James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell

Blood Brothers

Summer, present day

San Francisco, California

Arthur Crane woke to the smell of gardenias. Panic set in even before he opened his eyes. He lay still, frozen by fear, testing the heavy fragrance, picking out the underlying notes of frangipani and honeysuckle.

It can’t be…

Throughout his childhood, he had spent countless hours reading in the greenhouse of his family’s estate in Cheshire, England. Even now, he remembered the hard cement bench in a shaded corner, the ache in his lower back as he hunched over a novel by Dickens or Doyle. It was so easy to lose himself in the worlds within those pages, to shut out his mother’s rampages and threatening silences. Still, no matter how lost he was in a story, that scent always surrounded him.

It had been his childhood, his security, his peace of mind.

No longer.

Now it meant only one thing.

Death.

He opened his eyes and turned his nose toward that scent. It came from the empty pillow next to him. Morning sunlight slanted through his bedroom window, illuminating a white Brassocattleya orchid. It rested in an indentation in the middle of the neighboring pillow. Delicate frilled petals brushed the top of his pillowcase, and a faded purple line ran up the orchid’s lip.

His breathing grew heavier, weighted by dread. His heart thumped hard against his rib cage, reminding him of his heart attack last year, a surprise gift for his sixty-eighth birthday.

He studied the orchid. When he’d last spotted such a flower, he’d been a much younger man, barely into his twenties. It had been floating in a crimson puddle, its heavy scent interwoven with the hard iron smell of his own blood.

Why again now… after so many years?

He sat up and searched his apartment’s small bedroom. Nothing seemed disturbed. The window was sealed, his clothes were where he’d left them, even his wallet still lay on the bureau.

Steeling himself, he plucked the orchid from his pillow and held its cool form in his palm. For years he’d lived in dread of receiving such a flower again.

He fought out of the bedsheets and hurried to the window. His apartment was on the third story of an old Victorian. He picked the place because the stately structure reminded him of the gatehouse to his family’s estate, where he’d often found refuge with the gardeners and maids when the storms grew too fierce at the main house.

He searched the street below.

Empty.

Whoever had left the flower was long gone.

He took a steadying breath and gazed at the blue line of the bay on the horizon, knowing that he might not see it again. Decades ago, he had reported on a series of grisly murders, all heralded by the arrival of such an orchid. Victims found the bloom left for them in the morning, only to die that same night, their bloody bodies adorned with a second orchid.

He turned from the window, knowing the flower’s arrival was not pure happenstance. Two days ago, he had received a call from a man who claimed to have answers about a mystery that had been plaguing Arthur for decades. The caller said he was connected to a powerful underground organization, a group who called themselves the Belial. That name had come up during Arthur’s research into the past orchid murders, but he could never pin down the connection. All he knew was that the word belial came from the Hebrew Bible, loosely translated as demonic.

But did that mean the past murders were some form of a satanic ritual?

How was his brother involved?

“Christian…”

He whispered his brother’s name, hearing again his boyish laughter, picturing the flash of his green eyes, the mane of his dark hair that he always let grow overly long and carefree.

Though decades had passed, he still did not know what had happened to his brother. But the caller had said that he could reveal the truth to Arthur.

Tonight.

He glanced at the orchid still in his hand.

But will I live long enough to hear it?

As he stood there, memories overwhelmed him.

Summer, 1968

San Francisco, California

Another funeral.

Morning light from the stained-glass windows painted grotesque patterns on the faces of the young choir at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But their ethereal voices soared to heaven — clear, beautiful, and tinged with grief.

Such grace should have brought comfort, but Arthur didn’t need comfort. He wasn’t grieving. He had come as an interloper, a foreigner, a young reporter for the Times of London.

He studied the large lily-draped photo of the deceased mounted on an easel next to a carved mahogany coffin. Like most of the people in the church, he hadn’t really known the dead man, although everyone in the world knew his name: Jackie Jake, the famous British folksinger who had taken the United States by storm.

But that tempest was over.

Ten days ago, Jackie Jake had been found murdered in an alley off San Francisco’s Mission Street. Arthur’s newspaper had flown him from London to cover the death — both because he was their youngest reporter and because he was the only one who admitted to having listened to Jake’s music. But the last was a lie. He had never heard of Jackie Jake until this assignment, but the ruse got him on the plane to California.

He had come to San Francisco for another reason.

A hope, a chance… to right a terrible wrong.

As the funeral Mass continued, the crowd shuffled restlessly in the pews. The smell of their unwashed bodies rose in a cloud around them. He’d assessed them when he came in earlier, taking stock of Jake’s fans. They were mostly young women in long skirts and blousy white shirts, many with flowers in their hair. They leaned in postures of utter grief against men with the beards of ascetic hermits.

Unlike most of the crowd, Arthur had worn a black suit, polished shoes, something that befit a funeral. Despite his desire to shake the iron rule of his childhood household, he could not escape the importance of correct attire. He also wanted to present a professional demeanor for the policemen investigating Jake’s murder. Arthur sensed that their sympathies would not lie with this hippie crowd.

As the service ended and the mourners began to file out, Arthur spotted his target near the back of the nave, a figure wearing a black uniform with a badge on the front. Arthur contrived to bump against him as he exited.

“I’m very sorry, Officer,” Arthur said. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

“Not a problem.” The man had the broad American accent that Arthur associated with California from films and television programs.

Arthur glanced with a heavy sigh back into the church. “I can’t believe he’s gone…”

The police officer followed his gaze. “Were you close to the deceased?”

“Childhood friends, in fact.” Arthur held out his hand to cover his lie. “I’m Arthur Crane.”

The man shook Arthur’s hand with a too-firm grip. “Officer Miller.”

The officer kept an eye on the exiting crowd, his face pinched with distaste. A man wearing jeans and sandals swept past, leaving a strong smell of marijuana in his wake. The officer tightened his jaw, but did not move after him.

Arthur played along with his obvious disdain, hoping to tease information out of the officer. “Jackie and I were friends before he came here and got involved with”—he waved his hand at the crowd of hippies—“that lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these flower children had killed him. From my experience, it’s a fine line between fan and fanatic.”

