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i HIGH PRAISE FOR GRAHAM MASTERTON!

"One of the most consistently entertaining writers in the field" -Gauntlet

"Graham Masterton is the living inheritor to the realm

of Edgar Allan Poe."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Graham Masterton is always a lot of fun and he rarely lets the reader
down.... Horror's most consistent

provider of chills."

--Masters of Terror

"Masterton is a crowd-pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing
dialogue and visceral grue."

--Time Out (UK)

"Masterton is one of those writers who can truly unnerve the reader with
everyday events."

--Steve Gerlach, author of Rage

"Masterton has always been in the premier league of

horror scribes."

--Publishing News

ii STRANGE COMPULSION

"Did she tell you why she drank the blood?"

"She said that the sunlight in her apartment made her feel as if she was
burning, and she had to drink her friends' blood to save herself from
being cremated alive. It's possible that the burning sensation was a
genuine physical symptom, but her response to it was psychotic. It happens."

The phone buzzed. Frank said, "Excuse me for a moment," and picked up
the receiver. He listened and nodded, and then he slowly put the
receiver down again, and kept his hand pressed on top of it, as if he
were trying to make sure that it didn't ring again.

"We have a problem, lieutenant. About an hour ago a young man was
brought into the emergency room vomiting blood like Ms. Fireman. He
showed some signs of being sensitive to light, too--his skin was all
covered in sun block. We analyzed the contents of his stomach and I've
just been given the preliminary results."

"And?"

"Over three liters of blood. None of it his."

iii Manitou Blood

iv Other books by Graham Masterton:

THE DEVIL IN GRAY

THE DOORKEEPERS

SPIRIT

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

PREY

v

Graham Masterton

LEISURE BOOKS NEW YORK CITY

vi A LEISURE BOOK

September 2005

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this
book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to
the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."

Copyright ©2005 by Graham Masterton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher,
except where permitted by law.

ISBN 0-8439-5425-6

The name "Leisure Books" and the stylized "L" with design are trademarks
of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Visit us on the web at www.dorchesterpub.com.

vii MANITOU BLOOD

viii Graham Masterton

1

1

Bloodwork

It was only a few minutes after eleven in the morning, but already the
sun was beating on the sidewalks as hard as a blacksmith's hammer.

As he crossed Herald Square, in his flappy brown linen suit and his
green Matrix-style sunglasses, Dr. Winter saw a small crowd gathered
outside Macy's. At first he thought they must be looking at a new window
display, but then he realized that a mime artist was performing in front
of the store.

Frank Winter had an irrational aversion to mimes, or jugglers, or
clowns, or any other kind of street performers. Behind their painted-on
grins, he had always suspected that they were sly, and spiteful, and out
to cause mischief. But this mime caught his attention. She was a girl,
to begin with--a very thin, small-boned girl, in a one-piece suit made
of tight silver fabric. Her short-cropped hair was stiff with silver
paint, and her face was painted silver, too.

Frank stopped for a moment, and watched her. Her suit was so tight that
she could almost have been naked. She

2

was small-breasted, with very prominent nipples, and her buttocks were
as tight as a boy's. Underneath her Tin Man makeup she had a thin,
sculptured face that was almost beautiful, in a starved, waiflike way,
and pale, blue staring eyes.

But it wasn't only her appearance that held him there: It was her
extraordinary performance. She swayed from side to side, giving the
impression that she was defying gravity. Then she began to mime that she
was climbing, and somehow she made it appear as if she was actually
making her way up a ladder. At the top of the ladder she teetered, and
nearly lost her balance. Two small children who were watching her
stepped instinctively back, as if she was really going to fall on them
from twenty feet up.

Frank pressed his hand to the back of his head, because the sun was
beating on his neck. It was well over 93 degrees, with 85 percent
humidity. Nobody could walk around the city without gum sticking to the
soles of his shoes, and the crowd around him was mostly dressed in
T-shirts and shorts and sandals, and were furiously fanning themselves
with newspapers and tour guides. It had been sweltering like this for
over a week now, since the second day of August, and the weathermen were
predicting the longest heat wave in New York City since the summer of 1926.

Up on top of her imaginary ladder, however, the girl began to clutch
herself, and shiver, as if she were freezing. She stood on the sidewalk
quaking and even though the sun was beating on the back of his neck,
Frank could almost feel a chill, too, as if somebody had opened up a
refrigerator door, right behind him. He turned to the man standing next
to him and said, "She's something, isn't she?"

The man looked Italian, or maybe Greek. He was bearded, with a flattened
nose like an osprey's beak, and bulging brown eyes, and he was wearing a
strange dangling earring, like a miniature dreamcatcher, all feathers

3

and beads and fishhooks. He raised his eyebrows and smiled but didn't reply.

Frank wasn't sure if the man had understood him. "I mean the way she's
shivering like that... she's actually making me feel cold."

"Well," said the man, still smiling. "She is one of the pale ones,
that's why."

"The pale ones?" said Frank. He shook his head to show that he didn't
understand.

"I would gladly explain it to you, sir, but you would probably not
believe me."

"You could try me. I'm a doctor and you know us doctors. We're ready to
believe anything."

The girl began to climb down her imaginary ladder, until she reached the
ground. Then she sat on her red-and yellow rug on the sidewalk and
twisted her arms and legs together so that she tied herself into a human
knot. If he hadn't seen it for himself, Frank would have said that it
was anatomically impossible. Her face was looking at him from between
her legs, emotionless, remote, but strangely threatening, as if she were
warning him to keep his distance.

She rolled around the sidewalk in a ball, and then, in one fluid
movement, she disentangled her arms and legs and stood up, her arms
spread wide. The small crowd applauded, and two ConEd workers gave her a
piercing whistle.

Gradually, dropping nickels and dimes into her silver-painted basket,
the crowd dispersed, but the girl stayed where she was, leaning against
Macy's window with both hands, breathing deeply, staring at herself. The
Greek-looking man stayed, too.

Frank took off his sunglasses. He could see himself reflected in the
store window behind her--a tall, broad-shouldered man with brushed-back
hedgehog hair that was graying at the sides. "That was quite some
performance," he told her. "I'm a doctor, and believe me--I've

4

never seen anybody who can tie themselves up quite like that."

The girl lifted herself away from the window and turned around. She
looked Frank up and down as if she already knew who he was, but she
didn't speak. Frank wondered if she might be such a good mime because
she was genuinely mute. He glanced again at the Greek-looking man, but
the Greek-looking man didn't seem to be interested in contributing
anything to the conversation, either.

"Well, great show," Frank told her, uncomfortably. "I have to be getting
on."

He took out a dollar bill and he was leaning forward to drop it in her
basket when the girl suddenly raised her hand to her throat and made a
gagging noise. She took a stiff-legged step toward him, and then
another. At first he assumed that she was acting, but her eyes were wide
and she kept opening and closing her mouth, as if she couldn't breathe.

Without warning, she vomited blood. A bright-red clattering cascade that
splattered the sidewalk in front of her and splashed all over Frank's
shoes. She tilted back, and then sank to her knees. Frank knelt down
beside her and put his arm around her.

"What's wrong? Are you sick with something? Have you been to see your
doctor?"

The girl shook her head. She looked terrified.

Frank shouted, "Call 911!" but there was no reply. "I said, call--" he
began, but when he turned around the Greek-looking man was hurrying
away, like the White Rabbit. "Listen," he told the girl, reaching into
his shirt pocket for his cell phone. "I'm going to call for an
ambulance, get you into the emergency room right now."

The girl nodded. She started to say something but then she vomited even
more blood, so that Frank's sleeve was soaked. A few passers-by had
stopped to watch them, but most people were staying well away--even
crossing over

5

the street. Frank didn't entirely blame them. He and the girl were
plastered in so much blood that it looked as if they had been fighting
each other with box cutters.

All he could do was kneel down beside her and hold her close against his
chest while she sicked up more and more blood. She was shaking wildly,
and now she felt genuinely cold.

It seemed to take an hour for the ambulance to arrive, although it was
probably less than ten minutes. The sun beat down on the blood that was
spattered on the sidewalk, so that it steamed. Frank heard sirens, and
banging doors, and the rattle of a gurney, and then he was being helped
up onto his feet.

A woman paramedic was staring very closely into his face. "Where are you
injured, sir? You want to show me where you're injured?"

Dr. Gathering said, "The good news, Frank, is that she's HIV-negative."

Frank was standing by the window of his twenty-seventh floor office at
the Sisters of Jerusalem, looking down at West Thirty-sixth Street
below. The traffic was sparkling in the sunshine, and the crowds far
below him were dressed in bright reds and yellows and greens, like a
scattered assortment of jelly beans.

"What's the bad news?"

George Gathering opened the plastic folder that he was carrying and took
out three sheets of test results. "I'd call it bewildering, rather than
bad. She must have vomited more than two liters of blood, not counting
the blood she brought up before we got into her emergency. By rights,
she should be dead."

"I thought it might have been a perforated ulcer."

"Well, that was my first guess, too. But we haven't found any serious
erosion of the stomach lining, although I think it's worth doing another
X-ray. We haven't found any varices

6

in the esophagus, either. Her liver's healthy, and she has no portal
hypertension.

"So where was all that blood coming from?".

"We're not sure yet. But you know how ulcers can hide themselves out of
plain sight."

"Still--this is very unusual, wouldn't you say? Usually, if a patient's
bringing up that much blood--well, it's almost impossible to stop it."

"Like I say, I want to try another X-ray. But she has some other unusual
symptoms, too."

"Oh, yes? Like what?"

"Her digestive chemistry is seriously out of whack for a young woman of
her age. Her stomach lining is secreting less intrinsic factor than an
eighty-year-old's. Which means of course that she isn't absorbing
vitamin B12."

"So she's anemic?"

"Yes, she is. Not only that--or maybe because of that-- she's
hypersensitive to sunlight. We cleaned all that silver paint off her,
but when we tried to put her in a bed by the window she literally
screamed. We had to move her into a room of her own with all the blinds
pulled down."

"What's her history?"

"She says that her name is Susan Fireman. She's twenty-three years old
and she's a third-year fashion student at The Beekman College of Art and
Design. She shares a loft on East Twenty-sixth Street with two other
girls and one of their boyfriends. The mime thing is just a hobby,
apparently.

"Her medical records are still held by her family doctor in New Rochelle
... that's where her parents live. We're trying to contact him now.
Apart from the usual childhood diseases, though, she says that the only
problems she's ever had are painful periods and an allergy to steamers."

"Have you contacted her parents?"

"Not yet. She specifically requested us not to. She says that her dad
has a serious heart condition and she doesn't want to worry them."

7

"I see. Has she been out of the country lately?"

George sorted through his notes. "The last vacation she took was to
Mexico, last October, eleven days in Cancun."

"Have any of her friends or acquaintances shown any signs of sickness?"

"Not so far as she's aware. But there's one other symptom. She's been
having a persistent nightmare."

"A nightmare? Nightmares don't make you vomit blood."

"Of course not. But for some reason she seemed to think it was
important. She's been having it night after night, for more than a
month. Always the same one."

"Go on."

"She thinks that she's deep inside a ship, somewhere in the middle of
the ocean. But she's shut up inside a box, and it's totally dark, and
she can't get out."

"That's it?"

George closed his folder. "That's it. But she says that it's so
realistic that she doesn't like to go to sleep any more."

"Yes," said Frank. He thought about the time that his father had taken
him to the circus, when he was five, and a clown had come right up to
him and screamed in his face. "I used to have a nightmare like that."

Frank had given his assistant Marjorie the day off today, so that she
could visit her elderly mother in Paramus. He put on his Armani
half-glasses to check his e-mail, most of which was spam from
pharmaceutical companies. Then he sorted quickly through his letters,
tossing aside the circulars and tearing open the envelopes that looked
as if they might contain checks. He called Pediatrics to check when he
was due for his afternoon clinic (3:45, on the sixteenth floor.) Then he
bought himself a large double-strength espresso from the vending machine
and went down to the eleventh floor to visit Susan Fireman.

"I've been praying on my knees for this heat to let up," said Sister
Dominica, in the elevator. "I had to use the

8

Graham Masterton

subway this morning, and I do believe that the Lord was giving me a
preview of the Other Place, in case I was ever tempted to misbehave."

Sister Dominica must have weighed over 225 pounds and her face was pale
and knobbly like an Idaho potato. She might have been tempted to
misbehave, thought Frank, as the elevator doors opened yet again, and
more people crowded in, but where was she going to find somebody to
misbehave with?

He walked along the shiny corridor to Room 1566. The door was ajar, but
it looked as if Susan Fireman were sleeping, so he stepped quietly
inside without knocking. The blinds were all drawn down over the
windows, but a faint, moth-shaped twist of sunlight quivered on the
wall, illuminating a picture of Jesus, standing by the sea of Galilee.
The air-conditioning had been turned to Nome, Alaska, and Frank couldn't
stop himself from shivering, just like Susan Fireman had shivered at the
top of her imaginary ladder.

Frank went up to her bedside and looked down at her. She was breathing
steadily, with an oxygen tube in her nostrils. Her face was so white
that her skin was almost translucent, like a death mask molded out of
candle wax, but she seemed to be peaceful. The nurses had combed most of
the silver paint out of her short dark-brown hair, but it was still dry
and tangled and out of condition.

He balanced his cup of coffee on the bright red crash cart next to her
bed and checked her monitor. Her blood pressure was low and her pulse
was a little too quick, but there was no arrhythmia. He was tapping the
touch-sensitive screen to check on her CO2 and her HO2 when he became
aware that her eyes were open, and that she was watching him.

"Oh ... you're awake," he smiled. "How are you feeling?"

"Sick," she whispered.

9

"You can talk, then?"

She nodded. "Yes... but only when I have to."

"Is there a reason for that?"

"Not really. But if you stay silent, you can never tell lies, can you?
And nobody can ever misquote you."

He finished checking her vitals. "I don't think I'd last very long in my
line of work, if I had to mime everything."

"Oh ... you'd be surprised," she said. She circled her head around and
around, with her eyes crossed. "Dizzy spells," she explained.

"Okay," Frank conceded. "I guess it's just as well that you're so good.
There's no way I would have stopped to watch you, otherwise."

"You don't like mimes?"

"Unh-hunh. All that smelling pretend daisies and leaning up against
pretend walls--that doesn't do anything for me, I'm afraid."

"I see. You're one of those people who refuse to believe that things
exist unless you can actually see them."

"When it comes to walls, yes."

"How about ladders?"

"Okay... for a split second, yes, you did make me believe that you were
climbing a ladder."

She gave him a faint, sloping smile. "I could have climbed higher, but I
lost my nerve."

"Sure," he said. He leaned over her and shone his flashlight into her
eyes, one after the other.

"You took care of me," she told him.

"Hold still. Of course I took care of you. It's my job. You were lucky
that the finest gastroenterologist in the entire Western hemisphere
happened to be watching you when you started to bring up all that blood."

"Do you have any idea what's wrong with me?" she asked him.

"Not yet. You have very low blood pressure, which is

10

Graham Masterton

causing us some serious concern. Your CBC shows that you also have
pernicious anemia, which is probably caused by an inability to absorb
sufficient quantities of vitamin B12. But neither of those conditions
would directly cause you to hemorrhage, and so far we haven't been able
to detect any lesions in your digestive tract or any vesicles in your
esophagus."

"I'm not sure I know what any of that means."

"It means, simply, that we haven't yet discovered what's wrong with you."

She didn't answer him directly, but turned her face away, so that she
was staring at the picture of Jesus. "He looks sad, don't you think?"

"Have you been feeling at all sick lately?" Frank asked her.

"No, not exactly. I've been feeling ... different?

"Are you on any medication? Anti-anxiety agents? Antidepressants? How
about diuretics?"

"I take ginger and yarrow, for menstrual cramps."

"Okay... how about alcohol? How much do you drink, on average?"

"A glass of red wine, sometimes. But not very often. I get drunk very
easily, and I don't like losing control."

"Street drugs?"

"Never. Well, once, but that was over a year ago."

"Tell me about your diet. Are you a vegetarian?"

She nodded, although she still kept her face turned away.

"Sometimes strict vegetarians suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency," Frank
told her. "It's pretty easily sorted, though, with tablets or injections."

He scribbled a few notes, and then he said, "Dr. Gathering tells me
you're very sensitive to sunlight. How long have you suffered from that?"

"I don't know... three or four days. Maybe longer. I can't really remember."

"Is it just your eyes, or is your skin sensitive, too? Do you get a rash
or anything like that?"

11

11

Susan Fireman shook her head. "I can't go out without my makeup, even if
the sun's not shining."

"What happens if you don't wear makeup?"

"It hurts. It feels like I'm standing an inch too close to a furnace."

Frank made a note to talk to Dr. Xavier, the skin specialist. Then he
said, "You've been having recurrent nightmares, too, I understand?"

Susan Fireman pulled a dismissive face, as if she didn't want to talk
about it.

"A recurrent nightmare can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying
medical problem. It's your body sending a warning to your brain that
something might be seriously wrong."

"I don't know ... this feels more like a memory than a nightmare."

"You keep dreaming that you're on board a ship, is that it? And you're
shut up inside a box, in the dark."

"Not just shut up. The lid's screwed down tight. And there are more
boxes stacked on top of my box, so that I couldn't possibly get out,
even if it wasn't."

"I see. So how do you know you're on board a ship?"

"Because I can feel it moving. It pitches up and down, and then it
rolls. And I can hear timbers creaking, and the sound of the ocean.
Sometimes I hear somebody shouting, in a very singsong way, and that
frightens me more than anything else."

"Do you know who it is?"

Susan Fireman turned back and looked at him. "It's a boy, by the sound
of it. He shouts out something like tatal nostru, over and over again.
There's a whole lot more but when I wake up I can never remember it."

"Tattle nostrew? Do you have any idea what language that is?"

"None. But it frightens me, because the boy sounds so frightened."

12

Graham Masterton

Frank said, "We're going to have to do some more tests. Some allergy
tests, and some eye tests, and at least one more X-ray, to see if we can
find an ulcer. I think we need to contact your parents, don't you, and
let them know what's going on?"

"My dad's real sick. I don't want him upset."

"Well, maybe we could talk to your mother first, and let her decide how
to tell him."

Susan Fireman thought for a moment, and then she said, "No ... leave it
for now. Please. I'll tell her myself."

"Is there anyone else you want us to talk to? How about the people you
share with?"

"No--don't tell them."

"Don't you think they're going to be worried, when you don't come home?"

"Please..."

Frank tucked his notebook back in his pocket. "Okay, you're the boss.
I'll come back later and see how you're getting along."

He was walking back through his office door when his beeper went off. It
was Dr. Gathering, and it said urgent. He pressed his phone button and
said, "George? What's happening?"

"Willy's sent me up the final results of Susan Fireman's bloodwork.
She's anemic, no question about it, but there's something else, too.
Willy says that she has some enzyme in her bloodstream that he can't
identify. He might have to send it off to Rochester."

"Well, I've just been down to talk to her, and there's definitely
something unique about her."

"That's not all, Frank. Willy also tested a sample of the blood that she
vomited."

"Yes?"

"It's not hers. In fact, it's two different blood types

13

13

altogether. She's type AB, but the blood that she vomited was a mixture
of type A and type O."

"What?"

"I'm afraid so, Frank. That blood didn't get into her stomach from
internal bleeding. She drank it."

14

2

Blood Thirst

While Frank and George sat on the low-slung leather couch and watched
him, Dr. Bellman skimmed through the results of the blood tests, tapping
his ballpoint pen furiously against his teeth. Eventually he threw
himself back in his chair and said, "Christ!"

"We thought you ought to see it ASAP" said George.

"Well, you're damn right about that. We need to call the police, and we
need to call them now." He leaned across his desk and flipped his
intercom switch. "Janice?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Get me Captain Meznick at Midtown South, and make it snappy."

He read the blood tests again, more slowly. "We're sure about this?
There's no room for any mistake?" He was a small man with a high white
pompadour and compressed, Hobbit-like features. His staff called him The
Death Troll, but they respected him. He was fierce and quick-tempered
and a formidable stickler for detail.

"No mistake, sir," George told him. "Willy repeated his

15

15

tests twice, just to make sure. It's human blood, and there's no
question that it isn't hers. Unless she stole it from a blood bank, or
she's been keeping it refrigerated, there have to be at least two people
out there who have lost a serious amount of blood. Almost certainly, a
fatal amount."

The intercom buzzed. "Lieutenant Roberts on the phone, sir. Captain
Meznick is away in Philadelphia, at a law enforcement convention."

"Okay, that's okay." Dr. Pellman picked up his phone. "Lieutenant
Roberts? This is Harold Pellman, senior VP and medical director at the
Sisters of Jerusalem. I won't beat around the bush: We have a young
woman here who appears to have been drinking blood."

Frank could only guess what Lieutenant Roberts' reaction was on the
other end of the phone, but Dr. Pellman had to repeat himself twice.
"Drinking blood, lieutenant. Human blood, and other people's blood, not
her own. And unless they've been given an emergency transfusion, whoever
she drank it from is probably dead."

He spelled out Susan Fireman's address and personal details, and then he
hung up the phone. "That's it, gentlemen. There's nothing else we can do."

Frank stayed in his seat. "With all due respect, sir, I think I should
try to talk to Ms. Fireman before the police get here. We really need to
find out why she ingested all that blood, and who she got it from."

"Bad idea," said Dr. Pellman. "You're not a detective, Frank, and I
don't want anybody on this hospital's medical staff laying themselves
open to accusations of compromising a police investigation. You remember
what happened with the Koslowski kid. Nightmare."

"Yes, sir," said Frank. "But Ms. Fireman is still our patient, isn't
she, no matter what she's done? We're morally bound to pursue our
diagnostic procedure until we find out what's wrong with her."

"Frank--for Christ's sake, we know what's wrong with

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Graham Masterton

her. She's been binging on other people's circulatory systems, and it's
almost a certainty that she's killed them in the process."

"I realize that, sir. But for all we know, drinking human blood may be a
key symptom of her condition. If we don't investigate it--well, I
personally think that we'd be failing in our duty as physicians."

George said, very quietly, "I'm afraid I have to agree with that.
Supposing her condition can be transmitted? If one of our staff catches
it, or one of our other patients goes down with it--I mean, the legal
consequences don't bear thinking about."

"So that's it," said Dr. Fellman. "We're damned if we do, and doubly
damned if we don't."

Frank said, "All I need to do is ask her some very straightforward
questions. Like, whose blood did you drink? Where did you get it from,
and how, and why did you drink it?"

"And what do you think the cops will ask her? Exactly the same things."

"But once the police get here, she's far less likely to respond to any
questions about her condition, in case she incriminates herself--and if
she gets herself a lawyer, forget it, we won't have a hope in hell of
finding out what's wrong with her. She has a highly unusual combination
of physical symptoms--her anemia, her sensitivity to light--and she
obviously has severe psychological problems, too."

Dr. Fellman tossed down his pen. "Okay. But don't ask her anything other
than medical questions; and if she refuses to answer, don't push her.
And don't instigate any new diagnostic procedures until you've cleared
them with me."

They were just about to leave his office when Frank's beeper buzzed again.

"Okay if I use your phone, sir?" he asked Dr. Fellman. Dr. Fellman gave
him a wave of his hand and Frank picked it up.

"Dean Garrett here, Frank, in the emergency room. We've just had a young
man brought in here, vomiting blood. His

17

symptoms are very similar to that girl you brought in this morning."

"I'll be right down." Frank cradled the phone and then he looked at Dr.
Pellman with a serious expression. "Sounds like we've got ourselves
another one."

Frank and George went down together to the ER. As they arrived, seven
victims of a gang fight were being brought through the doors by
paramedics, all shouting and swearing and covered in blood.

Dr. Garrett grabbed one of the gang members by the lapels of his
sleeveless leather vest. "What's your name, bobo?" he demanded. Dean
Garrett was thin and unshaven and he had a drooping moustache, like
Wyatt Earp, but he was so wired and wild-eyed that the boy couldn't help
stumbling to attention.

"Julius," the boy blurted out. "What's it to you?" He had one eye closed
by a big purple bruise and a deep diagonal cut across his lips.

"What gang do you belong to, Julius?"

"The Blue Moros."

"The Blue Morons? That's appropriate. And those other bobos? Which gang
do they belong to?"

"The X-Skulls."

"Okay, Julius, my name is Doctor Dean and I belong to the Screaming
Medics, and this emergency room is my turf from which you will not
escape alive if you so much as break wind out of tune. Look at you--you
think this is tough, what you gilapollas have done to each other?
Superficial scratches, that's all. I've been trained to take a man's
entire insides out without him even knowing that I've done it, take them
out in handfuls and heap them on the nightstand next to his bed, and if
you don't behave yourself I promise I will do it to you."

Julius opened his bruised and bloodied lips, but said nothing, and when
Dean Garrett let go of his vest, he

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Graham Masterton

lenly beckoned the members of his own gang over to the far end of the
emergency room, well away from their rivals.

"Kids," said Dean. "That's all they are, kids--and you have to treat
them like kids."

George said, "I don't know how you cope with it, Dean. Most of my
patients are dear old ladies with purple hair, and they run me ragged."

"It's simple," said Dean. "You have to be ten times more scary than they
are, that's all."

"You are, believe me," Frank told him. "What's a gilapolla?"

"A gilapolla? Roughly translated, a dickhead."

Dean led them down to the last triage cubicle, farthest away from the
doors. He dragged back the curtain and there lay a skinny young man of
about nineteen or twenty, shaking and shivering, his T-shirt thick with
glistening blood. The young man's hair was sticking up, and his eyes
were flickering wildly from side to side. A big black emergency nurse
was adjusting his saline drip, while a spotty blonde one was standing
beside him with a stainless steel basin.

Almost as soon as they came into the cubicle, the young man sat up with
a spastic jerk, and vomited blood into the basin. He retched, with
strings of blood swinging from his chin, and then he dropped back onto
the bed, still shivering.

The nurse was about to take the basin away, but Frank said, "Don't throw
that away. Take that to Dr. Loman for analysis. We need a blood sample
out of his veins, but we also need a sample of the blood that he's just
vomited."

"You think he might have been poisoned?" asked Dean.

"It's possible. But if he's anything like the young lady we're looking
after upstairs, we need to check what type it is. The blood that she was
vomiting wasn't her own."

"You mean--Jesus."

19

19

"Frankly, Dean, I don't know what I mean."

Frank approached the bed and leaned over it. The young man's eyes were
wide open but his pupils were still darting around and he was muttering
and twitching and occasionally he arched his back, as if he were being
electrocuted.

"Listen to me, son," said Frank, loudly. "Listen to me--do you know
where you are?"

The young man clutched at the sheets, obviously making an effort to
control himself. "I'm ah--I'm gah--"

"Listen to me, try to concentrate. My name is Dr. Winter and you've been
admitted to the Sisters of Jerusalem. Can you tell me your name?"

"I'm ah--I'm ah--"

"Where was he picked up?" asked Frank.

"Port Authority. He was standing in line for a bus ticket when he
collapsed."

"Any ID?"

"Nothing. The paramedics said they couldn't find a wallet. Either he
didn't have one, which seems unlikely, since he was waiting to buy a bus
ticket; or else somebody lifted it while he was lying on the ground
puking his guts up."

"It's a happy world," said Frank.

"Okay" said Dean. "We'll run the usual tests and let you know the
results pronto. But I just thought you ought to see him."

"Sure."

They heard shouting, and whooping, and clattering. The Blue Moros had
started taunting the X-Skulls from opposite ends of the emergency room,
and one of the X-Skulls had picked up a chair and was brandishing it in
the air, as if he intended to throw it. Dean said, "Excuse me for a
moment. I have some heads to crack."

George checked his watch. "I have to go, too, Frank. Lunch with my tax
lawyer."

"Okay," said Frank. "Let's talk later."

20

Graham Masterton

Frank stayed beside the young man's bed for a little while longer. His
face was even whiter than Susan Fireman's, and he seemed to be much more
distressed. At least Susan Fireman had been reasonably coherent. It was
difficult to tell if this young man even knew where he was, or what had
happened to him.

"I--can't find--can't find--gah--" he gagged.

"You can't find what?" Frank asked him. "Your wallet? Is it your wallet
you're worried about?"

"I can't find--where I have to go--"

"You were standing in line for a bus ticket. Do you know where you were
intending to travel?"

"Got to--ucchh--"

Frank took hold of his hand. "Listen, the best thing you can do is get
some rest. We're running some lab tests, and once we've done that we'll
have a clearer picture of what's wrong with you."

"Tatal--total nostru--"

"What did you say?"

Frank looked up at the big black nurse, but all she could do was shrug.
"Sounded like something to do with his nose," she said. "Maybe he's
having difficulty breathing."

"Tatal nostru" the young man repeated. His heart rate was jiggling
excitedly up and down, while his blood pressure had started to sink like
the Titanic. He spluttered, and then he coughed up more blood, and
snatched at Frank's sleeve. "Tatal nostru!"

Frank turned to the nurse and said, "Epinephrine, and quick." Then he
turned back to the young man. "Listen-- can you hear me? Try not to get
too stressed. Your whole system's had a serious shock, and you really
need to stay calm."

"Total nostru--carele este in ceruri--" the young man panted.

"Don't try to talk," Frank told him. "Breathe deeply and evenly, that's
right, and relax."

The young man stared at Frank wide-eyed. Bubbles of

21

21

blood were frothing at the corners of his mouth, and his chest was
heaving up and down as if he had been running a
marathon."--sfinteasca-se numele tau--vie imparatia tafaca-se uoia ta--"

"Please, don't try to talk," Frank repeated. "You need to keep as quiet
and as steady as you can."

The nurse came back with a bottle of epinephrine and a hypodermic. Frank
lifted up the young man's blood-crusted arm, wiped it with an antiseptic
tissue, found a vein, and injected it.

"Painea noastra--cea de toate dane-o astazi--"

Frank waited. One minute passed, then two. At first he thought he might
have made a mistake, and that the young man wasn't suffering from an
anaphylactic seizure after all. But gradually the young man's heart
began to beat more steadily, and his blood pressure began to climb, and
he stopped panting for air.

All the same, his lips kept moving, as if he had to finish his
recitation, no matter what.

"--si nu ne duce pre noi in ispita--ci ne scapa de eel rau--"

After a while, though, he stopped talking and his eyes closed. Frank
peeled back his right eyelid with his thumb, and although his pupil was
still darting wildly from side to side, he was clearly unconscious.
Frank said to the nurse, "I need you to keep a real close watch on him,
okay? It's possible that he may suffer another allergic episode when
this wears off."

Dean came back, looking harassed. "Sorry to leave you like that, Frank.
How's he doing?"

"Anaphylaxis. He had a severe allergic reaction to something he's
ingested or something he's touched."

"He's okay now?"

"I gave him two milligrams of epinephrine."

Dean bent over the young man, frowning. "These symptoms ... I don't
know. They don't seem to relate to each other

22

Graham Masterton

in any logical way at all. There's something weird going on here."

"You think? That isn't the half of it. He was talking in some foreign
language."

"Really? Which one?"

"Nothing that I've ever heard before. Middle-European maybe, but it
wasn't Russian. I can recognize Russian, and it didn't have enough zees
in it to be Polish."

"Well, people say some pretty wacky things when they're sick."

"Not as wacky as this."

"What do you mean?"

"The first few words he came out with--they were exactly the same words
that the girl upstairs has been hearing in her nightmares."

"You're shitting me."

"No ... she says she has a recurring nightmare in which she's trapped
inside a box, on a ship. She can't get out, but she can hear this boy's
voice saying 'tattle nostrew,' over and over, like he's really frightened."

