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

her reflexive swallowing of warm liquid, the sudden quickening of her body. If she was immortal, as Cal claimed, and if she had been energized by a sip of the red stuff, what did that make her?

“Are you saying I’m a . . . ?”

“A what?”

“A vampire?”

Cal’s burst of laughter was so lighthearted, so unaffected, that it washed her suspicion away. “No,” he said, his shoulders still shaking with mirth. “You’re no such thing, Gina. Unless, of course, you’ve been draining necks and sleeping in coffins.”

“Not recently.”

“Phew. That’s a big load off my back.” He chuckled again.

“Glad you think it’s funny. But what’re you saying, then? How’d I survive the run-in with the truck?”

Cal covered his mouth and tried to calm himself.

She investigated another angle. “What about you? Are you . . . ?”

“Go on. I gotta hear this one.”

“Well, this is just as crazy, so don’t laugh. Okay, here it is—and I don’t even know if I buy into this stuff myself—but are you my . . . guardian angel?”

“One of the Unfallen?” Cal almost choked.

“I told you not to laugh.”

“C’mon. Can you see me sitting on a cloud, playing a harp?”

“That’s a misconception found nowhere in the Bible.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“But you just—”

“I was messin’ around, okay? And the last time I checked, vampires weren’t sleeping in coffins either. That’s a modern addition to their mythology.”

A charge of anger warmed Gina’s cheeks. “What if I had been killed on High Street? What if you were wrong about me being immortal, or whatever? You think then it would’ve been oh-so-ha-ha hilarious?”

“I knew it wouldn’t play out that way.”

“Right. Instead, you just stood by for the show. How sick is that?”

“But I knew.”

“How?”

“Gina, since way back in Borsa, I’ve known you had a purpose. A destiny, if you wanna call it that. Because of that seal there on your forehead.”

“This?” She pulled fingers across the spot. “You mean, you can see it?”

Southbound I-75, Georgia

Not even four p.m. yet, and cars were at a standstill on their way into Atlanta. Erota knew she should’ve left earlier, but after the visit to Ruby Falls—and her favorite tour guide—she had swung through downtown Chattanooga for lunch at the Mellow Mushroom. Was there anything better than pizza stacked with meat, fresh olives, and herbs?

Now, staring down rows of vehicles, Erota felt tempted to hitch a ride on a winged insect or a feathered friend. Of course, there would be that little issue of abandoning her human host, in her husband’s Jaguar, on the interstate.

She could hear Ray-Ban now: You found her body where, Officer?

Not that such creatures were the cure-all for her impatience, anyway. Take, for example, the Collector she’d crossed paths with in Decatur. He was a pedophile. One afternoon in a traffic jam, he’d left his living human habitation for a snappier ride in a passing dragonfly. Only to run head-on into a semi’s headlight.

It was so pure, so beautiful, he told her later. I couldn’t help myself.

There was his problem in a nutshell, and she bore him no sympathy.

The filthy Collector had found himself a hundred miles away, at a truck stop, before he could disengage himself from the splattered mess of his secondary host. Nothing more than a wispy tendril in the atmosphere, he had spent hours hopping wind currents and hugging shadows to find his way back to his usual dwelling.

Erota, in her husband’s Jag, flicked on the AC, cranked the Bose stereo, and eyed the driver in the adjacent car. Through her sunglasses, she watched his look of surprise turn to sly approval, then winking flirtation. He’d be ready for a cold shower by the time she was done playing mind games with him.

Easy pickings, here in the Peach State.

Erota inched forward a car length, put it back into Park, and savored thoughts of a much greater victory only weeks away.

Did that German tourist think he’d fooled her during the cave tour? She knew what he was up to and knew just how to exploit him. She had her contact in place at Gina’s hospital, she’d verified the unborn’s sex and approximate due date, and she had a trusty helper at work in a basement not far away.

The components were all in place.

Once she could see the infant for herself, she would light the fuse.

Chattanooga

“Is this gonna get you in trouble?”

“Nope, we’re fine,” Gina said.

Side by side in her Camry, arms brushing with each bump in the road, Gina and Cal had driven down to the riverfront. They faced the water now, sitting on concrete steps near an historical marker for the Trail of Tears.

“My supervisor was cool about it. I used the old prego excuse—which is legitimate, in this case—and she said to take the rest of the day off, come back tomorrow with a fresh smile.”

“I like your smile,” Cal said.

“You do?”

“Melted my heart the first time I laid eyes on you.”

“I was just a kid.”

“Who knows how old you really were?”

“Oh, good point. Me being immortal and all. Very clever. Well, if you must know, I’m two hundred and holding.”

“Uh, not even,” Cal said. “So, do you wanna hear about the mark?”

She was still mulling all that he had revealed up at Ruby Falls. Her own childhood memories were a scattering of mosaic tiles—not quite matching, dazzling but jagged, hinting at a picture that seemed to never take shape. Did he hold the pieces that could connect it all? Sure, she could buy into the idea of the Lamed Vov. As a Romanian Jew, Nikki had raised Gina with stories of the Nistarim and of distant uncles or cousins who were suspected of being a lamedvovnik.

Still, to think that her own child might be involved.

“Let’s hear it, buddy boy,” she said to Cal. “Tell me what you see.”

She’d been waiting for his explanation of the symbol on her skin. No matter his response, she was certain that immortality and the Fountain of Youth were concepts for fairy tales, not