The Blood Gospel

… a long bare throat.

… a brick plastered in a closing wall.

… a young girl with a raspberry blemish screaming silently.

No.

He fought to focus on the woods, on the pain of the cross in his burning palm, on the sounds of breaking twigs and snapping branches as strigoi burst out of hiding and surged toward the bunker. He risked a glance around the trunk, catching movement too quick for human eyes to track.

Six to ten.

He couldn’t be sure.

Jordan and Erin would have no chance against them. He brought his gun up into firing position with trembling hands.

More images assaulted him, reminding him of his sin, unmanning him when he needed to be at his strongest.

… a spray of blood across white sheets.

… pale breasts in moonlight.

… a smile as bright as sunshine.

Through the spectral glimpses of his past, he aimed and fired, hitting two strigoi on the right, each square in the knee, dropping them, slowing them, if nothing else.

Nadia picked off another two on the left.

Behind him, Jordan’s submachine gun crackled as the soldier fired and strafed from the bunker’s door. He heard the pop-pop-pop of Erin’s pistol.

The first wave of strigoi scattered to the side, trying to flank them. More came behind them. He counted a dozen, four wounded, but not badly. One was older than Rhun; the others youngsters but still dangerous.

Memories continued to wash over him, thicker now, pulling him away, then back again.

… a crackling fire, listening to the soft voice of a woman reading Chaucer, struggling with the Middle English, laughing as much as reading.

… a twirl of a gown in moonlight, a figure dancing by herself under the stars on a balcony, as music echoed from an open window.

… the pale nakedness of flesh, so stark against a crimson pool of blood, the only sound his own panting.

Please, Lord, no … not that …

A crossbow bolt grazed his cheek, snapping him back to the present. The arrow winged off the edge of the tree and buried itself in dirt behind him.

He fell back, knowing none of his party could last out in the open, especially not in the state he was in.

They were too exposed.

“Take them farther inside!” he gasped out, waving to Nadia, who was closer to the bunker door. “I’ll hold them off—”

“Stop!” called a voice so familiar Rhun clutched for his cross again, unsure if he was in the past or present.

He listened, but the forest had gone dead quiet.

Even the strigoi had gone to ground—but with the sun nearly up, they would not wait long. They would rush at any moment, swarming over them.

He strained, wondering if he had imagined the voice, a broken fragment of memory come to life.

Then it came again. “Rhun Korza!”

The accent, the cadence, even the anger in that voice he knew. He struggled to stay in the present, but the calling of his name summoned him into the past.

… Elisabeta climbing from horseback, an arm outstretched for his aid, baring her wrist, exposing her faint pulse through her thin pale skin, her voice amused at his hesitation. “Father Korza …”

… Elisabeta weeping in the garden under bright sunlight, hiding her face from the sun, grief-stricken, but finally seeing him, rising to meet him, her simple joy shining through tears. “Rhun Korza …”

… Elisabeta coming to him, barefoot, across the rushes, her limbs naked, her face raw with desire, her lips moving, speaking the impossible. “Rhun …”

Those arms lifted toward him, inviting him at long last.

He went to them.

A gun blast tore into his chest, the blossom of pain tremendous, shredding away the past and leaving only the present.

He stood still with his arms outstretched toward her.

She stood before him—only transformed. Her dark black hair had turned to fire. He heard her heartbeat, knowing there should be none, not here, not now.

Downslope from him, she kept her distance, sheltered by an alder. But even from here, he recognized the same curve of her cheek, the same dance to her quicksilver eyes, the same long curls tumbling to her shoulders. She even smelled as she always had.

His vision swam, overlaying two women.

Pink lips curved into the smile that had once seduced him. “Your deeds brought us here, Father Korza. Remember that.”

She lifted her smoking Glock and fired, fired, fired.

Bullets tore into his chest.

Silver.

Every one.

The world darkened, and he fell.

6:50 A.M.

Jordan fired a volley over Rhun’s body as the priest dropped. The redhead who had shot him ducked behind a tree.

Why the hell had the fool stepped out into the open like that?

Rhun had looked like he was in a daze as he stumbled out of hiding, his arms stretched out toward the woman, his hands empty, as if surrendering to her.

Jordan kept firing his Heckler & Koch submachine gun, offering Nadia cover so she could reach Rhun. Strigoi crawled forward toward them, clearly not eager to stand up and be shredded apart by silver. He hoped he had enough bullets in the extended magazine to get the pair back inside.

Erin knelt on the other side of the door, her Sig Sauer in hand. She didn’t have the same firepower he did, but she was a surprisingly good shot. She shot for legs, wounding rather than killing, just as Rhun had done. For the moment it was easier to slow them than to kill them.

Nadia hooked a hand under one arm and dragged Rhun back toward the bunker.

She took a crossbow bolt in the back of her thigh, but didn’t even flinch until she had hauled Rhun’s body inside and slammed the bunker door.

“Emmanuel?” Jordan asked.

“Lost.” She clenched her jaw and yanked out the bolt. Blood boiled out and smoked down her thigh. The stench of burnt flesh drifted up.

Erin swallowed hard. Jordan understood how she felt.

“Can you walk?” he asked. “I can give you a shoulder to—”

“I can walk.”

Nadia hurried them away from the door and pulled a wineskin from her belt. She took a small, cautious sip.

A heavy object thudded against the locked door behind them, echoing inside.

Nadia ignored it, but she finally stopped and lowered Rhun to the floor. She quickly freed Rhun’s karambit and used the hooked blade to slice off the leather armor covering his chest.

“We must work swiftly. The Belial will come through that door at any moment.”

Erin knelt next to her. “How do you know they’ll do that?”