“You won’t let me go, will you?” Tommy asked.
“He cannot let you go,” boomed a voice from behind them.
Tommy spun around so fast he fell. Gray slush stained his coat. Alyosha dragged him up painfully by one arm.
A priest in a black robe crunched across the snow toward them. At first, Tommy thought it was the priest from Masada because he wore the same kind of uniform, but this one was taller and broader, and his eyes were blue instead of brown.
“I have been waiting a very long time for you, Tommy,” the priest said.
“Are you the one who Alyosha says is like me?”
“Alyosha?” The man frowned, then smiled as if at a private joke. “Ah, that is a—how do you Americans call it?—a slang name. His full title is Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, prince of Russia, heir to the true throne of the Russian Empire.”
Tommy frowned, believing the man was joking. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The priest smiled. A cold chill ran down Tommy’s back. “How rude of me. No, I am not like you. I am like Alyosha.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. And we are going to be great friends.”
Above the man’s head, a flock of gray pigeons wheeled—and in their midst, a snow-white bird danced high, finding a beam of light in this gray day. Tommy’s gaze caught upon it, while he remembered the wounded bird back in Masada, the dove with the broken wing. He remembered picking up that injured bird—just before his life fell apart.
Had that act of kindness and mercy doomed him?
He squinted up as the white bird swooped low, passing over the scene. It stared down at Tommy—first with one eye, then the other.
Tommy shuddered and tore his gaze away from the skies.
The bird’s eyes had shone green, like slivers of jeweled malachite.
Same as the dove in Masada.
How could that be? How could any of this be?
Any moment now, I’ll wake in a hospital room with tubes and drugs running into me.
“I want to go back to my old friends,” he said, not caring if he sounded like a petulant child.
“You shall make a great many new friends over the course of your long, long life,” Mr. Rasputin said. “That is your destiny.”
Tommy looked back at the birds. He longed to be up there, flying free with them. Why couldn’t that be his destiny?
To have wings.
65
October 29, 5:54 A.M., CET
The sanctuary below St. Peter’s Basilica, Italy
Rhun touched his cross. They had won the battle. He shuddered to think how close they had come to losing it all. But they had triumphed.
Eleazar paused. He turned the book back to face him and ran his finger under the lines, reading it again, as if he had gotten it wrong the first time. But the words were the same.
“So we won the first battle,” Jordan said.
“But what about this ‘War of the Heavens’ … and the ‘First Angel’?” Erin asked.
“We found the book,” Jordan said with firm conviction. “We can find an angel. I bet the angel is bigger than the book was. How hard can it be, right?”
Erin laughed and leaned against him. “Right.”
The soldier was correct. They had accomplished the impossible once already. Rhun looked to Eleazar. “Where shall we begin?”
Eleazar furrowed his brow. “The prophecy. Return to the prophecy.”
Rhun waited.
Eleazar recited it. “The day shall come when the Alpha and the Omega shall pour his wisdom into a Gospel of Precious Blood that the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve may use it on the day of their need.
“Until such day, this blessed book shall be hidden in a well of deepest darkness by a Girl of Corrupted Innocence, a Knight of Christ, and a Warrior of Man.
“Likewise shall another trio return the book to the light. Only a Woman of Learning, a Knight of Christ, and a Warrior of Man may open Christ’s Gospel and reveal His glory to the world.”
“We did that,” Jordan said. “What do we need to do next to find the angel?”
Eleazar closed the book. “That may never come to pass.”
“Why not?” Jordan said with a frown. “We found the book, didn’t we?”
Eleazar sighed and hope drained from Rhun with that exhaled breath. “There is a chance that the trio has already been sundered,” Eleazar warned.
What was the Risen One saying? Rhun asked himself. How could the trio have been sundered? They were all here. He put one hand on Jordan’s sleeve, the other on Erin’s.
Then Erin closed her eyes. She grew pale.
“What is it, Erin?” Jordan asked.
She cleared her throat. “What if I am not part of the trio? What if I am not the Woman of Learning?”
“What are you talking about? Of course you are. You solved the mystery of the Gospel. Without you, we never would have found it. You were there when we turned it into a book.” The soldier spoke patiently, no worry in his voice.
But fear crept up Rhun’s spine.
“Remember the wording of the prophecy,” she said. “It says the trio opens Christ’s Gospel and reveals His glory to the world.”
“And?” Jordan asked.
Erin shook her head miserable. “I wasn’t there when the book opened. I didn’t cross the threshold of the basilica before the golden light burst from the book. You did. Rhun did. But I didn’t. I was still outside with the guard.”
“And you think that’s relevant?” Jordan protested. “Like one step across the threshold matters?”
“If I am not the Woman of Learning, Bathory was.” Erin took another deep breath. “And I killed her.”
Rhun strove to find a flaw in her logic, but, as usual, found none. Everyone had assumed that Erin was the Woman of Learning: she had been in Masada, in Germany, in Russia, and in Rome. But Bathory, too, had been in those places. She had been one step ahead of them. She had followed the clues that led to the book, and she had determined how and where it was to be opened. And she had been the one holding the book when it transformed.
Rhun closed his eyes, sensing the truth.
Could Cardinal Bernard have been correct all along about Elizabeth Bathory? Is that why the Belial had started collecting a Bathory of each generation and bonding her to their foul purpose, to preserve the Woman of Learning among their own fold?
If this were true, how could they ever hope to find the First Angel?
According to Cardinal Bernard, the woman killed in the necropolis was the last of the Bathory line.