by Wilson, Eric
A cool beverage on a hot day.
Stakes through the heart?
Oversized slivers to be removed with force.
Through the centuries, certain other Collectors had cloaked themselves in vampiric guises and used compliant humans to great effect. What was the infamous Elizabeth Bathory if not a bloodthirsty and sadistic countess who reveled in her role as a hostess? Collectors had even bedeviled the Scottish lowlands as Redcaps, roosted in Malaysian trees as langsuyaras, and haunted nearby Carpathian villages as strigoi mort.
Erota had unearthed similar lore from nearly every culture. While some of the life-leeches were urbane, others gruesome and obscene, all of them reflected the Collectors’ goals: to feed, breed, persuade, and possess.
However, only these from the Akeldama were truly undead Collectors.
So what if history had its spine-chilling tales based on a few corrupted souls? All of it worked in their favor. Fear was a catapult, crashing boulders through humans’ psyches, launching diseased corpses into their palace courtyards to drive out all that was noble.
People—so malleable, susceptible.
Those who lived in fear saw demons behind every bush, while those who trusted in logic alone were blinded to danger by their selfcongratulatory intellects.
Easy victims, all.
Erota sensed Ariston’s frustration in his hurried steps, in the way he bit into his thick bottom lip. As they moved around the Cetatea’s earth-covered casements, she drew alongside and handed him the roll sheet. “Sir? Is there some other task you’d like me to oversee?”
He shook his head.
“You seem preoccupied,” she said. “Perhaps a few minutes alone?”
“Hmm?”
“With me?”
“No.” His nut-brown eyes darted toward his wives, then caught a gleam of the setting sun as they turned back to Erota. “But thank you. I’m . . .” He cleared his throat. “I’m still baffled by our cluster’s failures in Arad and Kiev.”
“Failures?”
“We’re still no closer to the Nistarim. To be honest, I thought I was operating under some sort of special guidance when I first escorted my household to this city.”
“Special in what way?”
“I’m not sure. The coincidental nature of it all, I suppose. From the sands of Arad in Israel, to Romania’s Arad. From Jerusalem’s Golgotha, to—”
“The Hungarian Golgotha.”
Erota called up the fortress’s alternate name from her research. Now empty, these battlements had once held troops and prisoners of war, and in 1849, thirteen Hungarian generals had been hanged for their part in a revolution.
“Exactly,” Ariston said. “I took those as signs.”
“From the Master himself ?”
His brow furrowed.
“If it’s any encouragement,” she said, “we haven’t given up in Kiev. Hasn’t been easy, though. Many of the inhabitants still carry traces of Chernobyl’s radiation in their blood—barely drinkable. And even though Eros pushes us to search the land, to rake through the streets, we keep coming up empty-handed. As though they vanished into thin air.”
They: the mother and daughter from Cuvin.
“Did I misread the signs?” Ariston mused. “I ask myself that each day. Is it true that some among you are now talking of a return to Israel?”
“Well, the Nistarim’s roots are in Jewish legend, after all.”
“And you think some of them are hiding in the Holy Land?”
“Seems possible, sir.”
“Bah. They’ve probably moved as far from there as they can. Why, even here in Romania we have a good number of Jews. Some meet at the synagogue only blocks away, near Avram Iancu Square.”
“I’ve seen it. Still, the long Ukrainian winters are driving us batty, and the weather’s a lot better down south.”
“Bear with me awhile longer, if you will. I’m not deaf to the murmurings, and for this reason I have Megiste exploring new tapping methods for our repertoire. She plans to give a demonstration at our next meeting. An unsuspecting male. In the meantime, let the others squabble. We have work to do.”
“And if one doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat.”
“A functional phrase, to be sure. Good for heaping guilt on the lazy, and stirring arrogance in the industrious. Here,” he said. “Watch your head.”