Officer Miller shrugged, his eyes still on the mourners. “Maybe. The killer did leave a flower near his body… some type of orchid.”

And that was how Arthur first found out about the orchids.

Before Arthur could inquire further, Miller lunged to the side as a rake-thin man grabbed an easel near the door, clearly intending to steal the blown-up photo of the folksinger. The thief’s dark eyes looked wild under his unkempt hair, his dirty hands gaunt as a skeleton’s.

As the officer interceded, the man abandoned the photo, grabbed the easel, and swung it like a club. Miller tried to dodge, but his hip crashed against a neighboring pew. The easel struck the officer on the shoulder, driving him to his knees. The thief raised the easel again, high above the head of the dazed officer.

Before Arthur could consider otherwise, he rushed forward. It was the kind of foolhardy action his brother, Christian, would take in such a circumstance — but it was out of character for the normally reserved Arthur.

Still, he found himself barging between the two men as the crowd hung back. He grabbed the attacker’s arm before he could deal a fatal blow to the fallen police officer. He struggled with the assailant, giving Miller time to scramble to his feet. The officer then manhandled the attacker away from Arthur and quickly secured the man’s wrists behind his back with handcuffs. The man glared all around. His pupils filled his entire irises, making his eyes look black. He was definitely under the influence of some kind of drug.

Miller caught Arthur’s gaze. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

Breathing hard, his heart thumping in his ears, Arthur could barely manage a nod and pushed back toward the exit.

What was I thinking…

As he reached the streets, the bright City by the Bay seemed suddenly a darker place, full of shadows. Even the morning light failed to dispel them. He fetched up against a light pole and stood there for a moment, trying to slow his breath, when a flash of white caught his eye.

A paper flyer had been pasted onto the pole. The title drew his attention.

But it was what was beneath those hand-scrawled words that sucked the air from his lungs and turned his blood to ice. It was a black-and-white photo of a handsome young man in his midtwenties, with dark hair and light eyes. Though the photo had no color, Arthur knew those eyes were a piercing green.

They belonged to his brother.

Christian.

The flyer contained no further details except a phone number. With trembling fingers, Arthur wrote the number on the bottom of his notebook. He hurried down the crowded street, searching for an empty phone box. When he found one, he slotted his money into it and waited. The phone burred in his ear, once, twice, five times. But he couldn’t put it down.

He let it ring, balanced between disbelief and hope.

Finally, a man answered, his voice spiked with irritation. “What the hell, man? I was sleeping.”

“I’m sorry.” Arthur apologized. “I saw your flyer on the street. About Christian Crane?”

“Have you found him?” The man’s tone sharpened, annoyance replaced with hope. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said, fumbling for his words. “But I’m his brother. I had hoped—”

“Damn,” the voice cut him off. “You’re the Brit? His foster brother. I’m Wayne… Wayne Grantham.”

From the man’s tone, he clearly thought Arthur would recognize him, that Christian might have spoken to Arthur about him — but Arthur hadn’t shared a word with Christian for over two years, not after the way they had left matters in England, after their fight. It was why Arthur had come to San Francisco, to mend fences and start anew.

Arthur pushed all that aside. “How long has Christian been gone?”

“Eleven days.”

That was one day before Jake was killed. It was a ridiculous time to peg it to, but the folksinger’s murder was fresh in his mind.

“Have you called the police?” Arthur asked.

A snort answered him. “Like they give a damn about a grown-up man gone missing in San Francisco. Happens all the time, they said. City of Love, and all that. Said he’d probably turn up.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“No.” Wayne hesitated. “He wouldn’t have left without telling me. Not Christian. He wouldn’t leave me not knowing.”

Arthur cleared his throat. “He left without telling me.”

“But he had his reasons back then, didn’t he?”

Guilt spiked through Arthur. “He did.”

Wayne had nothing else to add, and Arthur reluctantly gave up without asking the most important question of all. There were some questions he still had difficulty asking, stifled by prejudice and made uncomfortable by his ingrained formal upbringing.

Instead, he went back to the hotel and filed his story, burying the new detail of the orchid a few paragraphs in. For good measure, he also reported Christian missing to the police.

As Wayne had said, they did not care.

* * *

The next day, Arthur woke to the screaming headline of a second murder. He read the paper standing at his kitchen counter, a mug of coffee growing cold in his hand. As with Jackie Jake, the victim’s throat had been torn out. The body of the young man — a law clerk — had been found only a few blocks away from St. Patrick’s Church — where Jackie Jake’s memorial service had been held. The article hinted that the murders were connected, but they didn’t elaborate.

Two hours later, Arthur sat at a diner across from Officer Miller, calling in his favor, admitting that he was a reporter for the Times.

“Can’t tell you much more than was in the Chronicle here,” Miller admitted, tapping the local newspaper. “But there was a flower — another orchid — found at this crime scene, too. According to a roommate, the victim found the orchid in his bedroom the morning he was killed, like the murderer left it as a calling card.”

“Were there any witnesses? Did anyone see someone at the crime scene… or see whoever left that orchid?”

“Nothing concrete. Someone said they saw a skinny, dark-haired man lurking around the church at the time of the murder, taking pictures, but it could be a tourist.”

Arthur could glean nothing else from what the officer told him. The mysterious photographer did add a good detail for the report Arthur intended to file, but the fact was certainly not as juicy as the detail about the second orchid.

That afternoon, Arthur composed and wired in the story. He dubbed the murderer “the Orchid Killer.” By the next day, the name was plastered across every newspaper in the city and across the nation, and his reputation as a journalist grew.

His editor at the Times extended his assignment to cover the murders. He even convinced the paper to give him enough of a stipend to rent a dilapidated room in the Haight-Ashbury district — where both victims spent most of their time. Arthur used the little money left over to buy a radio and tuned it to the police band.

