Innocent Blood (6 page)

All the sedan’s windows were down.

What are you doing?

The cat bounded toward the noise.

Jordan braked hard and shoved the car out of reverse and back into drive. He sped after the cougar, chasing its tail. He knew he couldn’t reach the car before the beast did, but he intended to be there to help Christian.

The cougar slammed into the flank of the town car, knocking it aside a full foot, denting it deeply. Christian was bowled across the backseat. The blare of the horn immediately died away, leaving only the growling hiss of the monstrous cat.

The cougar spotted its prey inside and forced its head and shoulders through the window, going after the priest.

Jordan floored the gas, intending to ram the beast from behind if necessary.

Get out of there
,
buddy!

The cat squirmed and kicked its hindquarters, pulling its full length through the back window and into the car. It was a tight squeeze, but the beast was determined.

Then on the other side, Christian squirted out of the far window.

“There!” Erin yelled, spotting him, too.

Jordan turned and skidded the Rover past the rear bumper of the sedan.

Christian stumbled away from the town car, pointing the key fob back at the car. He pressed a button—and all the windows rolled up, and the car beeped twice.

Jordan stifled a laugh at Christian’s sheer audacity.

He’d locked the cougar in the car.

The cat snarled and furiously flung itself about inside, rocking the sedan.

Jordan pulled up next to Christian. “Need a lift?”

Christian opened the front passenger door and climbed inside. “Drive. And fast. I don’t know how long my trap will hold it.”

Jordan understood. He gunned the engine, raced the Land Rover out of the stable yard, and ricocheted along the dirt road toward the highway. He needed to put as much distance as possible between them and that angry cat.

Christian pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and barked orders in Latin.

“What’s he saying?” Jordan asked Erin.

“Calling for backup,” she said. “For someone to dispatch that cougar.”

Christian finished his call, then glanced back at the stable. “I hope the beast doesn’t have enough space inside that car to get up a good enough swing to break through the safety glass.”

Erin cleared her throat. “But why was it even here? Why was it after me?”

Jordan glanced over to Christian.

“My apologies,” Christian said, looking crestfallen. “But I believe someone must have caught wind that Jordan and I were seeking your help. Word might have reached the wrong ears. As you know, the order has suspicions that there are Belial traitors hidden among our fold. I fear I might not have been careful enough.”

The Belial . . .

She pictured that force of
strigoi
and humans, united under a mysterious leader. Even the tight ranks of the Sanguinist order were not impervious to that group’s reach and infiltration.

“It might not be you,” Erin said, reaching forward and squeezing his shoulder. “Cardinal Bernard called for me earlier today, too. Maybe he let something slip. But either way, let’s table this until we get Nate somewhere safe.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Nate sounded aggrieved.

“You do not,” Christian answered. “My orders are clear and specific. I am to take Erin and Jordan back to Rome. That’s it.”

Jordan wondered if that was true, or if he was just trying to take the pressure off Erin.

“Why Rome?” Erin asked.

Christian swung to face her. “It seems, in all this tumult, we’ve forgotten to tell you. Father Rhun Korza has gone missing. He vanished shortly after that bloody battle in Rome.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Jordan noted the concern in Erin’s eyes, the way a hand rose to her throat. She still had scars there from where Rhun had bitten her, fed on her. But from her worried expression, she plainly cared deeply for the Sanguinist priest.

“What does that have to do with me?” she asked.

Christian smiled at her. “Because you, Dr. Granger, are the only one who can find him.”

Jordan didn’t care about the disappearance of Rhun Korza. As far as he was concerned, the guy could stay lost. Instead, there remained only one mystery he wanted solved.

Who sent that damned cat?

7

December 19, 4:34
A.M.
CET

Rome, Italy

With a pair of antique watchmaker’s tweezers in hand, the leader of the Belial hunched over the workspace on his desk. He pinched a magnifying loupe to one eye. With exquisite care, he carefully wound a tiny brass spring inside the heart of a thumbnail-size mechanism.

The spring tightened and caught.

He smiled his satisfaction and closed the two halves of the mechanism, forming what appeared to be the metal sculpture of an insect, with six jointed legs and an eyeless head. The latter was spiked with a needle-sharp silver proboscis and crowned by the gentle sweep of a pair of feathery brass antennae.

Blessed with steady hands, he shifted to another corner of his workspace and tweezed up the disarticulated forewing of a moth from a bed of white silk. He lifted the iridescent petal toward the glow of his halogen work light. The moth’s scales shone silvery green, barely hiding the delicate lace of its internal structure, marking the handsome pattern of
Actias luna,
the luna moth. With a total wingspan of four inches, it was one of the world’s largest moths.

With patient and clever motions, he fitted the fragile wing into tiny clips lining the brass-and-silver thorax of his mechanical creation. He repeated the same with the other forewing and two more hind wings. The mechanism inside the thorax held hundreds of gears, wheels, and springs, waiting to beat life back into these beautiful organic wings.

