“What does that mean?” Jordan asked.
Erin blew out her breath in frustration. “I have no idea.”
Jordan traced it with his finger, his voice sharpening. “I’ve seen this skeleton.”
“What? Where?” She ran back over the places they had been together: the tomb in Masada, the bunker, and the Russian church.
“This way!” He uncoiled like a spring. He sprinted back into the room he had just vacated, almost bowling over Rasputin in his haste.
Erin rushed after him, drawing both Rasputin and Rhun with her.
“Such a volatile pair.” Rasputin spoke from behind her. “So hot-blooded.”
She hoped that blood would stay right where it belonged.
Jordan crossed back to the basket and lifted that strange block of lead. Black blast marks covered its surface. He rubbed the scorched area with his leather sleeve. “Look!”
Erin leaned at his shoulder, only now seeing a faint pattern underneath the blast marks.
He spat on his fingers and used them to rub away a circle of the soot.
A skull grinned back at them from the lead, its backbone trailing down at an angle.
It matched the picture on the fragments. Erin pictured a slurry of lime and ash being poured over this lead sculpture and drying like clay, hardening to create an impression of the design on the lead box’s top.
Jordan stared up at her, laying a palm atop the lead surface. “Is this another box? First concrete, now lead. Could the Gospel be inside of that?”
8:47 P.M.
Rhun heard Jordan’s words, wanting to disbelieve. It seemed impossible. He reached one tentative hand toward the block, realizing he was acting just like Erin—needing to touch it to make it real.
Did this truly hold the Gospel of Christ?
After so many centuries of searching, he had thought he would never find it, had assumed his sin with Elisabeta had made him unworthy of finding it.
Jordan passed the heavy leaden block to Erin’s outstretched hands. She polished away more of the soot with a grimy tablecloth.
“I don’t see any seams.” She hefted it. “And it feels solid. It looks more like a sculpture than a box.”
Rhun longed to take it from her and test the truth for himself, but he kept still.
“I bet the Germans believed there was something in there.” Jordan tapped the blast marks. “It looks like they tried to blast it again and again. That’s why the sensor readings are so high.”
Grigori jostled against Rhun, wanting to examine the object himself. If the book was still encased within this block of lead, Grigori must not have it. He placed himself between Grigori and Erin.
“Have no fear, Rhun,” Grigori said. “I have no illusion that I am part of the prophecy.”
Only now did Rhun even remember the prophecy. He had never truly believed its words, especially after Elisabeta. Yet now …
“All three of you touch it,” Grigori said. “See if it reveals itself to you.”
“Could it be that simple?” Jordan put a palm on the block.
Erin rested her smaller hand next to his.
Rhun hesitated, loath to attempt such an act in front of Grigori.
As if reading his thoughts, Grigori beckoned with one hand. His dark followers crowded into the room. Their threat made real.
Rhun placed his hand next to Jordan’s and Erin’s.
8:50 P.M.
Erin stood, afraid to move.
The cold of Rhun’s hand chilled one side of her hand; the warmth of Jordan’s bathed the other. She couldn’t believe that she, who had devoted her life to science, was standing with her hand on a block of lead expecting miracles. What had happened to her over the last day and a half? If Jordan and Rhun hadn’t been standing next to her, she would have taken her hand off the block and jammed it into her pocket.
But they were there, so she stayed put, trying to convince herself that she was just humoring them, even though she knew better.
As she waited, icy cold seeped into her palm. It felt dead, like a corpse. The irrational thought would not leave her mind. The book was dead, and it would not come back to life on Russian soil.
She remembered the Cardinal’s words: The book can only be opened in Rome.
“Well, that was disappointing,” Jordan said, taking his hand back, the first to break the circle and admit defeat.
Rhun followed suit, and Erin hefted the block back against her chest. Would something miraculous have happened if she had only had faith?
She shook her head.
Enough of that.
“I figured it wouldn’t be that easy,” Jordan said.
“Indeed.” Rasputin gave his personal assistant, Sergei, a meaningful look and the young acolyte backed out the door.
Erin didn’t like to think where he might be going.
“Let’s gather up the stone pieces,” Rhun said. “And be on our way.”
“Where does your way lead?” Rasputin blocked their exit.
“Do you mean to break your word, Grigori? Steal the book and kill us?”
Rasputin’s feet stayed planted. “If God chose you, there is nothing I could do to stop him.”
“Great!” Jordan stepped close. “Thank you for your help and—”
Five acolytes glided up swiftly and surrounded him.
“Don’t be a fool,” Rhun warned Rasputin, his tone as calm as if they were discussing travel arrangements. “You must know that you do not have the resources here to open the Gospel.”
“I do realize that, my dear Rhun.” Rasputin smiled. A chill ran up Erin’s back that had nothing to do with the Russian weather. “Larger forces are at play than you or I.”
Sergei returned to the room.
A massive beast padded in after him, the dead come back to life.
The grimwolf growled, its ears flattened menacingly, its hackles spiked along his back.
Here was a twin to the one they had killed in the desert.
From behind the wolf, a woman stepped forward, running her fingers possessively along the flank of the monster. She tossed aside a mane of fiery hair to reveal a pale and familiar face—the woman from the forest in Germany.
The one who shot Rhun.
52
October 27, 9:01 P.M., MST
The Hermitage, Russia
As Rhun stared, fire lanced through his chest, igniting with the memory of the silver rounds exploding into him. The woman looked so much like his Elisabeta—the silvery-gray eyes, the high cheekbones, the perfect skin, the same tilt to her chin, even the knowing smile.
But it could not be her. Rhun closed his eyes, listened to her heart. Each beat told him that this woman was not his Elisabeta, could not be her.