by Wilson, Eric
He released his wife and son, who both stumbled to the wall.
Erota watched him cup the triangular shape and lift it to his mouth. He sipped. Moaned. Drank deeper. The burgundy liquid dribbled from his chin.
“It’s been filtered,” he said. “The fruit of the vine.”
With his recent wine-making aspirations, Ariston of Apamea couldn’t pass up the opportunity to present himself as a connoisseur.
“Exactly,” Megiste said. “The vine starts as a minuscule seed, planted into a human soil with one delectable bite—an orally injected contagion, if you will. I believe these thorns started back in Israel, when you, Lord Ariston, first sipped from the man’s heel.”
“It’s been growing in him all this time?”
“He’s tried to fend off its effects with alcohol, with limited and temporary success. In ages past, we Collectors have always been able to pass on infections from other blood sources, but this is unique. It seems we have been enabled with a more prickly bite, shall I say? Could have something to do with the Man from Kerioth’s betrayal and the thorns crushed into the Nazarene’s skull.”
“So this is unique to our cluster, is that correct?”
“It seems to be, Ariston.”
“What is the method of injection? Is there anything special we must do?”
“The contagion’s always there. We simply do what we do best, tap-ping sources for our own survival. If the host has any ailment or weakness, any unchecked susceptibility, the seed will have soil to grow. As it does, the vines will twine through veins and arteries until the thorns latch into place. Once in position, they tap the entire body. Each thorn filters and draws out blood for our enjoyment.”
Erota’s breath quickened. Her thirst intensified.
“The best thing,” said the priestess, “is that we can come back for more.” She gripped the thick twisted stem. “We simply snap off this entire portion and drink, but the vine keeps growing.”
“You’ve verified this?”
“I’ve tested it on this man here for the last year. And still, as you can see, he is available for our nourishment.”
“You mean to tell me, Megiste, you tested this without my foreknowledge?”
Erota caught a brief meeting of the eyes between Megiste and her father, Eros, and she felt her pulse quicken at the hint of intrigue. Had anyone else noticed the look?
“I do think,” Eros purred, “that her actions in this case were warranted.”
“Sorry, sir. I surely didn’t mean to overstep my bounds,” Megiste added.
Beside her, Ariston seemed to forget any perceived slight as he savored the remaining liquid from the pointed vessel, his irises gaining in emerald radiance with each lusty swallow.
Helene touched his arm. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
“Better than I imagined.”
“Instead of draining the mortals only once,” she said, “instead of wringing them dry and moving on, we can drink for years to come. And, left unchecked, the seed can germinate in others, particularly any sickly family members or friends. Wherever the tiniest of openings presents itself, a thorn is sure to hook in. Sins of the fathers, as they say.”
“All of this,” Erota asked, “is initiated with one bite? One tapping?”
“Wonderfully simple, isn’t it? Here.” Megiste handed over a fresh thorn.
Erota was an unholy worshipper, receiving this emblem of communion from her priestess. Through the thorn’s smooth husk, she felt the warmth of vitality and vigor. Then . . . she drank. By drawing the liquid over her own tongue, she was sucking life from this miserable being.
The invaaaasive,
creeeeeping
demise of a human.
She was spellbound. Loved every succulent drop. She was caught up in the blasphemy, the dastardly bastardization, of this most spiritual of experiences.
The Blood of the Host.
Of the Hostage.
In the end, wasn’t that all these flesh-and-blood creatures really were? Hosts and hostages, habitations and infestations.
As Erota’s vision painted the chapel in iridescent green hues, as the other Collectors joined in the experience with cupped hands and smeared lips, she reveled in the thought of marriage, where she would have her own prey upon which to feed. In the process, she could heap sorrow upon sorrow, grief upon grief.
The Concealed Ones, they could not hide from that.
Somewhere, already, the Nistarim were feeling the pain.