Once finished, his eyes lingered on each piece. He loved the precision of his creations, the way each cog caught another, meshed into a larger design. For years he had made clocks, needing to see time measured on a device as it was not measured on his own body. He had since moved his interest and skill toward the creation of these tiny automatons—half machine and half living creatures—bound for eternity to his bidding.

Normally he found peace in such intricate work, settling into easy concentration. But this night, that perfect calm escaped him. Even the soft tinkling of a neighboring fountain failed to soothe him. His centuries-old plan—as intricate and delicate as any of his mechanisms—was at risk.

As he made a tiny correction upon his latest creation, the end of the tweezers quivered, and he tore the delicate forewing, sprinkling iridescent green scales upon the white silk. He uttered a curse that had not been heard since the days of ancient Rome and threw the tweezers to his glass desktop.

He drew in a long breath, searching again for that peace.

It eluded him.

As if on cue, the telephone on his desk rang.

He rubbed his temples with his longer fingers, seeking to work calm into his head from the outside. “
Sì,
Renate?”

“Father Leopold has arrived in the downstairs lobby, sir.” The bored tone of his beautiful receptionist strummed through the speaker. He had rescued her from a life of sexual slavery on the streets of Turkey, and she repaid him with loyal, yet indifferent, service. In the years he had known her, she had never once expressed surprise. A trait he respected.

“Allow him up.”

Standing, he stretched and walked to the bank of windows behind his desk. His company—the Argentum Corporation—owned the tallest skyscraper in Rome, and his office took up its uppermost floor. The penthouse looked out upon the Eternal City through windowed walls of ballistic glass. Underfoot, the floor was polished purplish-red marble, imperial porphyry, so rare it was found in only one site in the world, an Egyptian mountain the Romans called
Mons Porphyrites
. It had been discovered during Christ’s lifetime and became the marble of kings, emperors, and gods.

Fifty years before, he had designed and engineered this spire with a world-renowned architect. That man was dead now, of course. But he remained, unchanged.

He studied his reflection. In his natural lifetime, scars from a childhood scourge had pocked his face, but the imperfections had disappeared when the curse of endless years found him. Now he could not remember where those scars had been. He only saw smooth, unblemished skin, a set of small wrinkles that never deepened around his silver-gray eyes, a square rugged face, and a mass of thick gray hair.

Bitter thoughts swept through him. That face had been called many names over the centuries, worn many identities. But after two millennia he had returned to the one his mother had given him.

Judas Iscariot.

Though that name had become synonymous with betrayal, he had come full circle from denial to accepting that truth—especially after discovering the path to his own redemption. Centuries ago, he had finally discovered
why
Christ had cursed him with immortality.

So he could do what he must do in the coming days.

Shouldering this responsibility, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass. Once he had a manager who was so terrified of falling that he could not stand within six feet of the window.

Judas had no such fear of falling. He had fallen to what should have been his death many times.

He gazed through the glass to the city below, its glittering streets known for its decadence since before the time of Christ. Rome had always been ablaze at night, although white-hot electricity had long replaced the warm yellow fire of torches and candles.

If his plan worked, all those lights would finally go dark.

Glitter and fire were characteristics that modern people thought belonged to them, but man had brightened the world with his will long ago, too. Sometimes for advancement and sometimes triviality.

Standing there, he remembered the sparkling balls he had attended, centuries of them, all the partygoers certain that they had reached the peak of glamour. With his looks and wealth, he had never lacked for invitations, nor for female companionship, but those companions had often demanded more than he had to give.

He had watched too many lovers age and die, dimming any hope of lasting love.

In the end, it had never been worth the price.

Except once.

He had attended a ball in medieval Venice where a woman had caught his eternal heart and showed him that love was worth any price. He stared down at the colored lights of the city until they blurred together and carried him into memory.

Judas paused at the edge of the Venetian ballroom, letting the colors swirl in front of him. Crimson reds, deepest golds, indigos that matched the evening sea, blacks that ate the light, and the pearly radiance of bare shoulders. Nowhere did the women dress as brightly, and display as much skin, as in Venice.

The ballroom looked much as it had one hundred years before. The only changes were the three new oil paintings hung on its stately walls. The paintings depicted stern or jolly members of this Venetian family, each dressed in stylish finery of their day. All were now long dead. At his right hand was a painting of Giuseppe, gone thirty years
,
his face frozen at forty by the oils and talent of a long dead painter. Giuseppe’s brown eyes, ready always for fun, belied the stern brow and stolid posturing. Judas had known him well, or as well as it was possible to know someone in ten years.

That is all Judas allowed himself to stay in any one city. After that, people might wonder why he did not age. A man who did not wrinkle and die would be called a witch or worse. So he traveled north to south
,
east to west
,
in circles that widened as the edges of civilization spread. In some cities he played the recluse, in others the artist, in still others the gadabout. He tried on roles like cloaks. And wearied of each one.