" 'Tattle nostrew'?"

"Something like that... that's about as close as I can pronounce it."

"And this guy said 'tattle nostrew' too? Maybe they know each other. It
might explain why they're both suffering from the same condition.
Something they've eaten, maybe."

"I don't know," said Frank, looking down at the young man in his
blood-soaked T-shirt. "For some reason, I have a very bad feeling about
this."

He went to the washbasin to wash his hands. Before he squirted out the
medical cleanser, though, he lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed
them, and then sniffed them again.

"What's wrong?" asked Dean.

23

Frank held out his fingertips so that Dean could smell them, too.

"That so much reminds me of something," said Dean. "Don't tell me."

"If you don't know what this is, you haven't been on vacation for a very
long while. It smells like pina colada. It's sunblock."

When Frank went back to room 1566, Susan Fireman seemed to be sleeping,
but when he carried a chair over to her bedside she opened her eyes.

"Dr. Winter..." she said, dreamily. "I thought you might be back."

"So you have a good idea what I'm going to ask you?"

She nodded.

"Okay then ... subject to further tests, it appears that you're not
suffering from any internal bleeding. No ulcers, no varices. The blood
that you were vomiting came from somebody else." Pause. "In fact, it
came from two somebody elses."

He waited for a moment, and then, when she didn't answer, he said, "Do
you think you can maybe explain that?"

"I don't know why," she whispered.

"You don't know why what?"

"I don't know why I did it. It was like ... I wasn't even me."

Frank said, "You drank all of that blood, didn't you? It wasn't yours at
all."

"I don't know why. I can't understand it."

"Whose blood was it, Susan? What did you do to them?"

"It was so confusing ... I could see myself doing it but it was like I
was watching somebody else."

"Whose blood was it, Susan?"

She closed her eyes and didn't answer. Frank waited for a long moment
and then he said, "Susan--I need to know who that blood came from."

24

Graham Masterton

"Why?" she said, without opening her eyes. "What difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference because anybody who lost that much blood is most
likely dead."

"That's what those people are for, isn't it?"

"I don't understand."

"That's what those people are born for... to give us their blood."

Frank said, "Open your eyes."

"Why?"

"I want you to look at me when you're talking to me. Or are you scared to?"

"I'm not scared of anything."

"I think you are. I think you're scared of yourself. I think you're
scared of what you did."

"I drank blood, all right? I needed to."

"Why did you need to?"

She suddenly opened her eyes, and exploded in fury. "I was burning! I
was burning all over! I was on fire and that was the only way to stop it!"

"So you had to drink blood, to stop the burning?"

"You don't understand! My whole body was on fire! I would have died
without it!"

"So whose blood was it, Susan?"

"Don't you get it, I would have died!"

She stared at him fiercely, but her ferocity didn't last for very long.
He sat back and said nothing, and she began to relax. After a few
moments she closed her eyes again and lay on her pillow utterly still,
as if she were sleeping, or dead. Frank waited. He was tempted to ask
her again whose blood it was, but he had the feeling that she was going
to tell him, if he gave her enough time.

Eventually, she spoke, in a very flat, detached voice. "Look at me," she
said. "I'm opening my bedroom door."

She paused for a moment, licking her lips, as if they were dry.

25

25

"Where are you now?" Frank asked her.

"I'm in the corridor. The sunlight's falling across the corridor this
way--" indicating a diagonal slant. "It's falling right on the poster of
Jim Morrison with gardenias in his hair. I can smell coffee... and I can
hear Prissy in the kitchen singing Man on the Moon. 'Do you believe...
they put a man on the moon? Do you believe... there's nothing up their
sleeve?'"

Another pause. After a while, Frank asked, "Now what are you doing?"

"I'm walking into the kitchen and Prissy turns around to me and smiles.
That's the last time she smiles at me. That's the very last time. Tatal
nostru. Careleesti in ceruri."

"What does that mean, Susan?"

"I feel like I'm burning. There's so much sunlight. The whole kitchen is
filled with sunlight and it burns! It's like I've had acid poured all
over me. I'm burning all over, even my feet. Oh God, I'm going to die. I
start screaming at Prissy but Prissy doesn't understand what's wrong
with me. She starts screaming too. We're both screaming but she's
screaming because she's frightened while I'm screaming because I'm on fire."

Susan's hand scrabbled sideways, touching Frank's arm. "I pick up the
knife ... the knife ... there's a big knife lying on the counter and I
pick it up. I don't hesitate. I can't hesitate, I'm on fire. I cut her
like this, across her throat. There's blood spraying everywhere, all
over the kitchen. All up the blinds and over the draining board. Blood,
blessed blood.

"Prissy falls to the floor with her arms waving and her legs kicking. I
kneel down beside her and I cover her wound with my mouth. I drink and I
drink but I scarcely have to swallow because her blood is pumping right
down my throat, and it's warm and delicious and it eases my burning. I
drink so much that I almost drown, and Prissy's blood is running out of
my nose."

26

Graham Masterton

Susan lay quietly for another minute, as if she were reliving the relief
that her friend's blood had given her.

"Is Prissy dead?" asked Frank.

Susan nodded. "She looks very pale, doesn't she? But that was what she
was born for. From the day she came out of her mother's womb, that was
her destiny. To feed me, and to stop me from burning alive."

"Now what do you do?"

"I'm standing up ... my bathrobe, it's so heavy, it's warm and it's
soaked in blood. I need to go back to my room and change. But look--the
door's opening--the door's opening and it's Michael. He stands there
staring at me and he can't believe what he's looking at. What's
happened? What's all this blood? Prissy! What's happened to Prissy?

"He doesn't understand that it's me, and that I did it. He kneels down
beside Prissy and while he's holding her head I pick up the knife again
and--" she didn't finish her sentence, but mimed the way that she had
cut Michael's throat, right down to the little wrist flick that she had
given the knife so that the blood would fly off the tip.

She clutched the side of her neck. "Michael topples over sideways, on
top of Prissy. He's trying to push me away but he's too busy trying to
stop the blood from spurting out of his neck. Spurt! Spurt! It's
everywhere, all over the floor, all over my face, all over my legs. I
pull off my wet bloody bathrobe so that I'm naked, and I'm smearing his
blood around and around, all over me."

Frank sat and watched as she caressed her breasts and her stomach and
her thighs. "Blood, all over me, sticky and warm ... and it eases my
burning so much ... blood everywhere, blood between my legs, I can
massage myself with fresh blood and it feels wonderful..."

She let out a long quiver of satisfaction. Then she said, "I bend over
Michael and he's staring at me. I smile at him and I whisper, 'thank
you, Michael, you're an angel.' I press my mouth against that gaping
slit in his neck and I swallow

27

27

his blood, gulp, gulp, gulp, even though I know that I'm being a
glutton. Look at me! I've got blood pouring out of the sides of my mouth
and dripping off my chin.

"But now I've sicked some up. I can't drink any more. I'm standing up
now ... I'm walking along the corridor leaving bright red footprints. I
sick up some more. Splatter, onto the floor. Then I go into the bathroom
and look at myself in the mirror. Blood woman! Blood woman! Scarlet
face, scarlet arms and legs, scarlet body. But I'm not burning any more.
I'm calm now, and my skin feels so much cooler. And I feel so ... what's
the word? Serene."

She opened her eyes, and smiled at him. "That's what I feel. Serene."

Somebody cleared his throat. Frank turned around and saw a tall black
man in a black linen suit, waiting in the doorway. There was another man
with him, a sallow-skinned white man in a short-sleeved shirt with jazzy
red patterns on it and a blood-colored necktie.

"Dr. Winter? I'm Lieutenant Hayward Roberts and this is Detective Paul
Mancini."

Frank pushed back his chair and stood up, and almost lost his balance.

"Are you okay?" Lieutenant Roberts asked him.

"No," said Dr. Winter. "I think I need a very stiff drink."

28

3

Blood Root

I looked up from the cards with the most serious frown that I could
manage. It was pretty hard to be serious when the sixty-seven-year-old
woman sitting opposite me was wearing a bright pink straw hat covered in
china cherries and a multilayered pink organza dress that looked as if
she were all dressed up for a children's birthday party. And pink
knee-high socks. And two-toned cheerleaders' shoes, custom-made, also in
pink.

"You have a weekend of very heavy financial losses ahead of you," I told
her. "By Monday, you're going to be $17,480 poorer, with nothing to show
for it."

Mrs. Teitelbaum gnawed at her lip. She didn't say anything, but I could
tell by the hunted look in her eyes and the way she was clutching the
strap of her purse how anxious she was. Mrs. Teitelbaum's money was
dearer to her heart than her grandchildren. If there was any legal way
that she could have married her deposit account at Chemical Bank, she
would have done it, and she would have taken it on a honeymoon to
Jamaica, too.

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29

"Tomorrow--let's see--tomorrow you're going to drop your purse."

"You're sure? That's terrible!"

"Oh, it's worse than that. Your purse is going to be picked up."

"Picked up? Surely that's good?"

"Not if the person who picks it up is a manic depressive who uses your
credit card to buy 300 challah loaves from Eli Zabar's."

"No!"

"That's not all, by a long shot. Friday, your late husband's portrait is
going to fall off the wall and break one of Widdly's hind legs, which
costs you more than $800 in veterinary bills."

"I can't bear it!"

"It gets worse, believe me. Saturday, a distant relative is going to
call and ask you to make bail for a trumped-up charge of insurance
fraud--which, out of the goodness of your heart, you do, especially
since he offers you his Mercedes as security. Unfortunately, he
disappears and you never hear from him again, and it turns out that his
Mercedes has already been repossessed.

"Sunday, while you're out having lunch with your friend, Moira, Mr.
Polanski upstairs leaves the water running in his bathroom. Your
apartment is flooded and all of your Persian rugs are ruined. While
you're clearing up the mess, somebody sneaks into your bedroom and
steals your best pearls."

Mrs. Teitelbaum leaned forward and peered through her gold-rimmed
spectacles. "This is what it says in my cards? For real?"

"There, look" I told her. "The smiling fool, with armfuls of bread. The
man in prison, with his horse-and-carriage being taken away. The
rainstorm, with the drowning woman underneath. And the beach-comber,
stealing pearls from the oysters. It's all there, Mrs. Teitelbaum, as
clear as the nose on your face."

30

Graham Masterton

Mrs. Teitelbaum prodded her nose as if it were somehow to blame for what
was going to happen to her. "So how do you know seventeen thousand and
what's it, so exact?"

"Mrs. Teitelbaum, that's what you pay me for. My psychic numeracy. I
count the number of cards and multiply them by the number of times
you've come here to ask my advice, plus Mr. Teitelbaum's age when he
passed away, which was seventy-six, and the twelve tribes of Israel,
that's twelve. Then I deduct your age and the last two digits of your
cell phone number and that's the exact figure."

"Seventeen thousand and what?"

"Seventeen thousand four hundred and eighty."

"So what can I do?"

"I don't think there's anything you can do. Fate is fate. Destiny is
destiny. The cards don't make the future, they only warn you what to
expect."

I pushed back my chair and stood up, accidentally stepping on the hem of
my dark green robe and tearing the stitches. "At least none of this will
come as a shock, will it? I mean, you'll be well prepared for it."

Mrs. Teitelbaum's cherries rattled. "But, I don't want to lose all this
money! This is the reason why I come to see you, Mr. Erskine! I come
here to find out what is going to happen to me, so that it won't!"

I went to the window and parted the dusty brown velvet drapes with two
fingers. Down below, on Seventeenth Street, a young Hispanic woman was
leaning over her stroller, wiping ice cream from her toddler's mouth.
She had masses of black curly hair, and she was wearing a tight yellow
top with an embroidered sun on the front of it, from which her enormous
breasts seemed desperate to escape by any route possible; and the
smallest pair of white cotton shorts. I think God was punishing me for
not keeping up my Spanish lessons. I could just imagine her reaction if
I went down to the street and tried the only Spanish

31

31

come-on line that I knew, "Le importa si me siento aquiT--"Do you mind
if I sit here?"

I came to terms with reality and let the drapes fall back. "There is
something you can do, Mrs. Teitelbaum. If you really want to change your
weekend, you could try a little something from the Magic Pantry."

"The Magic Pantry?"

"I don't often recommend that my clients should resort to spells, Mrs.
Teitelbaum. I'm not saying that they don't work. Oh boy--what!--there's
no denying that they work! But they're not cheap, and they can have
unpredictable side effects."

"I certainly don't want to lose seventeen thousand dollars, Mr. Erskine,
whatever the side effects."

I went to the glass-fronted cabinet at the far end of the room and made
a performance of producing a key on the end of a very long chain. I
unlocked the doors, which actually wasn't too difficult because the lock
had been missing when I bought it. Then I reached inside and brought out
a green glass jar with a tarnished brass lid. I opened it, and let Mrs.
Teitelbaum smell it.

"Herby," she decided. "What is it?"

"Spikenard. If you put a few leaves in a bag, and keep the bag under
your pillow, all of your possessions will remain safe, at least for as
long as the spikenard stays fresh."

"Well, that sounds ideal."

"It does, doesn't it? But there is a very dramatic side effect, I'm afraid."

"What's that?"

"Spikenard will also make you irresistible to younger men. If you sleep
on a bag of spikenard every night... well, the chances are that you'll
soon find yourself a vigorous young lover at least half your age. He'll
have a very big--well, let's not get too descriptive about it, but you
won't be disappointed."

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Graham Masterton

Mrs. Teitelbaum's left eyelid started to twitch. "This really works?"

"Of course. Spikenard is one of the most powerful herbs in the Magic
Pantry. Definitely not to be sneezed at."

"Well, if it really will protect my money, maybe I'll take some. How
much is it?"

"Two-fifty for three leaves, I'm afraid."

"If it saves me seventeen thousand, that's nothing. As for the side
effect... well, I guess I can live with the side effect."

I picked out three leaves, but then I hesitated. "I just thought of a
problem."

"Problem? What problem?"

"Well, spikenard will keep your money safe, and you'll get your young
stud. But when you've grown tired of him, you won't be able to get rid
of him--ever."

"Never?"

"No--not so long as you're sleeping with spikenard under your pillow. If
you want him to go, you'll have to throw away the spikenard, but that
means that you'll lose your money, too. It's a question of losing it
later, rather than sooner."

Mrs. Teitelbaum poked her nose into the jar and took a deep,
appreciative sniff. For a few seconds, I could see that she was very
close to deciding that $17,480 wasn't too high a price to pay for
several weeks of bedroom gymnastics with a younger man. But in the end,
she couldn't bring herself to two-time her bank account. She handed back
the jar and said, "Oh, well. What else do you have?"

I went back to the hutch, rummaged around, and produced another green
jar. "Here, try this," I suggested. "Blood root. Sanguina canadensis.
It's a member of the poppy family. The Native Americans used blood root
to stain their bodies before they went out scalping people, and they
still use it today, as a dye."

Mrs. Teitelbaum sniffed at this jar, too, and wrinkled up her nose.
"Musty," she decided.

"Ah, yes, but heap plenty powerful. If you keep blood

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33

root in your purse, Mrs. Teitelbaum, you will never lose your money,
ever. You can use it to protect your home, too-- simply by nailing a
small piece of it under your windowsill. I promise you, if you take
blood root home with you tonight, your weekend will be totally
different. No lost purse, no falling picture, no flooded carpets, no
stolen pearls. Everything that came up in the cards will be canceled."

"Canceled? You're sure?"

"They don't call me the Incredible Erskine, Herbal Visionary, for
nothing. I see, I interpret, I fix. I can heal the future before it
happens."

"So, for the blood root, how much?"

I sucked in my breath. "It's pretty hard to get hold of, these days,
Mrs. T. Most sanguina canadensii have been wiped out by genetically
modified sarsaparilla. But I guess

I could let you have a couple of inches for six-fifty."

Mrs. Teitelbaum opened her purse, took out a money clip that looked like
a raccoon trap, and tugged out a ten dollar bill. "Can you break this
for me?"

I didn't allow myself to waver. When it comes to extracting money out of
wealthy old women, wavering is fatal. Wealthy old woman have gotten
wealthy by being totally unscrupulous--by marrying bald, rich, old
bastards for lucre, not for love--by tactical divorcing and equally
tactical remarrying--and they will screw you for the price of a day old
newspaper if you show the slightest hesitation. They're vampires, and
the only way to get the better of them is to hammer a stake through
their checkbooks.

"Actually... it's six hundred and fifty," I told her. Then I let out my
famous high-pitched laugh, as if she had just played an incredibly funny
practical joke on me. You knew all along that it was $650, you wicked,
wicked woman! You were pulling my leg, weren't you? What a rib-tickler
you are!

She tugged out six $100 bills, one at a time, and then five tens. This
was where not wavering came into it. What was she going to say? That she
had really expected me to sell

34

Graham Masterton

her a whole two inches of rare Apache blood root for $6.50? I mean, how
stupid would that have made her look?

I took her money with that special sleight-of-hand they teach you at
magician's school, so that the mark is barely aware that it's gone.
Money--fwwp!--no money. Then I leaned forward and said, very
confidentially, "You promise you won't tell anyone how much I charged
you, will you?"

She looked up at me, not quite understanding what I meant.

"That's a very special price," I explained. "I wouldn't sell blood root
to anybody else for that kind of money."

I let out another scream of laughter, and this time Mrs. Teitelbaum
laughed, too.

As I opened the door of my apartment, however, she hesitated. "Mr.
Erskine--" she said.

I thought for a split second that she was going to say, "Give me back my
six hundred and fifty dollars, you double-dealing two-bit chiseler." But
instead she whispered, "That other herb, the first one you offered me--?"

"The spikenard?"

"That's it, the spikenard. I was wondering ... so long as the blood root
can guarantee to keep my money safe ..."

"Oh ... you were wondering if the spikenard could keep it doubly safe."

"Well, yes. Kind of extra security, if you know what I mean."

"In spite of the side effect?

"Mr. Erskine, I haven't had a side effect since Mr. Teitelbaum passed over."

"I don't know, Mrs. Teitelbaum. You're sure you can handle it? Some of
my ladies have complained of getting very tired."

"I'm in the best of health, Mr. Erskine. I eat only fish. Well,
sometimes a little chicken; and maybe a cream

35

35

strudel now and again. But I do Pilates, and I walk ten thousand paces a
day, every day, and always in a different direction."

"Well... okay. So long as you don't hold me liable for any--you
know--overexertion."

"Mr. Erskine? Mrs. Teitelbaum protested, all flushed and coquettish. And
she hadn't even bought any spikenard yet, let alone found herself an
eager young lover with a very large resume.

I opened up the cabinet, took out the green glass jar, and gave her
three leaves of spikenard. "Under your pillow, Mrs. Teitelbaum, in a
pure white linen bag. That'll do the trick."

She tugged three hundred dollar bills from her money clip and held them
out to me. But just as I was reaching forward to fwwp them out of her
fingers, she snatched hold of my wrist, and held it tight. "There's just
one more thing."

What? I thought. She's wearing a wire and I'm under arrest.

"You didn't give me my mystic motto," she said, reprovingly.

"Oh! Oh, yes! Your mystic motto! How could I forget?"

Shit, I thought. I used to own a rare nineteenth-century copy of
Bultitude's Compendium of Astrological Admonitions, but I must have
dropped it in the street when I had to move out of our apartment on East
Eighty-sixth Street. I'll bet some wino found it, and even now he's
terrified of sitting cross-legged under a medlar tree on the eighth of
August, or seeing two gray cats through the rungs of a ladder. But the
real nuisance is that, these days, I have to invent my own mystic mottoes.

"Ahhmmm ... 'If you stand under a lemon tree for long enough, the
falling blossom will turn you into a bride.'"

"Mr. Erskine." I swear to God there were tears in Mrs. Teitelbaum's
eyes. I gently eased the hundred dollar bills from between her fingers,
one, two, three, smiling all the time.

36

"Good-bye," I said, ushering her toward the door. "Next week, same time?"

"There's just one more thing," she told me. "Ye-e-es?" I asked, sweeter
than ever. "Fifty dollars change."

But that was another day's consultations over. I went to the window and
dragged back the drapes, in the faint hope that the bosomy young
Hispanic woman with the stroller was still out there, but of course she
wasn't. Anyhow, think about it, she was probably hopelessly devoted to
the father of her child, who was built like The Rock and worked as a
bodyguard for some famous Cuban guaracha band, and who would rip the
arms off any man who came within breathing distance of her, especially a
forty-three-year-old mystic in a green cape made out of a stretch-nylon
couch cover and a golden skullcap that was actually a Mickey Mouse hat
with the ears unstapled.

"Harry..." she would pant, her glistening lips only two-and-a-half
inches from mine, so that I could smell the extra-hot salsa on her
breath, "I want you so bad ... but I have promised my impossibly bulging
breasts and my endless legs to Raimondo."

And I would say, with infinite tenderness, "No tiene usted algo mas baratoT

I went through to my tiny kitchen, opened the icebox and took out a
bottle of Guinness. It's an acquired taste, Guinness: like burnt toast,
only beer. But it's good for a man living on his own, because it's food
and drink in the same bottle, and you never have any dishes to wash. I
took a long swallow, burped, and then I went back into the living area
to tidy up my fortune-telling cards.

How are the mystic fallen, I thought. Up until thirteen months ago I had
been living with Karen and Lucy in faded grandeur up on East
Eighty-sixth Street, now here I was in this dingy little two-room
apartment over Khaled's

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37

Pakistani Provisions, in a rundown district that I liked to call Upper
Greenwich Village.

I hadn't even unpacked properly yet, although I had managed to buy nine
mismatched bookshelves and stock the walls with all my tatty old volumes
of magic and fortune-telling and demonic arts. I had covered my table
with a crimson candlewick bedspread, and set out my crystal ball and my
phrenological bust, and I regularly burned sandalwood incense to cover
the smell of dry rot and Indian cooking from downstairs. What can you
say? Life's a bitch and then you smell of fenugreek.

I don't really know how or why our marriage came apart. I guess it was
mostly my fault. I'm never truly fulfilled unless I'm desperate. Like
the painter Edouard Munch of The Scream fame once said, "Without
anxiety, I would have been a ship without a rudder." There was nobody
else involved, even that smug tangerine-tanned bastard Rodney Elwick in
who kept inviting himself around for large glasses of chilled sauvignon
whenever he felt like it, and laughing with Karen in the kitchen while I
was playing drafts with Lucy.

"Something funny?" I used to say, appearing in the kitchen door, and
they both used to look at me as if I had a booger hanging out of my
nostril. I was an outsider. I wasn't even new money. I was no money at
all, of any age. All the money was Karen's.

But Rodney Elwick in wasn't totally to blame. I was jealous, yes, but I
have to admit that I was also bored, and discontented, and kicking my
heels. I felt that my life was being wastefully torn away, day by day,
like the blank pages from somebody else's diary. I had discovered the
terrible truth that happiness isn't everything. To know that we're
alive, we need challenges, and we need problems, and most of all we need
worry.

So here I was, the Incredible Erskine, Herbal Visionary, with all the
worry that anybody could wish for, and absolutely no money, but alive.

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Graham Masterton

A blonde woman in a turquoise blouse appeared in the entrance to the
antiques store on the opposite side of the street, and stood there,
smoking. She had dark roots in her hair, and her stomach bulged over her
denim mini skirt, but she had a hair-raisingly pretty face, like an
angel out of a Florentine painting. I wondered what would happen if I
went across and introduced myself.

"I've been watching you, my dear, and I think you're beautiful, in a
strange, trashy way."

No, that wouldn't work. And I was still trying to work out something
more seductive to say to her when my doorbell rang. My doorbell made a
wonderful glissando noise like a xylophone and it had cost me only $7.88
in Wolfowitz Discount Electrics on Second Avenue.

I opened the door. A young man of about twenty-five was standing outside
in the corridor, blinking. He had messy blond hair and he was dressed in
a white T-shirt with Molten Iris printed on it in red, and jeans. He was
snub-nosed, very pale, with pale green eyes, and blond eyebrows, and he
had a 9 kt gold crucifix dangling in his left ear. I could tell by the
yellow on his fingers that he smoked, but he was only wearing one ring,
and that was a heavy silver skull. You notice details like these, when
you're a fortune-teller.

One of the most interesting details about him, though, was that he was
here at all. Young men don't consult clairvoyants, not as a rule. Ninety
percent of my clientele was female, and the few men who did come had
either been diagnosed with a terminal illness and wanted to know how
long they had left, or were interested to know in advance which horse
was going to win at Aqueduct.

"Can I help you?" I asked him.

He frowned at the folded-up paper napkin that he was holding in his
hand. "Are you--uh--the Incredible Erskine?"

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39

"Incredible as it might seem, yes."

"My sister said maybe I should come talk to you."

"Your sister?"

"Marilyn Busch. I'm Ted Busch."

"Do I know your sister?"

"I don't think so, but she's friends with a girl who's the niece of a
friend of yours. She said I should talk to this friend of yours, but
this friend of yours said she didn't do psychic stuff no more but you
did so maybe I should come see you."

"What's that in Earth-speak?"

"I keep getting this nightmare, okay? So my sister's friend said I
should talk to her Aunt Amelia."

"Aunt Amelia? I don't know any Aunt Amelias. I don't know any Aunt
Anythings. I mean, look at me. Do I look like a nephew?"

"Amelia Crusoe? She's called Amelia Carlson now, but that's the name my
sister told me to tell you."

Amelia Crusoe. Oh, God.

I used to love Amelia Crusoe. I still loved Amelia Crusoe. Apart from
having a husky voice and vulnerable, pre-Raphaelite looks, Amelia was a
real psychic, a real medium who could talk to dead people as easily as
you and I can talk to people on the bus. She had always talked about
giving up the séance business, and she had, more than once, but I always
knew that she could no more give up talking to the dead than I could
give up worry. She needed it, to remind herself that she was still alive.

I said, "You'd better come in. You want a Guinness? It's Irish. You
drink enough of it, you pee green."

"I'm cool, thanks."

"Sit down," I told him, dragging out a bentwood chair. "What did you say
your name was? Fred?"

"Ted--Ted Busch. That's Busch like in Anheuser, not Bush like in George
Dubya."

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Graham Masterton

"Okay, Ted," I said, adjusting my golden skullcap. "I think the best
thing I can do is read your fortune in the cards, and see if this
nightmare of yours is going to have a deleterious effect on your life,
or whether it's just a harmless nocturnal terror."

Ted nodded. "I understand."

I was glad about that, because I didn't. "I'll have to charge you a
fee," I told him. "My rates are very reasonable, I'm not one of these
Upper West Side celebrity mystics with a self-help book on The New York
Times best-seller lists and a gold Lexus in the garage. But peering into
the unknown, it's a very complicated business, and it takes years of
dedication to perfect it, so I have to ask my clients for the nominal
sum of fifty-five dollars, inclusive of tax."

Ted opened up his left hand and there was a $100 bill, neatly folded.
"Amelia said that I'd have to pay you, but she didn't know how much."

Terrific, I thought. I should have asked fora hundred. But I took the
money and gave Ted $45 change, including five dollars in nickels and
dimes, which I shook out of my jelly jar.

"So tell me about this nightmare," I asked him, as I reopened the deck
of fortune-telling cards and started to lay them out.

"Uh ... don't I have to tap the deck or nothing?"

"Where do you think we are? Reno? No, you don't have to tap the deck.
They know you already, these cards. Look at this top one--a young man
with messy hair climbing up a flight of stairs--they even predicted that
you were coming to see me."

"Hey." Ted looked impressed.

"This is the Jeu Noir," I told him. "The Black Game--the most accurate
fortune-telling cards you can buy, if you can ever find them. They're
banned, in most countries, and do you know why? People were using them
to predict the date of their own death, and then killing people they
didn't like

41

41

on the day before they were due to die anyhow, so they wouldn't get
executed for it."

"Really?"

"Sure. Look at these cards--exquisite, aren't they? Look at the detail.
Do you know who designed them? French prisoners of war, in England, in
Napoleonic times. The artists weren't allowed to have pens, so they cut
all the flesh off the tips of their fingers, and drew the designs with
their own sharpened bones, dipped in a mixture of boot polish and rats'
blood."

Ted peered across the table with what he obviously thought was a
knowledgeable frown. I doubt if he had heard of Napoleon Solo, let alone
Napoleon Bonaparte. He sniffed and said, "I have the same nightmare just
about every night. I feel like I've been sleeping, okay, and then I
suddenly wake up."

"But in reality you're still asleep?"

"That's right. It's pitch dark, and when I try to sit up, I can't. I'm
trapped inside this wooden box, like a coffin."

"Carry on." I kept on laying out the Jeu Noir cards, in rows of seven,
six, five, three and four.

"I'm pounding on the lid with my fists, but it's fastened real tight and
I can't budge it, and in some way I know that there's another box on top
of me, with somebody in it, and another box on top of that, with
somebody in that, too."

I glanced up at him. He was clutching himself like he had the
stomachache and there were clear beads of perspiration on his upper lip.
It was a sweltering day, granted, but my rattly old air-conditioner
didn't work too bad.

"So ... you're feeling very claustrophobic?" I asked him.

"I'm suffocating, man! I'm banging and I'm banging but I know that
nobody's going to answer me and nobody's going to let me out."

"Is that it? You bang on the lid and nobody lets you out and then what?"

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Graham Masterton

Ted said, "This box I'm in ... I think it's on a ship. It's going up and
down like a fairground ride, and after a while I start to feel like I'm
going to barf. I can hear the ocean, and the wind, and clanking noises.
I can hear somebody calling out, in this really high voice. Maybe it's a
girl but it sounds more like a very young boy."

I put down the second-to-last card. "Can you catch what he's saying?"

"Not really. It doesn't make any sense. I'll tell you what it reminds me
of, though. The super's kids, when my family lived on Twenty-fourth
Street. The Popescus, that was their name. I hear this voice, and it
sounds just like one of them."

"So you hear the voice calling ... and that's when you wake up?"

"Jesus, I wish! Nothing else happens, but I still don't wake up.
Sometimes the nightmare seems to go on and on for hours, with the ship
heaving up and down, and the kid calling out, and I can't do nothing at
all but lie there, and I'm gasping for air."

I looked at him narrowly. "Is there anything happening in your life
right now to make you feel trapped? Are you stuck in a job you don't
like? Maybe you've just gotten engaged?"

"Not at all, man. Everything was totally cool before I started having
these nightmares. I got myself a new job at the beginning of last month,
at Lasky's Camera Store, and a new place to live, and I'm gigging in the
evenings at the Gothicka club. I don't have a care in the world, man,
apart from these nightmares."

"AH right, then," I told him. "I've laid out the twenty-eight Predictor
Cards so that we can see what your immediate future is going to be. The
last card we don't turn over till the very end."

"You can really read these things?"

"You think I'd have the nerve to charge you fifty-five bucks if I couldn't?"

"Okay," said Ted, dubiously.

43

43

I pointed to the first card, The Sweet Heart. "This is a good start!
You're going to meet a new girl this weekend. She's sitting on the bed,
see, and she's smiling flirtatiously, and that definitely means romance,
even if it's only a one-night stand."

"Yeah? Then who's that--looking in the window?"

I jerked up my head in alarm, but we were three stories up and of course
there was nobody. "Jesus," I told him. "You scared me."

"I meant there in the card," said Ted, pointing at it. "The girl's
sitting on the bed but there's somebody, like, spying on her."