Over the next days, he worked and ate with the radio on. Most of the chatter was dull, but four nights later, a frantic call came over the band. A dead body had been discovered, just blocks from Arthur’s rented room, a possible third victim of the Orchid Killer.

He hailed a cab to get there quickly, but the police had already cordoned off the area to keep the press away.

Standing at the yellow strip, Arthur lifted his Nikon camera. It was outfitted with a zoom lens. Christian had given it to Arthur as a present when he finished school, telling him that he could use the extra eye. Arthur still wasn’t very good with the camera — he preferred to tell stories with words rather than pictures — but without a photographer assigned to him, he would have to manage on his own.

To get a better vantage point, he shifted away from the police cordon and climbed a few steps onto the porch of a neighboring Victorian home. He leaned against a brightly painted column to steady himself and examined the crime scene through the lens of the camera. It took some fine-tuning of the zoom to draw out a clear picture.

The victim lay flat on his back on the sidewalk. A dark stain marred his throat and spread over the stone. One arm was outstretched toward the street as if beckoning for help that would never come. In that open palm lay a white object.

Arthur zoomed in and tried to identify it, finally discerning the details of its frilled petals and subtle hues. It was an orchid, but not any orchid. Arthur’s stomach knotted with recognition.

It was a Brassocattleya orchid.

Such orchids were common enough, used as corsage flowers because of their powerful scent and their durable beauty. His mother had raised that particular breed because she adored the scent.

Arthur remembered another detail.

Christian had always loved them, too.

His mind’s eye flashed to the poster, to the still life of Christian printed there, his brother’s smile frozen, his eyes so alive even in the photo.

As he stared at the orchid in the dead man’s palm, the sweet smell seemed to drift across the street to him, although that couldn’t be true. He was too far away, but even the imagined scent was enough to dredge up a long-buried memory.

Arthur sat on the stone bench in the corner of his mother’s greenhouse holding a pruning knife. The familiar scents of orchids and bark surrounded him, as the afternoon sunlight, trapped under all that glass, turned the winter outside into a steamy summer inside.

He stared at the long tables filled with exotic plants. Some of the orchids he’d known for years, watching them flower over and over again throughout his lonely childhood.

Since he was a little boy he had come here to watch his mother work with the orchids, crooning to them, misting them gently, stroking their leaves, giving them the love that she did not give to him. They were special and rare and beautiful — and he was not.

He’d had a secret dream that when he grew up he would do something so wonderful that she would look up from her pots and notice him.

But now that would never happen.

She had died two days ago, taking her own life in one of her fits of black melancholy. Today she had been planted in the earth like one of her beloved orchids.

He ran his thumb across the sharp knife.

He’d overheard the staff talking about the value of his mother’s orchid collection. She had spent a lifetime accumulating it — buying each plant from a funny little man dressed all in black with a bowler hat. He gathered them from botanical gardens around the world, from other collectors, and even from men who traveled into the distant rain forests and brought the specimens out in burlap sacks.

Now all her precious orchids would die or be sold.

A light winter rain began to patter on the glass roof and ran down the sides in streaks. Arthur laid the cold knife blade against the warm softness of his forearm.

This is how she did it…

Before he could act, the greenhouse door slammed open, and Arthur jumped.

The knife clattered to the tile floor.

Only one person dared to crash around the estate like that. Christian had come to the London house when both boys were fourteen. Christian’s parents had died in a car crash outside of San Francisco. Arthur’s father was second cousin to the boy’s father and took the teenager into their home. Though the two boys were related, it was only in blood — not in demeanor.

“Arty?” he called brashly. “I know you’re in here.”

Arthur stirred on the bench, and Christian spotted him, crossing over to join him. Christian’s brown hair was slicked flat from the rain, and his bright green eyes were puffy and rimmed in red. Unlike Arthur, Christian could let himself cry when he was hurt. It was an American trait. Something Arthur’s father and mother would never tolerate.

Reaching the bench, Christian pulled the dark lens cap off his camera. He carried the thing everywhere. He took pictures all day and spent half the night in a makeshift darkroom developing them. Arthur’s mother said that he had real talent, and she would not have said that if it weren’t true.

Christian planned to become a photojournalist. He wanted to travel to the world’s war zones, taking pictures — using his art to change the world. He’d even convinced Arthur that he could come along, too, as a journalist. They’d be a team. Arthur wasn’t sure that he had the talent for such a career, but he liked to be drawn into Christian’s whimsies. The other boy had a reserve of boundless optimism that Arthur often warmed himself against.

But today even that wasn’t enough.

Christian snapped a picture of the abandoned pruning knife on the tiles, then turned toward the rows of specimen tables. He headed to his favorite orchid: the Brassocattleya cross.

First, he took a close-up shot of the blossom, then he pinched off a dead leaf and felt its edges to see if it was moist, just as their mother used to.

“She’ll miss these flowers,” Christian commented.

Certainly more than me, Arthur thought dourly.

Christian plucked the flower, and Arthur gasped.

Mother would never have allowed that.

Christian dropped the flower on Arthur’s lap and picked up the pruning knife from the floor.

Arthur watched the blade. He imagined how it would feel if it cut into his wrists, how the blood would well out and drop onto the floor. His mother would know. She’d used a long knife from the kitchens to slit her wrists in the bath. When Arthur found her, the water was such a deep red that it looked as if the whole tub had been filled with blood.

Christian touched the inside of Arthur’s wrist. His fingers slid back and forth along the same spot where his mother had used the kitchen knife.

“Do you think it hurt much?” Christian asked, not shying from the harder questions. His fingers still rested on Arthur’s wrist.

Arthur shrugged, suddenly nervous — not at the subject matter but at the intimacy.

Christian moved his fingers aside, replacing his touch with that of the cold edge of the pruning knife.

Arthur stayed very still, hoping.

Christian took a deep breath, then sliced into Arthur’s wrist — but not too deep. It didn’t hurt as much as he had anticipated. No more than a sting really.

Blood welled out.

Both boys stared at the shiny scarlet line on Arthur’s white skin.

“She left me, too,” Christian said and put the flower into Arthur’s hand.

