The Blood Gospel

“Just when you think it can’t get any weirder.” Jordan switched on the light attached to the barrel of his Heckler & Koch machine pistol. “How do we proceed?”

“Quickly, I would recommend,” Nadia said. “And quietly.”

They set off down the tunnel—toward the source of the noise.

Jordan kept his weapon fixed in front, readying himself.

“Will guns kill them?” Erin whispered.

Emmanuel snorted.

Not helpful.

“Even silver bullets will only enrage them,” Nadia said. “A knife is a better tool.”

Jordan leaned down and pulled the silver Bowie knife from his boot sheath.

Erin drew her knife, too.

“I don’t like the idea of a corrupted bat getting close enough to kill it with a blade,” Jordan said. “I think I’d rather take them out with an intercontinental ballistic missile.”

“When they come,” Nadia warned, her voice low and her tone matter-of-fact, “lie down on the floor. We’ll keep them off you as best we can.”

“Not happening.” Jordan hefted his knife. “But thanks for the offer.”

Nadia lifted her thin shoulders in a shrug.

Erin agreed with Jordan. She had no intention of lying on her stomach, waiting for a bat to chew through her spinal cord. She’d rather take her chances standing up, with a knife in her hand.

The Sanguinists were now moving so quickly that she and Jordan had to run to keep up with them.

Soon they arrived at the intersection of another cross tunnel.

“We must have reached the base of the diamond,” she said, picturing the Odal rune, running a map of their progress in her head like a schematic.

From the air, this crossing of the two tunnels must look like a giant X—hopefully as in X marks the spot, Erin thought.

“This feels like the most likely place to hide something,” she said.

She cast her light across the floor but found only featureless concrete. She splashed her beam across the walls and ceiling. Nothing indicated a special or sacred hiding place at this intersection.

Jordan understood. “We’ll have to check all three of these next corridors. Search every door.”

Before they could take another step, though, screeches filled the air—coming from all three tunnels ahead.

There was no escape.

5:29 A.M.

The smell reached them first, thrust forward by the muscular beat of hundreds of wings. The stench threatened to knock Jordan to his knees—a foul combination of the fetid bite of urine and the bloated ripeness of corpses left in the sun. He fought his heaving stomach, wondering if this reek was as much a weapon of these beasts as their teeth and claws, meant to incapacitate their prey.

He refused to succumb.

It was more than his life in danger.

With a shaky hand he pushed Erin behind him so that she was shielded both by him and the Sanguinist triad. Her flashlight beam cut across the tunnel to the left, to the right, searching for a door.

No such luck.

Then darkness consumed the light, flowing up the tunnels on all sides. A handful of winged pieces of shadow broke from the pack and rushed forward. They swept high, over the heads of the Sanguinists, as if they had no interest in creatures without heartbeats.

Still, silver flashed through the air, slicing through wing and body.

Black blood rained.

Furred bodies fell, twisting, screeching, tumbling.

One creature made it through the silver gauntlet, diving through its dying brethren. Blinded by the light here, it struck a wall behind them and slid to the floor, flipping immediately around. It might be driven sightless by the shine, but it could still hear.

It hissed at Jordan, who again sheltered Erin behind him.

It was the size of a large cat, with a massive wingspan of two meters. It rushed at him, scrabbling on its hind legs and the hard angle of its wings. The bat’s eyes glowed red, and its needlelike teeth shimmered in the light. A high-pitched screech burst from its slathering jaws as it launched itself at him.

Jordan lashed out with his Bowie knife, slicing across the creature’s throat. Blood burst from the wound, but the bat’s bulk still struck at him, knocking him back a step. He had come close to decapitating the beast in a single blow. Still, leathery wings tried to fold around him. Claws dug at his body, but the thick skin of his duster protected him.

Finally, death claimed the creature, and it fell away.

Jordan turned to find a hellish winged fury sweeping in a dark tide from three directions, breaking upon the triad in front. Each Sanguinist faced a different tunnel.

Erin stood in the center of them, her face a mask of terror.

Jordan ducked to her side, ready to defend her as devoutly as the trio.

Bats now swirled overhead in a shadowy cluster of wings, claws, and glowing eyes. The horde held back for the moment, possibly smelling the blood of their foul brothers, hearing their death cries.

Even now, the shrill squeaks set Jordan’s teeth to aching.

He tried to find a single animal to focus on, but they darted back and forth too quickly.

Erin shone her light above. The bats shied from the beam, swooping away, as if it stung—and maybe the brightness did.

“Vespertilionidae,” she gasped, as if the word were an incantation. “Vesper bats. Never seen them more than a tenth of this size.”

“How do you—”

“I work in caves a lot,” she explained.

Her light jumped back and forth. Each time it struck a bat’s eyes, the animal retreated.

“They’re never aggressive like this.”

Jordan pointed his submachine gun up, the beam from the weapon scattering them, too. “Because you work around normal bats, not friggin’ tainted ones.”

“They’re regrouping faster each time.” Erin spoke like an objective researcher, but her voice was pitched an octave higher than usual. “They’re growing accustomed to the light.”

“Let them come.” Nadia had pulled off her silver chain belt and held it in one gloved hand. She fingered each silvery link like the beads of a rosary. “Waiting is wearing to my nerves.”

“Patience,” Rhun said. “Let’s walk farther ahead, search for a door, somewhere to shelter. Perhaps they won’t attack.”

“If you can,” Erin suggested, “look for a door on the right side of the passageway, something that might lead into the center of the Odal diamond.”

Jordan had to hand it to her. Even shrouded within a black cloak of shrieking death, she never took her eye off the ball. She still sought the treasure that was hidden in the bunker.