"Really?" He was right. I had never noticed it before but right in the
corner of the card there was a window, and a parchment-colored face was
peering into it. A mask, rather than a face, with a slit for a mouth and
two slitty eyes. Talk about Leatherface, in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

"That face--that's your conscience," I improvised. "When you take the
girl to bed, your conscience is going to be watching you and saying,
excuse me, Ted, are you doing the honorable thing here? Or are you
merely playing with this young woman's affections? See here, beside the
bed, there's a chessboard with all the pieces knocked over... that's a
symbol of the fickle game of love."

"That conscience dude ... he's pretty scary looking."

"Well, your conscience is supposed to be scary. He's supposed to make
you think twice."

"Man, if I saw that dude staring into my bedroom window, I wouldn't have
to think twice. I'd crap my pants and run for the door, in that order."

"Let's take the next card then. This is you, talking to all of your
friends. It may not look exactly like you. I mean you don't have red
hair and bright green pantyhose. But it represents you. You're smiling,
you're relaxed. That's good news."

Ted picked up the card and scrutinized it for nearly half

44

Graham Masterton

a minute. He was obviously determined to get his fifty-five bucks' worth.

"So who's this?" he wanted to know, turning the card around so that I
could look at it, too.

"Who's who?"

"This dude way off in the distance, all dressed in black, with the tall
black hat, and his face all wrapped up in a scarf."

"Oh, him! He's not... specially significant. We should go on to the
third card."

"No, hold up, man. Here's all these people laughing and joking, okay?
But this guy right at the back, he's looking toward this guy dressed in
black, and he's definitely scared. He's not laughing and joking like the
rest of them, is he? He's got his mouth wide open like he's definitely
scared."

I took the card reluctantly and examined it myself. "Well, I guess
you're right. He does look a little concerned."

"So why is he concerned?"

"You don't really want to know that."

"I do, actually. Like, if this is my future, and somebody's looking
scared, I really want to know why."

"All right," I said. "This black figure appears on only seven cards in
the Jeu Noir, at various distances from the main protagonists. Sometimes
he's far away, sometimes he's practically breathing down their necks.
But what his appearance actually means--that's open to very wide
interpretation."

"But who is he? That's all I'm asking."

"He's, um, Imminent Death."

45

4

Blood on Seventeenth Street

"Imminent Death?" Ted blinked. "What does that mean?"

"Like I say, it's open to very wide interpretation. But basically it
means that you're going to die. More or less imminently."

"You're putting me on."

I lifted both hands to show him that I was helpless. "What can I tell
you? You wanted to know exactly what the cards predicted, and that's
what the cards predict."

"Do they say how?"

I scanned the twenty-seven cards that I had already turned up. "Without
going into too much detail, you've already met the person who's going to
kill you. See here? That's you in the blindfold, talking to her. She's a
woman, and you even know what her name is, although you don't know her
real name, and never will. That's the significance of the blindfold."

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Graham Masterton

"Jesus. Do they say who she is?"

"Not specifically, but she comes from very far away. Have you met any
foreign women lately?"

Ted nodded. "I met a girl at a party in Soho last weekend. She spoke
pretty good English--but, yes, she was foreign. Russian, maybe."

"Russian?"

"Maybe. Russian-type, anyhow."

"Well, maybe the cards are referring to her. They also tell me that
you've been given a gift that you won't be able to get rid of, even if
you want to. See this card here? The Gift. A young man's holding a
birdcage with a bright red parrot in it. He likes the parrot, he's
smiling--but if you look closer you can see that the bottom of the
birdcage is actually fastened with bolts that go right through the palms
of his hands. He can never put it down. Quite literally, he's screwed."

Ted said, "She gave me a medallion. Look." He reached into his T-shirt
and pulled out a heavy pewter amulet, about the same size as an Oreo. He
held it out so that I could inspect it.

The medallion had a man's face embossed on it, with a border of snakes
and stars. The man's eyes were closed, and he looked almost laughably
grim. On the back, an inscription was engraved in italics, but it was
written in some language that I couldn't understand. De strigoica, de
strigoi, si de case cu moroi.

"This Russian-type girl... did she tell you what these words meant?"

Ted shook his head. "She said it would bring me good luck, that's all."

"In that case, let's hope that she was right and the cards are wrong."

Ted didn't look convinced. "You said they were the most accurate
fortune-telling cards that money could buy."

47

47

"That's true. I did say that. But they can be unnecessarily pessimistic.
Like, they may say Imminent Death but how imminent is imminent? If
you're a Galapagos turtle, imminent could mean sometime early next century."

I turned Ted's medallion over again, and it was then that I felt a
crawling sensation up the back of my neck, like ants running into my
hair. The mans eyes had opened, and he was staring straight at me, and
smiling.

I flung the medallion away from me as if I had suddenly found a spider
on it. Ted said, "What?"

"Muscular spasm, sorry. My fingers just--jerk, now and again. Ruined my
career in netsuke-carving."

Maybe I should have told him that the man's face on his lucky medallion
had appeared to open his eyes, but it could have been a trick of the
light, couldn't it, or maybe the medallion had been made in such a way
that it was supposed to do that. But Ted already looked so anxious that
I thought it better if I said nothing. I may make a living out of
telling fortunes, but I can assure you that finding out what the future
has in store for us does nobody any good. Especially since we can't do a
damn thing about it, not even with blood root.

"Let's turn over the last card, shall we?" I suggested. "This is what we
call the Decider Card ... the card that finally tells you what's going
to happen to you."

"Supposing this Decider Card says Imminent Death, too?"

"No problem. We can always tell your fortune again, with a different
deck of cards. Maybe the Tarot, or the gypsy cards. Or we could even try
the crystal ball. You have to understand, Ted--the future ... the future
is only a matter of opinion."

Ted kept his eyes shut while I turned over the last card. I was hoping
to God that it wasn't The Serpent, which means certain death before the
next moon rises, but it was almost as bad. It was The Water Woman ... a
picture of a

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Graham Masterton

woman floating just below the surface of a river, with undulating green
weed, instead of hair. I had never turned this card up before, but I
knew what it signified. Death by drowning, or some other unpleasant
demise that involved water.

Ted opened his eyes and frowned at it. "The Water Woman? Is that bad?"

"It's not bad--but I have to be frank, it's not especially good either.
Don't let it worry you, though. The cards are warning you, rather than
telling you. They're saying, be careful, Ted!"

"Be careful of what?"

"Just be careful. Don't go swimming, don't accept gifts from
damp-looking women, and look both ways before you step in front of a
fish truck. That's the message they're giving you about Imminent Death.
You're not going to die tomorrow so long as you keep your wits about you."

I started gathering up the cards.

"Is that it?" said Ted. "What about my nightmare?"

"Oh ... your nightmare."

"That's why I came to see you, man. To see if you could stop the nightmare."

"Of course. But quite frankly I don't think your nightmare is anything
for you to worry about. You're suffering from stress is all."

"Stress?"

"Sure. You may think that everything in your life is hunky-dory, but
you've taken on a whole lot of new responsibilities, haven't you? So
you're subconsciously beginning to feel that things are getting on top
of you. Hence, the box you're trapped in, and all of the boxes piled on
top of you. I can let you have some snakeweed for that... put snakeweed
powder under your pillow and you'll never dream about yourself again,
guaranteed."

Ted said, "Amelia said that you could maybe call on your spirit guide,
to tell me what was wrong."

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49

I stopped picking up cards. "My spirit guide?"

"She said you had a Native American spirit guide. Some medicine man you
once used to know, who got killed."

"Amelia told you about that?"

"Sure. She said that you had a real talent, when it came to telling
fortunes, but you hardly ever used it."

"Oh, really? Did I just read your cards for you, or did I imagine it?"

"Yes, you did. But Amelia said if you got in touch with your spirit
guide, you could actually show me what was going to happen to me."

"She said that, too?" I thought for a moment. Then I dug into the pocket
of my jeans and took out his $100 bill. "Ted, do you know what I'm going
to do? I'm going to give you a full refund, no questions asked."

"But I don't want a refund, man! I want to find out what my nightmare is
all about! Amelia said you could do it, man! I can't sleep! I haven't
slept in over a week! It's driving me out of my skull!"

"Why do you think Amelia didn't want to help you? It's unpredictable.
It's dangerous. Sure, I contact my spirit guide. Sure I can show you
what your nightmare is all about. I can also stick a .45 up my ass and
pull the trigger, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it."

Ted lowered his head and stared at the table. He sat like that for so
long I was beginning to think that he had fallen asleep.

"Listen," I said, "I haven't done that kind of thing in a very long
time. You should try the snakeweed. I can let you have a teaspoonful for
forty-five dollars, that's a genuine bargain."

Still he kept his head down.

"Contacting dead people ... it's a very risky business. Amelia will tell
you how risky it is, and she was doing it for years. Why do you think
she doesn't do it now?"

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Graham Masterton

I stood up, and went to the window. The blonde woman with the roots was
still there. "I couldn't help noticing you. ..." I could say to her.
"The way that the cigarette smoke leaks out of your mouth and disappears
up that cute retrousse nose..." No, that wouldn't work, either.

Ted said, "I don't know what else to do, man. I went to my doctor but he
said the same as you. Stress, and put me on Ativan. I took them but they
only made the nightmare worse. Shit, man, I'm too scared even to turn
out the lights."

"I can't help you, Ted. I'm sorry."

He looked up, and I was shocked to see that his face was smothered in
tears. "You have to, man. There's nobody else. Please."

The blonde woman looked up and saw me staring at her. I smiled, and
winked, but she turned her back on me and went inside her store. Oh,
well. She was probably a transvestite, anyhow.

I didn't know what to do. I hate disturbing the dead, and if Amelia
hadn't sent him, I would have told Ted to forget it.

"I'm really not sure, Ted," I said. "I guess I could ask my spirit guide
if he can help you. But I can't give you any guarantees, and if it looks
too risky--"

"Please, man. You don't know what this means."

I hesitated. I really didn't like this at all. I had made contact with
the so-called spirit world only three or four times in the past, but
each time it had been a catastrophe, and I had been lucky to escape with
my life. You think dead people are docile? You think they all go off to
Rapture, and spend their time dancing in meadows and playing the ukulele
like a bunch of hippies? Ha! Dead people are bitter and twisted and
vindictive and they hate the living like you wouldn't believe. Put it
this way: If you were dead, how would you feel about all those smug
bastards who were still alive, especially if they kept getting in touch
with you and saying Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? What's it like being
dead? Where did you hide the US Steel stock certificates?

51

51

"Just hold on a moment," I told Ted. I pulled out the bottom drawer of
my cabinet and took out my address book. I found Amelia's number and
punched it out on my cell phone. It rang and rang but all I got was her
answering message.

"I'm not here right now but I really want to know why you called me."

Amelia. That same husky voice. I cleared my throat, and then I said,
"Amelia ... it's Harry. I have young Ted with me. Ted Busch like in
Anheuser. I'm going to do what I can to help him, but I'd like to know
what you think about this nightmare he's been having." I looked at Ted,
who was biting his thumbnail, and then I said, "Call me back, can you?
Love, Harry.

I snapped the phone shut. "Okay, then, Teddy boy. Let's see if I can get
you some assistance from the world beyond."

I tugged the drapes together so that the room was dark, except for a few
sharp chinks of light that shone around the edges. I took three church
candles from the kitchen drawer, and lit them. Then I took off the black
bead bracelet that I always wore, the bracelet that Singing Rock had
given me, and dropped it around the candles so that it encircled them.

"You see this?" I said to Ted. "This bracelet is made out of polished
stones from the Okabojo riverbed in South Dakota. The guy who gave it to
me said that when he died, his soul would be divided into twenty-one
parts, and that each of these beads would contain one of those parts.
The things he had seen, the things he had said, the things he had
tasted, the things he had touched, and so on. This bracelet is like a
recording of who he was." Ted said, "I'll try anything, man, I really
will." "Okay, then." I reached across the table and held both of Ted's
hands. "I want you to close your eyes and think of your nightmare. I
want you to imagine it as clearly as you

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can. The box. The weight on top of you. The ship tilting up and down."

Ted nodded. I waited for a while but he kept on nodding. "Close your
eyes, then," I told him. "I'd like to get started sometime this week, if
I can."

"Oh, sure. Sorry." Ted closed his eyes and at the same time gripped my
hands even tighter.

I sat there for a while, watching his face. It's extraordinary, how much
people reveal of their thoughts, when they have their eyes closed. Even
more, when they're asleep. Myself, I tried to think of Singing Rock, the
very last time that I had seen him, turning toward me, just about to say
something. He hadn't looked much like a Cheyenne medicine man. Short,
stocky, with a broad, good-humored face, and glasses. You would have
thought he was an Eastern European mattress salesman rather than one of
the most powerful workers of Native American magic since Hastiin Klah.

"Singing Rock," I said, "I need to talk to you."

A car honked its horn in the street outside and somebody started
shouting." You stupid? What are you, stupid, or what?"

"Singing Rock, I have a troubled young man here, and I need your
guidance to help him."

The candle flames flickered, and dipped, but I didn't feel that there
was any presence here, apart from me and Ted, holding hands. I couldn't
hear anything, either, apart from the commotion down in the street, and
the endless takka-takka-takka of my air conditioner.

"Singing Rock, this young man has been having terrible nightmares, and
he needs to understand what they mean, and how he can stop them."

I thought: This is hopeless. Ted and I are going to sit here, with our
hands becoming increasingly sweaty, and nothing is going to happen.
Singing Rock had probably been dead

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for far too long for me to be able to call him back; or else he simply
didn't feel like helping an insomniac paleface. We had been friends,
Singing Rock and I, but he had never been a lover of white men, as a
race. His great-great-grandmother had been killed by the US. Cavalry at
Whitestone Hill, in Dakota Territory, along with five more of his
family, only babies at the time, and over two hundred other men, women
and children of the Yanktonai and Hunkpatina Sioux. Singing Rock used to
talk about it with such rage you would have gotten the impression that
it had happened only a few days before, instead of in 1863. Time isn't
always the Great Healer, believe me, especially when it comes to Great
Injustices.

"Singing Rock, I'm asking you a favor here. I need you to open some
doors for me, and show me the way through."

Ted opened one of his eyes. "Do you really think this is going to work?"
he asked me, dubiously.

"Not if you keep peeking it isn't. Keep thinking about your nightmare,
okay?"

He closed his eye again, and squeezed his face in concentration.

"Singing Rock," I intoned. "I think that something seriously bad could
be happening here, and I really need your help."

I waited, and waited, and I really began to believe that Singing Rock
was going to ignore me. Why should he help me, after all? If I hadn't
meddled in Native American magic, he would probably still be alive today.

But just as I was about to twist my hands free from Ted's sweaty grip, I
heard something, and it wasn't the traffic, or the air-conditioning
unit, or the binky-bonky drums of the world music store across the
street. It was a very high-pitched keening sound, like metal scraping on
metal--so high that it was almost inaudible to the human ear, although
it probably would have set the dogs howling.

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"Singing Rock?" I peered slowly around the room. Nothing appeared to
have changed, but there was no doubt about it, there was somebody else
here. The balance of the room felt as if it had shifted. Things appeared
to have moved, even though they hadn't. The books looked as if they had
rearranged themselves, and the photograph of Karen and Lucy that hung on
the wall in the corner had infinitesimally tilted.

"Singing Rock, are you here?"

The keening sound grew louder--so loud that it began to set my teeth on
edge. Now I could hear another sound, too. A soft, insistent chanting,
and the tapping of sticks. I thought I could smell smoke, too, and hear
the wind rustling through slippery grass.

Singing Rock was here, or not very far away, anyhow. I was sure of it.

Ted--" I told him. "I think my spirit guide has arrived."

"What do you want me to do, man?"

"Think of your nightmare, as clearly as you can. See it in your mind's
eye. Show him how claustrophobic you feel, trapped inside that box. Show
him how the ocean's going up and down. Let him hear that young boy's voice."

"I can see it, man. I can feel it. I can hear it."

The tapping of sticks became quicker, and more staccato. I could
definitely hear somebody chanting now. I didn't know what dialect it
was, but it was definitely Native American, and I would have taken a
guess that it was Sioux.

"Singing Rock, this young man is deeply troubled by his dream. He needs
you to show him what it means, and who could be causing it, and why."

Singing Rock didn't answer, but the black bead bracelet started to
shake, as if it were a rattlesnake's tail.

"Show him how he can rid himself of this dream, and sleep peacefully again."

The bracelet shook even more violently, and the candles began to
splutter and to burn more fiercely.

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55

"What's happening?" said Ted.

"Keep your eyes closed! Concentrate on your nightmare! He's here now!
Show him what's been scaring you!"

"Oh, Jesus, man! This is worse than when I'm asleep!"

"Concentrate! He needs to see your nightmare as clearly as you do!"

Ted gritted his teeth, and perspiration was dripping from the end of his
nose. The bracelet continued to rattle, and the candle flames burned so
furiously now that they were crackling and spitting out sparks. I felt
as if the whole room was rushing through time and space, completely out
of my control. It was like being on a fairground ride when you're
nauseated and desperate to get off but it just goes on and on and on.

"Singing Rock?"

At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blurred figure
disappear into my bedroom door. It was tall, and it was dark, and
strangely stretched out, but it disappeared so quickly and jerkily that
I couldn't see who it was. What really scared me, though, was that the
door was closed, and that the figure hadn't opened it. It had vanished
straight through the brown-stained wood.

I wrenched my hands away from Ted's, and awkwardly stood up, so that my
chair fell back onto the floor with a sharp bang.

Ted opened his eyes and blinked, "What?"

"I think he's here," I told him. Even I was excited. I circled around
the table, straining my ears.

"You think who's here?"

"Whoever's been causing your nightmare. Singing Rock has managed to
bring him here, so that you can see him for yourself."

"I don't get it."

"It's simple. Nightmares are always caused by spirit activity, of one
kind or another. When you have a bad dream, that's always caused by a
dead person, disturbing your

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sleep. Most of the time they don't do it deliberately, but sometimes
they really want to scare the shit out of you."

I paused, still listening. Then I said, "The only way you can find out
which spirit is giving you nightmares is by asking a spirit guide to
show you who it is."

"And that's who's here?"

"You got it."

Ted looked warily from side to side. "So where is he? I don't see nobody."

"He's in there," I said, and pointed toward the bedroom.

"In there? How the hell did he get in there?"

The bracelet gave a sharp, impatient rattle. It had probably cost
Singing Rock an exhausting amount of spiritual energy to find out who
was responsible for Ted's nightmares, and to bring him here. It had
probably been highly dangerous, too. A spirit who could create the
illusion of a suffocating box, and a fully laden ship at sea, was
obviously not to be messed with.

"Follow me," I said, and beckoned Ted across to the bedroom door. I
pressed my ear against one of the panels, and listened. At first the
room seemed to be silent, but then I heard the softest of whispers,
hundreds of whispers, thousands, like a whole cathedral filled with
fervently whispering nuns.

"Total nostru carele esti in ceruri, sfinteasca-se numele tau--"

I reached for the old brown plastic doorknob. There was only one way to
find out what this spirit looked like, and that was to face it. But I
can tell you that my heart was thumping so hard against my ribs that it
hurt.

"Vie imparatia ta, faca-se voia ta--"

"No!" said Ted, hysterically, in a just-broken voice like a teenager.

"Ted--he's here--but Singing Rock can't keep him here for very long."

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"I don't want to see him!" He was almost screaming. "Please, man, I can
feel how evil he is! I don't want to see him!"

On the table, the beads gave another brisk rattle.

"This is your only chance, Ted! If you don't face up to him now, you
could go on having this same nightmare for the rest of your life! Ted!
Listen to me! Ted!"

But Ted was backing away from me, with both of his hands raised, shaking
his head violently from side to side. "I can't do it, dude! I can't face
him! I can feel how evil he is! I never felt anything so bad!"

"Ted, you must! You don't have any choice!"

I didn't want to open that bedroom door any more than Ted. It sounded as
if the whisperers were growing ever more numerous--as if there were
millions of ghostly spirits crowding against the other side of the
paneling, praying hungrily for their release. And there was a smell,
too--a really sickening smell, like cheap chicken meat with the first
shadow of olive-green decay showing through the skin; and drains clogged
with dripping gray hair; and lumpy milk.

All the same, I knew that we had to confront this spirit that Singing
Rock had brought to show me. If we didn't, I might never be able to call
on him again. A Sioux would give you everything he possessed, if you
asked him, or even if you didn't. But he would never forgive ingratitude.

"I'm opening the door, Ted!" I told him. "You have to see this, no
matter what!"

Ted dropped onto his knees. "I can't, man! Please!"

I heard a furious pattering against the other side of the door, like a
shower of locusts. On the table, however, the bracelet gave a single
desultory shake, and then lay silent; and the candles began to dip and
gutter, as if they were starved of air. I knew that if I didn't look in
the bedroom

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now, I would never know who was giving Ted his nightmares, or why, and
that he would probably end up gibbering mad, or suicidal, or both. So I
opened the door.

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5

City of Blood

"Can we talk to her?" asked Lieutenant Roberts, nodding toward Susan
Fireman's bed. His voice was extremely deep and resonant, as if he were
hiding a double bass inside his suit, and Frank detected a Southern
accent, South Carolina or Georgia.

"Not yet," said Frank. "I don't think you'd get a whole lot of sense out
of her, in any case."

"She spoke to you, though?"

A pale and pimply young nun was hovering close by, trying hard to look
as if she wasn't listening. Frank said, "I think you gentlemen had
better come up to my office. You sent somebody around to her apartment,
I presume?"

"Oh, you bet," said Lieutenant Roberts. "They'll contact me, just as
soon as they've checked it out."

They went up to the twenty-seventh floor in silence. There was nobody
else in the elevator except for a diminutive Korean nurse in huge white
sneakers who kept yawning, which made Detective Mancini start yawning,

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too. Frank ushered them inside his office and closed the door.

"You want to sit down?" he asked them.

"Not especially," said Lieutenant Roberts. He was tall and grave, more
like a preacher than a detective. He was not only wearing a black linen
suit but a black silk shirt with a black silk necktie, and very shiny
black patent shoes.

Frank said, "Ms. Fireman was partly delirious, so I can't vouch for the
veracity of what she told me."

"You're not on the witness stand, doc. Just tell me what she said."

"She shares her apartment with a young woman called Prissy and a young
man called Michael. She told me... well, she said that she cut their
throats with a kitchen knife, and then drank their blood directly from
their severed arteries."

There was a very long silence--so long that Frank began to wonder if
Lieutenant Roberts had heard what he had just said. But at last
Lieutenant Roberts took out a very white handkerchief, unfolded it, and
blew his nose--and, to his credit, didn't inspect it. "Is there any
reason for you to suspect that she might be making it up?"

"As I say, I can't be one hundred percent sure. But the blood that she
vomited was human, and it wasn't hers, and the amount she vomited is
consistent with what she's been telling me."

"There's no chance that either of her victims might have survived?"

"Very unlikely. The average person has about five-point-five liters of
blood, and if they lose more than twenty percent of it "

Detective Mancini's cell phone warbled like a homing pigeon. "Ryker?" he
said. "Okay--just a minute, I can't hear you, you're breaking up." He
turned to Lieutenant Roberts and said, "It's Ryker--I'll have to take it
outside." He left the

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office and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind him,
although Frank could still hear him shouting to make himself heard.

"You're in there? You're in there now? What do you mean nobody's
answering? They're supposed to be dead, you moron!"

Lieutenant Roberts was silent for a moment, as if he were thinking about
something completely different. Then he said, "What is actually wrong
with Ms. Fireman?"

Frank shrugged. "Physically--several things. She's anemic. Her blood
pressure is way down and she's also hypersensitive to light. That's why
the blinds in her room are all pulled down."

"So she's suffering from what, exactly? Does it have a name?"

"Quite frankly, we don't know. We're carrying out further tests, but
until we get the results we're pretty much guessing. She's carrying some
kind of unusual enzyme in her blood, but we haven't yet identified it."

"Is there any known disease that makes people want to drink human blood?"

"No. But having said that, there might be some delusional psychoses
which lead the sufferer to believe that they need to."

"So Ms. Fireman is a nut job?"

" 'Nut job' isn't a term we generally use here at the Sisters of
Jerusalem, Lieutenant. For one thing, it's not clinically specific.
There are scores of different types of nut jobs, from bipolar
depressives to full-blown sociopaths. And as I say, we haven't yet
completed all of our tests."

"Did she tell you why she drank the blood?"

"She said that the sunlight in her apartment made her feel as if she was
burning, and she had to drink her friends' blood to save herself from
being cremated alive. It's possible that the burning sensation was a
genuine physical symptom, but her response to it was psychotic. It happens.

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Graham Masterton

I once had a patient with stomach cancer who seriously believed that he
was being eaten from the inside out by alien insects, and tried to
swallow Raid to kill them. When people suffer unbearable pain ... well,
it can seriously distort their perception of reality."

"Okay, accepted," said Lieutenant Roberts. "But what I'm trying to ask
you is, do you consider that she's mentally competent? Do you think she
can tell the difference between right and wrong?"

The phone buzzed. Frank said, "Excuse me for a moment," and picked up
the receiver. He listened, and nodded, and then he slowly put the
receiver down again, and kept his hand pressed on top of it, as if he
were trying to make sure that it didn't ring again.

"We have a problem, Lieutenant."

"A new problem, or the same problem got worse?"

"I don't know. Maybe both. About an hour ago, a young man was brought
into the emergency room, vomiting blood like Ms. Fireman. He showed some
signs of being sensitive to light, too--his skin was all covered in sun
block. We analyzed the contents of his stomach and I've just been given
the preliminary results."

"And?"

"Over three liters of blood, none of it his."

"Jesus."

"That's not all. Dr. Garrett has just had another one brought in. A
middle-aged male, also vomiting blood, his face and his hands covered in
thick foundation cream."

"Another one? Maybe it's some kind of blood-drinking cult."

"There's no way of telling what it is, not yet. It could be a virus,
incubated by the heat and the high humidity. Or maybe it's not a
physical sickness at all. Maybe it's some kind of mass hysteria."

"You think it could be catching?"

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"There's no way of telling, not yet. We're carrying out all the
regulation disease-control protocols, in case it is."

Detective Mancini shouted, "Okay, Ryker, for sure! I'll talk to you
later!" He pushed his way back in through the door, catching his foot on
the wastepaper basket.

"Well?" asked Lieutenant Roberts.

"Right on the button, Lieutenant. They found them in the kitchen. Two
dead, a man and a woman, both in their twenties, both with their throats
cut, both bled out." He checked his notebook and sniffed. "Mr. Michael
Harris and ... Ms. Priscilla Trueman."

"Oh, God," said Frank. In spite of her confession, in spite of all the
medical evidence, it still came as a shock to him that Susan Fireman's
story was true. He felt as if the lights had suddenly gone up in the
middle of a horror movie, and he had found himself spattered in real,
warm blood.

"Well," said Lieutenant Roberts, "it looks like we have ourselves a
double homicide, and that's just for starters." He checked his large
Rotary watch. "Since Ms. Fireman isn't in a fit state to be interviewed,
I think we'll go take a look at her handiwork for ourselves, and come
back later, if that's convenient with you. I'll also need to interview
those other two patients of yours, down in emergency-- ask them whose
blood they've been drinking."

"Of course," said Frank. "However you want to do it." He felt suddenly
very cold and watery, and he dragged out his tan leather chair and sat
down. "I'll call you, shall I, if Susan Fireman shows any signs of
coming round?"

Lieutenant Roberts stopped, unbalanced, and frowned at him. "Are you
okay, doc? You're looking kind of queasy."

"I'm fine. Just a little shocked, I guess."

"Well, that's understandable. You take it easy, we can see ourselves
down to the emergency room."

"Wait, Lieutenant--before you go--"

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"Yes, doc? What is it?"

"I don't know, maybe this isn't important. But Susan Fireman was talking
in some foreign language. Nothing that I've ever heard before ...
eastern European, by the sound of it. But the young man they brought in,
he was talking the same language."

"Really?"

" "Tattle nostrew] something like that. But there was a whole lot more
of it."

Lieutenant Roberts raised both eyebrows. "Tattle nostrew? Doesn't mean
anything to me. Still--" he said, tugging out his notebook and jotting
it down. "Tattle nostrew. I'm glad you remembered it. You never know."

"Dr. Garrett and I thought that maybe there might be some kind of
connection between them. You know-- maybe they're terrorists or something."

"Well, sure. It's worth bearing in mind. They could be al Qa'eda, trying
to spread this disease deliberately, like anthrax. On the other hand,
like you say, maybe it isn't a disease at all, and maybe they simply
belong to the same Esperanto club. Maybe it's the heat, and everybody's
gone bananas and developed a raging thirst for Rhesus negative, instead
of Coke. Until we find out what the hell's going on, we don't know what
the hell's going on."

The phone buzzed again. This time, Frank flicked the intercom button so
that Lieutenant Roberts could hear it, too. "Frank, it's Dean Garrett
again. Ambulance Battalion Eight has just called in to say they're
bringing us three more people barfing up blood. And they warn us that we
might have to expect more. Apparently NYU Downtown has reported five
similar cases; St. Luke's has three and Lenox Hill has two."

Frank said, "Christ--this is turning into an epidemic."

"Either that, or a massacre," said Lieutenant Roberts. "Or both. Let's
think about it--if all of these folks have been

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drinking human blood, how many throats have they cut to get it?"

Detective Mancini's phone warbled again. "It's a message from Inspector
Conroy, Lieutenant. He wants us back at the precinct, urgent."

"Okay, doc," said Lieutenant Roberts. "It looks like we'll have to love
you and leave you."

Frank said, "Sure. You still want me to call you about Susan Fireman?"

"Oh, yes. I got this very voodoo premonition. I think that you and me,
we're going to be sorely in need of each other's help in the next few days."

Frank drank a glass of water and then he went back down to see Susan.
Her skin looked even more luminous than it had before, and when he
approached her bed she could smile only very weakly.

"Who were those men?" she asked him.

"The police. They sent some detectives to your apartment. They found
your friends."

"I see."

Frank cleared his throat. "They'll want to talk to you when you're well
enough."

"What time is it? I've been asleep."

"Two-thirty-five. Why don't you try to sleep some more? The best thing
you can do is rest."

Susan shook her head. "I can't... I keep having that dream."

Frank stood beside her bed for a while, saying nothing.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?" asked Susan.

"If it was you who killed Prissy and Michael, then yes."

"It won't matter. They can't convict dead people, can they?"

"What do you mean? You're not going to die."

"I'm not going to live, either."

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Frank looked at her for a few moments longer, and then he said, "I have
to go. There's a hell of a crisis going on downstairs."

"You don't hate me, do you, for killing Prissy and Michael?"

"It's not my job to hate my patients, no matter what they've done."

"I'm glad about that. The funny thing is, I don't hate myself, either.
At least they died doing something useful, didn't they, which is more
than most people can say?"

"Susan," said Frank, "have you ever heard of the pale ones?"

Susan shook her head. "No," she said, "no, I never have."

"You're sure about that? A man who was watching you this morning... he
said that you were one of the pale ones. He said he couldn't explain it
to me, because I wouldn't understand what he meant."

"I never heard of them, never. I promise you, I never heard of them."
Susan's voice was suddenly different-- rambling and blurred, as if she
were concussed, or talking in her sleep. "I promise you ... I really
promise you." She kept on shaking her head, but as she did so, her eyes
kept rolling up.

"Susan--" said Frank. He glanced up at her monitor, but her heartbeat
was steady and her blood pressure was constant, even if it was still
very low. Her eyes were closed now and she was breathing soft and steady.

