Innocent Blood(53)

In turn, the stranger offered him his true name, one so cursed by Christ that Leopold still dared only to think of him as the Damnatus. At that moment, Leopold was offered a path to salvation, a way to serve Christ in secret.

That was what brought him to this crypt beneath Dresden.

On his knees, listing his sins, alongside these others.

Leopold had been instructed to seek out the Sanguinists, to enfold himself among them, but to remain the Damnatus’s eyes and ears within the order.

He swore his allegiance back then—as he must do again this night.

Another bomb fell above, shaking dirt from the crypt’s roof. The penitent on his left yelped. Leopold remained silent. He did not fear death. He had been called for a greater purpose. He would fulfill a destiny that had spanned millennia.

The penitent pulled himself back under control, crossed himself, and finished his litany of sins. Eventually, his words stopped. He had given his sins up to God. He could be purified now.

“Do you repent of your sins out of the truest love to God and not out of fear of damnation?” the Sanguinist priest intoned to Leopold’s neighbor.

“I do,” the man answered.

“Then rise and be judged.” The priest’s face was invisible under his cowl.

The penitent rose, trembling, and opened his mouth. The priest lifted the golden chalice and poured claret-red wine onto his tongue.

Immediately the man began screaming, smoke roiling from his mouth. Either the creature had not fully repented or he had lied outright. No matter the reason, his soul was judged stained, and his body could not accept the holiness of Christ’s blood.

It was a risk they all took to join the order.

The creature fell to the stone floor and writhed, his shrieks echoing off the bare walls. Leopold bent to touch him, to still him, but before his hand reached him, the body crumbled to ash.

Leopold said a prayer for the strigoi who had sought to change his ways, even if his heart was impure. He knelt then, and once more folded his hands.

He finished his own long confession and waited for the wine. If his path was righteous, he would not burn to ash before this holy Sanguinist. If he and the one he served were wrong, a single drop of wine would reveal it.

He opened his mouth, allowing Christ to be poured into his body.

And lived.

Leopold came back into his trembling body, pressed on all sides by the sharp hay. He had never considered his conversion from strigoi to Sanguinist as a sin, something that needed penance.

Why had God sent this vision to him?

Why now?

For a sickening moment, he worried that it was because God knew that his conversion was done under false pretenses, knew Leopold was destined to betray the order, like the Damnatus had with Christ.

He lay there for a long time, thinking upon this, then swallowed back his fears.

No.

He had seen the vision precisely because his mission was true.

God had spared his life back then to serve the Damnatus, and He spared it again today. Once the sun sank and the rescue workers left for the night, he would leave the hay bale under the cover of dark and continue his purpose, no matter the cost.

Because God told him so.





20





December 19, 1:44 P.M. CET

Rome, Italy



Atop the Tiber River, Judas drew back on the sculls, and his slim wooden boat shot a gratifying distance across the water. Sunlight reflected off the silvery river and dazzled his eyes. This late in the year he savored both its light and its fading warmth.

A flock of crows circled overhead, disappearing into the bare branches of a riverside park before rising up against the bright winter sky.

Below, he kept his body working in rhythm, moving down the Tiber, stroking harder as he battled the wake of a passing boat. Larger crafts plowed through the river around him. His fragile wooden hull could easily be smashed to matchsticks in an instant. This time of year, he was the only rower who braved the frigid winter temperatures and the risk of being run down by speedboats, ferries, and cargo ships.

His phone buzzed with another text message from his receptionist.

Sighing, he knew what it said without reading it. He had watched it on the news before he climbed into his boat. The papal train had been destroyed. The cardinal alone had survived. Everyone else aboard had died.

He stroked the sculls through the water again.

With the prophesied trio gone, nothing stood in his way.

Brother Leopold’s last text message had mentioned the First Angel, the one who was destined to use the book as a weapon in the coming War of the Heavens. With the prophecy broken, this angel likely posed no further threat, but Judas did not like loose ends.

A ferry captain tooted his horn, and Judas raised a hand in greeting. The man straightened his black cap and waved back. They had greeted each other almost every day for twenty years. Judas had watched him grow from a thin young buck, uncertain on the controls, to a portly old man. Still, he had never learned his name.