It was a dead end.
“There’s no way out of here!” Erin called back to Rhun.
Her eyes watered from the sharp smell of ammonia in the room.
Bat guano.
She took a few steps inside, trailed by Jordan. Her flashlight illuminated a round chamber with a domed roof. She was immediately struck by two details. The chamber was the same shape and size as the tomb in Masada. But here, fine white marble covered every surface: the floor, walls, and ceiling.
She imagined it must have been a beautiful space once, but now dark guano streaked the walls and piled up in corners.
She also noted a second detail, her heart beating faster, again picturing the schematic of the Odal rune in her head.
“What is wrong?” Rhun shouted back.
Erin glanced back. Had he felt the stirring of her excitement?
She answered him, not bothering to shout this time, knowing he would hear her fine at a normal speaking volume: “I believe this chamber lies in the exact center of the diamond part of the Odal rune.”
Their path here glowed in her mind’s eye.
Rhun understood. “Search for the book. Time runs short! If we cannot defend this door, we may have to flee back to the tunnel and seek a more secure shelter.”
Granted his permission and responding to his urgency, she hurried inside, her attention already drawn to the most dramatic object, the tallest item, in the room: a life-size marble crucifix with a shockingly emaciated Christ nailed to it, sculpted of the whitest marble. Every detail on his body was faultlessly rendered, from his perfectly formed muscles to the deep wound on his side. Unlike Christ, though, this figure was naked, hairless as a newborn, giving the image a stylized beauty, a mix of godlike innocence and human agony.
She moved her light to follow the gaze of his lowered head. The sculpture looked down upon a tall stone pedestal with a splayed top. Erin knew that shape, having just seen it hours ago. It matched the
The monk had said the emblem’s pedestal represented an important
Breathless, Erin knew she was looking at the source of that
From the way the pedestal’s top was tilted toward the statue and away from her, she could not tell if anything rested there.
“We should stay by the door,” Jordan warned. “In case we have to make a run for it.”
She did not slow, did not hesitate. Nothing would stop her from reaching that pedestal and seeing for herself what lay there—possibly a book written in Christ’s own blood.
Jordan swore under his breath and followed her deeper inside.
The cross and column rested upon a dais, a square marble base six feet across. That both objects should have been placed on a stage demonstrated their importance. But why would the Nazis erect a life-size crucifix? Were they guarding something they considered sacred and holy?
Erin had to find out.
She jumped up onto the stage, wincing when her feet ground into pieces of broken rock. Careful not to step on anything else, she circled the pedestal.
As she came around, holding her breath, her light glowed across the upper surface of the marble lectern.
Then her heart sank.
It was empty.
“What did you find?” Jordan called to her from the base of the dais, but his face remained turned toward the vestibule, where the Sanguinists fought to keep the bats at bay.
Erin stepped forward and ran her fingertips across the empty surface of the lectern. She felt the indentation along the top, as if something was meant to rest there, an object roughly of the dimensions described by Rhun.
“The book was here,” she mumbled.
“What?” Jordan asked.
Defeated, she stepped back, her heel crushing another chunk of debris underfoot. She glanced down, shining her light. Fragments of gray rock lay scattered around the pedestal. Focused now, she saw that they were not natural stone, but something man-made. She knelt and carefully picked up one shard.
Most of the others strewn on the floor were less than an inch thick and ashy in hue. She retrieved a larger piece and rolled it around in her palm, judging the material.
Could these pieces date to the time of the Blood Gospel? To know for sure, she would have to do a proper analysis somewhere else, but for now she improvised.
She scratched a thumbnail over one corner and sniffed at the abraded edge.
A familiar spicy scent struck her deeply, almost causing her eyes to tear.
Her heartbeat sped up. There had been traces of frankincense in the tomb in Masada, common enough in ancient burials.
But not in Nazi bunkers.
She fought to keep her composure, kicking herself mentally for jumping on the dais like a lumbering ox, especially after years of scolding her students for the most minor violations of the integrity of a site.
She turned the shard over. The piece was roughly triangular, like the corner of a box. Frozen in place, as if she were crouching in the middle of a minefield, she studied the other pieces on the floor. Three other triangles rested nearby, along with other pieces.
What if the triangles were corners?
If so, maybe they had been part of a
A box that might have held a
She stared up at the empty lectern. Had the marauding Russians come upon what was hidden here? Smashed open what they found and stole what was inside?
Despairing, she looked to the crucifix for answers. The figure on the cross was as skeletal as a concentration-camp victim, thinner than any representation of Christ she had ever seen. Black nails pinned each bony hand to the cross, and a larger spike had been driven deep through the figure’s overlapping feet. Burgundy paint glistened around his wounds. She moved the light up, drawn to the nearly featureless face, eyes and mouth barely demarcated by slits, the nostrils even thinner—depicted here was a perfect rendition of endless suffering.
She had an irrational urge to cut the statue down, to comfort that figure.
Then a sharp pain burst in her hand. She raised it to the light, realizing she had sliced her thumb on the shard from clenching her fist too hard.
Reminded of her duty, she turned her back on the cross and began gathering the broken pieces from the dais, scooping them up and stuffing them in her pockets. She noted that some had writing on one side, but she would have to decipher them later.
Jordan noted her work and began to climb onto the stage with her.
“Don’t!” she warned, fearful of any further destruction to the clues left here by the Russians.
With enough time, she might—
Rhun’s shout reached them, full of hopelessness. “The bats are through the door.”
