Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series (48 page)

Jordan noted her glance skyward and reached to squeeze her knee. “Who says the deadline is midday anyway? We may have more time than that to close the gates of Hell.”

She turned to him. His face bore only faint scars from the recent attack, but now his pale skin whorled and ran with crimson lines, covering half his face. Jordan had his parka unzipped, seemingly oblivious of the cold. Erin imagined if she took off her snow gloves, she could warm her hands off the heat flowing from him.

She took a deep breath and turned away, unable to stare at those lines any longer, knowing they marked how little of Jordan’s humanity remained. Still, a part of her felt guilty, even selfish, at her reaction to Jordan’s state. He had come back from the edge of death in France because of his angelic power and his human stubbornness. When the time came, he would have to decide which path to walk. And she would have to let him, no matter how much she feared to lose him.

To distract from these worrisome thoughts, she answered his question. “We have only until noon today.”

“Why do you sound so certain?” Rhun asked from across the cabin. His lion stretched on the neighboring seat, arching his spine into a bent bow.

Elizabeth answered Rhun before Erin could. “Look at the moon.”

Faces turned toward the various windows. A full moon hovered at the sun’s blazing edge.

Jordan leaned against Erin to see out. “Bernard mentioned that there would be an eclipse today,” he muttered. “But only a partial one, if I’m remembering right.”

“A
partial
one in France,” Erin corrected him. “This far east, it will be a
total
eclipse. I checked during the flight here. Totality will reach the Himalayas at one minute past noon.”

She remembered the mural painted on Edward Kelly’s wall. That bloodred sun above that black lake could have been the artist’s representation of a full eclipse.

Knowing this, she wished they had made better time getting here. Piloted by Christian, their Citation X jet had raced across Europe and Asia. En route, Bernard had regularly updated them by satellite phone on the conditions on the ground, about the surge of attacks erupting across the dark cities they flew over. The
strigoi
and
blasphemare
had grown bolder and stronger as the tide of evil spread, shifting the balance in their favor. But those monsters were only the spark of this firestorm. Simple panic did the rest, stoking those flames of chaos even higher.

As Christian swung them around a shoulder of a mountain, a small village appeared, tucked against the slope. Atop the peaked slate roofs, chimneys cast ribbons of smoke into the air, showing people inside cooking, laughing, living. It reminded her of what they were fighting to preserve.

A lone yak walked along a narrow snow-covered path. A brightly clad figure walked at its side, a cap pulled tightly over a round head. Both the dark-skinned man and the yak stopped to stare up at their helicopter.

Erin pressed a palm against the glass, wishing them both a long and happy life.

As the village vanished behind them, the last sight of habitation was a Buddhist temple, its gutters strewn with lines of fluttering prayer flags.

But it was not the temple they had come to find.

Christian continued onward, heading for the spot marked on Hugh’s map. “I don’t see any lake, unless it’s under all that snow. I might have to circle around.”

As he lifted their aircraft higher, Erin spotted a bowl-shaped gorge to the right. “Over there!” she called to Christian, leaning forward and pointing.

Christian nodded. “Got it. Let’s check it out.”

He angled toward that basin, sweeping between two peaks. At the bottom of this smaller valley spread a flat expanse of snow, about half the size of a football field, but its surface was not unbroken. Black ice reflected up at them, like dark cracks in the glaze of a white vase.

“That’s got to be it,” Erin said.

“Only one way to find out.” Christian manipulated the helicopter’s stick and lowered their aircraft to a hover over the snow.

Wind from the rotors blew the fine snow away to reveal an expanse of frozen lake. Its surface was black, like obsidian, like the black lake painted on the mural in the Faust House. But here there were no monsters crawling forth.

At least not yet
.

Erin checked the sky, noting the moon had already taken a bite out of the sun.

“Think we got the right place?” Christian asked.

Sophia spoke up from the far side of the cabin and pointed. “Look up by the cliffs on this side.”

Erin wriggled to see better. It took her a moment to note what had drawn the small nun’s attention. But then she spotted it, too. Half hidden by the shadow of the sheer rock face, two giant trees hugged the cliff. Both were leafless with pale gray trunks, their branches crusted with ice and frosted with snow.

