Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series by James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell Read Free Book Online

who would be very intrigued by it .
    With his phone, Jordan snapped several pictures of the stone and symbol, planning on emailing them to Erin as soon as he had a signal.
    “I should crawl back outside and send this to—”
    A scraping sound drew all their attentions back to the tunnel. A dark figure snaked out of the darkness and into the light. Jordan barely registered the fangs—before it launched straight at him.

March 17, 11:05 A.M. EET
    Siwa, Egypt
    A pang of regret flared through Rhun’s silent heart. He sat on his heels at the base of a tall dune and listened to the soft hiss of grains sliding down the Egyptian slopes. It filled him with a sense of profound peace to be here, alone, doing God’s work.
    But even that purity was marred by a darkness at the edges of his senses. He turned slowly toward it, drawn by a compass submerged deep in his immortal blood. As he bent over, searching for the source, sunlight glinted off the silver cross hanging from his neck. His black robe brushed the sand as his palm skated across the hot surface of the desert, skimming over the fine grains. His questing fingertips sensed a seed of malevolence below the surface.
    Like a crow hunting a buried worm, Rhun cocked his head, narrowing his focus to one point in the sand. Once he was sure, he pulled a small spade from his pack and began to dig.
    Weeks ago, he had arrived with a team of Sanguinists tasked with accomplishing this very duty. But the pieces of evil unearthed here had threatened to master the others, to consume them fully. In the end, he had forced them to abandon the dig site and head back to Rome.
    It seemed Rhun alone was capable of withstanding the evil buried here.
    But what does that say of my own soul?
    He poured each shovelful of burning sand through a sieve, like a child at the beach. But this was not work for children. The sieve caught neither shells nor rocks.
    Instead, it captured teardrop-shaped bits of stone, black as obsidian.
    The blood of Lucifer .
    Over two millennia ago, a battle had been fought in these sands between Lucifer and the archangel Michael over the young Christ child. Lucifer had been wounded, and his blood fell to the sand. Each drop had burned with an unholy fire, melting through the tiny grains to form these corrupted bits of glass. Time had long since buried them, and now it was Rhun’s duty to bring them back to the light again.
    A single black drop appeared, resting in the bottom of the sieve.
    He picked the drop up and held it a moment in his cupped palm. It burned against his bare skin, but it did not seek to corrupt him, as it did the other Sanguinists. Unlike them, he saw no scenes of bloodshed and terror, or lust and temptation. Prayers filled his mind instead.
    Opening a leather pouch at his side, he dropped the black pebble inside. It tapped against two others, all that he had found this day. The drops were smaller now, and harder to find. His task was almost complete.
    He sighed, staring across the empty sand.
    I could stay . . . make this desert my home .
    A cask of sanctified wine waited for him back at his camp. He needed nothing else. Bernard had sent word that he was to increase his efforts, that he was needed back in Rome. So, reluctantly, he had, although he did not wish for this assignment to end.
    For the first time in centuries, he felt at peace. A few months ago, he had redeemed his greatest sin when he had restored his former lover’s lost soul, changing her from strigoi back to a human woman. Of course, Elisabeta—or Elizabeth , as she preferred to be called now—had not thanked him for it, cursing him instead for returning her mortality, but he did not need her gratitude. He sought only redemption, and he had found it centuries after he had given up any hope.
    As he straightened, forgoing his search, a distant mewling reached his ear. He tried to ignore it as he carefully tied the leather pouch and packed away his tools. But the sound persisted, plaintive and