by Wilson, Eric
“What man?”
“The one who came to the door earlier.”
“He was simply passing through. There’s no reason to speak of him.”
Gina touched her fresh wound, wondering if she should press the issue. She assumed her mother was oblivious to her eavesdropping, which meant it would be better not to ask about the gift the man had left.
What could it be?
“He had pretty eyes,” Gina heard herself blurt out.
Nicoleta lifted her chin, blinked twice.
Gina knew then she had pushed too far, nudging up to another off-limits subject, thus risking an angry backlash.
“I’ll go get water for dinner,” she said.
Minutes later, she stood at the village well with small, roughened hands clutching the crank. Though towns such as Ghioroc, to the south, offered indoor plumbing, this age-old chore still played out here in Cuvin. She planted her feet, leaned back, and strained against the metal bucket’s weight.
Hard work was always rewarded. Wasn’t that what she’d been taught?
The crank tore open a blister on her thumb, and a moan escaped from her lips. She clamped her mouth shut. What would her widowed mother think if she caught her daughter making a show of such menial labor? Wasn’t a woman’s job to serve without complaint?
Gina rocked back to maintain the crank’s circular motion. Her dress tugged against her thin rib cage.
Although she embraced this task, she wasn’t deaf to rumors of other countries where water flowed from spigots all day long, where electricity was reliable and food was plentiful.
Pebbles shifted behind her. Footsteps.
Jolted from her thoughts, Gina let the crank slip and the rope unspooled in a wild rush. The bucket’s spaa-looosh echoed up through the shaft.
“If that’s you, Teo . . .”
No reply.
Well, she wasn’t going to let that boy get the better of her. He’d won a kiss, but that didn’t mean he could sneak up to frighten her. She grabbed the crank again. “You made me drop it. I hope you’re happy. Now leave me alone while I finish my chores.”
“Young lady, that’s no way to address an elder.”
The voice belonged to Teo’s uncle and made Gina uneasy. Vasile was known for meandering between Cuvin’s brick-and-mud homes with ears bent for dirty secrets and eyes angled for female flesh. Though he was a communist prefect, Nicoleta had warned Gina about this one, told her to stay clear.
She looked back over her shoulder. “Forgive me, comrade. Buna seara.”
“Go on with your work, young lady. Of course, considering your age, I suppose you could use my help.”
“I’m a woman.”
“Yes.” The word rattled in his throat like the purr of a sickly cat. “I can see that you are. I still think you might be grateful for a hand.”
“No, I—”
Concealed by the night, his arms wrapped around from behind and large hands moved over hers. He smelled musty, like damp animal fur. Gina’s throat tightened but she made no sound, and together they drew water from the well.
“See there? Much easier.”
She lowered her head.
“What? No thanks?”
“I must go,” she spit out. “My mother’s waiting.”
“Nicoleta? A severe woman, that one. Very proud. She’d be disappointed to think that her daughter needed my assistance. I won’t tell, if you won’t.”
The prefect’s odor clung to Gina. She felt sick to her stomach.
“La revedere,” she said in farewell.
She tossed her hair and turned, grabbing the bucket from the rim of the well and deliberately banging the metal load against his arm so that bone-cold water doused his sleeve.
Vasile’s expression stiffened before melting into sly approval. “Bine. Very good. Cuvin has enough weak women as it is.”
Gina marched off, letting the sounds of her dress swish away his words.
“Da,” he called. “It’s good to see this toughness from a little girl.”
Her eyes narrowed. Next time she would let the bucket swing lower, harder. Next time Vasile would see just how tough a little girl could be.
Later that evening, she happened upon the Provocateur’s gift.
She’d delivered the water to her mother and gone out to offer a bowl to Treia. She ran a hand over her dog’s head, scratched behind his ears. Earlier, with her own money, she had picked up a tin of oil-packed mackerel at the market, and she peeled it open now so that Treia could dig in. She listened to him snuffle with excitement while eating. He needed her, and she liked that.
When he was done, Gina moved around the corner of the house and dropped the tin into the half-full garbage can.
Moonlight reflections caught her eye. Something small and metallic. And glimmers of red.
A matching set.
She reached down and pincered the objects between her fingers.
Though she’d never seen them before, she was convinced they had been left for her by the afternoon visitor, only to be tossed out by her mother.
A stranger’s kind gesture? Or did the Provocateur know tomorrow was her birthday?
She looked away as she wiped the items on her sleeve. It was only right to wait. Just a few more hours. She clutched her discovery in a bronze-skinned fist and slipped back inside.
After midnight, she would take a closer look.
CHAPTER
SIX
Jerusalem
Lord Ariston’s spine crackled as he rose to full height. How were the other cluster members faring?
The cavern’s dim light gave no immediate clues. On the floor beside him, he noticed sections of a large, orange-painted ossuary, and he remembered selecting that pigment from a Negev artist’s palette, in the days of Herod and Vespasian. The bright color belonged to the box designed for his brute of a youngest son.
Natira . . .
The boy had lived well into his thirties before falling victim to a Roman sword. He’d never married. He’d fought bravely under Josephus at the seige of Jotapata, and been lain to rest with only sentimental tokens in hand.