He waited a little longer and then he left the room and walked along the
corridor toward the elevators. He had almost reached them when he had
the unnerving sensation that Susan had climbed out of bed and was
following close behind him, in her white hospital gown. He stopped and
turned around, but the only person in the corridor apart from him was a
cleaner, mopping the floor and singing Lazy River.

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67

He pushed the button for down. As he waited for the elevator to arrive,
he kept glancing back toward Room 1566. A nurse went in, and then came
out again. He felt distinctly unnerved. He was sure that Susan had been
only inches behind his back.

"You're not going to die," he had assured her. But what had she said, in
reply?

"I'm not going to live, either!"

What the hell did she mean by that? Either you live, or you die. You
can't do both.

The elevator pinged and the doors opened up. A man was standing inside,
his head wrapped up in white bandages, so that his eyes and his mouth
were nothing but slits, like a mummy. Maybe you can do both. Frank took
a deep breath and stepped inside.

When he stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor the emergency
department was already in chaos. He found Dean helping a young woman in
a lime-green summer dress who was vomiting blood all over the gurney and
all over the floor.

"Oh God," she kept mumbling. "Oh God, oh God." Then her throat
constricted and another gush of blood came up. Dean was doing his best
to catch it all in a pressed-cardboard kidney-bowl, but there were pints
of it. He was unshaven and sweaty and his hair stuck up like Stan Laurel's.

"You look like shit," Frank told him.

"You're about the tenth person to tell me that," said Dean.

"Are they going to give you some more help?"

"Oh, sure, they're bringing them in from all over. Kieran Kelly's come
down from intensive care; and Bill Medovic's coming back from White
Plains; and I'm supposed to be getting five more technicians and seven
more nurses. But if it carries on like this I'm going to be swamped."

"Have you heard from The Death Troll?"

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"Not yet. But Kieran said that if the casualty numbers go over fifty,
he's going to declare an Emergency Code Red."

The young woman sat up and retched, but this time she brought up only a
few spatters of blood. When Dean had wiped her mouth, Frank leaned over
and said, "Miss--my name's Dr. Winter. Can you tell me your name?"

"Kathleen ... Kathleen Williams. Oh God, I'm burning all over."

"You feel like your skin's on fire?"

"I'm burning! Help me!"

"We're going to do everything we can for you, Kathleen, I promise you.
But I need to know whose blood you've been drinking."

"What?" she said, staring at him in horror.

"Frank--" Dean protested. "You can't ask her a question like that!"

"You drank somebody's blood, Kathleen," Frank persisted. "You have to
tell me whose blood it was."

"I didn't drink anybody's blood. I'm sick, that's all."

"Listen," said Frank, "I know what you did. Do you hear me? I know what
you did. This isn't your own blood, is it?"

"Leave me alone! I'm hurting! I can't bear it! I'm hurting so bad!"

"You'll be hurting even more if we refuse to give you treatment."

"You can't do that! I'm burning up! Doctor! Help me! I'm burning up!"

"Frank, for God's sake!" hissed Dean, looking around to make sure that
there weren't any witnesses. "We could be sued from here to next Hanukkah."

But Frank stayed where he was, and when a nurse came to push the gurney
away he said, "No. Wait. Kathleen has something she wants to tell us."

The young woman opened her mouth, and closed it again, and then she
moaned and said, "All right. I did drink their blood."

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69

"Whose blood? Come on, Kathleen. You have to tell me."

The young woman's eyes suddenly overflowed with tears, and her mouth was
pulled downward by grief. "My children. My two little children. I
couldn't stop myself."

"Holy mother of hamsters," said Dean, pushing his fingers through his
mussed-up hair.

"What did you do?" Frank pressed her.

"I can't tell you! It wasn't me! I would never hurt them, ever!"

"Tell me what you did, Kathleen. It's the only way we can help you."

"I was--I was burning up all morning. I couldn't stand it. I felt like
my skin was shriveling up, it was so hot! I kept thinking about their
little hearts beating, and all that blood in their bodies. I kept
thinking that it would cool me down."

Dean covered his face with both hands, but Frank persisted. "How did it
happen, Kathleen? Come on--if you don't tell me, you'll have to tell the
police."

"Oh God, I was making their lunch. Cutting sandwiches for them. But all
the time I felt like I was on fire. I pulled all the blinds down, to
keep the sunshine out, but I was still burning. Then Marty came into the
kitchen and asked me why it was so dark. I looked at him and I knew what
I had to do. I couldn't stop myself."

"How old is Marty?"

"Eleven ... and Melissa, she's nine. When I was finished with Marty, I
went through to my bedroom. She was sitting in front of my
dressing-table mirror, playing with my lipstick. She saw me in the
mirror and she thought I was angry with her but I wasn't angry with her.
I was still burning up and I needed her blood."

"So you cut her throat?"

The young woman swallowed, and nodded. "I'm going to go to hell for
this, aren't I?"

70

"Hell?" said Frank. Then, under his breath, "You'll be lucky if they let
you in."

Dean led Frank out into the corridor.

"They're murderers, aren't they? All of these people."

Frank said, "Yes. It looks like it."

"God almighty. We've got more than thirty of them now, and they're still
coming in."

"We can't judge them, Dean. That's for the courts to decide, not us."

"That's if they survive. Some of the early ones are in a pretty bad way."

"Let me take a look."

Dean led him across to the pediatric crisis ward, which he had set aside
for hemorrhage cases only. A large red-lettered notice warned quarantine
area keep out.

"Just a precaution," Dean told him. "There's no evidence at all that
this is contagious, or infectious, or that it's caused by any kind of
toxin."

Inside the ward, all the blinds had been drawn down tight, so that the
physician assistants and emergency nurses were working in twilight, like
pale green ghosts. Frank walked up and down the aisle, stopping to
examine each patient in turn. Some of them lay silent and white-faced,
as if they were sleeping, or already dead; but some of the newer
admissions were crying and screaming and retching and begging for mercy.
The stench of partially digested blood was so thick and fetid that Frank
could taste it in his mouth.

All the time the sirens kept whooping, as more people were brought in
from the sweltering city outside, and the plastic doors kept flapping
open, and gurneys rattled along the corridors, and paramedics shouted
for assistance.

Frank and Dean went back into the emergency room and tugged off their
masks. "Anything new from Willy?"

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asked Frank. The vinyl-tiled floor was sticky with blood, so that the
soles of his shoes made a scrunching sound.

"He's been testing for everything you can think of, from sarin to ricin
to mustard gas. He's testing for anthrax, cholera, chicken flu, three
kinds of plague and you name it. Nothing so far, but he hasn't given up,
and he's still screening samples from every patient we bring in."

"How about the enzyme?"

"Nothing conclusive, not yet, but it's a metallozyme, apparently, with a
silver component. He has some idea that it might be related to the aging
process, but he'll have to do some more work on it."

As he reached the doors, Dr. Bellman came in, accompanied by his deputy
medical director, Ingrid Kurtz, both of them looking grim-faced.

"The mayor's declared a state of emergency," said Dr. Pellman. "Up until
fifteen minutes ago, there were three hundred seventy reported cases of
people vomiting blood, citywide, and so far the police have found
ninety-three exsanguinated bodies."

"God," said Frank. "This is beginning to sound like Dawn of the Dead."

Dr. Pellman said, "You can forget about the legal niceties, Dr. Winter.
We urgently need to find out what's wrong with these people. We need to
know what they have in common ... what they've eaten, where they've
been, who they've had any kind of contact with. We need to pinpoint
where each of them lived, and where they were when they started to show
signs of sickness. The CDC is sending us two senior advisers, and I've
also been talking to Medcom. You call in as many of your own staff as
you need. All leave is canceled until we've got this situation under
control."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Dr. Garrett--"

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"Yes, sir?"

"As soon as you can, take a couple of hours off. Take a shower and get
yourself something to eat. You look like shit."

As Frank returned to the eleventh floor, he could see that the scale of
the panic was rising by the minute. Every time the elevator doors
opened, more and more people pushed their way in. Crowds of non-critical
patients were being moved in wheelchairs to the convalescent wards,
anxiously clutching their belongings on their knees, while technicians
and nurses hurried along the corridors, and telephones warbled urgently
at every nurses' station. In the space of only a few minutes, the
hospital had turned into a noisy, crowded, chillingly air-conditioned Babel.

He was only halfway along the corridor to room 1566 when his beeper
went. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it, and then broke into
a run. He arrived in the doorway at the same time one of the emergency
technicians was coming out, and they almost collided.

"What's happened?" he demanded.

"She's asystolic. No warning."

Frank peered past the technician into the darkened room. Three nurses
were gathered around the bed, and Susan Fireman's nightgown had been
dragged up to expose her sparrow-like chest. One of the nurses was
already holding up the bright yellow defibrillator paddles, and shouting
"Clear!? But for some reason Frank knew for certain that Susan Fireman's
soul had already left her body.

He stepped into the room. He felt as if he were walking in slow motion,
while the crash team was rushing around the bed in a speeded-up frenzy
of activity. They shocked her, and shocked her, and shocked her again.
But her face remained deathly white, and her skinny wrists flopped like
a doll's, and she showed no signs at all that they might be able to save
her.

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He waited in the shadows with his hand pressed over his mouth. There was
nothing else he could do. In the end, the emergency nurse backed away
from the bed and returned the paddles to the crash cart. "Sorry, folks.
We've lost her."

Frank stepped forward and stood at the end of the bed. "Sorry, Dr.
Winter," said the nurse. "We did everything we could."

"Her heart just stopped," said another nurse, popping his fingers. "One
second all her stats were looking pretty steady. The next second, snap,
flatline."

Frank looked down at Susan Fireman and he was surprised to feel so
upset. Usually, when his patients died, he felt nothing more than
professional regret that he hadn't been able to give them longer to
live. But only a few hours ago, Susan Fireman had been contorting
herself outside Macy's, and climbing a ladder that wasn't there, and he
hadn't had the chance to ask her what she was doing, and what she was
trying to say, and he realized now that he had really wanted to know.

In spite of her waxy pallor, however, Susan Fireman looked completely
composed, and he could almost have sworn that she was smiling to herself.

"Do we know how to get in touch with her family?" asked one of the nurses.

"Yes," said Frank. "You'd better go. You'll be needed in the emergency
room, all of you."

The nurses packed away their equipment and unfastened her drips and at
last he was left alone with her. He studied her face under the lamplight
and thought, I wonder what really happened to you, Susan Fireman? It
occurred to him that he was probably going to find out, within the next
few hours, if more and more people died of the same condition. But
whatever had taken her, she had been a strikingly attractive young girl,
and this was a very sordid ending to a very short life.

"When you were climbing that ladder," he asked her,

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"where were you going? Where did you think that was going to take you to?"

Without warning, she opened her eyes. Those pale, ice-blue eyes, and
stared at him.

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6

Blood Lust

"What's in there?" screamed Ted Busch. "For Christ's sake, dude, what is
it?"

I cautiously pushed open my bedroom door. Inside, it was very gloomy,
because I hadn't had time to fix up any proper drapes, and the window
was covered with a droopy purple bedspread, fastened with cup-hooks. But
there was nothing and nobody there. No whispering hordes, no locusts, no
dark stretched-out figures. Only my lonely unmade bed with the crimson
quilt and the stained black satin sheets, and the paint-spattered
kitchen chair that served as my bedside table. Only the tattered poster
of a magic design by J.EC. Fuller, a friend of Aleister Crowley's, the
master of the black arts--all planets and wavy lines and naked women
with their hair on fire. And most of my clothes, of course: crumpled,
dirty, and heaped on top of my suitcase.

However, I was sure that I could smell something. Usually my bedroom
smelled of stale Indian spices and damp plaster, with a strong note of
Eternity aftershave. But I

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could detect something else--a very sharp, burned aroma, like a recently
lit match--and the smell of disturbed air. I sniffed, and sniffed again.
There was a curious feeling that somebody had been here, and had only
just left.

I peered around the door. There was nothing there, either, except for my
shiny new golf clubs and my stiff unworn Burberry trench
coat--souvenirs, both of them, of my evaporated life with Karen. I may
have lost my dignity, but by God I had kept my putters.

"Anything?" asked Ted, keeping his distance.

"Nothing," I told him. "Whoever it was--whatever it was--it came and
then it went."

"I'm sorry, dude," said Ted. "I was too scared, honest. I could feel how
evil it was. I could feel it. It was like when I was a kid, and there
was my He-Man bathrobe hanging on the back of my bedroom door, and I
just knew that it was alive, and as soon as my mom went downstairs it
was going to jump on me."

"No, Ted," I said, trying to be patient. "It wasn't like that. Your
He-Man robe wasn't alive and it didn't jump on you, did it? Your fear of
your robe--that was real enough, I'll grant you. Me--I used to be scared
of the wood grain in my closet door. It looked like a wolf, and I
couldn't look at it, in case it tore my throat out, but of course it
never did."

Ted said, "The thing that was here--what the hell was it?"

"The thing that was here was alive. We missed seeing it, that's all."

"I could feel so much evil!? said Ted. "I could feel my skin creeping.
And I could smell it, you know. It smelled like bleaugghh."

I lifted off my gilded skullcap and ran my hand through my hair. I was
seriously worried. Whatever that dark stretched-out figure had been, it
appeared to have deeply malevolent intentions, at least as far as Ted
was concerned. That meant that I was faced with a very uncomfortable
choice. Either I could sell Ted a handful of herbs from the

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Magic Pantry and send him on his way (which, I have to admit, was my
immediate inclination); or else I could try to find out what this thing
actually was, and why it was giving him nightmares, and whether I could
send it back to whatever cobwebby corner of the spirit world it had come
from.

So far, however, in my short but rackety life, my experience of things
with deeply malevolent intentions was that they resented being
interfered with. Any attempt to get rid of them usually resulted in
mayhem, and mass destruction, and finding yourself face-to-face with
manifestations that forever afterward would have you screaming in your
sleep.

I compromised. I went to the closet, unscrewed a yellow glass jar, and
took out a bunch of dried mugwort. "Look, Ted," I said, "you can have
this for nothing."

Ted inspected the mugwort suspiciously. "What do I do? Smoke it?"

"I wouldn't if I were you. Tie it to the head of your bed, and it should
protect you from bad dreams."

"It's a weed."

"Yes, but it's not any old weed. It's mugwort, which the Celts used to
call witch-weed. Unlike any other plant, it leans to the north when it
grows, which means that it's magnetic, and that it's highly responsive
to supernatural messages. You never know... it might tell you why this--
thing--keeps disturbing your sleep."

"Is that it?" Ted asked me. He looked seriously disappointed.

I put my arm around his shoulders. "I don't know what else I can do,
Ted. I tried my darndest, but it was really up to you. I found out what
was giving you nightmares, but if you didn't want to face it, what could
I do?"

"Maybe we should ask your spirit guide to give us an action replay."

"I'm sorry, Ted, he won't."

"I'll be much more hyped up for it this time, I promise you." He took a
deep breath that whistled in his nostrils, and

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then another, and stood up ramrod-straight. But I shook my head, and
continued to shake my head, and he gradually sagged.

"Ted," I told him, "Singing Rock is a Sioux medicine man and very proud.
The Sioux get extremely huffy if you take them for granted, and Singing
Rock gets huffier than most. Conjuring up that thing for us, that
probably took him more effort than you and I can even imagine. But what
did we do? We didn't even have the cojones to take a peek at it. You
seriously think he's going to give us a repeat performance?"

I could almost hear Singing Rock saying, in that dry, sarcastic voice of
his, "You white men! What great warriors you are! If I killed a bear
with my own hands, and laid it bleeding at your feet, you would scamper
away screaming like frightened children!"

Ted said, "Okay. I understand." He wiped his nose with the back of his
hand. "Maybe we could have another shot tomorrow?"

"I don't think so, Ted. This wasn't like chickening out of a dental
appointment."

"Would you at least think about it? I mean, I'll try this weed on my bed
tonight, but if I have another nightmare--"

I could hear an ambulance siren whooping, two or three blocks away, and
then another one, much closer, and then another. For a moment, I was
reminded of September eleventh, and all the sirens that had whooped that
morning, and that terrible gut-sinking feeling that the whole world had
collapsed beneath our feet.

"Okay," I agreed. "I'll think about it. Sorry I couldn't help you any
more." I showed Ted to the door. When he reached the landing he turned
and looked back at me like a stray puppy, but when he saw that I wasn't
going to change my mind he slowly trudged downstairs, one step at a
time, and I could tell that he was trying to make me feel guilty with
every step.

When I heard him slam the street door I went back into

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the living room and tugged back the drapes, so that the sun could flood
in. I took off my robe and hung it on the hat stand. Then I retrieved my
can of Guinness, and eased myself back into the old green-velour
armchair that I had rescued from the alley behind the Algonquin. It was
well past its prime, even for an armchair. Its back was broken and its
stuffing was bulging out. But who knows, Alexander Woollcott might have
sat in it, and Alexander Woollcott was one of my heroes. "There is some
cooperation between wild creatures," he once remarked. "The stork and
the wolf work the same neighborhood."

I found the remote control under the cushion and switched on the
television. I flicked from channel to channel, looking for the baseball,
but almost every station was showing pictures of New York hospitals, and
ambulances, and doctors. The running captions were reading "vampire"

EPIDEMIC HITS MANHATTAN ... SCORES SEIZED BY THIRST FOR BLOOD ... OVER
100 DEAD ... MAYOR BRANDISI DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY.

So that's why the sirens were whooping. I turned up the volume and I
could hardly believe what I was hearing. A senior official from the
Centers for Disease Control appeared on screen, a balding man who looked
like the medical hologram from Star Trek: Voyager. He was saying,"...
insatiable thirst for fresh human blood, which has led them to kill
acquaintances, friends and even their own children. Once they have
satisfied their thirst, however, they seem to be overtaken in a few
hours by violent nausea and cardiac arrest. Seventeen of those afflicted
have so far died, and I'm afraid that we're expecting many more."

A black woman reporter pushed a microphone into his face. "Sir--do you
think you're getting any nearer to isolating the cause of this outbreak?"

The official shook his jowls. "All I can tell you at this time is that
it bears absolutely no resemblance to any known disease, and in fact it
may not even be a disease, in the

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generally accepted sense of the word. We have CDC and Medcom specialists
working flat out to identify it, with the assistance of senior
pathologists at every major hospital in New York."

"So what can the public do to protect themselves?"

"Our advice is for people to continue about their business as normal,
but to watch closely for any signs in yourself or others of a burning
sensation of the skin, or of hypersensitivity to sunlight, or of strong
or unusual thirst."

I swallowed Guinness, and burped. In spite of the sirens outside, I was
starting to think, this has to be a put-on, surely? An updated spoof
like The War of the Worlds. Like, vampires? Oh, right.

But then the CDC official glanced down at his notes and said, "I am also
told that a reliable early indicator of the so-called 'vampire'
condition is nightmares. These frightening dreams usually start three or
four days before the crisis, and are associated with a feeling of
claustrophobia, or being shut in a box, as well as a strong sensation of
motion sickness, as if the sufferer were on board a ship."

I slowly sat up. I heard another ambulance, speeding up Sixth Avenue;
and then another; and another. A handheld news camera showed a young
woman on her knees on the sidewalk outside FAO Schwarz, vomiting blood.
Then they showed a man being rushed through the doors of the Sisters of
Jerusalem hospital, his clothes smothered in scarlet, like the victim of
a bomb blast.

Jesus, I thought. Nightmares. That was exactly what Ted had been
suffering from--and the same kind of nightmares, too. Shut up in a
casket, on an ocean-going ship. Then I thought: What if this was an
infectious disease? Ted had been standing only two feet away from me,
and I had been breathing the same air. I had shaken hands with him, and
the chances were that microscopic droplets of saliva had sprayed out of
his mouth when he had talked to me.

I hurried through to my bathroom, soaked my facecloth

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in scalding water, then squeezed it out and pressed it over my face. I
shouted out ahh when I did it, because it was so goddamned hot, but if
there were any viruses on my skin, this would fix them. If I couldn't
bear it, neither could they.

After a few moments, however, I thought: Just a minute, if my séance
with Singing Rock had shown us anything at all, it had shown us that
Ted's nightmares hadn't been caused by a virus at all, but by some
malevolent spiritual presence. A presence that I had actually seen for
myself, tall and dark and stretched-out, and sliding through my bedroom
door. I peeled off the facecloth and stared at myself in the mottled
mirror that hung over my basin. I looked hot. I looked very hot.

What the hell was I supposed to do now? Call Ted, and warn him that he
was just about to turn into a bloodthirsty vampire? Call the CDC, and
tell them that all of their experts were wasting their valuable time,
because the "vampire" epidemic wasn't caused by a virus, but by some
kind of spiritual manifestation?

I could imagine myself trying to explain it. "Like, I contacted this
dead Sioux medicine man I used to know, and asked him to lure this
malevolent spirit into my bedroom, which he did. Unfortunately my client
was too chickenshit to open the door, so I never really got to see what
the being looked like, not properly. So I gave my client some mugwort
and sent him home."

Bellevue? My feet wouldn't touch the ground.

I sat for almost an hour in front of the TV, watching as the epidemic
grew steadily worse. Each successive newsflash showed more and more
people regurgitating blood and more and more bodybags being wheeled away
on coroners' gurneys, and with every passing minute I felt increasingly
guilty and frustrated. By 3:39 pm. the death toll had risen to 119
so-called vampires and 147 homicide victims. I called Karen, to make
sure that she and Lucy were

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okay. All I got was her answering service, and she didn't respond to her
cell phone number, so I called Herman, the doorman. "Mrs. Erskine left
about an hour ago," he told me. "She took Lucy to visit her grandmother
in Albany." Karen's mother wasn't answering, either, but I left a
message that when Karen and Lucy reached Albany, they should stay there
until this epidemic was over. That would be one less problem for me to
fret about.

I was desperate to tell somebody in authority about Ted's nightmares and
Singing Rock and the tall stretched-out figure that had walked through
my bedroom door, but I knew exactly what would happen if I tried. At
best, they would dismiss me as a publicity-seeking charlatan. They had
only to look up my court record. In October of 1978 I was convicted of
dishonestly acquiring a five-year-old Chevy Malibu by persuading an
elderly lady from Englewood Cliffs that I could only communicate with
her recently dead husband through his car stereo. Not only was this a
lie, the car turned out to be a total lemon, so that didn't say much for
my psychic abilities, either.

That's it, I thought. I need a psychic to speak on my behalf--a
believable psychic. Somebody respectable, somebody with
gravitas--somebody who's going to be taken seriously.

I knew two psychics like that: Leon Borderman, from the New York
Institute of Psychic Research, who claimed to have regular conversations
with Benjamin Franklin-- although I doubted if he would even deign to
talk to me, the patronizing old gasbag. Then of course there was Amelia
Carlson, nee Crusoe--but I was pretty sure that Amelia had probably had
enough of me for one lifetime. I'm not saying that she didn't like me
any more, but I always seemed to turn up on her doorstep with a motley
entourage of Grief, and Complications, and all kinds of Shadowy Terrors
from God Alone Knew Where, even when I didn't intend to.

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Not long after, however, the TV news showed a respectable middle-aged
woman on her hands and knees, vomiting blood all over the floor of
Bloomingdale's shoe department. That's when I thought wotthehell
wotthehell I have to try this even if Amelia won't talk to me. I picked
up the phone and punched out Amelia's number.

As it rang, I rehearsed what I was going to say. Amelia, don't put the
phone down, it's Harry. Amelia, I desperately need your help. New York
needs your help. Amelia, I don't know how to tell you this, but--

The phone rang and rang, and I was beginning to think that I would have
to leave another message. But then a man with a Scandinavian-sounding
accent picked up and said, crossly, "Bertil Carlson."

"Oh, hi! You must be Mister Carlson."

"That's correct. Bertil Carlson. Who's calling?"

"This is Harry Erskine." No answer. "Harry... Erskine?"

Still no answer. I was just about to repeat myself, when Bertil Carlson
said, "Well?"

"Ah--I used to be a friend of your wife, Mr. Carlson. I'm still a friend
of your wife, I hope. We didn't have a falling-out or anything, it's
just that we haven't touched base in quite a while. Quite a few years,
as a matter of fact. Well, two, anyhow, maybe three."

"I know who you are, Mr. Erskine. My wife has mentioned your name."

"Oh, right! Glowingly, I hope."

"Glowingly? No."

"Right, well she wouldn't, I don't suppose. Not that there was
anything--I mean the last time we saw each other, it was all quite
amicable."

"What do you want, Mr. Erskine?"

"Have you been watching the news? This epidemic thing?"

"Yes, we're watching it now. Or trying to."

"So Amelia's there, with you?"

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Another long pause. Then, "I don't think I want you to talk to her, Mr.
Erskine. Perhaps she may not have told me about everything that you and
she were involved in, but I would rather that she didn't get involved
with you again." He pronounced it "inwolwed," which made me wonder how
he would say "Volvo."

"Listen, Mr. Carlson, I can understand how you feel. I really can. If I
were you, I wouldn't want my wife to be inwolwed with me, either. But
you've seen this epidemic on the news. I really think I know what's
causing it, and I think I could save a great many people's lives."

"Well, Mr. Erskine, I'm certainly not stopping you."

"I know. Of course you're not. But my problem is that I have to find
somebody in authority who's prepared to believe me, and for one reason
or another people in authority tend not to believe me."

"I can't for the life of me think why."

"Mr. Carlson, I wouldn't have dreamed of calling Amelia if I'd been able
to think of any other way. But you've seen how many people are dropping
dead, and you've seen how many people have been murdered. I mean, we're
talking hundreds, and where's it going to stop? I mean-- supposing you
catch it? Supposing Amelia catches it?"

"Mr. Erskine--"

"Please, Mr. Carlson, call me Harry. And please don't think that I would
let anything happen to Amelia, ever. You're the luckiest man on the
planet, being married to her. But I need to talk to her, at the very
least, even if she tells me to take a running jump."

At that moment, an extension phone was picked up.

"Harry?"

I felt as if a punching bag had swung back and hit me square in the
chest. "Amelia?

"What's happening, Harry?"

For a moment, I couldn't speak. My throat tightened up, and I couldn't
do anything but open and close my mouth

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like a recently caught codfish. Amelia and I had never been lovers,
except in my dreams, but somehow I had always felt that our destinies
were tangled together. I had made the wrong choice, all those years ago,
like I always make the wrong choice, and it was almost unbearable,
talking to the person I could have shared my life with, if I had only
been humbler, and kinder, and less of a smart-ass, and seen her for what
she really was.

"I didn't really want to call you," I garbled. "No--that came out wrong.
I didn't want to involve you in anything, that's what I meant. I should
have called you years ago, shouldn't I? But--you know--there was always
a reason not to."

"I saw your ad in the Village Voice," she said. "That's how I knew you
were still alive. Are you and Karen still together?"

"Not exactly, no. I think it was a case of I say potatoes and you say
pommes dauphinoise."

"That's a pity. I always thought you and Karen were so good together."

"Karen was always good with me. I guess I was always better on my own."

"I'm sorry, all the same. By the way, I got your message. That young kid
came round to see you, didn't he? The one with the nightmares?"

"Ted Busch like in Anheuser. Oh, yes, young Ted came to see me. That's
the whole reason I'm calling you."

"Harry, don't even ask. I don't do that stuff anymore."

"I know. Ted told me. The thing is, though--" and I got this in quick,
before she could stop me"--I read his fortune with the Jeu Noir, right,
and his Predictor Card was The Water Woman."

"Harry! I don't want to know that! I really don't!"

"But The Water Woman, Amelia" I persisted. "That's a pretty goddamned
scary prediction, wouldn't you say?"

Amelia hesitated, and then she had to admit, "Yes. It's a pretty
goddamned scary prediction."

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"It's worse than that, though. Ted persuaded me to call up Singing Rock."

"I'm sorry, was that a problem? That was my idea. I thought maybe
Singing Rock could help you to discover what was wrong."

At that moment, I heard the other phone being cradled, very discreetly.
Bertil Carlson obviously didn't want to listen anymore. It's bad enough,
hearing another man chatting to your wife, without hearing him chatting
about things that you know nothing about. I sympathized, I really did,
but I had to talk to Amelia. There was no other way.

"I asked Singing Rock to open up the doors, and to show me what was
causing Ted's nightmares."

"And did he?"

"Oh, yes. I saw it with my own eyes, and it was frightening, believe me.
It was tall and it was dark and it was stretched out, you know, like
somebody's shadow when the sun gets low. It went right through my
bedroom door without opening it, but the problem was that Ted was too
scared to see what it was. By the time I opened the bedroom door, it was
gone. Vanished. Disparu!"

"I'm sorry, Harry, but I don't see how I can help you."

"Amelia--did Ted tell you what kind of nightmares he's been having?"

"No, he didn't. Only that he was having them night after night, and he
was frightened to go to sleep."

"You've been watching the news, right? Did you hear the guy from the
CDC, talking about this epidemic? Before they get this terrible thirst
for drinking human blood, people start having nightmares. They keep
dreaming that they're shut up in a coffin, or a box, and that they're
being tossed around in a ship. They all dream it, all of them! And Ted
was dreaming it, too--that exact same scenario. Coffin, ship, the very
same thing. So what does that tell you?"

Amelia hesitated for a moment, and then she said, "People can have
similar nightmares, Harry, especially if they're

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suffering from a common illness. I was reading about people with
leprosy... they often have nightmares that their flesh is melting, like
butter. And people with a high fever can see cockroaches crawling all
over them."

"Okay, sure ... I'm sure that's true, so far as it goes. But we're
talking about hundreds of people here, aren't we? And what Singing Rock
summoned up, that wasn't a virus, or any kind of disease. That was a
thing. A person, or a presence, I don't know how the hell I'd describe it."

"So what you're trying to say is, this thing is responsible for
everybody else's nightmares, too--and this whole epidemic?"

"You got it. This isn't a disease, this is a war. This is some kind of
malevolent spirit, taking over people's minds, and then their bodies.
And who the hell knows where it's going to stop? Today, New York City.
Tomorrow, New York State. The day after, the whole eastern seaboard."

"Harry, for God's sake! You're letting your imagination run away with
you! I'm sure that isn't going to happen. Whatever it was that Singing
Rock summoned up, that was probably one of Ted's phobias, nothing more.
Some bogeyman from his childhood, who's suddenly surfaced out of his
subconscious. That can happen when people suffer from stress."

"Amelia, you're beginning to sound like Karen's shrink. Bogeymen from
your childhood don't give you the identical nightmare to three hundred
other people. Bogeymen from your childhood don't make you want to cut
your children's throats and drink their blood, straight out of their
carotid arteries."

Amelia said, "Maybe they do and maybe they don't. But, like I say, I
don't do this stuff any more."

"Because of you, or because of Bertie?"

"Bertil. Because of both of us. And because--and because--every time I
hold a séance, it opens up coffins that ought to stay closed."

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"Amelia ... I honestly truly believe that this epidemic is being caused
by some malevolent spirit--that same spirit that walked through my
bedroom door."

"Harry, have you heard yourself? You sound like somebody in a Marvel comic."

"But I can feel it! I can feel it in the air! It's like an electric
storm coming! You remember what it was like, just before Misquamacus
came out... it was like dogs barking and cats creeping under the couch
and your hair standing up on end! And this is the same!"

The other phone was picked up again. "Mr. Erskine, I don't want to be
rude to you, but I would like you to cut this conversation short. You
are causing my wife some distress."

"Mr. Carlson ... Bertil ... please, I wouldn't upset Amelia for the
world. But I have to see her. I have to discuss this with her. We could
be talking about the end of human civilization as we know it."

