The Blood Gospel (Page 73)

“We shall see,” Rhun said. Nadia had spoken his deepest fears, that Piers’s intellectual pride had led him into forming an alliance with the Nazis. Rhun knew that pride all too well—and where it could lead even a devout Sanguinist.

“Into formation,” he ordered the others. “We must reach the church at Harmsfeld before sunrise.”

Out of long habit, Emmanuel and Nadia stepped into their places, Emmanuel in front, Nadia to his left. Rhun met Jordan’s eyes and jerked his head toward Piers.

They stepped out of the defiled chamber, through the vestibule, and back into the dark concrete tunnel.

Jordan gathered up Piers, still wrapped in Emmanuel’s cassock, and followed with Erin close behind.

“Ich habe Euch betrogen,” Piers whispered. “Stolz. Buch.”

Rhun heard Jordan translate. “I have betrayed you all. Pride. Book.”

Emmanuel stopped and glanced back at Piers. Tears shone in his eyes. Rhun touched his arm. Piers had all but admitted it just then, that he had betrayed their order to the Nazis.

Rhun turned away, trying to understand. Had his friend’s all-consuming desire to be the first to find the book led him into his unholy alliance with the Ahnenerbe? Had the Germans betrayed him in the end? Rhun remembered his addled words. It is not a book. Did those words indicate that the Nazis had failed here somehow? As a punishment, did they crucify Piers?

No matter the outcome, if Piers had come here of his own free will, they might never be able to sanctify him enough for him to return to the Sanguinist fold.

Piers cocked his head to the left as they reached the crossroad of corridors. “Sortie.”

French for “exit.”

Erin must have understood. He was attempting to direct them to a way out.

She knelt and drew the Odal rune in the dust with her finger. She pointed to it. “Can you show me where the exit is, Piers?”

Jordan held Piers so that he could see the rune. The old man stretched one bone-thin finger to the left leg of the rune. Their team had entered through the right.

“There’s a second exit,” Erin said, looking up hopefully. “In the other leg of the rune. It must be how his bats came and went.”

Piers closed his paper-white eyelids, and his head fell back on Jordan’s shoulder.

“If we hurry,” Rhun said, “perhaps we can get him to the Harmsfeld chapel before sunrise.”

But, even so, a fear nagged at Rhun.

Was it already too late to save Father Piers’s soul?

37

October 27, 6:45 A.M., CET

Harmsfeld Mountains, Germany

Bathory gathered her sable-fur coat around her slender form and waited in the dark woods. To the east, the skies had already begun to pale. From the uneasy glances of her restless troops in that direction, it was clear they knew they had only a quarter hour left before sunrise.

The air had turned bitterly cold, as if night sought to concentrate its chill against the coming day. Bathory’s hot breath steamed from her lips—same as the panting wolf, blowing white into the dark forest. The same could not be said of the rest of her forces. They remained as cold and still as the forest as they waited, but not all were equally quiet.

“We must go. Now.” Tarek loomed next to her, his mouth curled in a snarl.

His brother, Rafik, kept tight to his older brother’s legs, his lips still blistered from the intimate moment Bathory had shared with him.

Bathory shook her head. So far, no word had been radioed from the lookout she had left by the motorcycles. The Sanguinists had not returned that way—and she didn’t expect them to. She was certain this was the place where the rabbits would leave the warren.

In her gut, she knew it.

“Never follow an animal into its burrow,” she warned.

She kept her eyes fixed on the bunker door. Magor had discovered the hole nestled among some boulders. It was little larger than a badger den, but the sharper senses of Tarek’s men revealed the source of the scent that drew her wolf.

Icarops.

She pictured the foul flock squirming out of that hole each night. Something must have created that horde, something that might still be down there.

Her men had set about widening the hole, digging out the earth that the Nazis had used to bury the hidden door. Once it was cleared, they discovered where the bats had clawed through stone around one edge of the hatch to make their nightly sojourn.

With the way unblocked, it would be easy to push open the hatch from the inside, an invitation to her quarry to make their escape this way.

“We’ll kill them as soon as they step out the door,” she said.

“What if they’re waiting for dawn?” Tarek’s eyes swept the eastern sky, already turning steel gray.

“If they are not out by sunrise, we will enter the bunker,” she promised. Her men would fight best if they knew they must take the bunker or die. “But not until the last moment.”

Her six crossbowmen stood rock-still, three to each side of her, silver arrows at the ready. The larger bolts of a crossbow delivered a deadlier dose of silver than a simple bullet, plus the arrows had the tendency to remain impaled in place rather than passing harmlessly through.

She was not taking any chances with Rhun Korza.

Tarek’s head swiveled to the door. All her troops went on alert.

She heard nothing, but she knew they must.

The bunker door moved forward, pushing its way along the path they had carefully cleared for it.

Three Sanguinists stepped into the forest, Rhun Korza among them.

Bathory counted three more figures behind them, still in the bunker, one carried by another, apparently wounded. But that made no sense—and she didn’t like surprises. Only five had left the abbey, and only five tracks were found at the water’s edge.

So who was this sixth?

Had Korza found someone alive in the bunker?

Then she remembered the icarops.

Was this the mysterious denizen of the bunker?

She kept her hand held high, telling her troops to wait until everyone was out of the bunker. But the last three stayed inside, plainly suspicious.

Korza looked at the ground and knelt, clearly noting where Bathory’s men had disturbed the soil. Before any further suspicions could be raised, she slashed her arm down.

Crossbow bolts whistled with a twang of taut strings. The volley struck the Sanguinist in the lead, nailing him to the large bole of an ancient black pine.

He struggled to free himself, smoke already steaming from his wounds into the cold night.

The bowmen shot another volley, all the bolts striking true, piercing chest, throat, and belly.