The Blood Gospel

How wrong he was …

Grigori continued: “Rhun, you do not know your precious Cardinal so well as you think. Remember, he excommunicated me. For committing a sin no greater than your own. And I did not take the life of the one I sought to save.”

“What are you talking about?” Jordan asked, feeling like he’d walked into the theater in the middle of a movie.

Erin sat straighter, guessing the truth. “You’re referring to Czar Nicholas’s young son, aren’t you? The boy named Alexei.”

Rasputin favored her with a sad smile. “The poor child suffered. Finally, he lay near death. What was I to do?”

Jordan now remembered the history. The czar’s son was once Rasputin’s young charge. Like many of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, he had suffered from what was known as “the Royal Disease” of hemophilia. According to history, only Rasputin could bring him relief during his episodes of painful internal bleeding.

“You should have let him die a natural death,” Rhun said, “within the grace of God. But you could not. And afterward, you would not repent for your sin.”

Jordan pictured Rasputin turning the boy into a monster rather than letting him die.

“That is why you could not be forgiven,” Rhun said.

“What makes you think I wanted the Cardinal’s forgiveness? That I needed it?”

“I think we have gotten off topic here,” Jordan cut in. Rhun and Rasputin’s old arguments did not advance their cause. “Will you help us find the book?”

“First tell me, how did Piers die?” Rasputin took Erin’s hand. She looked like she wanted to take it back, but she didn’t. She should have. “Please.”

She told him of the cross in the bunker, of the moment in the boat when Piers passed on.

Rasputin dabbed at his eyes with a large linen handkerchief. “How can you explain that, Rhun?”

“God’s grace.” Rhun’s words were simple and fervent.

“Explain what?” Erin asked, looking between them.

“Tainted as Piers was for breaking his vow, for creating and feeding upon blasphemare creatures, he should have been burned to ashes by the sunlight.” Rasputin folded the handkerchief and secreted it away in his robes. “That is what happens to strigoi who do not drink the blood of Christ. Has Rhun told you nothing?”

He hadn’t told them much. Just that sunlight killed them, not that they burned up. Jordan remembered how Nadia had carefully lifted the coat from Piers’s face, and her fear as she held him against her side so that he might see the sun one last time. His death had seemed peaceful, not violent, more of a letting go. Had God somehow forgiven his sins at the end or was there enough of Christ’s blessing still within Piers’s veins to keep him from burning? He suspected they would never know the true answer, and at the moment they had a more important concern.

“The book,” Jordan said. “Let’s get back to the book.”

Rasputin straightened, visibly drawing back to the matter at hand. “The German bunker was far south. Do you know when Russian troops might have reached it? If I had a time line …”

Jordan tried to remember his history, expecting Erin to interrupt with the answer. “The last major German unit in the south surrendered on April twenty-fourth, but the Russians were probably still mopping up until the formal surrender of Germany on May eighth.”

He counted off dates in his head. “By mid-May, though, the Russians were formalizing the division of Germany and the whole of the Iron Curtain. I would guess the Russian smash-and-grab teams peaked around May twentieth, although there were probably Russians clearing out bunkers before and after.”

Rasputin eyed him with what might be respect. “You indeed know your history.”

Jordan shrugged, but he kept talking, eager to find the book and get the three of them out of Russia alive. “I’ve studied a lot about the World War Two era, heard a lot more from my grandfather who fought during it. Anyway, that bunker was far south and isolated. Calculating travel time back then, plus a buffer to get out before American troops began their patrols, I would guess the most likely time for the Russians to have hit the bunker would have been between May twenty-eighth and June second. With a wide margin of error, of course.”

Erin gave him a surprised look, as if she hadn’t expected him to know anything useful. Which was getting old.

“Impressive, Sergeant.” Rasputin leaned back. “That information is valuable. Although it will still take time to find the book.”

How did Rasputin know that Jordan was a sergeant? That was worrisome.

“Why is it valuable?” Erin asked. “Why do the dates matter?”

“First, tell me what you are hiding in your coat, my good doctor.”

So he knew Erin had a Ph.D., too, Jordan realized, and that she had the pieces of concrete that had surrounded the book in her pockets. What didn’t he know?

“I can smell it,” Rasputin said.

Erin looked to Rhun. He nodded, and she drew out a piece of the book’s encasement. “We believe this might have been covering the book.”

Rasputin held out his hand, and Erin slowly dropped the gray fragment into his palm. His thumb followed the thin lines of soot that showed where the stone had been blasted apart.

Jordan snapped upright. He should have thought of this before. “If you get me an explosives sensor, I can use that piece as a control and find anything else with the same chemical signature. If this was wrapped around the Gospel, the book would have the same chemical breakdown products on its cover. Assuming it wasn’t destroyed in the blast.”

Rhun touched his cross again, looking shocked. Apparently the priest hadn’t considered the possibility that the book might have been destroyed, that they might be risking their lives to search for something that had been blasted to fragments and ashes.

Rasputin nodded to Sergei, who stepped forward. “Go with my personal assistant. He will help you procure the item that you need.”

Jordan stayed seated. “We move as a team.”

6:17 P.M.

Rasputin frowned, then laughed. Erin hadn’t thought that she could hate that laugh more than she had the first time she heard it, but she did.

“Very well,” Rasputin said. “Write down the details for Sergei.”

Sergei produced a spiral-bound notebook and pencil stub from his back pocket.

Erin took the concrete piece off the table and slipped it back into her pocket, worrying that Rasputin might steal it. He was clearly an opportunist and not one to underestimate. He already knew too much: that she was a doctor, that she and Rhun and Jordan searched for the book, and that they were possibly the trio of prophecy. And from the greedy glint in his eyes when Jordan had listed the likely dates the bunker had been breached, she also suspected that he already had a good idea about the book’s location.

Clearly, Rasputin enjoyed making them dance like trained monkeys, but was it more than malicious pleasure?

Their host rose and gestured toward a black tabernacle at the rear of the church. “Shall we view the very cobblestones where the czar fell? The namesake for this church.”

She pushed back her chair. Jordan and Rhun stood, too. They walked behind Rasputin’s slope-shouldered form like a Sanguinist trio, Rhun in front, Jordan flanking the right, and Erin the left.

Rasputin stopped in front of the tabernacle. Four polished black columns supported an ornate marble canopy carved in Russian folk-art style, with jet-black stone flowers and flourishes. Behind a small gate lay a simple section of gray cobblestones. Its utilitarian nature clashed with the church’s elaborate grandeur, reminding Erin why this giant building had been constructed—to memorialize the murder of the czar. She contrasted the soaring ceilings and rich gold tiles with the simple mounds of earth in Piskariovskoye Cemetery.

Some deaths were marked better than others.

A handful of Rasputin’s followers came and stood in a semicircle behind them, as if bound to their leader by