Arthur clenched his fist, crushing the orchid, and more blood flowed out of his wound. “I know.”

“My turn now.” Christian drew the bloody blade across his own wrist.

“Why?” Arthur asked, surprised.

Christian turned his arm over and dropped his wounded wrist on top of Arthur’s. Their warm commingled blood ran down their arms and dripped onto the clean-swept floor.

With his other arm, Christian took several snapshots: of the crimson drops on the white stone tile, of the bloody flower crumpled on the bench. Last, Christian angled the camera up to take a picture of the two of them together, their arms linked.

“I will never leave you,” Christian whispered to him. “We’re blood brothers, now and forever.”

For the first time since Arthur had found his mother in the crimson water — her stained blond hair floating on the surface, her head tilted back to stare at the plaster ceiling — he broke down and wept.

Arthur felt a hand shove him from behind, stumbling him back to the present.

“Get off my porch!”

He turned to discover a middle-aged woman standing there — about the same age his mother would have been if she’d lived. She scolded him and herded him off her home’s stoop, her flannel nightgown billowing in the night breeze.

Arthur’s reporter instincts came back. “Did you see anything?”

“None of your business what I saw.” She crossed her arms over her chest and sized him up. “But I can say that I don’t like how this Summer of Love has turned out.”

Later, when Arthur filed his story, the headline read Summer of Death follows the Summer of Love.

* * *

“I still haven’t heard any word from Christian,” Wayne said over the phone three days later. “Our friends in the city haven’t either.”

Arthur frowned, cradling the phone to his ear as he sifted through piles of police reports and forensic exams from the latest murder, a third victim. The young man was named Louis May, recently arrived from Kansas City. Like Christian, the man had likely been drawn by the promise of California, a modern-day gold rush of free love and openness, only to die on the sidewalk, his throat torn open and a flower in his hand.

Had the same happened to Christian? Was his body yet undiscovered?

“But something strange happened this morning,” Wayne said, interrupting Arthur’s line of worry.

“What?” He sat straighter and let the papers settle to the tabletop.

“A Catholic priest came by, knocking at my door at an ungodly early hour.”

“A priest? What did he want?”

“He asked if I knew where Christian might be, where he hung out, especially at night. Strange, huh?”

Strange barely fit that description. Despite his brother’s name, Christian had no religious affiliation. In fact, he only had disdain for those who piously bent their knees to an uncaring god, like Arthur’s parents had. So why would a priest be interested in his brother?

As if hearing Arthur’s silent question, Wayne explained. “The priest said it was important that he find your brother and talk to him. Said Christian’s immortal soul hung in the balance. He told me to tell Christian that he could turn his back on what he’d become and accept Christ into his heart and find salvation. Those were his exact words.”

Arthur swallowed, hearing an echo of his own words to Christian on that last night, words that could not be easily taken back. He had called Christian names, demanded he change, telling him that the path Christian had chosen would only lead to a lonely death. Their argument had grown more and more heated until the brothers fled from each other.

The next day, Christian was gone.

“You should have seen that guy’s eyes,” Wayne continued. “Scared the hell out of me, I have to say. Never met a priest like that. What do you think he really wanted?”

“I have no idea.”

After that call, Arthur sat in his tiny rented room, studying pictures and news clippings taped to the walls. Like Christian, all the victims were men in their twenties. They were dark-haired and handsome.

Arthur stared at a publicity photo of Jackie Jake. The folksinger’s black hair flopped over his eyes, reminding Arthur acutely of Christian. Jake even had the same bright green eyes.

It was at that moment that Arthur realized he didn’t have a single picture of his brother. After their quarrel, in a fit of pique, Arthur had destroyed them all. In many ways, he was as volatile and temperamental as his mother — and in the end, just as judgmental.

Arthur had been a fool back then. He knew it now. He wanted only to find Christian and apologize, but he worried that he might never get that chance. He could never make it right.

Over the following three days, he buried himself in the case, sensing Christian was linked to the murders. But how? Was he a victim, or somehow involved? The latter seemed impossible. Still, he remembered the madman at the memorial service. Could Christian have been drugged, maybe brainwashed by some murderous cult, and turned into a monster?

Needing answers, Arthur started his investigation with the orchids, but too many of the city’s flower shops sold them. He showed around the picture of Christian from Wayne’s flyer, but none of the shopkeepers remembered any particular customers buying those orchids around the times of the murders. It was no surprise. It was summer, and orchids were in demand for the dances of the upper class, those lofty creatures of wealth far removed from the men who lived on the streets or in squat houses or died holding one in their hands.

He touched base with Officer Miller every day, hoping for any news. All the while, the city held its breath for the next murder. Arthur learned from Miller that the latest victim, like the others, had also received his orchid on the morning of his death. It had been delivered to Louis May’s stoop, and twelve hours later the young man was dead.

With morning coffee in hand, Arthur contemplated this cruelty, this promise of death delivered to a doorstep. He climbed to his rented room and returned to his cluttered workspace.

There, resting on the keys of his typewriter, was a single white bloom.

A Brassocattleya orchid.

* * *

“Look, Mr. Crane,” Officer Miller said. “I can imagine you’re spooked, but folks around here think this might be as a publicity stunt. To sell more papers.”

Arthur stared dumbfounded across Miller’s desk into the crowded squad room. He had come straight here after finding the orchid. Right now it lay on the battered metal desk in front of him. “You can’t think—”

Miller held up a beefy hand. “I don’t. I trust you plenty, but I can’t help you. My hands are tied.”

Arthur’s stomach sank. He’d been fighting the police for hours, hoping for some kind of protection, but no one took him seriously. “How about I just sit in the police station then? Just for twenty-four hours?”

“I can’t allow you to do that.” Miller’s freckled face looked concerned, but his chin was firm. He wouldn’t give in.

“Then arrest me.”

Officer Miller laughed at him. “On what charge?”

Arthur punched him right in his freckled face.

