by Wilson, Eric
“A lotta history around the place. Some of it recent, and not pretty.”
“Okay,” Gina said. “Back to the legend.”
Cal glanced at his watch. “You’ve got six minutes left.”
“You say my child’s in danger? The job can wait. Keep talking.”
“I’ll make it quick. You shouldn’t break the routine, though. Act normal.”
“Can you just get to the point?”
A butterfly flitted into view, landed on a drop of spilled Sprite, then flew off.
“Sure. The story goes that Abraham, he begs God not to destroy the wicked cities, and so he starts wheeling and dealing: ‘God, if there are fifty righteous people, will you save the place? What if there’s forty-five? Forty?’ And so on. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ God says. All the way down to ten.”
“Must’ve been one bad place. They still got the brimstone, didn’t they?”
Cal’s eyes turned mournful at her flippancy. “The story,” he said, “shows that the Almighty was willing to protect many for the sake of a few righteous ones. Which leads to the Nistarim, the Lamed Vov.”
“Thirty-six of them, right? Guess that should be more than enough.”
“Grace beyond measure,” he agreed.
“Talk to Nikki about grace, and she starts sharpening the knives.”
“She needs it more than most.”
“What’d she do that was so awful?” Gina shooed flies from her plate of fries.
“I’ll leave that for her to tell. She’s sworn me to secrecy.”
“Convenient.”
“Actually, a real pain in the butt. There’s so much I wanna say.”
“Start with the whole immortal thing. You’ve already spilled the beans on that one. How can you even know? About me, I mean?”
“I was there, Gina.”
“Where?”
“Last year. That morning, outside Rembrandt’s.”
“You . . . you were there?” Gina’s heart wedged in her throat, her thoughts churning in reverse to that specific day in Chattanooga, in the Bluff View Art District. “You were across the road.”
“Heading up High Street,” he confirmed. “I’ve checked in on you over the years, but that day proved to me what I already suspected. Death by natural means won’t be your biggest concern.”
“Is there any other way?”
“You could have your very soul sapped from your veins.”
“As in, the whole Collector-slash-vampire thing?”
“Something like that.” Cal tapped his watch. “Two minutes and counting.”
“Okay. But who says I should’ve died? Other people survive things like that.”
“And just walk away? You had a broken back, a cracked skull—”
“There’s no proof any of that happened.”
“You know what happened.”
Before her eyes, images swarmed from that horrendous collision between flesh and metal. She could still feel the cartilage and bone shifting back into place, still recall the sensations of heat, light, and moisture on her tongue.
“Did you . . . ?” She faltered. “Give me something to drink?”
“Just a little bit.”
“It was blood.”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
“Someone who cares about you deeply.”
“Yours?”
“If it woulda helped, I woulda given it. But, no.”
Gina’s mind reeled with these continued questions and revelations. She remembered a shadow standing over her, her reflexive swallowing of warm liquid, the sudden quickening of her body. If she was immortal, as Cal claimed, and if she had been energized by a sip of the red stuff, what did that make her?
“Are you saying I’m a . . . ?”
“A what?”
“A vampire?”
Cal’s burst of laughter was so lighthearted, so unaffected, that it washed her suspicion away. “No,” he said, his shoulders still shaking with mirth. “You’re no such thing, Gina. Unless, of course, you’ve been draining necks and sleeping in coffins.”
“Not recently.”
“Phew. That’s a big load off my back.” He chuckled again.
“Glad you think it’s funny. But what’re you saying, then? How’d I survive the run-in with the truck?”
Cal covered his mouth and tried to calm himself.
She investigated another angle. “What about you? Are you . . . ?”
“Go on. I gotta hear this one.”
“Well, this is just as crazy, so don’t laugh. Okay, here it is—and I don’t even know if I buy into this stuff myself—but are you my . . . guardian angel?”
“One of the Unfallen?” Cal almost choked.
“I told you not to laugh.”
“C’mon. Can you see me sitting on a cloud, playing a harp?”
“That’s a misconception found nowhere in the Bible.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“But you just—”
“I was messin’ around, okay? And the last time I checked, vampires weren’t sleeping in coffins either. That’s a modern addition to their mythology.”
A charge of anger warmed Gina’s cheeks. “What if I had been killed on High Street? What if you were wrong about me being immortal, or whatever? You think then it would’ve been oh-so-ha-ha hilarious?”
“I knew it wouldn’t play out that way.”
“Right. Instead, you just stood by for the show. How sick is that?”
“But I knew.”
“How?”
“Gina, since way back in Borsa, I’ve known you had a purpose. A destiny, if you wanna call it that. Because of that seal there on your forehead.”
“This?” She pulled fingers across the spot. “You mean, you can see it?”
Southbound I-75, Georgia
Not even four p.m. yet, and cars were at a standstill on their way into Atlanta. Erota knew she should’ve left earlier, but after the visit to Ruby Falls—and her favorite tour guide—she had swung through downtown Chattanooga for lunch at the Mellow Mushroom. Was there anything better than pizza stacked with meat, fresh olives, and herbs?
