She climbed the altar, the air richer in incense and the scent of burning candles.

Once they were all gathered around the altar, Rasputin rested his fists on his hips and looked avidly at the long brown leather tube. "Show me," he ordered.

Rhun ran a sharp nail through the papal seal and lifted the top off. He stared inside, his brows pinching together, then shook the contents onto the marble surface. A rolled-up piece of old canvas slid out and landed on the altar, unfurling slightly.

Rasputin leaned closer, and with gentle care, respecting the age of the canvas, he rolled it wide for all to see.

Erin gasped at the painting revealed under the candlelight. She recognized the work immediately. Painted by the deft hand of the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn.

It was an original.

It depicted Christ performing his most powerful miracle.

Raising Lazarus from the dead.

6:04 P.M.

Grigori dropped to his knees in supplication before the altar, before the oil painting, and one by one, his dark congregation followed suit.

Rhun remained standing, staring down at the image of Lazarus in his stone tomb.

It was a stunning rendition of that moment, a secret known to Rembrandt and recorded in his painting. The work was one of three known to exist.

In beautiful, evocative strokes, Rembrandt revealed Lazarus, clad in his death shroud, rising from his granite sarcophagus. To the side, family members started back in horror. These spectators to the scene held up their hands as if to protect themselves from the man they had once loved. To them, this was not a joyous moment of resurrection. For they knew what had killed Lazarus.

"The first Sanguinist." Erin's whisper carried across the now-silent church.

Yes, those beside the tomb had witnessed the birth of the Order of the Sanguines. Lazarus had been attacked and turned to a strigoi, but his family had found him and sealed him into a crypt before he was able to feed on a human victim. There they doomed him to a slow death by starvation. But Christ arrived and set him free. For on that day Christ offered Lazarus a choice that no strigoi before could ever have been offered. Lazarus could not change his nature, but he could use Christ's love and blood to struggle against it. He could choose to serve Christ, and perhaps someday see the resurrection of his own soul.

This pact of duty, of service as a Knight of Christ, was represented in the painting by weaponry-the sheathed sword and sheaf of arrows-hanging above Lazarus's crypt, ready to be taken up in service of the new Church.

From that moment onward, Lazarus had accepted his burden and formed the Sanguinist side of the Church. Fresh from his crypt, he had never tasted human blood. He had always found sustenance simply in the blood of Christ. Only one other Sanguinist, since the dawn of time, had started his next existence ready to follow in Lazarus's footsteps; only one other had been turned before his first kill.

Pure. Untainted.

Long ago, Rhun had been that Sanguinist. He had thought himself worthy of prophecy. Had believed in his goodness. Had taken solace in his pride. Until the day he tasted Elisabeta's blood. The day he created a monster.

In that moment he had fallen. Only the One had ever kept himself undefiled.

Lazarus.

Their true father.

Even Grigori recognized that role. He traced the holy form of Lazarus on the painting, his finger slowing as it crossed a thin line of red dripping from the corner of Lazarus's mouth.

How could anyone look upon this painting and not recognize the truth revealed by Rembrandt? The scared spectators, the blood on the lips, the weapons on the wall. Rembrandt had been privy to the Sanguinists' secrets, one of the few ever allowed such knowledge outside the inner circle of the Church. To honor that trust, he produced this masterwork of light and shadow, to hide a secret in plain sight as a memorial and testament to their order.

Grigori regained his feet, his eyes lifting from the painting to a mosaic in his own church, sprawled above the entrance. It depicted Lazarus in his shroud, standing alive at the door to his tomb, his hood up to protect his face from the sunlight. Christ stood before the risen man, his hand outstretched toward his new disciple as his followers looked on in wonder, much as Grigori's followers looked to him.

Tears shone in Grigori's eyes as he faced Rhun.

"I will help you search for your book, my friend, and, unless God wills otherwise, no grievous harm shall come to you while you are within the borders of my land."

49.

October 27, 6:08 P.M., MST St. Petersburg, Russia Jordan stood a few steps from the altar, watching the others.

