THIRTY-SIX

Lucian walked to the open door of the Mercedes and Kate set her back against the locked door and held the shears in front of her, her thumb tight on the top of the blades. She was gasping, trying not to hyperventilate even while her lungs demanded more air.

“Kate,” said Lucian, lowering the long-barreled pistol and holding his hand out.

Kate clenched her teeth and lifted the shears like a knife. “Stay away. Don’t touch me.”

Lucian nodded and stepped back. He reached into the grass below the car, came up with her underpants, and set them carefully on the rear seat. “I’ll be out here,” he said softly.

Kate sat watching, the shears still raised, while Lucian dragged the body of the driver out, then returned for the other two. She pulled on her pants, her body still rippling with disgust and shock, and then peered out the car door before getting out.

Lucian had moved the bodies to the far side of the car, near the collapsed barn. The pistol was tucked in his belt but there was an ax in his hands. “Kate, come look at this.”

She leaned against the car a moment. She was shivering and her mind refused to focus. Colors seemed to shift and part of her still wanted to scream or weep, or both.

“Kate, please come look.” Lucian was kneeling by the body of the driver.

She approached slowly, the shears by her side. The sight of the driver lying there still twitching triggered some medical part of her mind and she knelt next to the man, her fingers probing the neck for a pulse. There was none. The driver’s hands and legs still twitched.

“I shot him in the throat and the forehead,” Lucian said emotionlessly. “Wouldn’t you agree that he should be dead?”

Kate stared at the young medical student as if seeing him for the first time.

Lucian touched the twitching fingers. “It’s the virus that refuses to die, Kate. Even now it’s sealing off the wounds, coagulation working at an impossible rate. The virus is directing a surfeit of oxygen to the brain even as body temperature drops to that of a corpse.”

Kate felt for the nonexistent pulse again. She was surprised to hear her own voice. “It can’t send blood to the brain. His heart has stopped.”

Lucian nodded and set three fingers deep into the driver’s solar plexus. “Feel here. No? All right … but the shadow organ, the blood-absorption mutation, is taking over minimal circulation chores. The virus wants to live. This man is clinically dead, Kate. But if he receives whole blood within the next forty-eight hours or so, the body will rebuild. There’ll be no brain damage … or at least minimal. This … thing … will be walking again if the strigoi find him and supply the blood. Stand back.”

Kate stood up and moved away as Lucian spread his legs, hefted the ax, and brought it down in a single vicious arc. Blood sprayed and the driver’s head was separated from his body.

“Oh, Jesus…” said Kate and turned away. She went and leaned against the Mercedes as Lucian did the same to Ion and the younger strigoi.

Lucian had dragged the headless corpses into the tumbledown shack. Now he picked up the heads one by one, carried them to the copse of trees, and tossed them far into the weeds. He took clumps of dried grass, rubbed blood from his pantlegs and boots, and walked back to the car. Kate stood rubbing her arms, the shears unnoticed in her right hand. Lucian took them away from her and threw them into the high grass. “Stand right here,” he said softly, moving her away from the car.

He opened the door on the driver’s side, brushed shattered glass from the slick leather, started the car, and drove the Mercedes under the tumbled roof of the shed. When he came out he pulled the ax from the soft dirt where he had buried the blade, hefted it, and walked to Kate. “I had to leave my car down the road and cross the field on foot. I kept the trees between me and the car. Come.”

He started to take her hand but Kate pulled back. Lucian nodded and started off down the lane. Kate waited a minute and then followed.

*   *   *

The white Dacia was much like the blue Dacia that Lucian had driven in Bucharest. It squeaked, rattled, and smoked the same, and there was no second gear. Kate settled back in the cracked vinyl seat and let Lucian drive her west and south.

“It was a temptation to take the Mercedes,” he was saying. “Everyone would have recognized it as a strigoi car and left us alone. But it would have been too visible from the air … and everyone would remember which way we went.”

“You followed me,” said Kate. It was not exactly a question.

Lucian nodded. “They drove me to Bucharest, I got my car, my father’s target pistol, the ax, and binoculars and drove straight back. I saw them drive the priest east. They must be going to the castle by way of Braşov and Piteşti.”

“The castle?” Words seemed strange in Kate’s mouth. Her mind kept replaying the moments of the rape, the helpless feeling as he pinned her down, the sense of becoming someone and something else than herself …

“Vlad’s castle on the Argeş River,” said Lucian. “It’s where tonight’s ceremony is. They drove the priest the west way; they were taking you via Sibiu and Calimaneşti. It’s just habit, in case they were followed. I only followed your car.” He glanced at her.

