The Blood Gospel (Page 91)

“The first Sanguinist.” Erin’s whisper carried across the now-silent church.

Yes, those beside the tomb had witnessed the birth of the Order of the Sanguines. Lazarus had been attacked and turned to a strigoi, but his family had found him and sealed him into a crypt before he was able to feed on a human victim. There they doomed him to a slow death by starvation. But Christ arrived and set him free. For on that day Christ offered Lazarus a choice that no strigoi before could ever have been offered. Lazarus could not change his nature, but he could use Christ’s love and blood to struggle against it. He could choose to serve Christ, and perhaps someday see the resurrection of his own soul.

This pact of duty, of service as a Knight of Christ, was represented in the painting by weaponry—the sheathed sword and sheaf of arrows—hanging above Lazarus’s crypt, ready to be taken up in service of the new Church.

From that moment onward, Lazarus had accepted his burden and formed the Sanguinist side of the Church. Fresh from his crypt, he had never tasted human blood. He had always found sustenance simply in the blood of Christ. Only one other Sanguinist, since the dawn of time, had started his next existence ready to follow in Lazarus’s footsteps; only one other had been turned before his first kill.

Pure. Untainted.

Long ago, Rhun had been that Sanguinist. He had thought himself worthy of prophecy. Had believed in his goodness. Had taken solace in his pride. Until the day he tasted Elisabeta’s blood. The day he created a monster.

In that moment he had fallen. Only the One had ever kept himself undefiled.

Lazarus.

Their true father.

Even Grigori recognized that role. He traced the holy form of Lazarus on the painting, his finger slowing as it crossed a thin line of red dripping from the corner of Lazarus’s mouth.

How could anyone look upon this painting and not recognize the truth revealed by Rembrandt? The scared spectators, the blood on the lips, the weapons on the wall. Rembrandt had been privy to the Sanguinists’ secrets, one of the few ever allowed such knowledge outside the inner circle of the Church. To honor that trust, he produced this masterwork of light and shadow, to hide a secret in plain sight as a memorial and testament to their order.

Grigori regained his feet, his eyes lifting from the painting to a mosaic in his own church, sprawled above the entrance. It depicted Lazarus in his shroud, standing alive at the door to his tomb, his hood up to protect his face from the sunlight. Christ stood before the risen man, his hand outstretched toward his new disciple as his followers looked on in wonder, much as Grigori’s followers looked to him.

Tears shone in Grigori’s eyes as he faced Rhun.

“I will help you search for your book, my friend, and, unless God wills otherwise, no grievous harm shall come to you while you are within the borders of my land.”

49

October 27, 6:08 P.M., MST

St. Petersburg, Russia

Jordan stood a few steps from the altar, watching the others.

He didn’t trust any of them. Not Rasputin with his crazy laugh and his games, not the waiflike congregants who had finally retreated into the shadows, not even Rhun. He pictured that glowing bloodlust in his eyes, the way he stared at Erin, locked on her like a lion on a fatted calf.

Worst of all, Jordan could have done nothing if she had been attacked. Grigori’s minions had him trapped, weighing down his every limb, his strength useless against them.

Voices drew his attention away from the altar. Rasputin’s children spoke in hushed tones as they carried a wooden table and four clunky chairs into the nave. Although the dark chairs had to be heavy, the boys lifted them as if they were made of balsa wood.

Unlike Rasputin, his acolytes wore regular street clothes instead of priestly garb. Jeans or black pants and sweaters. If he hadn’t known what they were, he’d have assumed them to be pasty Russian schoolchildren and their parents.

But he did know.

“Come.” Rasputin strode from the altar to the table, leading the others and collecting Jordan in the wake of their passage. The Mad Monk sat quickly, straightening his robes like a fussy old lady. “Join me.”

Erin found a seat, and Jordan took the one next to her, leaving the last for Rhun.

Sergei set a giant silver samovar in the middle of the table. Another of Rasputin’s minions brought in tea glasses that fit into silver holders with handles.

“Tea?” Rasputin asked.

“No, thanks,” Jordan mumbled.

After seeing what happened to Rhun, Jordan had no intention of eating or drinking anything Rasputin had touched. He’d rather not even breathe the air.

Erin declined, too, but from the way she pulled the ends of her sweater down over her hands, she was probably cold enough to want something hot to drink.

“Your companions don’t trust me, Rhun.” Rasputin bared square white teeth. His fangs were retracted, but Jordan didn’t find him any less dangerous for it.

None of them responded. Apparently the subject of Rasputin’s trustworthiness would never take up a lot of conversation.

Rasputin turned to Rhun. “Pleasantries aside, then. What makes you think the Gospel might be here in my city?”

“We believe it may have been brought back by Russian troops at the end of the Second World War.” Rhun kept his palms flat on the table, as if he wanted to be ready to push back and stand, either to fight—or possibly to flee.

“So long ago?”

Rhun inclined his head. “Where might they have taken the book?”

“If they knew what they possessed, they would have taken it to Stalin.” Rasputin rested his elbows on the table. “But they did not.”

“Are you certain?”

“Of course. If they had taken it anywhere of significance, I would have known. I know everything.”

Rhun rubbed his index finger where his karambit rested when he fought. “You have changed little in the last hundred years, Grigori.”

“I assume you refer to my sin of pride, which always made you worry so for my soul.” Rasputin shook his head. “Yet it is your pride which needs looking after.”

Rhun inclined his head. “I am aware of my sins.”

“Yet, every day, you suffer the foolishness of penance.”

“And should we not repent our sins?” Rhun’s fingers found his pectoral cross.

Rasputin leaned forward. “Perhaps. But are we forever defined by our sins? How is a moment or two of weakness so large a crime when weighed against centuries of service?”

Though inclined to agree with him, Jordan suspected Rasputin might have had more than a couple of weak moments in his time.