The Blood Gospel (Page 96)

“This warren continues to serve as a tomb, I’m afraid,” he said. “Each winter, the homeless children of St. Petersburg flee to the sewers. Tens of thousands of them. We bring them hot food and keep the sewers free of strigoi, but it is not enough. Innocents still die here in the dark, and still your precious Church does not care, Rhun.”

Rhun tightened his lips but did not speak.

Rasputin lifted the hem of his robes with one hand, like a lady with a ball gown, and led them forward. Five of his acolytes trailed at his heels and another five brought up the rear behind Rhun, Erin, and Jordan.

Erin concentrated on watching where she stepped and on not slipping. She shuddered to think of any part of her touching the floor. It was comforting to have Rhun on one side and Jordan on the other, although the three of them could not hold their own against the ten who accompanied them—eleven if she counted Rasputin.

Rhun stumbled and caught himself against the wall.

Jordan shone his light toward him. “Are you all right?”

The acolytes pushed them forward, keeping them moving.

Rhun sniffed the air, as if to double-check something. He called up to Rasputin: “Is that an ursus I scent? Down here?”

Erin sniffed, but didn’t smell anything.

“Not just any ursus.” Rasputin’s answer boomed down the tunnel. “The Ursa herself. Since we’re down here, I think we should pay her a visit, for old time’s sake.”

The monk turned abruptly into a side tunnel, forcing them to follow.

Erin caught Rhun rubbing his right leg. She read worry there, along with fear.

Jordan must have seen it, too, because he took her hand again.

After trudging a few minutes more, she then smelled it, too. She had grown up in the California woods, and she recognized the familiar musky odor.

Bear.

Jordan’s grip tightened on her fingers.

Ahead, Rasputin stopped at the crossing of two tunnels.

Like in the bunker, X marked the spot.

The tunnels came together in a chamber about fifty feet square. Wrought-iron gates blocked each of the four ways into the intersection, forming a massive cage. The metal had been worked into fanciful trees with connecting branches and leaves, like a forest. The pattern continued on the concrete walls with glass mosaics of trees and birds. The deep jewel tones and artistic renderings reminded Erin of the mosaics in the church far above.

In spite of the beauty, she fought down bile. A fouler stench underlay the musk of bear—the stench of rotting meat and old blood.

Jordan played his flashlight’s beam into the cage and picked out a black mound of fur curled atop a nest of gray bones and spruce boughs.

Rasputin smacked both palms against the gate blocking them. “My dear Ursa! Awake!”

The blackness shifted into life—cracking branches and bones underneath it—as it rolled lugubriously to its stomach.

A scarred muzzle rose and sniffed the air. Then the creature lifted itself onto four unsteady legs and lurched upright.

Erin gasped at its sheer size. Its shoulders scraped the arched roof inside. She put the creature’s height at around seven feet at the shoulder, probably fifteen feet when upright, if it could stand.

It shook itself once and came fully awake, turning the black wells of its eyes toward them, revealing a deep crimson glowing out of the bottomless depth. The shine spoke to its corruption and raised all the hairs over Erin’s body.

Then in one lightning-fast leap, it charged at them.

Rhun swept in front of Erin, his arms raised, ready to protect her. She appreciated the gesture, but it would be futile if the bear broke through that gate.

“Darling Ursa,” Rasputin crooned as the bear skidded to a halt before him. “One more meal before your winter’s sleep?”

Erin’s heart raced. Did he intend for them to be that meal? A quick look at Jordan and Rhun told her that they were thinking the same thing. Even the acolytes hung back, maintaining a healthy distance.

Reaching the gate, the bear rubbed its massive head against the iron, revealing gray fur interspersed with black. It was old.

Rasputin reached through the bars and fondled its ears. The bear huffed at him warmly, then swiveled its head toward Rhun, fixing him with those unnatural red eyes—and growled.

“Ah, see, she remembers you!” Rasputin chucked the bear under the chin. “After all these years. Imagine!”

Rhun ran his hand again down his leg. “I remember her, too.”

Based on his expression, it was no happy memory.

“Your leg seems to have healed well,” Rasputin said. “And you should not have been so careless.”

“Why is she here, Grigori?” Anger hardened Rhun’s voice.

“There was no safe place for her to overwinter in the wilderness,” he said. “Humans might find her den. At her age, she is slow to wake. She deserves a quiet place to spend the cold months.”

Rasputin rolled up his long black sleeve, drew a short dagger from his robes, and slit his own wrist. Dark blood welled out. He slipped his muscular forearm through the gate. The creature huffed again, sniffed, and licked his wrist. A long pink tongue wrapped around the monk’s arm with each stroke.

All the while Rasputin murmured to the bear in Russian.

Erin covered her mouth in disgust, and Jordan swallowed hard.

As the bear nuzzled Rasputin’s arm, its huge front foot kicked a round object through a gap in the gate’s ornamentation. The sphere rolled to a stop in front of Erin’s sneakers. She shone her light on it.

A human skull.

Judging by the tiny strips of flesh still clinging to it, it had come from a recent kill.

She danced back in horror.

Rhun spoke, his voice thick with command. “Enough, Grigori.”

Rasputin withdrew his white arm from the fawning bear and tugged his sleeve down. He glanced back at the others. “Does the time press at you so, Rhun?”

“We are here to find the Gospel and leave.” Rhun’s dark eyes never left the bear. “As you promised.”

“So I did.” Rasputin drew a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his palms. “Follow me.”

He headed back down the tunnel, slipping past the others, smelling of blood and bear.

They resumed their journey. Erin needed no urging to put distance between herself and the bear.

“Rhun?” she asked, keeping next to him. “What was that about you and the bear?”

He sighed impatiently. “The Ursa was once known as the Bear of Saint Corbinian. Do you know the story?”

Erin nodded. During her youth, she’d been forced to memorize all the saints and their stories. “Saint Corbinian, on his way back to Rome, encountered a bear who ate his mule. Afterward, Corbinian forced the bear through the will of God to accept a saddle, and it carried him home. But surely the monster here can’t be that bear. That story goes back to the eighth century.”