The Blood Gospel (Page 24)

“Erin?” he said as he reached her side.

She whirled toward him, her sword held high.

“Just me,” he said, and shifted his gun to the side, both hands up, palms out.

Her wide eyes came into focus, and she lowered the blade. He pried it out of her fingers and dropped it. Her face white, her eyes lost, she slumped in the corner of the sarcophagus. He lifted her out and sat with his back against the cold stone with her in his lap. He ran his hands over her, searching for wounds. She seemed unharmed.

The priest joined them. Jordan’s hand inched toward his pistol, a protective arm encircling Erin. What were his intentions?

“There are no more,” Korza whispered as if in prayer. “But we are still not safe.”

Jordan glanced over at the battered man.

“They will seal us in,” he said with such certainty that Jordan believed him.

“How do you know …?”

“Because it is what I would do.” He strode toward the door.

Jordan noted where he headed. The ROV sat on the floor, one camera aimed at them, a green light shining above it. The priest stamped on the lens. Metal and glass shattered under his heel and skittered across stone.

Jordan understood, remembering Sanderson’s scream.

They’ve been watching us.

9

October 26, 5:11 P.M., IST

Masada, Israel

As the last screams echoed across the summit, Bathory crouched before the now-dark monitor, frozen in shock, trapped between the past and the present.

She had witnessed the battle in the tomb, followed by the slaughter of the forces she had sent below. The fighting had been swift, dimly lit, much of it occurring out of camera view.

But she had also spied the few moments before the chaotic fighting.

She had watched a helmeted soldier confront a black-garbed figure, his back to the camera. But she had caught the flash of a white Roman collar as he cast a single glance to encompass the room.

Her pained blood went cold at this fleeting glimpse of the enemy.

Here was that Knight of Christ mentioned in the texted message.

A Sanguinist.

The two men faced off like rams during rutting season. Maybe the soldier would solve her problem for her, but the knight stepped past the soldier and stopped, staring at the far wall—what did he see?

She wished the camera’s range extended to the back of the room.

Out of those shadows, a woman in civilian clothes appeared, another surprise. She came waving her phone in the familiar pantomime of someone searching for a signal.

The knight turned to the woman and held out his hands to indicate an object the size and shape of a book.

Bathory’s breathing had quickened.

The woman shook her head.

The knight performed a slow circuit of the room. The tomb seemed empty, except for the sarcophagus. No likely hiding places. When the knight’s shoulders slumped, she let out her breath.

So they had not found the book.

Either it had never been there, or it had been plundered.

Then the knight grew wise to the presence of Bathory’s team, requiring a swift response. He should have been defeated, but she had underestimated his skill, also the support by the soldiers. He had taken out half of her forces in seconds.

From his performance, she knew the knight below was not new to the cloth, but someone much older, as well blooded as her own forces.

Then, as that knight crossed to crush the ROV camera, she got a full look at his face: his cleft chin, his broad Slavic cheekbones, his intense dark eyes. The shock of recognition immobilized her and left her hollowed out.

But life was not a vacuum.

Into that void, a molten, fiery hatred flowed, filling her anew, forging her into something else, a weapon of fury and vengeance.

She finally moved, clenching her hand into a fist and gouging her ancient ruby ring down the darkened monitor. Like so much that she possessed, the precious ring had been connected to her family for a long time.

As had the knight.

Rhun Korza.

That name had scarred her as surely as the black palm on her neck—and caused her as much pain. All her life, she had been raised on tales of how Korza’s failure had cast her once-proud family into generations of poverty and disgrace. She fingered the edge of her tattoo, a source of constant agony, another debt of blood that she owed that knight.

She flashed to that long-ago ceremony, kneeling before Him to whom she had pledged herself, His hand around her throat, burning in that mark in the shape of His palm and fingers, binding her to Him in servitude.

All because of that knight.

She had seen him in a thousand dreams and had always hoped she might someday find him alive, to make him pay for the deeds that had doomed generations of women in her family to sacrifice, to years of living with torment—enslaved by blood, fated to train, to serve, to wait.

This knowledge came with another truth, a pained realization.

She again felt His strangled hold on her throat, burning away her old life.

Her master must have known that Rhun Korza was the knight sent to Masada to retrieve the book. Yet that secret had been kept from her. He had sent her to face Korza without warning her first.

Why?

Was this to satisfy His own cruel amusements—or was there some greater purpose in all of this?

If she had known that Korza lurked in that tomb, she would never have sent anyone down. She would have waited for the knight to come up with the book, or empty-handed in failure, and shot him off the fissure like a fly off a wall.

The slaughter below told her that Korza was too dangerous to confront in close combat, even if she sent her remaining forces down after him.

But there was another way, a more fitting way.

The anger inside her hardened to a newer purpose.

Before the image went dark, she had spotted the body of one of her team near the tomb’s door, carrying a satchel over one shoulder. An identical pack waited near the top of the fissure.

She turned to the two hunters still in attendance.

Tarek had shaved his head like many of the others and riddled his skin with black tattoos, in his case Bible verses written in Latin. Leather, stitched with human sinew, clad his muscular six-foot frame. Steel piercings cut through lips and nostrils. His black eyes had narrowed to slits, furious at the casualties inflicted by those in the tomb. He wanted revenge. Dealt by his own hands.

“The knight is too dangerous,” she warned. “Especially when backed into a corner. We are down too many to risk sending more.”

Tarek could not argue. They had both witnessed the slaughter on the screen. But there was another option. Not as satisfying, but the end would be the same.