by Wilson, Eric
“It’s okay, Megiste.” Ariston pressed fingertips against his forehead. “I’ve just been getting so ill-tempered, what with this intruder business and these migraines I’ve been experiencing.”
“You too?”
“Nothing unbearable. Not most days, anyway.”
“A dull drone?”
“Yes.” He shot her an inquisitive look.
Eros spoke up. “Megiste and I discussed the same thing on the train. It doesn’t seem to bode well for us, I’m afraid.”
“The sensation grows,” Ariston said, “until it would seem I have a thousand flies buzzing between my ears.” He stopped at the entry to the farmhouse. “Hail Hades, some nights I can barely think. The longer I’m in this host, the more my focus seems corrupted by these human proclivities.”
“I’m sure it’s a passing phase.”
“One can only hope.” Ariston opened the front door, gesturing them inside.
Ruins of Soimos Castle, Romania
From behind a remnant wall of the hilltop castle, camouflaged by twilight, Benyamin Amit watched. He blinked. Refocused. He pressed his eye to the lens of his Swarovski scope, training the reticule on the woman’s face down in the vineyard that hugged an adjacent slope.
She was new to the premises, yet he was certain he’d seen her before. The memory of that pale neck and auburn ringlets swam beneath his thoughts, shadowed and difficult to distinguish. As he imagined running a finger over her thin, shapely lips, his foot began to ache.
When she and the man called Flavius Totorcea stepped into the house, Benyamin was left with a sense of disquiet. Who was she? And why was she here?
What was he doing here, for that matter?
“Megiste and Eros,” said Helene. “Why, how nice to see you. How is Kiev?”
Eros gave her a velvety kiss on the cheek. “Pleasant, this time of year.”
“And your household—are they all well?”
“With Erota off in Atlanta, we’re down to five, but we’re fine, thank you. Dorotheus is managing affairs while I’m gone.”
“Tell your mother hi for me.”
“Certainly.”
Shelamzion stepped in from the kitchen. “Welcome.” Her greeting did not match her cold stare as she took Megiste’s long fur coat and draped it from an antler rack to the right of the stone fireplace.
Megiste rubbed her hands at the hearth and chose to ignore the chilly demeanors of Auge and Shelamzion. These women and their jealousies. For good reason, she had followed Eros’s lead by never marrying, and she found secret amusement in their trite concerns.
“Is there a meal underway?” Ariston said.
“Of course, dear heart. I’m serving muschi as a main course.”
“Sounds wonderful, Helene,” said Eros.
“And to think that I’ll be missing out.” Ariston still had on his overcoat.
“You’re leaving?”
“You know I am. If you remember, my doe, I’m off on a visit with the vintner from Hunedoara. Need to leave right away, actually. I’m hoping to tap him for his every wine-making secret. My apologies for running off, but I should be back late this evening.”
“Not too late, sir. We have sooo much catching up to do.”
Though Megiste’s words lowered dark veils over the faces of the House of Ariston women, she chose not to acknowledge their pettiness. As Ariston marched out to the vineyard’s car, she let the tangy sweetness of pork in the air play through her nostrils, and she winked at Helene in a show of approval. Food would be a treat, even as she longed for something more substantial that her body could absorb.
The rumbling of the car’s engine had faded by the time Sol came in from the slopes, his face flushed, his breathing labored. After abbreviated greetings, he said to Eros, “Listen, I meant to tell my father, but now that he’s gone I think you should know. I noticed something odd on my way in from the fields.”
“Oh, what is it?”
“Hypothetically, I wonder if the intruder he’s seen could be a woman.”
“Go on.” Eros touched a finger to his chin. “I try to take everything into consideration.”
“There was a city taxi that passed by not long ago, from Arad. It’s not a common sight this far out, but I thought nothing of it until it passed back the other direction only minutes later.”
“Is there anywhere to be dropped east of here?” Megiste asked.