Ariston and the other Collectors ducked into subterranean darkness and shuffled along stone-cold walls, stirring the susurrus of those who had given their lives for this land. With both the dead and the undead in attendance, the stage was set for a meeting of black sedition.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Chattanooga
Gina cracked her neck, used a handful of Kleenex to wipe away the sticky trickle from her ear. She felt only dull pain.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” her mother said.
“What’s there to tell, Nikki? I got hit by a delivery van, I think.”
They sat on opposite sides of the frayed couch, a garage-sale bargain from the north end of town. Gina leaned forward to adjust the boot buckles that had come loose in the collision. Middle-aged Nicoleta sat primly, as though afraid of touching her back to the ratted cushions. Over the dining bar, track lighting revealed Count Chocula chunks in a half-empty bowl of milk.
Although Gina’s boyfriend was down at the Chamber of Commerce, where he worked as a graphic designer, the scent of his CK One cologne permeated the apartment and provided emotional support.
This was her territory. Their territory.
“Where did this happen?” Nikki demanded. “Were you able to jot down a license plate?”
“You mean, while I was hurtling through the air? No.”
Her mother’s thin nostrils flared.
“I was coming out of Rembrandt’s, okay? What’s it matter? I’m tough. Didn’t you used to tell me a story of how I walked away from some horrible bike accident?”
“That was different. Not nearly as serious as this.”
“If you say so.”
“Look, you’re bleeding.”
“That used to be your fault,” Gina said. “But hey, I’m still here. I survived.”
“Don’t you think we should go down to the hospital and have you checked out? You never know with these things. Did anyone call the police?”
“Relax a little. Made it back on my own two feet, didn’t I? Anyway, I can’t afford to miss any work. I’ve got to be there in an hour.”
“Work is important.” Nikki leaned forward. “Please, though—allow me to at least bandage that ear for you. We should cleanse it to avoid infection.”
“I’ve already had enough mothering for one day. Jed can look at it later.”
Despite her mother’s disapproval, Gina had moved in with Jed Turney after graduation. She’d never clicked with kids at school, always the outsider, the girl stuck between two cultures. Always stuck in Nikki’s shadow.
Which was where Jed came in. A decent guy, a middle child, a creative sort, he understood her in ways few others did. He drew pictures for her. He saw life as a complex and beautiful thing, an enigma that spanned borders and nationalities. He complained every now and then that Gina stepped on his feelings, and she always told him to grow up and get a thicker skin.
They were good for each other.
Even with Jed’s position and Gina’s job as a tour guide at Ruby Falls, they barely scraped by. Rent and water bills were killing them. Satellite TV: canceled. Constant late payments on car insurance. Canned food and frozen vegetables.
They were making ends meet, though—on their own.
Nikki gestured at the bar. “Doesn’t he clean up after himself ?”
“The bowl? That’s mine.”
A flat-out lie. Gina harped regularly about tidiness, and this morning she’d even reminded Jed to clean up since her mother would be visiting.
“Why, child? Why do you do that? I fail to see the point.”
“Becau
se I like my cereal soggy.”
“No,” said Nikki. “Why do you cover for him? I warned you—quite emphatically, if I recall—not to tread this path of promiscuity. And yet here you sit, reaping what you’ve sown, surviving on generic foods and rice.”
“Sowing rice. Not so bad, in the global scheme of things.”
“Where do you get this contempt for the upbringing I gave you?”
“You’re the one who moved us here, to the land of the free, home of the brave. What’d you expect? Gotta live with the consequences.”
“Don’t you see, Gina, how you’re letting the gangrene eat at your soul?”
“Oops. Guess you missed a few spots, huh?”
“How is it that I’m incapable of reasoning with my own daughter? It’s a mystery to me, a bona fide mystery.” Her pink lips expelled a sigh. “And all the while, countless others come to me for enlightenment.”