Kate looked him in the eye for the first time. “You betrayed us.”

Lucian glanced back at the road where a Gypsy wagon was weaving ahead of him. He honked, passed the wagon, dodged some sheep, and looked back at her. “No, Kate. I never did…”

She clenched her fists. “You were working for them. For all I know, you’re still working for them.”

Lucian took a breath. “Kate, you saw me kill those three—”

“You said yourself that the strigoi fight among themselves!” She had not meant to shout. “Factions! You may be with them and against them at the same time. You betrayed us. Lied to us. Informed on us.”

Lucian was nodding. “I had to … to keep you both alive. The strigoi knew you were coming. As long as I kept tabs on you, they were reassured…”

“You’re one of them,” whispered Kate.

“You know I’m not!” snapped Lucian. “That’s why I ran the assay test.”

“Blood tests can be faked.”

Lucian pulled the Dacia to the side of the road and turned toward her. “Kate, I’ve been fighting the strigoi since I was a child. My adopted parents died fighting them.”

“Adopted parents?” Kate remembered the old poet with his elegant manners, his gracious wife; she remembered the two bloodless corpses on the slab in the medical school morgue.

Lucian nodded. “I was an orphan. I was adopted by them when I was four. My parents were killed because of the medical experiments they were doing on strigoi … trying to isolate the retrovirus.”

Kate shook her head. “Your father was a poet, not a doctor. I met him, remember?”

Lucian did not blink. “My foster father was a poet. My foster mother was director of the State Virology Research Institute from nineteen sixty-five until nineteen eighty-seven. She was the reason I went to medical school. To learn about the strigoi. To learn how to destroy them but to isolate the retrovirus so that it could be used—”

“The thing in the tank,” whispered Kate.

Lucian nodded. “Not the first. We needed to experiment to see how the strigoi survive what should be mortal wounds. Mother worked for years to isolate the virus.” Lucian turned and squeezed the steering wheel until his fingers turned white. “We never had the proper equipment … access to the proper journals.” He looked away out his window. A truck roared by on the highway.

Kate shook her head slowly. “But you worked for the strigoi…”

“As a … what do you call them in your James Bond movies? A double agent. A mole. A flunky who observed things that had to be observed.”

Kate squinted at him. Her head hurt terribly. “You went to the United States. Not with your parents, but as a guest of Vernor Trent’s institute.”

Lucian was nodding with her words. “And to West Germany. And once to France. I ran errands for several of the more powerful Family members. The strigoi trusted me as a messenger. They helped pay for my medical schooling so that I could work with them on the human blood substitute they were helping to research in America and elsewhere.”

Kate folded her arms and moved away from him. “Why would they trust you?”

He stopped talking and looked at her for a silent moment. “Because my biological parents were strigoi,” he said at last.

“But you said…”

He nodded. “I am not strigoi. That is true. Remember, Kate, it’s a very rare double recessive. Most of the J-virus positive who mate have normal children. The regression is toward the norm ninety-eight percent of the time. Otherwise the world would be overrun by strigoi. And usually, when the strigoi have normal children, they do what normal parents in Romania do with retarded children, or diseased children or malformed children…”

“They abandon them,” whispered Kate. She rubbed her temples. “So your foster mother and father found you, adopted you…”

“No,” said Lucian, his voice so soft she could hardly hear him. “I was taken out of the orphanage and placed with Mother and Father by someone who hates the Family more than you or I do. By someone who had decided to act against them. I’ve worked for this person and for our shared goal of destroying the strigoi family for most of my life.”

“Who is it?” said Kate.

Lucian shook his head. “This is the only thing I cannot tell you, Kate. I have given my word of honor never to reveal my mentor’s identity.”

“But there is no Order of the Dragon?” said Kate.

Lucian smiled. “Only me. And the person who has sponsored me.” The smile faded. “And Mother and Father until the strigoi destroyed them.”

Kate looked askance at him. “Why would they trust you after they discovered your foster parents?”

Lucian had bitten his lip. “Because I informed on them. I had to. It was just a matter of weeks until they would have been discovered. We … I had to go to the strigoi so that I would be beyond suspicion. The stakes were too high this summer to allow everything to be destroyed at the last minute.”

“What stakes?” said Kate. “You mean Joshua? You helped me adopt him and then you helped the strigoi steal him back.”

Lucian shook his head. “My hope was that you would find the secret of the retrovirus before they found you. You did.”

Kate lost it then, flying across the seat at Lucian, pounding at his chest with her fists. “They killed Tom and Julie, you lying son of a bitch! They killed them and burned my house and took my baby and … goddamn it!” Only when her fingers clawed toward his eyes did he restrain her wrists.

