Innocent Blood(69)

Unaffected by the beauty, Olga led them toward a gothic archway in the nearest wall, one of the many entrances into the maze hidden inside. Drawing closer, Erin admired the skill of the artisans who had carved it, the clever way they had cut ice blocks and mortared them together with frozen water, like stonemasons of old.

Lit by yellow streetlights behind her, the gateway glowed citrine.

Olga halted at the entrance. “I leave you to your journeys. The angel awaits you in the center of the castle.”

The girl folded her arms, stepped her legs apart, and stood as still as the statues atop the walls. Even her eyes went blank. A chill ran up Erin’s spine, reminded that this little girl was a strigoi. The child had probably been killing for half a century or more.

“I’ll go first,” Christian said, stepping under the archway, his black robe dark against the gold light.

“No.” Erin stopped him with a touch on his sleeve. “It’s my test. I should go first. When it comes to Rasputin, we’d best follow his rules. As the Woman of Learning, I must be the one to find the safe passage to the heart of the maze.”

Jordan and Christian exchanged uneasy glances. She knew that they wanted to protect her. But they couldn’t protect her from this.

Erin turned on her flashlight, stepped past Christian, and entered the passageway.

Massive blue-white walls rose on both sides, about twelve feet high, looking two feet thick, open to the dark sky above. The walkway between the blocks was so narrow that she could touch both sides with her outstretched fingertips. Her boots crunched on snow turned dirty gray by countless visitors.

She shone her light around. Every few feet, the builders had inserted clear ice windows to provide distorted glimpses into neighboring passageways. She reached an archway on the left and peered through it, expecting it to be another leg of the maze, but instead she discovered a miniature courtyard garden, where all the flowers and trellises and bushes were made of ice.

Despite the danger, a smile rose on her face.

The Swedes knew how to put on a winter pageant.

Continuing on, she glanced up at the cloudy sky. There were no stars to guide her steps. A light snow now fell, quiet and clean. Reaching an intersection, she set off toward her left, running her gloved fingertips along the left wall, remembering a child’s trick. The surest way to traverse all the parts of a maze was to keep a hand on one side and follow it through. She might reach dead ends, but the path would eventually end in the center.

Not the fastest route, but the surest.

With Jordan and Christian trailing, she picked up the pace, her glove gliding over ice windows, snagging on the parts of the walls made of snow. Her flashlight revealed other chambers. She came upon a space holding a sculpted four-poster bed of ice with two pillows, overhung by an ice chandelier that had been wired with real bulbs. It was dark now, but she tried to imagine it lit, its brilliance shining off all the polished ice.

In another room, she found herself staring at a massive ice elephant, its tusks toward the door, serving as a perch for a line of finely carved birds, some settled in sleep, others with wings outstretched ready to take flight.

Despite the wonders found here, trepidation inside Erin grew with every step, her eyes searching for any traps. What game was Rasputin playing here? The test could not be as simple as solving a path through this maze.

She even searched some of the graffiti carved into the ice by tourists, likely teenagers from all the inscribed hearts holding initials. She found nothing menacing, no clue to some deeper intent by the Russian monk.

She rounded another corner, sure that she was close to the center of the maze by now—then she saw it.

One of the ice windows, its surface polished to the clarity of glass, held an object frozen inside it. She lifted her flashlight in disbelief. Hanging in that window, perfectly preserved by the ice, was a dirty ivory-colored quilt, missing a square in the bottom left corner.

Horrified, Erin stopped and stared.

“What is it?” Jordan asked, adding his light.

How could Rasputin know about this? How had he found it?

“Erin?” Jordan pressed. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Are you okay?”

She peeled off her glove and pressed her bare palm against the ice, the heat of her hand melting the surface, remembering the last time she saw this quilt.

Erin’s small fingertip traced across the ivory-colored muslin. Interlocking squares of willow-green fabric formed a pattern across its surface. Her mother had called the pattern an Irish chain.

She remembered helping her mother make it.

After the day’s work was done, she and her mother would cut and piece squares by candlelight. Her mother’s stitching wasn’t as fine as it once had been, and toward the end, her mother was often too tired to work on it. So Erin took responsibility for the task, carefully sewing each square into place, her young fingers growing faster with each one.