A short rap on the door cut her off.
“Come in,” Bernard called out, straightening the crimson skullcap of his station. The cardinal was vainer than he would ever admit.
She turned as the door swung wide and Father Gregory stepped inside, but he was only holding the way open for others. She caught sight of the first visitor and was out of her seat and halfway across the room before she realized it.
Jordan caught her in his arms and lifted her off her feet. She hugged him back, hard. Once he let her down, she leaned back, keeping her hands on his shoulders, while taking him all in.
Despite the cardinal’s prior reassurance, a knot of concern for his well-being had remained. But he did indeed look fine. In fact, he looked terrific, his tanned skin practically glowing with health.
She lifted on her toes, inviting a kiss. He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek. His lips burned, as if he were feverish. She settled back to her heels, a hand rising to touch her cheek.
A peck on the cheek?
Such a tepid sign of affection was out of character, and it felt like a rejection.
She studied his clear blue eyes and reached up to run a hand through his shock of short blond hair, wanting to ask him what was going on. He didn’t react to her touch. She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. His skin was burning hot.
“Do you have a fever?”
“Not at all. I feel great.” He stepped back and jerked his thumb toward his companion behind him. “Probably just overheated from chasing after this guy.”
It was Christian, but from the young Sanguinist’s expression, he was equally concerned. Jordan was definitely not telling her something.
Before she could press the issue, Christian entered the room. He was dressed casually in worn black jeans and dark blue windbreaker, beneath which showed a priest’s shirt and collar. He nodded to Bernard. “Sophia and Baako are bringing the strigoi’s body to the pope’s surgery.”
Erin let go of her worry about Jordan’s continuing estrangement and focused on the mystery he and the others had delivered to their doorstep. If they could discover the source of this strigoi’s unusual strength and speed, then maybe they could devise a way to short-circuit it in the future.
But apparently that would wait.
Christian pulled a khaki rag from his jacket pocket. He glanced guiltily toward Jordan. “Sophia asked me to show this to Erin.”
Erin caught her breath as she recognized the scrap. It was a piece of Jordan’s shirt — only it was caked in dry blood, with a clear slash through the middle. She looked anxiously at Jordan.
He grinned back. “Nothing to worry about. I just got nicked during the battle.”
“Nicked?” She sensed he was holding back. “Show me.”
Jordan lifted his palms. “I swear… there’s nothing to see.”
“Jordan…” A warning tone frosted her voice.
“Fine.” He reached a hand and lifted up his T-shirt. A set of six-pack abs came into view.
Definitely nothing wrong with them.
She ran a finger across his unusually warm skin, noting the thin line of a scar. That was new. Without taking her hand from Jordan’s belly, she looked back at the bloody shirt that Christian held. The cut in the front of the shirt matched the scar.
“Just a nick or not,” she said, “this shouldn’t have healed so quickly.”
Bernard came around to examine Jordan, too.
“According to Sophia and Baako,” Christian explained, “Jordan spontaneously healed, suffering no ill effects.”
No ill effects?
His skin blazed under her fingertips. He would barely meet her eyes. She remembered another time when he had burned so hotly. It was when he was healed by Tommy’s angelic blood. Was this evidence of the prophecy concerning the Warrior of Man? The words echoed in her head: The Warrior of Man is likewise bound to the angels to whom he owes his mortal life.
Jordan tugged his shirt back down, glancing at Erin. “I didn’t want you to worry. I was going to tell you when we were alone.”
Were you?
She hated that she doubted him, but she did.
“I figured we had a more important detail to address first,” Jordan continued.
He pulled something out of his camouflage pants and held it up for all to see. Its sharp edges flashed in the candlelight. It looked like two pieces of a broken green egg.
“We found this near the altar down in the sibyl’s temple,” Jordan explained.
He crossed the room and put the pieces down on the cardinal’s desk. They gathered around it. Its facets cast rainbows across their faces, brighter than she’d ever seen — yellows like sunshine, greens like the sun on the grass, blues like a summer sky. The pieces certainly weren’t made of ordinary glass.
“What kind of stone is it?” she asked.
“Diamond, I think,” said Christian, as he leaned closer. “A green diamond, more precisely. Exceedingly rare.”
Transfixed by its beauty, Erin gazed at the stone. The crystal cast dappled reflections around the desktop. Those glowing emerald teardrops reminded her of tiny leaves, dancing in a summer wind.
Jordan nudged the two pieces together. “We found it already broken into these two halves, but at one time, it must have been a single gemstone. And look at this…”
He rolled the stone over to reveal a symbol etched into the crystal.
Erin leaned closer, traced it with her index finger. It looked as if the design had been melted into the stone.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Jordan said, noting her attention. “It’s like the symbol was always part of the diamond, not carved in afterward.”
Erin frowned. “I’ve heard of flaws and inclusions in gems, but it’s hard to believe that such a precise emblem formed naturally.”
Christian nodded. “I agree.”
She straightened. “Besides, I’ve seen this symbol before.”
A small part of her enjoyed their shocked expressions.
“Where?” Bernard asked.
She pointed to the cardinal’s bookshelf. “Right here.”
Proving it, she stepped over and took down a small leather-bound tome. She herself had delivered this depraved book to the cardinal, picking it up from the snow in Stockholm after Elizabeth Bathory had dropped it. It was the Blood Countess’s personal diary, a record of her atrocities and macabre experiments.
Erin stepped back to the desk and opened the book’s brittle cover. It was centuries old. Still, she swore she could smell the scent of blood wafting forth from its pages. She flipped past drawings of medicinal plants until she reached Bathory’s later experiments, those that held detailed drawings of human and strigoi anatomy. Her eyes were drawn to the neatly written notes of horrific tests performed on living women and strigoi, grisly acts that must have caused terrible suffering and death.
She hurried past them.
At the end of the book, Erin found what she sought. Scrawled as if in great haste on the last page was a symbol.
It matched the one on the stone exactly.
“What does it mean?” Bernard asked.
“We’ll have to ask the woman who wrote it,” Erin said.
Jordan groaned. “Something tells me she’s not going to be that cooperative, especially after what Rhun did to her. She’s not exactly the forgiving type.”
“Still,” Erin said, “Rhun might be the only one who could convince her.”
Jordan sighed. “In other words, it’s time to put the band back together again.”
He didn’t look happy, but Erin felt a flicker of relief at the thought of them all together again, the trio of prophecy reunited.