“Kate,” he whispered, “it had to be. Just as the death of my parents had to be. The stakes are too high.”

She pulled away from him and threw herself against the far door. “What stakes? What are you talking about?”

Lucian put the car in gear and pulled out onto the empty highway. “The destruction of the strigoi Family,” he said. “All of them. Tonight.”

*   *   *

The stone kilometer marker read COPŞA MICA—8 KM. The road wound along the Tirvana Mare River through isolated uplands with no farmhouses, no villages, and no traffic except for the occasional rubber-wheeled cart. The clouds were low and a cold wind blew leaves across the narrow road and slammed against the Dacia like invisible fists.

“Tell me,” demanded Kate.

Lucian did not take his eyes off the road. “It would be foolish, Kate. There is little chance that they will come after us today … they won’t notice you’re missing for several hours … and we’ll be far away from here by then. Still, if we were caught…”

“Tell me,” said Kate. Her voice held an imperative that she had honed through long hours in emergency rooms, operating rooms, and conference rooms.

Lucian glanced at her. “Really, it would be stupid to—”

“Tell me.” Her tone left no choice in the matter.

Lucian licked his lips and smoothed back his spikey haircut. “It’s arranged, Kate. Tonight the strigoi Family is going to die. All of them.”

“How?” Kate said flatly.

Lucian shook his head but kept talking. “They’re gathering at the castle on the Argeş … Poienari Citadel, it’s called … the ancient keep that Vlad rebuilt more than five hundred years ago. It’s been arranged … they won’t survive the ceremony.”

“How has it been arranged?” Her voice showed her disbelief.

“The citadel has been abandoned and shunned since the days of Vlad,” said Lucian. “The locals still fear it. The government ignored it. The tourist bureau led the few tourists to fake ‘Castle Draculas’ like Bran Castle near Braşov rather than acknowledge the real site on the Argeş River.”

“So?” said Kate.

“So this ceremony has been anticipated for years. Ceauşescu began reconstruction of Poienari Citadel more than three years ago. The new government has finished it, despite the economic collapse. The strigoi demanded it.” He paused and looked at her, then went on. “Explosives were planted there during the reconstruction.” He let out a deep breath. “They’re timed to go off tonight during the Ceremony. The entire mountain is wired. None of the strigoi will leave alive.”

Kate folded her arms. “You’re lying again.”

He seemed startled at her attitude. “No, Kate, I swear…”

“You have to be lying. The strigoi would never allow someone access to one of their Ceremony sites like that. Also, their security people would sweep the place before the Ceremony. They’re cruel bastards, but they’re not idiots.”

They were entering the valley town of Copşa Mica. It was an industrial town unlike anything Kate had ever seen: the streets were black with soot, the houses were black, the people walking by were gray and black, and tall smokestacks belched out more pollution. Lucian pulled the car into a rutted area beside the railroad tracks. “Kate,” he said, “it’s true. I swear it.”

She stared at him.

He sighed. “The construction was authorized by the strigoi Family leaders, was paid for primarily by Vernor Deacon Trent’s foundation, and was carried out by Radu Fortuna’s construction company.”

Kate’s arms were still folded across her chest. “And you’re saying that Fortuna just happened to ignore your mythical bombs being planted. Or is it going to be done the way they tried to kill Hitler … one strigoi turncoat with a bomb in his briefcase?”

Lucian gripped her arms and then released them quickly when he felt her stiffen up. “I’m sorry. Listen, Kate … Fortuna almost never visited the site. Most of the work was done by Hungarian artisans. During my summers I worked as a supervisor on the project…” He stopped when he saw her look of disbelief. “The strigoi trusted me, Kate. I had been an international courier as a teenager. I was ambitious and greedy and showed loyalty only to those with the power to help me. And I had help…” He stopped.

“Your mystery mentor,” Kate said sarcastically.

“Yes.”

“And the bomb was set in place while no one was looking.”

“It’s not a single bomb, Kate. The two main towers of Vlad’s citadel were rebuilt, as were the main hall, the south battlements, the old approach bridge, and the east battlements, where the actual ceremony will be held tonight. They’re all loaded with explosives and wired with separate timers. The entire mountaintop is coming off.”

Kate held her cold stare but she felt her heart rate accelerate. “The strigoi security people will find it.”

Lucian shook his head. “They’ve been over all of the sites a dozen times. The explosives are sealed in the actual construction. Even the timing devices have been mortared up and shut away. They haven’t found anything and they won’t. There’s no way to disarm it. If the strigoi are there tonight, they’ll be destroyed.”