* * *

It took three days for the Times to bail Arthur out. In the interim, a fourth victim had received an orchid and had been murdered. The new death further convinced the police that Arthur either had been lying about the orchid or someone had played a cruel prank on the British reporter.

Arthur knew better.

Still, what did it mean? Had the killer passed him by? Or was he just biding his time to make the kill?

Not knowing for sure, Arthur spent his first night of freedom in Sparky’s twenty-four-hour diner, afraid to go home. He brought a giant pile of notes and used the time to outline a book, a treatise about the murders. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood had come out two years ago, and the narrative of those killers had mesmerized him. He wanted to do something similar, to find some way of making sense of these deaths, to nail them down between the cold, dispassionate pages of a book.

Seated at a corner table of the diner, with a clear view to all the exits, he nibbled on his third piece of apple pie and downed his umpteenth cup of coffee. All night long, he had refused to give up his table, despite the jaundiced glances from the waitress.

But now the sky had pearled to a pale gray, and he knew it was time to move on. He could not live inside the diner forever. So he packed up his things, left a generous tip for the waitress, and trudged toward his apartment. As he walked, he rubbed the grit from his exhausted eyes. He squinted at the sun breaking over a boarded-up and abandoned storefront ahead. The five-story building had become the home of squatters. It was regularly raided, emptied, only to fill again.

As he crossed along it, he hefted his satchel of notes. He knew he could get a book out of these murders, something dark and fascinating and significant, the kind of thing that could make his career.

A few meters away, a figure stepped out of the door of the dilapidated store, sticking to the shadows. Even though he was barely visible in the gloom, Arthur recognized him and stopped, stunned and incredulous.

“Christian…?”

Before he could react, his brother was upon him, pulling him tightly in an embrace that was both intimate and frightening. Fingers dug into his shoulders, his elbow, hard enough to find bone.

Arthur gasped, tried to pull away, but it was like trying to unbend iron. Pain weakened him further, forcing him to drop his bag.

Lips moved to ear. “Come with me.”

The breath was icy, smelling of sour meat and rot. The tone was not one of invitation but of demand. Arthur was lifted off his feet and dragged away, as easily as a mother with an errant child.

In a moment, they were through the doorway and up a flight of rickety stairs to an upper room. Refuse littered the floor. Old ratty blankets bunched along the walls, abandoned by their former dwellers. The only place of order was a thick oak table in the center, its surface polished to a high sheen, so out of place here.

As was the smell.

Past the reek of sweat, waste, and urine came the wafting sweetness of honeysuckle and gardenia. The scent rose from a spray of white orchids, all Brassocattleya.

If Arthur had any doubts as to the role Christian played in the recent murders, they were dispelled at this sight. The table looked like a shrine or an altar to some dark god.

Arthur tried to struggle out of that iron grip, but he could not escape the hand clamped to this forearm. For his efforts, he was slammed against a wall, hard enough to bruise his shoulder, and pinned there. Fearing for his life, he searched for his only weapon, the same weapon that once drove the two brothers apart in the past.

His words.

But what could he say?

Arthur looked at his attacker, dismayed by what he found there. Christian looked exactly the same — yet completely changed. His face and bearing were as they always had been, but now he moved with a speed and strength that defied reason. Worst of all, his gentle expression had turned hard and angry. Malice shone in eyes that were once bright and full of joy.

Arthur knew this dreadful condition must be secondary to some kind of drug. He remembered the madman in the church, recalled the horror stories he had read of addicts on a new pharmaceutical called PCP. The drug had arrived in the Haight-Ashbury district just last year.

Was that the explanation here?

“You can stop this,” Arthur tried. “I can get you help. Get you clean.”

“Clean?” Christian pushed his lips up into a ghastly grimace and laughed, a mocking rendition of his usual playful mirth.

Changing tactics, Arthur tried reaching him through their shared past, to draw him out, to make him remember who he once was. “Brassocattleya,” he said, nodding to the table. “Like Mother grew and loved.”

“They were for you,” Christian said.

“The orchids?”

“The murders.” Christian faced him, showing too many teeth. “The orchids were merely to lure you here. I knew you were at the Times and hoped word of the orchids would draw you here. That’s why I took that singer first, the one from London.”

Arthur went cold, picturing Jackie Jake’s face. He had contributed to the poor man’s death.

“You came sooner than I expected,” his brother said. “I had hoped to leave a longer trail of invitation before entertaining you here.”

“I’m here now.” Arthur’s shoulder throbbed, aching even his teeth. “Whatever is wrong between us, we can fix it together.”

Christian exposed his arm, turning it to reveal the pale scar on his wrist. Arthur had a matching scar.

“That’s right,” Arthur said. “We’re blood brothers.”

“Forever…” Christian sounded momentarily lost.

Arthur hoped this was a sign of him finally coming out of his dark, drug-fueled fugue. “We can be brothers again.”

“But only in blood.” Christian faced him, his eyes hard and cold. “Isn’t that right?”

Before Arthur could answer, Christian threw him to the floor, riding his body down and straddling atop him. His brother’s white face hovered inches above his, those eyes reading his features like a book.

Arthur tried to throw him off, but his brother was too strong.

Christian leaned closer, as if to kiss him. Cold breath brushed against Arthur’s cheeks. His brother used a thumb to turn Arthur’s chin, to expose his neck.

Arthur pictured the morgue photos of Christian’s victims, their throats ripped out.

No…

He struggled anew, bucking under Christian, but there was no escaping his brother. Impossibly sharp teeth tore into the soft skin of his throat.

Blood drowned Arthur’s scream.

He wrestled against his death, struggled, cried, but in a matter of moments, the fight bled out of him. He lay there now as waves of pain and impossible bliss throbbed through his wounded body, borne aloft by each fading heartbeat. His arms and legs grew heavy, and his eyes drifted closed. He was weakening, maybe dying, but he didn’t care.

In this bloody moment, he discovered the connection people sought through love, drugs, religion. He had it now.

With Christian…

It was right.

Suddenly, that moment was severed, coldly interrupted.

Arthur opened his eyes to find Christian staring down at him, blood dripping from his brother’s chin.

