by Wilson, Eric
She would scold him. Perhaps lecture.
In the end, though, she would listen as she always did.
“You still want the case of tuica, don’t you?” Helene was touching his arm. The night air smelled warm, almost salty. “This lady, she is awaiting her money.”
“Helene, I’d like you to keep watch as I go in. Could you do that?”
“Expecting trouble?”
“My line of work dictates caution,” he said. “I wouldn’t put it past other black marketers to cut in on our private exchange.”
“See?” Helene told the other woman. “A trustworthy choice.”
The auburn-haired beauty turned her head. Poised, with shoulders back and bust pushing up against her blouse, she appraised him through the eyes of a jeweler. Her lips curled upward, and he took that as a sign of approval.
“Intrati, domnule,” she said, inviting him to enter.
“You have the case?”
“Just inside. I hope you don’t mind us using the house of God for our indiscretions, but it does offer such good cover. Besides, if the dear Lord gave you this body of yours, don’t you think He understands your need to address its fickle demands? It would be petty of Him to hold your weaknesses against you.”
“Weakness? No, no, no. For me, this is a medicine.”
“Oh, honey. I know all about such prescriptions.”
“Either way, I don’t worry over religion and old wives’ tales. We should enable ourselves, rather than relying on mental crutches. I’m a man of learning.”
“A man.” She curled her hair around a finger. “Yes, you certainly are.”
Benyamin was fit for his age, toned and powerful, and so he allowed her silky tones to strum his ego as his legs carried him onward. He would not concern himself with thoughts of Dalia just now, not after she’d taken it upon herself to drain his precious supplies. If these two women wished to fill his prescription, very well.
And if they thought it best to candycoat the prescription, he might be up for that too. Here a scratch, there a scratch.
Left, right, left.
“Ben, you have the money?”
He fumbled the bills from his pocket. “The case? It’s in here, you say?”
“Through those doors.”
His desire was a creeping vine, looped around his foot and reeling him in greedy lurches toward the token of temporary relief. He set a hand on his gun, but kept moving. Any apprehension on his part might cause these ladies to bolt.
It was best to keep walking, keep walking.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Chattanooga
Gina gritted her teeth, grabbed her midsection, and rushed to the apartment bathroom. The toilet lid was down, and she—
No time. Hurry.
She brushed aside the ivory shower curtain and heaved into the tub. Her guts seemed to turn inside out as another spasm bent her over the drain.
Finally, she ran the water, sprayed the tub clean, then wiped her mouth and splashed her face. When she stood, she felt lightheaded and held on to the sides of the sink cabinet.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said, peering into the mirror.
The girl in the reflection gave no reply. She looked haggard, but even here at her worst, she still looked like a teen. Men hounded her for this, drawn by the appearance of innocence and youth.
Innocent? Gina felt anything but. Weary and old was more like it.
Weakening fingers of pain clutched at her, then slipped away as she steeled her gaze in the glass. She’d removed her black choker for work, and her half-moon scar showed pale and thin. Her earrings dangled over the basin, and she had a flash of concern that they might wash down the drain.
Just like her thoughts and memories used to do, spiraling away from her.
All so complicated. Life on a chessboard.
In the apartment living room, her folding chess set reminded her of those days in Cuvin. When Gina moved out of her mother’s St. Elmo district home last year, she had brought the set along. She’d removed the dagger from within, hiding the crude implement once used for performing surgeries of superstition.
True, she had inadequacies. But she would no longer submit to cleansing Nikki-style. No thank you.
She slid a hand down her right shin. There was the blade, beneath her clothing, sheathed in the leather her boyfriend had tooled for her last Christmas.
Faithful, forgetful, kindhearted Jed. He’d been good to her.
Another sensation moved through her belly.
Thinking it was the pain making a comeback, Gina prepared herself for the worst. This was different, though. A mere whisper of butterfly wings. It reminded her of Teo, of the flutters she’d felt from that first kiss back in Cuvin. Was there anything quite like young love—full of excitement, devoid of sexual politics and grown-up concerns?
Another flutter.
As though something were moving inside her.
Maybe she was a demon child, spawning something dark and hideous within. Back in Romania, her mother had seemed convinced of her defilement, yet Gina refused to buy into it any longer.
What had Cal said to her? I know you feel small, like you’re no one important, but that’s not true.
She hugged her tummy as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
Arad
The first sip of tuica darted down Benyamin’s throat, then wound through the maze of his intestinal tract with a palpable heat.
Ahhh, yes.
If there was any mercy upon this lonely planet, it was no more evident than here in the magnanimous kiss of the bottle to his lips. This was his god, bestowing favor and strength. Benyamin was a disciple, paying homage in this twin-steepled artifice.
Helene came to his side.
“I thought you were keeping watch,” he said.
“This is more interesting,” she cooed, sliding fingers down his arm.
The willowy creature with the alabaster neck stepped into the chapel and pushed the door closed with her rounded buttocks. She glided to his other side, her hair bleached by gibbous light through the nave’s windows. The two females eased him toward a pew and pressed him into a sitting position on the hardwood.