“With Joshua,” said Kate. “And O’Rourke.”

Lucian touched her hand. “I’m sorry, Kate. I’d hoped they might bring the baby with you today. But they must be flying him down tonight in the helicopter with Radu Fortuna and the other VIPs.”

Kate pulled her hand away. “You’re lying there, Lucian. You didn’t think Joshua would be in the car with me. You wouldn’t have rescued us if he were. You need him there tonight, so the ceremony will proceed. So the assassination will proceed.”

He looked away and she knew then that he was lying about wanting to save Joshua, but telling the truth about the explosives. Her arms and legs literally ran cold at the thought. Outside, gray shadows moved through the industrial filth of Copşa Mica.

“Kate,” Lucian said softly, not turning to look at her “you have to understand that there have only been three of these Investiture Ceremonies in the past five hundred years. There will never be a better time. The entire Family will be there … all the strigoi who are important enough to count.”

Kate nodded. “And my baby and an ex-priest who never hurt anyone are a small price to pay for that chance to assassinate them.”

Lucian wheeled and his eyes were wide. “Yes! A hundred babies and a hundred priests are a small price!” He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Do you realize how many centuries my people have been enslaved by these monsters, Kate? Do you know how many babies and priests and ordinary people have died horribly because of their cruelty? Can you imagine a nation which has never taken a breath outside the shadow of totalitarian madness?” His voice was shaking. His entire body was shaking.

Lucian let go of her arms and put the car in gear. “It doesn’t matter what you think, Kate. It will happen tonight. I’m sorry about Joshua … I truly am. And O’Rourke. They will be martyrs just as my adoptive parents were.” He drove slowly down the highway through the black city.

“Where are we going?” she said dully.

“We’ll change to Highway Fourteen B here in Copşa Mica,” he said. “Then north on E Eighty-one to Cluj-Napoca by nightfall, and then west to Oradea and the Hungarian border.”

“How will we get across?”

Lucian smiled. “I have ways better than your Gypsy smugglers. We’ll be in Budapest by tomorrow night.”

“And Joshua will be dead.”

He looked at her. “Yes. Would you rather he be a full-fledged strigoi? He’ll drink human blood tonight, Kate. But it will not turn him into one of them. It will all end tonight.”

She leaned across and seized the steering wheel. Startled, Lucian pulled into an empty market area near the factory gates. No one was in the broad, cinderblock area. The road west went on to the right. The road south to Sibiu and the citadel branched left just behind them. The sky rained black snow on everything.

“You know that Joshua can be saved from that,” she said. “With transfusions of the human blood substitute, his immune-deficiency disease can be alleviated but the shadow organ never has to be involved. He won’t build a dependency on human blood … human life. The artificial hemoglobin will be like insulin to him, nothing more. His body could give us the cure for cancer, for AIDS, and he never has to be strigoi.”

Lucian touched her cheek. “It’s too late, Kate.”

She swooned then, allowing her eyes to slide up under her fluttering lids and sliding off the vinyl seat against the door.

“Kate!” Lucian leaned across and lifted her lolling head.

Kate slipped the target pistol out of his belt and set the muzzle against his chest. “Sit back, Lucian.”

“Kate, for Christ’s sake…”

“Sit back,” she snapped.

He did so, setting his hands on the steering wheel. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

She waited until he looked at her so that he could see her eyes. “I won’t kill you, Lucian. But I will shoot you. In the leg. Away from the femoral artery, but smashing a major bone. So you won’t come after me.”

“Come after you? To where?”

“I’m going to get Joshua.”

Lucian laughed. It was a thin sound. “Kate, let me explain something to you, all right?”

She said nothing.

“It’s not just the explosives or the usual strigoi security,” he said into the silence. “This is the important night. Strigoi from all over the world who were not at the first three nights will be there tonight. It’s like Easter to ardent Christians. There will be at least five hundred people up there. All of them will have brought their own guards.”

Kate held the pistol steady.

Lucian ran his hand through his hair again. “Kate, we couldn’t even get there. There is only one road to the citadel on the Argeş … it’s Highway Seven-C and it makes this lousy road look like one of your American Interstates by comparison. Highway Seven-C is closed in the Făgăraş Mountains to the north of the castle because of early snows and rock slides. It’s only open in late June to early August, and even then you risk your life on that road. Even the strigoi are flying or taking the highway through Braşov or Sibiu.”

Kate’s finger was on the trigger.

Lucian held both hands in front of him, asking for time with his palms. “To the north of the citadel the road is closed and there are hundreds of troops stationed there because of the big hydroelectric project on the Argeş River above the castle.”

