Field of Blood Read online

  ADVANCE READER PRAISE FOR FIELD OF BLOOD

  “Wilson rises far above most in modern fiction and portrays the fight between good and evil in an innovative, refreshing way.”—RED, rock group

  “In a market flooded with ‘perfect’ heroes and squeaky clean Christian characters, Wilson gives us a healthy dose of reality. It’s realistic and accurate where it should be and pure entertainment where it should be. It’s everything you could hope for in a Christian book—something for the lost to contemplate and for the believer to never forget.”—Meli Willis, www.inside-corner.com

  “Ahhh! That was utterly amazing.”

  —Mara M., a fan

  “Not only Eric Wilson’s best novel to date, but easily one of the most powerful and inspirational novels I’ve read in years. This is intense and edgy writing to be sure, yet nowhere will you find the redemptive power of Christ’s blood explored so brilliantly in fiction. And the best part? There are still two more books to come!”

  —Jake Chism, www.thechristianmanifesto.com

  “Field of Blood was wonderful! I loved the ending . . . it left me wanting more, more, more! Gina is the perfect representation of the human condition . . . a mind blow-ing story!”—Julie P., a fan

  “Ridiculously topnotch!”—Jeremy M., a fan

  “A classic genre seen through new eyes. The book was well researched and . . . I was blown away by the story.”—James N., a fan

  “Eric Wilson reveals his full potential as an extraordinary writer with Field of Blood. Characterized by a tightly woven plot, unforgettable characters—living and undead—and an overall remarkable story, Field of Blood is sure to please readers of all kinds.”—Brandon V., a fan

  OTHER NOVELS BY ERIC WILSON

  The Best of Evil

  Dark to Mortal Eyes

  A Shred of Truth

  Expiration Date

  NOVELIZATIONS BY ERIC WILSON

  Fireproof

  Flywheel

  Facing the Giants

  © 2008 by Eric Wilson

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Page design by Mandi Cofer.

  Excerpt from The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, © 1994 by J. Gordon Melton, reprinted by permission of the author.

  Thomas Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Wilson, Eric (Eric P.)

  Field of blood / Eric Wilson.

  p. cm. — (The Jerusalem’s undead trilogy)

  ISBN 978-1-59554-458-2

  1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Jerusalem—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.I583F54 2008

  813’.6-—dc22

  2008019837

  Printed in the United States of America

  08 09 10 11 12 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  A Note from the Author

  Prologue

  The First Drop: Revenants

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Second Drop: Refugees

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Third Drop: Revelations

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  The Fourth Drop: Return

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Acknowledgments

  A NOTE FROM

  THE AUTHOR

  I love stories full of grit and emotion, especially when I find them sniffing around history’s unexplored corners.

  A few years back, my Romanian travels piqued my interest in the legends of the undead. Later, I came across this passage in J. Gordon Melton’s The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead:

  an increasing number of novelists . . . possess no understanding or appreciation of any power derived from Christian symbols. For the foreseeable future, new vampire fiction will be written out of the pull and tug between these traditional and contemporary perspectives.

  The words were a challenge to me, a flag waved before a bull. There were powerful concepts at work here: life, blood, and memory; evil, redemption, and immortality. I knew I had rich soil in which to plant a story.

  The soil deepened when I read of two separate events from 1989.

  The first involved a mysterious outbreak among thousands of Romanian orphans, an epidemic of subtype F HIV-1 that started with a single infectious source.

  The second was a discovery of unplundered burial caves on Jerusalem’s outskirts. The tombs contained one sarcophagus and thirty-nine ossuaries—stone boxes built to hold the bones of the dead. Archaeologists determined this place was the Akeldama, a cemetery for foreigners and the site of Judas Iscariot’s death. They also found that a number of the boxes were empty.

  Okay, now I knew I was onto something.

  As I headed to Israel for two blistering weeks in the summer of 2007, I had no clue how sharply my experiences would hone the concept for a trilogy.

  I visited historical locations, made new friends, took hundreds of pictures, and reveled in how much could be done on a shoestring budget and a prayer. The highlight was Jerusalem, with its collage of cultures, religions, and history.

  There was, however, a lingering frustration.

  Where was the excavation site for these ancient tombs? I couldn’t pinpoint the spot, and
it was absent from any tourist maps.

  The day before my return to the States, I was making a final drive around the Old City when I looked back over my shoulder and spotted the Rockefeller Museum, the building that houses the Israel Antiquities Authority. I made a U-turn into the angled driveway and stopped at the gate.

