The Blood Gospel (Page 85)

How long since she had been so alone? Far from Him and His tools? Years.

She stroked the leather seat appreciatively and pulled up the window shade. Sunlight flooded into the cabin, falling across her legs, warming them. She held her hand palm up to the light, as if she could grasp hold of it. When she tired of that, she turned her attention to the bright landscape below.

The city of Munich gave way to farms, forests, and tiny, one-family homes that spread ever farther apart as the jet headed east. In each house, a family had just had breakfast. A father had kissed a mother good-bye, a child had gathered up a schoolbag and left. Those houses were empty now, but later they would fill again.

What would it be like to live in one of them?

Her destiny had been fated at birth. No simple life of husbands and children and domesticity. She usually felt only contempt for those living such a simple existence, but today she was drawn to its humble charm.

She shook her head. Even if she were free, she would not settle into another prison as a wife and mother. Instead she and Magor would hunt. They could range as far as they liked, living alone, never having to worry that He would punish her, that Tarek would finally have the revenge he had so long sought, not fighting every day for respect, for the right to live to see another sunrise.

Just thinking about it made her tired.

Magor stirred in the cargo hold, sensing her worries.

Rest, she told him, and he settled back down.

Her fingers stroked the black mark on her neck, the proof that set her apart from others. It would take a miracle for her to erase it, to escape Him.

What if the book could show her just such a miracle?

PART IV

Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.

Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.

Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land …

Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in,

And cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

—Deuteronomy 26:16–19

46

October 27, 4:45 P.M., Moscow Standard Time

St. Petersburg, Russia

Erin had trudged through Russian customs half asleep, but she woke up fully when she and the two men reached the freezing sidewalk in front of the St. Petersburg airport. Rhun hustled them into a taxi with a broken heater and a driver who obviously had no fear of death. She was too scared to be cold as the driver careened through the thickening snowstorm, talking all the while in Russian.

Eventually the cab slid to a stop in front of what looked like a city park, a large space that was probably green in summer, with tall trees lining both sides. Right now the trees had naked limbs, and the frozen grass would soon be buried under thick white snow.

She could not believe how far she had come from the searing heat of Masada. Yesterday morning, her biggest weather worry had been sunburn; today it was hypothermia. As she climbed from the taxi, the St. Petersburg wind cut through her grimwolf leather coat and sucked warmth from the marrow of her bones. Instead of sand, gritty snowflakes stung her cheeks.

Overhead, the sun had changed into a pearly disk struggling to cast a white glow through banks of cloud, providing little light and less warmth.

Jordan walked close at her side as they crossed under a stone arch and into the park. She suspected that he wanted to take her hand, but she punched her fists deep in her pockets and kept walking. He looked hurt, and she couldn’t blame him, but she didn’t know what to do with him. She had been very close to making love to him back in Germany and was terrified by what would have happened if she had. She liked Jordan far too much already.

With each step, her sneakers slipped on the ice-glazed stone tiles of the path. To either side, the earth had been raised into knee-high grassy mounds. She eyed them, wondering what they were for.

Jordan had turned up his collar, his nose and cheeks already red. She remembered the feel of his jaw under her lips, the heat of his lips against her skin, and quickly looked away.

A few steps ahead, Rhun hadn’t bothered with a coat and strode in a billowing black cassock, white hands at his sides, looking as comfortable as he had in hundred-degree heat atop Masada. In one hand, he carried the long leather cylinder that Nadia had left for them in Germany. Erin had no idea what it contained and suspected that Rhun didn’t either. Before Nadia had given it to him, she had sealed the cylinder with golden wax and imprinted it with the papal seal—two crossed keys tied with a band and topped by the triple crown of the pope.

“Okay, Rhun.” Jordan stepped up on the priest’s right side. “Why are we here? Why did we come to this freezing park?”

Erin moved to Rhun’s other side to hear the answer. He had told them only that their destination was St. Petersburg, that Russian forces might have brought the book to the city after the war. Erin had already surmised as much, picturing the dead Russian soldier in the bunker, remembering Nadia reading the Cyrillic orders. The soldier had been dispatched from this city.

Erin also knew the man had a wife and a child, a daughter who might still be alive, living in St. Petersburg, unaware that some strangers knew more about her father’s death than she did.

Erin was glad that she had given Nadia the letters from the bunker to pass along to Brother Leopold. Maybe their efforts would bring the woman a small measure of peace.

“Rhun?” Erin pressed him, wanting to know more, deserving to know more.

The priest stopped and looked across the snow-covered mounds toward a copse of skeletal trees. Wind rattled stubborn and ragged leaves. “We have come here to ask permission to seek the book on Russian soil.”

“Why?” Jordan said. “I thought Sanguinists didn’t ask for permission.”

Rhun’s poker face concealed his emotions, but Erin sensed fear from him. She hated to imagine something terrible enough to frighten Rhun.

“St. Petersburg is not in our domain,” he answered cryptically.

“Then whose is it?” Jordan asked. “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Catholic Church has a renewed presence here.”

Erin stuffed her hands deeper into cold pockets and stared at the path’s end, where she saw a large bronze statue of a woman in a broad skirt holding an object up into the air. Erin squinted, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. She searched around the space. She had thought this was a city park, but an air of sadness permeated the air. She could not imagine children ever playing here.

“The Vitandus rules this land,” Rhun answered Jordan. The priest touched the leather cylinder slung over his shoulder as if to reassure himself that he had not lost it. “And he has no love for the Church. When he comes, tell him nothing about our mission or yourselves.”