“The strigoi have to get there,” said Kate.

Lucian nodded. “They’ll drive up from Bucharest and Rîmnícu Vîlcea. Yes. But the highway will be closed miles below the citadel. There will be roadblocks and security checks from the town of Curtea de Argeş on. No one who is not strigoi could get through.”

“How close could I get before the roadblocks?” asked Kate.

Lucian shrugged. “How the hell do I know? The village of Căpăţîneni is only four or five kilometers below the castle.”

“If I get that far,” said Kate, “I could walk the last couple of miles.”

“Scuzaţi-mă, Domnul Politişt, puteţi s-mi arataţi cum să ajung Poienari Citadel?” said Lucian in a falsetto. “M duc la plimbare.”

“What?” said Kate. “What about the citadel?”

“Nothing,” said Lucian. “I’m just imagining you asking directions and telling the strigoi guards that you’re just going for a walk.” He shook his head slowly. “You couldn’t get to the citadel, Kate. If you did, they’d just take you and make you part of their fucking Sacrament. There’s no way you could get the baby away.”

Kate did not lower the pistol. “Perhaps it would be worth it just to make sure that they did not turn him into a full-fledged strigoi.”

He frowned at her. “You mean kill the child before they make him drink? But why, Kate? The Ceremony starts a little before midnight. The strigoi are a prompt race. The Investiture Ceremony is scheduled to take about an hour and a half. The explosives go off at twelve twenty-five. Chances are that they will not have gotten to the so-called Sacrament part of the Ceremony before … before it happens.”

Kate nodded her understanding. “Get out of the car, Lucian. I don’t know who to trust or what to believe anymore, but I know that I’m grateful for what you did an hour ago. He … they…” Her hand started to shake and she steadied it on her knee. The muzzle of the pistol was still pointed at Lucian’s chest. “If you promise not to come after me, I’ll just leave you here. You go on to Hungary.”

Lucian opened the door and stepped out. The road was empty except for a Gypsy wagon rumbling by. The swaybacked black horse pulling the black wagon may have been any color under the soot that coated him. The children’s faces staring out from under the dark gray canvas were streaked with sooty rivulets where tears had muddied the grime on their cheeks. Their hands were black.

“Kate,” said Lucian, his voice sad, “why?”

“Don’t worry. You said yourself that when they catch me they’ll just make me part of their Ceremony. They won’t take time to interrogate me. At any rate, I could stand anything until … when? Twelve twenty-five?”

Lucian gripped the top of the car door. “But why?”

Kate lowered the pistol. “I don’t know. I just know that I’m not leaving Joshua or O’Rourke there. Good-bye, Lucian.” She slid over, closed the door, put the car in gear, and made a U-turn on the empty highway to head back to the intersection where Highway 14 ran south to Sibiu. The windshield was already so dusted with the rubber ash and soot in the air that she had to turn on the windshield wipers. They clawed back and forth with a sound of fingernails on glass.

Lucian had jogged across the street while she was making the turn. Now he put both hands out the way she had seen hitchhikers do in Mediaş. He switched to an upraised thumb as she came up to the sooty stop sign.

“Thanks, babe,” he said as he slid into the passenger seat. “I thought I’d never get a ride.”

Kate held the pistol in her lap. “Don’t try to stop me, Lucian.”

He held up three fingers. “I won’t. I swear. Scout’s honor.”

“Then why—”

He shrugged and settled back in the tattered seat, his knees high. “Hey, Kate, did you know that before we shot Ceauşescu we tried to electrocute him?”

Kate started to speak and then realized that this was one of Lucian’s dumb jokes. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” said Lucian, “but even though we pulled the switch a dozen times, the electricity never hurt him. Afterward, while the firing squad was hunting for bullets, we asked him why the electricity didn’t work. You know what he said?”

“No.”

“Látjátok, mindig is rossz vezetö voltam.”

Kate waited.

“He said, ‘You see, I always was a bad leader/conductor.’ Get it? Vezetö means leader, but also, like, semiconductor. Get it?”

Kate shook her head. “You don’t have to go with me on this, Lucian.”

He spread his fingers and settled lower in the seat. “Hey, why not. It’s easier to follow. I always was a lousy vezetö.”

Kate turned right onto Highway 14. Black letters were just visible on a gray-sooted sign: SIBIU 43 KM. RÎMNÍCU VÎLCEA 150 KM.

Once out of the smoke and soot of Copşa Mica, Kate turned off the wipers but had to turn on the lights. Despite the early hour, it was getting dark.