The Blood Gospel

The Sanguinist writhed in a fog of his own boiling blood.

That took care of one priest.

Now to kill Korza.

38

October 27, 6:47 A.M., CET

Harmsfeld Mountains, Germany

“Stay inside!” Rhun shouted, diving through a rain of deadly silver.

A crossbow bolt struck his arm, embedded itself into his forearm. Its touch burned deep into his flesh with the poison of silver. He had known the danger as soon as he found the fresh loam turned at the foot of the door—but he had reacted too slowly.

Someone had been waiting in ambush.

Someone who had expected to fight Sanguinists.

He reached the shelter of a thick linden tree and rolled behind it.

Safe behind the broad trunk, he yanked out the crossbow bolt. More blood than he could spare flowed from the wound, trying to purge his body of the silver’s taint.

He sagged against the tree and glanced left.

As he had hoped, Nadia had reached the shelter of a boulder next to the doorway.

But not Emmanuel.

A dozen silver bolts had skewered him to a pine a few yards away. Smoke boiled from his wounds, enfolding him in a ghostly shroud of his own pained essence.

Rhun knew he could not reach him—and even if he could, death had already laid claim to his old friend and brother of the cloth.

Emmanuel knew this, too. He reached an arm back toward the bunker.

Piers’s voice rasped from out of the darkness. “My son.”

“I forgive you,” Emmanuel whispered.

Rhun hoped that Piers had heard the words and cast a silent prayer to his dying friend.

Then Emmanuel slumped, only the cruel bolts holding him upright.

Behind the boulder, Nadia wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. Like Rhun, she had to accept that Emmanuel was dead, but with that grief came a sliver of joy. He had met the most honorable end for any Sanguinist: death in battle.

Emmanuel had freed his soul.

When he was finished with his prayer, Rhun’s attention snapped to the sound of a single human heart beating out in the forest. There was a human among the strigoi attackers, revealing the true nature of those who attacked them.

The Belial.

But how had they come to find Rhun and his party here?

And how many were hidden in the woods?

Behind him, Erin’s and Jordan’s heartbeats echoed out of the bunker, where they remained sheltered with Piers. They were safe, at least for another moment.

Rhun reached to his thigh and pulled out his wineskin. He needed Christ’s blood to replace what he had just lost. Without it, he could not continue to do battle. But with such a drink, he risked being thrust into the past, helpless and exposed.

Still, he had no choice. He lifted the skin and drank.

Heat burned through him, fortifying him, pushing back the burn of silver with the purity of Christ’s fire. Crimson crept into the edges of his vision.

He fought against the looming threat of penance.

Elisabeta in the fields. Elisabeta by the fire. Elisabeta’s rage.

He tightened his hand around his pectoral cross, begging the pain to keep him present. The world became a shadowy mix of past and present. Images flashed:

… a long bare throat.

… a brick plastered in a closing wall.

… a young girl with a raspberry blemish screaming silently.

No.

He fought to focus on the woods, on the pain of the cross in his burning palm, on the sounds of breaking twigs and snapping branches as strigoi burst out of hiding and surged toward the bunker. He risked a glance around the trunk, catching movement too quick for human eyes to track.

Six to ten.

He couldn’t be sure.

Jordan and Erin would have no chance against them. He brought his gun up into firing position with trembling hands.

More images assaulted him, reminding him of his sin, unmanning him when he needed to be at his strongest.

… a spray of blood across white sheets.

… pale br**sts in moonlight.

… a smile as bright as sunshine.

Through the spectral glimpses of his past, he aimed and fired, hitting two strigoi on the right, each square in the knee, dropping them, slowing them, if nothing else.

Nadia picked off another two on the left.

Behind him, Jordan’s submachine gun crackled as the soldier fired and strafed from the bunker’s door. He heard the pop-pop-pop of Erin’s pistol.

The first wave of strigoi scattered to the side, trying to flank them. More came behind them. He counted a dozen, four wounded, but not badly. One was older than Rhun; the others youngsters but still dangerous.

Memories continued to wash over him, thicker now, pulling him away, then back again.

… a crackling fire, listening to the soft voice of a woman reading Chaucer, struggling with the Middle English, laughing as much as reading.

… a twirl of a gown in moonlight, a figure dancing by herself under the stars on a balcony, as music echoed from an open window.

… the pale nakedness of flesh, so stark against a crimson pool of blood, the only sound his own panting.

Please, Lord, no … not that …

A crossbow bolt grazed his cheek, snapping him back to the present. The arrow winged off the edge of the tree and buried itself in dirt behind him.

He fell back, knowing none of his party could last out in the open, especially not in the state he was in.

They were too exposed.

“Take them farther inside!” he gasped out, waving to Nadia, who was closer to the bunker door. “I’ll hold them off—”

“Stop!” called a voice so familiar Rhun clutched for his cross again, unsure if he was in the past or present.

He listened, but the forest had gone dead quiet.

Even the strigoi had gone to ground—but with the sun nearly up, they would not wait long. They would rush at any moment, swarming over them.

He strained, wondering if he had imagined the voice, a broken fragment of memory come to life.

Then it came again. “Rhun Korza!”

The accent, the cadence, even the anger in that voice he knew. He struggled to stay in the present, but the calling of his name summoned him into the past.

… Elisabeta climbing from horseback, an arm outstretched for his aid, baring her wrist, exposing her faint pulse through her thin pale skin, her voice amused at his hesitation. “Father Korza …”

… Elisabeta weeping in the garden under bright sunlight, hiding her face from the sun, grief-stricken, but finally seeing him, rising to meet him, her simple joy shining through tears. “Rhun Korza …”

… Elisabeta coming to him, barefoot, across the rushes, her limbs naked, her face raw with desire, her lips moving, speaking the impossible. “Rhun …”