Sophia faced them. “Didn’t Hugh de Payens mention that the valley home of those
strigoi
monks had two mighty trees growing in it?

Possibly the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Eternal Life
.

Erin felt a sinking of disappointment at the sight of them. The pair looked like ordinary trees, certainly old, but nothing spectacular. Still, they matched Hugh’s description.

“Put us down,” Erin said. “This must be the right place.”

Christian obeyed, warning them. “Let’s hope the ice is thick enough to hold us. It’s the only place to land.”

He was right. All around, the banks sloped steeply, rising and merging with the cliffs of rock. He lowered their craft cautiously until the skids gently kissed the ice. Only when the surface seemed to support their weight did he allow the aircraft to fully settle.

“Looks good,” he said and powered the aircraft down.

Erin took off her headphones and waited while the Sanguinists, even Elizabeth, exited first, wary of any dangers. As soon as the door was open, a frigid breeze blasted inside, sweeping around as if trying to flush her out. She shuddered in her parka, but not from the cold. Instead, every hair on her body seemed to suddenly stand on end.

The Sanguinists reacted even more strongly: Christian crashed to a knee out on the ice, Sophia gasped loudly enough that Erin heard her above the sharp whistling of the wind, Rhun clutched for the cross hidden under his coat, wavering drunkenly as he took a few steps. Elizabeth caught his elbow and steadied him, frowning at the others.

Erin remembered seeing the Sanguinists react the same at the Faust House. The unholiness here was much stronger.

Even I feel it
, she thought, shivering with unease.

Next to her, Jordan clenched his shoulders toward his ears and cocked his head, wincing. “That noise . . . like fingernails on a chalkboard. No, make that steel claws digging into a blackboard. Gawd . . .”

He looked sick to his stomach.

Erin didn’t hear what he heard, but he alone had heard singing from the stones. His ears were clearly tuned to an entirely different wavelength than hers.

She climbed out of the aircraft to join the others, with Jordan hopping out after her. As her steel crampons touched the ice, her legs went cold, as if the heat of her body were sucked out through her feet.

Behind Jordan, the cat leaped free, jumping high as if trying to avoid the ice, but the shore was too far. The cub landed on his silver claws, then crossed toward Rhun, lifting each foot daintily before placing it down again, as if he were trying not to touch that black surface.

“Something’s wrong here,” she whispered.

“A powerful evil resides in this lake,” Rhun agreed. “Let us be away quickly.”

Despite the desire to run for the shoreline, they proceeded cautiously, careful of the ice’s slipperiness and fearful of disturbing what lay below. Rhun aimed them for the bank closest to those shadowy trees.

Erin sighed when her legs finally stepped from ice to rock. She immediately felt pounds lighter, as if the backpack over her shoulders had been lifted free.

Rhun joined her, his spine straighter now. The Sanguinists looked revived as they left the lake, like flowers opening to sunlight.

“I can still feel it,” Sophia said. “Wafting off the lake, filling this valley.”

Rhun nodded.

Christian wiped his brow with a glove and looked longingly toward the helicopter. “Now I wish I’d parked closer. Don’t look forward to hiking back out again.”

Hopefully we’ll get a chance to
.

Erin looked to the sky, squinting at the sun’s glare as the moon continued to edge farther over its face. She lowered her gaze to the steep rocky slope that led up toward those massive trees. Only now did she note that the boulders looked artfully placed, framing a snowy trail that wended up toward the cliffs.

“There’s a trail,” she said and began to head toward it.

Jordan stopped her. “Stay by my side.”

She glanced at him, glad to see his protective nature showing itself again. She took his hand, wishing they didn’t have to wear gloves.

With the lion at his side, Rhun took the lead. They slowly climbed through the boulders, careful of patches of ice. As the trail took its final switchback near the top, Rhun suddenly stopped, the lion let out a low growl.

“We’re not alone,” Rhun said.

11:12
A
.
M
.

Rhun had almost missed them.

