“So you booby-trapped your secret vault,” Jordan said. “Gotta say, you covered your bases well.”
As Elizabeth watched Rhun’s lips move in futile prayer, she pitied him. He had given everything for his God, and his sacrifice had been wasted. In the eyes of the Lord, he was judged as impure as any feral strigoi. This failure was his reward for centuries of service to Christ.
So Rhun would certainly find it particularly galling at who would save them now, who could open this vault when he could not.
“Step aside,” Elizabeth said, slipping the knife from Sophia’s fingers.
Elizabeth knelt beside Rhun and used a fistful of straw to scrub his blood from the receptacle in the stone.
Rhun watched her. “What are—?”
“Quiet,” she scolded.
Still on her knees, she cut her palm and studied the blood as it pooled. In its glossy surface, the reflection of her own face shone back at her.
Sorry, Rhun, I know how this will pain you.
She chanted the proper Latin words. “ ‘For this is the Chalice of My Blood, of the new and everlasting Testament.’ ”
She then turned her hand and let her blood drip into the indentation on the floor. It quickly filled the shallow reservoir. Once it was full, she chanted the final words of the incantation. “Mysterium fidei.”
With a soft scrape, the stone sank into the floor, then moved to the side.
She heard the gasps of disbelief.
Only Erin laughed.
The others turned to her.
“I get it,” Erin said. “Elizabeth was made whole when Rhun returned her soul in the desert. Then back at St. Mark’s, when Bernard stripped her of that new soul by making her a strigoi again, she wasn’t allowed to drink any blood. Instead, she was forced to drink the wine that very night.”
“And I’ve not touched a drop of blood since then,” Elizabeth added, as she turned to Rhun. “By the dictates of the Church, my being remains pure. I am the Chosen One. And here is your proof.”
She shifted aside to allow a beam of sunlight from the church’s windows to fall inside the hollow. Fiery light reflected back from the surface of a dark red gemstone hidden inside, setting its facets ablaze. The brilliance seemed to pour forth from the stone’s heart.
Though her eyes were dazzled, Elizabeth gazed deep into the crimson stone, stunned by its beauty. She had beheld many gems in her lifetime. In her mortal life, she had been one of the richest women in the world. But none of those gems had held the same fascination as this one.
She was not the only one so captured.
Jordan crashed to his knees, the light dappling his face, looking like fresh blood.
“It sings,” he moaned.
Jordan’s heart sang to the fiery stone, and it answered in a holy symphony, drawing him ever deeper into its melody, into its light. Around him, the world faded to shadows before such brilliance.
How could it not?
Distantly he heard the others chattering, but their words were mere undertones before the glory of that singing.
“Can’t you hear it?” he asked, trying to get them to listen.
A sharper voice cut through the melody, ringing between the individual notes. “Erin Granger, take the stone! Cover it from the light before he’s lost to it forever!”
He recognized the voice of the hermit.
Then moments later, the radiance dimmed, muffling that eternal song. The world found its substance, weight, and shadows. He saw a woman wrapping the gem in white linen, dousing its fire. Her eyes looked upon him with fear and worry.
Another carried a bag to her, and she stuffed the treasure into it. The sound of the zipper closing was loud in the quiet church.
Jordan’s arms lifted toward the woman, toward the pack. He ached to take the stone from its hiding place, to bare it to the sunlight, to hear its song to the end.
The woman took another step back. “Did any of you hear singing?” she asked.
A chorus of denial answered her.
Slowly, more of the world grew solid around him. But if he strained, he could still hear a faint whisper of that song from the pack, even an echo from his own pocket. That echo was a darker emerald, full of verdant life, and the promise of root and leaf, flower and stem.
“Jordan,” a sweet voice said at his ear. “Can you hear me?”
Yes.
“Jordan, answer me. Please.” Then softer as she turned away. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He is unbalanced.” The hermit again.
“What does that mean?”
“He was touched by angelic blood. While it protects him and heals him, it also consumes more of his humanity each time it saves him. You can see a map of this war written on his skin. If the angelic force prevails, he will be lost to you forever.”
A hand touched his forehead, as icy as snowmelt against his hot skin.
“How can we help him?” Her name is… Erin.
“Do not let him forget his own humanity.”
“What exactly does that mean? What do we do?”
He heard a change in that faint song, drawing his attention away. It was a whisper of minor chords, a darker thread woven through the song, inserting deeper notes of warning.
He forced his lips to move. “Someone’s coming.”
Silence followed, letting him listen more closely.
“Impossible,” the hermit started again. “I have guards posted all around. In the shadows of the forest, in the dark tunnels. They would have warned me. You are safe.”
The black notes beat louder in his head.
The lion growled, its white fur bristling with warning.
Jordan stood, strode to a wall, and grabbed a long-handled weapon.
“Put down the hoe,” the hermit said. “There is no need for violence.”
Jordan turned to face the deep shadows at the rear of the church.
Too late.
He is here.
Legion stepped into the dark tunnel from the shadowy bower of the old forest. Others led him, those he found lurking in the woods, those of a corrupted nature who had thought to find peace on this mountaintop. Instead, they ended with Legion’s palm resting upon their cheek, where he branded them, claimed them. He took in their memories, their knowledge of the lair of the hermit, learning the secret ways into that mountain.
Earlier in the day, after gaining knowledge of this place through the eyes and ears of Father Gregory, Legion had left Prague, his still-weak body carried by those who bore his mark. A trio of branded Sanguinists had secured a vessel, a helicopter with windows shaded against the sun so he could be whisked over lands bright with the new day.
They had landed on the far side of the mountain from where the enemy’s helicopter sat. From there, this old forest protected him from the sun’s touch. As he had climbed, he had basked in the scent of the rich loam, the mold of decaying wood, the sweetness of leaf and bark. His eyes drank in the dark emerald of the canopy, the soft petals of flowers. His ears heard every rustle, chirp, and scurry of life, reminding him of the paradise this world could be, if untouched by the molestation of man.
I will return this to a true garden, he had thought. I will reap and weed and burn until it is paradise once again.
In that forest, he had discovered the hermit’s guardians — both beast and strigoi—those loyal to a man who promised a path to serenity. It only took a touch to free them from such conceit, to make them his own, so no alarm would be raised.