by Wilson, Eric
“You seem upset, Gina.”
“About what? No, I—”
“Hello.” The German man came alongside, voice booming and friendly, a daypack in hand. “Vee also haf places like this in my country, Gina. Sehr schön. You haf lunch break soon? Vee can sit down, I buy you Big Mac, and vee talk about it, ja?”
Hitting on a pregnant woman? What was up with that?
“I’m sure it’s nice,” she said. “C’mon, everyone, let’s move along.”
Gina eased from the girl’s olive-skinned touch, but the chill of those fingers clung to her forearm for the rest of the tour, accompanied by a faint, briny odor. She checked her arm two or three times, thinking the brunette had taken hold of her again, only to find the girl standing ten yards away with a rapt, haunting stare.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
Soimos Castle
Benyamin watched the two rounds plow into the creature’s gut.
At the shooting range, he’d witnessed the aftermath of fired 9x18mm slugs. They chewed through targets and left no doubt about their deadly intentions. Of course, he had never seen the projectiles’ actual paths.
Now, in the gothic confines of this centuries-old Transylvanian citadel, in this moment of imminent danger, his senses kicked into overdrive. The human mind was a thing of wonder. Time became an abstract entity, sliced into segments, split again into thinner ones—frames to be studied from a reel of film.
The spent cartridges ejected over his right shoulder.
The rounds spit from the Makarov’s mouth and spiraled forward.
The apparition that was a man, that wasn’t a man, couldn’t be a man, rushed forward in great clopping strides, while the fish tails of moonlight flapped in his beard, and the gleams of his irises intensified.
The pair of Russian-made rounds punched through his chest, lifting and slowing him, so that in this freeze-frame mode, it appeared he was vaulting, almost flying, over rock slabs and patches of grass. The skin sucked tight around the wounds, puckering, oozing blood. His bounds turned into a run, into a jog, a walk—
And then he stopped.
“Never been shot by a gun before,” he said.
“Most people don’t live to tell about it,” Benyamin said.
He waited for the apparition to fall, a victim to the laws of physics and nature. But the man still stood there. Perhaps he was a steroid-riddled athlete, or a hyped-up drug addict, or a person of abnormal strength and pain tolerance.
Or, as Nickel had asserted, one of Jerusalem’s Undead.
The man drove hairy-knuckled fingers with long tapered nails through one of the holes in his sweater, searched around in his chest cavity, then brought into view a flattened slug dripping with bodily fluids. He studied the object, sniffed at it, and touched it to his tongue.
Undead. Yes, Benyamin decided, that had to be the right answer.
The Makarov’s magazine held six more rounds, and Benyamin fired them all with short trigger squeezes.
He thought about his wife and son—so many regrets. Would he and Dov ever get to go on their camping trip?
He thought about Nickel and Those Who Resist, and wondered how things might’ve gone if he had partnered with the man. A potent team? Surely, though, Nickel could find others to recruit.
I’m still here firing, still kicking. I’m not dead yet.
Benyamin turned to run. Forget the expensive Swarovski scope and rifle. Who cared if he was missing a sock and a shoe? He knew his only hope now was to outdistance this unholy manifestation, maybe hide some-where down near the river, or find a place beneath the foliage or in a mud bank.
Keep moving, keep moving.
But his aggravated foot rejected his commands. The appendage dragged the soil like a rotted tree stump. He could barely move.
From behind came none of the unearthly growls or werewolves’ howls or bat screeches that were supposed to go with this scenario. It was eerily peaceful.
Only thudding steps, closing in.
So Nickel had been right about these killers from the Field of Blood. Benyamin had no idea where the others were, but he knew eleven dwelled right here. Down this hill. He also realized the woman he’d seen through the scope, entering the Totorcea house, was a twelfth revenant. She was the one he’d met last year on the Cetatea chapel’s doorsteps, the one who’d directed him inside for his case of beloved tuica.
Had she poisoned him then? Done something to the alcohol? Sure, his infection had started years prior, but was she the one who had triggered and turned it into something hideous?