Now, staring down rows of vehicles, Erota felt tempted to hitch a ride on a winged insect or a feathered friend. Of course, there would be that little issue of abandoning her human host, in her husband’s Jaguar, on the interstate.
She could hear Ray-Ban now: You found her body where, Officer?
Not that such creatures were the cure-all for her impatience, anyway. Take, for example, the Collector she’d crossed paths with in Decatur. He was a pedophile. One afternoon in a traffic jam, he’d left his living human habitation for a snappier ride in a passing dragonfly. Only to run head-on into a semi’s headlight.
It was so pure, so beautiful, he told her later. I couldn’t help myself.
There was his problem in a nutshell, and she bore him no sympathy.
The filthy Collector had found himself a hundred miles away, at a truck stop, before he could disengage himself from the splattered mess of his secondary host. Nothing more than a wispy tendril in the atmosphere, he had spent hours hopping wind currents and hugging shadows to find his way back to his usual dwelling.
Erota, in her husband’s Jag, flicked on the AC, cranked the Bose stereo, and eyed the driver in the adjacent car. Through her sunglasses, she watched his look of surprise turn to sly approval, then winking flirtation. He’d be ready for a cold shower by the time she was done playing mind games with him.
Easy pickings, here in the Peach State.
Erota inched forward a car length, put it back into Park, and savored thoughts of a much greater victory only weeks away.
Did that German tourist think he’d fooled her during the cave tour? She knew what he was up to and knew just how to exploit him. She had her contact in place at Gina’s hospital, she’d verified the unborn’s sex and approximate due date, and she had a trusty helper at work in a basement not far away.
The components were a
ll in place.
Once she could see the infant for herself, she would light the fuse.
Chattanooga
“Is this gonna get you in trouble?”
“Nope, we’re fine,” Gina said.
Side by side in her Camry, arms brushing with each bump in the road, Gina and Cal had driven down to the riverfront. They faced the water now, sitting on concrete steps near an historical marker for the Trail of Tears.
“My supervisor was cool about it. I used the old prego excuse—which is legitimate, in this case—and she said to take the rest of the day off, come back tomorrow with a fresh smile.”
“I like your smile,” Cal said.
“You do?”
“Melted my heart the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“I was just a kid.”
“Who knows how old you really were?”
“Oh, good point. Me being immortal and all. Very clever. Well, if you must know, I’m two hundred and holding.”
“Uh, not even,” Cal said. “So, do you wanna hear about the mark?”
She was still mulling all that he had revealed up at Ruby Falls. Her own childhood memories were a scattering of mosaic tiles—not quite matching, dazzling but jagged, hinting at a picture that seemed to never take shape. Did he hold the pieces that could connect it all? Sure, she could buy into the idea of the Lamed Vov. As a Romanian Jew, Nikki had raised Gina with stories of the Nistarim and of distant uncles or cousins who were suspected of being a lamedvovnik.
Still, to think that her own child might be involved.
“Let’s hear it, buddy boy,” she said to Cal. “Tell me what you see.”
She’d been waiting for his explanation of the symbol on her skin. No matter his response, she was certain that immortality and the Fountain of Youth were concepts for fairy tales, not her own flesh-and-blood experience.
“Once I tell you, you’ll be responsible for what you know.”
“Is that a good thing, or bad?”
“It just is,” he said.
Gina’s gaze lighted again on the Trail of Tears marker, and she debated whether it was a bad omen or just a counterpoint to her recent struggles. “Well, Cal, I’m all for responsibility, and I’m tired of wondering. Plus, if it’s my key to life eternal, maybe I can market it. Sell postcards and T-shirts, or something.”
He turned to face her. “The mark has nothing to do with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You being immortal is a whole separate issue.”
“So the mark’s meaningless? What’re you getting at?”
He brushed the hair back over her head, exposing the symbol she had long tried to hide—and which no one else, except a village prefect long ago, seemed to have had any awareness of.
She felt naked beneath his scrutiny. “Well?”
“There’s these light blue lines, almost like veins.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Tracing her skin, his fingers were dry, yet smooth—the way leather might feel after years of wear and tear—and their touch caused something to swell in her chest. A bittersweet desire. She’d always been drawn to those with links to her homeland, but this seemed to go beyond that. It made no sense to feel deeply for a man who had shared only a few incidents in her past.
Confused by her yearning, she slipped back into sarcasm.
“Is it a tumor?”
He frowned at that.
“Kidding,” she said. “Just a joke.”
Even his reaction tugged at her, and she told herself to be cautious. She’d always had genuine concern for the downtrodden and the orphans, and she found herself susceptible now that the same concern was turned her direction.
Cal’s green eyes were locked onto her.
“What?” she said. “Do I look like a charity case?”
“You look like a beautiful young woman.”
She tapped the ring on her finger. “Married. Don’t you forget it.”
“I hope he’s good to you.”
“Jed? He’s the best.”
She meant it, and she tamped down any thoughts otherwise. Cal had information she needed, and that alone was her reason for being here beside him on the riverfront steps.
“So,” Gina said. “We’ve established that it’s not a tumor.”