“You look to be a delicious fellow, Mr. Amit.”
He fortified himself with another drink. It warmed him.
Helene squatted down and raised his ankle over her shoulder. She pushed back his pant leg, then traced one finger over his heel where the scar tissue was dimpled and red. “It’s all swollen,” she said.
“Right there,” he pleaded. “If you could just scratch it.”
She first brushed her lips over the spot—moist, very soft.
And then her teeth.
“One moment,” said the second woman. “The others are on the way.”
“The others?”
“Relax, Ben,” Helene said. “Relax.”
An icy heat swarmed through his ankle, his eyes trailed to the ceiling, and the chapel began to spin.
“Lead the way, Barabbas.”
Ariston held the torch while his bearded henchman shouldered through a heavy wooden panel. Before them, the stone steps of a hidden passage curled upward. The design of these fortifications included underground escape routes, and this one fed from the vestry where Franciscan monks had once served.
Erota trailed the cluster leader, her olfactory senses detecting traces of votive candles and incense, of alcohol and . . .
Human blood.
Pulsing, pounding, pumping.
She thought of the promised demonstration, and she felt her own counterfeit heart quickening at the thought.
One by one, the cluster entered the chapel from behind the raised altar, their footsteps kicking up motes of dust that glittered in the moon-beams. The Collectors oozed through shadows and swaths of light until they’d reached the back pew where Megiste and Helene kneeled like worshippers before a stone-chiseled idol.
The figure was male, grasping a bottle, his chest slo
wly rising and falling.
A real man, then. Not stone, after all.
“I told you to wait,” Ariston said. “What’ve you done, Megiste?”
The hostage was in a cataleptic state, slumped back, eyes fixed upon the nave’s high ceiling, his right leg outstretched with Helene as his foot-stool. In the darkness, the engorged skin at his heel resembled a blister about to burst.
“Helene’s subdued him,” Megiste said. “That’s all. Meet Benyamin Amit, former patrolman for the Israeli Mash’av, present bodyguard for Romanian politicos. He’s ready and willing, practically begging for our attention.”
Ariston said, “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Helene smiled up at her husband.
“This is the man, the one I found camping with his son in the Negev. I remember I’d inhabited a mosquito, as an experiment more than anything. A few drops, that’s all I drew from him—but I felt glutted. It’s too bad that in these human casings we don’t have half the capacity of such an insect.”
“A mosquito?” Megiste pulled a face. “Sorry, I’m not crazy about working with bugs. I don’t know that I’d be able to choose one as a host.”
“Your loss. A means to a most excellent meal.”
“What’ll it be next, Ariston? Leeches? Ticks?”
Erota thought the idea had some appeal.
“For their size,” Megiste continued, “those’re some real bloodsuckers, though still not equal to what Helene and I are about to show you. Apparently there’s some truth in the saying that ‘It’s more blessed to give than to receive.’ Mr. Amit here is the epitome of that. He’s migrated with his family all the way from Israel to be near the one who first tapped his blood. I guess he wants to keep giving, Ariston.”
“I don’t mind receiving. Not at all.”
Erota crowded in with the others, drawn by the pumpity-pump-pumpity-pump of the victim’s pulse, by the sweet, coppery haze above his pew.
The haze seemed cleaner than the majority she’d seen before, devoid of the dietary impurities so prevalent in this modern era. She figured he must eat mostly kosher. If given the ability to swim through the air, she would be diving and bathing in this cloying mist. It would be her sacrilegious mikveh, her baptism.
“Helene, tell everyone what’s going on here.” Ariston folded his arms over his belly. “The things you and I discussed.”
“Love to, dear.”
Benyamin remained rigid and unresponsive.
“I first met this man,” Helene said from her knees, “on the job at city hall. He likes to make small talk with me while waiting on his employers. He’s decent enough, polite. Only when he thinks no one is looking does he allow himself to hobble along, and a few weeks back I began to suspect something was amiss when I asked him what tuica was. I’d heard other men mention it, and I hoped to increase my cultural understanding.”
“As we all should be doing,” Ariston said. “As a tool. A weapon.”
“Absolutely.”
Megiste nudged Helene. “Tell them what you saw.”
“Well, it was clear as day. The mere utterance of that word, tuica, and Mr. Amit’s eyes took on this intense, emerald gleam, like an ember coming back to life. I knew then he’d been compromised somehow, and it was his occasional limp that suggested to me the point of entry.”
“Where I’d bitten him,” Ariston said. “Back in Israel.”
“That’s right. In a moment of privacy, I asked to see his wound, and he obliged me. I noticed then the infection—the infestation, if you will—and later asked Megiste to help me discern its source. In a moment you’ll see it with your own eyes. Mr. Amit tried to give me all the reasons for bringing his wife and son to Romania, but I believe he was drawn by our presence—yours, more precisely, Ariston. By allowing the bite to fester, he gave the poison time to permeate his body, and the very infection that’s been eating away at him tells him he can only be soothed by more of the same. In his case, another drink.”
“Fighting fire with fire, as they say.”
