Innocent Blood(145)
And then Arella’s words earlier.
Michael was rent asunder. You carry the best of the First Angel within you.
Erin began to understand.
Tommy didn’t carry all of Michael inside of him, only the best, the most shining and brightest, a force capable of granting life.
Another vessel carried his worst, his darkest, with a force that killed.
She saw that the shine of Iscariot’s blood was distinctly darker than Tommy’s blood.
Two different shades of gold.
She turned and gazed across the crater, at the glass exposed by their digging, at the round plug that once sealed the well. Like the crater itself, one half was dark gold, the other lighter.
She remembered thinking it looked like an Eastern yin-yang symbol.
Two parts that make a whole.
“We need them both,” Erin mumbled.
She peered at Arella. Earlier, the sibyl had stayed silent because she knew Iscariot needed to come here, too. Had Arella even drawn that symbol in the sand so he would know to come to this place?
Bernard drifted closer to Erin, his clothes ripped and bloodied, but he must have sensed the growing understanding inside her. “What are you saying?”
Rhun looked on, too.
She drew the two with her, along with Jordan. They needed to hear this, to tell her she was wrong.
Please, let me be wrong.
Rhun turned that dark, implacable gaze of his upon her. “What is it, Erin?”
“The First Angel isn’t Tommy. It’s the archangel Michael, the heavenly being rent asunder. Split in two.” She gestured to the crater’s glass. “He must be reunited. We must fix what was broken here.”
That was Arella’s warning to them—or the reign of man would end.
“But where’s his other half?” Bernard asked.
“In Judas.”
Shock spread through the group.
“Even if you’re right,” Jordan asked, “how are we going to get them back together?”
Erin focused on Iscariot, dying on the sands.
She knew that answer, too. “Their immortal shells must be stripped from them.”
Jordan gaped at her. “They have to die?”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s the only way. That’s why the sword was left here, why we had to come here.”
“Iscariot has already received a mortal wound,” Rhun said. “So the blade must afflict one upon the boy?”
“Do we dare do that?” Jordan asked. “I thought we decided in Cumae that Tommy’s life was more important than even saving the world.”
Erin wanted to agree. The boy had done nothing wrong. He had tried to help an innocent dove, and in return he had seen his family ripped from him, and he had suffered countless tortures. Was it right that he must die here as well?
She could not send this child to his death.
But it was also one life against the lives of the just and unjust around the world.
Jordan stared at her.
She knew if she gave him the word that he would carry it out, reluctantly but he would. He was a soldier—he understood about sacrificing for the greater good. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one.
She covered her face.
She could not watch more innocent blood be spilled. She had watched her sister sacrificed to false belief. She had caused Amy’s death because of her own ignorance of the danger she had put her in. She would not take another innocent life, no matter how much her mind told her that she must.
“No,” she gasped out, decidedly. “We can’t kill a boy to save the world.”
Bernard suddenly moved toward Jordan, going for the sword. But Jordan was as swift now and lifted the blade to the cardinal’s chest, its point over his silent heart.
“This will kill you as surely as any strigoi,” Jordan warned.
Bernard glanced at Rhun to back him up, to join him against Jordan. The cardinal wanted that sword.
Rhun folded his arms. “I trust the wisdom of the Woman of Learning.”
“The boy must die,” Bernard insisted. “Or the world dies with him. In horror beyond earthly imaginings. What is one boy against that?”
“Everything,” Erin said. “Murdering a boy is an evil deed. Every evil act matters. Every single one. We must stand against each and every one, or who are we?”
Bernard sighed. “What if it’s neither good nor evil, only necessary?”
Erin clenched her hands into fists.
She would not let Tommy be murdered.
“Erin.” Jordan’s worried blue eyes met hers. He nodded over to the well.
Tommy made a placating motion with his palms toward Elizabeth, keeping her there. He then stalked over and studied each of them.
“I know,” he said, looking exhausted. “When I touched the sword and decided to bring it out of the well . . . I knew.”