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

around somewhere, and she’s been a weepy, unholy terror since the death of her husband. Listen, I’ll deal with these two while you keep an eye on the bus, Gina. Guard that door.”

“Where do you want me?” Dov said.

“Shouldn’t you be in the bus too?” Gina checked.

Cal shook his head. “If he goes in there, he’ll draw trouble to the others. Nope, he’s staying out here with us.”

From the doorway, the male municitor beckoned Dov to come onboard, but the boy refused to acknowledge the gestures or commands.

“You can go if you want,” Cal said. “I’m not forcing you here.”

Dov raised an MTP in his fist. “I want to help you fight.”

Gina thought of the sorrows her tiny Jacob had seemed to bear even in the womb, and understood now the pressure Dov Amit must be under. She felt proud of this little man who had endured enough already. Though she detected the trembling in his hands as he grasped the metal spikes, she heard no wavering in his voice, and she felt her heart soften toward him.

“You position yourself between me and the bus,” Cal instructed him. “If they get past me or try to circle around at Gina, it’ll be on your shoulders to act.”

Dov straightened. With his grimace of discomfort over unseen sorrows, the blue glow on his forehead intensified. “I’ll be ready.”

Gina believed him. She knew his training was minimal, yet it was more than she or the others possessed. Already, the boy had struck down a Collector with his own hands. Could she do the same?

“How ’bout you?” Cal asked her. “You ready?”

Shalom and Nehemiah were nearing, their arms swinging, razor-edged fingernails lengthening, eyes burning.

“You better believe it, buddy boy.”

CHAPTER

FIFTY-THREE

Cal withdrew an MTP from the group in his left hand and flexed his fingers around the object, weighing it. Another set of cars chugged northward, bisecting the distance between the vampires and the empty train station. A bicycle rattled by as a peasant woman headed home for the evening.

Gina backed toward the bus, the blade of her own weapon glinting. She pressed against the door, confirmed that it was shut tight, and made sure there were no signs through the windows of any children onboard.

Good. All she had to do was hold her ground and rely on the dagger.

Cal’s words: It’s not what . . . It’s who.

And, back on a Chattanooga riverbank: If you choose to believe, that’s all it takes . . . a chance at being cleansed.

He made it sound so simple. Simplistic was more like it. Nothing in this world got handed to you on a platter. That was a fairy tale. A dream. Gina had known since this blade’s first bite into her own skin that life was anything but simple. Look at her now, with a chance to turn against her enemies the very blade that had cut her as a child.

Well, maybe there was some justice after all.

Across the pavement, Cal the Provocateur was setting his chin and advancing toward the pair of Collectors. He looked strong, light on his feet, and self-assured. She wondered how many others he had faced.

There’s so much I wanna tell you . . . he had said earlier.

“Go back the way you came,” he was barking at Shalom and Nehemiah. “I know why you’re here, but you’re not getting anything. Not tonight.”

“Oh?” The man smirked. “And who are you to talk?”

“I think you know.”

What was that supposed to mean? Gina wondered.

“I do,” said Nehemiah. “And I’m not the slightest bit worried.”

“Stop right there.”

“We want the boy, the one with the letter Tav.”

“Can’t have him.”

“Let us take him, and we’ll leave the rest alone.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“At least let me have her,” Shalom chimed in, aiming a curved finger-nail at Gina. Though her demeanor was demure, her eyes glowed with an insatiable fire.

Gina’s throat tightened. She raised the dagger higher, thought of the angel tattoo on her back, and found herself praying for protection. A futile gesture, perhaps, but desperate times called for desperate measures. For a moment, she sensed the whisper of wings over her shoulders, then told herself it was her imagination playing tricks.

Just stay focused. Keep your eyes open.

Cal took advantage of Shalom’s diverted attention and lifted the MTP in his hand. In a fluid motion that rocked him back on his heels and then forward again, he stepped into his throw and launched the crude yet significant weapon. It spun like a dirty icicle and would’ve split the young woman’s skull, except that she sidestepped to the left.

She grinned, incisors showing for the first time as the sharp implement disappeared into the foliage behind her. Her serrated fangs could’ve been stalactites in the ancient cavern of her mouth, formations that had elongated over the ages. Like the earth, like the grave, she was ready to swallow and devour.

She took steps in Gina’s direction.

Cal moved to cut her off, but Nehemiah circled the other way.

“Dov,” he said.

“I’m watching.”

“Come here, child,” the paternal figure purred. “You’re the one I want.”

Dov squared his shoulders.

“Never mind the home for orphans and undesirables, the hideously infected. Is that what you want? You want to play victim to HIV, like the others?”

Gina thought she detected a slump in the boy’s posture.

“Come home with me,” Nehemiah urged. “I have a teen son, and I’m sure you and Shabtai would get along fabulously.”

“If you want him,” Cal said, positioning himself in the middle of the lot, “you get me too. Package deal.”

“I’m a man of Jewish origin. You must know how I love a bargain.”

“You’re a body thief and a bloodsucker.”

“I am rather thirsty, too true.”

With that, the verbal sparring was over.

Nehemiah, despite the middle-aged legs of his host, broke into a smooth sprint, with deadly fingers raking the air at his sides. This time, Cal rocketed two tent pegs through the space between them, one after the other. As Nehemiah dodged the first, he moved into the path of the second, and it punched through