“I already know what it is. You’ve been Lettered.”
“Lettered in varsity track and field, if that counts.”
“The letter Tav, Gina. Or Tau. It’s from the ancient Hebrew alphabet. Almost like an x with soft little curls on the ends. Over the centuries, it’s been simplified and used by all sortsa people. Basically, a cross. Some call it the Roman Cross, or the crux commissa. Saint Francis of Assisi, he even used it as part of his crest.”
“Okay. And?”
“You ever seen those people on Ash Wednesday, wearing the Sign of the Cross on their foreheads? It all comes from the same original story.”
“This is sounding like Nikki now. Snoozeville.”
“You wanna know?” he said. “Or you gonna make jokes?”
She stared off over the meandering river. “What’s it mean for me, Cal? You come waltzing in to my work—after quite the long absence, I might add—and start making these wild claims. Like I’m supposed to believe you. Well, give me something real.” She tapped his chest with her fist. “Something tangible.”
“I’ll give you what I know. You’ll have to decide from there.”
“Loads of fun. Hit me with it.”
“First, lemme guess. This symbol appeared on your twelfth birthday.”
“Hey. There’s no way you could—”
“Gina, listen. There’s all kindsa stuff that got lost in your past, jumbled up and bled away. I know how strong you’ve had to become. That’s good. You’re trying to move forward and put the old things behind you, and I admire that. But now you’ve got this wall of cynicism up, to keep anything else from getting in.”
“I won’t deny it. What? Is that a problem for you?”
His eyes softened, drifting down to hers.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just—”
“No, Gina. It’s okay. If I wanna get to the bottom of things, I’m sure to stir up some mud.”
“That’s me. Ol’ muddy waters.”
“That’s not what I see,” he said. “Not at all.”
As Cal spoke, he ran the pad of his finger up left, down right, up left, down right, over the mark. Gina felt cool tingling spread across her scalp—a cup of pure water, of snowmelt, emptying over her head and running down into her hair.
How else could she explain the sensation?
She resisted labeling moments such as these, although she’d had them before a time or two. She hedged against the fanaticism of her mother and ran screaming from anything that smacked of spiritual arm-twisting. Put enough people in a room—or an N. K. Lazarescu session—and a skilled communicator could work them into a blather over just about anything.
But could there be a seed of truth in all her mom’s talk? Something unmarred and radiant that lay hidden beneath heaps of crusty religion?
In Gina’s mind’s eye, somewhere behind these lines etched into her thick skull, she watched colorful glass shards begin to float into place, bumping softly, easing, joining, becoming one. In Romania, she’d seen meticulous craftsmanship just like it, broken stone turned into works of art.
She stared off past Cal’s shoulder. Lifting her chin. Afraid to blink.
“Can you just tell me the story?” she said.
“Sure thing.”
CHAPTER
FORTY
“It’s from the ninth chapter of Ezekiel,” Cal Nichols explained. “God instructs this guy carrying a writer’s case to go through the streets of Jerusalem and to start marking the foreheads of those who sigh and weep for the sins they see all around. Each of the ones that got Lettered, they were spared from the wrath to come.”
“Final Vengeance,” Gina said.
“A foreshadowi
ng, maybe. These people, they were not to be touched during that particular day of judgment, because of the sorrow they’d carried with them, mourning for a world gone mad.”
“Is that what you think of this place?”
“Me? I see beauty, and lots of amazing things. Everywhere I go, I’m running into people with big hearts and love that won’t quit. That’s why we need you, Gina. If this all pans out, I mean. We’ve gotta fight to protect others. We need your son. We need the Concealed Ones, who are like the solid foundation—humble and unseen, but without them the whole thing crumbles.”
“Why me, though? I thought it was all a male thing.”
“They have to come from somewhere, don’t they?” He gestured to her tummy. “See there? Prego, in your own words.”
“So the women do all the work, while the men get the glory? Typical.”
“Well, with that attitude of yours . . .”
“Who makes these rules?”
“Hey, man, at least you get the Letter.” He flashed a smile. “Not to mention that your son will have a portion of immortal blood—thanks to you, that is. In Jewish culture, heredity passes through the mother’s side. Aside from the original Thirty-Six, the previous Nistarim candidates have always been mortal.”
“If you ask me, it sounds like a flawed plan.”
“We’re all flawed.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“But it doesn’t disqualify us from being Those Who Resist.”
“Well, that’s a big relief.”
“It should be. Even though some people think this stuff I’m telling you is just legend, much of it comes down through revered rabbinical traditions. To a devout Jew, the Talmud’s just about level with the Torah and the Scriptures. And of course, the male is seen as a covering or a protector, going back through thousands of years of culture.”
“And you think my child is a part of all this?”
“You tell me.”
She reflected on the past months of cramps and knee-buckling grief, of sympathy pains that seemed to torment her son within. What sort of life lay ahead for him? She felt a flutter in her midsection.
“My poor baby,” she said.
“Yeah, there’s not much glory in the job.” A weary expression crossed Cal’s face. “It’s all about dying to yourself every day. Often a long, lonely road.”
