The Blood Gospel

Korza’s voice was so low that Jordan had to strain to hear his answer. “She was strigoi. Sealed in here to protect the book. A mission she performed until those silver bolts ended her life.”

As he worked, Jordan pictured those grisly events unfolding: the Nazis opened the sarcophagus, found the little girl still alive in the damn coffin, then staked her to the wall with a hail of silver crossbow bolts. He remembered the crushed gas mask spotted near the tomb’s entrance. The Nazis must have known what they would find here. They had come expecting both the girl and that toxic gas.

Erin pressed, clearly seeking some way to understand all of this, to insert it into a scientific equation that made sense. “So the Church used this poor girl. Forced her to be its guard dog for two thousand years?”

“She was no girl, and she was asleep, preserved in the holy wine that bathed her.” Korza’s words fell to a pained whisper. “Still, you are correct. Not all agreed with such a cruel decision. Nor even the choice of this accursed place. It is said the apostle Peter picked this mountain, that tragic time, to bind the blood sacrifice of the Jewish martyrs to this tomb, to use that black pall to protect the treasure.”

“Wait,” Erin scoffed. “The apostle Peter … Saint Peter? Are you saying he ordered someone to bring the book here during the siege of Masada?”

“No. Peter carried the book here himself.” The priest’s hands fiddled with his rosary. “Accompanied only by those he trusted best.”

Jordan suspected he wasn’t supposed to be telling them any of this.

“That can’t be,” Erin argued. “They crucified Peter during the reign of Nero. Roughly three years before Masada fell.”

Korza turned away, his voice quiet. “History is not always recorded with precision.”

On that cryptic note, Jordan finished his preparations. He stood and lifted the wireless detonator. Erin looked a question at him.

He wished he had more comforting words.

“Either this will work … or I’m going to kill us all.”

11

October 26, 6:01 P.M., IST

Undisclosed location, Israel

Sitting in his hospital bed, Tommy fingered the IV port sticking out of his chest. He did this numbly, not out of curiosity. He knew why the nurse had inserted it there. He’d had one before. After so many blood draws, they were afraid of collapsing a vein.

His doctor—a thin woman with sharp cheekbones, olive-green scrubs, and a grim expression—had not bothered to tell him her name, which was weird. Usually doctors kept introducing themselves and expected you to remember them. This one acted as if she wanted to be forgotten.

He hiked up the thin flannel blanket and looked around. It seemed like any other hospital room: motorized bed, intravenous lines pumping who knew what into his blood, a table with an olive-green plastic pitcher and cup.

He did miss that there was no television stuck up on the wall, not that he would have understood anything on the Israeli channels. But after his months in the hospital before, he knew there was comfort in the familiar movement on the flickering screen.

With nothing else to do, he got out of bed and pulled his IV pole along with him toward the window, the linoleum tiles cold against his bare feet. The view outside was only moonlit desert, an endless expanse of rocks and shrubs. Beyond the parking lot, not a man-made light could be seen. The Israelis had dragged him out to the middle of nowhere.

Why?

Hospitals were in cities, places with people, lights, and cars. But he had seen none of those things when the helicopter landed in that parking lot, just a cluster of mostly dark buildings.

In the chopper, he had been strapped in the middle seat, between two Israeli commandos. Both had leaned as far away from him as they could, as if they were scared to touch him. He could guess why. Earlier, he had overheard one of the American soldiers mention that he had chemical breakdown elements of that toxic gas still on his clothes and hair. No one dared touch him until he was decontaminated.

Back at Masada, he had been stripped naked inside the contamination tent, his clothes taken. And once he got here, they forced him into a series of chemical showers, seeming to scrub every dead cell off of his skin. Even that dirty water had been collected into sealed tubs.

He bet that was why he was here in the middle of nowhere: to be a guinea pig so they could figure out why he had survived that gas when everyone else died.

After all of that, he was glad he never mentioned anything about the melanoma lesion vanishing from his wrist. One finger absently rubbed that spot, still trying to fathom what that meant. His secret was an easy one to keep. Hardly anyone spoke to him—they spoke around him, about him, but seldom to him.

Only one person looked him in the eye.

Father Korza.

He remembered that dark gaze framed in a gentle face. His words had been kind, asking as much about his mother and father as about the horrors of the day. Tommy wasn’t Catholic, but he still appreciated the Father’s kindness.

As he thought again of his parents, tears threatened—but he put them in the box. He’d invented the box to deal with his cancer treatments. When things hurt too much, he boxed them up for later. With his declining health and terminal diagnosis, he’d never imagined he would live long enough to ever have to open it.

He stared down at his bare wrist.

Now, it seemed, he would.

12

October 26, 6:03 P.M., IST

Masada, Israel

Erin crouched behind the sarcophagus, her hands clamped over her ears. She flinched as Jordan triggered the C-4 planted against the wall. The blast hit her gut like a blow. Rock dust rolled across the chamber. Sand sifted down from the roof, brushing her exposed skin like the whispery crawl of a thousand spiders.

Then Jordan yanked her up, hard. “Move it!”

She didn’t understand his urgency—until the echo of the blast in her ears continued to grow louder. She stared up as the ground jostled under her.

Another aftershock.

The priest took her other arm and pulled her toward the smoking wall. A small hole had been knocked out of it. But it was too small.

“Help me!” Jordan called out.

Working together, the three of them yanked out loosened bricks along the edges. Beyond the hole loomed a dark passageway, chiseled out of the rock. Long ago, men had dug it to take them somewhere—and right now anywhere was better than here.

The quaking grew worse. The treacherous ground shifted under her and slammed her into the wall.

“No more time!” Jordan hollered and yanked out one last brick, creating a tight squeeze. “Everybody out!”