Innocent Blood(127)
Recognizing this truth, they all headed after Christian. Rhun carried Arella, while Bathory kept possession of the boy. Moments later, the helicopter’s engine sputtered coarsely on the beach, choking on ash, before rumbling loudly to life. Erin shielded her eyes from the sand and ash kicked up by the rotors.
It became impossible to talk.
Once at the helicopter, they all climbed in. Bathory passed Tommy to her, while Bernard helped Rhun settle Arella across a row of seats. Christian barely let them find their seats before gunning the stressed engines. He lifted them off the beach and turned them over the leaden waters, fleeing the maelstrom of fire and smoke.
“Where to?” Christian bellowed back.
“Rome!” Bernard called out, staring across the cabin, daring them to argue.
Bathory glanced to Erin with a glint of mischief in her eye. Erin leaned away, fearing the worst. But she was not the countess’s target. Moving in a swift blur, Bathory twisted to her neighbor, wrapped one arm around his waist, and crashed open the door next to him. Neither were buckled in yet, and both Bathory and Bernard went tumbling headlong out the door, still clutched together.
Erin leaned over in her harness, as Christian tilted the helicopter, the door banging open and closed in the wind. She saw the pair splash into the water below, then come sputtering up, still fighting.
Jordan reached and caught the door and got it latched. “Guess that settles it,” he said, grinning, plainly appreciating Bathory’s bold move to break the stalemate.
The three of them looked at one another.
Christian stared back at them, a question shining in his green eyes.
Erin leaned forward and touched the young Sanguinist’s shoulder.
“Siwa,” she said firmly.
Christian glanced to Rhun, to Jordan, getting confirmatory nods. He turned back around and shrugged. “Who am I to argue with the trio of prophecy?”
47
December 20, 8:38 A.M. CET
Cumae, Italy
Judas stood vigil in a crevice up the cliff face. He remained locked deep in shadow, hidden from the sharp senses of Sanguinists on the beach below, shielded by the stink of sulfur and the rumble of the earth as the gates of Hell threatened to open. He had barely made it out of the lower tunnels before the passageways collapsed around that smoky cavern, sealing it off. Now not even the Sanguinists could reach those gates in time.
There was nothing anyone could do to stop the inevitable.
Still, moments ago, he had watched the helicopter thump into the heavy pall of smoke and vanish, taking the boy and Arella with it.
His heart panged at seeing her brought so low, recognizing how much she had risked to rescue the boy. He pictured her ravaged body, her hair gone white. Still, even from this distance, he recognized her beauty as she lay in the sand.
My love . . .
From the rocks, he now spied as the cardinal and the countess waded from the leaden waves, their clothing clinging wetly to them. Both their eyes were on the skies, where the helicopter had vanished.
But where were the others going?
He had watched Bernard and Elizabeth plunge from the craft, clearly jettisoned like so much unwanted baggage.
“You have doomed us all!” Bernard’s shout echoed up to him.
As answer, Elizabeth simply brushed sand from her wet clothing.
“We will go after them!” the cardinal insisted. “You have changed nothing!”
She took off a boot and dumped out sand. “Can you not admit the possibility that you were wrong, priest?”
“I will not let you judge me.”
“Why not? You created me as much as Rhun. Your meddling with prophecies in the past forced Rhun and I together.”
Bernard’s shoulders grew rigid at Bathory’s words. He angrily stalked away, rallying the other Sanguinists and retreating from the beach, putting the countess again in chains.
Judas waited a full quarter hour before climbing down, scaling the cliffs back to the beach. He had a specific goal in mind. He had witnessed Arella writing something in the sand, saw how it had affected Dr. Granger and the others. He crossed to that spot now, to where Arella had lain so still. He noted the depression in the sand where her head had rested.
He knelt and brushed his fingertips across that hollow.
Worry for her ached in him.
He saw what she had etched in the sand. He would recognize her handiwork anywhere, having spent a century recording her words and sketching what she had drawn. He looked upon what was inscribed here now, with as much of an eye to prophecy as at any other time.
A flaming torch.
He smiled, understanding.
She had drawn the others a map, telling them where to go.
Certainty calmed his mind. He knew all the symbols associated with her throughout the centuries, including this one.