Nikki had flourished since their arrival in the U.S. of Make-a-Buck A. While serving as a housecleaner for the city’s upper class, she had acquired a wealthy patron, a woman smitten with her stories of survival under communist hardship. Soon, she was on the speaking circuit, first giving inspirational lectures, then headlining seminars that sometimes netted her five figures in one weekend.
Releasing. Cleansing. Renewal . . . A Session with N. K. Lazarescu.
She used only the initials, to further avoid detection, and always addressed audiences with her raven hair pulled back in a purple-and-gold-threaded gypsy scarf. Not only did it disguise her appearance, it added to the impression of supernatural insight. They responded to her soft accent, the enviable beauty of this woman in her late forties, and her invigorating blend of spirituality and self-reliance.
How, Gina now wondered, was she supposed to combat her mother’s success? She swiveled on the couch, looked back over her shoulder, and said, “Have I shown you my tattoo?”
“Your what?”
“My tat.”
“You mean to tell me you’ve defiled your own body?”
“Just doing what you taught me, bleeding away the sin.” The pattern tingled as Gina lifted her shirt. “You like it, Nikki?”
“I think it’s bound to draw more trouble your direction.”
“C’mon. You’ve used those fear tactics long enough.” Gina hitched one leg under herself on the couch, then dabbed the tissue again at her ear. “I’m over it. I won’t keep hiding from something that doesn’t exist.”
“But they’re still out there, I’m afraid.”
“They. Who the hell are the mysterious they?”
“Watch your tongue, young lady.”
Gina bounded to her feet and moved into the kitchen.
Since the move to the States, she’d attended public schools and, to her mother’s chagrin, learned to speak like an American, even think like one.
Of course, Chattanooga was worlds removed from Cuvin. Crouched between tree-spiked ridges, this city boasted shiny cars on most of its streets, bright clothes and current styles. Newspapers criticized the government openly. And, for young Gina, there had been a novelty: black men and women with wide noses and full mouths and stories chiseled into their frank stares. That was how she’d realized not all Americans were as carefree as she once believed.
Still, she preferred this culture to her mother’s zealotry.
She had no interest in the tales that rumbled through Transylvanian villages, misguiding the uneducated, compelling some to drive needles into cadaver belly buttons so that bodies would stay in their graves, or to carve out and fry in lead skillets the hearts of corpses suspected of being vampires.
Or to bleed the insect bites of their only daughters.
Nope. Not her thing.
Yet she did recognize something humble, even honorable, in those who refused to lift high their own intellects as the measuring rods for all truth.
Her own physical senses had fallen short in codifying some of her experiences, and even though she would never admit it aloud—certainly not in front of Nikki—her attempts to reject the spiritual realm outright had failed.
A spark remained.
It flitted and danced, refusing to be snuffed out.
Gina dumped the bowl in the sink, then ran the faucet while scrub-bing dishes with the coarse side of the sponge. Her body ached from the collision, but she saw no reason to make a show of her pain.
“Do you realize you’re a target?” Her mother was talking again. “We all are. That tattoo, that despicable marring of your body—it only under-lines your ignorance. There are creatures out to destroy you, and you’ve joined forces with them by painting one on your skin.”
“Actually, it’s ink.”
“It’s an angel.”
“Like me, right? Your little angel.”
“Fallen angels.” Nikki’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s what they are. Since the beginning, they’ve plagued mankind. They’re Collectors, here to steal as many souls as possible from the hands of the Almighty.”
“What about the good angels? You know, those plump little babies with the harps and wings?”
“A misrepresentation. Greek mythology’s pollution of Christianity.”
Even with the strains of truth that seemed to play through Nikki’s words, it seemed to Gina there was something out of tune, not quite right. She couldn’t help but goad her mother along. “Are you saying only bad angels exist? We’re just stuck here on our own?”
“There are more good than evil, don’t misunderstand. But that doesn’t negate the corrosive power of the Separated.”
“‘Gotta keep ‘em separated,’” Gina sang.
“What?”
“It’s the Offspring. From this song called . . . Never mind.”
