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

herself with renewed fervor, sweeping back and forth—every broken shard, every speck of dirt—working off her mischief until the only goal remaining was the mind-numbing beauty of a job well done.

CHAPTER

TEN

Ruins of Kerioth-Hezron, Israel

“How do you like this place, Barabbas?”

“I feel a definite connection here, sir.”

“For good reason. This was the Man from Kerioth’s hometown.” Ariston waved down the hillside, where moonlight pooled between crumbling walls. “It’s nothing but a haunt for jackals now—a haunt for us, too, of course. Miserably desolate.”

“At least we’re hidden from sight. I like this place.”

“Hmm. Well, you might say this region is in our blood. Further back in time, Sisera—remember that name?—he was the commander of this region’s armies. Folktales spoke of him being so large that he caught fish in his beard, which caused some to speculate that he was a giant of demonic origin.”

“One of the ‘sons of God’? The Nephilim?”

“A relation of ours,” Ariston confirmed. “Of course, that was before Sisera was . . . destroyed. Something as innocuous as a tent peg through the head. And attacked by a woman, of all things, while he was sleeping.”

“He’s not the first man to have suffered such a fate.”

“Oh? And what do you know of these things? Were you married once?”

“No,” Barabbas said. “I had no time for such distractions.”

“Well, look at what it did for me. I had first Shelamzion, then Helene—and now the two of them are back from the dead to plague me.”

Both men laughed.

Ariston turned his thoughts to the other Collectors. How were they faring, led by Eros on this evening’s foray into nearby Arad?

A few nights prior, Ariston had spearheaded their hunt just east of here. They’d feasted on goats in a wadi. Caused lots of bleating. Ariston and Sol had even tapped the heel of a human, an adult male, sleeping in a body-length bag of some sort beside his young son. Disguised, Ariston had gone back for seconds the following evening, finding the man at his house.

“Lord, do you think it’s safe here at these ruins?” Barabbas said.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

As if to underline the risks of staying in this vicinity, a shriek sliced through the evening air. Ariston glanced into the valley and realized his first wife was the source of the distraction.

“Hail Hades.” He sighed. “We’re trying to remain covert here.”

Shelamzion’s actions were hardly surprising, considering her habitual whininess. Accompanied by Collectors and a bearded man in black robes—who was this stranger?—she rounded Kerioth’s old winepress and stumbled beneath the weight of something in her arms.

Or someone.

Ariston’s ribs tightened. He took a step forward. His wife’s cloth-wrapped load was small, no larger than—

“It can’t be,” he breathed.

She shrieked again, and this time the sound snaked up the incline and around his chest. The Collector within told him to remain detached. His legs, however, were driven by old emotions that burbled up from his host’s marrow, and he found himself rushing down the hill to Shelamzion’s side.

She fell, wailing, clutching her burden and rocking on her knees. He pulled back the cloth and saw the face of his youngest daughter, hazel-eyed Salome.

She was dying. A smoldering mass.

As the Collector watched, his perceptions filtering through the eyes of Ariston of Apamea, the child shriveled away, like a corn husk splitting over an open flame. Her skin blistered, blackened, and gave off sulfuric fumes that dried the lining in his nasal passages until it seemed his face would ignite.

“What is happening?” he shouted.

Eros looked nonplussed. Shelamzion’s high-pitched cries verged on hysteria.

“Who is responsible?” Ariston said. “Who did this to her?”

His wife squeezed the cloth bundle, and the corpse finished its rapid decomposition. Ashes spilled onto the sand. Bits of bone. Then even those disintegrated, and Salome was no more.

Ariston snorted. Tried to shake off his surge of rage.

She was his offspring, sure, but she had been a Collector first and fore-most. That could not be forgotten. She had come here to inhabit and possess, and somehow she had erred—an understatement, to be sure—and lost her host. If she’d simply left the habitation behind, or been banished, she might’ve had a chance of returning even stronger than before. Instead, she’d given up the ghost and the mortal casing that went with it.

Salome was gone. Cast into the Restless Desert.

What a waste. He scuffed his foot at the dirt. One hell of a way to go.

Shelamzion was still whimpering at his side, and Ariston was suddenly out of sympathy for such theatrics. The cluster was here to subjugate their hosts, not the other way around.

He slapped his wife once, hard, and told her to keep perspective. “You’re not human,” he reminded her. “You never were, and Salome never was. A long time ago, maybe, but that wasn’t us. We’re the undead. So now she’s one of the dead undead. What’s it matter?”

His wife swiped at her tears. Melted back into the group of Collectors.

“Talk to me. Who’s going to tell me how this happened?” He looked over the cluster. “I’d like to think we can learn from our mistakes. Eros? Anyone?”

The fellow in the black robes stepped forward. “I’ve witnessed this type of thing before.”

“And who might you be?” Ariston said. “You don’t seem shaken by this.”

“I’m Mendel.”

“Ariston.”

“I’m an ultra-Orthodox Jew, though I prefer the name some have given us: the datim.”

“Datim?”

“The ‘righteous ones.’ ”

“And what of this garb you are wearing?” Ariston gripped the bearded man by the sleeve and drew him away along a stone wall. Curled side locks swayed beneath a black hat, while stocking feet shuffled along in black shoes. “Perhaps things have changed, but this is like nothing I ever saw worn by Pharisees or religious leaders.”

Mendel became indignant. “These robes are exactly as prescribed.”

By the Almighty? By the rabbis?

Ariston chose not to argue the point, although it seemed what was prescribed was as capricious as the minds of mere humans. The religious garments had been quite different during his last stroll through the streets of