It seemed they had been playing him all along.
Mammoth hands caught Benyamin by the upper arms, dragging him down. Fingers dug through his coat, latching into the skin with razoredged nails. The beard scraped over his neck like steel wool.
“I never gave you an answer,” the revenant said.
“About what?”
“You offered a drink, and I would love one.”
“Here you go,” Benyamin said, producing the flask from his pocket.
The assailant swatted it away.
Megiste had been warm in the thatched-roof house, with the crackling logs in the stone fireplace and the lingering smell of muschi. At Eros’s bequest, she had trekked with him toward the warehouse and left her fur coat behind. She shivered in the moonlight, her skin more ghostly than usual, almost translucent.
“There it is again,” Eros said. “Gunshots.”
“Maybe Barabbas found the intruder Ariston spoke of.”
“But he doesn’t carry a gun.”
“Doesn’t need to, does he? He’s a hulk of a man, if I’ve ever seen one.”
Eros studied her expression. “He’s been a faithful servant to the cluster.”
“Faithful? Why, what a tedious word.”
“Come. You look cold.” He draped an arm over her shoulder, guiding her through the warehouse’s wooden door in its sliding track. “Let’s find something to take the evening chill off. I’m sure Barabbas will be along shortly.”
“He can warm me, if he likes.”
“I have a better alternative,” said Sol, from inside the building.
Ariston’s oldest son stood beside a wheeled hay cart, his hook nose and hooded eyes aimed at them. An electric fixture dangled from an overhead girder and spotlighted the middle-aged woman laid out in the cart.
Dalia Amit was motionless. Twin scarlet dribbles ran from her pudgy arm, indicating the location of Sol’s anesthetizing bite and staining the pale-yellow straw that was to be her deathbed.
“What’re you up to?” Eros demanded. “And where’s the boy you mentioned?”
Sol ignored the household leader’s questions, despite the fact Eros was the cluster’s second in command. Already, Sol was preparing the emblems of blessed blasphemy—a scabbed wafer torn from the woman’s armpit; a thorn extracted from the pus-filled opening.
“Where is the boy?” Eros repeated. “If he’s here, it would be in our best interest to guarantee that he, too, is infested.”
“This woman, she wrestled with me and allowed the little rodent to scurry off.”
“Did I give you instructions to start tapping her?”
“She’s sustenance for our families, collectively and individually. Is there a reason I’m beholden to your every whim as it pertains to my own feedings?”
“She’s been visited before, on numerous occasions. If you take much more, there’s the possibility it would kill her. We need only enough to erase whatever memories she has of this place.”
Sol’s finger flexed around the wooden rail of the cart.
“Sol,” Megiste said, “I think the concern Eros has is that Mrs. Amit remain a long-term resource for the House of Ariston. We would all adore depleting these humans till there was nothing left, I understand. But we have to ration ourselves.”
“I’m an adult. I’m tired of relying upon Ariston’s or his”—Sol stabbed a finger toward Eros—“weak decisions.”
/> “He’s your superior. You would be wise to hold your tongue.”
Sol wiped a hand over his mouth. With a deep breath, he took hold of the vine at Dalia’s underarm and tugged—thwapp, thwapp, thwapp. The tangle of withered taproot popped loose, thorn by thorn, and coiled in the straw. He snapped off the first thorn, turned and glared into Eros’s eyes, then gulped down its contents.
Megiste found her own desire stirred by this greedy display. Her nails began to elongate. She was thirsty—powerfully, irresistibly thirsty—after her overland journey to this vineyard. Her skin was cold, her limbs low on life force, and these joined factors spurred a bloodlust that seemed now to have a focal point.
“Eros?” she said.
“I think it’s time,” he concurred. “My patience has worn thin.”