“Father.” Sol gave a protracted sigh and shook off Auge’s censuring hand. “This is all very entertaining, as usual, but we were discussing the destruction of the Nistarim. Revised techniques and whatnot. Is this all you have to show us?”
“I think it’s rather significant,” Eros said.
Unimpressed, Sol huffed.
The Houses of Ariston and Eros fell silent. The flames of Barabbas’s torch whistled and crackled.
The confrontation intrigued Erota. In light of her impending marriage to the man from Atlanta, she’d been observing interactions between husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings and cousins. What drove individuals onward? More important, what drove them apart? She’d seen all manner of discord among humans, in some of the lower organ-isms too. As a Collector, she drew perverse pleasure from this.
Yet the Principles of Cluster Survival were explicit: When a challenge arises from within the cluster, the leader will determine its validity and, if necessary, banish any Collector that displays mutinous intentions.
Ariston hooked his right arm through his son’s. “Sol, Sol, dear boy.”
“Don’t start patronizing me now.”
“Come, you two.” Ariston hooked his other arm through Shelamzion’s. “My first wife, and my oldest son. The issuance of my loins. You mustn’t allow jealousy to blind you. Yes, I’ve always preferred Helene—a better wife, better lover. And so, it’s only natural I would prefer the offspring I shared with her.”
“Father, this is—”
“This is necessary. For your well-being.” Ariston leaned forward, his joined arms forcing wife and son to bow with him toward the kneeling Helene. “By the sails of Sicily, look at her, look with me, and enjoy what you see. Look.”
“I’m . . . looking,” Shelamzion sputtered.
Sol only glared.
“Looook.”
The torch flames wavered as Ariston drew in air. He did so slowly, intentionaly, sucking the color from the lips of his wife and firstborn and draining all semblance of vibrancy from their earthly habitations. On either side of him, they began to droop like deflated pig bladders.
“We’re a small cluster, true. But,” Ariston said to the incapacitated pair, “we are infused with traces of the Man from Kerioth and the Master Collector himself. This gives us potential never before explored. Now. I’d like it if we could share in this as a family. Would you be kind enough to give Helene your attention?”
Megiste held out slender arms. “Show them, Helene.”
She looked to Ariston. “Now, dear?”
“Yes, show these loved ones. Show us all.”
Helene’s fingers moved over Benyamin Amit’s heel, then squeezed and pulled upward in the movement of a seamstress drawing needle through cloth. The skin swelled, rose, reached a tented pinnacle, and finally col-lapsed as a large thorn punched through, as clear fluid gushed forth.
“Arrrgghhhh!”
The man on the pew snapped forward. The hiss that issued from his mouth reverberated between walls and chapel ceiling and awakened in each of the Collectors’ eyes a peculiar glow.
Erota felt herself respond, felt her parched throat tighten. Her thirst was strong.
As suddenly as he had reacted, Benyamin fell back into a stupor.
Helene kept tugging, and the thorn—the thorns—kept unraveling from the wound, curved and glistening, mottled red and black.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Chattanooga
Gina was in the employee restroom, with seven minutes before her shift. She stared into the mirror, ready to do her job. The facts, the anecdotes, the history—all there, committed to memory.
Over the next few hours, she would walk close to five miles as she guided groups through limestone caverns of flowstone and drapery formations, stalactites, and calcite crystals. Located more than a thousand feet beneath Lookout Mountain, the tour’s highlight was Ruby Falls, an undergr
ound cataract plunging 145 feet into a shallow pool.
One more quick check. A personal matter.
She parted her dyed hair, studied her forehead. There, stenciled into her skin, stood the same crossed lines she’d seen in her apartment but which seemed to hide from view of everyone else. Everyone, with the possible exception of Cal.
And Teodor’s uncle, the village prefect. Look in a mirror, young lady, and tell me what you see. Do you see the proof of your role in this grand scheme?
How had that revolting man known? To what role had he been referring?
She forgot these questions as a set of tools went to work again at her innards, scooping, scraping. She was a pumpkin, her guts hollowed out, her facial features carved by pain into something horrifying. A candle ignited in her core, more intense than before, and dribbling waxen tears.
She fell back against the wall. She felt empty. There was nothing left in her stomach to offer as appeasement.
I won’t cry. I won’t. I have to get to work.
She dry-heaved into the sink, felt the burn in her throat. Her mind flashed to the incident with the delivery truck, and the internal damage that she might’ve suffered. Were there injuries to her organs?
Another gut-wrenching spike of pain.
God, please. What’s going on?
Arad
Erota found the spectacle both illuminating and delightful.
One by one, the thorns stretched the skin of Benyamin’s ankle. One by one, they broke through the ruptured scar tissue. The stock upon which the thorns grew was crusty and cracked, in appearance like an ancient taproot that had fermented in worm-ridden earth. It rustled through the flesh’s opening with the sounds of a snake passing through dead leaves. It writhed, as Helene pulled; it squirmed upon the chapel flooring, carving arcane shapes in the dust.
A tangled vine. A dragon’s tail of spiked protuberances.
“Take one, dear heart.” Helene snapped a thorn from its source and handed it to Ariston. “Try a taste.”