I could hear Bertil Carlson take a very deep breath. "Mr. Erskine,
everything that my wife ever said about you is true. You are completely
and absolutely doolally."

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7

Blood Line

Even though he knew she was dead, it was hard for Frank to believe that
Susan Fireman wasn't staring at him, and that she wasn't about to speak
to him. He felt as if his skin were shrinking, and it took all of his
strength not to turn around and hurry out of the room.

He slowly approached the bed and bent forward to examine her--so closely
that he could have felt her breath on his face, if she were still alive.
But, no, she wasn't breathing, and although her eyes were wide open,
they were focused on nothing at all.

All the same, she still had that small, secretive smile, as if it amused
her that she was dead, and found it funny that she had unnerved him so much.

"Susan?" he said, and he shook her shoulder just to make sure.

At that moment Dr. Gathering came in, carrying an untidy sheaf of
medical records. "Erm ... she can't hear you, Frank."

"No, George, I know."

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"Sister Perpetua told me she'd shuffled off the mortal coil. I thought
you'd be here."

"Yes," said Frank. He tried to sound efficient, and practical, even
though his heart was still hammering. "We're going to need a full
postmortem, and we're going to need it pronto. Especially the bloods."

George dropped some of his papers onto the floor and bent down to pick
them up. "It's Dante's Inferno down in the ER."

"I was down there. It looks as if it's going to get worse."

"The Death Troll has a theory that this could be a Western variant of
dengue hemorrhagic fever."

"Oh, does he? Well--I suppose he has to find some way of justifying that
all-expenses-paid trip to Bangkok."

George peered over at Susan Fireman. "To be fair, this does seem to
exhibit several similarities to DHF. It starts with a minor respiratory
infection, doesn't it, and that could account for the nightmares. Then
there's a period of extreme sensitivity to bright light, followed by
total collapse, and a catastrophic drop in blood pressure."

"Sure. But so far as I'm aware, people who get DHF don't feel an
unquenchable thirst for other people's blood, and they don't go cutting
their children's throats to get it."

"True--but The Death Troll was careful to say 'variant."

"Well, he would. He's a politician, not a doctor."

Frank turned back to Susan Fireman. He felt reluctant to leave her,
because he knew that he would never see her again--not in one piece,
anyhow. The pathologists would cut open her breastbone with surgical
shears, and rummage through her organs; and then they would open up the
top of her skull with an oscillating autopsy saw, and lift out her brain.

George said, "The reason I came up here, the Death Troll says that you
should take the rest of the day off and get some rest. He'd like you
back here at 2 A.M., to help out the night shift."

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"I'm fine, George. I'd rather stay here."

"Frank--you won't be any good to anybody if you're totally bushed, you
know that. Go home, relax. We'll call you if there's a crisis."

"This isn't a crisis?"

"Not yet. This is only your ordinary, everyday, garden-variety disaster."

Frank reluctantly left the Sisters of Jerusalem and walked home.
Midtown, the streets were still screaming with sirens, and medical
helicopters were clattering overhead and people were hurrying in every
direction as if the end of the world was coming.

It started to rain, and the rain was so warm that it felt like blood. He
suddenly realized how tired he was, and how unsettled. There was nothing
worse than having to deal with patients who couldn't be saved, no matter
how hard he tried to keep them alive. He found himself praying that he
wouldn't come across somebody throwing up blood in a doorway, because he
would have to stop and take him back to the emergency room. George had
been right: He badly needed to rest, and to think, and to get himself
ready for a very arduous night.

He heard a woman screaming, somewhere on the next block, and a man
shouting, "Get away from me! Get away from me." Then he heard breaking
glass, and two loud bangs that could have been gunfire. He had seen
disaster movies in which the social fabric had torn apart, almost
immediately, but he had never believed that it would really happen, not
until now.

Sixth and Fifth avenues were both blocked off by police barricades, so
it took him nearly twenty minutes to reach the tree-lined street in
Murray Hill where he lived, and by the time he got there his pants were
chafing with sweat and his shirt was clinging to his back. It was almost
5:00 now, 91 degrees, with 87 percent humidity. The afternoon had turned
a dull bronze color, as if it were going to thunder.

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He climbed the white stone steps to his front door. Halfway up, he
caught sight of a middle-aged man kneeling by the mailbox on the corner
of the street. He stopped, and took off his sunglasses so that he could
see better. The man's face was crudely smeared with bright blue paint,
so that it looked like an African tribal mask, and his T-shirt had
ridden up under his arms so that his big white belly hung down. He was
gripping one leg of the mailbox with both hands, as if he were terrified
that he was going to fly off the face of the earth. As Frank watched
him, his belly convulsed, and convulsed again, and a fountain of dark
ruby vomit gushed out of his mouth and splattered onto the sidewalk.
Frank took out his cell phone and punched out

911, but it beeped and beeped and nobody answered. He hesitated. He was
a doctor. It was his moral duty to go to the man's assistance. But he
knew there was absolutely nothing he could do to help him, and the man
had probably murdered two or three people to drink so much blood. The
man slowly turned his head toward him, and he looked utterly desolate.
Frank hesitated a moment longer, but then he put his sunglasses back on,
climbed up the last three steps, and opened up his front door. He went
through and closed it behind him. Click.

The apartment building was stuffy and hushed and dimly lit. It was like
living in an Edward Hopper painting. There were dusty silk lilies in a
tall green vase beside the umbrella stand, and a tall rectangular mirror
in which one only seemed to be able to see half of oneself, or the back
of somebody disappearing through a doorway. Somewhere up at the top of
the building, someone was vacuum-cleaning; and as he climbed up to his
second-story apartment, Frank heard sad, reflective piano music, Debussy
maybe, or Satie.

As he was about to unlock his apartment door, his key raised, he thought
about the blue-faced man in the street.

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He was tempted to go back. After all, if the man was suffering from the
same condition that had killed Susan Fireman, he hadn't wanted to murder
anybody: He had been driven to do it by his raging thirst for human
blood. But the same could be said of crackheads who murdered innocent
people to feed their addiction, or drunk drivers who knocked down
schoolchildren. Frank had told Susan Fireman that he didn't judge his
patients, but he had been lying. He had nothing but contempt for people
who injured themselves or others through willful stupidity, or lack of
self-control. Once he had sat all night by the bedside of a
twenty-seven-year-old woman who had been so drunk that she had swallowed
concentrated drain-cleaner, and he had never been able to find it in his
heart to forgive her for what she had done to herself.

He hadn't forgiven Susan Fireman either, for murdering her friends
instead of trying to get medical help. All the same, he regretted that
she was dead. For some reason, he felt that she had the answer to
something that he needed to understand.

His apartment was high-ceilinged and austere, with dark brown carpets
and cream-colored walls and a few abstract paintings in varying shades
of brown and cream. The furniture was Italian, mahogany-colored leather,
very square and very expensive. In one corner there was a Bang & Olufsen
CD player. In the opposite corner stood a 1920sstyle cabinet which
contained bottles of liquor and Jazz Age cocktail glasses.

Frank was thirty-seven in January and he was still married, although he
and Christina had already talked about divorce. The starkness of this
apartment was in direct contrast to their house in Darien, Connecticut,
which was crammed with antique colonial furniture and embroidered
cushions and china dogs. Frank had felt that

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Christina was cluttering up his head with so many knickknacks and frills
that there wasn't any space left for serious thinking. One day he had
gone to the Sisters of Jerusalem and stayed late in gastro-entorology
and never returned home. Even today, seven months later, he couldn't
really explain why, not to anybody else. He spent long evenings alone,
reading; or listening to music; or staring at the wall and doing nothing
at all.

Maybe, like many doctors, he had secretly begun to wonder what he was
doing, saving lives that were nothing but a waste of everybody's time,
including the people who were living them. He stripped off his chilly,
sweat-soaked clothes and climbed into his black glass shower-cubicle
with the volcanic stone base. As he soaped himself, he could see half of
his face in the circular shaving mirror next to the black marble basin,
as if he were being spied on from a parallel existence. He toweled
himself with a dark brown towel and rubbed his chest with Dolce &
Gabbana body lotion.

Afterward, with a fresh towel wrapped around his waist, he went into the
stainless-steel kitchen and took a bottle of Perrier water out of the
icebox. He would have preferred a Heineken, but he was going to need all
of his concentration when he went back to the Sisters of Jerusalem in
the early hours of the morning. He supposed he ought to eat something,
even if it was only a cheese sandwich, but he didn't feel hungry. He
kept thinking about Susan Fireman, staring at him with those china-blue
eyes, and the blue-faced man vomiting blood in the street outside.

He lay back on his king-size bed. In the corner of his bedroom was the
only antique in the whole apartment: an oval cheval-mirror that was
reputed to have belonged to Ulysses S. Grant, and which Grant had taken
with him on his campaign in Chattanooga. Frank didn't particularly like
it, but it was worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, and he
didn't want Christina to get her hands on it.

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He switched on the wall-mounted plasma-screen television. Almost every
channel was still running minute-by-minute news of the "vampire
epidemic." Cases had been reported as far uptown as 125th Street, and
Mayor Brandisi had ordered police checkpoints set up on all bridges and
tunnels, although he had to admit that he didn't really know what they
were supposed to be looking for, apart from people who appeared to be
sick, or who had covered themselves with sunblock.

So far, more than two hundred victims had been found with their throats
cut, and the mayor estimated that there could be "twice--maybe three
times--more."

Frank switched off the television and lay back on his dark brown sheets.
His apartment was soundproofed, but he could still hear sirens echoing
and the dull thumping of helicopters. He wondered what it would be like
if he woke up to find that he was the only person in Manhattan left
alive. He imagined himself wandering from street to echoing street, past
abandoned taxis and windblown newspapers.

He fell asleep. When he was an intern he had trained himself to sleep
whenever he had the chance, and he could sleep deeply and dreamlessly
and wake up exactly when he knew that he would be called for, to the second.

Outside his bedroom window, the howling of sirens went on, like wolves.
Daylight disappeared early, without any sunset, and by 9:00 it was dark.
He carried on sleeping, lying on his back, motionless, except for the
slightly curled fingers of his left hand, which occasionally twitched.

A few minutes after 11:30, there was a creaking noise at his window. It
didn't penetrate his sleep, even when it was followed by a sharp click,
and then the sticky sound of rubber seals being parted as his window was
opened. A warm surge of air swelled into the room, smelling of gasoline
fumes, and hot concrete, and steam.

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He thought he felt somebody stroke his forehead, and play with his hair.
He snorted, and irritably shook his head. He didn't want to wake up yet
and he didn't want to dream. He never allowed himself to dream. In
dreams people told you critically important things that you couldn't
understand, and you formed attachments to people who didn't exist.

"Frank," said a soft voice.

He snorted again, but still refused to wake up.

"Frank, it's me."

He turned over, tugging at the sheet.

"Frank, it's no use pretending. I know you can hear me."

He licked his lips, which felt very dry. Then he gradually opened his
eyes. Someone was sitting on the bed, right next to him. A woman,
wearing something pale. The light from the hallway was shining behind
her head, so that he couldn't clearly see her face. He lifted one arm to
shield his eyes and said, "Christina?"

"I thought you were going to sleep forever."

"What the hell are you doing here?" He tried to sit up, but the woman
pressed a cold hand flat against his chest, and pushed him firmly back
down again.

"Christina--there's a full-scale medical emergency, you shouldn't have
come to the city."

"But I'm not Christina, whoever Christina is."

Frank reached across and switched on his square bedside lamp. "Oh, God,"
he said, when he saw who the woman was. "Oh, God, it can't be."

Susan Fireman reached out and took hold of his hand. Her eyes still
seemed unfocused, and her face was still pallid, but she was smiling at
him, and there was no doubt that she was alive.

"I thought you were dead," said Frank, in a voice that sounded like
somebody else's. "You died, didn't you? Your heart stopped."

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"I thought you would have known about death, being a doctor."

"What are you talking about?"

"Death is for people who were born to die. Not for people like me."

Frank took hold of her wrist, lifted her arm away and sat up straight.
Susan Fireman continued to smile at him, her expression so beatific that
it almost looked as if she were mad, or an angel, or a nun who had
experienced a divine revelation.

"Frank," she admonished him. "You mustn't take death so literally!"

"I'm dreaming," he said. He slapped himself, hard, across the face.
"Shit. I'm not dreaming. Maybe I'm dreaming that I'm dreaming."

Susan Fireman touched his cheek with her fingertips, and they were very
cold. "I know that you liked me. I know that you found me attractive. I
saw how sad you were when you thought that I was dead."

"For Christ's sake, you are dead!" Frank rolled across the bed, away
from her, and stood up. "I was there when you died. They tried to
resuscitate you but they couldn't. I'm dreaming this; or hallucinating.
Maybe I've contracted your infection. Maybe this is one of those
nightmares."

"Frank, I thought that you liked me."

"Like you? How can I like you? You're dead, and it's absolutely
impossible that you're here. Logically, medically, it's impossible."

Susan Fireman stood up, too, and walked around the bed. She moved with
an extraordinary jerking motion, as if she were in a film, and some of
the frames were missing. She raised both arms as if she wanted him to
embrace her. "I'm here, Frank, and that's the only logic that means
anything."

"How did you get in?" he said, and almost as he said it, he caught sight
of the bedroom window, tilted ajar.

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"I can get in anywhere. The pale ones always can."

Frank still thought that he was dreaming. Susan Fireman had denied any
knowledge of the pale ones, hadn't she?

"I'm going to wake up," he told her. "On the count of three, I'm going
to wake up, and you, my dear, will no longer be here. One, two, three!"

"We could be so good together, Frank. You could be a pale one, too."

He closed his eyes tight, waited, and then opened them again. But Susan
Fireman was still standing in front of him.

"If I can't make you disappear, I want you to go. However you managed to
get in here, I want you to leave the same way."

"But Frank... don't you want to know what happened to me? Don't you want
to find out why all of these people seem to be sick?"

"What are you talking about?"

"This epidemic--all of these people killing their friends and their
loved ones and drinking their blood."

"You know why they're doing it?"

"Of course ... it happened to me, didn't it?"

"Why didn't you say something before, when you were in the hospital?"

She reached her hand out again, but Frank stepped back and said, "Just
don't touch me, okay?"

"Frank, don't be angry with me. If I had understood what was happening
to me when I was in the hospital, I would have told you, I promise you.
But I didn't, not then. I needed to pass through ... to see it from the
other side."

"So you can tell me now? This is crazy. I must be suffering from overwork."

She smiled at him slyly. "First things first," she told him. She crossed
her arms and lifted off her nightdress, so that she was naked. Her
breasts were tiny, but her nipples were hard and knurled. She had a gold
piercing-ring shining between her hairless lips.

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Frank said nothing, but watched her, warily, keeping his hands by his
sides, and breathing very deeply. He had been caught before by a
frustrated female patient who had accused him of molesting her, and it
had led to months of legal argument and thousands of dollars of expense.
He didn't want anything like that to happen again.

Susan Fireman sat down on the bed. "Come here," she said.

Frank shook his head. "No way. One, I don't believe that this is really
happening. You're some kind of hallucination, and I don't even know why
I'm talking to you. Two, if this is happening, and you are real, I don't
want to have anything to do with you."

"Frank, this isn't a dream. You're awake."

"How can I be? Even if you didn't die, you couldn't have left the
hospital and climbed in through my window. There's a sheer drop out
there--seventy-five feet at least."

"Any wall can be climbed, Frank, if you have the ability to climb it."

She waited for a moment and then she stood up again. He backed away from
her until he reached the bedroom wall, and he couldn't back away any
further. She came up so close to him that he could feel how cold she
was. It was almost as if she was draining the warmth right out of the
surrounding air. "You're desperate to find out what happened to me,
aren't you? And you want me, too. You know you do."

She reached down and took hold of his penis through his thin
blue-striped cotton shorts. Although her fingers were so cold, he felt
aroused, and he began to stiffen. She slowly rubbed him, up and down,
digging her thumbnail into the ridge of his glans.

"You see?" she challenged him. "I was right on both counts. I'm real,
and you want me."

Frank had never felt anything like this, ever. He was so frightened that
he was shaking, but his fear seemed to

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excite him more than he had ever thought possible. What was happening to
him was the stuff of insanity. Susan Fireman was dead, and so she
couldn't have climbed into his window, and she couldn't be talking to
him, and rubbing his penis. The madness of it made his erection stiffen
harder and harder, until it hurt, and he didn't know whether to wrench
himself away, or shout out for help, or allow Susan Fireman to go on
rubbing him. He couldn't think straight. It seemed as if the only way to
escape from this nightmare was to live through it, until he woke up.

Very softly, Susan Fireman said, "I didn't know it myself, not until
now, but there have always been other people."

Frank couldn't speak. The coldness of her hand had made his penis feel
numb, and the coldness was beginning to penetrate deep between his legs,
as if somebody was pushing an icicle into his bowels.

"Other people, do you understand what I'm telling you? Different people,
who live different lives. In darkness, and shadows, and closed boxes."

With one hand, she tugged down his shorts, and they dropped onto the
floor, around his ankles. She gripped his bare erection even harder, and
each downstroke was so powerful that he felt as if she were trying to
rip his skin off.

"They've always been with us," she whispered. "They've always been
hiding, and waiting. And now they're free!"

Still gripping his penis, she dragged him toward the bed. He felt
totally helpless, as if he had to do whatever she told him to do. She
lay back on the bed, and opened her legs wide. Even inside her, her
flesh was pale, although it was shining with juice. "Come on, Frank,"
she urged him. "You know how much you want me."

He half-stumbled onto the bed. "Here," she coaxed him, and she pulled
him nearer, and then she guided him into her. Inside, she felt chilly
and slippery, like wet filleted fish. But even though the sensation of
penetrating to her was so unpleasant, he couldn't find the strength or
the focus to

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pull himself out of her. She gripped his buttocks and began to urge him
rhythmically forward, smiling at him all the time. He couldn't believe
how strong she was, for a girl so slight. She pulled him more and more
forcefully, her nails digging into his skin. "You're mine now, Frank,"
she panted. "My protégé. One to another, like Chinese whispers, that's
how it goes. It's a secret message."

"Guh-god," he stammered.

Triumphantly, gasping, she pulled him into her: pull-- pull--pull--pull,
and with every pull she arched her back, so that he could feel her bony
pelvis tilting up to dig into his hips.

He began to shudder. He felt as if his testicles had frozen solid, into
eggs of ice, and that they were gradually being crushed, with greater
and greater force. The cold between his legs was almost unbearable, but
at the same time he felt an overwhelming urge to climax, and he began to
push forward--until she no longer needed to pull him, because he was
forcing his penis into her as if he were trying to split her in half.

He grunted, and stammered, and snorted, and then he ejaculated. He felt
as if thick jets of freezing slush were pumping out of him--one, two,
three. When he had stopped quaking he knelt between Susan Fireman's legs
with his head bowed, while Susan Fireman stroked his shoulders with her
cold, trailing fingertips, and his back, and his hips, and cupped his
shrunken scrotum in the palm of her hand.

Frank eventually fell sideways, and lay there, shivering, like a dog
dragged out of a river. Susan Fireman turned to him so that their faces
were only three or four inches apart, almost too close for Frank to focus.

"A secret message," she breathed.

"What secret message? I don't understand."

She kissed him, twice. "They brought it all the way from the home
country, don't you see, hidden in their blood."

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"Who did?" he croaked. "Who are you talking about?"

"Strigoi, they call themselves. The people who never die."

"Strigoi?"

"That's right. And now they've brought their message here, and we can
help them to spread it. Me, and you, and anybody else we choose. It
isn't a written message. Not a message that anybody can whisper." She
sat up, and looked down at him. "In a few hours, my darling Frank, you
will pass through, too, and understand everything."

He tried to lift his head, but she pushed him back down.

"There's one more thing," she said. "We have to make sure."

She climbed on top of him, with those thin, chilly limbs, and straddled
him. Then she maneuvered herself upward until her shins were pressed
hard against his shoulders and she was kneeling over his face. He looked
up and he could see the pale bloodless waves of her lips, and her gold
piercing-ring. She was brimming with semen, and two pearly drops were
sliding down her thigh.

"What are you doing?" he said. He was beginning to wonder if this wasn't
a nightmare after all, and that Susan Fireman, even if she was dead, was
really here.

She looked down at him. Her eyes looked dreamy, but she was no longer
smiling.

"We have to make sure, Frank," she repeated.

He tried to struggle himself up, but as he did so, a drop of cold semen
fell onto his lips. He tried to spit it away, but Susan Fireman stuck
out her finger and poked it into his mouth.

"There," she said, smiling again, and climbed off him.

He spat again, and sat up, and furiously wiped his mouth on one of the
pillows. "What the hell did you do that for?"

She laughed, and pirouetted away from him, across the bedroom. She
flickered, as she danced, like an old hand-cranked movie.

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Frank hobbled into the bathroom, feeling as if he had been fighting in
an alley, and lost. He switched on the light and stared at himself in
the mirror and he had never seen himself looking so haggard. He twisted
around so that he could see his buttocks, and they were criss-crossed
with bloody lacerations. How could he be dreaming, when he felt so sore?
His penis was reddened and his scrotum was smeared with blood where
Susan Fireman had scratched him. How could he be dreaming, when he could
twist the faucet and splash his face with warm water?

He pressed his face into a towel. I can feel this, and I can't wake up.
I'm going to have to accept that it's real. As crazy as it is, as scary
as it is, it's real.

He dropped the towel onto the counter and went back into the bedroom.
"Okay," he said, "supposing this isn't a nightmare--why don't you tell
me what the hell is going on?"

But there was no answer. Susan Fireman wasn't there.

"Susan?" he demanded. He stalked through to the living room but there
was no sign of her. Not only that, the security chain was still
fastened, so she couldn't have slipped out through the front door. He
switched on the fluorescent light in the kitchen but that was empty,
too. The only sound was the humming of the icebox.

He returned to the bedroom. "Susan? This is ridiculous!"

He opened the closet. She wasn't hiding in there. There was only an inch
clearance under the bed, so she couldn't be hiding there, either.

He searched his apartment again. He even looked in the dirty clothes
hamper. She was gone, and there was absolutely no trace that she had
been here, except for the rumpled-up bed. He looked up at the window,
but it was five feet up from the floor, and it was only open three or
four inches. Even if she had managed to climb in that way,

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he very much doubted that she could have climbed out. There was nothing
around that she could have stood on to reach it.

"I'm losing my mind," he told himself. He stared back at himself from
the mirror in the hallway, and his reflection didn't even try to deny it.

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8

Blood Bath

After Bertil hung up on me, I sat in my Alexander Woollcott chair for a
while, drinking and thinking. Even though I had turned down the volume,
the TV news channels were still filled with flickering images of people
plastered in blood, and the numbers of dead and murdered were clocking
up higher and higher, like the score on a pinball machine, with no sign
of them slowing down.

If I couldn't persuade Amelia to talk to the city authorities, I had to
try to talk to them myself, didn't I?--even though I knew how skeptical
they would be. I couldn't just sit here in this tatty old chair drinking
Guinness and watch all of these people die. But what if the authorities
simply refused to believe me, which they probably wouldn't?

Maybe I should make another attempt to contact Singing Rock. He probably
wouldn't agree to bring the malevolent thing back to my bedroom, so that
I could see it for myself, but maybe he could tell me something about
it, and why it was spreading this blood-drinking epidemic. Even a name
would help: I could look it up on the Internet. You'd be

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surprised what malevolent things you can find on the Internet. I once
looked up Misquamacus, the Algonquin wonderworker who had killed Singing
Rock and had almost killed me and Karen, too, and I found an actual
picture of him, on some obscure Web site devoted to Keiller Webb, a
nineteenth-century frontier photographer.

There he was, Misquamacus, standing in the background of a daguerreotype
taken at Pyramid Lake in 1865. He was wearing a tall black stovepipe hat
and he was glaring at me, as if he had known when this picture was taken
that I would be looking at it one day, in a hundred and forty years'
time. He was stony-faced, his cheeks scarred with magical stigmata, and
his deep-set glittering eyes looked like cockroaches nestling under a
window ledge.

There hadn't been very much text to accompany the picture, except a
brief excerpt from Native American Magic, by Roland Hunsiger and Merriam
West. "Misquamacus was said to have possessed the power to appear in
several different places simultaneously, sometimes thousands of miles
apart. He was also credited with the ability to travel through time by
swallowing blazing oil and being reborn in the body of any unsuspecting
woman who happened to be in the locality of his self-immolation--either
in the future, or in the past, whichever he chose.

"Misquamacus and his followers fought several notably bloody battles
against the earliest Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, and the wooden
palisades for which Wall Street was named were specifically built to
keep out his marauding warriors. Although Misquamacus' tribe was
scattered in the spring of 1655, he made a solemn oath that one day he
would drive out every last colonist. It is seriously thought by many
Native American elders that the catastrophic collapse of several
buildings in Manhattan in the

1990s was a last attempt by Misquamacus to destroy the

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white 'invaders' and drive them from American soil. They even believe
that he might have succeeded, had not his destruction of high-tension
power cables led to a massive discharge of electrical energy, which
vaporized his manitou (spirit), and dispersed it amongst the four
elements. He is now condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the earth,
the fire, the wind and the rain."

The name Misquamacus still gave me a rusty taste in my mouth, even after
all these years. He had first come into my life when he had chosen Karen
as the host for his first reincarnation. Once he was reborn out of
Karen's body, he had tried to summon the Great Old Ones, the Indian gods
of total destruction, the ones who lived in the Empty Time (before time
as we know it had actually begun.) He had almost succeeded, but Singing
Rock had helped me to stop him.

Misquamacus had tried to be reincarnated again, and again, and Singing
Rock had been killed as we struggled to send him back to the Happy
Hunting Ground once and for all. Misquamacus was an incredibly powerful
wonderworker, no doubt about it, but in the end it was no contest. His
magic might have been pretty damn devastating in the days of rain dances
and war parties, but he didn't stand a chance against
twenty-first-century technology. Who's going to be bothered to blow
magic powders into the wind to find herds of buffalo, when there's a
Wal-mart only ten minutes down the road, with pre-packed USDA-grade
steak? Who needs to go to a sweat lodge in search of visions, when they
can buy ecstasy, and DVD players with cinema-quality sound? The Indians
were simply left behind, standing with their pipes and their feathers
and their beads beside the highway, while the rest of the world went
careening onward, into the future. Even Singing Rock used to say: It's
no use crying about Native American magic, my Mend, it's one of those
things we don't need anymore, like cotton diapers and typewriters.

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I picked up the bracelet that Singing Rock had given me, and slipped it
back on. Its black stones looked very dull now, for some reason, as if
all the life had gone out of them. I clasped my right hand around it,
and closed my eyes.

"Singing Rock... I really need your help right now. I admit that we
didn't have the guts to look when you first tried to show us what was
causing Ted's nightmares ... we were cadmium yellow, I admit it. But
that doesn't mean that I don't deeply appreciate what you did for us,
and that I don't admire your bravery. Singing Rock... I'm begging you
now. I'll make any sacrifice you want me to. Anything. People are dying
out there, hundreds of people, and it seems to me that this thing that's
been causing Ted's nightmares ... well, it could be responsible for
killing these people, too."

I waited, listening for some kind of response--a tap on the window, or a
whisper, or a scratch on the wall. All the time the day gradually grew
darker, and the sirens went on whooping and wailing. I heard screaming,
and a catastrophic crash of glass, like a storefront window being
smashed, and shots. Helicopters were beating over Central Park like
distant tom-toms.

"Singing Rock, please. I know that I must have appeared ungrateful for
what you did for me, but believe me I thought it was very, very amazing.
If you can't conjure up that actual thing a second time, or if you don't
feel in the mood, at least just give me a clue. Tell me what that thing
is, or what it's called. Tell me where it comes from, or what it wants."

I heard people running along Seventeenth Street, scores of them. I stood
up and went to the window just in time to see them crossing Sixth
Avenue. There must have been over two hundred of them, men mostly, but
some women, but I had no idea why they were running. They weren't
crying, or shouting--only running. It was one of the scariest things

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that I had ever witnessed. They turned northward and they were gone,
although I could still hear the clattering sound of their feet, for
almost fifteen seconds afterward.

"That's it, Harry," I said, out loud. "Doomsday scenario."

I turned back into my gloomy room, and jumped with shock. Singing Rock
was standing in the darkest corner. I could see the light reflected from
his glasses, and his greased-back hair, and the black suit that he had
been buried in. He wasn't entirely substantial: I could still see the
bookcase behind him, and even the titles of the books.

"Hallo, Harry," he said. His voice had a crumply quality, like tissue
paper, or the wind blowing into a sports reporter's microphone.

"Singing Rock. I was beginning to think that you weren't speaking to me."

"There are some friends and some enemies on whom we can never turn our
backs."

"So I'm which? Enemy, or friend?"

"You have to ask me?"

"No, of course not. I'm sorry. If I wasn't your friend, you wouldn't
have drummed up that thing for me, whatever it was."

"If that's what you wish to believe."

I circled cautiously around the table, but the closer I got to Singing
Rock, the dimmer he became, until I could barely make him out at all,
only his lips moving. I stepped back, and he became clearer. He would
have been nearly seventy-five now, if he had lived, but he hadn't
changed. I guess that's the only positive thing you can say about death:
It doesn't age you.

"How are you doing?" I asked him.

"I am dead, Harry Erskine. I exist only in the great world of blackness
beneath your feet. That's how I am 'doing'."

"But you know what this thing is, don't you? You know why all of these
people are having nightmares and

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drinking blood? I mean, they're killing each other out there, Singing
Rock, they're cutting each other's throats. Women, children, anybody.
It's a massacre."

"Yes, I am aware of that. I can see those innocents who have been
murdered. Their spirits are falling into the blackness below like the
snow falls in winter."

"You can't show me that thing again? That presence, whatever it was? I
saw it out of the corner of my eye ... it was kind of dark, and
stretchy. And I heard it whispering, too."

Singing Rock shook his head. "I would show you, Harry Erskine, if I
could. I don't blame you for your lack of courage. It is a creature of
the darkest dark, from a very ancient heritage of which I know nothing.
I caught it by surprise, and led it here with an old Lakota spell, but
it soon broke free, and it will not be surprised a second time."

"Do you have any idea what it is, or where it comes from?"

"I can tell you its name only by suggestion. If I were to speak it, or
to write it, I would instantly attract its attention, and it would come
after you faster than a ravenous bear in the forests from which it first
emerged. Let me warn you, Harry Erskine: This spirit is greedy and cruel
and it will stop at nothing to spread its kind as far and as fast as it
can."

"Okay, then, if you can only tell me its name by suggestion--suggest away."

"Not now. But you will know the name when I give it to you."

"Singing Rock, this is urgent! Mothers are drinking their babies' blood,
even as we speak!"

But Singing Rock firmly said, "No. Don't you understand? You are
special. By chance, you are the only one who has guessed that the plague
has been caused by a spirit, and not by a virus. If you were to be
killed, who else would guess? Your white doctors have long ago lost
touch with the spirit world, and with the powers of nature. If they cannot

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see their enemy wriggling under their microscopes, they refuse to
believe that he exists."

"So how do I convince them?"

"I cannot say. You are a white man and you know better than I do how to
talk to other white men."

"For God's sake, you used to be a realtor. You can convince anybody of
anything."

Singing Rock turned to me, and I thought that he looked weary and sad,
as if he were tired of being dead. "I will tell you the name, Harry
Erskine. What you do with that knowledge is up to you."

I tried to give him an encouraging smile, but it wasn't easy. He began
to fade, and after a few moments he had vanished altogether, and the
only evidence that he had visited me was the faint aroma of lavender
hair oil.

