Immanuel's Veins (28 page)

“A bathhouse,” she said. “But no water?”

“No. Water and crosses aren't my favorite.” He held one hand behind his back and motioned to the crucifix that stood taller than he. “As a common ornament, it's fine enough. I keep it around to remind me how powerless it is by itself. But water, blessed by even this harmless symbol, makes me rather sick.”

Oddly enough, she understood. There was something offensive about water, which gave life in the midst of death.

“The cross was a fountain, but it doesn't work. Perhaps we'll fill it with water and prove our fears misguided one day, just for fun.”

She returned his show of bravery. “For fun.”

The entire castle was filled with wonder and beauty, though she was quite certain that part of her appreciation was the result of her new vision. But none of it quite affected her like the tunnels below the castle. The dank, torch-lit halls with their caged rooms were all rather unnerving at first glance but only mysterious at second.

They stood now in the grand library off the main tunnel, and Vlad seemed very impressed with it. “We pride ourselves in knowledge,” he said, bowing his head and spreading his arms before a portrait called
Alucard
. He retained his reverential posture for a few moments and then straightened. The fanged, red-eyed wolf-bat would have sent a chill down Lucine's back only yesterday. Now a profound awe mixed with her fear and respect for this creature.

“He's your earliest ancestor, also called Shataiki or Nephilim by some,” Vlad said. “As written in the oldest book in the Pentateuch, when the sons of God united with the daughters of men.”

“Is he . . .” She wanted to ask if he was dead.

“He lives still.”

He must have made Vlad? And what did that make her?

“I am second generation,” Vlad said. “One generation from my father.”

“And what about the rest of this coven?”

“The rest? Most are made, like Natasha, with only a hint of Nephilim blood in their veins. Even the older ones are less than a tenth.”

“And . . .”

“And you?” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “My bride, you will become half of what I am. The strongest and the most gifted of all of God's sons. There are only a few like you alive today. Does this please you?”

“I . . . But am I really alive?”

He hesitated. “Do you feel alive?”

“I don't know what I feel.”

“Do you like it?”

“I think so. Yes. More as I get used to it.”

But there was also a pain raging just below the surface, she thought. Something that had to do with this beast who looked like death in one moment and life in the next.

“I'm eight hundred years old. Alucard made his first human when he bit a pregnant woman two thousand years ago. The offspring became my father, so to speak, though we don't bear offspring as such. I was made by another who was made by my grandfather. I am the last.”

“So then I could be seen as your daughter,” she said.

“No. You are my bride. And as my bride you will live a very long time.”

“And then?”

Vlad turned from the portrait. “And then you will die and take your rightful place in hell.”

His voice was unapologetic. Bitter. His face had darkened; his eyes had gone like coal.

“I don't want—”

Vlad's hand slammed into her cheek with such force that she spun and smashed into one of the bookcases before dropping to her knees on the cold stone floor. Pain sliced down her neck, and for a moment she was sure her jaw had been shattered.

She grunted and reached for her face. Blood flowed from a cut on her upper lip. Her mind filled with a raw hatred for this half-breed who had just savaged her, and for a moment she wanted to throw herself at him and claw his eyes out. She was reliving her past!

“Never speak of it again,” he said.

Then Vlad was picking her up. Kissing her wound. Tasting her blood. And when she tasted his, her pain faded and she realized that she had deserved to be hit.

They fed on each other for a few long dizzying minutes, and Lucine knew that she would both love and hate Vlad forever.

TWENTY-NINE

S
aint Thomas, the beast hunter—that's how I began to call the old man who delivered me from the church's dungeon. But I will confess that I couldn't be sure he was a man at all, any more than Vlad van Valerik was really a man. If so, then surely not a man in the same way I was a man.

There was more to both of them.

I needed a place to hole up and read the journal, and I knew of no better place than my own room in the Cantemir estate's west tower. I knew the grounds well, knew the layout of the security, the guards' schedule, the maids' comings and goings, and the surrounding countryside.

More importantly, I was certain that the church would mount a search for me, spreading tales of my witchcraft as they went, but I doubted they would look for me so close to where they'd taken me.

I rode north of the estate and tied my horse in thick grass near a brook, where he could manage for a day, even two if necessary, before I returned. Then I walked straight to the house and slipped into my bedroom using a window I'd left unlocked in the event I needed a quick exit under attack. A matter of habit.

I stood in the darkness for a long while, listening for any sound beyond my own breathing. The house was as quiet as an abandoned mine. Satisfied, I locked the door, pulled the curtain tight, and lit a single candle, no more.

There by the soft yellow glow, I pulled out the book the old man had given me and set it before me on the desk.

A single leather thong bound the frayed brown covers. The lower right-hand corner curled up, worn to a lighter shade from handling. Either a thousand hands had opened the book, or one, a thousand times. It was less than an inch thick. The name of that book was etched into the leather above the twine.

Blood Book
:
Tales, Confessions, and Rumors
of Another World

I took the end of the thong between my thumb and forefinger and gently released the looped knot, then lifted the cover and looked at the first page. The writing was in script, written in black ink with a sharp quill. A letter to the reader.

To you who are Chosen—

I, Thomas, have written and compiled this Blood Book so that those with eyes to see will understand the makings of both worlds, the seen and the unseen. The secrets written between these covers will lead you to death if you fail to understand, or to life if you open your eyes and see.

I have seen what so few have seen. And I can assure you that evil has made itself known in the flesh. A door was opened for one of those beasts to enter this world and spread the disease in bodily form, as was done at the dawn of time. As with the sons of God, the Nephilim beast, who slept with women and bore half-breeds as told in the Holy Scriptures themselves, entered your world 1700 years ago and passed his seed to a woman who bore that first monster.

