"That's the cross in the picture," Rick said. "The one the burning vampire was carrying."
I pulled it from its velvet bed and Rick moved the candle closer. She had called it the Blood Cross. The wood was unshaped, tightly grained, the pieces like rough stakes, the splintered ends smoothed and oiled. The wire that wrapped the two pieces, shaping them into a cross, was brass, green with verdigris. The cross was weighty, much heavier than it appeared, and it was old. Ancient. I held it to my nose and smelled no smoke, no flames, and the wood was discolored only by time, not fire.
"You would dare to steal from me?" Before I could turn, Sabina was on me. Her eyes were vamped out. Her fangs snapped down. Faster than I could draw a breath, she bent me back across her knee. Claws pierced through my leathers and chain mail, her fingertips drawing my blood. "Thief," she hissed.
Sabina's hinged fangs slowly swung down, three inches long, white in the candlelight, touching my throat above my collar. My throat was barely healed from Leo's mauling; I might not survive this one. A harsh schnick sounded and Rick held the barrel of his gun to her temple. She didn't react. But Rick no longer moved. The taint of fear poured from his pores. She had immobilized him with her mind. He couldn't even breathe. I knew what it felt like to be held like that. The adrenaline-spiked terror.
I swallowed. A bead of cold sweat trickled from under my arm and touched a pricked spot on my side, stinging. "No. Not steal. Borrow. Whatever this is, it works like a weapon on vampires. I just need it to save three witches, two of them children, who will be sacrificed in the next few hours or days." I felt her tighten, a near-human reaction, to my words. "I need to use it like you did, when you raised the flaming cross and chased the vampires away from the blood magic they tried." Her body reacted again, easing, softening. I heard Rick take a strangled breath. "Let me use the Blood Cross," I whispered. Her head snake-tilted, the motion eerie. "Do you claim to be our savior, then?"
"I don't think it's likely," I said.
"Yet you dare to touch the Blood Cross. The cross of the curse. The cross of Ioudas Issachar."
"Ioudas Issachar," Rick forced out, the Ss sibilant with his straining. "Judas Iscariot."
The priestess and I looked at Rick. His face was grayish, his eyes fighting panic. I felt Sabina release him enough for him to draw a full breath. "Ioudas Issachar," he breathed again. "Judas Iscariot." His eyes tilted to me. "Catholic school. Latin 101."
"You know the history of sin and shame that is our birthright?"
Rick's expression said he had nothing else to offer. I took a shot and said, "The Sons of Darkness. And the Blood Cross."
Sabina's expression didn't change, but when she opened her mouth she laughed. The sound was lonely as a wolf howl, the power in it thudding into the walls and making the window glass ring. The candle flames wavered with its vibration. A desolate humor, bitter as wormwood, slicked my skin with its desperation. "The Sons of Darkness."
Just as she had taken us over, she released us. Faster than I could follow, she was gone; the candle flames fluttered, nearly guttering in the small whirlwind of her movement. She was across the chapel in an eyeblink. She stared at the cross in my hands. It was glowing faintly now, a curious phosphorescence. Rick took several gasping breaths, loud in the silence, his knuckles white on his weapon. We shared a glance, and he blinked, breathing hard, deciding. Something moved deep in his black eyes, like the trail of an alligator in dark water.
Carefully, he slid the 9 mm into his shoulder holster. His hand was shaking, a fine tremor as if an electric current flowed through him. The gun wouldn't have killed Sabina fast enough to do us any good anyway, even if it was loaded with silver shot and he emptied the clip at her. She was too old. She would have killed us both as she died. Rick controlled his breathing, and moved, standing at my side, our shoulders touching, facing the priestess.
"Who were they?" I asked. "The Sons of Darkness? What is the Blood Cross?"
Sabina stood, white in the disturbed candle flames, wavering with the shadows. Resignation and something more intense than relief flashed over her. An emotion so sharp it left a residue on her flesh like a scar, like a battle ended, and then it was gone.
She took a breath she didn't need and sighed. Her eyes bled back to near-human, her fangs clicked back into the roof of her mouth. When she spoke, it was with the formal cant of an oft-repeated quote. " 'Ioudas Issachar, son of Simeon, then one of the twelve, went to the chief priests, and said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? Hearing it, they were glad, and they promised they would give him money. And they gave unto him thirty pieces of silver.' You know this story?"
"The story of Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of the Christ."
"The thief," she said. "The murderer. The bringer of evil."