But at least he had agreed to help me. I didn't know how he was going to
give me the name of the malevolent thing, but I knew that he would keep
his promise.

It occurred to me, though, that he still hadn't told me if I was his
friend or his enemy. Maybe he regarded me as a little of both.

I took a shower, standing in the tub with the shower fixture rattling
and shaking and letting out explosive sneezes of hot water. Without
drying, I wrapped myself up in the thick navy-blue toweling robe that
Karen had given me, with my monogram embroidered on the pocket, and I
sat by the open window perspiring and drinking Guinness and listening to
the terrible sounds of the night.

Sirens were echoing from every direction, and every now and then I heard
masses of people running. Thick brown smoke was rising from the garment
district and helicopters were circling around Times Square with
crisscrossing floodlights.

Even though I knew that Singing Rock wouldn't let me

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down, I was becoming increasingly worried and edgy, and I kept getting
out of my chair and pacing around the room. I had switched the
television off. By 9:15 it was reported that 347 people had died from
the "vampire plague" and

511 had been found with their throats cut. More people had been murdered
in New York City in a single day than were usually murdered in a year.

Mayor Brandisi had admitted that it might take "days, weeks, or even
longer" to isolate the cause of the epidemic. Manhattan was now
completely sealed off, with roadblocks at every bridge and every tunnel
entrance. From Washington, D.C., the president had promised that the
federal government would give New York City "every conceivable
assistance." He also swore that if the epidemic were found to have been
caused by terrorists, retribution would be "swift and terrible."

I was tired, and hot, and I was debating with myself whether I ought to
go to bed, when I heard a scrabbling noise at my door. I leaned into my
cramped little hallway and listened. There was another scrabble, and I
called out, "Who's there? Is there anybody there?"

There was no reply, but I was sure that there was somebody out there. I
tried to peer through the spyhole, but some joker had stuck something
over it--chewing-gum, probably. I waited for a short while, and then I
said, "Who is it?"

Still no response. It could have been Mrs. Zolbrod's dog, the one that
looked like Harpo Marx's wig. Or maybe it was a rat. But for some reason
I was certain that it was a person. I could feel his tension, even
through two inches of door. I could almost hear him sweating.

I pressed my ear against the door, and held my breath. It was then that
he hammered loudly on the door with his fist, and almost deafened me,

"Jesus!" I shouted, and opened the door.

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I didn't recognize him at first, because his face was streaked with
something thick and black and greasy, and so were his arms. But when he
coughed and said, "Help me, dude. I really need some serious help," I
realized it was Ted Busch. He looked even more disheveled than he had
before. His Molten Iris T-shirt had a dark sweat-stain down the front of
it, and his hair was sticking up as if he had been electrocuted.

"You'd better come in," I told him. I didn't really want him to come in,
but what else could I do? Supposing something gruesome happened to him
because I had turned him away?

He stumbled into the living room, and collapsed into my Alexander
Woollcott chair.

"I'm burning up, dude," he told me.

"How about a glass of water?"

"No, no, not water. I can't touch water. Water's going to make it worse."

"What's wrong with you? You're sweating buckets. And what's all that
black on your face? Jesus, Ted, you look like Al Jolson."

"I'm burning up, dude. It's like my skin's on fire."

"You need to go to a hospital, you really do. I can't help you here."

"I tried... I went to the Sisters of Jerusalem, but you can't get
anywhere near. The whole place was like hundreds of people, all crying
and screaming. The doors were shut and they had cops on the doors to
stop people getting in."

"Ted, I'm a fortune-teller, not a doctor. There's nothing I can do for
you, except give you a drink."

Ted stared at me, his eyes so wide that he looked as if he were mad.
"You don't get it, do you? My skin's on fire. After I left you I tried
to walk home but the sun was burning me and all I could find was motor
oil to cover my face and my

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arms but I'm burning even worse. You have to help me, dude, or else I'm
going to die."

I didn't know what to say to him. It was obvious from the way that he
was trembling and clutching himself that he was in agony, but what can
you do for somebody who's been infected by spiritual malevolence?
Calamine lotion might be good for poison ivy rash, but it doesn't have
much effect on cruel and ferocious things from beyond.

"I can run you a cold bath," I suggested. "And how about a couple of
Anacin? That might help to bring your temperature down."

He twitched and sniffed and kept on shuddering like a junkie.

I picked up the phone. "I could try calling a doctor but I don't think
there's any point. If you can't even get into a hospital--"

Unexpectedly, he let out a high, coyote-like howl, and the hairs on the
back of my neck stood up. "I'm burning!" he screamed. He held up his
hands to show me, as if they were actually on fire. "Look at me, I'm
burning!"

"Listen!" I shouted back at him. "You have to calm down! You might feel
like you're burning, but you're not! It's all in your mind, or your
autonomic nervous system, or wherever! Just sit tight and sweat it out,
that's all you can do!"

"But my skin's on fire! I'm shriveling, dude! I'm getting cremated!"

I decided to run him a cold bath. It might not work, but I couldn't
think of anything else to do, apart from hitting him over the head, very
hard, with my heaviest skillet. I'm good at saving the world, but I
don't have a whole lot of patience when it comes to individuals.

I went through to the bathroom and turned on the big old cold-water
faucet. The bath was vast, and it had a strange blood-colored stain down
one side, as if a young bride had recently been murdered in it. I had
been trying to bleach the stain out with Clorox, but it only seemed to

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make it look more bloodlike. The water was brown, and not particularly
cold, but it would have to do.

I was leaning over the bath, checking that the plug was in properly,
when somebody wrapped his arm around my neck. I saw something flash in
the corner of my eye, and I instinctively ducked my head down, just as a
craft knife slashed across my face, cutting my left cheek almost down to
the bone.

Blood sprayed everywhere. It spattered up the side of the bath and
blossomed in the water like roses. I twisted myself around, grunting and
struggling, and I felt the craft knife cut cold across my knuckles.

I was never any good at fighting, but I was shit-scared and I was angry,
and I lashed out with everything I had, like a demented windmill. Ted
fell backward, jarring his shoulder against the edge of the door, and
then I seized his sweaty T-shirt and hurled him against the towel rack,
and then against the basin, and then I heaved him over the side of the
bath so that he splashed into the water. He still had the craft knife
but I grabbed hold of his wrist and bent it so far back that he dropped it.

I managed to hold him down on the bottom of the bath even though he was
screaming and kicking and trying to bite me. I picked up the full
half-gallon bottle of Clorox from under the back of the bath and hit him
with it, boff, boff, again and again. He was stunned for a moment, but
then he gripped the sides of the bath with both hands and tried to pull
himself out. I hit him again, and he fell backward. Then I unscrewed the
cap from the Clorox and emptied it into his face.

I will never be able to forget that shriek of agony as long as I live.
He jumped blindly out of the bath--nobody could have stopped him--not me
on my own--not even me and six other men. He collided with the door
again, and then he staggered across the living room, scattering my Jeu
Noir cards, knocking over my framed photograph of Karen and

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me and little Lucy, breaking the blue-glass vase that I had won in
Atlantic City. He managed to open the front door and crash his way out
of it, hitting the door on the other side of the corridor so hard that
he split one of the panels. A muffled voice from inside shouted, "Hey!"

I was already feeling a surge of guilt, because I knew that I could have
blinded him. I shouted, "Ted! Come back!" and went after him. But by the
time I got to the door he was already lurching toward the top of the stairs.

"Ted!" I yelled at him.

He turned, and raised his head. His face was red and blistered, and
smoke was actually rising from his hair. Both eyes were closed, and his
lips were puffed up like two giant maggots. He opened his mouth and
said, "Tatal--tatal nostru--"

"Ted, for Christ's sake, get back here, and let me splash some water on
you!"

I don't know if the bleach had poured into his ears and deafened him, or
if he simply didn't want to hear me, but he turned back toward the
stairs and it was then that he lost his footing and disappeared, like a
magic trick. One moment he was standing there, the next moment he was gone.

"Ted!"

I could hear him tumbling down the stairs and I was sure that I could
even hear his bones cracking, although it was probably the banisters. By
the time I reached him he was lying on the dirty green linoleum on the
landing, his neck twisted one way and his body twisted the other. One
leg was crooked back, in a position that even a contortionist couldn't
have managed.

I came slowly down the stairs and hunkered down next to him. His eyes
were open but the pupils were sightless and milky white. I know that he
had tried to cut my throat, but I still felt overwhelmingly guilty. It
wasn't his fault that he had been infected by a malevolent spirit.

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I stood up. The left side of my face was sticky, and blood was running
from my knuckles.

"Singing Rock!" I shouted. "If you're going to give me a sign, then
you'd better get your ass in gear, because I'm running out of time here!
You hear me? Singing Rock?"

Laticia from the room opposite called out, "Harry? Harry, is that you?
What the hell is going on down there?"

There was no point in asking her to call 911. "It's okay," I called
back. "Somebody fell, that's all."

I stood up, nursing my dripping hand. It was then that I caught sight of
a label that had been stuck onto the apartment door right next to me,
Mrs. St. John's. She had been handwritten in large red letters, St.
John, but most of it had been ripped off, so that all that remained was
"St."

Don't ask me how I knew that this was the first part of Singing Rock's
message. There are times when you just know things--like one of your
friends is in trouble, or somebody's died, or the weather's going to
change for the worse.

"Okay, Singing Rock," I told him. "An 's' and a 't.' But you'd better
give me the rest of it real damn quick."

Laticia was standing at the top of the stairs with her hair piled high
and decked out with purple ribbons. She was wearing a purple satin robe
and she was smoking a small cigar.

"Harry?" she said, hoarsely.

"It's the end of the world, Laticia," I told her. "Next time you get
down on your knees, you'd better start praying, too."

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9

Blood and Thunder

Frank Winter opened one eye but all he could see was blackness.

I've been sleeping, he thought. But I don't remember going to bed. The
last thing I remember is--

He tried to sit up, but his head hit something solid. He tried to move
his arms, but they were pinned tightly to his sides. He struggled to
turn himself around, but there wasn't enough room.

He felt a dark wave of pure panic. He was shut up in a narrow box, with
no light, and no air, and with the lid fastened down. Oh my God, he
thought. I'm in a coffin. Somebody must have found me sleeping and
thought that I was dead. Oh God, don't tell me that they've buried me
already.

"Help!" he shouted. "Help! Somebody get me out of here!"

There was no answer. He managed to wrestle his right arm free, and
hammer on the lid with his fist. "Help! Help me! There's been a mistake!"

Still no answer. He started to hyperventilate, his chest

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rising up and down as if he had been running upstairs. But then he told
himself: Calm down, Frank. This isn't going to help. You're going to use
up all of the air that's left to you, and all you're going to do is
distress yourself. Keep calm. Think. Try to think what happened to you.

The trouble was, his memories seemed to be all broken up. He could
distinctly remember that he had been hiding in a very dark place, very
high up. Somewhere in the rafters of a barn, maybe. He had heard men
shouting, and dogs barking, and he had seen torches dancing behind the
trees. He had crept back farther into the darkness, but he couldn't
recall what had happened after that.

"Help!" he called out, beating on the lid of his coffin. "I'm not dead!
You have to get me out of here!"

It was then that his coffin suddenly lurched sideways, and knocked
against something else wooden. Another coffin, maybe. Frank listened,
wide-eyed in the blackness, trying to hear what was happening outside.
His coffin lurched again, and then he felt a dipping motion, almost as
if he were floating.

"You have to get me out of here!" he screamed. "I can't breathe! For
God's sake get me out of here before I suffocate!"

He managed to twist his left arm free, too, and set up a furious,
crippled banging on his coffin lid. But nobody answered, and the dipping
motion became more pronounced, until he felt his coffin rising, and then
hesitating, and then falling.

He heard a deep creaking noise, and then a windy rumble, which could
have been sails. He realized that his coffin was on a ship, and that the
ship was maneuvering out to sea. He thought he could hear seagulls
crying, or it could have been the desperate screams of other people,
trapped in other coffins, just like he was.

He was about to scream again, but then he thought: relax. Nobody's going
to let you out. All you can do is lie

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here, and wait, and conserve your energy. They might have shut you up in
a coffin, but they haven't killed you, and they're taking you someplace,
for whatever reason they have in mind.

He felt the ship turning into the wind, and for a long time his right
shoulder was pressed painfully hard against the side of his coffin. But
then it righted itself, and began to sail reasonably steadily, although
it wasn't long before the endless rising and falling made him feel
nauseated. He tried to remember the last time that he had eaten, and
what it was, but he couldn't.

It was then that he heard somebody clambering on the coffins all around him.

"Help!" he shouted. "Help, I'm still alive!"

The clambering noise stopped, but he was sure that the person was still
close by. He waited, holding his breath. "Help," he whispered. "Please,
for God's sake, get me out of here."

A long time went past. Then he heard a high, trembling voice say, "Total
nostru carele esti in ceruri... sfinteasca-se numele tau ..."

Tatal nostru! It hit him so hard that he felt as if somebody had punched
him in the stomach. Tatal nostru! The same words that Susan Fireman had
been chanting, and the young man in the emergency room, too!

"Let me outa here!" he screamed, hammering even more furiously with his
fists. "Let me out of here! Let me out of here!"

"Sshh," said a woman's voice, very soft, and very soothing. "Ssh,
Frank--you've been having a nightmare, that's all."

He struck out wildly with his right arm, but instead of hitting the side
of his coffin, he knocked his nightstand, and his digital alarm-clock
tumbled onto the floor.

"What? What's happened?" he croaked, and opened his

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eyes. It was still night, but streetlight was shining in through the
half-open window. It must have been raining outside, because shadowy
drops of water were crawling across the ceiling like amoeba. He could
hear the whip-whip-whoop of ambulance sirens, and people shouting.

He sat up. Susan Fireman was sitting on the end of his bed wearing one
of his white shirts, her hands in her lap. He stared at her. He couldn't
remember if she was still alive, or if she was supposed to be dead. Her
eyes glistened so pale that she looked as if she had been blinded.

"Frank? It's only me. You were having a nightmare."

"What time is it?" he asked her. She didn't answer so he had to lean
over the side of the bed to see the red numbers of his digital clock on
the floor. 11:57. Three minutes to midnight.

"Are you all right?" Susan Fireman asked him.

He eased himself into a sitting position and massaged the back of his
neck. He felt as if he really had been shut up in a coffin, bruised and
scraped all over.

"I thought you'd gone," he told her.

"Of course not. I'm going to stay here to take care of you, Frank."

"Is this a nightmare, too?"

"What do you mean?"

"You--everything--the epidemic. This feels like a nightmare inside of
another nightmare."

Susan Fireman held out her hand to him, palm upward, as if she were
offering him the answer to everything. "All life is a nightmare, Frank.
The only difference is that some of us never wake up."

Frank sat for a moment with his head bowed. Maybe this wasn't real.
Maybe it was still last night, and he hadn't yet woken up and walked to
the hospital through Herald Square. Maybe there was no silver-painted
mime and no regurgitated blood. Maybe there was no citywide massacre.

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Maybe tatal nostru were just words that he had picked up unconsciously
from a passing patient, or the radio playing in a taxi.

He looked at Susan Fireman for a moment. You look as though you're
sitting on the end of my bed but maybe you're not. Without saying
anything to her, he stood up and walked through to the kitchen, and
switched on the lights. The kitchen was modern and stark, with black
granite worktops and a stainless-steel oven by Smeg. The only decoration
was a tall, triangular glass vase, containing a single arum lily, blood-red.

He went to the fridge and took out a bottle of Perrier water. As he
reached up to one of the shiny black cupboards to find himself a glass,
he became aware of Susan Fireman's reflection. She was standing on the
opposite side of the counter, her arms by her sides.

Without turning around, he said, "Listen, Susan, I don't know if you're
alive or if you're dead, or if I'm dreaming, but I'd really prefer it if
you left me alone."

"I can't do that, Frank."

Frank poured himself a glass of fizzy water and then he turned around to
face her. "This is my nightmare. That means that you have to do whatever
I tell you, doesn't it?"

"But this isn't your nightmare. This is everybody's nightmare."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll find out, when you pass over, too."

"I don't have any intention of passing over.'"

Susan Fireman came up very close to him, and lifted her hand to touch
his cheek. He swatted her away as if she were an irritating blowfly.

"Oh, Frank," she chided him. "You don't have any choice. None of us has
any choice."

"I need to go back to sleep," he said. He was talking to himself, not to
her. "I need to go back to sleep, and wake

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up for real. This is still Monday night and none of this has happened."

"You can deny it all you like," she said. "But the sooner you accept it,
the better. There's a dark cloud moving over us, Frank, like a great
black bird's wing, and it's moving very fast. It won't be long now, and
the daylight people will be gone forever."

"Bullshit," Frank told her. "None of this has happened." He lifted his
glass but for some reason the thought of drinking water made his mouth
feel greasy. He emptied the Perrier down the sink, put the glass back in
the cupboard, and walked back to his bedroom, leaving Susan Fireman
standing in the kitchen. He lay down on his wrinkled sheets and closed
his eyes. If he could only sleep, then Susan Fireman would vanish and
everything would go back to normal.

Five minutes went past, but he was still wide awake. It was obvious that
things were different, and that something had gone badly wrong. After
midnight, Manhattan always echoed with car horns, and firetrucks
bellowing, but it was never as noisy as this. Tonight, the screaming of
sirens never stopped--siren upon siren, like the hallelujah chorus from
hell. He could hear barking noises, too, like people trying to break
doors down with axes; and the terrible crackle of glass breaking; and a
deep, intermittent rumbling.

He opened his eyes. It was 12:11 in the morning. Susan Fireman was still
there--standing in the doorway, watching him.

George Gathering had asked him to report back to the Sisters of
Jerusalem at 2:00 a.m. Well, he thought, even if this is a nightmare, I
can't get to sleep in it, so I might as well take a shower and get
dressed and go back to the hospital.

He sat up again.

"No luck?" asked Susan Fireman.

"This isn't a nightmare, is it?" said Frank. "Even if I do get

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to sleep, I'm not going to wake up and find that I never met you." "No,
Frank, you're not."

He stepped out of his front door into the sticky, noisy night. It
couldn't have rained very hard, because the sidewalks were drying out
already, but the humidity was almost tropical.

There were no taxis anywhere in sight, so he started to walk. He had
left Susan Fireman in his apartment, standing in the hallway, still
smiling at him. He had asked her not to be there when he got back, but
she had simply said, "Time will tell, Frank. Time will tell."

The blue-painted man who had been clinging to the mailbox had gone, but
the rain hadn't been heavy enough to wash away the pool of blood that he
had left on the sidewalk. There were bloody handprints, too, leading
across the street, so it looked as if the man had crawled away on his
hands and knees, and not so long ago, either.

Frank wondered for a moment if he ought to follow the handprints, to see
where they led. Maybe he could save the blue-painted man, after all. But
then he decided that he would be better employed at the Sisters of
Jerusalem, taking care of as many people as possible, instead of
tracking down one man, just because he had a conscience.

He walked south on Second Avenue, which looked comparatively quiet.
There was almost nobody around, even though the sidewalks were strewn
with broken bricks and sparkling glass. Everywhere, there were abandoned
shopping carts, some of them still filled with looted televisions and
bottles of liquor and designer jeans. Human greed never ceased to amaze
him. It was the end of the world, so people went out and stole televisions.

He was just about to cross Thirty-ninth Street when he heard somebody
call, "Help me!"

He turned around and saw a girl of about fifteen years

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old, crouched in a drugstore doorway. Her blond hair was matted with
blood, so that it looked pink, and her white T-shirt was caked with
blood, too.

"Help me!" she repeated. Her voice was a high, breathy scream.
"Sir--please help me! I'm burning up! I'm burning!"

Frank approached her. "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do to help you
here. Do you think you can make it to the Sisters of Jerusalem? Do you
know where that is? I'll see what I can do for you there."

"I can't! I can't move! My skin's burning!"

He hunkered down next to her. She was snub-nosed and boyish-looking, and
he would have guessed that she had Chinese blood in her. She was shaking
wildly, and her little eyes were darting from side to side as if she
felt that she was being hunted.

"You'll have to come to the ER," Frank told her. "I can't treat you here
in the street."

She reached up and clung to the sleeve of his linen coat. "You can help
me, I know you can. Please, come closer, and I'll show you."

Frank tried to pull himself away. "I'm sorry. But there are hundreds of
other people who need my help just as badly. I'll help you walk to the
hospital, but--"

Without warning, the girl pulled at Frank's sleeve and dragged herself
onto her knees. "Aaaaahhhhhhhh!" she screamed at him. She swung back her
right arm and Frank saw glass flashing. He raised his left elbow to
protect himself, but she cut right through his sleeve, right through his
shirt, and sliced into his skin. She lifted her arm again, but Frank
shoved her away with all of his strength, and she crashed backward
through the drugstore window, breaking the glass and knocking over a
display of lipsticks and face creams. A carousel of sunglasses fell
over, too.

The girl shuddered, and one of her legs kept kicking, as if she were
being electrocuted. Frank stepped back, holding his arm. Blood was
running through his fingers but when

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he looked inside his sleeve he saw that the girl hadn't cut him too
deeply. He hesitated, grimacing, wondering what he ought to do next. The
girl lifted her head a little, but then it dropped back again, and her
leg stopped kicking. She was probably dead, and Frank decided to leave
her where she was. Whatever Susan Fireman had said, this was still a
nightmare, and the Hippocratic Oath didn't apply to nightmares.

He started to jog west toward Lexington, and then southward again to
Thirty-seventh. About six or seven blocks downtown he saw sixty or
seventy people stampeding across the street, howling and yipping like a
pack of hounds, and then he heard the prolonged pop-crackle-popping of
gunfire. A woman shouted at him from an upstairs window, "You! Yes, you,
you bastard! Don't you go running away!" but when he turned into
Thirty-seventh Street he was on his own again, and there was nothing but
litter and broken boxes and overturned Dumpsters.

Frank could hear the crowds outside the Sisters of Jerusalem from at
least four blocks away. Two cars were burning at the intersection of
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh, filling the street with black oily
smoke, and six or seven people were lying on the sidewalk, their heads
covered by coats and blankets, obviously dead. Blood was running across
the sidewalk and into the gutter, and a guilty-looking brown-and-white
mongrel was lapping it up. People were running in all directions, and
what was frightening was how quiet most of them were: Only a few of them
were shouting or whimpering, and the rest were all serious-faced and
wide-eyed and silent. Even when they collided with each other they
seemed not to notice--just stumbled, and carried on. To Frank, it felt
as if the whole city had turned into a madhouse.

Outside the hospital the street was so crowded that he had to force his
way forward with his shoulders and his

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elbows; and several times he had to seize people by their clothing and
drag them to one side. Every now and then, one of them would suddenly
vomit up a fountain of blood, which splashed over everybody around them,
but few people seemed to notice, or to care. Here, there was much more
screaming and arguing and much more panic, but people were still milling
around and bumping into each other as if they had no idea what to do.

Some people were chanting, "Tatal nostru, carele esti in ceruri..." but
not in unison, so that the streets sounded like a vast chicken battery.

After several minutes of struggling, he managed to reach the police
barrier. A raging black man in a red woolly hat tried to pull him back
into the crowd. "You wait your turn, man! You wait your turn!" but Frank
pushed the man's shoulder, and when he staggered backward the man was
immediately dragged away by the hysterical crowd, as if he had been
swallowed by a raging sea.

Frank ducked under the barrier. As he straightened up, he was confronted
by two cops in riot helmets, swinging nightsticks. "Back behind the
line, buddy! The hospital's full! Go home, and stay there!"

Frank said, "Wait up! Wait! I'm a doctor, I work here." He pulled out
his wallet and held up his ID. "I'm supposed to be on duty."

One of the cops inspected it, and then said, "Okay, doc," and stood back
to let him pass. "Honest to God, though--I don't know what the hell you
think you can do."

Frank crossed the sidewalk and pushed open the blood-smeared plastic
doors. To reach the emergency room, he had to negotiate his way through
a shoal of abandoned gurneys, most of them covered in blood and bloody
blankets. Inside, the whole world had turned red. Patients were lying
six deep in the corridors, noisily bringing up blood. The whole
emergency room was plastered in scarlet--the floors, the walls, and even
the ceilings. There were red

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handprints everywhere. Everybody's clothes were soaked in blood, and
many of the patients looked as if they were wearing bright red gloves
and bright red masks, like revelers at some grisly pagan carnival.

Frank pulled back curtain after curtain, until he found Dean Garrett in
a cubicle at the far end of the ER. Dean was bending over a young Puerto
Rican woman who was blowing bubbles of blood with every breath. Dean's
clothes were soaked in blood, too, and he looked beaten.

"Doctor, I will not die?" the young woman was asking him. "I am so
afraid ... I cannot bear to think that I will never see the sun again."

Dean laid his hand on her forehead, and tried to smile. "You'll see the
sun, don't you worry. This time next month, you'll be sitting on your
rooftop in your bikini, and I'll come around to make sure."

Frank said, "Hi, Dean."

Dean turned around and blinked at him. "Oh--hi, Frank. Glad you could
make it. Mind you, I think we need more priests than doctors." He took
Frank's arm and steered him away from the young woman's bed. "They're
dying, Frank. All of them. They haven't announced it on the TV yet, but
this disease is one hundred percent fatal, whatever it is, and there's
nothing we can do to stop it."

"Nothing from the labs yet?"

"So far, they're totally baffled. Every victim's blood shows signs of
this metallo-enzyme, but they're beginning to think it's a symptom,
rather than a cause."

"Where's George?"

"Up on Eleventh, helping with autopsies."

"How many negative outcomes so far?"

"Up until 11:45 we'd admitted seven hundred seventeen patients, which is
over ten times our capacity. At a rough guess, I'd say that we've
already lost more than half. They seem to succumb much more rapidly,
too. It's like a forest

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fire. Like--the more people that catch it, the faster they die. Round
about now, I'd say that most patients are dead within four to five hours
of admission."

Frank looked around. He didn't know what to say. Some people were still
retching and sicking up blood, but most of them were lying pale-faced
and shivering, as if they knew what was going to happen to them, but
were too weak even to cry.

"You're bleeding," said Dean.

Frank peered at his elbow. "Nothing serious. Some girl attacked me with
a piece of glass. It's like hell out there, believe me. They must be
fifty deep, trying to force their way in here."

Dean led the way through to his office. One woman was sitting against
the wall and three women were lying on the floor, all of them trembling
and muttering. Dean's desk was strewn with blood-stained, crumpled
papers. "There's no point in us taking any more in," he said, dragging
out his chair and sitting down. "We can't do anything for them, except
hold their hands while they die."

"Maybe it'll burn itself out like the Spanish influenza did in 1918."

"The Spanish influenza died out because there was nobody left alive to
catch it. I don't know. I don't have any idea what this is, Frank. I
can't understand how it spreads and I can't work out why it makes people
want to drink human blood."

"Maybe the TV people aren't so far wrong. Maybe it is vampires."

"Oh, sure. Nosferatu's Syndrome. Look--you'd better let me put a
dressing on that cut."

Frank took off his coat and rolled up his blood-soaked shirt-sleeve.
Dean swabbed the cut with alcohol and examined it closely. "You were
lucky. A quarter-inch to the left and she would have opened up your
radial artery." He

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applied a non-adhesive dressing and bound it with tape. One of the women
on the floor coughed and said, "Total nostru..."

"Has anybody found out what that means?" asked Frank.

Dean shook his head. "We've been overwhelmed, Frank. We're still
overwhelmed."

"But they're all saying it. Everybody who catches this disease. I mean,
don't you think that needs looking into?"

"You're absolutely right, it does. But not by me, and not tonight."

Frank left Dean in his office and took a tour around the ER and all the
surrounding wards. In the new-admissions bay, patients were retching and
crying out in despair, or furiously babbling to themselves, while
exhausted nurses went from one bed to another, trying to keep them as
quiet and as comfortable as they could. Until they knew what was causing
this epidemic, there was nothing else they could do. Frank stepped
carefully over blood-drenched bodies that were packed together in the
corridors. Some of them were moaning or praying but most of them were
very close to death and were silently staring at the ceiling. Emergency
technicians patrolled the corridors, checking the patients who were
lying on the floor, shaking them if necessary to see if they were still
breathing. Every now and then, one of the technicians would stand up and
beckon for the porters, and yet another body would be lifted up and
wheeled away to the morgue, draped like a store-window dummy in a
bloodstained sheet.

The stench was so strong that Frank had to press his hand over his face.
Even though he had been practicing gastric medicine for eleven years, he
had never become inured to the smell of decomposing flesh--unlike
George, who could happily cut open a slippery gray-green corpse without
even wearing a face mask, and whistle Annie Laurie while he did it.
Frank was always convinced that the smell of death lingered on his hands
and in his hair, even

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after three or even four successive showers. The women in his life had
often caught him sniffing his fingers, but he had never told them why he
did it. He hadn't wanted them to think that when he made love to them,
his hands might still smell like dead men and women.

He gagged, but his stomach was empty, and so he didn't bring up anything
but acid-tasting bile. The back of his throat felt as if somebody had
forced a carpenter's rasp down it, and his skin prickled. He was so
shivery that he began to wonder if he had a temperature. He could feel
sweat sliding down his back and into his waistband.

A man on the floor painfully lifted up his head and stared at him. The
man had a beard of dried blood and his eyes were unfocused. "De
strigoica, de strigoi" he said, hoarsely. "Si de case cu moroi!"

"What?" said Frank, hunkering down beside him. "What are you trying to say?"

?De deochetori... si de deochetoare ..." the man wheezed, but then his
head fell back and he lay staring at the dying woman next to him, and
gasping for breath.

Frank stood up. He still couldn't work out what language these people
were speaking, but he was convinced that it had to be a critical clue.
What condition causes people to speak in tongues that nobody has taught
them, and nobody understands? Only demonic possession, as far as he
knew, and he certainly didn't believe in that.

God, he was thirsty. He pushed aside a gaggle of abandoned wheelchairs
until he reached the Coke machine. He took out three quarters, but
before he inserted the first one into the slot he thought: I don't want
a Coke. The very thought of swallowing Coke made him feel hotter, and
his skin more irritable. I need something else. Something that will
really refresh me.

A porter went past, pushing the body of a young blonde woman on a
gurney. He was short and podgy, with dark circles under his eyes, and
his face was waxy with tiredness.

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His overall was spattered in so much blood that he looked like a butcher.

"How's it going?" Frank asked him.

The porter stopped, and wiped his nose with his blood-streaked forearm.
"We can't help them, can we? All we can do is watch them kick the bucket
and then wheel them off to the morgue."

"Here," said Frank. He took hold of the front of the gurney, and helped
the porter to steer it along the corridor. If he couldn't do anything to
help the dead, he might as well lend a hand to the living.

He pushed open the heavy swing doors of the morgue. It was chilly and
gloomy inside, and one of the fluorescent lights was blinking on and
off. All of the chiller compartments must have been filled by now,
because bodies were being wrapped up in sheets with only their faces
showing, and then laid out in lines on the floor, as tidily as possible.
There was only one morgue attendant on duty--a tall brunette woman with
small oval glasses and a Roman nose. She looked as exhausted as the
porter, and she had a large red cold-sore on her upper lip.

"Brought you another one," said Frank. "Where do you want her?"

"Any place here is fine," said the morgue attendant, pointing to a row
of women's bodies on the right-hand side of the room. "I'm trying to
keep the men and the women separate."

"In case of what?" asked the porter. "Post-extinction hanky-panky?"

"Out of respect," said the morgue attendant. "Or maybe that's something
they don't teach you in porter school."