His stylish black leather boots crossed the wooden floor with practiced ease. He knew each creaky board, each almost imperceptible cove. A masked servant appeared with a tray laden with wineglasses. Judas took one, remembering the strength of his long-ago host’s cellar. He sipped, let the flavors caress his tongue—thankfully Giuseppe’s cellars had not gone into decline with his death. Judas emptied the glass and took another.

In his other hand, hidden behind his back, his fingers clutched tightly around a narrow black object.

He had come here for a purpose larger than this ball.

He had come to mourn.

He slipped between masked dancers on his way to the window. The long nose of his mask curved downward like the beak of a crow. The smell of the well-crafted leather from which it was made filled his nostrils. A woman swept by, her heavy scent lingering in the air long after she and her partner had moved away across the floor.

Judas knew these dances and countless more. Later, after more wine, he would join them. He would choose a young courtesan, perhaps another Moor if he could find one. He would try his best to lose himself in the familiar steps.

Fifty years ago, in his last pass through Venice, he had met the most enchanting woman he had seen in his long life. She, too, had been a Moor—dark-skinned
,
with luminous deep-brown eyes and black tresses that spilled over her bare shoulders to her slender waist. She wore an emerald-green dress with gold trim, pinched in at the waist as was the fashion, but between her breasts, hanging from a slender gold chain around her neck, rested a shard of bright silver, like a piece of a broken mirror, an unusual adornment. The scent of lotus blossoms, a fragrance he had not enjoyed since his last sojourn in the East, lingered around her.

He and the mysterious woman had danced for hours, neither needing a different partner. When she spoke, she had a curious accent that he could not place. Soon he forgot that and listened only to her words. She knew more than anyone he had ever met—history, philosophy, and the mysteries of the human heart. Serenity and wisdom rested in her slim form, and he wanted to borrow her peace. For her, perhaps, he might find a way to rejoin the simple cares of mortal men.

After the dancing, at this very same window, she had raised her mask that he might see the rest of her face, and he had lifted his as well. He had gazed at her in a silent moment more intimate than he had ever shared with another. Then she had handed him her mask, excused herself, and disappeared into the crowd.

Only then did he realize that he did not know her name.

She never returned. For more than a year he had searched Venice for her, paid ridiculous sums for incorrect information. She was the granddaughter of a doge. She was a slave from the Orient. She was a Jewish girl who escaped from the ghetto for a night. She was none of those.

Heartbroken, he fled the city of masks and strove to forget her in the arms of a hundred different women—some dark as Moors
,
others fair as snow. He had listened to a thousand stories from them, helped some and forsaken others. None had touched his heart, and he left them all before he had to confront their aging and deaths.

But now he had returned to Venice to banish her from his thoughts, fifty years after he had danced with her across these floorboards. By this time, he knew, she was likely dead, or a wizened and blind old woman who had long forgotten their magical night. All he had left of it himself was his memory and her old leather mask.

He turned the mask over in his hands now. Black and glossy, it was a thick flat ribbon of leather that slashed across her eyes, with a tiny paste jewel glittering near the corner of each eye. A daring design, its simplicity at odds with the ornate masks worn by the women of those times.

But she had needed no further adornment.

He had returned to these bright halls to cast that dark mask into the canal tonight and banish her ghost to the library of his past. Gripping the old leather, he glanced out the open window. Below, a gondolier poled his slim craft through the dark water, ripples lit silver by moonlight.

Beyond the canal’s banks, figures hurried across stone tiles or over bridges. People on mysterious errands. People on everyday ones. He did not know, did not care. Like everything else, it wearied him. For one moment, he had believed that he might find connection, until she left.

Reluctant now to part with it, he stroked the mask with his index finger. It had rested in the bottom of his trunk for years, wrapped in the finest silk. At first he’d been able to smell the scent of lotus blossoms, but even that had faded. He brought the mask now to his nose and sniffed—one last time—expecting to inhale the odors of old leather and cedar from his trunk.

But the scent of lotus blossoms bloomed instead.

He turned his head, fearful of looking, the movement so slow that he would not startle even a timorous bird. His heart thumped in his ears, so loud that he expected the sound to draw all eyes to him.

She stood before him, unmasked and unchanged, her serene smile the same as a half century before. The mask slipped from his fingers to the floor. His breath held in his throat. Dancers swirled around, but he remained motionless.

It could not be.

Could this be the same woman’s daughter?

He dismissed this possibility.

Not with such an exact likeness.

A darker thought intruded. He knew of the ungodly beasts that shared his march through time, as undying as himself, but of craven bloodlusts and madness.

Again he banished this prospect from his mind.

He could never forget the heat of her body through her velvet dress when he danced with her.

So what was she? Was she cursed like him? Was she immortal?

A thousand questions danced in his head, replaced finally by the only one that truly mattered, the question he had failed to ask fifty years ago.

“What is your name?” he whispered, afraid to shatter the moment into shards like the one that she wore around her slender neck.