Nikki pursed her lips and shook her head.
Gina returned to the living room, where she feathered fingertips over warriors on her black walnut chess set. She still played, when she had the chance.
“So the good ones, the good angels . . . are they the Nistarim?”
“Darling,” said Nikki, “the Nistarim are as human as you or I. According to Talmudic tradition, they’re the Lamed Vov. Literally, the Thirty-Six. They walk in anonymity and humility, and it’s their presence that holds back Final Vengeance. If even one of them perishes without another rising to fill his place, we all suffer.”
“Yikes. Sounds bad.” Gina’s sarcasm was meant to disguise her inter-est. “And what’s that whole deal about the signs on their foreheads?”
“Where’d you hear of such a thing?”
Gina could still recall Cal’s interest as he’d studied her, and his vow to return: I’ll find you. Somehow. Someway.
“Is it true?” she persisted.
Nikki rolled her eyes. “Something similar to Harry Potter’s lightning bolt, is that what you mean? Or perhaps the mark of the beast?”
“Oh, here we go. Roll out the holy chitchat.”
“One day you’ll better understand these things you take so lightly.”
“Explain this, Nikki.” Gina shoved back a wave of hair to expose the symbol on her forehead. “Does this make me a devil child?”
“I don’t see anything.”
“I bet it’s why you were always cutting into me, huh?”
“Introspection is for the weak, Regina.” Her mother spoke the words in Romanian for emphasis. “A luxury we can’t afford. You’re a Lazarescu, born to work your fingers to the bone. Just as I teach in my seminars, you can only exorcise the darkness through the light of your own labors.”
“Even if I’m carrying the big, bad, nasty mark?”
“You’re speaking nonsense, I tell you. There’s nothing there.”
Irritated, Gina dropped her gaze to the chessboard. Was she losing touch with reality? She’d lived for years with the mark, even expended energy trying to conceal it, yet her boyfriend Jed had told her the very same thing: Sweetheart, there’s nothing there.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
A Truck Stop Off I-75, Georgia
Nikki Lazarescu sat in her Acura NSX, beneath signage that flickered neon through the pelting rain. She was en route to Atlanta, on a preparatory trip for some upcoming seminars, but her reasons for stopping at this diner were more personal.
Should she go in?
Behind large windows, rough-and-tumble men forked hash browns and scrambled eggs into mouths stained by Tabasco sauce. She knew they would turn to stare. Like leeches, their eyes would wriggle toward her and sniff out the wounds she had worked so hard to conceal.
She needed details, though, about what had happened. Who had smashed into her daughter outside of Rembrandt’s Coffee House? How had Gina walked away with only minor injuries?
After earlier inquiries at the espresso shop, Nikki had called in a favor with a local policewoman, who’d pointed her to a specific freight company and the driver who might have some answers for her. His delivery van was now parked here in this lot.
Nikki had rolled past a few minutes ago, confirming the registration and the name painted on the door: Zach Larkins. The sight of the dented front grille and bent hood ornament had sickened her.
Her poor, precious girl.
Setting her jaw, she stepped from the Acura, gathered her jacket around her neck with one hand, and jogged through the downpour toward the diner. She wiped her feet on the doormat inside.
And here came the stares.
Wherever she went, these leeches managed to find her, attracted to her shame. She’d been shaped—or misshapen—by her encounters with guilt. Not only had she bedded down with it, she had borne its terrible offspring and then done all she could to sever herself from its clutches.
Could any good come from airing her wrongs?
No, not that she could see. Instead, she strode through each day with shoulders pulled back and chin jutted forward, attempting to hide all that was evil within by bettering herself and those around her.
Releasing. Cleansing. Renewal . . .
Her seminars gave her financial wings, while also providing the means to buy back that purity she had discarded. She reasoned that if she had the power to destroy, then she also had the power to heal. This was irrefutable in her mind, and she’d built the last few decades upon that precept.