The Blood Gospel (15 page)

“What does that mean?” The soldier would not be pacified until he understood, and doubtless not afterward either.

Rhun lifted a stone off one of the dead men and brushed sand from his face. The woman kept her light on his hands as he angled the dusty head toward them. With one gloved hand, he peeled back cold lips, exposing an ancient secret.

Long white fangs glinted in the beam of light.

The soldier’s hand moved to the butt of his gun. The woman drew in a sharp breath. Her hand rose to her throat. An animal’s instinct to protect itself. But instead of remaining frozen in horror, she lowered her hand and came to kneel beside Rhun. The man stayed put, alert and ready to do battle.

Rhun expected that, but the woman surprised him, when so little else did. Her fingers—trembling at first, then steadying—reached to touch the long, sharp tooth, like Saint Thomas placing his hand in Christ’s wound, needing proof. She plainly feared the truth, but she would not shun it.

She faced Rhun, skeptical as only a modern-day scientist could be. And waited.

He said nothing. She had asked for the truth. He had given it to her. But he could not give her the will to believe it.

She waved a hand over the corpse. “These may be caps, put on to lengthen his teeth …”

Even now, she refused to believe, sought comforting rationalizations, like so many others before her. But unlike them, she leaned closer, not waiting for confirmation or consolation. She lifted the upper lip higher.

As she probed, he expected her eyes to widen with horror. Instead, her brows knit together in studious interest.

Surprised yet again, he eyed her with equal fascination.

5:21
P.M
.

Kneeling by the body, Erin sought to make sense of what lay before her. She needed to understand, to put meaning to all the blood and death.

She desperately ran through a mental list of cultures where people sharpened their teeth. In the Sudan desert, young men whittled their incisors to razor points in a rite of passage. Amid the ancient Maya, filed teeth had been a sign of nobility. In Bali, tooth filing was still a coming-of-age ritual that marked the transition from animal to human. Every continent had similar practices. Every single one.

But this was different.

As much as she wanted it to be true, no tools had sharpened these teeth.

“Doc, talk to me.” Jordan hovered over her shoulder, his tense voice loud in the small space. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She fought to keep her tone clinical, both for her sake and for his. If she lost her composure, she might never get it back. “These canine teeth are firmly rooted in the maxilla. Feel how the bony sockets at the base of the fangs are thickened.”

Jordan stepped over a pile of rubble to stand between her and the priest. He rested one hand on his gun. “I’ll take your word for it.”

She flashed him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. It didn’t seem to work, because his face stayed stern when he asked, “What does it mean?”

She leaned back on her haunches, eager to put space between herself and the tooth she had just touched. “Such root density is a common trait in predators.”

Father Korza stepped away. Jordan’s barrel twitched toward him.

“Jordan?” She stood next to him.

“Keep talking.” He eyed the priest, as if he expected him to interrupt, but the man stood still. “It’s interesting stuff, isn’t it, padre?”

She scrutinized the dusty brown face in the rubble. It looked as human as she did. “A lion’s jaw exerts six hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. To support such power, the tooth sockets harden and thicken around the fangs, as these have done.”

“So what you are saying,” Jordan said, clearing his throat, “is that these fangs aren’t just a weird fashion statement. That they’re
natural
?”

She sighed. “I can’t come up with another explanation that fits.”

In the dim light of her flashlight, she read the shock on Jordan’s face and the fear in his eyes. She felt it, too, and she would not let her feelings overwhelm her. Instead, she turned to the silent priest for answers. “You called them
strigoi
?”

His face had closed into an unreadable mask of shadows and secrets. “Their curse bears many names.
Vrykolakas. Asema. Dhakhanavar.
They are a scourge once known in all corners of the world. Today you call them vampires.”

Erin sat back. Did a memory of this horror lie at the root of ritualistic tooth filing, a macabre mimicry of a real terror forgotten in the modern age? Forgotten, but not gone. An icy finger traced up her back.

“And you fight them?” Jordan’s skepticism filled the tomb.

“I do.” The priest’s soft voice sounded calm.

“So what does that make you, padre?” Jordan stepped into a wider stance, as if expecting a fight. “Some kind of Vatican commando?”

“I would not use such words.” Father Korza folded gloved hands in front of him. “I am but a priest, a humble servant of God. But to serve the Holy See, I and certain other brethren of the cloth have been trained to fight this plague, yes.”

Erin had a thousand questions she wanted to ask, but she had a most pressing one, one that had troubled her since the priest stepped into the tomb and said his first words.

The Church has prior claim to what lies within this crypt.

Suddenly glad to have a soldier between them, Erin watched the bloody figure over Jordan’s shoulder. “Earlier, you asked about a book that might be hidden here. Is that why we were attacked? Why we’re trapped down here?”

The priest’s face closed. He craned his neck toward the brick roof as if seeking guidance from above. “The mountain is still moving.”

“What—” A great groaning of stone, accompanied by explosive
booms
of crushed rock, interrupted Jordan’s question. The ground shook—at first mildly, then more violently.

Erin stumbled into Jordan’s back before finding her footing. “Another aftershock?”

“Or the concussive charges weakened the mountain’s infrastructure.” Jordan looked at the ceiling. “Either way, it’s coming down. And soon.”

“We must first find the way out,” Father Korza said. “Before we discuss other matters.”

Jordan moved toward the collapsed entrance.

“We will gain no passage that way.” Father Korza slowly turned in a full circle. “But it is said that those who came to hide the book during the fall of Masada used a path known only to a few. A path they sealed behind them as they left.”

Jordan scanned the solid walls. “Where?”

