Innocent Blood(109)

Jordan turned away, imagining Rhun was not happy.

Too bad.

A flower petal drifted to his cheek—and stung him, piercing the corner of his lip. He grabbed it, crushed it in his fingers, and threw it down.

As if angry at this assault, more of the creatures fell upon him, silver stingers penetrating any exposed skin: face, hands, neck. He battered at them, seeing Erin under attack, too. He headed toward her through the cloud, doing his best to protect his eyes. While the buggers might not be toxic to humans, he and Erin could still be blinded by their stingers.

Erin huddled by the large antique desk and swatted at the air around her with a binder from the tabletop. He heard a litany of curses, saw spots of blood dribbling from countless punctures on her arms and face.

She slapped at her throat, and a butterfly crumpled to the ground.

Taking a clue from her example, he swept off his long jacket and batted at the air. He joined her, using the coat like a matador against a thousand angry bulls. Whipping it in a fury, he cleared some breathing room around her.

Still, she pulled the collar of her own jacket up over her head and formed a tent around her. She leaned down, scattering papers under her palms, plainly searching for any clue to the whereabouts of the others.

He peeked over her shoulder. The papers looked to be written in a hundred languages, many of them ancient. “Just grab everything!” he suggested. “We can sort through it later!”

“Not until we neutralize the threat here. If anything escapes with us, they’ll go straight for Rhun, Bernard, or Christian.”

Jordan knew she was right. The buggers seemed tuned to attack strigoi. A moment ago, Erin had not set off this trap by entering. Even his rifle blast had failed to wake them up. It was only when Rhun crossed the threshold that they rose up.

“Let’s see if I can’t knock this load down a bit,” he said. “You keep searching.”

He reversed his tactic. Instead of using the coat to batter the threat away, he used its length and bulk like a huge net. He cast it out, scooping coatfuls of the fluttering horde out of the air. He forced them to the floor and stamped them under his boots.

Erin called to him as he worked. “Most of these papers have the letterhead of the same company. The Argentum Corporation.”

Jordan recognized the name. “Big conglomerate!” he called back. “Does all kinds of stuff, including arms manufacture. Sounds like a business a man like Judas would get himself involved with.”

He continued his steady assault. He bashed, battered, and crushed his way throughout the room until the air began to clear. Then his hunting became more focused, picking individuals out of the air with a snap of his coat.

Rhun called through the door. “How are you faring?”

“Just finishing some light housekeeping!”

Erin waved to him. “Jordan, come see this.”

He joined her, brushing a trail of blood from his eyes. She pointed to a piece of Argentum company correspondence: a grayish-silver envelope with an embossed letterhead in the corner, depicting an old-fashioned anchor.





“I keep seeing these anchors all over this place,” Erin said. “And remember Rhun’s text from Rasputin, the one that warned him that the symbol of an anchor was connected to Judas?”

“Yeah, the guy clearly has a nautical fetish.”

“It’s not nautical. It’s Christian.” She traced the shape of the cross that made up the center of the anchor. “This is a crux dissimulata. Ancient Christians used it as a secret symbol, back when Christians were persecuted for their faith and a cross would have been too dangerous to display outright.”

Jordan slapped a small brass-and-silver bee to ruin. “Must be why he chose it for the logo of his Argentum Corporation.”

“He still loves Christ,” Erin said. “And with this immortality, he can never escape his guilt. It’s no wonder he is fighting so hard to bring Him back.”

“But how?” Jordan asked.

She pushed the papers away. “There is nothing here but corporate financials and normal correspondence. Nothing points to his plan. But it must be here. Somewhere in this room.”

“He wouldn’t leave something like that out in plain sight. He would’ve hidden it.” Jordan pointed to the desk drawers. “Search for something locked, something concealed.”

With only a few stingers still in the air, Jordan searched the walls, removing the framed paintings.

“Nothing in the drawers!” Erin called to him.

Jordan reached a gilt-edged portrait that looked old. A second glance at its subject matter revealed it was a painting of Iscariot, little changed from today, but here he was wearing a Renaissance outfit, his arm around a dark-skinned woman in an expensive-looking gown. Her fingers held a small Venetian mask.