The porter left, banging the gurney loudly against the swing doors. The
morgue attendant bent over the woman that he and Frank had just brought
in, and checked the label attached to her big toe. "Jane Kryzmanski,
1143 West Thirty-eighth Street. Aged twenty-four. God, what a waste."

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Frank looked around at the blood-stained bodies. "I don't think I ever
felt so helpless in my life."

"You're a doctor?"

Frank nodded. "Frank Winter, gastroenterology."

"Good to know you, doctor. Helen Bryers. We don't have any idea what's
causing this yet, do we?"

"No. Whatever it is, it seems to be very difficult to isolate."

"It's a bad dream," said Helen Bryers. "I keep thinking I'm going to
wake up, and none of this will have happened."

You and me both, thought Frank. But then maybe he was dreaming her, and
she didn't even exist. "How many cadavers do we have here now?" he asked
her.

"Three hundred sixty-nine, including this young lady. There's over a
hundred out back, in the storeroom. We're going to have to ship them out
soon, before they become a major health hazard. I'm waiting to hear
about refrigerated trucks."

Frank walked between the bodies. Each of them was a personal tragedy,
but right now they were nothing but numbers, and the numbers kept on
piling up.

Helen Bryers said, "Could you do something for me, doctor? I hate to ask
you, but I haven't had time to go to the bathroom in over four hours."

"You want me to babysit?"

"Both of my colleagues went off-duty and they still haven't come back
and I'm not supposed to leave the morgue unattended."

"Just in case one of your charges tries to make a run for it, right?"

She took off her glasses and tried to smile. "It's the rule, ever since
that unpleasantness last year."

"I'm sorry?"

"We had some very distressing incidents... casual cleaning staff taking
advantage of deceased patients. Intimate advantage."

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Frank suddenly became aware that he was staring at Helen Byers' neck,
and at the pale blue line of her carotid artery. He could imagine the
warm blood pulsing through her system, pumped by her heart, and the
thought was strangely soothing. Drinking blood ... it must be like
lowering your body into a warm, deep bath.

He blinked. "Oh--you mean that unpleasantness?" he said, abruptly
realizing what she was talking about, "Yes, I heard about it. I guess
some guys are so lacking in charisma, the only women who are going to
fall for them are dead."

"Then it's all right if I--?"

"Sure, go ahead. Take your time. You look like you could use a break."

Helen Byers took her purse and left Frank alone in the morgue. He
supposed that he should have refused her request, and returned to the ER
to help Dean, or gone upstairs to assist George. But somehow it all
seemed so hopeless. No matter what they did, they didn't know how to
stop all these people from dying, and maybe they were better off dead.
Most people were.

He caught sight of himself in a glass-fronted cabinet, and stared at his
reflection as if he didn't recognize himself. Most people were better
off dead? Why on earth had he thought that? He was supposed to be a
doctor. He was supposed to do everything in his power to keep people
alive. He rubbed his arm. His skin felt uncomfortably hot, as if he were
suffering from sunburn, and his thirst was so fierce that he found it
difficult to swallow.

He looked down at the body of a middle-aged woman in a gray-and-white
summer dress, stained brown with blood. She was quite handsome, with a
well-cut bob, and she had obviously had some cosmetic surgery done
around her eyes. Not much use where she was going, thought Frank ... she
should have saved her money. Her eyes were wide

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open, but all the color seemed to have drained out of them. Whatever she
was staring at, it wasn't in this world.

As he turned away from her, he heard a noise in the storage room at the
back of the morgue. A clatter, and then a sharp bang, like a stool
falling over.

"Anybody there?" he called out. He didn't think it was likely. Helen
Byers had told him that she was on her own, and the ER technicians knew
what they were doing: They wouldn't have sent anybody to the morgue if
they weren't one hundred percent sure that life was extinct.

But then he heard another sound, like a window-bar rattling; and he was
sure that he could feel a sudden draft of warm air. The sirens sounded
louder, too.

He made his way toward the storeroom, stepping over a row of seven or
eight dead men as if he were log-rolling across a river.

"Hey--is anybody there?" he repeated. Maybe somebody had been brought
into the morgue before he was ready for it. He accidentally stepped on a
dead man's hand, and said, "Sorry, feller!" before he could stop
himself. The man had white hair and a bulbous nose. He must have been a
doorman, because he was still wearing his maroon uniform with
gold-braided epaulets. He looked as if he were sleeping, rather than dead.

Frank heard another noise. He stepped cautiously into the storeroom but
it was very dark, and he could see hardly anything, except for the
window at the very far end, which must have faced the hospital air
shaft, because it admitted only a faint, gray light from the night
outside. He strained his eyes and he thought that he could see a dark
figure moving in front of the window, but he couldn't be sure.

"Hey!" he shouted, even though his throat was so sore. "Who are you?
What the hell are you doing in the morgue?"

He groped for the light switch, and found it. The fluorescent tubes
flickered, and for a split second the storeroom

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was dazzlingly lit. But then all of the tubes popped at once, and Frank
was left half-blinded, with swimming afterimages left in his eyes.

In that split second, though, he had seen something horrifying. The
storeroom window was open, and a girl in a bloodstained nightgown was
climbing out of it. She was turned toward him, so that he could see how
white her face was, and the dried blood around her mouth. Her hair was
long and black and wild, and it was flying upward, as if it were being
blown by a furious wind.

A young man was rising up from the floor to follow her, his
green-and-white baseball shirt blotted with blood. He was being helped
up by a dark, attenuated figure, which Frank couldn't make any sense of.
It was less like a person than a sloping shadow, with an elongated head
that rose toward the ceiling, and high, diagonal shoulders. It was
leaning at an impossible angle, in the way that only a shadow could.

Yet just before the lights went out, it had snapped its head around, and
Frank had glimpsed two black, blurry eyes, and a stretched-open mouth
that was more of a grating than a mouth. In the darkness, he heard an
explosive, hate-filled hiss that sounded like air brakes, and then a
high, piercing shriek--a shriek so terrible that he felt as if his brain
was being blinded, as well as his eyes.

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10

Bloodshot

Laticia helped me to drag Ted Busch back up to my apartment. The heels
of Ted's sneakers knocked on every stair, all the way up, and
bump-bump-bumped along the landing. I was amazed that nobody came out of
their rooms to see what the hell we were doing.

We heaved him on to the couch and he lay there with his face all scarlet
and blistered and his legs and arms at peculiar angles like a marionette
with all of his strings cut. Laticia said, "If I trusted the cops, I'd
call for the cops, if I thought they'd come."

"Laticia, he tried to cut my throat."

"Well, you need to wash that blood off of your face and put a Band-Aid
on it at least. Let me do that for you. And if you get scared tonight,
with this dead individual lying here, you can always come and share my bed."

"Laticia, you were sent from heaven, FedEx."

"A hundred and twenty-five for all night, mind. Gratuities extra."

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After Laticia had gone back to her apartment, I stood looking down at
Ted Busch's body and I felt genuinely sorry for him, and guilty as hell.

"Those Jeu Noir cards were dead right about you, buddy," I told him.
"They warned you about Imminent Death, didn't they? But you didn't take
any notice. Okay, Death was a whole lot Imminenter than either of us
thought. But the cards warned you about water, too, didn't they, with
the Water Woman? You should never have tried to cut my throat in the
bathroom. Well--you should never have tried to cut my throat at all.
Nemo me impune lacessit. He who steals my clownfish gets a kick in their
puny ass."

I opened another can of Guinness. It was my last one, but I needed it. I
didn't know what to do next. Singing Rock had given me two letters, "s"
and "t." At least I thought that he had given me two letters, but I
could have been allowing my fevered imagination to run away with me. I
had no way of checking if he had really meant S and "t." And what was
even more confusing, I had no idea how many more letters he was going to
give me, or if I'd understand what the word meant when I eventually got
them all.

I was pretty damn sure, though, that the blood lust that was affecting
so many people in Manhattan was the same blood lust that had led Ted to
attack me and try to cut my throat. I was also pretty damn sure that it
wasn't caused by any kind of disease, or virus, not in the way that the
authorities were talking about it. It was some kind of mass possession,
like The Exorcist times 8,008,278. This wasn't just one girl talking
like Louis Armstrong and throwing the occasional Jesuit out of the
window. This was a tidal wave of possession, a spiritual tsunami, and it
was swamping the city and everybody in it.

And it was genuinely terrifying, on a grand scale. It was September
eleventh squared. If so many people had died in a single day, how much
longer could the rest of us survive?

I made up my mind. No matter how much Bertil

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protested, I would have to talk to Amelia. She was the only person who
would believe that Singing Rock was trying to help me from the Happy
Hunting Ground, and she was the only person who might be able to
persuade the city authorities that I wasn't a fraud or a certifiable
lunatic.

At the bottom of my closet I found the old plaid blanket that my dog
used to sleep on, and I took it into the living room to cover up poor
old Ted. As I unfolded it, I caught the glint of silver around his neck.
It was the medallion which he said that the Russian-type girl had given
him-- the medallion with the spooky face and the eyes that looked as if
they opened. I lifted the medallion up and turned it over. The face was
still staring at me, grimly, as if it resented my interfering. I
hesitated, but then I unfastened the clasp, and took the medallion off.
I wasn't intending to steal it, but for some reason I felt that it was
some kind of clue, in the way that the letters "s" and "t" were clues.

I drew the blanket over Ted's head and then I turned the AC right down,
so that he wouldn't start smelling too ripe. Then I knocked on Laticia's
door.

"You change your mind, Harry? You want to stay the night?"

Under normal circumstances I might even have been tempted. Laticia was
wearing a purple see-through bra and purple see-through panties with
dangling ribbons at the side, and she wasn't unattractive if you didn't
mind Prince without the moustache.

"Not tonight, Laticia. I have to go out. I just wanted to tell you that
I had to leave Ted on the couch."

"Okay... he's not going to bother me, is he?"

"I hope not. If he does, just keep him talking until I get back."

I walked down the stairs, out of the front door and into the street.
Khaled's Pakistani Provisions was closed, and its steel shutters had
been pulled down. This was highly unusual. Khaled religiously stayed
open till 1:00 a.m. at least,

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seven days a week, in case anybody had an irresistible urge to start
cooking murgh masala in the wee small hours of the morning.

The night was sweltering hot, and there was an acrid smell of burning in
the air, like the days after 9/11. The sirens were still screaming and
in the distance I could hear somebody yelling through a bullhorn,
something along the lines of "wo-wah-wah-wah-wah-ba-booh-booh-bah!" I
kept walking westward, turning around from time to time to make sure
that there was nobody following me.

As I turned south into Seventh Avenue, I saw two skinny young women with
spiky hair crouching on the sidewalk about fifty yards up ahead of me.
My first instinct was that they needed help, and I started to walk
toward them more quickly. But as I got nearer, I saw that a heavily
built man in jeans was lying between them, with his arms and legs spread
wide. I also saw that something dark and glistening was running across
the sidewalk, like blood. I U-turned smartly and headed back where I had
come from.

Just as I reached the corner of Seventeenth Street, I glanced quickly
back over my shoulder. One of the spiky-haired young women was getting
up onto her feet, and as she did so she turned around and looked in my
direction. She must have said something to the other girl, because she
stood up, too. The heavily built man in the jeans stayed where he was,
and I took an educated guess that he wasn't having a nap. The girls
hesitated, and then they started walking toward me, and I could tell
from the quick, determined click of their heels that they were after me.

I turned into Seventeenth Street and then I sprinted along to Sixth
Avenue, and took a right. I could have kept on running, but those girls
were at least ten years younger than me and they hadn't been drinking
Guinness. Instead, I took another right into Sixteenth Street, and ran
as far as the alley next to Feinman's Antique Carpets, and hid myself
behind a Dumpster. I waited, and waited. Two people

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walked past, talking and laughing, but they were both men, and they both
seemed as jumpy as I was.

I gave myself five more minutes. The alley was airless and it smelled of
weeds and damp brickwork and pee. Across the street, in the window of a
discount camping store, I could see the letters RIG in red neon. It
flicked on, and then it flicked off. The strange thing was that
sometimes it stayed on for almost fifteen seconds, while at other times
it flicked on and off almost instantly. RIG. Blank. RIG.

RIG. Maybe Singing Rock was sending me another signal--three more
letters for my mystery word. ST plus RIG spelled S-T-R-I-G. But what the
flaming Falujah did that mean? I couldn't think of any word that began
with STRIG. Maybe it was part of an anagram, like "ostrich." Maybe it
was an anagram of a biological term, like "streptococci." But Singing
Rock had never had any sense of humor, and he had always been totally
contemptuous of white man's medicine, so it was more likely to be
something else altogether, like somebody's name.

Eventually, I emerged from the alley and looked left and right to make
sure that the spiky-haired girls had gone. From somewhere over by
Washington Square, there was a tremendous bang, almost like a bomb,
followed by echo after echo. Jesus, this was seriously scary. I could
deal with the normal perils of a New York City night--drunks, muggers
and assorted freaks--but this didn't feel like New York City any more. I
started half-walking and half-jogging toward Tribeca, staying in the
shadows as much as I could, and staying highly alert for people who
looked as if they might be hunting for fresh human blood.

I was only a few blocks away from Christopher Street, where Amelia
lived, when a man stepped out of a darkened doorway, right in front of
me. He had a shaved head and dark glasses and a neck like a section of
trans-Atlantic cable, and he was built like a Marine. He was wearing a

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khaki T-shirt and camouflage pants and about a hundred chains and
dog-tags and keys around his neck, and probably a few human ears, too, I
wouldn't have been surprised. He was eating a Snickers bar and his mouth
was full.

"Hey," he said.

I tried to skirt around him but he double-shuffled to one side and
blocked me.

"Excuse me, do you have a problem?" I demanded. "I'm in kind of a hurry
here, if you don't mind."

"You know what they say, man. More haste less speed."

I tried to sidestep, but he sidestepped, too. I backed off a couple of
paces and he backed off, too, but when I took one step forward, so did he.

I tried to look cool, and bored by all of this waltzing, but my heart
was thumping like a basketball and I was beginning to feel very frightened.

He swallowed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I gotta
know if you're one of them," he said.

"What are you talking about, 'one of them'?"

"Me and my friends, see, we're protecting this neighborhood, and if
you're one of them you're not welcome beyond this point."

I looked across the street, and for the first time I saw three other
men, waiting in the shadows. At least one of them was holding a rifle.

"My name's Harry Erskine, I'm an herbal visionary."

"You're a what?"

"An herbal visionary. I tell your future and then I give you herbal
remedies to improve your life prospects."

"Are you trying to be smart?"

"Of course not. It's not your usual nine-to-five job but somebody has to
do it."

"Got any ID?"

I showed him my driver's license. "I was also on the front page of
Psychic Weekly, if you want to know. I'm on my way to visit a friend of
mine who's another psychic. And if by

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'one of them you mean who I think you mean, then I'm not 'one of them.'
In fact I've been trying to keep well clear of them."

"Okay, Harry. You won't object if I frisk you, then?"

"Frisk me? For what?"

"For anything that you can use to cut somebody's throat."

I lifted both arms. "Go ahead, frisk away."

He didn't hesitate, and he frisked me like an expert. While he was
patting my crotch, I said, "The only reason I'm down here tonight is
because I think I might be able to stop this epidemic."

"You? What can you do?"

"This person I'm going to visit--she and me, well, we've handled some
stuff like this before. You remember all those buildings that collapsed,
in the nineties? We stopped that."

"Sure you did."

"You don't have to believe me, but it's true. This epidemic, it's not a
physical disease, like chicken flu or cholera or anything like that.
It's not a terrorist attack, either, like anthrax or ricin."

The man finished frisking me and stood up. "Go on. I'm not stupid. I was
with the Rainbow Division in Bosnia. If it's not a disease, what is it?"

"I think it's a spiritual force. Like an evil manifestation from the
world beyond."

The man stared at me for almost ten seconds without saying anything.
Then he slowly shook his head and started laughing. One of his friends
from across the street called out, "What's so damn funny, Gil?"

"Got me a screwball here," said Gil.

"Do I look like a screwball?" I demanded.

Gil looked me up and down. "Yes, Harry. You definitely do."

Apart from being moderately drunk, I was still feeling desperately
guilty about splashing Clorox all over Ted, and

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I was exhausted, and disoriented, and I badly needed to show somebody
that I was right about this epidemic. So I said to Gil, "I'll prove it
to you. I'll damn well prove it to you."

"You'll prove it to me? How are you going to do that?"

"If you escort me to my friend's house, she can show you that I'm
telling the truth. We'll hold a séance, and you can see for yourself."

"A séance? You're inviting me to a séance?"

"What's the matter, you got repetitis? That's what I said, a séance. If
we can identify the spirit that's causing all of this chaos, we can do
something about it. Exorcize it, or banish it, or send it back to
wherever it came from."

Gil smiled, and stepped back to indicate that I could pass. "You just
move along, Harry. I think you could do with some strong black coffee
and a very cold shower."

"And supposing I get attacked by 'one of them'?" I demanded. "Or two of
them,' even?"

"Harry--"

"Supposing I never get the chance to tell the city authorities why all
of these people are cutting other people's throats? Thousands more
people could die. Millions, even. Listen to me, Gil. Without me, this
city is doomed. America is doomed."

Gil opened and closed his mouth but didn't say anything. A police squad
car came howling past us, followed by another, and another. I heard
another explosion: a deep, dull thump, somewhere over by the Hudson
River waterfront. I could feel the aftershock right through the soles of
my feet, as if the sidewalk was a rug, and somebody had tugged it.

"How far is your friend's house?" asked Gil.

"Four blocks. Christopher Street, that's all."

"Okay, then, I'll come with you to the front door, give you protection,
but that's all. I ain't attending no séance."

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He walked with me southward toward Christopher Street. It turned out
that his name was Gil Johnson, and he worked for a company on
Twenty-fifth Street that moved pianos. Once, when he had been hauling a
Bechstein into an apartment building on East Fifty-seventh Street, a
steel hawser had snapped and the piano had dropped nine stories into the
street below, flattening a man who had been wanted by the police for
rape and armed robbery. "Now was that supernatural justice or what?" Gil
had a wife and two teenage daughters and he lived and breathed for the
N.Y. Jets. "I love those guys." He had even persuaded Freeman McNeil to
be godfather to his oldest daughter.

"We saw the news about people killing people and me and my buddies
decided we was going to protect our neighborhood. I'm not having no
diseased people cutting my family's throats, no way."

About twenty men and women came running across Charles Street, howling
and screaming, but they didn't pay us any attention. They ran off, their
footsteps echoing like applause. God alone knew where they were headed,
or what they were planning to do when they got there.

"You understand what's going on, Harry?" Gil asked me. "I don't
understand what's going on."

"I think I know what. But don't ask me why."

"I'll tell you something, Harry," said Gil. He showed me his left
forearm, which was tattooed with a grinning skull. "I faced death when I
was out in Bosnia. I looked death right in his hollow eye sockets. I saw
my buddies get shot, and blown up by RPG's, and it was madness out
there. But at least we knew who were fighting. We were fighting the
Serbs, and the Romanian mercenaries, and the Muslims, no matter how
crazy they were. But this--this is like we're fighting everybody and
nobody."

"I think that just about sums it up, Gil. Everybody and nobody."

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Gil turned around and showed me his right bicep. It was tattooed with
the number 10, all wrapped around with razor-wire, and dripping with
blood. "That was us, Number

10 Special Detail. One of the toughest details ever. Our job was to
penetrate the enemy's positions and grab their senior officers--alive,
if we could. Mostly it all went to shit and we ended up blowing their
heads off. But that's who I am. I may shift pianos now, but up here in
my head I'm still a grunt, and I think like a grunt."

At that moment we were passing a liquor store, and as we did so, a
red-and-blue Michelob sign flickered and jumped.

I looked into the store window and saw that the number "10" appeared to
be dancing on his arm--only it was backward, so that it looked like the
letters "OI." A fraction of a second later a great multi-branched tree
of lightning crackled over Battery Park, and there was a deafening
collision of thunder, kabooommmmm! right over our heads.

"Holy shit," said Gil.

It shook me, too--but I believed I knew what had caused it. "O" and
?I?--two new letters. And, judging by that thunderous punctuation mark,
maybe they were the last two letters, and I was now in possession of the
whole word. I stopped, my face lifted to the sky, turning around and
around on the sidewalk. "Singing Rock! Singing Rock! Is that you again?"

Gil waited for me, with his hands on his hips.

"You're definitely a screwball, Harry, no doubt about that."

"I wish. Singing Rock is my spirit guide. He's been trying to tell me
who started this epidemic."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. The problem is, he has to give me the name in individual
letters, a couple at a time. He can't tell me the entire name outright,
because if I say it outright, the thing will come after me, whatever it
is, and rip my throat out, or something equally undesirable."

"If you say so, Harry."

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"Gil, will you just trust me? So far, he's given me five letters--'s'
and 't' and 'r' and 'i' and 'g'. Now I looked at your tattoo just then
and there was a damn great rumble of thunder which really emphasized
what I was looking at, the letters 'o' and 'i.'

I held up my hand and counted the letters off on my fingers. "So far we
have S-T-R-I-G-O-I which spells--"

"Don't say it!" Gil screamed at me. It was so unexpected that he made me
jump.

I stared at him, shocked. "What? I was only trying to--"

"Don't say it, man! I know that word! I know what it means!"

"What do you mean you know what it means?"


"They were always using it in Bosnia, the Romanian mercenaries. It was
like an insult, only it was worse than an insult. It was what they
called somebody they were really scared of."

"You mean stri--"

"Don't say it! For Christ's sake, it's too much of a coincidence! If
people have been killing people and drinking their blood--that's like
vampires, man, and that's what it means. It means vampire."

"You're pulling my chain."

"I'm not, Harry, I swear it. You can check it out. That word means
vampire and that's what your spirit guide didn't want you to say it out
loud. Even in Bosnia they never said it loud, not unless they were all
hyped up, and even then it wasn't like they were talking about real
vampires."

"Vampires?" I repeated. "Come on, Gil, is this likely? I know they keep
calling it a 'vampire epidemic' on the news, but that's only because
people have been drinking blood."

"But why not?" said Gil. "You said yourself that this epidemic was
caused by some kind of evil spirits, didn't you? Maybe this is what they
are. Real, genuine vampires."

"Gil, I'm not at all sure that I believe in real, genuine

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vampires." I put on my Bela Lugosi accent." 'The children of the
night... what music they make?"

"You believe in spirits, though, don't you?" Gil persisted. "You believe
in all of that Twilight Zone stuff? Come on, man, you've just told me
you have a spirit guide called Singing Rock."

"Listen, Gil, you're supposed to be the skeptic around here."

"Yes, but that word, man! Jesus, I haven't heard that word in eleven
years but when you spelled it out--that really made my hair stand on end."

"Okay" I said. "I guess it's worth looking into. We can ask my friend
about it when she holds her séance."

"You mean you can ask her. I told you, I ain't going to no séance,
especially if you're going to start talking about vampires."

"You fought in Bosnia and you're scared of vampires?"

"Are you kidding me? I fought in Bosnia and that's exactly why I'm
scared of vampires."

We reached Amelia's apartment on Christopher Street. She and Bertil
lived in a second-floor studio in one of those elegant
nineteenth-century apartment blocks that were originally built for the
clothing industry, with high windows and decorative columns. The first
floor was taken up by Christopher Street Cashmere, which sold
strawberry-colored men's sweaters to the kind of men who would pay $400
for a strawberry-colored sweater. And lemon-colored sweaters, too. And pink.

I climbed the steps at the side of the building to the shiny olive-green
front door and pressed the shiny brass doorbell marked Carlson. I waited
and waited, and eventually Bertil said, "Hello?" through the intercom.

"Bertie? It's me, Harry Erskine."

"For God's sake, Harry, what are you doing here? Don't you know what
time it is?"

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"Bertil, I have to talk to Amelia. It's incredibly urgent."

"I told you earlier, Harry, I don't want you involving Amelia in any of
your problems, whatever they are. Now please go away."

"Believe me, Bertil, I wouldn't bother you if this wasn't critical. But
we're talking about thousands of people's lives here. Your life too, and
Amelia's, and mine."

"I'm sorry, Harry. I have to think about Amelia's best interests."

But then Gil leaned forward and said, "Excuse me, sir? This is Gil
Johnson, Forty-second infantry division, New York National Guard. I
believe that we need to give Harry some assistance here."

"National Guard? What do you want from us? I don't understand."

"This epidemic, sir. This gentleman believes that he knows what's
causing it, and he needs your good lady's assistance."

"And what if I say no?"

Gil looked at me and winked. "I'm authorized under martial law to arrest
you for obstructing the military, sir, and to require your good lady to
assist us in any way that she can."

There was a very long silence, and then the door release buzzed. I
pushed open the door and we walked into the darkened hallway.


"Are you coming up?" I asked Gil.

Gil pulled a face. "I don't know. I'm not too sure I want to get
involved in this."

"Come on, Gil, think about your family, too. I need your authority. If
you don't come up, he's not going to believe this martial law thing, is he?"

The two of us squashed together into the tiny elevator and went up one
floor. When the door slid back Bertie was waiting for us--a tall, thin
man with gray, brushed-back hair and rimless spectacles, wearing a loose
beige shirt and baggy beige pants and sandals. I grudgingly had to admit
that he was reasonably handsome, even if he looked as

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if he drank nothing but carbonated spring water and ate nothing but
Swedish crispbread.

"So here you are, then, Harry," he said, making no effort to hide his
annoyance. "You and your companion had better come in." We stepped out
of the elevator and into the living area. The apartment was very
Scandinavian, with blond wooden floors and furniture that gave you a
serious ache in your butt just to look at it. On the walls hung several
huge paintings of blue Scandinavian blobs, and in one corner stood an
abstract sculpture of a triangular thing dangling from a skinny
rectangular thing. It wasn't easy to reconcile all of this carefully
arranged emptiness with Amelia's old apartment in the Milage, which had
been heaped up with books and armchairs and rolled-up carpets and
reading lamps and blotchy old engravings, not to mention a few dirty
dinner plates.

"Tasteful," I remarked, looking around.

But then Amelia appeared, crossing the floor in a gauzy, white dreamlike
dress. She seemed taller, until I realized that she was wearing
wedge-heeled sandals, but she was certainly thinner, and freshly
suntanned, and her curly hair was cropped very short. She was no longer
wearing glasses, either.

She looked extraordinary, at least ten years younger than the last time
I saw her. Her face was still sharply featured, and her cheekbones were
still prominent, but she didn't seem to have any wrinkles at all. Her
breasts had always been noticeable but now they looked bigger than ever,
and firmer, too. She was wearing about two thousand gold bangles on her
wrists and a modern necklace made of big lumpy pieces of gold.

"Harry," she said. "How wonderful to see you again." She flowed right up
to me and put her arms around me, and kissed me, and kissed me again,
and again. God, she smelled good. All woman and Chanel. Meanwhile Bertie

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was pursing up his mouth as if he were trying to suck battery acid
through a blocked straw.

"Amelia, you look fabulous," I told her. "Whatever Bertie's been feeding
you on, it definitely agrees with you."

"Bertil," she corrected me. "Yes, Bertil's been taking very good care of
me, haven't you, Bertil?"

"I like to think so," said Bertie, trying to smile, although I could
tell that he felt like running around the apartment, kicking over
abstract sculptures and screaming Swedish obscenities.

"Smorgasbord, I'll bet," I said. "Nothing like those open sandwiches,
hey, Bertie? Saves you a fortune, leaving off that top slice of bread,
and who really needs it?"

"You're looking tired, Harry," said Amelia.

"Tired, scruffy, down-at-heel, that's right. Well, you know about me and
Karen. It was good while it lasted but it was never going to last. She
was always going to be too high-end for a mook like me."

"You shouldn't put yourself down, Harry. You have very great sensitivity."

"By the way," I said, "I'd like you to meet Gil Johnson of the Rainbow
Division. Gil, this is Amelia, my psychic friend, and this is her
husband Bertie."

"Bertil," Bertil corrected me, shaking Gil's hand. "Perhaps I can offer
you gentlemen a drink? Tea, or coffee, or a soda?"

"I could murder a beer, if you have one."

"I have Pripps."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"Pripps is the best-quality Swedish beer, brewed in Stockholm."

"In that case, thanks, don't mind if I do. Amelia--I can't believe how
terrific you look. Do you ever hear from MacArthur? What a guy! Do you
remember that night that you and MacArthur ran all the way around Washington

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Square Park with nothing on but paper bags over your heads? I couldn't
touch tequila for about a year after that."

Bertie came back with two bottles of frosty-cold beer, and a frosty-cold
expression on his face. "Do you think you could get to the point, Harry?"

I sat down in one of those orthopedic armchairs. Poor Gil remained
standing. He was looking very uncomfortable, but he obviously thought it
would be impolite to swig his beer down and go. Bertie sat very close to
Amelia, with one hand resting possessively on her thigh, giving her an
occasional squeeze.

I swallowed beer, and it was so cold that it made me hiccup. "This
vampire epidemic, I'm one hundred percent sure that it's being caused by
some kind of malevolent spirit. Don't ask me how, or why, but Gil thinks
it could even be a real vampire."

"A real vampire?" said Bertie. "Vampires are in the movies. Vampires
can't be real."

"Well, maybe you're right, and we're making fools of ourselves. But
Singing Rock has managed to give me the vampire's name, and Gil says
it's the same name that Romanians used out in Bosnia, when they wanted
to call somebody a butcher or a blood-sucker."

"Singing Rock?" asked Bertie. "Who or what is Singing Rock?"

"He's a Native American medicine man we used to know. He's passed over
now, but he still acts as my spirit guide."

"You mean he's dead?"

"In the sense that he's no longer physically with us, yes, I suppose you
could say that he is."

"So a dead man has given you a name, and this name is Romanian for
vampires, and this is why we must believe that New York has been invaded
by vampires?" Actually, he said "inwaded by wampires."

"Erm, yes."

"What's the name?" asked Amelia.

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"Oh, for God's sake," said Bertie.

I ignored him. To give the poor fellow some credit, he hadn't come
across anything genuinely supernatural before, and I can remember my
first encounter with things from beyond. I thought it was wall-to-wall
bullshit.

"Singing Rock said that I shouldn't say it out loud, because the spirit
would hear me, and come looking for me. But if you give me a pencil and
a piece of paper..."

Amelia passed me a notepad from the Martinez Hotel, in Cannes, France,
and a gold mechanical pencil. I wrote down STRIGOI, and pushed it across
the glass-topped coffee table to Amelia.

She leaned forward to look at what I had written, but then she
immediately sat up straight, staring at me as if I had done something
truly appalling.

"Oh my God" she said. "Oh, Harry. Oh my God."

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11

Blood Fever

The creature's shrieking went on and on, like a knife scraping on glass,
but then it stopped, abruptly; and then there was only the clamor of the
hospital, and the roaring of the city outside.

Frank stayed where he was, straining his eyes in the darkness. He
thought he could see shadows moving in front of the window, but it could
have been the lights of a passing helicopter, criss-crossing down the
airshaft.

He cleared his throat and called out, "Who's there? Whoever you are, I'm
warning you, I'm calling security."

He wasn't sure that he had spoken loud enough for the thing to have
heard him, because it had scared him so badly. It had looked spidery and
disproportionate, the sort of creature that appears only in the very
sweatiest of nightmares. But although it had been impossibly stretched,
it had also looked unnervingly human--as if it would be capable of
logical thinking, and even talking. In the split second that he had
looked into its eyes, Frank had seen a

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terrible knowingness. And contempt, too, and only humans were capable of
contempt.

