, with Jordan kneeling next to her, holding his shoulder. They both looked shaken up, but unharmed by the brilliance. Being untainted, they had likely been spared the brunt of its force.

Elisabeta lay crumpled in his arms, unmoving.

She was
strigoi,
without even the acceptance of Christ’s love to shield her from that fire. Like the other damned creatures, she must be dead.

Please,
he prayed,
not Elisabeta
.

He gathered her to his chest. He had stolen her from her time, from her castle, imprisoned her for hundreds of years, only to have her die in a lonely desert far from anything or anyone she had ever loved.

How many times had his actions cursed her?

He stroked short curly hair from her white forehead and brushed sand from her pale cheeks. Long ago, he had held her just so while she lay dying on a stone floor at Čachtice. He should have let her go then, but even now, deep down he knew he would do anything to have her back.

Even sin again.

As if in response to this blasphemous thought, she stirred. Her silver eyes fluttered open, and her lips warmed into a hesitant smile. Her gaze was momentarily lost, displaced in time and place.

Still, in that moment, he knew the truth.

In spite of everything, she loved him.

He touched a palm to her cheek. But how had she survived the burning brilliance in her cursed state? Had his body shielded her? Or was it his love for her?

Either way, joy filled him as he fell into her silver eyes, letting the desert fade around them. For the moment, she was all that mattered. Her hand rose. Soft fingertips touched his cheek.

“My love . . .” she whispered.

5:03
P.M.

Erin looked away from Rhun and the countess. Her gaze was still dazzled by that blast of light, swearing for a moment she saw a sweep of wings sailing upward from the sands. She gazed up at the stars.

Stars.

She straightened and turned in a slow circle, watching the pall clear from the night sky, spreading outward in all directions. She pictured the darkness being swept clean, all the way back to Cumae.

Had they succeeded in closing that opening gate?

Jordan stood up next to her. He flexed and stretched his left arm, shaking the limb a bit, reminding her of a more immediate concern. She remembered him crashing to his knees and clutching his side, like he was having a heart attack.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He looked down at the boy, at the blood.

“When he fell, it felt like something was ripped out of me. I swore I was dying.”

Again.

She examined Tommy’s pale face. His eyes were closed as if he were merely slumbering. Back in Stockholm, the boy’s touch, his blood, had resurrected and healed Jordan. She noted the pool of blood here no longer glowed. It simply seeped coldly into the sand.

She reached over and squeezed Jordan’s hand, feeling the heat there, glad of it. “I think whatever angelic essence Tommy imbued in you was stripped back out during that blast of light.”

“Where’s the sword?” Jordan asked, glancing around at his feet.

It was gone, too.

She again pictured those wings of light. “I think it’s been restored to its original master.”

Bernard joined them, his eyes on the skies. “We have been spared.”

She hoped he was right, but not all of them had been so lucky.

She dropped to a knee and touched Tommy’s blood-soaked shirt. She brought her fingers to his young face, looking even younger in death, his features relaxed, finally at peace. His skin was still warm under her fingertips.

Warm.

She placed her full palm to his throat, remembering doing the same with Jordan. “He’s still warm.” She reached down and tore open his shirt, ripping buttons. “His wound is gone!”

Tommy suddenly jerked, sitting half up, pushing away from her, clearly startled, his gaze sweeping over them. The fear there faded to recognition.

“Hey . . .” he said and stared down at his bare chest.

His fingers probed there, too.

Elizabeth burst away from Rhun and landed on her knees, taking his other hand. “Are you fine, boy?”

He squeezed her fingers, shifting closer to her, still scared.

“I . . . I don’t know. I think so.”

Jordan smiled. “You look fine to me, kiddo.”

Christian joined them with Wingu. The pair had finished a fast canvass of the crater and its rim to make sure all was safe. “I can hear his heartbeat.”

Rhun and Bernard confirmed this with nods.

Relief shattered through Erin. “Thank God.”

“Or in this case, maybe thank
Michael
.” Jordan slipped an arm around her.

The countess scolded Tommy. “Don’t ever do something like that again!”

Her seriousness drew a shadow of a smile from Tommy. “I promise.” He lifted up a hand. “I’ll never impale myself on another sword.”

Christian moved closer to Erin. “His blood doesn’t smell . . .
angelic
anymore. He is mortal again.”

“I think it’s because we released the spirit inside him. So it could rejoin its other half.” She glanced over to Iscariot. “Does that mean Judas is healed, too?”

Christian shook his head. “I checked as I made my circuit with Wingu. He lives yet, but only barely. Even now I can feel his heart about to give out.”

Rhun fixed his eyes on Judas. “His reward was not life.”

5:07
P.M.

For the first time in thousands of years, Judas knew his death was near. A tingling sensation spread from the wound in his side and coursed through his veins like icy water.

“I’m cold,” he whispered.

Arella drew him tighter into her warm embrace.

With great effort, he lifted his arm in front of his failing eyes. The back of his hand was covered in brown age spots. His skin hung in loose wrinkles from his bones.

It was the fragile limb of an old man.

