Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series Read Online Free PDF Page A

fallen angels during the war of Heaven. In the end, he was cast down for challenging God’s divine plan for mankind.
    But upon opening that ancient volume in the Tower of Winds, a map had fallen free. It had been drawn in strong black ink on a piece of yellowed paper and annotated by a flowery medieval hand and showed another library in Vatican City, one older than any of the others.
    It was the first she had heard of this secret library.
    From the map, it appeared this collection was hidden within the Sanctuary, the warren of tunnels and rooms below St. Peter’s where some Sanguinists made their home. In those ancient tunnels Sanguinists flocked to spend untold years of their immortal lives in quiet contemplation and prayer, removed from the cares of the bright world hundreds of feet above. Some had lived in those halls for centuries, sustained by mere sips of sacramental wine. Every day priests delivered wine to their still forms, holding silver cups to their pale lips. They sought only peace, and access to their tunnels was carefully controlled.
    According to the map in her pocket, the Sanctuary held the oldest archives in the Vatican. She had privately consulted Christian about this place, learning that most of the documents hidden there had been written by Sanguinist immortals who had lived through the events of the ancient world. Some had known Christ himself. Others had been old even before those times, converted to the order after hundreds of years of savagery as feral strigoi .
    Though the Sanctuary was forbidden to humans, Erin had been down there once before, accompanied by Rhun and Jordan. The trio had brought the Blood Gospel into the Sanguinists’ innermost sanctum, to receive the blessing of the founder of the Order of the Sanguines, a figure known as the Risen One. But she had learned then that he had a name more significant to Biblical history.
    Lazarus .
    He had been the first strigoi whom Christ had commanded into service.
    Upon learning of this library, Erin confronted the current head of the order in Rome, Cardinal Bernard. She had sought permission to enter that library to continue her line of research, but she had been soundly rebuffed. The cardinal had been firm that no human had ever been allowed to cross its threshold. He also assured her that the library only contained information about the order itself, nothing that would help with the quest.
    Erin hadn’t been surprised by the cardinal’s reaction. Bernard treated knowledge as a powerful treasure to be locked away.
    She had tried playing her trump card. “The Blood Gospel itself anointed me as the Woman of Learning,” she had reminded Bernard, quoting the recent prophecy revealed in the desert. “The Woman of Learning is now bound to the book and none may part it from her.”
    Still, he refused to bend. “I have read deeply and widely from this library. No one in the Sanctuary ever walked with Lucifer and his fallen angels. The stories of his fall were written long after it happened. So there remains no firsthand account of how or where Lucifer fell, where he is imprisoned, or how the shackles that bound him in eternal darkness were forged or could be remade. It would be a waste of time to search that library, even if it weren’t forbidden.”
    As she had glared into his hard brown eyes, she realized he would not break those age-old rules. It meant she had to find her own path down there.
    She stared across the last few yards of the basilica, toward a statue of St. Thomas—the apostle who doubted everything until presented with proof. She smiled softly through her nervousness.
    There’s an apostle after my own heart .
    She continued toward the statue. Below its toes lay a small door. It was normally unguarded, but as she rounded toward it, she discovered a Swiss Guardsman standing before the threshold, half hidden within the door’s alcove. She clenched her teeth and moved to the side, out of direct sight. She knew who was to blame for