The Blood Gospel

She fell to her knees next to him, taking his hand. “Nate? Are you okay … why are you here?”

She knew the answer to both questions and despaired as she realized the result of her own shortsightedness. She had never considered that the Belial would go after her innocent students. What did they know? Then it all tumbled together. She had sent the pictures of the tomb, of the Nazi medallion. No wonder Bathory knew to track their team to Germany.

What have I done?

She didn’t know the answer to that one, nor another. “Amy?” she whispered.

Nate stared up at her, tears welling in his eyes. “I … I wasn’t there to protect her.”

Erin rocked back as if she had taken a blow to the face. She heard a sob escape Nate.

“It’s not your fault, Nate.”

It had been her fault. The students had been left in her care.

Nate’s voice was hoarse. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

A rush of affection rose in Erin for the tough Texas kid. She squeezed his hand.

“How touching,” sneered Bathory.

“Why did you take him?” Erin turned and glared at her, earning a threatening growl from the grimwolf. “You got the photos, I imagine. He knows nothing else. He has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Not quite,” said Bathory. “He has something to do with you.”

Guilt washed across Erin. “What do you want?”

“Information from the Woman of Learning, of course.” Bathory displayed her perfect white teeth in an unpleasant grin.

“I don’t believe in that damn prophecy,” Erin said, and meant it. So far, the trio seemed to have bungled more things than they got right. It didn’t feel like they had divine prophecy on their side.

“Ah, but others do.” Bathory stroked the grimwolf’s head. “Help us.”

“No.” She would die before she assisted the Belial in opening the book.

Bathory snapped her fingers. The grimwolf leaped and pinned Nate to the floor with his front paws, knocking his hand loose from Erin’s. The wolf bent his muzzle low over Nate’s throat.

The message was clear, but Bathory drove it home anyway. “I don’t need your cowboy.”

Bathory trained her flashlight on Nate. Erin tried not to look at him. She stared instead at the rough stone walls, the newly installed barred steel gate, and the black ceiling of the cell that seemed to extend upward forever.

But her gaze returned to Nate. He had closed his eyes, quaking, but looking so brave she wanted to hug him. Clearly terrified, he still didn’t ask for help. He just waited.

“What do you need?” Erin asked Bathory.

“Your thoughts about opening the lead casing that holds the book.” Bathory put both hands on her hips. “To start.”

“I don’t know.”

The dog lowered its head toward Nate’s exposed throat and snarled.

“But maybe we can talk it through, you and I.” Erin spoke as fast as she could. “But first, call off the grimwolf.”

As if obeying a silent command from its mistress, the wolf raised its head.

Nate shuddered with relief.

Erin had to give the woman something. “The lead box had a design on it. A skeleton and a man bound together by loops of rope.”

“Yes, we know. Along with the symbols for the Alpha and the Omega.”

Bathory turned to the taller of the two brothers, his flesh punctured and tattooed, his eyes hungry upon her. He shrugged off a satchel, pulled free the heavy artifact, and held it out to Erin.

“What else do you see?” Bathory asked.

Erin took the cold metal object, careful not to touch the fingers of the tattooed man. She wished she had something significant to add. What did she know about the book? She stroked the two figures carved into the front: the human skeleton and the naked man, crossed and locked in an embrace, bound together by a braided cord.

Drawing by Trish Cramblett

“The book is about miracles,” Erin started. “Christ’s miracles. How He harnessed His divinity.”

The wolf shifted its weight from paw to paw.

“We know that,” Bathory snapped. “How do we open it?”

Erin ignored her and tried to think. “Miracles. Like changing water to wine. Bringing the living back from the dead …”

She stopped, surprised.

Bathory understood at the same time. “All the major miracles are about transformations.”

“Exactly!” Erin was surprised at how quickly Bathory had made the connection. “Like transubstantiation, changing wine to the blood of Jesus.”

“So, perhaps this block of lead is the actual book.” Bathory crossed over and crouched next to her, like two colleagues conferring. She touched the lead, too. “Alchemists were always trying to find a way of turning lead to gold.”

Erin nodded, understanding the woman’s hypothesis. “Maybe that quest has its roots in this legend. Some old hint about the Gospel traveled up through the ages. Turning lead to gold.”

Bathory’s silver eyes locked on hers. “Maybe the Gospel needs to be transformed in the same way. From dull, worthless lead to the golden glory of the book?”

Erin suddenly remembered Piers’s words in the bunker.

The book is not yet a book. Not yet.

Had the old priest figured out the puzzle as he hung for decades on the cross with nothing else to ponder as he suffered?

Erin nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“It’s an interesting idea. But what are the alchemical ingredients needed to cause this transformation?” Bathory tapped the figure of the skeleton inscribed on the lead jacket. “I suspect the answer may lay in our bony friend here?”

“But what does the Alpha symbol above his head mean? It has to be a clue.” Erin stared at the skeleton under the Alpha symbol, then glanced at the naked man and the symbol above his head. “And what’s the meaning of the Omega symbol?”

“Alpha skeleton, Omega man.” Bathory slipped her finger into two small divots at the top of the block.

Erin hadn’t seen those before. They looked like tiny receptacles, meant to hold something, maybe something like those alchemical ingredients Bathory mentioned. She tried to get a better look at them.

Before she could, Bathory sprang to her feet, understanding flashing across her face. She ripped the lead block from Erin’s hands.

“What?” Erin asked. “What did you see?”

Bathory snapped her fingers, and the wolf abandoned Nate.

The young man sat up shakily, rubbing his throat.

The eerie silver eyes smiled at Erin. “Thank you for your help.”

With that, she and the strigoi brothers left the cell. The lock clicked closed, and light retreated down the tunnel. Erin leaned forward to watch it disappear. Bathory had figured out something, something important.

Nate drew in a shaky breath. “She’ll be back.”

Erin agreed, adding, “But we won’t be here.”

3:35 P.M.

Rhun pulled his dark hood lower over his eyes, hiding from both the tourists and the late-afternoon sunlight that inundated St. Peter’s Square.