In Christian’s eyes, Arthur read horror — and sorrow — as if the blood had succeeded where Arthur’s words had failed. Christian put an ice-cold hand against the wound on Arthur’s throat, as if he could stop the warm blood flowing out of it.

“Too late…” Arthur said hoarsely.

Christian pressed harder, tears welling. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

His brother stared down, clearly struggling to hold in check the evil inside him, to hold on to himself. Arthur saw his nostrils flare, likely scenting the spilled blood. Christian moaned with the need of it, but Arthur heard an undertone of defiance.

Arthur wished he could help, to take away that pain, that struggle.

He let that desire show in his face, that love of brother for brother.

A tear rolled down Christian’s cheek. “I can’t… not you…”

With both arms, he picked up Arthur, crossed to a window, and threw his body out into the sunlight. As he flew amid a cascade of broken glass, he stared back, seeing Christian withdraw from the sun, back into shadows, forever lost.

Then Arthur crashed to the street.

Still, darkness found him in that sunlight, swallowing him away. But not before he saw an orchid land on the pavement near his head, floating in a pool of his blood. The sweet scent of it filled his nostrils. He knew it would be the last thing he ever smelled.

His mother would have been happy about that.

* * *

An unknown number of days later, Arthur woke to pain. He lay in a bed — a hospital bed. It took him several breaths to work out that his legs were suspended in front of him, encased in plaster. Turning his head took all his effort. Through his window, he saw weak afternoon sunlight.

“I see that you’re awake,” said a familiar voice.

Officer Miller was seated on his other side. The police officer reached to a table, retrieved a water glass with a straw, and offered it. Arthur allowed the man to slip the straw between his lips. He drank the lukewarm water until it was all gone.

Once done, Arthur leaned back. Even the short drink had left him exhausted. Still, he noted the purplish bruises ringing Miller’s eyes, courtesy of Arthur’s earlier sucker punch.

Miller fingered the same. “Sorry we didn’t take you more seriously, Mr. Crane.”

“Me, too,” he croaked out.

“I have to ask… did you recognize the man who attacked you?”

Arthur closed his eyes. In truth, he didn’t recognize the creature who had attacked him, but he did recognize the man who had flung him into the sunlight, away from the monster trying to claw back into control. In the end, Arthur knew Christian had saved his life. Could he condemn him now?

“Mr. Crane?”

Behind Arthur’s eyelids, he saw the face of Jackie Jake and the broken body of the man on the sidewalk. Even if he could forgive Christian’s attack on himself, he could not let that monster inside him continue to kill.

Arthur opened his eyes and talked until he drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke, it was night. He was terribly thirsty, and his legs still hung in front of him like a bizarre sculpture. A quiet murmuring off to the left must be the nurses’ station. He reached for the bell to summon—

He was on the street, looking through eyes that were not his own. A brick tower loomed ahead of him. A church. In the middle of the tower was a door. A spill of light fell onto the dark front steps.

Weeping, he ran toward the light, moving with a speed beyond imagining. Traffic droned next to him, and far away a siren sounded. None of that mattered. He had to reach that tower. He had to get through that door.

But as he neared the church, a figure stepped into view, bathed in that warm glow from inside. It was a priest. Though the distance was great, whispered words reached his ear. “This is hallowed ground. Be warned, it is inimical to the curse within you. If you come, you will have but one choice. To join us or die.”

The strange priest’s words proved true. With each step, the strength of his limbs faded. It was as if the ground itself drew energy away from him. Heat rose through his feet. For a second it was wonderful, because he was so cold. But then it burned him cruelly.

Still, he did not stop. He lifted first one leaden leg and then another, fighting the heat and the weakness. He must reach that door, that priest. All depended on it.

He was now close enough to note the gothic design, etched in verdigris, on the tall doors. He spotted the priest’s Roman collar, made of old linen, not modern plastic. He staggered now toward that man. Despite his weakness, he knew this one was like him, cursed but somehow enduring.

How?

The priest stepped back, beckoning him inside.

He fell across the threshold and into a vast nave. Pillars and arches rose on either side of him, and far ahead candles burned on an altar.

On his knees now, he burned within the holiness found here.

Fire raged through his body.

The priest spoke behind him. “Be welcome, Christian.”

Arthur thrashed in his bed, still burning from his waking dream. A rope broke and dropped one of his legs. This new pain centered him, drawing him out of the flames.

A nurse in a white cap rushed into the room. Seconds later, a needle pricked his arm, and everything blessedly went dark.

Days later, he awoke again. His head was clear, but he felt terribly weak. The nurses tried to convince him that his vision of burning in the church was a side effect of the morphine or a fever dream secondary to shock. He believed neither explanation. Instead, he carried those last words inside him, knowing they’d be etched there forever.

Be welcome, Christian.

Arthur knew somehow he had been connected to his brother for that brief, agonizing moment, perhaps a gift born of the blood they shared. He also remembered Wayne’s description of the priest who had come looking for Christian. Was that the same priest, offering some form of salvation for Christian, a path he might yet follow?

Or was it all a bad trip, to use the vernacular of the youth thronging into San Francisco?

Either way, Arthur slowly healed. Bedridden for most of it, he used his downtime to dictate his new book to an assistant hired by the newspaper. Her name was Marnie, and he would marry her as soon as he could stand.

Following Arthur’s attack, the murders had suddenly stopped, but public interest had not waned. A year later, his book, The Orchid Killer, became an international bestseller. As far as the world was concerned, he had solved the case, even if the police had never apprehended Christian.

His brother had simply vanished off the face of the earth. Most believed he was dead or had possibly even killed himself. But Arthur never forgot his dream of crawling on his knees into a church, burning in that holiness.

He clung to his hopes that Christian yet lived.

But if he was right, which one had survived that church?

His brother or that monster?

Summer, present day

San Francisco, California

As the sun sank toward the horizon, Arthur brought the orchid to his face and breathed in its fragrance. The petals tickled his cheeks. He carried the blossom into his study. Books lined the walls, and papers covered his oak rolltop desk.

