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

In these weeks after the bombing, Gina asked for more hours at Ruby Falls, extra shifts. Anything to stay busy. The tourists kept coming, and she kept guiding them into the womb of the earth.

Womb? Not quite.

More like the bowels of the earth. A place for her to hide, to forget, to slowly process and digest. She was a survivor. She would press on.

Hi, my name is Gina. I’ll be your guide as we descend . . .

CHAPTER

FORTY-FIVE

First Week of November—Buckhead

It was a dark and stormy night.

Erota had always loved that well-worn phrase, and she thought of it now.

Lightning was arcing over the skyline of Atlanta, and thunder rumbled through black clouds like the sounds of Civil War cannons being rolled into position and fired at random. In the spacious Tudor-style manor, lights flickered, and Erota started setting out candles. For her husband’s sake, more than anything.

She had no trouble with the dark. After centuries in the tomb, her eyes had ballooned back into their sockets with an unearthly clarity of vision. Her ears, too, were keen to sounds, especially as she’d been fine-tuning her senses to the pleasures all around.

Ray-Ban would curse her, however, if she failed to take this precaution—as if he couldn’t do it himself, as if it was so hard to light a wick.

The man was too busy, of course, with his Internet distractions.

Well, there was something to be said for that. Erota had infested him with the thorns of her own lust, so why not allow him a few entanglements on the side. It gave her a sense of accomplishment. Anything to boost her confidence, after her failure at Erlanger East.

She was still baffled by that. She’d ridden along with the pipe-bomber, seen for herself the tiny infant who was wailing as though the world already sagged heavy upon his shoulders. Then she’d encouraged her host to set down his satchel of goodies. She could not control his mind—the Power of Choice was inviolable—but it had been a good test of her abilities to persuade and possess.

She’d heard the click as he set the timer on the bomb.

Fifteen minutes later, from the parking lot outside, they’d watched the building shudder, saw the eruption of light and smoke, and the shower of glittering glass that hissed down upon the shrubbery.

Why, then, had the world carried on?

She had done as planned, finding a link to the Nistarim and meting out destruction. Yet the planet kept rotating. Humans still scurried here and there.

Where was the Master Collector’s promise of peace from these infernal beasts?

Though she could scarcely allow herself such impertinent thoughts, she saw no evidence of the new earth he promised—a planet seeded with the blood of dead two-leggers; a Collection of Souls producing vegetation and sustenance for eons to come.

Erota would have to keep seeking out her own meals, thank you very much.

In the den down the hall, Ray-Ban was moaning. Erota moved that direction, drawn by his restrained, guttural sounds. Almost primal in their urgency, they spurred something in her own loins.

She turned the door handle, eased into the den, and glided toward him on tiptoes. His eyes were glued to the computer screen. She wrapped her arms around him in his office chair, becoming one with his desire and feeding off of it. As her lips grazed his ear, she found her own arousal growing, and then she was teasing his thorns from within.

The thick, crusted cord of netherworld brambles inched about his waist, down both legs. Triangular talons clawed over skin and cloth, restricting circulation while causing his muscles to tense. His right hand clutched the mouse. His other was entwined in that taproot of ancient venom.

Erota flashed back to her days as a temple prostitute. Men had come to exorcise their demons of the flesh, and she had allowed them that banal deception. She beckoned them one by one, enduring the midday heat and the presence of fleet-footed lizards on the stone walls.

Ah, but this was so much easier, was it not?

The cushioned chair. And his monitor, this rectangular device of lurid hues and sounds.

“What we do in our own home is our business,” she purred into his ear. “As long as it’s not hurting anyone.”

He snapped his head back. “Erota.”

“It’s okay, Ray-Ban.”

It wasn’t, of course. Yet he seemed oblivious to the pernicious vine that now encircled his chest. He seemed unaware—or maybe just didn’t care in this moment of mounting lust—that the dry, withered vine was rooted in a part of himself that he seemed to enshrine.

Erota was no longer able to resist the elevated heat from his body, the pounding pu-tatta-putatt . . . pu-tatta-puttat of his bloodstream. She feathered the pale-green daggers of her fingernails up through his hair and lowered tapered teeth toward the back of his neck where his tie still hung, rather loosely now.

She sank her fangs into his flesh. She drank.

The doorbell crescendoed, breaking through her singularity of purpose.

Ray-Ban started in his chair, pushing back and sending Erota reeling. He punched off the power on the monitor. The vine slithered back into its place of hiding. Erota windmilled her arms for balance, then slunk beside the armoire as her husband gathered himself and went to answer the still-clanging chimes.

She licked the blood from her lips and followed after him.

Megiste’s arrival was unannounced.

Erota welcomed the woman into the house, took her fur coat and folded it over the banister—Ha, if you would be so kind, Ray-Ban, to put that away? There was no doubt in Erota’s mind that her own days of philandering were about to end. Had Ariston sent the priestess after her? Was there a traitor here in the United States? A spy from the Consortium who had reported her renegade ways?

“Come in, come in,” Erota said.

“Thank you.”

Megiste eased into the vaulted entryway, her willowy form catching the eye of Mr. Raymond Pace. He was still red faced, his pupils still dilated.

“My