Where was Natira now? No sign of him.
Ariston scooped up a coin from the rubble. Its unfamiliar lettering circled the shape of a cross. Very peculiar. It was like no currency he’d seen during his days in Jerusalem. Had someone else managed to infiltrate this space?
He set aside his musings and watched as the others began climbing naked from their chosen ossuaries. Among them he noted hook-nosed Sol, his oldest son, and two of his daughters, demure Shalom and darling little Salome. Then he was joined by his first wife, wary but submissive Shelamzion.
Glorious as the sensation could be, touch was also capable of turning one’s stomach, and he cringed from the brush of her arm. Oh, how he hoped his second spouse was in the adjoining chamber.
Helene. Mother of Natira.
She’d known how to stir his desires, and already he was anticipating the moment when they could indulge in pleasure once more. Or was that solely the yearning of this Collector within?
As if it made any difference. Either way, their actions would be as one.
Such activity would have to wait, of course. They had things to do.
The majority of his cluster had already repositioned the lids on their graves, per his instructions to leave things undisturbed. As for his own burial box, it was decimated. What of it? He was their leader, and he’d done as he saw fit.
“Follow me,” he said. Or at least he tried.
His jaws and tongue worked at the words, but his vocal cords were in need of wetting. He sucked on the insides of his cheeks until saliva formed.
The others waited. In their collective memories, he was the figure-head and they would defer to him. With hazel eyes round and desperate for approval, Salome, his youngest daughter, picked up a jewel-encrusted armband from the floor and offered it to him. When he slipped it over his wrist as a sign of the family’s allegiance, she flas
hed a smile that was made all the more adorable by crooked teeth.
In the silence, a whiff of blood flitted through Ariston’s nostrils.
“Hmm,” he grunted. “Let’s go find ourselves some nourishment.”
They crawled through the passageway into the next chamber, which was adorned with geometric designs and delicate pilasters carved in relief.
Helene was there. She rose, smiling and ready to go. She was from the House of Eros, the clan occupying the second cave, and his marriage to her had formed a tenuous bond between the two families. Ariston felt an urge to embrace her, to slide fingers along that stately neck, but the others were watching.
“You sleep well, my doe?” The old term of endearment was still there on his tongue.
“The sleep of the satisfied,” she said.
Her voice, raw from disuse, sent a shiver of delight through him as it had in years gone by, and he made no effort to hide his reaction from Shelamzion. The first to die, Shelamzion should’ve expected he would move on in a second marriage.
Invigorated, he led the way through the maze of burial chambers, gathering the others around him. Eighteen total. He wished Natira were here to fill a nineteenth spot, yet that was not to be.
First, the servants joined Ariston. Then olive-skinned Eros and his household, gliding along with sensual ease. Finally, a henchman with a grizzled red beard, whose ossuary guarded the opening into the land of the living.
“Barabbas,” Ariston said.
“Sir.”
“I’m glad to find you again at my side.”
In his first-century existence, Barabbas had been an insurrectionist, a murderer, the type who could be handy with the seedy side of a merchant’s dealings. While the man known as the Nazarene had been sentenced to crucifixion, the local crowds had demanded Barabbas’s release, and he had become an indispensable part of Ariston’s business, even earning a spot in the family tomb.
“I smell fear,” Barabbas said.
“Oh, I’m not afraid. It’s just good to—”
“No.” He waved a grimy hand. “I smell fear out there.”
Ariston followed his attendant of old, squeezing through the opening and joining him on a slope. Before them, a young male was kneeling at the feet of an older specimen. The pair’s tangy scent took root in Ariston’s head and seemed to grow with succulent promise.
“Lord Ariston,” said Barabbas, “I’m thirsty.”
“I think humans have ripened. We came at a good time.”
“Sir, I don’t like the way that one’s eyeing me.”
“Then you’ll have to do something about it, won’t you?”
“Upon your command.”
The ground quivered beneath Lars’s knees, and a teeth-rattling percussion kicked in nearby.
Click-clackkk . . . Click-clackkk . . .
He sensed the approach of something otherworldly—or maybe it was his imagination still toying with him—and then, from the corner of his vision, he realized it was a person. Unclothed, bearded, and sickly white, this strange individual was moving toward him. He looked unfinished, somehow. Like cement that hadn’t yet hardened.
Others issued from the cave behind the towering man, spurred along by the drumming of two children with bones in their fists.
Ariston enjoyed the clattering in his ears as his daughters, Salome and Shalom, played with charred bones lifted from the front burial chamber, cremated remnants from a civilization after their own.
“Hello,” Ariston called to the humans.
They remained motionless. Around him, Collectors awaited his signal.
He told them, “We’re all in need of blood, are we not? Let’s say we enjoy a good mikveh, a ritual baptism, to cleanse us on this night of our release. Blood instead of water. Death instead of life.”
They uttered their support for this violation of a sacred ritual.
Very well then.
In a gesture meant to show respect for those who might soon provide sustenance, he turned to the humans and raised a hand in greeting.