In the years after Christian’s disappearance, Arthur had spent most of his life traveling, reporting, and chasing down leads about savage killings and mysterious priests, trying to find his brother, or at least to understand what had happened to him. It was a passion that he had shared with Marnie, until her death six months ago. Now he wanted only to finish the work and be done with it.

With everything.

At last, at the end of things, he was close.

Several years ago, Arthur had uncovered rumors of a secret order buried deep within the Catholic Church, one that traced its roots to its most ancient days — a blood cult known as the Order of the Sanguines. He crossed to his desk and picked up a leaf from an old notebook, the edges ripped and curling. A photo had been taped to it. Someone had sent the picture anonymously to Arthur two years ago, with a short note hinting at its importance. It showed Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus, portraying Christ’s resurrection of a dead man. Arthur had marked it up, annotating his many questions about this dark order, of the rumors he had heard.

He let the sheet slip from his fingers, remembering the dream of a burning church.

Had his brother joined this order in the past?

He glanced at the orchid.

If so, why come for me now, Christian?

Arthur suspected the reason. It was stacked on his desk in a neat pile. Over the past decades, Arthur had gathered further evidence, enough to be believed, about this Sanguines cult within the Church. Tonight, his source — a representative of a group called the Belial — was scheduled to come and deliver the final piece of proof, something so explosive that the truth could not be denied.

Arthur picked at one of the soft petals of the orchid.

He recognized it as a threat, a warning, an attempt to silence him.

Arthur would not be intimidated. As the day wore on, he tried repeatedly to reach his Belial source — a man named Simeon — to move up their evening meeting, but he could never reach the man. By that afternoon, Arthur considered simply fleeing, but he realized that there was no point in trying to hide. He was already in too deep. Besides, a recklessness had settled over him since Marnie’s death — he just didn’t care anymore.

So he waited for the night, enjoying his favorite meal from an Italian restaurant down the street, complementing it with a bottle of his finest pinot noir. He saw no reason to skimp. If this was to be his last meal, he might as well enjoy it. He ate it in his kitchen while watching the sky turn orange behind the Golden Gate Bridge.

Finally, a knock sounded at his apartment door.

Arthur crossed from his study and peeked through the peephole. A man dressed in a navy blue suit stood out in the hall. His face and shorn black hair were familiar from a grainy photograph passed to Arthur at a bar in Berlin. It was Simeon.

Arthur opened the door.

“Mr. Crane?” The man’s voice was low and hoarse, with a Slavic accent that Arthur couldn’t quite place. Maybe Czech.

“Yes,” Arthur said, stepping aside. “You should come inside, quickly now. It might not be safe.”

This earned a soft smile from the man, possibly amused by Arthur’s caution. But the man did not know about Christian or the orchid.

As his guest entered, Arthur checked the hall outside and the stairs leading down to the old Victorian’s stoop. All clear.

Still, a chill ran up Arthur’s back, a prickling of the fine hairs on the nape of his neck, a sense of immediate danger. He quickly followed Simeon inside and closed the door behind him, locking the dead bolt.

Simeon waited in the foyer.

“Let’s go to my study.” Arthur led the way.

Simeon followed him and stepped to Arthur’s desk, staring around the room. His gaze settled upon the marked-up page showing The Raising of Lazarus. He motioned to that sheet.

“So I see you already know of the bloody origins of the Sanguinists,” Simeon said. “That Lazarus was the first of them.”

“I’ve heard fantastical rumors,” Arthur said. “Dark stories of monsters and creatures of the night. None of it to be believed, of course. I suspect the stories are there to scare people away from the truth.”

Arthur stared expectantly at Simeon, hoping to hear that truth.

Instead, Simeon touched Christ’s face on the page with one curiously long fingernail. “There is much about the Sanguinists that defies belief.”

Arthur did not know what to say to that, so he kept quiet.

Simeon scratched his nail down the notebook page. “Show me what you already know.”

Arthur handed him a folder of the manuscript he was working on, with notes scribbled to indicate where documents and pictures should be inserted.

The man riffled through the pages swiftly, too fast to truly read it. “You have passed this along to no one?”

“Not yet.”

Simeon met his eyes for the first time. His eyes were brown and fringed by thick lashes, handsome eyes, but what struck Arthur most about them was that they did not blink. The hair rose on his arms, and he took a step backward from the man, suddenly realizing the prickling danger he had sensed earlier had come from this man, not from some hidden threat beyond his apartment.

“You are close to the truth,” Simeon said, no longer hiding the menace in his presence, looming taller. “Closer than you know. Too close for our comfort.”

Arthur took another step back. “The Belial…”

“The Sanguinists defy us at every step, but that war must be kept secret.” Simeon stepped after him. “Our darkness cannot thrive in the light.”

The buzz of a motorcycle on the street distracted Arthur. He glanced toward the sound — and Simeon was upon him.

Arthur crashed painfully to the floor. Simeon pinned him there. Arthur struggled against him, but Simeon had an implacable strength that Arthur had only experienced once in his life — on the day Christian nearly killed him.

“You want the truth,” Simeon said. “Here it is.”

The man’s lips split to reveal sharpened teeth, impossibly long.

He flashed to that moment with Christian, suddenly remembering what he blanked out, what his mind would not allow him to fully see.

Until now.

There were monsters in the world.

Arthur redoubled his struggles, but he knew he was at his end.

Then a crash of shattered wood and glass rose from his bedroom. He pictured his window exploding. But he was on the third story.

Simeon turned as a dark shadow flew into the room, tackling the monster off Arthur. Gasping, Arthur crabbed on his hands and feet away from the fighting, backing into his study’s cold hearth.

The war raged across the tight room, too fast to follow, a blur of shadows, accompanied by flashes of silver, like lightning in a thundercloud. The battle smashed across his desk and crashed into his bookshelf, scattering volumes across the floor.

Then a feral scream, full of blood and fury.

A moment later, a head bounced across his wooden floor, spilling black blood.

Simeon.