Chattanooga
Gina collapsed to her knees in the employee bathroom, spine bowed, shoulders sagging, while the weight of the world seemed to fall across her back.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
“Just one game of chess, Jed.”
“Why waste my time? You always beat me.”
“C’mon. It helps me relax.”
Although the day’s anguish had subsided, Gina was still sore around her ribs, still sensitive to rapid movement or bright light. She needed some-thing to ease her unspoken concerns and assure her of a world unfazed by her earlier illness. Since girlhood, she’d found chess to be a glue that held her fragmented days together.
“Help you relax?” Jed said. “By beating me into the dirt? You’re more twisted than I thought.”
Even in jest, the accusation poked at something tender in Gina’s mind. She began setting out the chess figurines on blond and black squares, banging down each one, a woman stamping her denial onto pardon papers.
“How’d it go at work today?” Jed asked.
Bang, stamp, bang . . .
“That good, huh? ”
Stamp, bang . . .
“Great.” He hit the Off button on the remote. “I’m gonna get my butt kicked.”
“Want me to play blindfolded?” Gina said. “Then you might have a chance.”
“Okay, now you’re asking for it.” Jed unfolded himself from the couch, grabbed a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the fridge, and joined her at the chess table beneath the black-framed Kurt Cobain poster. “Time to deliver the pain.”
“Not on this—” She paused. “Not on this night, buddy boy.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“I just saw you wince.”
“I did no such thing,” she said.
“Did too. Look at you, Gina. You’re gritting your teeth.”
The discomfort was nothing she couldn’t handle. A short stab.
From behind her back, she offered two closed fists. “Choose your color. Not that it’ll make any difference.”
Blue eyes studied her over thick-rimmed glasses. He touched her right hand, and she opened it to reveal a light-colored pawn.
“You’re white,” Gina said. Then, playfully, under her breath: “And getting whiter by the day, sitting in that office at the Chamber of Commerce.”
“Hey.”
“Joke.”
“Sweetheart, you know I hate making the first move.”
“Control the center of the board,” she instructed. “Advance a few pawns, back them up with your knights and bishops, then castle quickly. That’s it. Easy.”
He sighed. Shoved his king’s pawn forward two squares.
“There you go. Wasn’t so hard, was it?” Gina’s fingers played with her choker, then swung the queen’s bishop pawn two squares ahead.
“What’s that?”
“The Sicilian Defense.”
“So now you’re going all Mafia on me, huh?”
She whipped her dagger from its sheath. “Gonna feed you to the fishes.”
“Not if I can help it.” His knight jumped into the attack.
Gina, after pushing her queen pawn one space, went into the kitchen to grill cheese sandwiches. Jed called out each time he made a move, his thinking time increasing between turns even as his volume decreased. She responded to his attempts with constrictive maneuvers that set up a sud-den counterattack.
He sipped his PBR and surveyed the bat
tlefield. Realizing his imminent doom, he wrung his mop of brown hair while she poured tomato soup into mugs.
“I suck,” he mumbled.
“Strange.” Gina shrugged. “I’m starting to feel all peaceful.”
“You suck.”
“You, buddy boy, are a sore loser.”
“Maybe,” Jed said, “you should kiss me and make me feel better.”
She sneered, bumped into him with her hip, then set mugs and small plates beside his measly trio of captive pawns. Her side of the table offered little space due to the number of slain chess pieces. She almost felt bad for annihilating him like this. Almost.
The perplexing thing, as always, was the ease with which she played the game. She knew that somewhere in her past she had received instruction, but she had no distinct memory of such.
She drank down the tomato soup, let the heat soothe her raw throat.
“Your mom hasn’t called much, has she?” Jed said. “Since you showed her the angel.”
Gina stared out the window.
“I mean, wasn’t that the whole point of the tattoo? You, breaking free?”
“You know what?” Gina said. “I bet if she’d had a choice, Nikki would’ve never had me in the first place. Birth control was banned in Romania back then—so that way all good communist women could add numbers to the workforce, I guess. Born anywhere else I would’ve been a goner, guaranteed.”