With trembling fingers, he felt his face, discovering furrows where there had once been smooth skin, around his mouth, at the corners of his eyes. He had withered to this.

“You are still beautiful, my vain old man.”

He smiled softly at her words, at her gentle teasing.

He had replaced the curse of immortality with the curse of old age. His bones ached, and his lungs rattled. His heart lurched along like a drunken man walking in the dark.

He stared at Arella, as beautiful as ever. It seemed impossible that she had ever loved him, that she loved him still. He had been wrong to let her go.

I have been wrong about everything.

He had thought that his purpose was to bring Christ back to Earth. All his thoughts had been directed toward nothing else. He had spent centuries in service of this holy mission.

But that had not been his purpose, only his conceit.

Christ had granted him this gift, not to end the world, not as penance for his own betrayal, but to undo the mistake that Christ Himself had made as a boy.

To fix what was broken.

And now I have.

That was his true penance and purpose, and it was better than he deserved. He had been called to restore life, instead of bringing death.

Peace filled him as he closed his eyes and silently confessed his sins.

There were so many.

When he opened them again, gray cataracts clouded his vision. Arella was a blur, already cruelly fading from his sight as the end neared.

She hugged him tighter, as if to hold him there.

“You always knew the truth,” he whispered.

“No, but I hoped,” she whispered back. “Prophecy is never clear.”

He coughed as his lungs shriveled inside him. His voice was a croak. “My only regret is that I cannot spend eternity with you.”

Too weak now, Judas closed his eyes—not onto darkness, but onto a golden light. Cold and pain receded before that radiance, leaving only joy.

Words whispered in his ear. “How do you know how we shall spend eternity?”

He opened his eyes one last time. She blazed through his cataracts now, in all her glory, shining with heavenly grace.

“I am forgiven, too,” she intoned. “I am called at last home.”

She drifted up from him, away from him. He reached for her, discovering his arm was only light. She took his hand and pulled him from his mortal shell and into her eternal embrace. Bathed in love and hope, they sailed to their final peace.

Together.

5:09
P.M.

No one spoke.

Like Erin, they had all witnessed Arella bursting to light, washing the crater with a warmth that smelled of lotus blossoms. Then there was nothing.

Judas’s body remained, but even now it was crumbling to dust, stirred by the desert wind, mixing with the eternal sand, marking his final resting place.

“What happened to him?” Tommy’s voice was tight with worry.

“He aged to his natural years,” Rhun answered. “From young man to old in a handful of heartbeats.”

“Will that happen to me?” Tommy looked aghast.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, kid,” Jordan answered. “You were only immortal for a couple months.”

“Is that true?” He turned to the countess.

“I believe so,” Elizabeth said. “The soldier’s words are sound.”

“And what about the angel?” Tommy studied the empty spot in the desert. “What happened to her?”

“If I had to guess,” Erin said, “I would say that she and Judas were taken up together.”

“He would have liked that,” Tommy said.

“I think so, too.”

Erin threaded her fingers through Jordan’s.

He tightened his grip. “But that means we’re out of angels here. Isn’t at least
one
of them supposed to have blessed the book?”

Erin turned to Bernard. “Maybe they already have. The skies are clear overhead again.”

Bernard reached through his shredded clothes to the armor beneath. He tugged the zipper, looking ready to rip it clean off. Finally, he got it open and pulled free the Blood Gospel.

He held it atop trembling palms, his eyes worried.

The leather-bound volume looked unchanged.

But they all knew any truth lay inside.

Bernard carried it to Tommy and placed it reverently in the boy’s hands, his expression apologetic. “Open it. You have earned it.”

He sure had.

Tommy dropped to his knees and put the book on his lap. With one finger, he slowly lifted the cover, as if afraid of what it might reveal.

Erin watched over his shoulder, equally unnerved, her heart racing.

Tommy lowered the cover to his knee, revealing the first page. The original hand-scrawled passage glowed with a soft radiance in the dark, each letter perfectly clear.

“Nothing new is there,” Bernard said, sounding forlorn and distraught.

“Maybe that means everything is over,” Jordan said. “We don’t have to do anything else.”

If only . . .

Erin knew better. “Turn the page.”

Tommy licked his upper lip and obeyed, lifting the first page and exposing the next.

It, too, was blank—then darkly crimson words appeared, marching across it in finely scribbled lines. She pictured Christ writing those Greek letters, his quill dipped in His own blood to enact this miraculous gospel.

Line after line quickly filled the page, far more than the first time the book had revealed its message. Three short cantos formed, accompanied by a final message.

Tommy held the book up to Erin. “You can read it, right?”

Jordan placed a hand on her good shoulder. “Of course she can. She’s the Woman of Learning.”

For once, Erin didn’t feel the urge to correct him.

I am.

As she took the book, a strange strength surged from the cover through her palms. The words shone brighter before her eyes, as if she were always destined to read what was written here. She felt suddenly possessive of the book, of its words.

She translated the ancient Greek and read aloud the first canto. “
The Woman of Learning is now bound to the book and none may part it from her
.”