Far away, in Kiev, Megiste and Eros had weighed the options of striking out as a household on their own, forming a cluster independent of and unhindered by the House of Ariston’s infighting. Sol’s brazen dis-respect only underscored their concerns. During the sudden banishment of Salome, they had also witnessed Ariston’s capacity for distinguishing between his host’s emotions and his Collector ideals. Surely, he would understand.
“Time for what?” Sol sneered.
Megiste took one step toward Ariston’s insolent son and slashed his throat with her lethal set of nails. The wound reached through to his spine. Sol, reliant on his protected status as the cluster leader’s firstborn, seemed stunned by this abrupt punishment, pulling both hands to the gaping incision, then sagging to his knees on the warehouse floor.
Blood pumped from the opening, geysers of stolen vitality not to be wasted.
Principle: The strong Collector is encouraged—nay, commissioned—to prey upon the weaker . . .
Principle: The leader will . . . banish any Collector that displays mutinous intentions.
“Will Lord Ariston question our actions here?”
“You heard him voice his frustrations,” Eros said. “I shouldn’t be surprised if he thanks us for doing him—doing the cluster, as a whole—a favor. Are you thirsty?”
Megiste smiled.
Eros, wearing his own silken grin, knelt to take the first drink, and the priestess joined in. She tasted the dreams and nightmares of those whose existences Sol had fed upon. She felt liquid spirits squirt between her teeth, warming her, working their way through her ashen frame. There was nothing but the pulsing in her temples, the hammering of the blood, soothing her migraine and shutting out all other concerns.
When she disengaged at last, she realized Eros had disappeared.
She widened languorous eyes and spotted the leader’s feet dangling over the edge of the hay cart. He had dived into another meal, his hand clasped around Dalia’s prickly vine, with depleted thorns dotting the straw about him.
“I guess Ariston’s son wasn’t enough for the two of us,” Megiste said, still giddy.
No response.
She thought she heard the rustle of straw off in the shadows along the far wall, but she figured rats were to be expected in a drafty facility such as this.
“And to think, Eros,” she said, “that I was the insatiable one.”
Not a word.
“Where’re your table manners?” she joked. “Sir, I’m speaking to you.”
His feet didn’t move.
Megiste let go of Sol’s empty shell. He fell backward, his left shoulder cracking against, then sliding down the curved wagon wheel.
She grasped the rail of the cart and pulled herself up. She looked over the edge and found that Eros also had been relegated to emptiness, to the Restless wanderings that all Collectors feared.
A rusty metal tent peg had been driven into his skull.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
Chattanooga
“You are immortal, Gina.”
“As in, ‘I’ll live forever’ and all that junk?”
“Ja,” the man said in German. “I mean, yes.”
“Yikes. In that case, I should pay more attention to my diet.” Gina swabbed a french fry through the ketchup on her paper plate. “Honestly? My mother’s real big on that religious mumbo jumbo, so it’s sort of burned me out.”
“Some people, they never quite get it.”
“Hey, you can’t judge me by the—”
“I’m talking about her.”
“Oh.”
Gina nibbled on the fry, still bewildered by the identity of this man who had been down in the caverns, who had sounded like a German tourist, and who even now carried himself with a continental flair. Why had she agreed to have lunch with this Mr. Schaefer?
Earlier, he had stepped in and deflected the prying questions of the girl with the reptilian stare. That was a point in the guy’s favor, right? And he’d asked only for a chance to share lunch with Gina at these public picnic tables by the Ruby Falls parking lot. Nothing too creepy about that. The hill here did offer some nice glimpses of Chattanooga below.
None of this had convinced Gina to accept his offer, though.
She had a husband. And a baby in the oven. And tour guides were discouraged against off-hours interaction with attendees.
There was one thing he had said that hooked her: I have a message for you, from your friend in Borsa.
Borsa? A message from Cal the Provocateur?
It was so outlandish that she had to find out if it were true. Gina took a slow breath and felt her baby settle inside. She would’ve discounted Schaefer’s claim, except no one else would’ve even known to mention that obscure Romanian town.
Still, best to play it safe.
