by Wilson, Eric
“I’m married, Megiste. I’m established here.”
“But this would’ve been your father’s wish. Surely, you can see that.”
“He’s gone,” Erota spit out. “He’s nothing to me now, is he?”
“Think of the role you can play in the void he has left. In fact, when we return I intend to elevate your status within the household. You and I, we can enjoy the preening of others over us—especially the male Collectors. They’re so simpleminded, don’t you think?”
“What does Lord Ariston think of this decision to part ways?”
“Oh, well, he’s not in favor of it. He’s lost control, though, that’s clear. A cluster leader is in no position to dispense judgment when he cannot keep things in order. Let him fume. It won’t stop us from moving forward.”
Erota wanted no part of Megiste’s power struggle. Already she’d shown herself capable here on her own in the U.S., and she knew she could turn to the Consortium if the need arose.
“My father,” she said, “would’ve told me to make my own choice as a grown woman. I don’t plan to go back to Israel, or anywhere near those godforsaken tombs. They’re all yours.”
“I warn you: Sol met his end by voicing similar defiance.”
“I’m sorry, Megiste. You’re right, of course. That was out of line. It’s just that I’m enjoying my life here, and I think I’ve added some nice specimens to our Collection too. Did you see Ray-Ban, my husband? I’ve got him wrapped around my finger, as the saying goes. And his sister Kristine? She’s been putty in my hands.”
“Then you should be free to move on. Trust your infestations to take hold.”
“I don’t think you—”
“They grow quite nicely, once the humans start tending to them. Trust that. With a sudden divorce, your husband’ll find even more time to nurture the things. Really, I’m in no mood for such arguments. Not after this awful turmoil.”
Erota watched the priestess push back her ringlets of hair and hold a palm to her head, showing a grimace of discomfort. Erota recognized the look from her own recent migraines. Even now, her head continued to throb, but this empathy did not change her feelings.
Put aside the goals she had set for herself ? Out of the question.
“Are we in agreement?” Megiste asked.
“Sure.”
“Glad to hear it.” Megiste took her hand.
Erota’s mind raced for a way out of this sudden change in plans. “You know, if you’re going to leave tomorrow, I should really go start packing. I’ll be in my room, but feel free to help yourself in the kitchen. Help your-self to Ray-Ban, too, if you like. Filthy males.”
“I’m actually interested in knowing more about this Lettered woman.”
“What? It’s old news now. Just a silly mistake on my part, I’m sure.”
“I suppose I’ll see for myself, won’t I?”
Before Erota could repel the attack, she felt Megiste’s teeth latch into her forearm, pumping, anesthetizing, then sucking away memories like one of these Southern thunderstorms tearing shingles from a roof. She felt drowsy, disoriented. She had found her own Collector’s item, so to speak, and she fought now to retain her mind’s grip on it: the link . . . the Letter . . . the Nistarim. Erota might’ve miscalculated in Chattanooga, but she was still convinced that Gina Turney was a vital connection, one not to be lost.
Erota slowed her breathing, her heartbeat, and tried to tug free from the hooked fangs. She was a warrior. “Megiste, please.”
Still draining away. Roof shingles, memories—fluttering in the storm.
“Megiste.”
The priestess opened her eyes, mouth gnawing, rimmed with red.
“Why don’t you come back to drink more later?” Erota said. “I won’t stop you. But if you’re wanting to know where the woman is, the one with the Letter, I’ll tell you. You can go see her for yourself tonight.”
Fangs unlatched. “I would like that.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
Chattanooga
Gina lay in a tub of hot water and gardenia-scented bubbles, with a candle burning on the sink. Jed was trying to help. He said this would relax her. She did as she was told, settling back in the bathwater, thick chestnut strands drifting over her shoulders. Her hair had never been as silky or confinable as her mother’s, and she hadn’t cut or added color to it in two months.
Knock, knock . . .
Along her eyelids, she felt the sting of salt. Didn’t go well with gardenias.
