Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

and claws of lycanthropic beasts, which humans called vyrkolakas or loup-garou: were-wolves. Collectors in Russia, India, and the Arabic world often disguised themselves as eretiks, rakshasas, and ghuls.

Some chose more innocuous forms.

Always, though, they leeched off the life force of others. Always, they started with mortal hosts.

Until tonight.

Beneath the branches of the acacia tree, Ariston concluded his address to the Akeldama Cluster. “I believe those of us here have an unprecedented opportunity. By escaping the prisons of death’s darkness, we’ve been equipped like no others to hunt down the Nistarim.”

“It won’t be easy,” Eros said. “They’re only thirty-six in number.”

“Thus the meaning of their name. They’ve been concealed for quite some time. Oh yes, other Collectors know about the marks borne by the Nistarim, but they’re blinded to them by their own hosts’ limitations. Such things are dark to mortal eyes. We, on the other hand, are the first Collectors to be looking through the eyes of the undead.”

“We can see beyond.”

“That’s right, Megiste. Their marks will give them away.”

“Upon your command, of course, Lord Ariston.”

Ariston gave his firstborn a hard stare. “All in good time. We’ll first need a secluded place from which to forage and gather our strength. Meanwhile, with our victims in two separate locations, the governing authorities will be kept busy trying to understand what took place.”

“Hunt us all they want, they can’t cause us harm.”

“But they can,” Ariston pointed out, “alert the Concealed Ones to our presence. For now it’s better to maneuver stealthily. Sol, since you seem full of energy, I want you to shoulder the corpse the rest of the way.”

“Lord, I can carry on all night,” Barabbas said.

“No, I want my son to share the burden.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’ll be mostly downhill from here anyway. Can anyone else smell the salt in the air?”

Sol let out a defiant breath, glanced around the cluster, then acquiesced. Grunting, he hefted the body over his back and set off over hard-packed sand.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

The Dead Sea, Israel

Benyamin Amit found and radioed in the dead body on the beach.

Male. Eighteen years old. Norwegian, judging by the passport fished from the deceased’s belt pouch. Tattered clothes. Features shriveled beyond recognition. Skin covered with sores that’d festered and turned yellow-green.

What’d happened to the poor devil?

With orders to wait here for an American, Benyamin returned to pacing the gritty sand in shorts and a tan tank top. The temperature hovered at 104 degrees. With an M-1 carbine slung from his shoulder, he was on patrol for the Mash’az, a volunteer division of the Israeli Police, formed in 1974 in response to escalating Palestinian unrest.

Where was this Cal Nichols? Why were the Americans involved?

The patrolman waved off a young Russian-speaking couple. “Not today,” he said. “You’ll have to go further up the beach.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Official police business. Move along.”

Benyamin’s fingers curled around the rifle stock. He felt irritable from lack of sleep. He lived in a city twenty minutes west of here, but he and his son Dov had camped last night in a wadi, a dry streambed, that sliced from the Negev toward the Dead Sea. Twice they’d been awakened by unearthly sounds. He’d told Dov it was the bleating of Bedouin goats, though he really wasn’t so sure.

One thing he was sure of: he’d been bitten.

By a desert ant? A spider?

He stopped to scratch at the shekel-sized wound on his heel, then looked up as a tour bus braked at the nearest hotel and emptied its passengers onto the pavement. Vacationers had been surging to this Ein Bokek resort area, and international investors were taking notice.

But still no sign of the American.

“I won’t wait here all day,” Benyamin complained aloud.

He took another look at the corpse. Had the boy been shot? Stabbed?

Until this morning, weekly patrol shifts had never diminished Benyamin’s appreciation of the Dead Sea. More than thirteen hundred feet below sea level, it was the lowest spot on earth, part of the Rift Valley. Fed with therapeutic minerals from the Jordan River, the dense aquamarine water glittered in the sun.

The sea’s high saline content made it virtually impossible to drown here, and swimmers often bobbed along while reading paperback novels or newspapers. The few who did perish were victims of panic.

This region did, however, have its history of woes.

According to the Torah, Lot’s wife had been turned to a pillar of salt just south of here, and the city of Sodom had been destroyed by brim-stone and sulfur. Those same fumes continued to linger, and salt deposits crystallized along the shores, delivered by the lapping waves as though reminders of God’s wrath upon those who looked back.

Old stories. Nothing more.

Benyamin Amit considered himself a modern man, a secular Jew. His grandfather had perished in the Shoah—the Holocaust—and he questioned the existence of a God who would allow such atrocities.

He rubbed at the itchy spot near his foot. Flipped open the dead man’s water-bloated passport again. The name was indecipherable.

Just one more example of the Almighty’s seeming apathy.

“Mr. Amit?” An American voice at his back. “Sorry I’m so late, man. I got held up at a West Bank checkpoint. Whew, it’s a scorcher. Or is this just normal weather to you?”

The patrolman turned. “Nothing is normal, Mr. Nichols. Not today.”

Cal Nichols was a billboard on two legs. Wearing Nike running shorts, athletic shoes, and a black T-shirt that said Just Do It, he bore a JanSport daypack on his back. His shoulders tapered to narrow hips. With lean ropes of muscle stretched across his quadriceps, he looked no older than one of the Israeli Army’s mandatory enlistees. A European might’ve called his nose Romanesque, yet it seemed proportional beneath a tan forehead topped with wheat-colored hair.

“Mr. Nichols,” Benyamin said. “Black absorbs the heat.”

“What? Oh, the shirt. Yeah, didn’t think about that.”

“You need to, with your fair skin.”

The American pinched his nostrils and eyed the deceased.

“Even with salt water to cleanse and cauterize the wounds, a corpse still stinks,” Benyamin said. “Some days the sea’s odor isn’t