Rhun nodded. They needed to keep their search secret from the Belial. “What about Piers? What will you say about him?”
“I’ll tell them what I found,” she said. “A shame that I only noticed German soldiers in the bunker. And strigoi, of course.”
“So you will not tell them of the Russian soldiers?”
“If the Church learns that Russian soldiers from St. Petersburg had been in the same bunker as the Blood Gospel, they will send more than a team to Russia. It will be all-out war.”
Rhun nodded. No Sanguinist had ever returned from St. Petersburg alive since the traitorous Vitandus took command there. To retrieve anything from Russia, the Church would have to send an army. And every casualty would weaken their order in the battle they must eventually fight against the Belial.
“We must go alone,” Rhun said. “Both to prevent a war and for any hope of recovering the book.”
“And what about the humans? It will be dangerous to bring them.”
“The Vitandus may hate our order, but he maintains a strange sense of honor. It may be enough to keep them safe.”
From the other side of the wall, Rhun heard Jordan’s and Erin’s hearts beat faster.
“I can plainly see your affection for them, Rhun,” Nadia said. “Do you think that the Russian will not?”
“I can’t leave them here.” He tried to block out the sounds of Erin and Jordan. “If the Belial have agents within the Sanguinist ranks, their lives might be more at risk here than if I took them to Russia.”
“Then the matter is settled.” Nadia stood and put on her chain belt.
“I will need papers for us all,” Rhun added.
“I will get them for you in secret.”
Rhun considered the path on which he was about to embark. For the first time in his long, long life, he was about to be sundered from the Church, even if only for a time. He felt bereft.
Nadia headed toward the door. “And I will bring you something you can trade for safe passage. Something precious to the ruler of St. Petersburg.”
Even Nadia did not dare to speak his name.
He had once been a Sanguinist, but he had broken the Church’s laws so violently that he had been excommunicated—and not an ordinary excommunication, but a banishment that could not be undone, one so severe that all who knew him must shun him forever after.
In the end, his name had become his curse: Vitandus.
10:08 A.M.
Erin smiled when Jordan lifted her over the leather jacket and onto his lap. She now straddled him, staring down at his impish smile. “What happened to staying on your side?”
“You’re the one who came over to my side.” He kissed her lightly on the lips and a shiver ran down her spine.
She couldn’t argue with that. With one foot, she kicked the grimwolf jacket onto the floor.
Jordan grinned up at her. “Problem solved.”
She stroked a hand across his jaw. Smooth from his recent shave. She kissed him again. He smelled like eucalyptus shaving cream, and he tasted like coffee.
She pulled back and gazed into those beautiful blue eyes. “Your eyes are Egyptian blue, like the sun god Ra.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
He slid one warm palm around the small of her back, then pulled her so tightly against his chest that she felt his heartbeat against her breast.
She relaxed against him, feeling safe.
Then he shifted his lips, found her mouth, and kissed her hard. A yearning urgency flowed from his lips to hers. She moaned between them and threaded her fingers through his hair, pulling him even closer.
She wanted to forget everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, blot out every bad memory. The only thing she had room for in her head was the two of them. He stroked his hands along her body.
With one arm around her back, he used the other to ease her around and under him on the bed.
She stretched under his weight, feeling his muscular bulk settle upon her. Her hands stroked down his broad back. She slid them under his shirt, felt the smooth warmth of his skin. He pulled his T-shirt over his head in one quick movement, revealing the blaze of his tattoo down one side, the branching fractal marking the lightning strike, a testament to his brief experience of death.
Her finger traced one of the forking lines, raising a shiver over his flesh.
He was far from dead now: his breath heaved, heat radiated from him, his eyes shone deep into hers.
Never breaking from her gaze, he undid the belt of her robe and smoothed back both sides. Only then did his eyes drift down, devouring her body, leaving heat in their wake without him even touching her.
“Wow,” he silently mouthed.
She drew him down to her, gasping when his bare skin touched hers. His mouth found hers again. Erin lost herself in the kiss. Her heart raced against his, and her breath caught, held, then sped, too.
He raised his lips from hers, just a finger’s breadth, and she lifted up to meet them again. He kissed down her throat. She tilted her neck and arched her head back against the pillow, feeling strands of wet hair fall across her face but not wanting to take her hands from his body for even a second to brush them away. His lips moved lower, grazed along the top of her collarbone, ending on the hollow of her throat.
“Erin?” His question brushed soft against her neck.
She knew what he asked, and she knew what she wanted to answer. But she didn’t speak. “Wait.” The word came out breathless. She pushed him away and pulled the robe closed. “Too fast.”
“Slower,” he said. “Got it.”
She tied the robe. Her heart raced, and she wanted nothing more than to flee back to the warmth of his arms. But she didn’t trust that. She couldn’t.
A fist pounded the door.
A voice called through.
Nadia.
“Time to go.”
45
October 27, 10:10 A.M., CET
Munich, Germany
As the jet lifted off, Bathory settled into the plane’s soft seat with a sigh. In the darkness of the cargo hold, she felt Magor relax.
Sleep, my darling, she told him. We are safe.
For the first time in years, she was flying during the day, and without her strigoi. Where she was going, they had more to fear than just sunlight; their very existence put them at risk. It was a dangerous destination, but she felt safer without them.
She had chartered a plane, one whose pilot did not question her when the ground crew loaded the wolf into the cargo hold. He had stayed silent in his covered crate, as ordered, but they must have smelled him, known that he was a huge beast. For the right price, they had said nothing. She stretched luxuriantly in the wide seat of the jet. She had the plane to herself. The only others on board were the captain and the copilot.