“Not for many kilometers. Which is precisely what piqued my curiosity. And that’s when,” Sol said, “I saw her. This middle-aged woman ducked down, but stood straight again when she realized she had no place to hide. She shuffled by on thick legs and pretended she had no interest in me.”
“This was along your property’s fence?”
“Near the gate, yes. She had a boy with her as well. They’re still out there, I’m certain, though I’m unclear as to their intentions. The woman’s hair was pulled back in a bun, with features similar to ours.”
“Jewish, perhaps?” Helene said. “Mrs. Dalia Amit, I would venture. She and Benyamin have a son, and she’s come by city hall on a few occasions—to check on her husband’s activities, if you want to know what I think.”
Eros pointed Sol toward the door. “Go get the poor woman and child.”
“And do what with them?”
“Is there some place we can question them in private?”
“The warehouse,” Sol admitted. “But I don’t think it would be—”
“You don’t think. Yes, your father’s told me of this problem of yours.”
“I’m a grown man. I see no need for bowing to his every whim and fancy. I—”
“Go. Now,” Eros kept his voice even and low, yet Megiste knew he was incensed with such insubordinance. “We’ll meet you in the warehouse in five minutes.”
Megiste ran a hand along her neck as she watched Ariston’s sniveling son stomp outdoors. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “Am I the only one feeling thirsty?”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Soimos Castle
Still vigilant, Benyamin repositioned himself against the remnant wall.
Months ago, Cal Nichols had tried to recruit him in a campaign against these killers, the undead from the Field of Blood, who had torn men to shreds and sucked every drop from their veins. Though Benyamin had tried to drown out those Dead Sea images, Nickel’s reappearance had only stirred them back to the surface.
He’d rebuffed Nickel’s offer that night. It was rubbish.
After fleeing the café, he had tried to repair his relationship with Dalia and Dov—and failed.
Dalia was barely speaking to him now, more condemning than ever of his misdeeds. Dov was almost thirteen, sullen in that teenage manner and wearing his hair over his eyes.
In an attempt to regain some fatherly respect, Benyamin had vowed to take his son camping this weekend in the mountains just north of these castle ruins. This time, Benyamin meant it. He even told himself it was part of his reason for being here now, checking out the terrain for their outing.
That wasn’t his true reason, though.
Bugged by Nickel’s assertions at Café Focsani, Benyamin had decided to investigate the claims on his own time. Using his position at city hall, he checked Helene Totorcea’s records and found that she and her family, including her husband, were Romanian Jews who had returned here after a long hiatus. The only thing odd about their papers was the absence of anything odd. Even the most upstanding families had secrets buried deep in bureaucratic files, but this was a spotless bunch.
Curious, Benyamin had accessed the district property files next.
Which led him here.
This was his fourth random evening observing the comings and goings on the neighboring hillside, at Totorcea Vineyards. He’d even sneaked along the property’s perimeter a few times to count the number of residents.
Eleven. As tallied through his scope.
Was Nickel right? Was this innocuous group responsibl
e for the mur-ders in Israel eight years previous?
But there had been eighteen bite patterns. Nineteen empty boxes.
He recalled Dalia’s words, yesterday in the hallway: Ben, what is it now? Is there another woman? Is that it? No. Please, I’d rather you not tell me. You’ll do what you want, as you’ve made so clear. But your son, he needs his father. His bar mitzvah is close, and you are never around to instruct him. Can’t you see this? One night you’ll stay out late again, only to find Dov grown and gone when you return. Is that how you want it to be, Ben? Is that the Almighty’s wish?
This evening, racing east from city hall after work, Benyamin had watched the setting sun in his rearview mirror and promised himself this would be his last sortie to Soimos. If he found nothing conclusive, he would drop the entire matter. He would set aside the drinking. Apply himself to his marriage. Help his son prepare for the passage into manhood.