Knock, knock, knock . . .
“Gina?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You okay?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You need me to come in and help you with anything?”
“What, Jed? Am I on a suicide watch here?”
“I was thinking of something . . . romantic. You know, you and me.”
“I’m still healing. The stitches and all.”
“Yeah. I mean, what was I thinking? I knew that.” His presence hovered there, outside the bathroom door. “Silly question,” he mumbled, and walked away.
Gina pushed aside any regret for hurting his feelings. He was trying to comfort her, but it only stirred the pain further. She filled her lungs and let herself slip beneath the surface, the bubbles crackling in her floating strands of hair, the heat shifting back and forth across her bread-dough belly and breasts that had deflated after the buildup of the pregnancy.
This was what it was like to be immortal, huh?
Swell. Just great.
She wondered what, if anything, had been true in her conversation with Cal. Long ago he had tried to help her and her mother, then disappeared for years. What was his emotional investment in her life? Why had he been there in the first place? Finally he had come back, dumped a bunch of secrets on her, and promised to be there as guardian and protector. What an idiot she’d been to think he would put himself on the line for the sake of her child.
“Don’t worry about your baby,” Cal had said. “I’ll keep him safe.”
“They’ll come for him,” Nikki had tried to tell her months prior.
Gina’s lungs were about to explode, and she resurfaced to the shrill of the phone. She let her arms float beneath the bubbles, her fingers already puckering.
Brrng, brrng . . . Brrng, brrng . . .
“You going to get that, Jed?”
No answer, but the phone did stop bleating. She could hear her husband’s low voice, the words indiscernible from here in the bathroom.
Knock, knock . . .
“What now?”
“That was Mr. Felsner,” Jed said. “From the FBI. You know how they think this bombing is connected to the three in Atlanta? Now they’re not so sure.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“They’ve isolated a section of material from the package that contained the explosive device.”
“The pipe bomb, Jed. The nails. Just say it.”
“Gina . . .”
“I was the first one to see our son, okay. I know what happened.”
“Can I come in?”
“I’m relaxing.”
“Does that mean no?” he said.
“What’d they find? What was the call about?”
“All of the Atlanta incidents were perpetrated using matching packages.”
“Perpetrated? Jed, stop. The fancy words won’t make this any less real.”
“Our incident . . .” He cleared his throat. “It broke the pattern. They’re thinking it may’ve been just a copycat, so they’re shifting most of the focus back to Georgia.”
“Fine.”
“I guess this package, it was just a regular old daypack. JanSport brand.”
She inhaled the aromas of the candle and bubbles. From under the door, a horsefly buzzed into the bathroom. It explored the vanity, then came at her hand on the tub’s edge. She batted it away, felt her fingernail catch and bend back against the corner of the adjacent countertop.
Ignoring a bu
rst of pain and the red liquid that squeezed from beneath the injured nail, she said, “Jed, thanks for the bath. It feels nice. Listen, I’m sorry for being a jerk.”
His footsteps shuffled off to the living room.
Flies had always disgusted Megiste. She detested the very thought of using one as a host, fearful she would be tainted by its diseased mind-set.
Sometimes, though, a Collector had no choice.
While still in her human host, Megiste had located the Chattanooga apartment without difficulty and taken the elevator to the seventh floor. From a thin gap beneath the locked door of the Turney residence: sounds of a phone, muted voices, then the blaring TV.
She had no time to wait for Gina Turney’s morning exodus to work. She had to do something now. She imagined a brash attack, crashing straight into the apartment and taking by force what she wanted—memories, blood, any available evidence to substantiate the claims of the untrustworthy Erota.
Megiste decided against the direct approach. Already, Erota’s streak of narcissism and violence had raised the ire of police officials and local clusters.
Bump, bumpp, bzzzz . . .
Along the seventh-floor hall, a horsefly bumped against the sconce lights.
