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

find the girl standing ten yards away with a rapt, haunting stare.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

Soimos Castle

Benyamin watched the two rounds plow into the creature’s gut.

At the shooting range, he’d witnessed the aftermath of fired 9x18mm slugs. They chewed through targets and left no doubt about their deadly intentions. Of course, he had never seen the projectiles’ actual paths.

Now, in the gothic confines of this centuries-old Transylvanian citadel, in this moment of imminent danger, his senses kicked into overdrive. The human mind was a thing of wonder. Time became an abstract entity, sliced into segments, split again into thinner ones—frames to be studied from a reel of film.

The spent cartridges ejected over his right shoulder.

The rounds spit from the Makarov’s mouth and spiraled forward.

The apparition that was a man, that wasn’t a man, couldn’t be a man, rushed forward in great clopping strides, while the fish tails of moonlight flapped in his beard, and the gleams of his irises intensified.

The pair of Russian-made rounds punched through his chest, lifting and slowing him, so that in this freeze-frame mode, it appeared he was vaulting, almost flying, over rock slabs and patches of grass. The skin sucked tight around the wounds, puckering, oozing blood. His bounds turned into a run, into a jog, a walk—

And then he stopped.

“Never been shot by a gun before,” he said.

“Most people don’t live to tell about it,” Benyamin said.

He waited for the apparition to fall, a victim to the laws of physics and nature. But the man still stood there. Perhaps he was a steroid-riddled athlete, or a hyped-up drug addict, or a person of abnormal strength and pain tolerance.

Or, as Nickel had asserted, one of Jerusalem’s Undead.

The man drove hairy-knuckled fingers with long tapered nails through one of the holes in his sweater, searched around in his chest cavity, then brought into view a flattened slug dripping with bodily fluids. He studied the object, sniffed at it, and touched it to his tongue.

Undead. Yes, Benyamin decided, that had to be the right answer.

The Makarov’s magazine held six more rounds, and Benyamin fired them all with short trigger squeezes.

He thought about his wife and son—so many regrets. Would he and Dov ever get to go on their camping trip?

He thought about Nickel and Those Who Resist, and wondered how things might’ve gone if he had partnered with the man. A potent team? Surely, though, Nickel could find others to recruit.

I’m still here firing, still kicking. I’m not dead yet.

Benyamin turned to run. Forget the expensive Swarovski scope and rifle. Who cared if he was missing a sock and a shoe? He knew his only hope now was to outdistance this unholy manifestation, maybe hide some-where down near the river, or find a place beneath the foliage or in a mud bank.

Keep moving, keep moving.

But his aggravated foot rejected his commands. The appendage dragged the soil like a rotted tree stump. He could barely move.

From behind came none of the unearthly growls or werewolves’ howls or bat screeches that were supposed to go with this scenario. It was eerily peaceful.

Only thudding steps, closing in.

So Nickel had been right about these killers from the Field of Blood. Benyamin had no idea where the others were, but he knew eleven dwelled right here. Down this hill. He also realized the woman he’d seen through the scope, entering the Totorcea house, was a twelfth revenant. She was the one he’d met last year on the Cetatea chapel’s doorsteps, the one who’d directed him inside for his case of beloved tuica.

Had she poisoned him then? Done something to the alcohol? Sure, his infection had started years prior, but was she the one who had triggered and turned it into something hideous?

It seemed they had been playing him all along.

Mammoth hands caught Benyamin by the upper arms, dragging him down. Fingers dug through his coat, latching into the skin with razoredged nails. The beard scraped over his neck like steel wool.

“I never gave you an answer,” the revenant said.

“About what?”

“You offered a drink, and I would love one.”

“Here you go,” Benyamin said, producing the flask from his pocket.

The assailant swatted it away.

Megiste had been warm in the thatched-roof house, with the crackling logs in the stone fireplace and the lingering smell of muschi. At Eros’s bequest, she had trekked with him toward the warehouse and left her fur coat behind. She shivered in the moonlight, her skin more ghostly than usual, almost translucent.

“There it is again,” Eros said. “Gunshots.”

“Maybe Barabbas found the intruder Ariston spoke of.”

“But he doesn’t carry a gun.”

“Doesn’t need to, does he? He’s a hulk of a man, if I’ve ever seen one.”

Eros studied her expression. “He’s been a faithful servant to the cluster.”

“Faithful? Why, what a tedious word.”

“Come. You look cold.” He draped an arm over her shoulder, guiding her through the warehouse’s wooden door in its sliding track. “Let’s find something to take the evening chill off. I’m sure Barabbas will be along shortly.”

“He can warm me, if he likes.”

“I have a better alternative,” said Sol, from inside the building.

Ariston’s oldest son stood beside a wheeled hay cart, his hook nose and hooded eyes aimed at them. An electric fixture dangled from an overhead girder and spotlighted the middle-aged woman laid out in the cart.

Dalia Amit was motionless. Twin scarlet dribbles ran from her pudgy arm, indicating the location of Sol’s anesthetizing bite and staining the pale-yellow straw that was to be her deathbed.

“What’re you up to?” Eros demanded. “And where’s the boy you mentioned?”

Sol ignored the household leader’s questions, despite the fact Eros was the cluster’s second in command. Already, Sol was preparing the emblems of blessed blasphemy—a scabbed wafer torn from the woman’s armpit; a thorn extracted from the pus-filled opening.

“Where is the boy?” Eros repeated. “If he’s here, it would be in our best interest to guarantee that he, too, is infested.”

“This woman, she wrestled with me and allowed the little rodent to scurry off.”

“Did I give you instructions to start tapping her?”

“She’s