His earnest vows had sounded a bit too familiar in his own ears as he climbed the slope to the castle and took up this observation post among the ruins. But he meant them. He did. After tonight’s action fizzled, he would start fresh.
All that changed when the strange—or not so strange—woman arrived.
How did he know her?
Goose bumps now rushed along Benyamin’s arms beneath his jacket, fol-lowed by a buzzing in his head that was a companion to his old itchy-itch.
He double-checked the house through the scope, saw that the door was still shut, the lights glowing inside.
He had a moment.
He set down his scoped rifle—who said he needed Nickel’s weapons or knowledge?—and propped himself against the wall. He rolled up his trouser leg so that he could get a look at his heel in the moonlight.
It was tender. The scar from years ago had become home to raging infection. The once glossy circle of pink was now a mound of crusty brown, and spiderwebs of blue-black ran up along his calf and down over the top of his foot. The entire leg hurt, and some days turned into a conflagration of unbearable pain. Other days, without explanation, he would wake up to find the tempest had died, the natural coloring had returned, and the swelling had subsided.
He tugged off his sock by its toe, airing the wound.
A sharp object moved beneath the skin, a shark’s fin trolling blood-tinged waters. He hated whatever that thing was, despised himself and his sickness, and this world that turned a blind eye to misery.
Where was the God of his fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Who had been there when his grandfather was facing the ovens of Matthausen concentration camp?
Dalia would scold him for such ruminations, as she did for everything else. But what did he care? He felt like barking his frustrations at the moon. This region’s early dwellers had been called Dacians, derived from the word for wolf, and he imagined that werewolves lurked even now in these Carpathian foothills.
In fact, for a moment, he thought he saw glowing green eyes off to his left.
Nonsense, of course. All of it. This was 1997, and he was a man of cerebral means. He had no reason to rant at distant deities or to fear local folklore. He could find his own solutions to life’s challenges, if only he applied himself.
The most immediate solution was in his jacket.
Benyamin was cold, buffeted by the winds that howled through the ruins. Time, he decided, to warm his old bones and prepare for the night watch.
He was tugging the flask from his inner coat pocket when an apparition appeared through the arched medieval entryway. The shape was gargantuan and bearded, its eyes pulsing—there was no way of denying it—with preternatural light.
One of the undead? A man-beast sent from the house to end his snooping?
“Hello.” Benyamin said. “Like a drink?”
He felt calm. Here, at last, he would confront this slippery fear. One way or another, he would know where he stood between the worlds of the seen and unseen.
With the rifle just out of reach beside his bare foot, he switched his hand from his flask to his holster and drew the loaded Makarov into view. He pushed down the safety lever. Aimed the barrel at the apparition’s abdomen.
“Don’t you move,” Benyamin said.
With eyes narrowed and luminescent, the figure advanced. In his wiry beard, flashes of moonlight became trapped like fish in a net, like the tales Benyamin’s mother used to tell of mighty Sisera, oppressor of the Israelites, giant among the sons of God.
Weary and on the run from a lost battle, that particular giant had taken refuge in a woman’s tent dwelling and downed a bowl of warm lebben, curdled milk, before falling asleep wrapped in a rug.
Only, Sisera never awoke.
The woman drove a spike through his temple. A metal . . .
Metal tent peg. An MTP.
Well, perhaps Cal Nichols was onto something there, toting around his daypack of rustic tools—the mallet, a few pegs, perhaps some bottles of warm milk for putting the bedtime monsters to rest.
Of course, that had all happened thousands of years ago, before read-ily available shotguns and pistols. Even a blunderbuss could do the job with more efficiency. There was no reason, in Benyamin’s mind, to join Those Who Resist when he could deal with matters on his own by a few well-placed shots.
“I said not to move,” Benyamin repeated.
The apparition stopped.
Some believed that the name Sisera meant Servant of Ra. Well, this modern-day counterpart looked nothing like a minion of the Egyptian sun god. He was wearing work boots and a thick corduroy jacket over a wool sweater. He was enormous, broad backed, but maybe a man after all.
