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

“you just don’t like me talking to other men.”

“Pavel. He thinks you don’t like him anymore.”

“I like him, and I like you too.” Gina touched his nose. “Now, go sit down. This is about to be over.”

Over Petre’s shoulder, she saw that Dov had now planted himself on the bottom step of the bus. He swept his gaze toward Cal, attentive to any commands, and said in a Hebrew-accented voice that was urgent but steady, “What should I do? Someone’s coming toward us, through the woods across the road.”

Gina’s eyes scanned the trees but saw nothing out of place.

“Bring me my pack,” Cal told Dov.

The boy ducked back into the bus, where gibbous light on the windows turned the occupants into pale, ethereal beings.

“What’s going on?” the male muncitor huffed.

Cal removed his hat, slapped it against his leg, then snugged it back over his head. “Gather the children in the back rows, stay down outta sight, and keep all doors and windows closed. You hear me?”

“The local ruffians, you think?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re the driver. I say you take us to the police station. Surely there’s one along the main stretch through town.”

“We can’t outrun them forever.” Cal clapped an arm over the man’s shoulder and steered him toward the vehicle. “Do as I say. Go.”

Dov reemerged. He brushed past the muncitor, who drew the bus door shut behind him, then hefted the satchel he had fetched from beneath the driver’s seat.

Cal stretched out his hand. “Time to split them up.”

The fifteen-year-old reached into the bag, producing a bundle of crude, tapered spikes. His mentor withdrew a handful. The metallic sounds reminded Gina of medieval warriors suiting up for battle, and she felt primal courage well through her chest. She had a sudden sense of purpose.

Dov seemed to feel it too. On his forehead, the letter Tav gave off a faint blue iridescence through his black hair.

“What’re those?” she asked, pointing at the spikes.

“MTPs,” Cal said. “Metal tent pegs. My weapon of choice.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Think of that guy in the Bible, the one who got his head hammered into the ground while sleeping. These things’re nasty sharp. With the right leverage, a child could put one through a person’s temple.”

“Sometimes,” Dov said, “you have to do the bad thing.”

“The right thing,” Cal said. “What’s right isn’t always easy.”

“So, we’re fighting zombies now?”

“Undead,” Cal corrected her. “Zombies don’t need blood the way these things do. You’ve got your dagger. Use it. It has its own symbolic power over the Collectors, or at least as much as they’ll give it credit for. It’s betrayed their kind before.”

“This thing?” Gina said. She drew her weapon, noticed nothing particularly remarkable or supernatural about it, and she hoped it would do. At this point, what other option did she have?

“It’s two-thousand-years-old.”

“Not another one of your stories. Not right now, Cal.”

“Once belonged to Peter.”

“As in, the disciple?”

“He tried protecting the Nazarene with it, even cut off a guy’s ear, but that wasn’t part of the plan. Pete got scolded for it. Dropped the thing right there on the spot—the scene of the crime. Not that it mattered.” A sardonic twinkle played through Cal’s eyes. “There was no fingerprinting back then, so he didn’t have to worry about them tracing it back to him.”

“Hilarious. And it got here how?”

“Long story, Gina. Basically, Judas grabbed it off the ground and stuffed it into his robe. Lotta good that did him.”

“So we’re about to fight some vampires, and all I’ve got to trust in is an old knife and some crazy stories.”

“It’s not what you trust in. It’s who.”

Dov was tugging at Cal’s arm. “Here they come,” he said.

The Bucegi Mountains

He was drifting, running low on mental energy for this trek through the night. With limited sensory abilities, he was crippled by the blackness that pooled in this gorge. He had no idea where he was in relation to Zalmoxis Cave.

This was foolishness. Utter absurdity.

Partnered with the Collector within, Ariston liked to think of himself as a creature of urbane ways, comfortable with women, envied and emulated by men. His manner was smooth, his movements imperious and confident.

And now, his Collector was lost. Kicked about by unruly forces of nature.

Frantic to arrest his progress, he clawed at a shape ahead, found himself slipping between two sharp objects that were curved and . . . They were the horns of a sure-footed chamois poised here on the steep rock. Even as he tried to grasp hold, the goatlike animal swiped its head and tossed him off the way it would a pesky insect.

“Ariston.”

To his vaporous ears, the voice sounded thin and waxy.

“Ariston.”

Definitely his name. Or rather the name of his permanent host.

“If you can hear me, hang on a bit longer. Once the wind’s died down, make your way back to the cave. Shalom and I will try to meet you there, after we’ve captured the woman and the boy.”

He wrapped what little there was of his intangible form around the next thing he bumped into. Like the tattered flag of a beleaguered army, he found himself waving from the sharp point of a twig.

Then, to his great relief, a small gust broke him loose.

Sinaia

“They’re right there,” Dov said.

A briny odor swirled down the slope, followed by the emergence of a man and a woman from the stone path that cut between the trees. One was recognizable to Gina: the slender brunette from the bookshop. The other was a fatherly sort, grand and graceful. They were beautiful specimens. Humans, it would seem. And yet they possessed an aura wholly other, hinted at in their stark, emerald eyes that pierced the night.

Gina had seen that look before, years ago in Cuvin. Had Teodor’s uncle been one of these things? Was that why he’d wondered if she bore the Letter?

So this, Gina realized, is what Collectors look like.

“The young woman’s Shalom, and the man is Nehemiah,” Cal said. “There should be a few more. I’d bet Auge’s