She hardened her gaze and said, “Mr. Schaefer, if this is your way of hitting on a married woman, you are out of luck, pal. I’ve got a good man, and he would tear you to pieces if—”
“I get it, Gina. Read you loud and clear.”
“Okay, you’ve got the American accent going on now. Very smooth.”
“Sorta like changing hats for me,” he said.
As if to demonstrate, he removed his walking cap and set it on the picnic table. His hair was black, with tufts of gray in his sideburns. His skin had the tanned look of a wealthy European, one who spent winter months in Cairo or Eilat. Only his cerulean eyes hinted at Germanic heritage. Gina recognized such things from her overseas childhood, as well as her daily interaction with international tourists.
Schaefer shrugged. “I’m fluent in more languages than I can count. Enough to make your head spin. Let’s see . . . Ancient Greek and Aramaic, Italian, German, Mandarin, a bit of Farsi—”
“Right,” Gina said. “Because you also are immortal.”
He said nothing.
“You’ve had lifetimes to learn it all, I bet. A real man of the world, soaking in knowledge like a sponge. Must come in handy with the chicks. I mean, you talked me into lunch, right?”
“Fast food?” He thumbed the soggy meat patty in his burger basket. “This hardly counts. You want the good stuff, you should visit a Brazilian churrascaria.”
“Speak Portuguese too, do you?”
“Enough to get by.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Not like I can prove you wrong.”
“Try me in Romanian.”
“You think you’re up for that?”
Cool and casual, he cupped his hand and waved it toward himself.
“Fine then.” She asked him how he was doing. “Ce mai faci?”
“Bine.” Good.
“Ah, too easy. How about this?” Gina planted an elbow on the table. “Intoarce-ti fata la dreapta stinga pentru ca soarele sa nu-ti bata in ochi.”
He turned his head to his left, avoiding the sun as she had suggested. She’d intentionally steered him wrong, however, and he blinked as the mid-day glare off of a parked car stabbed at his eyes.
“You’re wearing contacts,” she said. “I can see the edges of them.”
“But are you convinced? By my Romanian, I mean?”
“Are your eyes real
ly blue?”
“Why so nosy? Can’t a guy pass on a message without an interrogation?”
“You come talking and acting like you’re German. Then you switch to English. You imply that you know friends of mine in Romania.” Gina leaned forward. “And, as if that’s not strange enough, you decide to take it up a notch and tell me I’m immortal.”
“You are,” he said. “That’s what this is really all about.”
“See, the thing is, I knew that already. Now I’m just bored by the whole deal. I mean, I regularly pass through walls and catch bullets with my teeth, but it’s lost all its excitement. Skydiving’s not as thrilling when you know you can’t die doing it.”
“Man, you gotta be kidding. That’s what makes it so much fun.”
“You, buddy boy, are out of your stinkin’ mind.”
“Yeah? I’ve been told that before.”
Gina started to rise from her bench. “Nice chatting. Back to the grind for me.”
Schaefer crossed one leg over the other, glanced at his slim-faced wristwatch, and said, “You’ve got twenty-one minutes left. You wanna hear this or not? And, oh, if you really wanna know . . . my eyes are green.”
“Show me.”
“Right here?”
“Or I’m walking.”
“You’re no pushover. That’s good.” He ducked his head, squeezed his fingers around his contacts till they popped loose from his corneas. He flicked them to the ground, then edged forward and lifted his gaze. From the side, sun rays highlighted every speckle of gold in his deep green irises. “Look familiar?”
That voice . . . his minty cool breath swirling over her . . .
Cal? In Chattanooga?
After eight-plus years without communication?
Gina rocked back from the table, her hand toppling the cup of Sprite. She grabbed napkins and started mopping up the mess, her downturned eyes wide and scared and confused. She saw liquid dripping onto the JanSport pack tucked by his seat, and she nudged it to the side with her foot. It was heavy.
“My hair’s still yellow-blond underneath,” he said. “But I look older like this. A little gray does the trick. Gotta keep changing up the look, you know.”