Journal Entry
July 6, 2010—Lummi Island
Instinct tells me to stay hidden, but I feel lonely and helpless here on this island. Am I supposed to just sit around waiting to die?
I’ve decided that on my way to the ferry crossing tomorrow I’m going to hide something in the church graveyard. At least that way, in case I don’t make it far, the police’ll find proof that I was here. I’m convinced Those Who Hunt are after me. But if I decide to just sit and do nothing, won’t that be the same as joining in their schemes?
Looking east across Puget Sound, I see the snowy peaks of Washington State as well as signs of civilization. I smell saltwater and dead fish in the air. Is that a bad omen?
My troubles started a couple weeks ago when an old Hebrew map showed up in the mail. It was stained with blood. Four droplets. Out of curiosity, I tasted each one and found memories stored there, belonging to Ariston, Erota, Megiste, and . . . Gina? Could she be who she seems? How could that even be possible?
Now, with the ferry ride ahead of me, I can’t help wondering where this’ll lead. How’ll people react when they see me? Am I being lured from safety? I’ve got the map here in my pocket, and I’m tempted to search for more clues–you know, let my saliva seep back down into these crusty stains.
Last time I tried this, it stirred all sorts of images. Maybe this time around I’ll find deeper secrets and answers to my questions.
Here goes nothing. Guess it’s time to find out.
Chapter One
April 2000—Zalmoxis Cave, Romania
She was free, for now. The first step . . .
With dagger in hand, Gina Lazarescu faced the cave opening where the sounds of scuffing feet seemed to mark the presence of another. A Collector? One of Jerusalem’s Undead?
Bleeding, she stood still and waited.
Drip, drip . . .
White-hot pain was the price of her freedom. Her spring dress was splotched red, the skin of her left arm hanging in ribbons where she’d wrenched loose from razor-edged thorns and reached for her weapon. Moments later she’d sliced through the restraints on her right wrist, then cut the tangle from her throat. A slave no longer to her mother’s brand of bitterness.
Or so she wanted to believe.
Either way, she was a Lazarescu—born to work her fingers to the bone, raised to accept life’s burdens without complaint.
Drippp . . . drippp . . .
She felt numb, probably going into shock, but there was nothing more the Collectors could do to her. Already they’d stolen the life of her newborn son with a pipe bomb full of nails, and only hours ago they’d desecrated Good Friday by impaling young Petre Podran against the charter bus.
She blinked against that memory. Let the Collectors tear at her neck, her arms. It would be an escape from the images seared into her skull.
When nothing but the wind moaned through the mouth of the cave, she decided she should get going. To stay would be to risk another confrontation.
As Gina moved forward, her vampire captor gasped. She had thrust this blade into his chest and felt it pierce that malignant heart, dropping him where he stood. “It has its own symbolic power,” she’d been assured.
Apparently so.
Ariston’s last breath now blew like desert heat over desiccated flesh. The contrast with the high-mountain chill caused Gina to shiver, and her earrings trembled against her neck.
“You took it all,” she hissed at him. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
She thought of the whisk broom from her childhood chores in the village of Cuvin, and wished she could sweep away these Collectors once and for all. She kicked at the creature, determined to keep him from ever rising again.
A metallic sound rang out.
An old coin.
Kneeling, she ignored crimson drops that pooled at her feet and took hold of the object that had rolled from Ariston’s clothes. Words ran along the circumference, encircling a Maltese cross. She’d seen the cross in history books, embroidered on Knights Templar vestments. It was similar to the letter Tav.
She’d once borne that symbol on her own forehead while carrying her son in the womb. She’d been told that in Hebrew it signified salvation, that it marked her child’s purpose. And then . . .
Well, then everything had come undone.
Stay on task here, Gina scolded herself. Pull it together.
She suspected Cal Nichols could tell her more about the coin’s place of orgin, but he wasn’t here. He’d agreed to meet her in Bucharest when this was over, and that now became her goal. She would proceed on the belief that Cal and young Dov had survived the bear attack at the Sinaia train depot. It was the only thing keeping her upright.
She slipped the coin into the breast pocket of her dress. This time, she was certain she heard footsteps in the musty space.
“Lord Ariston?”
Gina recognized the female voice. Shalom: the sharp-fanged entity who had first carted her up the slope to this spot. The Jewish name borrowed from her human host had nothing to do with peace.
