10

October 26, 5:14 P.M., IST

Masada, Israel

Heat scorched Rhun’s back, as hot as the breath of any dragon. He pictured the wall of flames rolling over the top of the sealed dark sarcophagus. But it was the sound that hurt the worst. He feared the concussive blast might crack his skull, fountain blood from his ears, and defile this once-sacred space.

Beyond their tomb, stone rained down near the entrance. Unlike the first explosion that had sealed the fissure above, this second one sought to destroy this very chamber.

Thus trapping them.

As fire and fury died down to a rumbling groan, he braced hard against the limestone sides of the tomb. It was fitting that he die in a sarcophagus—trapped as surely as he’d once sealed another behind stone. Indeed, he almost welcomed it. But the woman and soldier had not earned this fate.

He had hurled them both inside the coffin after the first explosion. Knowing this ancient crypt offered the only shelter, he had drawn the stone lid over them, using all of his strength, assisted only slightly by the soldier. If they survived, he did not know how he would explain such strength of limb. The code he lived by demanded that he let them die rather than allow those questions to be asked.

But he could not let them die.

So they crowded together in pitch darkness. He tried to pray, but his senses continued to overwhelm him. He smelled the wine that had once filled this box, the metallic odor of blood that saturated the remains of his clothing, and the burnt paper-and-chalk smell of spent explosives.

None of it masked the simple lavender scent of her hair.

Her heartbeat, swift as a woodlark’s, raced against his chest. The warmth of her trembling body spread along his stomach and legs. He had not been this close to a woman since Elisabeta. It was a small mercy that Erin was turned away from him, her face buried in the soldier’s chest.

He counted her heartbeats, and in that rhythm, he found the peace to pray—until at last silence finally returned to his mind and to the world beyond their small tomb.

She stirred under him, but he touched her shoulder to tell her to be still. He wanted them to wait longer, to be certain that the room had stopped collapsing before he attempted to shift the tomb’s lid. Only then would he know if they were entombed by more rock than even he could lift.

Her breathing slowed, her heart stilled. The soldier, too, calmed.

Finally, Rhun braced his knees against the bottom of the stone box and pushed up with his shoulders. The lid scraped against the sides. He heaved again. The massive weight moved a handsbreadth, then two.

Finally, it tilted and smashed to the floor. They were free, although he feared that they had only traded the small cell for a larger one. But at least the temple held. The men who had dug out this secret chamber had reinforced its walls to hold the tempestuous mountain at bay.

He stood and helped Erin and Jordan out of the sarcophagus. One glowstick had survived the blast and cast a dim glow into the room. He squinted through scorching dust to the tomb’s entrance.

It was an entrance no more.

Earth and rock sealed it from floor to ceiling.

The other two coughed, holding cloths to their faces, filtering the fouled air. They would not last long.

The soldier clicked on a flashlight and shone it toward the doorway. He met Rhun’s eyes and stepped back from him, his face dark with suspicion and wariness.

The woman cast the beam of a second flashlight around the ruined chamber. A layer of dust covered everything, transforming the dead bodies to powdered statues, blunting the horror of the slaughter.

But nothing hid the broken pieces of the sarcophagus’s heavy stone lid. Her light lingered there. Motes of dust drifting through the beam did not obscure the truth of his impossible act in lifting and pushing that stone free.

The soldier did not seem to notice. He faced the blasted doorway as if it were an unsolvable mystery.

Closer at hand, the woman’s light settled on Rhun, as did her soft brown eyes. “Thank you, Father.”

He heard an awkward catch in her voice when she said the word father. He found it discomfiting, sensing that she had no faith.

“My name is Rhun,” he whispered. “Rhun Korza.”

He had not shared the intimacy of his full name with another in a long time, but if they were to die here together, he wanted them to know it.

“I’m Erin, and this is Jordan. How—”

The soldier cut her off; cold fury underlay his tone. “Who were they?”

That single question hid another. He recognized it in the man’s voice, read it in his face.

What were they?

He considered the hidden question. The Church forbade revealing the truth, its most guarded secret. Much could be lost.

But the man was a warrior, like himself. He had stood his ground, faced darkness, and he had paid in blood for a proper answer.

Rhun would honor that sacrifice. He stared the other full in the eye and offered the truth, naming their attackers. “They are strigoi.”

His words hung in the air, like the swirling dust, obscuring more than they revealed. Clearly confused, the man cocked his head to the side. The woman, too, studied him, more in curiosity than in anger. Unlike the soldier, she did not seem to blame him for the deaths here.

“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

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