No. Megiste really didn’t like this idea. Did she have any better option, though? It was late, with no signs of activity in this hallway. Facing the elevator, two armchairs flanked a magazine table and a fake, potted palm. She took a seat, a safe place for a slumbering host, and pulled up her sleeve to reveal smooth, alabaster skin.
Luring the dreadful thing. Waiting for it to find her.
Find her it did.
Horseflies, she knew, could be vicious. The females fed on blood to foster reproduction and used razored mandibles to pick at the skin of their victims.
Bzzzz, bumpp, bummpp . . .
Megiste met its prismatic eyes and waited for a response.
Moments later, her Collector was in a world bombarded by multiple angles of vision. Thankfully, this female fly was an experienced navigator, coordinating the viewpoints and honing in on what she was after.
There: down and under the apartment door.
The buzzing wings matched the sound in the Collector’s head. She tried to concentrate. Tried to direct her host toward what she wanted. The female hovered near a kitchen counter, looking for blood where someone might’ve cut themselves peeling carrots. She moved next toward the bathroom, where a woman might’ve nicked herself shaving her legs—an American custom she found fascinating, as well as sensually suited to her own brand of delights.
She heard water now, booming like ocean surf. And a sharp, hissing sound. Was someone running a bath?
Gina’s blood, her memories, that’s what the Collector was after.
It was the human scent, however, that drew the horsefly in a hurry.
She descended, tried to latch on for a taste. She was batted away, and in the moment that followed, the scent intensified. She zoomed down toward the drops of blood that splashed against the floor.
Gina pulled the bath plug with her toes. She listened to the glug-glug of the water as it sucked bubbles in a spiraling journey downward. She could hear the twenty-seven-inch TV blaring in the living room, manipulated by Jed’s ubiquitous remote.
She replayed that moment again, at the Ruby Falls picnic area, when she had spilled the Sprite and scooted away the heavy pack beneath Cal’s feet.
JanSport . . . Was she supposed to be surprised?
Cal . . . Had he come to track her down, to cozy up? To target her child?
Covered in fleeting bubbles, Gina started to shiver. There had to be a way to escape from the stark images of the decimated nursery. She thought of her mother’s dagger—that old familiar therapy.
Speaking of her mother, had Nikki tried to stop Cal? Was that why she’d been upset by his visit? Or had her mother been in on it? That seemed unlikely, since Nikki was with Gina at the time of the explosion. Of course, Nikki could’ve planted the pipe bomb herself. Jed said he had found her wandering in the hall.
For that matter, why hadn’t Jed done anything to stop this? Where had he been while the bomber was planting the package?
Maybe the FBI’s Mr. Felsen suspected the baby’s father of mischief, and that’s why he’d called, fishing for means or motive.
Gina told her brain to stop. The thing just kept churning, contorting, a boa constrictor trying to crush its prey before swallowing it down. She was the prey, and these thoughts would devour her if she let them.
Her fingertip was throbbing. She looked down, saw beads of her own blood like ruby bath crystals along the floor of the tub, and was oddly pleased by her revulsion to them. She was done with her mother’s cure-alls.
Beside her, the horsefly was leeching from Gina’s spilled blood on the tub’s edge, storing up to breed its pestilence.
“Shoo,” she said. “Get away.”
What was it Cal had spoken of ? Forming a group of Those Who Resist? His words just didn’t mesh with those of someone who would trigger the destruction at the clinic.
Gina decided she couldn’t accept Cal’s guilt, not till it was proven he’d been there that day. If she wallowed in self-pity, it would only drag down her husband and others. She would stand beside the Provocateur in his belief that this world was a beautiful place.
That wasn’t to deny the evil.
It was here. It slunk in corners, staining lives.
Even hours-old Jacob had not been spared. Wickedness had stalked into that clinic and jabbed its penetrating nails into his chest.
Stop. Don’t go there, Gina. Just . . . stop.