“Father?” Shalom called. “Are you there?”
Gina raised her blade to meet this returning threat, but teetered before a wave of blackness. She braced herself, then eased around a bend in the cavern, stilling her breath and lifting her left arm over her head. She hoped to slow the flow from her wounds, yet the drops kept spilling, warm and sticky, into her hair.
Faint . . . feeling faint. Eyesight blurring.
She had to hold herself together, had to get out of here.
Pebbles scraped along the dirt, and she figured Shalom must’ve found her father by now. In confirmation, a keen of anguish echoed through the subterranean chambers, indication of the Collector’s conflict between her own rapacious nature and the familial concerns of her host.
Gina pressed further back and bumped into a pair of makeshift coffins. Dust quavered along the lids, and the smell of rot rose from fissures in the wood. Her understanding was that these Akeldama Collectors had no fear of the sun, no need for Dracula-styled naps in felt-lined caskets. So what was this? Their vampiric burial site?
Murky light from the cave opening revealed names carved into each lid.
Sol and Eros.
She’d heard from Cal that the Akeldama Cluster was a union between the Houses of Ariston and Eros. Though unsure of Sol’s identity, she knew that Ariston lay lifeless only feet away, and here beside her was Eros. Both leaders, fallen. So then, was this the end of the cluster?
It couldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever was.
In Cal’s words, she knew she’d fulfilled part of her “destiny,” but soon enough a new leader would step in to re-channel the Collectors’ hostility.
From around the bend, Shalom’s warbling cries turned Gina’s knees to water. Her strength was ebbing. She doubted her own ability to put up much of a fight. Not yet. Not with vitality still seeping from her thorn-scoured arm.
If, however, she stayed quiet, maybe the Collector would leave.
Drip, drip . . .
She looked down, and even in the dim light she couldn’t miss the trail of red-black circles that betrayed her location.
“Gina?” A low-pitched snarl gave way to a voice of caution. “I know you’re there. Come out so we can talk.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“My father’s been banished,” Shalom said. “How’d you manage that?”
“C’mon back here and I’ll show you.” Gina knew that in seconds she would be cornered anyway, and in her present condition she was sure to lose a hand-to-hand battle. Perhaps, if she kept her wounds out of sight, she could ward off her foe with a fearless display.
“I’m not fooled,” the she-vampire said. “You’re hurt.”
“Then c’mon.”
“You’re trapped. There’s no way out but through the front of this cave.”
“Why don’t you just come end it now? Or are you afraid to fight one handed. I bet that’s it, huh? I saw what happened at the station.” A quick image: Shalom sprinting forward, then howling, as one of Cal’s metal tent pegs took off her hand at the wrist. “See,” Gina said, “that’s the problem with relying on a host. You want the full use of the senses, but with it comes a whole world of pain.”
“I like pain.”
“Must run in the family. Your dad, he just kept begging for more.”
Shalom snapped her teeth.
“Maybe Cal could sew your hand back on for you,” Gina goaded. “He only did it because you were trying to kill the kids. Can you blame the man?”
“Where is he now, do you think?”
“How should I know, since you dragged me off before I could say proper good-byes? Either way, I’m sure he and the bus of orphans are long gone.”
“He’s gone, yes,” Shalom said. “Erota destroyed him.”
The possibility there was any truth in these words shoved Gina back against the stone wall. She’d seen Erota attack in the form of a predatory bear. She could still picture those massive claws and yellowed teeth.
Without Cal, who would there be to guide her through this new paradigm of bloodthirsty beasts and half-truths? Yes, he’d failed her back in Chattanooga, but at least he’d tried to warn her. And even though she questioned his hands-off approach through most of her childhood, none of it negated her need for him.
“I don’t buy it. He’s still alive.”
“He gave himself up,” Shalom said. “We told him we’d kill you otherwise.”
“Is that a fact?” Gina envisioned Cal’s waves of wheat-colored hair, his broad shoulders, the gentle strength in his gold-flecked gaze. Were his feelings for her personal? He’d seemed to imply as much. Or was he simply carrying out a duty, an obligation to her?
“And what about Dov?” she added.
“A victim too,” Shalom said.
As a Romanian Jew, Gina had grown up with tales of the Nistarim, the Concealed Ones. They were thirty-six souls, cloaked in humility, who bore the weight of humanity’s woes. At age thirteen, a man by Jewish standards, Dov Amit had been marked with the letter Tav as one of them.
