Innocent Blood(73)
Jordan scowled at him, as if that mattered now. He watched as Erin concentrated on freeing the boy’s face, pressing her hands against his cheeks and chin and across his closed eyes. It seemed a futile process. It could take hours to thaw the boy out, even with a fire nearby.
But Erin glanced over to him, her expression amazed. “His skin is frozen, but once warmed, the flesh below seems soft, pliable.”
Intrigued, Rasputin stepped closer. “It seems the grace that grants Thomas his immortality resists even the touch of ice.”
Still, from the grimace frozen on the boy’s face, such grace had clearly not kept him from suffering.
Jordan pulled a small med kit from his pocket. He had taken it from the bathroom at Castel Gandolfo. He snapped it open and took out a syringe. “This is morphine. It’ll help with the pain. Do you want me to inject it? If his core is not frozen and his heart beats—even slowly—it might offer him some relief, especially as he wakes up.”
Erin nodded. “Do it.”
Jordan placed a hand over the boy’s bare chest, over his heart. He waited for his palm to warm the skin below. As he waited, he felt a feeble beat.
He glanced up.
“I heard it, too!” Rhun said. “He is stirring.”
“Sorry, buddy,” Jordan mumbled.
He lifted the syringe high and pounded the needle through the thawed palm print on his chest, aiming for the heart. Once set, he pulled back on the plunger, got a reassuring flush of cold blood into the syringe, indicating a good stick. Satisfied, he pushed the plunger home.
Erin brushed his frosty hair and whispered a litany into his cold ear, warming him with her breath. “I’m so sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”
They waited a full minute, but nothing seemed to happen.
After rubbing his thighs, calves, knees, Jordan worked the boy’s legs, bending them with great care. Christian did the same with his arms.
Erin suddenly jerked back as his thin chest gave a heave, then another.
Jordan stared over as the boy’s eyelids pulled open. Despite the dimness, the boy’s pupils remained fixed and tiny, constricted by the morphine. His lips gasped open, and a gargled cry escaped, half weeping, half pain.
Erin cradled him in her lap. Jordan shed his leather jacket and wrapped Thomas’s body and limbs as a violent trembling shook through his wan form.
Rhun loomed over Rasputin. “We will take the boy from here. You have won your pardon, but our business here is concluded.”
“No,” Rasputin said. “I’m afraid, it is not.”
More strigoi entered from the various archways around the room, joining the handful already there, quickly outnumbering their group. Many carried automatic weapons.
The Sanguinists moved together to face the threat.
“Do you break your word?” Rhun asked.
“I almost got you to break it for me by nearly refusing my gift,” Rasputin said with a smile. “But it seems Erin saw through my little ruse here. Which only makes your decision harder, Rhun.”
“What decision?”
“I told Bernard I would hand the boy over to the Woman of Learning.” He waved an arm to encompass both Erin and Bathory. “So which woman is it? You must choose.”
“Why?”
“The prophecy allows for only one Woman of Learning,” said Rasputin. “The false one must die.”
Jordan stood up, moving to stand over Erin.
Rasputin smiled at this motion. “Clearly the Warrior of Man will choose his lady love, guided by his heart not his head. But my dear Rhun, you are the Knight of Christ. So you must choose. Who is the true Woman of Learning? Which woman shall live? Which shall die?”
“I will not become part of your evil, Grigori,” Rhun said. “I will not choose.”
“That is also a choice,” Rasputin said. “Rather the more interesting one.”
The monk clapped his hands once.
His strigoi brought up their guns.
Rasputin faced Rhun. “Pick or I will kill them both.”
9:44 P.M.
Rhun glanced between Elisabeta and Erin, recognizing the cruel trap set by Rasputin. The monk was a spider who wove words to snare and torture. He knew now that Rasputin had come here as much to torment Rhun as for Bernard’s promised absolution. The Russian would hand over the boy, but not before making Rhun suffer.
How can I choose?
But with the fate of the world in balance, how could he not?
He saw how battle lines were drawn in the snow: strigoi on one side, Sanguinists on the other. They were outnumbered, caught without weapons. Even if victory could be achieved, both women would likely be killed or the boy whisked away by Rasputin’s forces during the fighting.
Into the silence that stretched, a strange intruder arrived in their midst, wafting through the drift of snowflakes, crossing between their two small armies. The brilliance of its emerald-green wings caught every mote of light and reflected it back. It was a large moth, so strange to see in this icy landscape. Rhun’s sharp ears picked out the faintest whirring coming from it, accompanied by the soft beat of its iridescent wings.