He didn't trust any of them. Not Rasputin with his crazy laugh and his games, not the waiflike congregants who had finally retreated into the shadows, not even Rhun. He pictured that glowing bloodlust in his eyes, the way he stared at Erin, locked on her like a lion on a fatted calf.

Worst of all, Jordan could have done nothing if she had been attacked. Grigori's minions had him trapped, weighing down his every limb, his strength useless against them.

Voices drew his attention away from the altar. Rasputin's children spoke in hushed tones as they carried a wooden table and four clunky chairs into the nave. Although the dark chairs had to be heavy, the boys lifted them as if they were made of balsa wood.

Unlike Rasputin, his acolytes wore regular street clothes instead of priestly garb. Jeans or black pants and sweaters. If he hadn't known what they were, he'd have assumed them to be pasty Russian schoolchildren and their parents.

But he did know.

"Come." Rasputin strode from the altar to the table, leading the others and collecting Jordan in the wake of their passage. The Mad Monk sat quickly, straightening his robes like a fussy old lady. "Join me."

Erin found a seat, and Jordan took the one next to her, leaving the last for Rhun.

Sergei set a giant silver samovar in the middle of the table. Another of Rasputin's minions brought in tea glasses that fit into silver holders with handles.

"Tea?" Rasputin asked.

"No, thanks," Jordan mumbled.

After seeing what happened to Rhun, Jordan had no intention of eating or drinking anything Rasputin had touched. He'd rather not even breathe the air.

Erin declined, too, but from the way she pulled the ends of her sweater down over her hands, she was probably cold enough to want something hot to drink.

"Your companions don't trust me, Rhun." Rasputin bared square white teeth. His fangs were retracted, but Jordan didn't find him any less dangerous for it.

None of them responded. Apparently the subject of Rasputin's trustworthiness would never take up a lot of conversation.

Rasputin turned to Rhun. "Pleasantries aside, then. What makes you think the Gospel might be here in my city?"

"We believe it may have been brought back by Russian troops at the end of the Second World War." Rhun kept his palms flat on the table, as if he wanted to be ready to push back and stand, either to fight-or possibly to flee.

"So long ago?"

Rhun inclined his head. "Where might they have taken the book?"

"If they knew what they possessed, they would have taken it to Stalin." Rasputin rested his elbows on the table. "But they did not."

"Are you certain?"

"Of course. If they had taken it anywhere of significance, I would have known. I know everything."

Rhun rubbed his index finger where his karambit rested when he fought. "You have changed little in the last hundred years, Grigori."

"I assume you refer to my sin of pride, which always made you worry so for my soul." Rasputin shook his head. "Yet it is your pride which needs looking after."

Rhun inclined his head. "I am aware of my sins."

"Yet, every day, you suffer the foolishness of penance."

"And should we not repent our sins?" Rhun's fingers found his pectoral cross.

Rasputin leaned forward. "Perhaps. But are we forever defined by our sins? How is a moment or two of weakness so large a crime when weighed against centuries of service?"

Though inclined to agree with him, Jordan suspected Rasputin might have had more than a couple of weak moments in his time.

Rhun tightened his lips. "I am not here to discuss sin and repentance with you."

"A pity." Rasputin looked at Erin. "We've had many enlightening discussions about that over the years, your Rhun and I."

"We are here for the Gospel," Erin reminded him. "Not enlightenment."

"I have not forgotten." Rasputin smiled at her. "Tell me from where was it taken and when?"

Rhun hesitated, then spoke the truth. "We found evidence that the book may have been at a bunker in southern Germany, near Ettal Abbey."

"Evidence?" Rasputin fixed his intense eyes on Jordan, as if he were more likely to answer than Rhun.

Jordan tensed. His instinct was to hide everything from Rasputin that he could. "I'm just the muscle."

"Russia is a big land." Rasputin looked to Erin. "If you do not help me, I cannot help you."

Erin glanced at Rhun. She tugged at the cuff of her sweater.

"Piers told us," Rhun answered. "Before he died."

Rasputin's face drooped. "Then he turned to the Nazis after all?"