The priest’s eyes were vacant. “That secret was lost.”

“You’re not holding out on us, are you?” Jordan asked.

Father Korza fingered rosary beads on his belt. “The path is beyond the knowledge of the Church. No one knows it.”

“Not true.” Erin ran both hands along the wall closest to her, digging a nail into the mortar between two stones.

All eyes turned to her.

She smiled. “I know the way out.”

5:25
P.M
.

Jordan hoped that Erin knew what she was talking about. “Show me.”

She hurried to the rear of the chamber, dancing her fingertips along rough stone as if reading a book written in Braille.

He followed, patting the stone with one hand, the other still on his submachine gun. He didn’t trust Korza. If the priest had warned them from the start, Jordan’s men might still be alive. Jordan wasn’t going to turn his back on him anytime soon.

“Feel how clean the masonry is along this wall?” Erin asked. “The blocks fit so perfectly that little mortar was even needed. I suspect they only cemented it as an extra measure to secure the vault against quakes.”

“So it’s probably the only reason we’re still alive,” he said. “Let’s hear it for overbuilding.”

A distracted smile played across her lips. He hoped to see that smile again out in the sunlight, somewhere safe.

At the back wall, she dropped to a knee beside the impaled bodies. Her shoulders tensed, and her eyes fixed on the wall, averted from the dead. But she kept going. He admired that. She placed a palm against the ancient bricks and stroked it downward.

“I noticed this earlier.” The ground jolted, and her next words rushed out. “Before the attack. When we were examining the girl.” She took his hand and placed it beside hers on the stones. “Feel the ridges of mortar pushing out between the bricks.”

He touched the cold unyielding stone.

“This section is unlike the other walls,” she rattled on eagerly. “Skilled masons, such as those who built this vault, would skim the excess mortar away, to create a clean look and to protect the mortar from being knocked out if anyone brushed against the wall.”

“Are you saying that they got sloppy here?”

“Far from it. Whoever built this section of wall was working from the
other
side. That’s why the mortar is bulging out
toward
us here.”

“A sealed doorway.” He whistled. “Nice going, Doc.”

He studied it. The mortared section formed a rough archway. She might be right. He pounded the wall with the flat of his fist. It didn’t give. “Feels damned solid to me.”

To dig this out would take hours, maybe days. And he suspected they had only minutes. Erin had done a good job, but it wouldn’t be enough to save them.

A section of roof near the entrance broke away and fell with a deafening crash. Erin flinched, and he moved toward her protectively. They’d end up buried down here with the corpses of monsters and men.

His
men, with Cooper and McKay.

“McKay,” he said aloud.

The holy man frowned, but Erin glanced at McKay’s twisted body. Her eyes brightened with hope and understanding.

“Do you have enough time?” she asked.

“When I’m
this
motivated? Damned straight.”

He headed across the rubble and knelt beside McKay’s body.

I’m sorry, buddy
.

He gently rolled his lifeless body to the side. He kept his eyes off the ruin of his friend’s throat, resting a hand on his shoulder. He held back memories of his friend’s barking laugh, his habit of peeling labels off of beer bottles, his hangdog look when confronted by a beautiful woman.

All gone.

But never forgotten, my friend.

He freed the backpack and returned to the wall where Erin waited. He didn’t want her to be alone with the priest. He didn’t know what the man might do. The holy man was full of secrets, secrets that had cost his men their lives. What would Korza do to keep those secrets if they escaped this prison?

No matter what was planned, the mountain would probably crush them first. Jordan hurriedly unzipped the backpack. As the team’s demolitions expert, McKay carried explosives, originally brought along to blow up canisters and neutralize any residual threat. Back when they thought they were dealing with something simple, like terrorists.

He worked fast, fingers inserting blasting caps into blocks of C-4. McKay could have done this faster, but Jordan shied away from that well of pain, unable to face the loss. That would come later. If there was a later.

He shaped and wired charges, doing fast calculations in his head while keeping an eye on Erin as she talked to the priest.

“The girl,” she said, waving an arm toward the child on the wall. “You’re telling me that she was two thousand years old when she died?”

Korza’s voice was so low that Jordan had to strain to hear his answer. “She was
strigoi
. Sealed in here to protect the book. A mission she performed until those silver bolts ended her life.”

As he worked, Jordan pictured those grisly events unfolding:
the Nazis opened the sarcophagus, found the little girl still alive in the damn coffin, then staked her to the wall with a hail of silver crossbow bolts
. He remembered the crushed gas mask spotted near the tomb’s entrance. The Nazis must have known what they would find here. They had come expecting both the girl
and
that toxic gas.

Erin pressed, clearly seeking some way to understand all of this, to insert it into a scientific equation that made sense. “So the Church used this poor girl. Forced her to be its guard dog for two thousand years?”

“She was no
girl
, and she was asleep, preserved in the holy wine that bathed her.” Korza’s words fell to a pained whisper. “Still, you are correct. Not all agreed with such a cruel decision. Nor even the choice of this accursed place. It is said the apostle Peter picked this mountain, that tragic time, to bind the blood sacrifice of the Jewish martyrs to this tomb, to use that black pall to protect the treasure.”

“Wait,” Erin scoffed. “
The
apostle Peter …
Saint
Peter? Are you saying he ordered someone to bring the book here during the siege of Masada?”

“No. Peter carried the book here himself.” The priest’s hands fiddled with his rosary. “Accompanied only by those he trusted best.”

Jordan suspected he wasn’t supposed to be telling them any of this.

“That can’t be,” Erin argued. “They crucified Peter during the reign of Nero. Roughly three years
before
Masada fell.”