  “I am sorry,” the guard said. “The museum closes at three.”

  My watch read 3:05 p.m.

  Disappointed, I reversed onto the road. Then, in a stubborn moment, I parked the car and jogged back. I bypassed the gate and went straight to the guard booth, where a different man was seated. He asked how he could help me.

  “Is there a museum bookstore?” I said. “I just need some research materials. Please, I’ll pay for them.”

  “Too late. There’s no one there. Here, you come with me.”

  Unsure of his purpose, I followed along. He led me into the closed museum, past exhibits and three-thousand-year-old relics. Circular stairs took us down a level, where I saw chain-link storage areas full of artifacts. The smell of history hung in the air, and my heart pounded in my chest.

  We reached an archive room tucked into the back reaches of the lower level, where I was introduced to a kind-faced, dark-haired woman. Her desk was barricaded by towering shelves on rollers.

  “You want to know about the Akeldama?” She pronounced it with a guttural sound. “I suppose I can help. I was the one who drew the cave diagrams and most of the tombs’ inscriptions.”

  “What? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “Why are you interested? I’ve never had anyone so excited to meet me.”

  “Well,” I told her, “I’m writing a book.”

  “I hope it’s scary.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, “it’s a very scary place.”

  The very words I hoped to hear!

  She went on to describe her own experiences of crawling into the subterranean site, through tight spaces and piles of bones.

  “Do you have any reports or maps?” I requested. “Anything that might help me in my writing?”

  “It’s been many years, but let’s look here.” She pointed at shelved files.

  With her gracious and enthusiastic help, I amassed page upon page of information. I found inventories of the ossuaries, including the Hebrew and Greek inscriptions identifying nearly all of the dead. I read about the Houses of Ariston and Eros, two distinct groupings within the burial site, and it was from this research I found many character names: Ariston, Erota, Shelamzion, and so on.

  I was thanking God and making final notes in the cramped copy room, when the dark-haired woman returned from a fact-gathering jaunt to the museum library.

  She was beaming. “Eric, are you sitting down? I think today is your most lucky day. Come and meet one of the men who led the dig at the Akeldama. This is unusual that he is here. But very good for you.”

  Incredible was more like it.

  At a table in the library, I joined the softspoken and internationally recognized archaeologist. He spread out a topographical map and pointed to the Akeldama’s precise location, confirming that it was indeed where Judas hanged himself, the land bought with thirty silver shekels by the high priests.

  An hour later I found myself alone in the spooky quiet of the Akeldama, where olive and almond trees clung to a dusty slope. I saw rugged holes reaching into the ground. I even found the old Charnel House, a boneyard used twelve centuries later by the Knights Templar.

  My mind was on overdrive with scenes, ideas, and characters. Already, the story was coming to life . . . so to speak.

  —Eric Wilson, March 2008

  To my uncle, Frank Guise:

  You didn’t live to read this one, but I do believe we’ll see each other again and maybe even go mountain biking on some undiscovered trail—if I can keep up.

  And to my grandfather, Alan Wilson:

  Long before I was published, you inspired me with criticism and praise in equal measure. You carried yourself to the end with quiet strength.

  PROLOGUE

  AD 30—City of Jerusalem, Israel

  The Man from Kerioth dangled over hard earth. His breath was ragged, his fingers grasping at the noose that clung to a gnarled olive tree. His larynx, nearly crushed by the short plunge, worked against the rope.

  Air. One gulp, that’s all he needed. Just one.

  Despite this struggle for oxygen, he could not quell the whispers in his head: There is a way back, even still . . .

  Impossible.

  The sun rose orange and pregnant over the Mount of Olives, giving birth to purple shadows. His lungs heaved. He kicked in desperation, and his body twisted on the rope, providing him a glimpse of the city walls along the opposing ridge.

  Those walls, they were were infested with Roman swine. He’d longed—oh, how he had longed—to join an uprising that would restore this city to the Jews. He had even aligned himself with a band of dagger-men, the Sacarii, but when their zealotry floundered amid internal rivalries, he’d hedged his bets instead on the aspirations of a Nazarene.

  All for naught.

  If he felt any remorse, it was that he’d squandered three full years on empty promises. He’d given himself, heart, mind, and soul, to the cause of the rebel king. He had collected donations for the Nazarene, even dispersed them to the needy, then watched a woman dump costly perfume over the man’s feet. An utter waste—and the Nazarene had allowed it.

