Innocent Blood(117)

Erin touched each symbol, naming them aloud. “The Persian Sibyl, the Erythraean Sibyl, the Delphic Sibyl, the Libyan Sibyl . . .”

She stopped last at the symbol at the top. “The bowl always represents the Cumaean Sibyl. It is said to represent the nativity of Christ.” She studied the coast. “She made her home outside Naples. And according to numerous ancient accounts—from Virgil through Dante—it is said her throne guarded the very gates of Hell.”

Referring to the claw rising from below, Bernard said, “I believe he seeks to release Lucifer, the Fallen One.”

“That’s how he intends to trigger Armageddon,” Erin said.

Ash lashed against the window like sleet as they drew ever nearer the coast. The sky above had closed off with smoke, keeping the day from showing its face here. Bernard quailed against the doom that must surely follow.

Jordan cleared his throat, his nose close to the drawing. “So if everything in this drawing is important, how come there’s an angel looking over Judas’s shoulder, doing nothing but looking sad?”

Bernard pulled his attention from the burning coastline back to the drawing.

“Her face,” Jordan continued. “It looks a lot like the woman painted in Iscariot’s office. Like they could be the same woman. In the oil portrait, Judas had his arm around her, like they were man and wife.”

Bernard peered closer at the drawing with Erin. He examined the face, then a shudder of recognition swept through him, turning him cold.

How could this be . . . ?

Erin noticed his reaction. “Do you know her?”

“I met her once myself,” he said softly, going back to that warren of tunnels beneath Jerusalem, to the woman shining with such grace at the edge of that dark pool. He remembered her lack of heartbeat, yet the fierce heat that flowed from her in that cold cave. “Back during the Crusades.”

Erin frowned at him, plainly doubtful. “How . . . where did you meet her?”

“In Jerusalem.” Bernard touched his pectoral cross. “She was guarding a secret, something buried far below the Foundation Stone of that ancient city.”

“What secret?” Erin asked.

“A carving.” He nodded to the sketch before them. “It was the history of Christ’s life told through His miracles. The story was supposed to reveal a weapon that could destroy any and all evil. I sought it out at great cost.”

Screams of the city’s dying filled his ears even now.

“What happened?” Erin asked, sounding far away.

“She found me unworthy. She destroyed the most crucial part before I could see it.”

“But who is she?” Jordan asked. “If she was around during the Crusades, then again during the Renaissance with Judas, she must be immortal. Does that mean she is a strigoi? Or someone like Judas or the boy?”

“Neither,” Bernard realized aloud. He pointed to the wings drawn over her shoulders. “I believe she is an angel.”

He stared at Erin, his eyes welling with tears.

And she found me unworthy.





44





December 20, 7:38 A.M. CET

Off the coast of Italy



Rhun stood at the pilothouse door as the hydrofoil raced toward the shore. Following Erin’s advice they had plotted a course northwest of the city of Naples, aiming for a dark bay in the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the shadow of the volcanic cone that the Cumaean Sibyl made her home.

Black waves churned past their hull, and ash blasted Rhun’s bare face. It did not smell of blood, only of iron and cinders and sulfur. When he wiped it from his brow, grit coated his fingertips.

The quakes had stopped, but the eruption continued, churning smoke and ash into the world, jetting sprays of fiery lava into the darkness beyond the rim of the cone. Erin had told them that this caldera lay in the center of a larger supervolcano called Campi Flegrei. She warned that if this smaller burning match set off that monstrous well of magma beneath it, much of Europe was doomed.

How much time did they have?

He raised his eyes to the sky for an answer—and found none. Sunrise was upon them, but under the cloak of the volcano’s shroud, it remained a moonless night. The lights of the ship tunneled through the black snow.

Inside the cabin, Erin and Jordan covered their noses and mouths with scraps of ripped cloth, like thieves in this endless night, protecting themselves against the ash fall.

Jordan shouted and pointed his arm. “To the left, is that a helicopter parked on the beach?”

Rhun saw he was correct, slightly irked that the soldier had noted it first. With Rhun’s sharper eyes, he picked out its unique shape, its markings, both a match to the aircraft that had attacked them.

“It’s Iscariot’s helicopter!” he confirmed for the others.