by Wilson, Eric
“How you doin’ today?” asked a man with an assistant manager tag.
“Good. How’re you?”
“If it’s breakfast you’re lookin’ for, you’ve come to the right place.”
“I’m looking for a driver, actually.” She tilted her head and met his eye. “If you don’t mind, perhaps you’d do me the favor of pointing him out to me.”
“Don’t know that I can do that. We got lotsa people that pass through.”
“His name’s Zach. Zach Larkins.”
“He in some sorta scrape with the law? I don’t want any trouble.”
“Has he been in trouble before?”
“Who? Zach?” The assistant manager’s gaze scooted toward a corner booth, where a black man with curls of grey above his ears was cutting into a stack of pancakes. “Nah, he’s a straight arrow. Keeps to himself most of the time, just eats his food and leaves. Always tips good, though—which my waitresses, they appreciate.”
“So that’s him?”
A slight nod.
“Thanks for your help, sir.” Nikki threaded between the tables.
As she neared the corner, she found herself under scrutiny. The driver’s gaze was steady beneath a weathered brow, and his broad cheekbones were dotted with freckles. He placed both hands on the table, perhaps a subconscious gesture from his past to prove that he was unarmed.
“Zach Larkins? My name is Nikki.”
“How you do?”
“I don’t mean to disturb you, but I have a few questions if you don’t mind.”
“I’m in no hurry to go back out in that rain. How can I help, ma’am?”
“I’m the mother of the girl you hit a few days ago, in Chattanooga.”
“Ma’am?” He put down his fork and knife. “You mind repeating that?”
“My daughter’s the one who put the dent in your grille. She was walking across the street from Rembrandt’s, on High Street, and I’m told you were traveling down the hill from the museum.”
“I don’t want any problems. My record’s been clean all these years.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“I reported what happened to the police, and that’s God’s honest truth.”
“I know, Zach. I have a friend in the department.”
With that established, the man’s demeanor changed. He bent for-ward, pupils wide with concern. “Is your girl okay? I tried to help, but she wanted none of it.”
“That sounds like my Gina.”
“If there’s a hospital bill or anything, I’ll do my best to sort it out,” Zach said. “But you’re coming to the wrong person if you’re hoping to sue me. I’m not a rich man. Wish I was, wish I could do something, but that’s just the way it is and the way it’s always been.”
“Rest assured, that’s not why I’m here. Gina seems to be okay.”
“Not that I can make any sense of that.” Zach looked down into his orange juice, swirled the glass. “She should’ve been dead. I was squinting into the sun, and then there she was, just like that. By the time I hit the brakes, she was up and over my hood, leaving a crack in my windshield.” He took a deep breath.
Nikki took one of her own. “Go on.”
“Well, it scared me to my bones. I was traveling a good thirty-five, forty miles an hour. I’m not a young man, and I remember a time when hurting a white woman—no matter whose fault—why, that could be a fatal mistake, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Yes, I understand. So you stopped to see how badly hurt she was?”
“Did indeed. I slammed on my brakes and ran back up the street. Saw a person or two already ogling the scene. Well, your girl, she’d been tossed through the air and come down near the curb, twisted like a rag doll. She had blood in her mouth, just a bit. I wasn’t sure what to do. Had lots going through my mind. I don’t get to church as often as I should, but I know a miracle when I see one, and there’s no way on God’s green earth that girl should’ve survived.”
“What’d she do? Was she conscious?”
“She stood up.” Zach shook his head at the thought. “Got right to her feet.”
“Were there any visible injuries?”
“Sounds strange, I know, but I swear I heard bones popping back into place. She straightened up, her eyes all out of focus, and I told her she should wait for an ambulance. Told her she should sit down, and said how sorry I was. I hadn’t even seen her there. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me like I was a ghost, then pushed away and went lurching down the road.”
“And you let her go?”
“Tried to stop her, but she was having none of it. That’s when I saw the angel tattooed on her back—not that I was staring inappropriately, ma’am, but there it was—and I figured it was best to just leave her in the good Lord’s hands.”
“If only it were that simple,” Nikki said.
“I believe it is. Eternal life and salvation, free gifts from above.”
Nikki had faced this sort of simplistic reasoning in some of her sessions. “Zach,” she said, “that sounds a bit irresponsible. Don’t you think we each ought to do our part?”
“Oh, I won’t argue that. But anything I do, it’s just my way of saying thanks to the heavens above. There’s no need to go paying for a gift. Listen.” He reached into his pocket and pushed a business card across the table. “You call if there’s anything you need. I’ll try my best to help, and I do mean that sincerely.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.”
“And I hope you’ll accept my apologies for what happened. Never seen anything like it. Just glad to know your daughter’s all in one piece.”
Nikki hurried back through the deluge to her Acura. She locked the doors, gripped the steering wheel, and sank into her seat. As a mother, she’d always known her daughter was unique, but what were the ramifications of this?
She should’ve been dead . . . a miracle . . .
Sometimes Nikki, in darker moments, imagined her daughter following in her footsteps, wielding that same awful Power of Choice, corrupting the world about her and ushering in Final Vengeance.
