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

the sound of gunfire bursting into her thoughts. She snapped the chess set shut and grabbed the dagger.

Vasile was making late-afternoon rounds, spying through windows as he slipped along an alleyway, when he came face-to-face with a portly fellow wearing blue workman’s trousers and a jacket.

“Buna seara,” the prefect said. “Can I help you?”

The man cocked his head.

“Can I help you?” Vasile repeated.

With nut-brown eyes fixed straight ahead, the man tried to say some-thing through fleshy lips. It came out as garbled nonsense. Another man stood behind him—a younger, thinner version. Father and son, perhaps.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, comrade. What is it you’re after?”

In response, the heavier man’s hand thrust forward and clasped Vasile’s arm in an ice-cold grip. The numbing sensation sent a warning through his body, which he shook off as he fielded another laughable attempt at communication.

Except Vasile was not amused.

He took pride in the beauty of his mother tongue, a Romance language, and if he was going to be accosted on a street—okay, in an alleyway—in his own village, then this man should at least pronounce things properly.

Vasile tried to pull away. The cold of those fingers was penetrating his skin. It reminded him of the sort of contact he hadn’t experienced since . . .

“Let my arm go,” he said. “I insist. I am a communist in good standing, and you’ll pay dearly if I discover you have any criminal dealings. I hold the reins around here. Don’t you squabble with me.”

The thinner fellow stepped up, brown eyes set close together over his nose. His speech was halting. “This man is Ariston, my father. I am Sol. I was trained in Latin, so I hope you understand what I say. We mean no harm, but my father will do what he must.”

Vasile considered this. “If he’ll release me, we may have something to discuss.”

Words were exchanged between father and son, and the clench loosened.

“We know who you are,” Sol said to Vasile. “You are a host.”

“A host? But of course. As a communist, I try to share and share alike.”

“I think you know my meaning. You are at work with a Collector.”

Vasile’s stomach twisted, an inferno roared behind his eyes, and he thought for a moment he might vomit. Though bitter loneliness had accompanied his decision to abandon his cluster, he was free from the cluster’s petty concerns and bureaucracy. Unless these men, these Collectors, were here regarding his claims, he had no use for them. He’d survived in this village on his own, and he could do without interference from whip-cracking superiors.

“What is it you want from me?”

“We need answers, straight and true. We seek the Nistarim. You, we hear, have knowledge that could help.”

“I might.” Vasile’s queasiness began to subside. He did indeed have information, and this put him in a position of power—a position he craved yet rarely experienced in this backwater town. “As you may know, they are the Concealed Ones. Very difficult to find. I don’t suppose you’ve ever located or even seen one?”

“No,” Sol said. “But we will.”

Vasile had no proof that he’d seen one, either. He’d heard things from the home of Nicoleta and Regina, and through the bathroom window, he’d spied the twelve-year-old running her finger in a specific pattern along her forehead.

Even so, he did not know for certain.

“Are you two familiar with the signs to look for?” Vasile said this with the manufactured conceit of a man who had viewed such things infinite times. “It’s been fabled that they bear a seal, so as to be spared when Final Vengeance comes.”

Ariston, jowls wagging, muttered something to his son.

“Enough,” Sol said to Vasile. “You are going to help us now.”

“I’m considering it. Naturally, there are things I expect in return.”

“You misunderstand. It’s not a question, but an order.”

“Well, well, comrade.” Vasile sneered. “There’s only one way you’ll get the details you want, and that’s to play by my rules. Don’t push your luck.”

“You are a poor host. My father is displeased.”

“What does he know, huh? He understands not a word.”

“In just one moment,” Sol said, “he’ll understand more than enough.”

At that, Ariston’s head reared back, his eyes narrowing to slits, his gums appearing from behind peeled lips. With a puff adder’s swiftness, he struck.

Punctured skin. Latching fangs.

And images collected from the hot, pulsing flow of life.

Despite brief stiffening along the skin as Vasile’s own Collector tried to guard the premises, Ariston had no trouble accessing a vein. It was a Principle of Cluster Survival: For the sake of consolidated fortification, the strong Collector is encouraged—nay, commissioned—to prey upon the weaker Collector.

He disengaged from the prefect’s forearm. A greasy residue ringed his mouth. The taste was passable, yet the blood itself was thin and diluted, and he’d stopped the moment after filtering out the necessary pieces of evidence.

A girl with chestnut hair . . . a faint Hebrew mark on her forehead . . .

Where Vasile had stolen a glance through a young girl’s window and conjectured on what she saw in the mirror, Ariston was able to witness the memory through undead eyes and see clearly.

The letter Tav.

As for the girl’s awareness of the mark . . .

If she could see it, was that not proof of her own link to immortality?

Task accomplished, Ariston set his hands on Vasile’s shoulders and turned him back down the alleyway. The man lurched away, unblinking. A sleepwalker. Since times unknown, Collector saliva had worked as a memory-distorting coagulant. When Vasile regained awareness, he would be groggy, somewhat euphoric, with only dreamlike recollections of those who had stolen from him.

“That was not pleasant,” Ariston said to Sol.

He’d been annoyed by the prefect’s flippancy and by his own struggles to communicate. Clearly, language lessons were a necessity. While hitch-ing rides to this western edge of the country, the cluster members had familiarized themselves with maps and colorful, flat scrolls borrowed from the orphanage classroom, but there was still much that was alien to them, much