When Rhun did not answer, Rasputin continued: "He came to me early in the war. I was not as comfortable as I am now." He paused and gazed around at the church, smiling at the silent followers lined up against resplendent walls. "But even then I had my resources."

Surprise flickered across Rhun's face. "Why would he go to you?"

"We were close once, Rhun. Piers as first, you as second, and I as third. Do you honestly not remember?" Hurt was plain in his voice, with an undercurrent of anger. "Where else could he go? The Cardinal threatened to excommunicate him if he continued searching for the book. So after visiting me, Piers went next to the Nazis, seeking help that I could not provide. He refused to give up the hunt. Obsessions are hard to forsake, as you can attest with Lady Elisabeta."

Rhun turned away. "Cardinal Bernard would have done no such thing to Piers."

But Jordan heard the lack of conviction in Rhun's words. Even with the little experience Jordan had with the Cardinal, he knew how much importance the man placed upon the prophecy of the three. To the Cardinal, Father Piers had no role to play.

How wrong he was ...

Grigori continued: "Rhun, you do not know your precious Cardinal so well as you think. Remember, he excommunicated me. For committing a sin no greater than your own. And I did not take the life of the one I sought to save."

"What are you talking about?" Jordan asked, feeling like he'd walked into the theater in the middle of a movie.

Erin sat straighter, guessing the truth. "You're referring to Czar Nicholas's young son, aren't you? The boy named Alexei."

Rasputin favored her with a sad smile. "The poor child suffered. Finally, he lay near death. What was I to do?"

Jordan now remembered the history. The czar's son was once Rasputin's young charge. Like many of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, he had suffered from what was known as "the Royal Disease" of hemophilia. According to history, only Rasputin could bring him relief during his episodes of painful internal bleeding.

"You should have let him die a natural death," Rhun said, "within the grace of God. But you could not. And afterward, you would not repent for your sin."

Jordan pictured Rasputin turning the boy into a monster rather than letting him die.

"That is why you could not be forgiven," Rhun said.

"What makes you think I wanted the Cardinal's forgiveness? That I needed it?"

"I think we have gotten off topic here," Jordan cut in. Rhun and Rasputin's old arguments did not advance their cause. "Will you help us find the book?"

"First tell me, how did Piers die?" Rasputin took Erin's hand. She looked like she wanted to take it back, but she didn't. She should have. "Please."

She told him of the cross in the bunker, of the moment in the boat when Piers passed on.

Rasputin dabbed at his eyes with a large linen handkerchief. "How can you explain that, Rhun?"

"God's grace." Rhun's words were simple and fervent.

"Explain what?" Erin asked, looking between them.

"Tainted as Piers was for breaking his vow, for creating and feeding upon blasphemare creatures, he should have been burned to ashes by the sunlight." Rasputin folded the handkerchief and secreted it away in his robes. "That is what happens to strigoi who do not drink the blood of Christ. Has Rhun told you nothing?"

He hadn't told them much. Just that sunlight killed them, not that they burned up. Jordan remembered how Nadia had carefully lifted the coat from Piers's face, and her fear as she held him against her side so that he might see the sun one last time. His death had seemed peaceful, not violent, more of a letting go. Had God somehow forgiven his sins at the end or was there enough of Christ's blessing still within Piers's veins to keep him from burning? He suspected they would never know the true answer, and at the moment they had a more important concern.

"The book," Jordan said. "Let's get back to the book."

Rasputin straightened, visibly drawing back to the matter at hand. "The German bunker was far south. Do you know when Russian troops might have reached it? If I had a time line ..."

Jordan tried to remember his history, expecting Erin to interrupt with the answer. "The last major German unit in the south surrendered on April twenty-fourth, but the Russians were probably still mopping up until the formal surrender of Germany on May eighth."

He counted off dates in his head. "By mid-May, though, the Russians were formalizing the division of Germany and the whole of the Iron Curtain. I would guess the Russian smash-and-grab teams peaked around May twentieth, although there were probably Russians clearing out bunkers before and after."

Rasputin eyed him with what might be respect. "You indeed know your history."