Most of the strigoi forces were concentrating their attention on the Swiss Guardsmen racing into the basilica with their guns blazing. Their lack of caution suggested that the civilians had been cleared out.

Good to know, Jordan thought.

He and Erin reached the back of the crater without drawing any attention. The entire baldachin leaned drunkenly before them, the canopy canted to one side. From the basilica floor, the bronze structure had appeared to be a hundred feet tall. Now only twenty feet stuck out, which meant an eighty-foot climb down into the darkness-with strigoi waiting at the bottom.

The dust to the right swirled, revealing two black-cloaked figures.

Rhun and the Cardinal.

"Take that woman out of St. Peter's," Bernard ordered.

"You try telling her that," Jordan said.

Proving the impossibility of ordering "that woman" to do anything, Erin jumped from the crumbling marble edge out onto the bronze canopy. She teetered backward, then clutched at one of the smaller angels, one who held a crown aloft.

Jordan and Rhun jumped at the same time, landing to either side of her, both reaching to steady her. The Cardinal landed an instant later, higher up the canopy, next to the sphere that was topped by a cross. That seemed fitting.

"If you follow," Rhun warned, "stay behind me."

Without waiting for a response, the priest clambered down one side of the canopy.

Jordan gripped Erin's shoulder before she moved, catching her eye. "As soon as you're over the edge, get to the inside of the columns. Use that bronze bulk to shield you as much as possible if there is any shooting."

She leaned forward and kissed him quick on the lips-then freed her grip on the angel, slid down the tilted bronze surface, and vanished over the edge.

With his heart in his throat, Jordan stood still for a moment, shocked, then hustled after her. No matter what, he had to keep her safe.

Reaching the edge, he flipped to his belly, lowered his legs, and discovered plenty of footholds and handholds. In moments, he was leaving the light above for the blackness below. Once this was over, he vowed to climb the tallest building he could find, sit up on its roof, and spend an entire day staring at the sun and enjoying a clean breeze on his face. But for now, he kept climbing down, again, following the blond crown of Erin's head. She heeded his advice and got to the inside of the column.

He fitted his fingers into the shallow golden swirls decorating the column, moving fast, hoping to get as far down as he could in case he his lost his grip and fell.

Then a dark shadow, tinged with red, stormed past him.

The Cardinal.

"Be warned!" Bernard yelled as he passed. "The enemy is on all sides!"

Great.

Moments later, Jordan's boots hit the stone floor. He clicked on the flashlight attached to his machine pistol. All around, black shapes converged upon him, boiling out of the dark passageways of the necropolis.

To the right, he spotted Bathory-shadowed by her massive grimwolf. The pair rounded a corner and disappeared into a black tunnel.

"Over there!" Jordan yelled, and pointed.

Rhun and the Cardinal stepped into formation, with Bernard at the head. Jordan took the left side, pushing Erin between him and Rhun. It wasn't much, but it was the safest place for her. She brought her pistol up and fired once into the darkness.

Jordan turned and opened up with his machine pistol.

Dark blood splattered rough stone walls.

Ahead, the Cardinal grappled hand to hand with three strigoi, proving his spryness.

But at this rate, they'd never reach that tunnel.

Then a voice spoke at his ear, seemingly arriving out of thin air.

"I bring reinforcements."

He turned to discover the cherubic, bespectacled Brother Leopold at his shoulder. Beyond his small frame, a cadre of Sanguinist monks-twenty strong-fell like rain from the baldachin and landed in a circle around Jordan's group, already fighting before their feet hit the floor.

Leopold joined Jordan, pushing his eyeglasses higher on his nose, looking more like a kid brother than an undying warrior of Christ.

As if zeroing in on a weaker target, a strigoi lunged out of the darkness behind the short scholar; the flash of sword was the only warning.

Jordan reacted on pure muscle memory. He jerked his machine pistol up and caught the blade, deflecting it from Leopold's neck. The edge still grazed a bloody line across the young Sanguinist's shoulders.

The scholar's eyes grew round.

Angered, the strigoi turned toward Jordan. He was a hulking figure with dark skin and pale tattoos, studs puncturing his nose and ears. Jordan remembered seeing the guy in Germany, at Bathory's side. He figured him to be some sort of lieutenant for the Belial-which meant he must have helped orchestrate the attack on Jordan's men in Masada.

The beast smiled, showing teeth.

"Get back, Leopold," Jordan warned, ready to square off with this bastard, who only kept smiling.

The young monk's eyes became huge as he stared at Jordan-or rather behind Jordan.

Caught in the reflection of Leopold's eyeglasses, Jordan spotted movement.

He twirled, his American Bowie knife appearing in his fingers.

A gaunt, skeletal version of the larger lieutenant lunged at him, impossibly wide jaws going for his throat.

Jordan continued his spin and drove the silver-plated blade between those snapping jaws, punching it hilt-deep.

Chew on that.

The creature screamed, jerking straight up into the air like a jack-in-the-box, ripping the knife's haft from Jordan's fingers. As it flew high, smoke and boiling blood erupted from its mouth, from the back of its skull.

