The Blood Gospel

A moan ran through the strigoi who were gathered around her. All eyes fixed on her neck. The one holding her licked his lips.

“Enough!” Rasputin called.

He pushed himself to Erin’s side. In his hands he held a leather leash. He clipped one end to the back of Erin’s collar and handed the other end to Bathory.

“Thank you.” Bathory looped it around her wrist. With the other hand, she yanked the leash tight.

Erin choked, the tightness of the collar keeping her from coughing. She couldn’t breathe. Her cuffed hands rose to her throat, fingers trying to loosen it. Cold hands pulled her limbs down. She would die.

“Just so we understand each other.” Bathory stuck her face right next to Erin’s. “You can come very near to a painful death in Russia without me breaking my word to Rasputin.”

Her knees buckling, Erin looked into those cool silver eyes. Would they be the last things she ever saw?

“I hope that you understand that, too, Father Korza.” Bathory glanced at the pile of forms that were burying Rhun.

Erin’s vision closed in dark.

9:06 P.M.

Buried under a mass of Grigori’s acolytes, Jordan struggled to breathe against the sheer weight of them, squeezing the air from his chest, slowly choking him. Teeth sliced into his arms and legs.

Please, God, don’t let me die like this …

His prayer was answered from the most unlikely source.

Distantly, he heard Rasputin shout. “Enough!”

At that command, the pressure eased; bodies rolled off of him. Hot blood seeped from the bites on his arms and legs. His head swam; his vision whirled, but finally settled.

Impossibly strong hands hauled him to his feet. Grigori’s minions yanked Rhun upright, too. One acolyte still lay on the ground, bleeding profusely.

It seemed Rhun had put up a better fight than Jordan had.

“Wh-where did that woman take Erin?” Jordan swayed with dizziness. How much blood had he lost?

“Away.” Rasputin smiled his crazy smile. “If Bathory doesn’t kill her en route, I have an idea where they will end up.”

Rhun spat blood and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “Why did you let the Belial take her—and the Gospel? They are godless. You must know the consequences if they open the book.”

“Would the consequences be any worse for me if Sanguinists had the book?” Rasputin’s face relaxed into planes of sorrow. “Your beloved Church has possessed countless holy tomes, Rhun—filled their precious Secret Archives with them—and they have never used any of them to help me and mine.”

“But the world will suffer, Grigori. The entire world that God created.”

“The world suffers now.” Rasputin ran his hand through his long hair. “And your God does nothing. Your Church does nothing. Your humans do nothing.”

Rhun took a step toward Rasputin, but the Russian’s acolytes surrounded him again, forcing him to halt.

“If it doesn’t matter,” Jordan said, “then let us go.”

Rasputin chuckled. “He is charming, your warrior.”

“What do you plan for us, Grigori?”

“What I have always planned.” Rasputin turned to leave the cramped room. He snapped his fingers, and his dark flock herded Jordan and Rhun along behind him. “I intend to let your God save you, Rhun. Has not that been your eternal prayer, my friend? Salvation at His hand.”

9:12 P.M.

Gasping, her throat on fire, Erin trailed down the dark corridor at Bathory’s heels, dragged like a dog. The woman released the choke chain enough to allow her to breathe—but barely.

Rasputin’s words rang in her ears: Once beyond Russian soil, you may do with her as you wish.

If she didn’t get away before they left Russia, Bathory would kill her.

And what about Jordan? Was he already dead?

She refused to believe it.

Rhun was clearly alive, fighting desperately against overwhelming odds, when she was hauled away, but Jordan had not moved, buried and being bitten on all his limbs.

He cannot be dead … he cannot.

Erin lifted her chin in an effort to ease the pressure of the spikes at her throat. Even that small movement caught her neck in a fiery noose of agony, narrowing her vision. She suspected the spikes were made of silver, the collar likely meant to imprison Sanguinists. She tried not to imagine how much worse it would feel if the silver acted as a poison in her body as it did in those of the Sanguinists.

Bathory threaded through corridors with no hesitation, trusting her grotesque wolf to lead the way. It loped ahead, occasionally dropping its nose to the floor and snuffling along like an ordinary dog. Erin found the naturalness of the gesture unsettling, as if this creature had no right to behave like a normal animal.

“Why do you hate Rhun Korza?” Erin’s voice sounded hoarse and unnatural, echoing in the corridor.

The leash twitched, and her throat closed in fear, but Bathory did not pull.

“That creature ruined my family.”

Erin took a fast step to keep up. “Then it’s true. You are descended from the Elizabeth Bathory? But how exactly did Rhun ruin her?”

“He killed her and turned her. As a strigoi, she abused peasants to satisfy her needs, something which would have gone unremarked during that time, but then she turned to noble girls, and the Hungarian king stripped her of her wealth, her nobility, and sent the Church after her. Since that time …”

Her voice trailed off and she touched the mark on her throat.

Erin took a few more steps before prompting, “Since that time …?”

Bathory’s fingers dropped from her neck. “We were penniless, persecuted. Then a stranger came offering a path to survival, to lost riches, and also to revenge.” She held up her hand, one finger of which bore a large ruby ring. “He even returned some of our family treasures and heirlooms, rescued them in secret before they were lost forever. But such noble generosity came with a stiff price: one woman from every generation had to be bound in servitude to a hard master, chained to His painful will. I am the only woman of my generation. So it fell to me, whether I wished for it or not.”

This last was said with a bitterness that stung.

Aghast, Erin fell silent for several steps. They reached a closed door, and Bathory unlocked it to reveal a dingy stairwell. She took a flashlight from her pocket and shone it up. Steps ascended for several stories. It would be a long climb.

“Come.”

Bathory pulled Erin into the stairwell behind her as the grimwolf bounded ahead. With each step, the collar pinched against Erin’s throat. Fresh blood dripped down her neck. She tried to block the pain out of her mind, struggling to think of some way to escape.