The tub was done draining. Gina climbed out and dried herself. As she slipped into jeans, she heard the horsefly hovering again, back near the rivulets of pinkish-red. She ran the water till the color was gone then twisted her towel with a shake of the wrist, and landed a shot that sent the big fly spinning, stunned, into the corner behind the toilet.
Though the fly was interested in laying eggs, the female Collector kept this temporary vessel fixed on the duty at hand. Drinking was a simple matter, an orgy of flavor, whereas siphoning memories was a wholly different function that required focus and mental energy. For a fly, it was a real stretch to add anything other than instinctive behaviors to the primitive brain.
The winged host was preparing for final cleanup when a typhoon swirled overhead, a sudden change in the weather system that buffeted and sent it reeling.
Buckhead
Early morning rays were peeking between the live oaks when Megiste got back to the Paces’ home off of Peachtree Road. The fly experience was one she would rather forget, and she was disappointed by the information she’d filtered.
This Gina woman, she no longer carried the mark.
She was washed up. Of no use.
Which only helped sharpen Megiste’s focus. She would return to Arad, to Kiev, enlist the loyalties of the shaken cluster members. There was no reason to continue following Lord Ariston. What a man could do, Megiste could do better. She would guide them back to Israel. There, they would partner with refugees, terrorists, the ultrareligious—anyone who could help in increasing the sorrows of this dying planet.
And let the Nistarim suffer with the putrid humans.
Let them crumble, one by one.
It might take time, but the House of Eros would soon regain its strength and continue in its quest to usher in Final Vengeance.
Megiste arrived at the doorstep of the Tutor-style home, expecting Erota to be ready to go. Her instructions last night had been explicit. She and Erota would be buying tickets out of Atlanta today, and by tomorrow they would be helping their household—Dorotheus, Hermione, Domna, and, of course, burly Barabbas—regroup.
The estate was eerily quiet, still illuminated by lawn lights, but with windows dark all around. The front door was unlocked, even open a crack.
The scent of death drew Megiste upstairs.
She knew before she’d reached Ray-Ban’s
desiccated body that Erota had broken away and abandoned the needs of her family back in Kiev. Ray-Ban had probably caught her in the act of packing and tried to put an end to it. A man of his money and position, proud of his trophy wife—he would not take a soft-handed approach to such ungratefulness. Plus, his business pals would see it as a sign of emasculation.
Oh, if only Mr. Raymond Pace could see himself now.
Barely a man at all.
As for Mrs. Erota Pace, she was nowhere to be found.
With a plane to catch and a household to guide back toward that sliver of a country squeezed between the Mediterranean and the shores of the Dead Sea, Megiste couldn’t burden herself with such matters. Let the puerile Collector in the nineteen-year-old’s body choose a path of rebellion. On her own, Erota would be ineffective. Inept. Certainly not worth fretting over.
THE FOURTH DROP:
RETURN
Good! It has given us opportunity
to cry “check” in some ways in this chess game,
which we play for the stake of human souls.
—Bram Stoker, Dracula
Rescue others by snatching them from the flames . . .
show mercy, but be careful that you aren’t contaminated.
—Jude 1:23
Journal Entry
June 27
I’m not sure what to think at this point. I have one drop left, and so far I’ve found mostly heartache. Each stain has come from a Collector, one of Those Who Hunt. The memories are full of dark things, and I’d like to believe it’s all fantasy. Just some good stories to keep my interest.
Who sent me this map? Someone trying to help me escape this little corner of the world, or someone trying to flush me out of hiding? That’s the part I can’t figure out.
Megiste’s blood did give some interesting viewpoints. I’m not really sorry to see some of these characters take the fall, but there’s a part of me that . . . well, that likes the darkness. Maybe it’s because the light can be so blinding at times. You just feel more—I don’t know—at home, I guess, in the dark. It doesn’t force you to wear a pretty face or look just right. You can let your hair down. I mean, who’s gonna notice? Who’s gonna care?