The body fell and struck the stone, already dead.

A scream of rage erupted behind him. "Rafik!"

Feral, grief-filled eyes fixed on Jordan.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Jordan growled. "Losing someone you love."

The strigoi launched himself at Jordan, flying through the air, his cloak billowing wide, like a man-size icarops.

Jordan dropped to a knee, tilted his submachine gun up, and unloaded at full auto, shredding the monster in the chest with pure silver. "That's for my men."

The strigoi lieutenant clattered to the stone, his body steaming. But he was still alive, in agony, dragging himself toward the impaled Rafik.

Leopold scooped up the monster's abandoned sword, the very weapon that had come close to killing him. He strode to the struggling strigoi.

The creature had almost reached his goal, extending a bloody arm, his fingers scrabbling to reach the one called Rafik, to touch him one last time.

Mercilessly, Leopold swung the sword in a blurring flash.

The strigoi's head flew off his body, and the stretching arm fell limply to the floor.

The fingers dropped short, never reaching the other, the two remaining forever separated.

Leopold turned and stared around the cavern, his brow pinched in confusion. "Where did everyone else go?"

Jordan spun, searching the spot where Erin had been a half minute ago.

She was gone.

And Rhun with her.

60.

October 28, 5:34 P.M., CET Necropolis below St. Peter's Basilica, Italy Erin twisted to the side as a strigoi's blade thrust toward her.

Then Rhun was there. He yanked her nearly off her feet and hauled her behind him. With one quick step forward, he slashed his blade across the strigoi's throat, felling him like a sapling.

She stared around, realizing they were momentarily alone in the tunnel down which Bathory had fled. She glanced back. Out in the main necropolis, Sanguinists were flowing down the columns to join the subterranean battle.

"Return to Jordan when it's safe," Rhun said fiercely, brooking no argument as he nodded back to the fighting. "I shall overtake Bathory."

With a swirl of his cassock, he disappeared down the dark tunnel.

With no choice, Erin faced the battlefield, heard the screams, smelled the blood. She searched the carnage until she spotted Jordan. He stood with his back to one of the metal plinths, firing at another tunnel that disgorged a flow of strigoi.

It was chaos, a hellish Bosch painting come to life.

She would never make it through that gauntlet. If the strigoi didn't get her, friendly fire might. She turned back toward the empty tunnel that Rhun had taken. It seemed the safest choice.

She kept her light low and to the left, running her right hand along the side of the tunnel, feeling for a side tunnel. If she came to a crossroads and she didn't know which direction Rhun had taken, she'd have to turn back.

Shots echoed ahead of her, coming from a place where a gray light flowed from around a bend in the tunnel.

She hurried forward-then a fierce, guttural growling flowed back to her, slowing her feet to a more cautious pace.

She brought up Jordan's Colt, loaded with silver ammunition. She moved more warily as she reached the turn in the tunnel. Step-by-step, she edged around the bend.

The crack of a pistol made her jump.

A short way down the tunnel, she watched Rhun leap with unnatural speed past the bulk of the grimwolf, his gun smoking. Landing beyond it, he lunged down the tunnel, away from the wolf, ready to continue his pursuit of Bathory, who was nowhere in sight-but then he skidded to a stop, turning as he did so with incredible grace.

Over the bulk of the wolf, his eyes found her. No doubt he had heard her heartbeat or noted the shift in shadows as she arrived with her flashlight.

He wasn't the only one.

The grimwolf jerked around, facing her, its teeth bared, its muscles bunched to spring.

"Erin, run!"

The beast's ears twitched toward Rhun, but it didn't turn from Erin.

Rhun came sprinting back, his pistol up, firing at the monster's hind end.

That got its attention.

With a deafening howl, it surged around, and with a heave of its back legs, bowled into Rhun. Erin lost sight of him, blocked by the body of the wolf.

More shots were fired.

She pointed her Colt but didn't fire, fearing she might strike Rhun with its silver bullets.

Then the wolf tossed its thick neck-with Rhun clutched in its jaws. The massive beast shook him like a rag doll. Blood sprayed the walls of the tunnel. Rhun lost his handgun and struggled to free a knife.

Knowing she had to help, Erin fired her pistol at the wolf, striking it in the shoulder. It twitched, but otherwise remained unfazed. She fired over and over, hoping that the cumulative load of silver might affect it. Pieces of fur ripped off its hide, but still it ignored her and slammed Rhun to the floor, its jaws clamped around his neck.

Rhun didn't move.

Erin began to run forward-when she heard a high-pitched whistle slice down the tunnel.

Bathory.

The grimwolf dropped Rhun, shook blood from its muzzle, and bounded off down the dark tunnel.

Holstering her useless pistol, Erin rushed forward and skidded on her knees to reach him. Blood soaked her jeans-but it was not her own.

She shone her flashlight on Rhun. Blood wept down both sides of his torn throat. It bubbled from his lips as he tried to speak.

She pressed both hands against his wound. Cold blood covered her palms and seeped between her fingers.

He coughed his throat clear enough to issue a command: "Go back."