rounded a corner at the end of the corridor.

Movement flashed in front of them, and Jamie held his T-Bone out in front of him. He pulled his torch from his belt as Larissa’s eyes reddened beside him, and shone it down the passage. Crawling up the wall ten feet in front of them, like an awful overgrown insect, was one of the monks. It turned its head toward them as the light from Jamie’s torch passed over it, and the look on its pale, narrow face was purgatory. Its eyes gleamed red, but the mouth was contorted into a wide silent howl, and tears spilled down its cheeks. It clawed at the pale stone of the wall, tearing its fingers to shreds, and then it slammed its forehead into the wall, splitting the skin, sending blood pouring down its face. It did it again and again and again.

“Stop that!” yelled Jamie, and the monk fell awkwardly off the wall, landing in a heap on the floor.

It looked at them with an expression of pure agony, and Jamie thought he had never seem such misery in the face of a living creature. It crawled a few feet toward them, sobbing and weeping, and Jamie took a step backward, leveling the T-Bone at the approaching figure. It shuffled onto its knees and faced them.

“Damned,” it said in a choked voice that was almost a whisper. “Damned.”

Larissa made a noise in her throat, and Jamie looked at her. She was staring at the vampire, and he realized with horror that she knew exactly what he was going through.

“Tried not to do it,” the monk whispered. “Not strong enough. Damned. Damned for all eternity.”

Jamie shone the torch past the weeping figure, and the beam picked out the body of a second monk, lying slightly further down the corridor. His neck had been ripped out, but there was very little blood on the floor around him.

The hunger was on him, and he fed on one of his brothers. Oh God.

He raised the T-Bone and pointed it at the monk’s chest. The broken, anguished figure in the brown habit didn’t so much as flinch. It simply linked its hands in front of its stomach and closed its eyes. Jamie took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

The explosion of blood brought two more vampire monks shambling along the corridor. They swayed out of the darkness, their red eyes gleaming, but Jamie and Larissa were ready. He tossed her the stake he had reclaimed from Kate, and they strode forward to meet them. Larissa leapt into the air, her broken left arm hanging beneath her, taking the confused, newly turned vampires by surprise, and plunged the stake into the chest of the nearest monk. It grimaced briefly, then burst in a shower of blood. Jamie T-Boned the other, the projectile punching a neat round hole in his brown robe and the skin beneath. It exploded, soaking the pale walls a dark crimson. Larissa stepped forward, leaned toward the dripping blood, then stopped, and turned to Jamie.

“Look away,” she said.

“Why?” he replied.

“I don’t want you to see this. Please, Jamie.”

He nodded and turned his back on her. From behind him came a wet sound, then a stifled grunt of pleasure.

“OK,” she said, after a long moment.

He turned back and looked at her. Her lips shone red, and her arm was no longer broken; she was rotating it in its socket, inspecting it, and looking at him with shame on her face.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

He reached a hand out to her, and she accepted it, gratitude on her beautiful, blood-streaked face.

They were nearly at the end of the corridor when they heard a soft weeping from behind one of the wooden doors. Jamie pushed it carefully open.

The room was identical to the one that he had inspected earlier, but this one wasn’t empty. Huddled in the corner was a monk, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs. His head was lowered, and he was shaking and weeping as Jamie crossed the room and knelt on the cold stone floor in front of him. Larissa stayed in the doorway, watching the corridor.

“Are you hurt?” asked Jamie, placing a hand on the man’s arm.

The monk raised his head, and Jamie cried out, shoving himself backward across the stone floor.

A crucifix had been carved into the man’s face; across the ridge of his forehead and then down from his hairline, along the length of his nose, through his mouth, splitting his lips into flapping chunks, and down to the end of his chin. The wound was wide and deep, and blood was gushing down his ruined face and onto his habit.

“Oh God,” said Jamie.

At the mention of his Lord, the monk began to babble, a running stream of prayer.

“YeathoughIwalkthroughthevalleyoftheshadowofdeathIwillfe arnoevilbecausethouartwithme.”

Jamie stood up and backed away from the huddled shape, his face twisted with despair.

There’s nothing you can do for him. Think about your mother. Focus.

But he couldn’t. He could think only about the tortured, violated man curled in the corner in front of him and wonder again what manner of creature he was dealing with, a creature that would inflict such savagery on men who had devoted their lives to peace.

“Come on,” said Larissa, softly, and he turned to look at her. “We have to keep moving. You can’t help him.”

He followed her out into the corridor, and they rounded the final corner together. On the ground in front of them, a large arrow had been painted with blood, pointing the way they were facing. Two words had been written beneath it: THIS WAY

Hatred spilled through Jamie, hatred for Alexandru and all his kind, a hatred that burned so hot in his chest he thought he would burst into flames. “Does he think this is a game?” he hissed.

Larissa grabbed his arm.

“It is a game,” she said. “To him, that’s all this is. Ilyana, your father, your mother, those are just details. It’s violence and pain and misery that he loves. Remember that when you face him.”

A shout echoed down the corridor, and Jamie shone his torch along it. Morris, McBride, and Kate were walking quickly down it, and Jamie and Larissa went to meet them.

The team was reunited in front of a large wooden door.

“What did you find?” asked Jamie.

“Later,” said McBride, his face drawn and pale, and Jamie nodded.

They stood in front of the door, the five of them, with Jamie in the center.

This is it. No matter what lies behind this door, you don’t leave this place without her. You make her proud.

“Ready?” asked Morris.

Jamie took a deep breath. “Ready,” he said, and pushed the door open.

But he wasn’t ready at all.

45

THE TRUTH HURTS

Alexandru Rusmanov sat in the chapel hall on a wooden chair so ornately carved it looked like a throne.

It stood on a raised stone platform at the back of the large hall. An enormous wooden cross stood behind it, before a tall stained-glass window that faced the gray surface of the North Sea, a hundred feet below. A wooden lectern, from which Jamie guessed the abbot had conducted the monastery’s services, had been thrown aside and lay broken on the stone floor.

A long wooden dining table had been treated with similar disdain; it lay smashed along one of the long walls of the hall, surrounded by the plain wooden chairs that had seated generations of the monks of Lindisfarne. Above it, set into alcoves along the high wall, were crude statues of saints. Their carved faces stared down solemnly into the middle of the hall.

Then Jamie saw her.

His mother.

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