The line of those who came from that Nephilim beast must be stopped before their seed spreads further! If they can be redeemed, it must be through love and blood, not sword and hammer.

Where all was once unseen, now it is seen. What was done in spirit will be done in the flesh, so all men will know that evil walks and speaks and that the Maker's great romance is a kiss of love, an offering of blood.

If you read now, you are chosen. All you need is here. Find the heart of Solomon's Song for that beloved. Slay the beast who would win her.

Be the hand of your Maker, in the flesh, for all to see.

Be his twin. I beg you.

— Thomas

I reread the letter three times, mesmerized by the suggestions contained within. Flipping through carefully, I saw that the front of the journal was filled with drawings and notes, some faded to light tracings on the grainy paper, all in very sharp letters and square lines.

The next section was written by another party in yet a different hand. And a third section was in the same hand as the letter I'd read. So this Blood Book was a compilation of three journals written by three people?

I flipped back to the beginning and scanned the opening pages. Pictures of winged wolf creatures, very similar to the images I'd seen in the Castle Castile. This was them! Here, the ancestors of Vlad van Valerik and his coven of devil worshippers.

The inscription under one such sketch of a creature that had been cut in half:
Dissected Nephilim
. It was a ghastly picture describing various body parts.

There was more, much more, in this first section, details written by someone called Baal about a reality that I could hardly believe existed. I peered at those pages with barely a thread of reason to hold my mind together. Surely it was all the figment of some madman's imagination!

I had always considered religion to be the device of the powerful to wrest control from the weak, an instrument of fear and political power. But here on these pages, the rift between the known and unknown was woven together in such plain detail. Either the writers were truly insane or they had seen what I had not.

And yet I
had
seen! There in the Castle Castile I had seen things that could not be explained by anything other than what I was reading on those pages. Perhaps all those fables contained in the Holy Scripture had some basis in reality after all.

The candle burned. My breathing was steady and heavy. Not a sound but the soft crackle of ancient pages turning and the sizzle of the flaming wick. I was transported into a new world of understanding that shook me to my bones.

The writings of Thomas, who I agreed must be an angel from God himself, brought the rest into focus. His journal began with a simple disclaimer that he would write only what could be grasped by a mortal who had never crossed the realities as he had. I tell you my fingers trembled over the page as I read his interpretation of this struggle between good and evil made flesh so that some may see. In his words:

It is no different than what has been known by some already, that angels and demons have walked this earth in human form, that beasts have been known to speak and whales to swallow men. That dragons will come from the sky to consume, and the Christ will come on a white horse to slay them.

It is written in the Holy Scripture that fallen angels, the sons of God, mated with the daughters of men who bore them monsters called Nephilim.

It has been written that a ram from the thicket saved Isaac. That Jacob wrestled with an angel. That the devil possessed swine. But what few know is that Alucard, the servant of that devil, crossed over to this earth in the days of Noah and is followed by his offspring, some knowing, others unknowing. Their lust to win the love of mortals away from God knows no bounds.

I stopped there, knowing I had met the offspring of this Alucard the first time I laid eyes on Vlad van Valerik. My doubts were washed away and I began to read with even more intensity, searching for the way that I might contend with this unholy thing.

I cannot say all that I read that night, because much of it was too otherworldly for me to grasp in its entirety, and that Blood Book was soon lost, never to be recovered. But the crux of it all was seared into my mind as if by a branding iron, and here it is:

There is indeed good and there is indeed evil, and both walk the earth. But good has little to do with the forms of religion, and evil has as little to do with so much behavior condemned by religion. Both good and evil vie for the passions of the heart. For love! For Solomon's Song of romance and desire. Love is God's gift to his creation. And evil contests this same love with bitter rage, to be loved as God is surely loved.

This was evil's seduction, and it had manifested itself there in bodily form in the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains, a manifestation of the same battle that rages in every human heart.

My only hope of standing in the presence of such evil without becoming one with it was to be cleansed by all that was holy. To find a new life washed with a new power, with blood that had taken on the meaning of life.

According to the Blood Book, life was in the blood. It quoted from the Holy Book: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” And again of the saints, “Thou hast given them blood to drink.”

All of the blood sacrifices, which I had always considered barbarous, suddenly made sense. That blood, however symbolic on the altar, had true power as much as evil had manifested itself in the blood of this beast. Surely this was why the Christ had bled out on that cross of torture. Not for a religion, not for Christianity or orthodoxy, but for the heart of man. In the words of Thomas:

Immanuel, God with us—that he would leave the spiritual realm and be present in flesh and blood in such an act of humility is a staggering notion. As it is, he willingly gave his blood, in the flesh, so that others might find life, for it is written: “He did not come by water only, but by blood,” and “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” Now blood is required to give new life to the dead.

I tell you, he did not give only a small amount to satisfy this requirement. He was beaten and crushed and pierced until that blood flowed like a river for the sake of love. It was for love, not religion, that he died.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins. And those plunged beneath that watery grave to drink of his blood will never be the same.

I slid out of my chair and crashed to the floor, and I threw my life into the hands of God, begging him to give me his blood and his heart to pump that blood. I wept into the stone, prone before the very God I had discarded all of my life, and I vowed to love him if he would only love Lucine and give his blood for her.

I was a mess, and I knew only whispers of the truth, but even those ravaged my mind. I could feel the heat of God himself flowing through my veins.