From beyond Arthur’s desk, a shadow rose and shed its darkness. The figure wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, open, revealing the Roman collar of the priesthood. He stepped around the desk, his pale face scratched, bleeding. He carried two short swords in his hands, shining like liquid silver, marred with the same black blood as seeped across the golden hardwood floor.

Impossibly, the figure grinned at him, showing a familiar glint of rakish amusement in his green eyes as he sheathed the swords.

“Christian…?”

Beyond fear now, Arthur gaped at his brother. Despite the passing of forty years, Christian was virtually unchanged, no more than a boy in appearance compared to Arthur’s lined and aged face.

“How?” Arthur asked the mystery standing before him.

But Christian only smiled more broadly, crossed over, and offered Arthur his hand.

He took it, gripping his brother’s pale fingers, finding them cold and hard, like sculpted marble. As Arthur was pulled to his feet, he saw the old scar on his brother’s wrist, a match to his own. Despite the impossible, it was indeed Christian.

“Are you hurt?” his brother asked him.

How did one answer that when one’s life was unhinged in a single moment?

Still, he managed to shake his head.

Christian led him back to the kitchen, to the table where the remains of his last meal still sat. He settled Arthur to a seat, then picked up the empty bottle of pinot noir.

“Nice vintage,” he said, taking a sniff at the bottle. “Good oak and tobacco notes.”

Arthur found his voice again. “Wh… what are you?”

Christian cocked an amused eyebrow — a look that ached with the memory of their shared past, as perfectly preserved as the rest of his features. “You know that already, Arthur. You just must let yourself accept it.”

Christian reached to his leg and unhooked a leather flask. Branded into its surface were the crossed keys and crown of the papal seal. Christian took Arthur’s empty goblet, filled it from the flask, and pushed it back toward him.

Arthur stared warily at the glass. “Wine?”

“Consecrated wine,” Christian corrected. “Turned by the holy act of transubstantiation into the blood of Christ. It is what I’ve sworn to drink. It’s what sustains me and my brothers and sisters.”

“The Sanguinist order.”

“The blood of Christ allows us to walk in daylight, to do battle with those who haunt the shadowy corners of the world.”

“Like the Belial.” Arthur remembered Simeon’s sharp teeth.

“And others.”

His brother found another goblet from the kitchen, filled it, and joined Arthur at the table.

Arthur took a sip from his glass, tasting only wine, none of the supposed miracle it held. But for the moment, he accepted this truth.

Christian lifted his own goblet, drank deeply, then raised his glass. “Seems we’re blood brothers yet again.”

This earned a shy smile from Arthur.

Christian reached over and clinked his glass against Arthur’s.

“To you, my industrious and persistent brother. I told you before that you would make an excellent journalist.”

“You knew what I discovered.”

“I’ve never stopped watching you. But your efforts stirred up a hornet’s nest. There are those — even in my own order — who need secrets.”

Arthur remembered Simeon’s words about the Belial.

Our darkness cannot thrive in the light.

It seemed the Sanguinists needed those shadows, too.

“For your safety,” Christian said, “I tried to warn you.”

Arthur could still smell a slight scent of gardenias. “The orchid.”

“I had to be subtle, using a means of communication that only you would understand. I had hoped you’d abandon this line of inquiry on your own, but I should have known better. When you didn’t, I couldn’t let anyone harm you.”

“You saved my life.”

Christian grew momentarily pensive. “It was only fitting after you saved my soul.”

Arthur frowned at this.

Christian explained. “It was your love, our bond as brothers that finally broke me down enough to seek out the Sanguinists and what they offered, a path to service and redemption for my sins.”

Arthur flashed to the burning church, to the priest in the doorway.

Christian brightened again, straightening his spine. “So I saved your life, and you saved my soul… let’s call it a wash.”

Arthur asked other questions, got some answers, but others were denied him.

He slowly accepted this and the need for such secrets.

Finally, Christian stood. “I must go. You should check into a hotel for a couple of days. I’ll send someone over — someone I trust — to fix your window, to clean up the place.”

In other words, to get rid of the body.

Arthur followed him to the door. “Will I see you again?”

“It’s forbidden,” Christian said, his eyes a mix of sadness and regret. “I’m not even supposed to be here right now.”

Arthur felt a pang that threatened to break his already old heart.

Christian hugged him, gently but firmly. “I’ll always be with you, my brother.” He broke the embrace, placing his palm over Arthur’s heart. “Right here.”

Arthur saw that Christian held something under that palm, pressed to his chest. As his brother removed his hand, a square of stiff paper fell and fluttered toward the floor. Arthur scrambled to catch it, nabbing it with his fingertips.

As he straightened, he found the door open and Christian gone.

Arthur stepped into the hallway, but there was no sign of his brother.

He stared down at what he’d caught, a parting gift from Christian.

It was a black-and-white photo, slightly yellowed, crinkled at the corners. In the background was a rainy pane of glass, and in the foreground two grieving boys gazed into the camera together. Christian held the camera high, and Arthur leaned against him for support, two brothers, blood bonded never to part.

Christian must have carried the old photo all these years.

Now, it was Arthur’s.

To keep now and forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

James Rollins is the New York Times bestselling author of thrillers translated into forty languages. His Sigma series has been lauded as one of the “top crowd pleasers” (New York Times) and one of the “hottest summer reads” (People magazine). Acclaimed for his originality, Rollins unveils unseen worlds, scientific breakthroughs, and historical secrets — and he does it all at breakneck speed. Find James Rollins on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and at www.jamesrollins.com.

Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel mystery novels have won the Bruce Alexander and Macavity awards and have been nominated for the Barry and RT Reviewers Choice awards; her critically acclaimed novel, iDrakula, was nominated for the APPY award and listed on Booklist’s Top 10 Horror Fiction for Youth. She and her husband and son just left Hawaii’s sunny shores for adventures in Berlin. Find Rebecca Cantrell on Facebook, and Twitter, and at www.rebeccacantrell.com.

Content

James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell
Blood Brothers

ABOUT THE AUTHORS