Three men knelt between the huge boles of the trees, so still and unmoving that they could be statues. Snow rested upon their shoulders and atop their bald pates, creating powdery skullcaps. Rhun heard no heartbeats from them, but he knew they still lived.

Eyes stared toward him, shining out of the shadows under the leafless bower.

Knowing they had been seen, they rose in unison, unfolding smoothly, snow sliding from their white-robed bodies. They stepped into the sunlight to greet Rhun and the others, pale hands folded at their waists.

Rhun knew these were
strigoi
, but they walked under the sun as easily as any Sanguinist. As Hugh de Payens had claimed, these monks had found another way to make peace with the day.

Rhun stepped forward and bowed. He held his empty hands out so that they could see he had no weapon. “We have been sent by Hugh de Payens,” he said. “We bring his blessings.”

The lead monk had a round face with dark, soft eyes. “Have you returned the stones our friend was given to safeguard?”

“We have them,” Rhun admitted.

Erin slipped her backpack from a shoulder and unzipped it, clearly ready to produce her stone, but Rhun cautioned restraint. Hugh had said that they could trust these monks, but the palpable evil that rose off the lake made him cautious.

Even the lion stuck close to his knee, plainly unnerved by this entire valley.

All three monks bowed in unison, as if hearing a silent bell. “Then be welcome,” the leader said as he straightened, a soft beatific smile on his lips. “My name is Xao. Please come into our temple and let us reunite your stones with their blue brother. Time, as you know, runs short.”

The monks turned and led them toward the trees. Closer now, Rhun noted the two trees were nearly identical, with thick gray trunks and smooth bark. The pair stood so closely together that their higher branches grew entwined, forming a natural archway overhead. The gnarled limbs trembled in the cold wind that blew off the mountains, but they appeared strongly rooted.

Around the trunks, the ground had been swept away. The broom’s bristles had left circular patterns in the thin layer of remaining snow. The deliberate arrangement of lines looked like patterns raked into sand in a Zen garden, but the patterns themselves—curlicues and arches—reminded Rhun of the tattoo on Jordan’s chest and neck.

The monks stopped at the wall of rock centered behind the trees. They chanted together in a language he did not recognize, but Erin whispered behind him, her voice full of awe.

“I think they’re speaking Sanskrit . . .”

Xao withdrew a small silver sculpture of a rose from a pocket. He clenched his fist around its stem, piercing his flesh on its thorns. He then dripped his blood atop a rock that jutted from the cliff, and a heavy grinding of stone sounded.

“It’s like a Sanguinist gate,” Christian murmured.

Or the precursor to one
, Rhun thought.

As the rock groaned and cracked, a small round door pushed out and rolled to the side. Snow crunched under its weight.

The monks entered, clearly intending for them to follow. The door was so low that it required bowing to enter. It was likely purposefully constructed that way, to imbue humbleness into those who entered.

Rhun and the lion went first, followed by the others.

Once over the threshold, Rhun straightened and found himself facing a cavernous expanse, illuminated by the glow of a thousand candles and scores of fiery braziers that smoked with incense. He immediately recognized that this was no natural cavern, but a massive space hewn from the surrounding rock, sculpted by hand into a masterpiece. It must have taken centuries.

Erin gasped at the sight as she entered with Jordan and the others.

It was as if a small village had been sculpted out of the rock, their foundations still attached to the stone floor, as if the buildings had grown out of the cavern. Then there were the hundreds of statues, their bases similarly merged seamlessly with the stone. They depicted ordinary villagers going about their daily life, including a full-size yak pulling a cart, and herds of goats and sheep grazing on patches of stony grass.

“It’s like they took that village we passed,” Jordan said, “and turned it to stone.”

The monks ignored their stunned reactions and led them to the village’s center, where a massive Buddha sat, rising at least thirty feet tall. Those stone eyes were closed in peaceful meditation. His face was not stylized but appeared to be representative of a real man, with wide-set eyes, a strong straight nose, delicate arched eyebrows, and the hint of a smile on his overly full lips. His features were perfect; it looked as if he could open his eyes at any moment.