“You’re lying, Shalom. If even one of the Concealed Ones falls without a replacement, the entire world crumbles. Isn’t that how the legend goes?”
“Silly stories.”
“Then why do you want him so bad? Nope. Dov’s still out there.”
A raspy snarl.
“I bet he’s escaped, hasn’t he?”
“Tomorrow’s Hope,” Shalom said, shifting the focus. “What a ridiculous name for your orphanage. There is no hope for the fatherless. In 1989, we infected many of them with the virus, and—”
“They’re just children.”
“Correct. And already thousands have succumbed.”
Gina clenched her jaw. It was true that a unique strain of HIV had ravaged her homeland, taking down the helpless and the weak. “But not Dov,” she said.
“We’re not done with our infestations.”
“Your dear old dad is.”
Another snarl, and this time Gina heard rocks shifting. Was the Collector using the growls to disguise a soft-footed approach? Gina flexed her fingers around the dagger’s hilt and willed strength into her muscles.
“Have you ever tried Nazarene Blood?” she asked.
“What?”
“I hear it’s good stuff.” She scooted behind the wooden boxes, using the creature’s next growl to cover her movements. Her ruby-orb earrings, a gift from Cal, were said to contain drops of that sacred blood, but she wasn’t yet ready to place her trust in such improbabilities.
Shalom sniffed twice. “I don’t smell it in you.”
Of course not. Gina bore the scars of her mother’s religious lunacies, and she’d cut herself loose from that only minutes ago. Doing this on her own terms, thank you very much.
“Well then.” She dropped behind the coffins. “What’re you waiting for?”
The Collector rounded the outcropping, eyes glowing like back-lit emeralds. Her undead habitation was unable to regenerate skin and bone, and a cauterized stump was all that remained of her right hand. Her other, however, wielded long, se fingernails.
“I won’t hurt you,” Shalom said. “Not yet. I’d first like to know how you vanquished Lord Ariston. It seems you’ve thrown our house into disarray.”
“Not really my problem.”
“I detect an acid tone. We’ve both lost loved ones, have we not?”
“Life goes on.”
“I’ve heard of the cuttings you endured from your own mother. Let me soothe you. Let me show you the warmth of a woman’s touch.”
Gina slumped to the ground, pulse fluttering in her temples, vision darkening. Despite her aversion to this enemy, she found herself lulled, beguiled, by the invitation. Warmth. Touch. Could there anything wrong in that? Emerald eyes, gazing into hers . . . Lean limbs, holding her . . . Elongated nails, tracing her skin and cupping her face as they tilting her head back and . . .
“No!”
She flailed with her blade. Scrambled to a knee. With her spine pressed against the cave wall, she kicked against the nearest coffin and saw splinters fly.
Shalom snickered. “My, you’re a feisty one.”
Another flurry of kicks compromised the box. Wood cracked, nails pinged against stone, and the casket rolled across loose gravel as though placed on oiled casters. The front end caught Shalom at the knees. She buckled over the lid, face slamming into crude planks, eyes fixing upon the name of the deceased.
“Sol?”
Shalom’s nostrils flared as grit from the coffin swirled. Tears welled, then oozed in pale green lines down her cheeks. Her sneer twisted into a frown.
“It’s so dry,” Shalom gasped. “So . . . so restless.”
Gina clambered into a standing position, but the vampire showed no interest. According to Cal, the Restless Desert was a place of banishment, and it seemed Shalom was either grieving Sol’s demise or anticipating her own doom. She was still bent over, tips of sable hair brushing the etched wood. Drool spilled from her fangs and sizzled like skillet grease.
Well, Gina figured, let the revenant mourn her comrades. Technically, weren’t they all undead anyway?
She made a move toward the Collector, hoping to take off the head at the neck, but her arms hung like lumps of lead at her sides. At her throat, the thorn’s root was swollen, constricting her breath. She felt weak. Her grip on the dagger was tenuous, and another futile stab at the creature might only break the spell and provoke a counterattack.
Knowing her legs were her best allies now, Gina chose flight over fight.
Cal and Dov, please hold on.
She brushed through the cave opening, past a veil of moss and foliage. No doubt, Shalom would come storming after her soon enough. With the coin in her pocket and the weapon back in its sheath on her thigh, she lurched down the slope while a pink-tinged dawn bled through soaring evergreens.
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