Innocent Blood(146)

Erin remembered the fire in his eyes as he held the sword.

“It’s about choice,” he said. “I have to choose this, only then will all be set right.”

Hearing this now, Erin realized how close they had come to ruin. If she had unleashed Jordan or if Bernard had grabbed the blade, if either of them had thrust the sword into the boy without his consent, they would have lost all.

This thought gave her a small measure of comfort, but only very small.

What Tommy was saying meant that the ending would be the same.

A dead boy on the sands.

“But Iscariot didn’t agree to be stabbed,” Rhun warned.

Erin stiffened, realizing Rhun was right.

Have we already lost?

Jordan swallowed, lowering the sword, knowing Bernard could no longer force the matter. “I think Judas did agree,” Jordan said. “During the fight, he was matching me move by move. Then suddenly he let his guard down. I didn’t realize it at the time, just reacted, stabbing him.”

“I suspect he always sought death,” Rhun said.

“So then what do we do?” Jordan asked. “From here I mean?”

Erin saw how his eyes could not even meet the boy’s.

Tommy shifted, apparently to keep his back to Elizabeth, glancing over his shoulder to be sure, to keep her from seeing. Tommy noted Erin’s attention. “She will try to stop it from happening.”

Tommy lifted the tip of Jordan’s sword and placed it to his chest. He looked up at Jordan, trying to smile, but his lower lip trembled with his fear, struggling to look so brave, so sure in the face of the unknown.

Jordan finally found the boy’s face, too. Erin had never seen such agony and heartbreak etched in the hard, wry planes of his face.

“I can’t do this,” he moaned.

“I know that, too,” Tommy said quietly, his voice quavering. His eyes looked toward the west, to the sun, to the last light he would ever see.

A wail rose from beside the well. “Noooo . . .”

Elizabeth rushed toward them, suddenly sensing what was about to happen.

Tommy sighed and thrust himself upon the sword—taking the last light of the day with him as he died.





53





December 20, 4:49 P.M. EET

Siwa, Egypt



Rhun caught Elisabeta around the waist as she ran up to them.

Tommy collapsed to the ground, sliding off the blade, spilling red blood across the dark sand. A bright golden brilliance pooled there, too. Across the crater, a similar radiance shone from that side, a darker gold that framed the figures of Judas and Arella.

“Why?” Elisabeta sobbed, clutching him.

Rhun drew her down next to the boy.

The sword had pierced his heart clean through. Rhun heard now its last feeble quiver, then it stopped.

Jordan crashed to his knees across from him, dropping his sword, clutching his left side.

Erin leaned down. “What’s wrong—?”

Rhun felt it a moment before it happened—a welling of great power beyond measure—and threw his arm over his eyes, shielding Elisabeta with his body.

Then came a bright explosion.

Glory seared his eyes.

His blood boiled in his veins.

Elisabeta screamed in his arms, the sound echoed by the others in a chorus of pain and fear.

Brought low by this radiance, on his knees, Rhun begged for forgiveness as he prayed through the pain. His every sin was a blight against that holy brilliance, nothing could be hidden from it. His greatest sin was a blackness without boundaries, capable of consuming him fully. Even this light could not vanquish it.

Please, stop . . .

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the light gave way to a merciful darkness. He opened his eyes. Lifeless bodies of strigoi and blasphemare were scattered around the crater; even those that had fled beyond it had fallen dead at the explosion. Rhun stirred as pain still raged in his body.

It burned with the holiest of fires.

He searched the crater. Erin was crouched over a fallen Tommy, with Jordan kneeling next to her, holding his shoulder. They both looked shaken up, but unharmed by the brilliance. Being untainted, they had likely been spared the brunt of its force.

Elisabeta lay crumpled in his arms, unmoving.

She was strigoi, without even the acceptance of Christ’s love to shield her from that fire. Like the other damned creatures, she must be dead.

Please, he prayed, not Elisabeta.

He gathered her to his chest. He had stolen her from her time, from her castle, imprisoned her for hundreds of years, only to have her die in a lonely desert far from anything or anyone she had ever loved.

How many times had his actions cursed her?

He stroked short curly hair from her white forehead and brushed sand from her pale cheeks. Long ago, he had held her just so while she lay dying on a stone floor at Čachtice. He should have let her go then, but even now, deep down he knew he would do anything to have her back.