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end of it.
    But the cave where I found her, not far from the ruins, revealed itself to be the entrance to a small crypt. Inside rested the remains of a young man, entombed with the weapons and finery of a Mongol noble. Genetic studies are under way to determine if the body might not be that of Genghis Khan’s grandson, the emissary the king of Shahr-e-Gholghola had murdered centuries ago that set in motion the events that would lead to the citadel’s downfall.
    But it was the manner of that young man’s death that keeps me sitting at my desk this winter morning staring at the neatly filled out report and wondering.
    According to Atherton’s stories, the Shansabani king had slain his daughter’s suitor by decapitating him after he discovered their planned elopement. And the Mongolian body in the tomb had no head.
    Could the emissary and the lover have been the same man? Had the king’s daughter fallen in love with the Khan’s grandson? Had that tragic love triggered the massacre that followed? Everyone always said that love led to good things, but it didn’t always. I find myself playing with my wedding ring again and make myself stop.
    I don’t know, but as I sit here, stuffing the reports in a folder, I remember more details. How Azar told me that leopards were the royal symbol of the Shansabani kings. How Farshad screamed about the girl being possessed by a djinn and hunted by ghosts.
    Was he right after all?
    With the opening of the tombs, had something escaped?
    Had the wisp of a long-dead princess slipped into the girl, seeking another to help carry her to her lost love?
    Had her father, still mired in anger and vengeance, possessed those two leopards, the royal sigils of his family, and tried to drag her back to the horrors hidden under Shahr-e-Gholghola?
    And in the end, had the explosions that resealed that tomb reburied his grave along with the bones of the leopards, ending the angry king’s ghostly pursuit of his daughter?
    Or were the pair of hunters merely leopards, not possessed by anything more than hunger, their aggression fueled by the toxic gas in their new den?
    And those voices. Had it just been the cats? I hadn’t been able to track down another Bactrian scholar, so no one but the professor had translated those eerie sounds into words. Maybe he was unhinged by his colleagues’ deaths or already affected by the gas from his earlier work at the dig site.
    I shake my head, trying to decide between the logical explanation and the supernatural one. Usually, I’m a logical guy.
    These crazy thoughts must be the aftereffects of all the gas I breathed in the cavern. But when I think back to the professor’s words, I can’t be so sure: Things happen out here in the mountains that you cannot believe when you are safe in the city.
    A knock at the door interrupts my train of thought, and I’m grateful for it.
    McKay comes in, steps to the desk. He carries a paper in hand. “New orders, Sarge. Looks like we’re shipping out.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œMasada, Israel. Some strange deaths reported following an earthquake out there.”
    I reach to the folder on my desk and close it, ending the matter.
    â€œI bet this assignment will be easier than the last one.”
    McKay frowns. “What’s the fun of that?”

 
    Read on for a sneak peek at
    The Blood Gospel
    an exciting new novel from James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell, featuring archaeologist Erin Granger, Vatican priest Father Rhun Korza, and Army Ranger Jordan Stone in his next adventure
    On sale January 2013

 
    Prologue
    Spring, AD 73
    Masada, Israel
    T HE DEAD CONTINUED to sing.
    Three hundred feet above Eleazar’s head, the chorus of nine hundred Jewish rebels rang out in defiance of the Roman legion at their gates. The defenders had sworn to take their own lives rather than be captured. Those final prayers, chanted to Heaven on high, echoed down to the tunnels