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

her face. When she stood, she felt lightheaded and held on to the sides of the sink cabinet.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said, peering into the mirror.

The girl in the reflection gave no reply. She looked haggard, but even here at her worst, she still looked like a teen. Men hounded her for this, drawn by the appearance of innocence and youth.

Innocent? Gina felt anything but. Weary and old was more like it.

Weakening fingers of pain clutched at her, then slipped away as she steeled her gaze in the glass. She’d removed her black choker for work, and her half-moon scar showed pale and thin. Her earrings dangled over the basin, and she had a flash of concern that they might wash down the drain.

Just like her thoughts and memories used to do, spiraling away from her.

All so complicated. Life on a chessboard.

In the apartment living room, her folding chess set reminded her of those days in Cuvin. When Gina moved out of her mother’s St. Elmo district home last year, she had brought the set along. She’d removed the dagger from within, hiding the crude implement once used for performing surgeries of superstition.

True, she had inadequacies. But she would no longer submit to cleansing Nikki-style. No thank you.

She slid a hand down her right shin. There was the blade, beneath her clothing, sheathed in the leather her boyfriend had tooled for her last Christmas.

Faithful, forgetful, kindhearted Jed. He’d been good to her.

Another sensation moved through her belly.

Thinking it was the pain making a comeback, Gina prepared herself for the worst. This was different, though. A mere whisper of butterfly wings. It reminded her of Teo, of the flutters she’d felt from that first kiss back in Cuvin. Was there anything quite like young love—full of excitement, devoid of sexual politics and grown-up concerns?

Another flutter.

As though something were moving inside her.

Maybe she was a demon child, spawning something dark and hideous within. Back in Romania, her mother had seemed convinced of her defilement, yet Gina refused to buy into it any longer.

What had Cal said to her? I know you feel small, like you’re no one important, but that’s not true.

She hugged her tummy as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

Arad

The first sip of tuica darted down Benyamin’s throat, then wound through the maze of his intestinal tract with a palpable heat.

Ahhh, yes.

If there was any mercy upon this lonely planet, it was no more evident than here in the magnanimous kiss of the bottle to his lips. This was his god, bestowing favor and strength. Benyamin was a disciple, paying homage in this twin-steepled artifice.

Helene came to his side.

“I thought you were keeping watch,” he said.

“This is more interesting,” she cooed, sliding fingers down his arm.

The willowy creature with the alabaster neck stepped into the chapel and pushed the door closed with her rounded buttocks. She glided to his other side, her hair bleached by gibbous light through the nave’s windows. The two females eased him toward a pew and pressed him into a sitting position on the hardwood.

“You look to be a delicious fellow, Mr. Amit.”

He fortified himself with another drink. It warmed him.

Helene squatted down and raised his ankle over her shoulder. She pushed back his pant leg, then traced one finger over his heel where the scar tissue was dimpled and red. “It’s all swollen,” she said.

“Right there,” he pleaded. “If you could just scratch it.”

She first brushed her lips over the spot—moist, very soft.

And then her teeth.

“One moment,” said the second woman. “The others are on the way.”

“The others?”

“Relax, Ben,” Helene said. “Relax.”

An icy heat swarmed through his ankle, his eyes trailed to the ceiling, and the chapel began to spin.

“Lead the way, Barabbas.”

Ariston held the torch while his bearded henchman shouldered through a heavy wooden panel. Before them, the stone steps of a hidden passage curled upward. The design of these fortifications included underground escape routes, and this one fed from the vestry where Franciscan monks had once served.

Erota trailed the cluster leader, her olfactory senses detecting traces of votive candles and incense, of alcohol and . . .

Human blood.

Pulsing, pounding, pumping.

She thought of the promised demonstration, and she felt her own counterfeit heart quickening at the thought.

One by one, the cluster entered the chapel from behind the raised altar, their footsteps kicking up motes of dust that glittered in the moon-beams. The Collectors oozed through shadows and swaths of light until they’d reached the back pew where Megiste and Helene kneeled like worshippers before a stone-chiseled idol.

The figure was male, grasping a bottle, his chest slowly rising and falling.

A real man, then. Not stone, after all.

“I told you to wait,” Ariston said. “What’ve you done, Megiste?”

The hostage was in a cataleptic state, slumped back, eyes fixed upon the nave’s high ceiling, his right leg outstretched with Helene as his foot-stool. In the darkness, the engorged skin at his heel resembled a blister about to burst.

“Helene’s subdued him,” Megiste said. “That’s all. Meet Benyamin Amit, former patrolman for the Israeli Mash’av, present bodyguard for Romanian politicos. He’s ready and willing, practically begging for our attention.”

Ariston said, “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Helene smiled up at her husband.

“This is the man, the one I found camping with his son in the Negev. I remember I’d inhabited a mosquito, as an experiment more than anything. A few drops, that’s all I drew from him—but I felt glutted. It’s too bad that in these human casings we don’t have half the capacity of such an insect.”

“A mosquito?” Megiste pulled a face. “Sorry, I’m not crazy about working with bugs. I don’t know that I’d be able to choose one as a host.”

“Your loss. A means to a most excellent meal.”

“What’ll it be next, Ariston? Leeches? Ticks?”

Erota thought the idea had some appeal.

“For their size,” Megiste continued, “those’re some real bloodsuckers, though still not equal to what Helene and I are about to show you. Apparently there’s some truth in