Head still down, Lars caught a glimpse of the wave. It was followed by rusty words that sounded as though they could be Hebrew.
“Shalom,” Lars responded. Hello. Peace to you.
At least these intruders had spared him from his coworker’s threats.
“Shut your trap,” Thiago growled at him, then aimed his impatience at the others. “What were you doing in that cave? Get out of here. Now. Well, the ladies there, they can stay. But you men, spare us the details and go put on some clothes.”
The man who had waved mouthed a single word.
Time slowed.
Click-clackkk . . .
Then, as though given an order, the towering individual beside him was advancing, muscles taut as steel bands along his upper arms and hairy pectoral region. With each step his fingernails elongated, intensifying in color, curved and pale green.
“What the—”
Thiago’s gruff curse was chopped short. His fingers relaxed on Lars’s neck, and the belt dropped from his other hand to the ground.
An odd sense of relief tempered the Norwegian’s terror. Had this group been summoned to his aid? Protectors of the weak? Now the squat man was coming his way, perhaps to drag off the bullying coworker.
Then something moist landed in the dirt by Lars’s knees.
Although the single eyeball stared up at him with the undeviating attention of a Cyclops, there were no signs of life left in Thiago’s granite stare.
Lars tried to yell.
A clawed hand choked off the sound, and the fingers that wrenched through his blond hair tilted his head back like the lid on a beer stein.
Needlelike sensations pricked his neck, then sank deeper, injecting pleasure and pain in a heady concoction that had him believing, if only briefly, he was back at the bar. He was in one of those strobe-light TV commercials, the life of the party, with men feeding off his jokes and women lapping up his silver-tongued flatteries. He felt wanted, appreciated.
His lips spread into an eerie grin.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Judean Hills, Israel
The Houses of Ariston and Eros traveled through arid darkness. They had given a speedy burial to the first victim of their feeding frenzy, and they carted along the second with the intention of dumping him far away, thereby diverting attention from Jerusalem.
Barabbas shifted the bloodless body over his shoulder. “Lord Ariston, where are we taking him?”
“The place I have in mind still exists,” Ariston said. “I’m quite certain.”
The eighteen revenants continued through the night. By inhabiting bodies from a previous age, they again had full use of the five senses yet only limited ability to categorize their findings.
They detected peculiar hums and chimes as they skirted townships. They walked along black roads smoother than Roman thoroughfares. Occasionally, metal chariots whipped by without horse or donkey, and at the front of each vehicle, lamps shone forth brighter than any of them had ever seen.
Civilization had advanced. That was to be expected. Nevertheless, Ariston knew his cluster would have to make quick adjustments if they were to function in this strange new era.
Another vehicle roared by.
“Toyota,” Eros said, fumbling with new lettering and sounds.
“What’s the word you speak?”
“I saw it on a passing chariot. The owner’s name, maybe?”
“No.” Ariston came to a stop beside an acacia tree. “I’ve seen it on others as well. It could be the name of the current king. The chariots might all be part of his fleet.”
Eros furrowed his brow. “King Toyota?”
“Sounds reasonable to me.”
“I suppose so. It’s clear we have much to assimilate.”
Like the rest of his household, olive-skinned Eros carried himself in a manner that bespoke physical prowess and grace, and his words fell from his tongue with lush confidence. Ariston
couldn’t help but notice that the females of his own family reacted with keen interest.
Now was a good time to point out the obvious . . .
“Speaking of assimilation, we all need to acquire some clothing.”
A few of the revenants groaned.
“It’s the only way we’ll be able to blend in.”
Barabbas spoke up. “There were robes draped over a line on the out-skirts of that last city—Hebron, if my memory’s correct. Would you like me to gather them up, sir?”
“Your hands are already full.”
“We can do it.” Salome wore a crooked grin. “Me and Shalom.”
“Very well,” Ariston said. “But be sure you’re not spotted. And don’t delay.”
He clapped them on the backs of their necks and found himself awash in fatherly pride. He blanched at this show of emotion. How revolting. Who had time for such hereditary human concerns? Whenever Collectors tried to nullify the Separation’s effects, this was the challenge: the struggle between them and their hosts.
“Shalom, you watch after your younger sister,” Shelamzion interjected, as the girls wandered off into the darkness.
Even more pathetic.
Ariston tried to hide his sneer from his first wife.
When their daughters trudged back into view twenty minutes later, the moon had pulled wisps of cloud across its face as though veiling itself from the coming shame.
And shame there was.
“Look at this hideous garb.” Ariston spun once, scowling at Shalom. Not only was his new robe tight across his belly, it lacked sleeves and reached no further than his knees. His beefy arms, his plump calves, were there for all to see. “Have garments digressed this much during our time away?”
“There weren’t many choices, Father. We grabbed all we could before a dog’s barking drove us away.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s certainly, uh . . .” Barabbas coughed into his hand. “Colorful.”
Ariston glowered. “It’s decorated with red and yellow circles.”
“Maybe it’s to be worn while at the reins of one of their shiny chariots.”
“Ridiculous. I’d look like a moving target for some Babylonian horde. Even worse, I could be mistaken as a Bedouin woman displaying clothes for sale.”