Jed thumped his chest with his thumb. “I’m glad you’re here.”
She met his blue eyes. Rewarded him with a half smile.
“Don’t let that mother-daughter thing get to you,” he said. “Here’s a thought for you. What if we started saving up for a move to Florida, or Montana, or—”
“What about Seattle?”
“You serious? I’ve got an uncle named Vince, lives in the Pacific Northwest. He’s a police sergeant, and he’s always saying how it won’t stop raining there, just year-round liquid sunshine. But he swears it’s more majestic than you can imagine.”
Gina bit into her sandwich, used fingers to remove dangling melted cheese. She had no idea where the Seattle idea had come from. She’d seen pictures, sure. Watched the Seahawks play on TV, listened to grunge. Something about the place appealed to her; more accurately, it called to something within her.
She changed the subject. “Did you get that project done?”
“For Mr. Carrington? Yeah, he seems stoked about it, so that’s a good thing.” Jed slurped from his mug. “What about you? How’d it go down in the salt mines?”
She’d fought off onslaughts of nausea most of the day, but she skipped over that tidbit. Instead she rattled off some of the silly questions she’d received from tourists and told about a woman’s ear-piercing shriek as bats swooped by.
On the final tour of her shift, deep inside the mountain, Gina had basked near the plummeting crescendo of the falls, in the cool kisses of its artificially lit, ruby-red mist. While her group oohed and ahhed and took photos, she stood off to the side and closed her eyes. It felt safe there, underground. A cocoon.
It also brought back primal memories: quaking earth . . . fabric rending . . . moisture on her parched tongue.
Now, she had only a vague queasiness to remind her of the day’s earlier turmoil. No use saying anything to Jed about it. Wouldn’t help to complain, or to worry him. The upset stomach could’ve come from food poisoning or the twenty-four-hour flu.
What’d it matter? She always rebounded from this sort of stuff. Tomorrow, she was convinced, she would wake up healthy as ever.
The sickness returned at dawn. In a sheen of sweat, Gina stumbled to the bathroom and faced the toilet on her knees. She puked once. Then again.
The convulsive nature of her malady left her drained, and each movement was an effort that set her head spinning. She held on. Stared down at mauve- and cream-colored tiles, where shorn whiskers from Jed’s electric shaver formed a haphazard dark-brown sprinkle.
Lovable Jed Turney. Messy, mind-on-other-things Jed.
He was at work already. She was alone, with a few hours before the start of her Wednesday shift. No one could see her here, hunched, with bedraggled hair, and knuckles white around the porcelain rim.
She felt insignificant. Humbled, and lowly.
What was going on? Was God punishing her for the tattoo, or the live-in boyfriend, or her myriad other sins—as listed in the Book of Nikki? Had last year’s confrontation with the business end of a moving van inflicted damage to her internal organs? Or . . .
She did the math. Put the pieces together in her mind.
Is it even possible? Could I be . . . ?
Gina’s whisper filled the bathroom: “I think I’m pregnant.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Arad
Collectors were unable to read minds. Sure, that presented some challenges, but who needed omniscience? Really. It was such a crutch.
Erota, after eons of practice, had little trouble discerning individuals’ weaknesses. Follow their steps, their eyes, their hands. Eventually, actions betrayed a person’s desires with all the clarity of that sign she’d seen on TV, the one in New York City’s Times Square, scrolling thoughts and motives in blazing color for all who cared—or dared—to look.
“Let’s have some fun,” she suggested to her sister.
In three days Erota and Domna would be returning to Kiev by train, and soon after Erota would be on her way to the United States. To Atlanta. Maybe even with a chance to visit New York City someday.
Why not have one last hurrah together, here in Arad? Hunters and prey. Wasn’t that what their father had spoken of ?
Domna was a willing participant. “What’ve you got in mind?”