Long ago, Nikki Lazarescu had sinned. A mere teenager herself, she’d crossed boundaries and destroyed her relationship with the man she adored. A man with immortal blood. Twins were birthed from their for-bidden love, but her son had been taken from her, and only Gina remained at her side.
Gina knew nothing of her sibling, of her bloodline.
For her own safety.
If the Collectors determined her identity and whereabouts, they might try to destroy her in hopes of cutting off the Nistarim.
To avoid detection, Nikki had moved Gina from Seattle and the Puget Sound area to Romania and now to Chattanooga. She had misled her daughter about certain facts—her birthplace, for example—though, again, it was all for her protection.
Was Gina herself immortal? Had she inherited an immunity to the grave?
Nikki had nursed the hope that such was true, yet never summoned the courage to test it. What was she to do? Poison her own child and wait for a recovery?
Except now, she had her conclusive answer.
Gina had walked away from a head-on collision with a moving vehicle. She had also demonstrated, through the decades, an anomalous aging process. She showed a clear resistance to the effects of time, physically developing maybe one year for every two that passed.
Nineteen sixty-five: Gina’s birth date.
Not that anyone would believe it.
These days, Gina’s peers were fighting the first signs of getting older, while she seemed to be growing stronger, healthier, and more mature. She looked fifteen, maybe sixteen, and her birth documents were forgeries based on a mother’s lies. Even the unavoidable brushes with medical professionals had stirred no suspicions. Based on her own academic progress, she believed she was nearing her nineteenth birthday.
Some ironic humor there. Most daughters acted like they were older than they were, and expected to be treated like adults.
Whereas Gina really was older. Already thirty-one years old.
Safe, hidden by the droplets that sluiced down the windscreen, Nikki mouthed: “What else was I to do, my dear child? I had to cut you. It was my only means of bleeding away your memories and blurring the years. It hurt me every time I did it—you have to believe me—but how else could I pay the price of my own iniquities? What could we do but share in the pain together?”
Nikki got no response. No pardon. Only drumming rain upon the roof.
Anyway, wasn’t introspection for the weak? Tickets for her Atlanta engagements were already selling out, and it would do no good to sit here, paralyzed with regret. By the light of her labors, she would forge ahead.
At least my daughter is alive. Doubly alive.
She tossed back her raven locks and turned the key in the ignition.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Late March 1997—Arad
Benyamin Amit had an itch to scratch.
Fixated on a TV advertisement, he gazed across a meal of bread, local cheeses, and meat set out by his devout wife, Dalia. The screen was his world, and there was his cure: a bottle of Orsus Beer in the hand of a Latin beauty.
She was the fantasy, the draw for the recreational drinker. For those more serious about their intake, she was a prop and little else.
“You think she’s pretty, Ben? Is that why you stare?”
“No.” He blinked. “That’s not it.”
Dalia lifted her chin and pushed away from the table. She wore a long flower-print apron over her dress. Her hair was pulled back in an austere bun. “I know ‘pretty’ when I see it, and that . . . that girl . . . she’s pretty. So there’s no reason to deny what I can see with my own eyes, you understand?”
He lifted a chunk of bread to his mouth. Took a bite.
“I know I’m not the woman you married, and I can accept that.”
Another bite.
“Can you, Benyamin? Can you face the fact that I am older, with gray hairs showing and these wrinkles on my neck? I am your wife, and I’ve served you dutifully, as before my Maker. Yet you mock me.”
“I do no such thing.”
“You gawk at this Romanian beauty and then say it is not so.”
“Is that the real trouble?” he asked. “Or are you upset that I moved you here?”
“ ‘From Arad to Arad,’ you said. As though it were an epiphany. As though you’d be a happier man. I followed you for that reason and no other, but now our son’s behind in his schooling. They treat Dov no better than a gypsy. All for what?”
He answered in monotone. “I needed a change.”
“If you were content, Ben, these sacrifices would be justified. Instead, you sit here moody and restless, ogling those younger bosoms.”
“Don’t tell me my own mind, woman.”
“Your eyes tell me more than enough.”
“After all these years, you think you know me? You don’t.”
Dalia snatched half-empty bowls of supa from the table. Her foot-steps shook the floor as she moved from the kitchen, to the bedroom, to the bathroom, and back. She got this way when she was upset, pacing away her sanctimonious anger. It’d become a pattern as far back as Israeli Arad, when she started adhering to the decrees of the datim, the ultrareligious, who fancied themselves ultrarighteous.
Benyamin didn’t doubt their sincerity, but he wondered what it accomplished. Either way, he knew this much: in a minute, Dalia would return to the table, mumble something about the garbage needing to be taken out, and he would do it to appease her for another day.
She was right about one thing. He was restless.
That itchy-itch-itch.
With the Amit family’s move three years ago, Benyamin had hoped to break up the routine. He knew their savings would stretch farther in Eastern Europe, and his volunteer experience with the Israeli Police had gotten him a job guarding a high-profile Romanian official here in Arad. He was paid well, with an occasional bonus in the form of premium Russian vodka, and he liked the prestige, the respect.
That all changed the first time he was ordered to kill a man.
