Innocent Blood(29)

A fat yellow bee wandered along a dusky purple bloom, another bee landing on the same stalk. The stalk bent under their weight and swayed in the breeze, but the bees paid that no mind. They worked so diligently, sure of their place in God’s plan.

The first bee lifted off the blossom and swooped across the lavender.

He knew where it was headed.

Following its meandering path, Rhun reached the lichen-covered wall at the back of the garden. The bee disappeared through a round hole in one of the golden-yellow conical hives—called skeps—that lined the top of the stone wall.

Rhun had constructed this very skep himself late the previous summer. He had loved the simple task of braiding straw into ropes, twisting those ropes into spirals, and forming them into these conical hives. He found peace in such simple tasks and was good at them.

Brother Thomas had observed the same. “Your nimble fingers are meant for this kind of work.”

He closed his eyes and breathed in the rich smell of honey. The sonorous buzzing of bees enveloped him. He had other work that he could be doing, but he stood a long moment, content.

When he came back to himself, Rhun smiled. He had forgotten that moment. It was a simple slice of another life, centuries old, from before he was turned into a strigoi and lost his soul.

He smelled again the sweet rich scent of the honey, the light undertone of lavender. He remembered the warmth of sun on his skin, when sunlight was not yet mixed with pain. But mostly he thought of his laughing sister.

He ached for that simple life—only to recognize it could never be.

And with that hard realization came another.

His eyes snapped open, tasting blood on his tongue, and confronted Bernard. “What you did . . . it is a sin.”

The cardinal patted his hand. “It is my sin, not yours. I’ll willingly accept that burden to have you at my side for the upcoming battle.”

Rhun lay still, wrestling with Bernard’s words, wanting to believe them, but knowing the act was wrong. He sat up, finding renewed strength in muscle and bone. Most of his wounds had also closed. He drew in a breath to steady his riotous mind.

Bernard held out his hand, revealing a familiar curve of tarnished silver.

It was Rhun’s karambit.

“If you are recovered enough,” Bernard said, “you may join us in the battle ahead. To exact vengeance upon those who treated you so brutally. You mentioned a woman.”

Rhun took the weapon, shying away from the cardinal’s penetrating gaze, too ashamed even now to speak her name. He fingered the blade’s sharp edge.

Elisabeta had stolen it from him.

How had Bernard found it again?

The strident clang of a warning bell shattered the moment.

Questions would have to wait.

Bernard crossed the chamber in a flash of scarlet robes and lifted down his ancient sword from the wall. Rhun stood, surprised by how light his body felt after drinking blood, as if he could fly. He firmed his grip on his own weapon.

Rhun nodded to Bernard, acknowledging that he was fit enough to fight, and they took off at a run. They sailed down the gleaming wooden halls of the papal apartments, through its front bronze doors, and out onto the square.

To avoid the eyes of the handful of people milling about the open plaza, Rhun followed Bernard into the shadowy refuge of Bernini’s colonnade that bordered the piazza’s edges. The massive Tuscan columns, four deep, should keep their preternaturally swift passage hidden. Bernard joined a contingent of other Sanguinists who waited in the shadows for the cardinal. As a group, they rushed along the sweep of the colonnade toward the entrance to the Holy City.

Once they reached the waist-high fence that divided the Vatican city-state from Rome proper, Rhun’s eyes scanned the nearest rooftops. He remembered the shared vision he had with Elisabeta, of her leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

The furious honk of a car horn drew his eyes below, to the cobblestone street that led here.

Fifty yards away, the small shape of a woman fled down the center of Via della Conciliazione, limping on one leg. Though her hair was shorter, he had no trouble recognizing Elisabeta. A white car swerved to miss her.

She paid it no mind, intent on reaching St. Peter’s Square.

Trailing behind her, a dozen strigoi loped and sprinted.

He longed to burst from the colonnade and run to her, but Bernard put a steadying hand on his arm.

“Stay,” the cardinal warned, as if reading his thoughts. “Humans are on that street and in those houses. They will see the battle, and they will know. We have millennia of secrecy to protect. Let the fight come to us.”

As Rhun watched, he recognized the pain in Elisabeta’s thinned lips, her fearful glances behind. He remembered the same panic when looking through her eyes.