In the predawn hours, the pair of long-legged teenagers trailed Benyamin home. He was still woozy from the incident in the Cetatea chapel, knees wobbly, eyes watery. He closed the metal gate with exaggerated care, then disappeared inside.
The girls waited. At daybreak he reemerged with his son, climbed into a Peugot sedan, and headed off, presumably for work and school.
“Let’s see what his wife’s up to.”
“She’ll be out soon enough, Domna. Give it a few minutes.”
Sure enough, Mrs. Dalia Amit appeared with empty canvas bags over her arm. She locked the gate, then shuffled along cracked side-walks toward the corner market, folds of skin swaying beneath her chin. According to Megiste’s assertions, this woman might already be victim to thorns of her own—perhaps a cantankerous vine of bitterness rooted in Mr. Amit’s alcohol abuse—but that in no way dissuaded Erota from the pursuit of blood and personal pleasure. In fact, it might even simplify the procedure.
“There she is,” Erota said. “As expected.”
Domna tipped her sunglasses. “My, she’s a plain woman, isn’t she?”
“Good thing we don’t get any older, huh?”
“I’d rather die than look like that.”
“You,” Erota said, “are so shallow.”
“Look at her. It’s no wonder our friend Benyamin drinks. You and I, we know how men are, and to be honest, I’m surprised that’s his only vice.”
“All it takes is one.”
“True enough,” Domna said. “What’s hers, do you think?”
“We keep on her trail long enough, and I’m sure she’ll give herself away.”
They did. And she did.
It started at an outdoor bazaar. Dalia bought bulk paprika from a wizened woman in a thick wool coat . . . and made every effort to avoid contact with those dark gypsy hands. At the bakery, she told her after-noon plans to an acquaintance . . . while her eyes passed judgment upon the woman’s revealing blouse and caked mascara. Dalia even angled her body away, separating herself from this obvious hussy.
To the baker, she grumbled: “N-aveti piine proaspata?”
The bread’s freshness was not above scrutiny from insufferable Mrs. Amit.
Browsing a rack of fried donuts, gogosi, Erota a
nd Domna listened and observed. They each selected a goody—why not indulge their taste buds, as part of the disguise?—then convened outside.
This would be too easy, they agreed. If any one foible offered more prospects for subversion and distortion, they couldn’t think of what it was.
Oh, the potential in an overblown sense of piety.
Benyamin Amit chased two aspirin with a glass of water, smoothed back his hair, and jaunted down the marble stairway. His sidearm’s reassuring weight shifted in the holster against his ribs. On the third floor of city hall, his superior was locked behind double doors for a committee meeting, leaving Benyamin unsupervised for the next forty-five minutes.
Enough time to visit his favorite doe-eyed archivist.
He eased into the file room on the building’s lower floor. Aside from the dull throbbing between his temples, he felt better than he had in days. No limp. No itch. On his heel, the scar was nothing but a sunken depression beneath tan socks.
“Helene?
“Buna zuia.” She rose from her seat. “Ce mai faci?”
“And a good day to you,” he replied from the doorway. He gripped the lapels of his suit jacket. “I’m doing well. Very well, in fact.”
“Is that so?”
He gave a sly grin. “Last night relieved quite the burden, you know.”
She checked the hallway behind him, then propped herself against the corner of her desk, with legs crossed beneath a long skirt. Behind her, a brass nameplate read Helene Totorcea. “I’m surprised you remember much,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“Why so happy, then?”
“Today’s a fresh start,” he said.
In the Cetatea’s chapel, Benyamin had experienced a groggy epiphany brought on by deep swallows and a mellifluous fire. He’d satisfied the beast within, bought off his demons, and today he felt like a man freed from chains. The coiled desire had abated, and he no longer needed the drink. Not now, not ever again. Of that, he was quite certain.
This morning, staring at his wife’s rigid back in bed, he had decided to change his ways. Dalia deserved better. While she’d overstepped by dumping his liquor supplies, she had only responded out of hurt and frustration. Who could blame her?