In the ashes of Ceausescu’s regime, bribes were commonplace, dalliances and indiscretions. And he was expected to play along. The last individual who had refused found his wife dead the next morning, jostled from a crowd into the path of a city tram.
Seeing no escape, Benyamin did as he was told—with a Makarov pistol and a double tap to the target’s head.
And the little itch grew.
“There.” Dalia plopped into her chair, wiping her hands together.
“Have you calmed down?” His voice was patronizing.
“See for yourself. I know you better than you think, my dear husband. In fact, I’ve removed the temptation.”
“What are you up to?”
“You might understand if you peek into the kitchen.” She gestured. “It’s around that corner. I know you don’t go in there often.”
A grimace distorted his face. He folded and set down his cloth nap-kin, then strolled from the table. At the kitchen sink he found five bottles that represented his liquor stash from about the house, even the Grey Goose—a gift from a foreign diplomat, that he’d kept behind the panel in his closet.
Five bottles, emptied. Dalia had corralled them all.
Pain spiked through Benyamin’s leg, and he peeled down his sock to get a look at the scar on his heel. Since its infliction years earlier, on the camping trip in the desert wadi, this wound had nagged him. Now it was discolored and puffy, the way it got when his need became great.
Who did Dalia think she was? What gave her the right?
Rage sparked between his ears, but it was nothing compared to the gnawing in his gut that demanded he find a way to douse this thirst. His stomach clenched, curling his body like a huge fist.
That itch. Unrelenting.
Only one thing to assuage his ills.
As if on cue, the phone rang, and he grabbed at it to silence the noise. He was relieved to hear the voice of his supplier, a low-level secretary from city hall.
“I have a case for you,” she said. “Of tuica.”
“Tuica.”
“You must come quickly, and alone.”
“Tuica.” He fondled the word, touching his tongue to his teeth as he pronounced it like the locals: tsweeka. The very name conjured a flash of potent homemade spirits, plum brandy searing his throat with blessed heat.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but this time I need payment on the spot.”
“Not a problem, Helene. Where?”
“The Cetatea Aradului.”
“I’m on my way.”
New tapping methods . . . a demonstration . . . an unsuspecting male.
Erota remembered the promises from the previous gathering at the Cetatea Aradului, and she could only hope their fulfillment would stave off the cluster’s unrest. Some felt the move from Israel had been a mistake, and others questioned Ariston’s decision to send the House of Eros off to Ukraine while his own household stayed in Romania.
With Domna at her side, Erota rounded one of the citadel’s earth-works. The sisters wore matching sunglasses. Through personal experience along Kiev’s riverfront, they’d learned the irresistible draw of two leggy brunettes in Ray-Bans. Ukrainian men had paid the price for such distraction. A few open-minded women, as well.
“Hello,” Ariston said.
Though he stood in the darkness beside his wives Helene and Shelamzion, Erota picked him out with no problem. Her shades gave 100 percent UV-protection, and she wore them with the conviction of a monk bearing a crucifix. She’d read about the damage sun rays could do, and had chosen to preserve her eyes for superior night vision.
“How was the train trip?” Helene wanted to know.
“Long,” Domna said. “Next time, we should all meet in Kiev.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Erota said. “I’m just thirsty and cold.”
Helene rub
bed her forearm like a mother soothing a child. “You’ll be warmed soon enough, I can assure you.”
“You should also be warm at your next destination,” Ariston said. “Atlanta. Or ‘Hot-lanta,’ as I believe some call it. Of course, you’ll be bringing your own form of heat, won’t you, Erota?”
“I plan to, sir.”
A week from now, she would branch off from this cluster and rendezvous with her husband-to-be, at Kiev’s Boryspil International Airport. Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, the man longed for a Ukrainian bride to parade before his high-octane business pals—and he was going to get one.
Rumors of late had filtered through other clusters to Lord Ariston, hints of a woman and daughter who had slipped into the United States in early 1990. Word was that they were living somewhere in the South, under assumed names.
It would be Erota’s task to ferret them out. Or put the rumors to rest.
Either way, she spoke passable Russian and English, her papers were in order, her body statuesque.
A trophy wife?
The job was made for her. Or perhaps she was made for the job.
Dressed this evening in a tight silk top, a midnight blue jacket that barely reached her slender navel, and designer jeans that showcased her legs, she was eternally nineteen. This type of assignment was nothing new, considering the temple trade in which she and Domna had once indulged. In fact, she looked forward to being on display, even relished its irony. Hidden in plain view, she would have no difficulty finding trophies for her own Collection.
“We’ll expect regular updates,” said Helene.
“Absolutely. How’d we ever get by without telephones?”
“Can you imagine, dear?”
Ariston’s stout arms folded over his belly. “Helpful technology, I suppose, but it also benefits Those Who Resist. At least we won’t have to pass messages through rival clusters, letting them horn in on our strategies, seeking glory for themselves.”
“Juvenile,” Erota agreed.
From behind her, a set of high-pitched squeals caused her to jump. She turned and saw tiny Kyria and Matrona, arm in arm. They had hurried ahead of the other arriving Collectors, and they pretended to stumble in the shadows, milking the moment for attention.