“Don’t shoot,” the maybe-a-man said. “I’m just taking you to the vineyard.”
“You’re not taking me anywhere.”
Benyamin remembered something else about Sisera. To this day, during the Jewish festival of Rosh Hoshanah, the shofar was blown a hundred times to represent the cries of Sisera’s mother when she heard of his demise. In Benyamin’s ears, he imagined that soul-wrenching wail now, the primal cry of the ram’s horn. A call to judgment.
A 9x18mm judgment . . . Meet your Makarov.
“Not another step,” Benyamin said.
“But I have my orders.”
“Stay right there.”
With eyes blazing again, the creature defied his command and charged ahead on powerful, driving legs.
Sisera, viscera . . . You’re going down.
The former patrolman squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession.
Chattanooga
“Did you hear that?” Gina said.
A throng of tourists milled at the railing, eyes fixed on a red-lit natural amphitheater of fluted stone formations and stalactites. A few cocked their heads, as though intrigued by what sounds might be trapped hundreds of feet beneath Lookout Mountain. The rumbling of an earthquake? Cries of the Confederate dead?
“Vat are vee supposed to hear?” a German man asked.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
Gina stepped back from her tour group and cupped a hand over her stomach. In her ears—or was it only in her imagination?—she had registered two sharp thunderclaps. The baby inside had squirmed at the same moment, his discomfort radiating throughout Gina’s body.
During this pregnancy, Gina had felt a heightened sensitivity of her physical senses that seemed to carry over into realms of emotion. It sounded crazy, even in her own head, yet she was convinced that her child had somehow dialed her in to others’ turmoil and pain.
So had somebody been shot? Was someone in danger?
She grimaced. Rolled her neck. “It’s okay, little guy.”
“You’re having a boy, huh?”
Gina glanced into the attentive almond-shaped eyes of a brunette. The girl was Gina’s height, around the same age, with an unidentifiable accent, Ray-Bans pushed up onto her forehead, and slender legs and hips.
Gina hated her for that. Though Jed kept telling his wife that she hadn’t lost any of her appeal and tha
t he especially appreciated her swelling chest, one look in the mirror proved that her once shapely behind had turned to lard.
“Yes,” she told the girl. “He’s a constant mover.”
“A little bundle of joy.”
More like a ball of constant sorrow.
But Gina said nothing, afraid it might trigger abdominal cramps or hormonal sobs. She tried to keep tears to herself, hiding them from even her husband.
“Is it true,” the girl inquired, “what they say about the ultrasound?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, Gina—about determining the sex.”
Gina fidgeted with her name tag, not sure she liked being addressed so personally. However, she had grown used to these questions regarding her pregnancy, particularly on the daily trips through the caverns. She was six weeks from her due date, toting a small watermelon beneath her uniform. What did she expect? But why did the promise of new life give strangers the right to rub her belly, ask what names she had picked out, and offer uninvited advice?
She looked into the upturned eyes and recalled seeing this same girl in previous tours, maybe a month or two back. That was strange. Never mind, though. The girl meant well, just wanting the best for mother and baby.
“Haven’t heard that one,” Gina answered. “Look, we better move along.”
“There’s no rush.” Cold fingers touched Gina’s arm. “The others are still taking pictures. From what they tell me about ultrasounds, males always have their hands down in their laps—yes, we know how those boys are, don’t we?—and the females have their hands up by their heads, already primping.”
“Sure. That could be true.”
“So. A boy, huh? I bet you’re excited.”
Gina nodded.
“You look about ready to pop.”
Gina gave her a questioning look, but saw nothing but reptilian disregard above the girl’s pasted-on smile. “Still got a ways to go,” she said.
“Have they given you a due date?”
“Hope it’s soon, that’s all I care. Okay, I’ve got to gather everybody before the next group catches up.”
