Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series by James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell

privacy, but she had seen enough people die to preserve Bernard’s secrets.
    Knowledge was power, and she would not let him hoard it.
    The topmost sheet was written in Latin. She skimmed the words, translating as she went. It seemed two strigoi had attacked a nightclub in Rome, killing thirty-four people. Such open attacks were unusual, almost unheard of in modern times. Over the passing centuries, even the strigoi had learned to conceal themselves and hide the bodies of their prey.
    But apparently that wasn’t true any longer.
    She read through the private report on the massacre and discovered an even more disturbing detail. Among the dead was a trio of Sanguinists. She swallowed at the seeming impossibility of that.
    Two strigoi had killed three trained Sanguinists?
    She moved the sheet aside and read the next report, this one in English. It described a similar attack on a military base outside of London, twenty-seven armed soldiers killed at their evening mess hall.
    Erin shuffled through the remainder of the pages. They documented strange and ferocious attacks across Italy, Austria, and Germany. She became so lost in the horrors of these accounts that she barely noted the office door swinging open.
    She raised her head.
    Cardinal Bernard entered, dressed in the scarlet robes of his station. With his white hair and calm demeanor, he could easily be mistaken for someone’s kindly grandfather.
    He sighed, nodding to his desk. “I see you’ve read my intelligence reports.”
    She didn’t bother trying to deny her actions. “They’re light on specifics. Have you learned anything more about these attackers?”
    “No,” he said as they exchanged places. He took his desk chair, and she returned to her seat. “We know their tactics are savage, undisciplined, and unpredictable.”
    “How about witnesses?”
    “So far, they’ve left no survivors. But from this latest attack, at the discotheque, we were able to obtain surveillance footage.”
    Erin sat straighter.
    “It is quite gruesome,” he warned, tilting his computer monitor toward her.
    She leaned forward. “Show me.”
    He opened a file, and soon grainy footage showed a handful of dancers moving around on a dark floor. Lights strobed, and though the footage had no audio, she could imagine the heavy bass beat of that music.
    “Watch these two,” Bernard said, pointing.
    He indicated two men, both dressed in dark clothing, at the edge of the screen. They moved slowly out onto the dance floor. One had white skin, one black. She squinted closer, studying the dark figure. The video quality was too poor to pick out features, but it seemed as if his skin drank in the light. His face looked unnatural somehow, more like a mask than human skin.
    As if the dancers sensed the hunters in their midst, the small crowd parted, keeping a ragged circle of free space around the two creatures. They were right to be wary. A moment later, the two strigoi lashed out, moving so quickly that their images blurred on the screen. She had never seen strigoi move at such speeds.
    In less than ten seconds, only the two strigoi remained standing. Broken and bloody bodies lay at their feet. Each figure picked up a wounded woman from the floor, slung her over his shoulder, and disappeared out of the frame.
    Erin shuddered to think what lay in wait for those poor girls.
    The cardinal tapped a key, and the image froze.
    Erin swallowed hard, thinking of the pain and fear those people must have felt in their final moments. None of them had stood a chance.
    “Are the police looking for these killers?” she asked.
    The cardinal moved his monitor back around. “They are searching, but they don’t understand what they’re hunting.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The police were never allowed to see this footage. As you know, we cannot allow proof of the existence of strigoi to be revealed to the world at large.”
    She sat back in her chair. “Then how can the people protect