  In the end, the supposed king was nothing but a shortsighted simple-ton. Innocent, yes. But a fool.

  Last night, the Man from Kerioth had made his decision. He refused to play the puppet any longer. For thirty shekels, the price of a common slave, he’d led an armed mob into a garden where the Nazarene kneeled in prayer, and he’d kissed that life away—quite literally.

  “My friend . . .” The Nazarene had looked him in the eye. “Do what you have come for.”

  And he had done just that.

  Yet here he swung. From the end of a rope.

  Well, what was he supposed to do? Beg forgiveness? Grovel on his knees? He’d rather rot like the garbage brought out through the nearby Dung Gate, rather burn here in the Valley of Hinnom. Gehenna—wasn’t that the Greeks’ name for this valley? Children had once been sacrificed here to Moloch, and even now death licked at the air.

  A way back . . .

  Never.

  Coarse threads drew blood from the abrasions on his neck, and his eyes bulged. As his throat convulsed against this restriction, something sulfuric seemed to crawl from his esophagus.

  Bile? His departing spirit? Or perhaps the fierce presence whose malice he’d welcomed in these last few hours.

  Sudden panic overtook the Man from Kerioth. As spreading sunlight tore his resolve into strips, he clawed at his robe. Where was the dagger? The one he’d swiped from the ground after the Nazarene’s arrest. He would grab hold of the dagger, lift it to the noose, and cut himself free. Whereas Peter the disciple had failed to protect his master with this blade, the Man from Kerioth would put it to good use.

  Live by the sword, or die by the sword.

  Yes, if he could only . . .

  His fingers found the hilt.

  If he could . . .

  The dagger slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the ground below. For the second time in one day, it’d betrayed the intentions of the one who had held it. He knew then he was finished.

  Coated with a salty paste, his tongue ballooned in his mouth and his lips expelled a red-black mist. He kicked, spun back around. Heard a splintering sound. Felt his body lurch. Even as his mind grasped what was happening, the branch holding him surrendered to his weight in a prolonged crack that reverberated over parched ground.

  For one moment, one blessed second of weightlessness, he tasted air—sweet, golden wine—sliding over his tongue.

  Then his own bulk worked against him.

  And he plummeted.

  His knees buckled against the earth an
d pitched his torso forward, where it tore over a jagged stone. Like a street vendor’s ripe fruit, his belly split and gushed open. Landing across his back, the broken limb shoved him further down upon the rock.

  Agony exploded from his center, coursing through his extremities. He let out a raspy cry as his sour juices trickled into the field. So this was how it would end? With only dust and blood to mark his time on Earth?

  Alongside his head, he saw a beetle scramble through clods of dirt—attracted, in all likelihood, to the stench of entrails. Soon the flies would be arriving as well. Minions of Beelzebub. Of decay.

  A way back, even still . . .

  Too late for that now.

  Curse the Nazarene. Curse him and his loyal fools.

  The Man from Kerioth began to curl and convulse in the wash of daylight. As his energy ebbed, the field’s throat opened beneath him and drank of his blood in long, thirsty swallows.

  THE FIRST DROP:

  REVENANTS

  There was dust that thick in the place that you might have slep’ on it . . . an’ the place was that neglected that yer might ‘ave smelled ole Jerusalem in it.

  —Bram Stoker, Dracula

  I remind you of the angels who did not stay within the limits of authority . . . but left the place where they belonged.

  —Jude 1:6

  Journal Entry

  June 21, 2010

  The envelope showed up yesterday, brought over to Lummi Island on the ferry.Inside there was an old map marked with Hebrew writing. No return address, just a stamp and a Romanian postmark.

  Have Those Who Hunt already found me? I thought this place was safe here in Puget Sound, worlds away from Seattle and all its hustle and bustle. Long as I can remember, this house has been my home. I’ve got shelves of books to read, great views of the sunset, and fresh crab on a daily basis. Still, sometimes it feels like a prison.

  I’ve read in the Mosaic Law that the life is in the blood, and even Abel’s blood cried out from the ground after Cain killed him. As soon as I saw the four red stains on the map, I wondered: could there be memories in these droplets?

  Part of me said I should be disgusted by the idea. This morning, though, I couldn’t help it. I put my tongue on that first crusty spot, and waited. I thought maybe I’d find a reason for my exile here, or at least more about Those Who Hunt. Was it wrong of me to at least try?