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silver-plated KA-BAR dagger strapped to his ankle.
    “One of the strigoi must have survived the attack,” Sophia said.
    Baako glanced to the tunnel. “It must have fed on the rats until it was strong enough to dig its way out.”
    “Maybe it wasn’t a strigoi ,” Jordan said, his heart thudding in his throat as a sudden realization rose. “Help me search the bodies.”
    Sophia cast him a quizzical look, but the two Sanguinists obeyed. One by one, they examined the faces of the dead.
    “He’s not here,” Jordan said.
    Baako frowned. “Who’s not here?”
    Jordan pictured the boyish face of his former friend, someone whom he had trusted wholeheartedly, only to have that confidence betrayed in this cavern.
    “Brother Leopold,” Jordan mumbled to the darkness. He stepped to a spot on the floor, where blood still stained the rock. “Rhun stabbed Leopold right here. This is where he fell.”
    His body was gone.
    Baako swung an arm to encompass the room. “I already checked the space. The earthquake collapsed all the other passages.”
    Jordan shone his light toward the narrow tunnel. “So he made his own.”
    Jordan closed his eyes, again seeing Rhun giving Leopold his last rites, Leopold’s blood spilling into a huge pool under his body. With such a mortal wound, how had Leopold managed to survive, let alone find the strength to dig himself out? There couldn’t have been enough sustenance in that pile of rats.
    The same question must have been on Sophia’s mind. “The tunnel is at least a hundred feet long,” she said. “I’m not sure even a healthy Sanguinist could claw through that much dirt and stone.”
    Baako knelt beside the bloodstain on the stone floor, taking in its expanse. “Much blood was spilled. This brother should be dead.”
    Jordan nodded, coming to the same assessment. “Which means there’s something we’ve missed.”
    He returned to the tunnel, studied the cavern, then began to slowly walk in a grid pattern across the room, looking for anything that could explain what had happened. They moved bodies, checking beneath them. Jordan even dropped to his hands and knees and examined the old crack in the floor by the altar, discovering a thin gold line where it had sealed.
    Sophia squatted next to him and passed her brown hand over the entire length of the crack. “It looks closed.”
    “That’s good news, at least.” Jordan straightened, cracking his head on the bottom edge of the altar, and knocking his helmet askew.
    “Careful there, soldier,” Sophia said, hiding a small smile.
    Jordan reseated his helmet. As he did so, his headlamp glinted off two pieces of what looked like glass, green as a broken bottle of beer, resting in the shadow of the altar.
    Hmm . . .
    He slipped on a pair of latex gloves and picked up one of the two pieces. “Looks like some sort of crystal.”
    He held it higher. In the lamplight, rainbows of light reflected from the broken surfaces. He examined the shattered edge, then returned the piece next to the other one. The two pieces looked as if they’d once been a single stone, about the size of a goose egg, now broken in two. He fitted the halves together, noting that the stone appeared to be hollowed out inside, like an egg.
    Baako stared over his shoulder. “Have you seen it before? Maybe during the battle?”
    “Not that I recall, but a lot was going on.” Jordan rolled the object to examine it from every angle. “But look at this.”
    His gloved fingertip hovered over lines imbedded in the crystalline surface. They formed a symbol.

    He glanced to Sophia. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
    “Not me.”
    Baako merely shrugged. “Looks somewhat like a cup.”
    Jordan realized he was right, but maybe it didn’t just represent a cup . “Maybe it’s a chalice.”
    Sophia cocked a skeptical eyebrow toward him. “As in Lucifer’s Chalice.”
    This time he shrugged. “It’s at least worth investigating.”
    And I know a certain gal