"I'm going for security now!" he shouted. "Do you hear me? I'm going to
have your ass thrown out of here so goddamned fast!"

As he started to edge his way out of the room, however, the lights
suddenly ping-clicked back on again. He blinked, and shielded his eyes.
The window was still open, but the shadow creature had gone. The floor
was still covered with rows of bodies, all tied up in sheets, but the
young girl who had been climbing out of the window had disappeared, too,
and so had the young man who had been following her.

Frank thought he ought to call security, but what would they say, if he
tried to tell them that he had just seen a stretched-out shadow
creature, and dead people who could come back to life? He was already
feeling off balance, and he was sure that he was running a fever. Maybe
he was still dreaming all of this; or maybe he was sick, and he was
hallucinating. There was no way of telling what was real and what was
imaginary. He could be lying in bed at home, fast asleep, and none of
this was happening, except as a shadow-theater inside his mind.

Cautiously, he made his way toward the window, stepping over bodies as
he did so. When he got there, he looked out into the airshaft. The main
hospital building went up as far as the seventh story, with a
thirty-five-story tower on the northeast corner. All he could see were
the lighted windows of the wards and the corridors opposite, and people
hurrying to and fro. In the distance, he heard the indigestive grumbling
of thunder. He must have dreamed the stretched-out creature, or imagined
it. His throat was so sore that he could barely swallow, and his skin
was burning.

He was just about to turn away from the window when

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there was a dazzling crack of lightning, and the air was so charged with
electricity that Frank felt his scalp prickle and his teeth buzz
together. There was another crack, and then another. He looked upward,
toward the sky. And it was then that he saw what had happened to the
creature, and the two young people it had been helping to climb out of
the storeroom.

They were two-thirds of the way up the airshaft--not just them, but ten
or twelve more, all of them still wrapped up in their hospital sheets.
They were climbing the sheer concrete walls as quickly as if they were
huge white spiders, not even using the window ledges or the drainpipes
to help them.

Frank stared at them, appalled. They were dead, those people. That's why
they were wrapped up in sheets. And yet here they were, climbing up the
airshaft, and disappearing over the edge of the hospital roof. What had
Susan Fireman said? "Any wall can be climbed, Frank, if you have the
ability to climb it." But if you were dead?

He watched until the last of the climbers had vanished. Then he slammed
the window and turned the security key. He was shaking uncontrollably,
and his skin was so sensitive that he could hardly bear the feel of his
clothes. He needed to tell somebody what he had seen. But who was going
to listen to him, especially with patients dying in every corridor, and
hundreds more victims trying to force their way into the hospital?

He left the storeroom and went back into the morgue, and stood among the
sheet-swaddled bodies, shivering. He was still there when Helen Bryers
reappeared. "Doctor?" she frowned, putting down her purse. "Is
everything all right? You really don't look well."

"Keep the window in the storeroom closed," he told her, in a hoarse voice.

"What? It isn't open."

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"Not now it isn't. I closed it myself, and locked it. But make sure you
keep it that way. There's something around."

She stared at him through her magnifying spectacles. "I'm sorry, doctor.
I don't understand what you mean."

"Someone managed to get in. A prowler. I caught him in the storeroom,
but he managed to get away. He was--he was disturbing some of the cadavers."

"He did what? What are you talking about?"

Frank had to lean against the stainless-steel bench to keep his balance.
At the far end of the bench, next to the faucets, lay an open instrument
case full of scalpels and lancets. He couldn't help thinking that all he
had to do was pick up a scalpel, and slit Helen Bryers' throat. One deep
slice would do it, and then all of that warm, refreshing blood would
come pumping out. He could clamp his mouth over her neck, and swallow,
and swallow, and all of that hoarseness would be eased, and his skin
would stop itching, and he wouldn't feel so burningly thirsty any longer.

"Doctor?" said Helen Bryers. "Maybe we should call security. I mean, if
there's really an intruder--"

Frank nodded. "You're right, Helen. Maybe we should. I'll go talk to
them now."

He pushed his way out of the morgue and into the corridor. He tilted
from one wall to the other, and his vision was jumbled like a handheld
camera. He could hear people shouting, and the clatter of gurneys, but
he felt as if this was all happening to somebody else.

As he made his way through the ER, he heard Dean shouting to him.
"Frank! Frank! I could really use some help here!" He turned around, and
he could see Dean trying to help a young woman who was kneeling on the
floor, vomiting up cascades of blood. But he felt too feverish, and he
knew that none of these people could be saved. Dean shouted at him
again, but he pushed his way through to the entrance, and back out into
the night.

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What do I do now? he thought to himself. Where do I go? Maybe I ought to
go home and crawl back into bed. Then I can finish this nightmare, and
wake up properly, and none of this chaos will have happened.

The streets outside the Sisters of Jerusalem were packed with struggling
people. Some of them were still screaming, and some of them had dropped
to their knees, babbling and swaying from side to side. But most of them
were silent, although their eyes were staring and they were bearded with
blood. "Save my boy!" a black woman called out, holding up a lolling
child in blood-soaked pajamas. "Please, sir, for the love of God, won't
you save my boy?"

Frank lifted his left hand to block out the sight of her. From the angle
of the child's head, and the gaping wound in his neck, it was obvious
that he was already dead. Turning away, Frank tripped on a woman's body
and almost fell. The night was so hot that he could hardly breathe, and
his skin was burning so fiercely that he felt like tearing off his
shirt. Yet he couldn't bear the thought of water. If he splashed himself
with water, he was sure that he would be scalded. He needed to slather
himself in fresh, warm blood.

He was still stumbling around behind the police lines when somebody came
up behind him and gripped his shoulder.

"Dr. Winter? Dr. Winter?''

He swiveled around. It was Lieutenant Hayward Roberts. The lieutenant
looked tired and grim and disheveled, and the red-and-blue police lights
were dancing on his sweaty face. Not far away stood Detective Paul
Mancini, talking on his cell phone. Detective Mancini's white shirt was
torn and his left eye was half-closed by a glossy crimson bruise.

Lieutenant Roberts had to shout to make himself heard over the sirens
and the noise of the crowd. "Glad we found you, doc! We've just been
talking to your boss!"

"Oh, yes?"

"We found out what it meant! Tattle nostrew! We

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thought--you know--it might help to give us some answers!"

"You found out what it meant?" With a feeling of complete unreality,
Frank thought: Why are you telling me this? I know what it means. He
couldn't quite translate it word for word, but he knew that when
Lieutenant Roberts explained it to him, it wouldn't come as any surprise.

Lieutenant Roberts took out a damp red handkerchief and wiped his face.
Then he leaned forward and said, "I mentioned it to one of our
detectives, back to the precinct. He's Romanian, a guy called Cioran."

"Our Father," said Frank.

Lieutenant Roberts stared at him. "That's right. 'Our Father.' How do
you know?"

"I'm not exactly sure. But I guess when you think about it, it's
obvious. The way that everybody was chanting it, it sounded like a
prayer, and what's the one prayer that everybody knows by heart? 'Tatal
nostru, carele esti in ceruri...' Our Father, who art in heaven."

"So you worked that out already? You could have saved us a journey."

"No, no," said Frank. "It just came to me, I don't know how. But I'm
really pleased you made the effort. At least we know for sure." He
swayed a little. He felt so hot that he was sure that the skin on his
face must be bubbling up in blisters. "Who did you talk to?"

"Your boss, Dr. Pellman; and a couple of your senior medics. But they
didn't seem to think that it helped them any. In fact they found it more
baffling than ever. Why is everybody who gets sick saying the Lord's
Prayer, in Romanian? Like Dr. Pellman said, you can catch the chicken
pox, and you can catch the influenza, but you can't catch a language."

"Mass hysteria, maybe," said Frank, thickly. God, he felt bad.

"Well, if it is, it's not like your usual mass hysteria.

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According to Dr. Pellman, there's been plenty of case histories of
people thinking they're possessed by Satan, and cursing, and talking
gibberish--and from what he knew, that kind of hysteria can spread
pretty quickly, given the right social circumstances. Happened in
Pennsylvania in the 1880s, apparently; and in Utah, among the Mormons.
But nobody ever started speaking word-perfect Romanian, nor any other
language."

Frank said, "Well, no. I never heard of that either. But I can't think
why they're doing it, or how. Look--you'll have to forgive me. I'm not
feeling too good myself. I was trying to get home."

"That's okay, doc. We can give you a ride."

"I'd be very grateful. I think the stress is beginning to get to me."

Lieutenant Roberts went over to the police lines, and spoke to the
sergeant in charge. The sergeant called forward six or seven officers to
help them through the crowds toward their car. There was some pushing
and shoving and indignant shouting, but nobody became really aggressive.
They climbed into Lieutenant Roberts' Buick, and locked the doors.
People stared into the windows, and smeared blood all over the glass,
but they seemed to be curious rather than hostile, and when Detective
Mancini started up the engine and gradually nudged the car through the
crowds, they shuffled out of the way and let them through.

"This thing is just spreading and spreading," said Lieutenant Roberts.
"Unless you doctors can find out what's causing it, I don't see what we
can do to stop it. We've had so many homicides, citywide, people with
their throats cut, we've completely lost count. And there doesn't seem
to be any logic to it. None at all."

Frank thought of Susan Fireman, back at his apartment. He wondered if
she was still there (if she had ever been there, and this wasn't a
nightmare). Susan Fireman seemed

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to know what this epidemic was all about. She could climb impossible
walls and she knew all about "passing through," whatever that was.
Darkness, and shadows, and closed boxes. Maybe if Lieutenant Roberts
could arrest her, and interrogate her, she might give them the leads
that they were looking for.

His hands were burning so fiercely that he clamped them under his
armpits to relieve the pain.

Lieutenant Roberts heaved himself around in the front passenger seat and
said, "You okay, doc? You're really looking logey."

"I'm okay. Just tired, I guess."

"Hmh! Just so long as you don't start chanting that 'tattle nostrew' stuff."

"Me? No, no. I don't think I'm quite that bad." Although he couldn't
help thinking, "tatal nostru ... carele esti in ceruri... sfinteasca-se
numele tau..." He could almost hear it sung inside his head, in a high,
childish soprano.

"Si nu ne duce pre noi in inspita... lead us not into temptation ...ci
ne scapa de eel rau ... but deliver us from evil. Amin."

They reached Frank's apartment building in the tree-lined street on
Murray Hill and Detective Mancini pulled into the curb.

Lieutenant Roberts said, "Listen, doc, if you think of anything--give me
a call. Anything, even if you think it sounds stupid."

"Well... there is something. That girl Susan Fireman ... the first one
to get sick."

"What about her?"

"I think I might have been hallucinating, or dreaming, maybe. But she
appeared in my apartment."

"She appeared in your apartment," Lieutenant Roberts repeated.

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"This was after she died, right?" asked Detective Mancini.

"Yes."

Lieutenant Roberts thought about that for a while, and then he said,
"Maybe you need to take some time off, doc. A situation like this...
well, it can throw you off-balance more than you realize."

"You don't have to tell me that, lieutenant, I'm a doctor. I'm fully
prepared to admit that I might have been suffering from exhaustion, or
stress, or some kind of mental aberration. But it certainly didn't feel
like a mental aberration, at the time. And it still doesn't feel like
it, even now. In fact, I'm ninety percent confident that if I go
upstairs right now, she'll still be there, waiting for me."

Lieutenant Roberts puffed out his cheeks, and thought some more. "So
what do you want me to do, doc? Ms. Susan Fireman is wanted for multiple
homicide, and if she's really hiding in your apartment, then I need to
go up there and arrest her. But I know for a fact that Ms. Susan Fireman
is deceased, so why should I waste my time?"

"She's dead, yes," Frank admitted. "I was right there in the room when
she died. But somehow she came back. She climbed up into my apartment
when I was asleep and she--"

"She what, doc?" asked Detective Mancini.

Frank opened the Buick's door. "Nothing. You're right. I must have
dreamt it."

"She what?" repeated Lieutenant Roberts.

Frank hesitated, but when he saw that they weren't going to leave him
until he had given them an answer, he said, "She forced me to have
intercourse with her. It was a sex dream, I guess."

Lieutenant Roberts climbed out of the car. "I think I'm going to take a
look in your apartment, Dr. Winter. I don't believe for one moment that
Ms. Fireman is actually there, but I need to satisfy my insatiable
curiosity."

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"Believe me, lieutenant--"

"I do believe you, doc. I believe that you believe that Ms. Fireman came
to visit you after she was deceased, and had carnal relations with you.
But I want to know why you believe such a thing."

"I didn't steal her body from the hospital, if that's what you're trying
to imply. When she climbed into my apartment she was alive, and she was
talking, and she was quite capable of forcing me to have sex with her."

"You're saying she raped you?"

"Not exactly. But she was very compelling, and I was afraid of her.
Well, anybody would have been afraid of her. She was supposed to be
dead. She was dead."

Lieutenant Roberts took hold of Frank's arm. "Come on, doc, let's make a
quick inspection, shall we? I don't need a search warrant, do I, seeing
as how you're inviting me up to your apartment?"

"I don't know--I don't think--I'm really not feeling too good--"

"Won't take but a minute, doc," said Lieutenant Roberts, and helped him
up the front steps, gripping his arm so tightly that Frank didn't have a
chance of breaking free. Frank found his keys and opened the front door.

His apartment was in darkness, and so he switched on the spotlights.
Lieutenant Roberts walked into the center of the living room and looked
around, while Detective Mancini went through to the kitchen.

"Very stylish place you have here," said Lieutenant Roberts. He picked
up a small chrome statuette of a dancing nude. "Jon Diavolo," he said.
"Must have cost you a good few ulcer treatments."

"It was a gift from my sister."

Lieutenant Roberts put it down. He picked up a book of matches from the
Red Bench on Sullivan Street, a onetime

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Mafia hangout, but now a popular bar for Soho drinkers who didn't like
tourists. "Where did you say Ms. Fireman climbed in?"

"I didn't. But the bedroom window was the only one that was open."

"You want to show me?"

Frank led him through to the bedroom. The sheets were still twisted, and
the pillows were scattered across the floor.

"Rough night?" asked Lieutenant Roberts. Frank shrugged, but didn't say
anything. He couldn't. His throat was raging, and his skin felt as if he
had burned himself sunbathing, and then climbed into a scalding bath.

Lieutenant Roberts inspected the window and then he said, "Beats me how
anybody could get in there. Even a contortionist."

"I'm really going to have to lie down," said Frank. Maybe if he wrapped
himself up in a sheet and crouched on the bed in the fetal position, his
skin wouldn't burn so fiercely. Oh God, help me, he thought. Tatal
nostru, carele esti in ceruri.

"Are you in a hurry to get rid of us?" asked Lieutenant Roberts. He
opened up Frank's closet and inspected his neatly arranged shirts and
suits. "Very nice threads," he remarked. "Good to see a man who cares
about his clothes."

At that moment Detective Mancini came in.

"Nobody?" said Lieutenant Roberts.

Detective Mancini shook his head. "I even checked the laundry hamper."

"Okay, then. It looks like we need to get back to the precinct, and add
to the general sense of helplessness. Thanks for showing us around, doc.
Why don't you get some rest, that's my recommendation, and maybe
something solid to eat."

Through the bedroom door, Frank saw a quick, pale flicker. At first
glance he thought that it was Detective

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Mancini's shirt, reflected in the full-length mirror that hung in the
hall. But as Detective Mancini stepped to one side, away from the
mirror, Frank saw to his horror that it was Susan Fireman. She was
wearing her simple white gown, and her face was white, too, as if it had
been dusted with flour. But she wasn't in the hall.

She was inside the mirror, as if the mirror were an open doorway, and
she were standing in another room.

Detective Mancini had his back to the mirror, and couldn't see her, even
though he was only five or six inches away. "Ready to hit the bricks
then, Lieutenant?"

"Mmh-hmh. I'm coming." Lieutenant Roberts was taking a last look under
the bed, just to make sure that nobody was hiding there.

Frank shouted out, in a hoarse, breathless voice, "There! For Christ's
sake! She's there! Look! Behind you! She's there!"

Susan Fireman turned toward him and gave him a wicked, conspiratorial smile.

"There!" Frank repeated.

Detective Mancini frowned, and said, "What? Where?"

He started to turn around, but Susan Fireman's arms flowed out of the
mirror and Frank saw the sharp glint of steel. With one deep, diagonal
cut, she sliced Detective Mancini's throat all the way across, flooding
his collar with scarlet. Detective Mancini took one jerky step forward,
trying to balance, then another. He looked totally bewildered. But then
his head tilted backward and a huge fountain of blood came gushing out
of his neck, spurting right up to the ceiling and all across the
magnolia-painted walls. He tipped sideways and fell against the hall
bureau, knocking his head against the brass handles. He lay on his
stomach, his feet jiggling in a desperate little dance.

Lieutenant Roberts said, "What the fuck--" He reached inside his coat,
trying to pull his gun out, but he wasn't quick enough for Susan
Fireman. She stepped out of the

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mirror and then--blink--she was already in the bedroom, as if several
frames of her movements had been edited out. Lieutenant Roberts was
turning around to face her, his gun half out of its holster, but
then--blink--she was standing right behind him.

Frank shouted, "Susan!" but he was already too late. Susan Fireman slit
Lieutenant Roberts' throat so quickly that he didn't even see her do it.
Blood burst out from beneath his chin and immediately soaked the front
of his shirt.

Without hesitation, Susan Fireman pushed Lieutenant Roberts onto his
knees, but then she seized his collar so that he couldn't fall forward
onto his face. She looked up at Frank and her pale-blue eyes were
bulging. "Here!" she panted. "Here's what you need, Frank! This will
make you feel better!"

She gripped Lieutenant Roberts' curly gray hair and pulled his head
back, so that the wound in his throat gaped even wider. She had cut
incredibly deep, right through his sternocleidomastoid muscle, severing
his external jugular vein and his carotid artery.

Frank stared at the wound in horror, and then at Susan Fireman. Her face
was almost luminous with excitement. "Look at it!" she told him. You're
letting it all go to waste! God almighty, Frank, if you don't have it,
then I will!"

As a doctor, Frank had sworn never to hurt anybody. Above all, I shall
not play God. But Lieutenant Roberts was probably semiconscious by now,
and there was absolutely no chance of saving his life. Meanwhile,
Frank's skin was burning hotter and hotter. He felt as if he had been
doused in gasoline and set ablaze, and his throat was so dry and
constricted that his vocal cords had shriveled.

And there was something else, too. A dark and uncontrollable need was
rising up inside him like a shark rising to the surface of the ocean,
drawn by the scent of blood. Frank had never realized before how
strongly blood smelled, even fresh blood, but he could smell it now.

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Warm, and metallic, and teeming with life. In spite of his agony, or
partly because of it, his penis began to harden, and he began to salivate.

Oh God forgive me, he thought. He hesitated for a moment, looking one
way and then the other, but then he knelt down, cupping Lieutenant
Roberts' chin in his left hand, and placing his right hand flat on his
chest, so that he could tilt his head back even further. Blood was
jumping seven or eight inches out of Lieutenant Roberts' carotid artery,
and when Frank leaned forward with his mouth open, it splashed against
Frank's cheek, and then his nose. For a split second, he thought that he
could find the strength to turn away, but then blood spurted across his
lips, and when he involuntarily licked it, the taste overwhelmed him.

With a grunt of sheer greed, he clamped his lips over Lieutenant
Roberts' wound so that his warm blood would jet directly onto the roof
of his mouth. The flavor was astonishing. It tasted like iron, and
molasses, and raw meat, and oysters, and the fresh juices of sexually
aroused women. He swallowed, and almost at once his throat began to open
up, and he felt an extraordinary cooling sensation, starting at the top
of his head, and gradually sinking down his body, as if somebody with
very cold hands was lightly teasing him from top to toe. He swallowed
more, and more. He couldn't swallow enough of it. His penis was so rigid
that it hurt, and when the blood flow from Lieutenant Roberts' carotid
artery started to weaken, and he had to suck harder, he felt himself
ejaculate, and his shorts fill up with sticky wet semen.

But he went on swallowing, and swallowing, and gasping for air, until
suddenly it was all too rich for him, and he retched, and vomited blood
all down the front of Lieutenant Roberts' coat.

Slowly, he lifted his head. Susan Fireman was looking down at him with
an expression that he had never seen on

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any human being before. In a way, it reminded him of the slanting
shadow-creature that he had seen in the morgue. It was a mixture of
contempt, and pity, but relief, too, as if he were a wayward son who had
at last decided to come home.

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12

Blood Relatives

"I can't help you with this, Harry," said Amelia. "This isn't your Uncle
Walter trying to get his revenge on you because you sold off his
precious stamp collection."

"Amelia, I never had an Uncle Walter."

"Of course you didn't. I'm simply trying to tell you that this is way
out of my league."

"But you're the best! You're the creme de la milk."

Amelia emphatically shook her head. "When it comes to small-scale stuff,
like people's dead relatives, I'm fine, Harry, I can handle it. A wife
dies, her husband remarries. The wife's dead but she still feels
jealous. She starts throwing pots and pans across the kitchen, or maybe
she creates obnoxious smells in the bedroom, when her husband's trying
to make love. I can talk to a spirit like that, negotiate with her, calm
her down. I can make her understand that life has to go on, even though
she's passed over. But this is something else altogether. This is one of
the reasons I gave up clairvoyance. This is very deep water, Harry, and
you could easily drown."

I had picked up my beer bottle to take a swig but now I

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put it down again. "Amelia--when Misquamacus was reincarnated--you were
amazing. He was the greatest Indian wonder-worker in history, and you
were more than a match for him, weren't you? We wouldn't even have known
who Misquamacus was, or what he was trying to do, if it hadn't been for
you."

Bertie cleared his throat. "If my wife does not feel that she can help
you, Harry, you will have to accept it."

"But she can help us. She has to. I mean, who else is there?"

Amelia picked up the piece of paper with STRIGOI written on it. "Your
friend Gil here is absolutely right. This is one of the Romanian words
for 'vampires.' I don't know very much about them, only what my friend
Razvan Dragomir has told me, but I do know that these are supposed to be
real, live vampires, not storybook vampires, and that most Romanians are
still very afraid of them--not just peasants, city-dwellers,
too--educated people, like doctors and university professors and lawyers."

"So I was right, and we are being invaded by vampires?"

"This is absurdness!" Bertie protested. "Just because you can't
understand something, you believe immediately that it must be
supernatural! Wampires indeed! Are we children? There is no such thing
as wampires!"

None of us said anything, but we all looked at each other, like students
waiting for their angry teacher to finish ranting.

Bertie said, "In a few days, hopefully, the doctors will discover that
this epidemic is caused by a pathogen that infects people with a very

unpleasing thirst for human blood. The pathogen will be isolated and an
antidote will be formulated. It will be straightforward science, my
friend. Nothing to do with garlic and crosses and stakes through the heart."

"You think so?" I challenged him. "In that case, how

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come I saw Singing Rock and Singing Rock gave me the letters that make
up the Romanian word for vampires? That wasn't straightforward science,
was it?"

"No" said Bertie. "It was your fevered imagination, running like a
guinea pig in a little wheel."

"Now come on, Bertie--" I began.

But Amelia said, "Harry... Bertil simply doesn't believe in ghosts and
demons and things like that. He thinks that they're caused by a glitch
in the human brain."

"In particular, an aberration of the amygdala," said Bertie, "the center
of human fear."

I looked at him in disbelief. "Amelia hasn't told you about Misquamacus?"

"Of course. Amelia has told me everything about the life she lived
before we met."

"Bertie--Misquamacus was no aberration of the Dalai Lama, or whatever it
is. He was an Indian wonder-worker from three hundred years ago and he
was reincarnated in a woman's neck. Not just any woman, either, but the
woman I married. We saw it for ourselves. I saw it, Amelia saw it.
Misquamacus almost managed to summon up some of the greatest forces that
the ancient world had ever known. Storms, lightning, earthquakes, it was
unbelievable. He could have reduced the whole of Manhattan to rubble. If
it hadn't been for Amelia and Singing Rock... well, God knows what would
have happened. But that was real."

Bertie nodded and kept on nodding. "I am quite sure that you perceived
it to be real."

"You want me to introduce you to Dr. Hughes? He was there, at the
Sisters of Jerusalem, when Misquamacus was reincarnated, and he lost
three fingers to some invisible lizard. Why don't you tell him that he
only perceived it? Eleven cops got killed. Why don't you tell their
families that they only perceived it? Pity their kids can't perceive
them coming home again."

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Bertie stood up. "Harry, I am not going to argue with you about the
nature of reality. I am simply telling you that Amelia is not going to
get involved in this insanity, whether you are right or wrong."

I looked at Amelia. There was an expression on her face that I had only
seen once before. It was sadness for something that had gone and that
could never be recovered. Maybe it was youth, or happiness, or courage.
Maybe it was all three.

"Okay," I said. I was tempted to ask Amelia what she thought, but it
wouldn't have been fair. Once upon a time she might have been Amelia
Crusoe, psychic and clairvoyant, with wild curly hair and jingly
earrings, but now she was Mrs. Amelia Carlson, and I had no right to ask
her to be disloyal to her husband, even if he was an asshole.

"Go see Razvan," she said. "He can probably help you. He's written half
a dozen books about Romanian witchcraft, and he's probably the greatest
expert on vampire legends outside of Bucharest. He's also very
sensitive. I met him at a psychic fair in White Plains."

"This is such nonsense," said Bertie, with an abrasive laugh. "Why are
you wasting Harry's time like this?"

Amelia wrote down a name and address on the notepad, tore it off, and
handed it to me. Bertie gave a dismissive pfff! but he didn't try to
stop her.

"Thanks," I said. Then, to Bertie, "Sorry. I shouldn't have come around
here. I didn't mean to rub your fur up all the wrong way."

"Well, it's forgotten," said Bertie. "It's just that I was brought up to
be pragmatic, and to believe in scientific evidence rather than
superstition." He put his arm around Amelia's shoulders. "When I met
Amelia, I considered it the challenge of my life to show her that no
matter how strange events may be, they cannot be explained by magic, or
by cards, or crystal balls."

He showed us to the door. Gil said, "Thanks for the beer,

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sir," and nodded to Amelia. "Thanks, ma'am. Thanks for trying, anyhow."

Outside, on the street, he turned around to face me. "Harry," he said,
with great solemnity, "I believe you."

"You do?"

"This epidemic. It is vampires, isn't it?"

"Well, I believe so. Or some kind of supernatural force."

"You bet. Did you see her face when you showed her that piece of paper?
That was the face of a woman who is truly, genuinely scared shitless. I
know. I've seen faces like that before, in Bosnia."

"I'm sure I could have persuaded her to help us, if hubby had let her."

"Well, I don't know about that. But I do know that she wasn't just
play-acting. She saw that word and she went white. And that's why I
believe you. It would have been much easier for her if she had lied to
you, because her husband doesn't believe in vampires, and he was bound
to give her a hard time about it. But she didn't, did she? And if she
thinks this epidemic is being caused by vampires, and you think it's
caused by vampires, then I do, too."

At that moment my cell phone warbled. It was Amelia.

"Harry? Listen, I'm so sorry I couldn't do anything more to help you
out. Bertil--well, he's very protective, and he's a little jealous, too,
of the people I used to know before we met."

"Don't worry," I reassured her. "Gil and I are going to see your
Romanian friend right now. I'll tell you what--I'll keep you up to
speed, so that you know what's going on. Maybe you can give us some
helpful hints."

"Harry?"

"What?"

I don't know why I said "what?" I knew from the tone of her voice
exactly what she meant. It was like meeting an old girlfriend from your
teenage years, and picking up her big fat kid and saying, "he's
terrific, isn't he?" when what you're really trying to say is, "remember
those times, lying

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on the grass, with the sun shining through the trees, and we didn't care
about anything but us?"

Gil looked at his watch and said, "Listen--I should go check back with
the other guys, tell them what I'm doing."

"You can use my cell phone if you like."

"I have my own," said Gil, holding it up. "But I think this is something
I have to explain to them face-to-face. Besides, I need to see my
family. My wife, my little girls. I ought to make sure they're safe."

"Okay, then, sure. Why don't I go see this Romanian character, and you
catch up with me?" I peered at the piece of paper that Amelia had given
me. "Sixty-one Leroy Street, that's only three blocks from here. You
should recognize Leroy Street--that's where they shot the exteriors for
The Cosby Show. Put my number into your phone, so that we can keep in
touch."

Gil started to make his way back toward Houston Street. He had only
walked half a block, however, when I heard whooping and screaming, and
the rushing noise of dozens of pairs of feet. Around the corner came
fifty or sixty people, their eyes staring, their arms waving, their
clothes drenched in blood. They were mostly men, but I saw at least six
or seven women, one of them with her ginger hair stuck up with dried
blood like a Native American headdress, and another one bare-breasted
with scores of crisscross cuts all over her breasts.

They ran toward Gil and Gil immediately turned around and started
running back toward me. I saw the flashing of knives and I knew exactly
what they wanted, and so I started running, too.

"Harry!" Gil yelled at me.

It didn't take long for Gil to catch up with me. He was at least five
years younger than me and I doubt if he drank seven cans of Irish porter
every day. Together we pounded back along Christopher Street, with the
screaming crowd

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close behind us, and believe me I was so panicky that I could hardly
catch my breath.

We turned south on Bedford Street, crossing Grove Street and Barrow
Street, still running flat out. But as wild and disheveled as it was,
the crowd was catching up with us. I didn't want to look back but I
could hear the slap-slap-slap of their feet echoing from the buildings
close by, and I guessed that they were only half a block behind.

"Maybe--we should--split up!" I panted.

"No!" Gil retorted. "We're going to have to face them!"

"Are you--nuts? They'll cut us up--like--carrots!"

"There!" said Gil. "Building site!"

"What?"

But Gil didn't answer me. Instead, he headed diagonally across the
street to the corner of Houston and Morton, where the front of a
nineteenth-century warehouse was being restored. The front of the
building was covered in scaffolding and placards announcing a new Trade
winds Fashion Store, and there were two builders' Dumpsters parked in
the street outside.

Gil jumped up onto one of the Dumpsters and pulled out a short length of
scaffolding pole. "Here!" he said, and threw it to me. Then he dragged
out a six-foot length of timber, with razor wire wrapped around one end.

"We have to stand back-to-back!" he told me. "And don't think about them
as people! They want to kill us, and they will, unless we kill them first!"

We stood back-to-back in the center of Morton Street as the crowd ran up
to us. I swung the scaffolding pole from side to side, and did some
fancy figure eights with it, like Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. Gil
stood still, with his feet planted wide apart, gripping that length of
timber in both hands, and looking as if he were ready to take on the
combined hordes of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun.

"Whatever you do, stay close," Gil told me. "Don't allow those freaks to
get in between us, or we're finished."

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The crowd had slowed down now, and they were approaching us very
cautiously. All of them were carrying knives or machetes or sickles, and
all of them had a starey-eyed expression on their faces. They were all
very white, too, as if all the blood had drained out of them. Some of
them were moaning, and others were sobbing in pain, and I realized that
they must all be feeling the same burning sensation that had driven Ted
Busch so crazy, as if they were being cremated alive.

"Listen!" Gil shouted at them. "We know that you're all feeling pretty
sick, and that you're thirsty for blood, but this is a big mistake! Me
and my friend here, we're looking for a way to cure you, to give you
your normal lives back! Haven't you ever seen a vampire movie, for
Christ's sakes? If you kill us, you'll need to drink blood forever!"

I don't know whether they could understand him or not, but they took no
notice. They kept edging forward, their knives and their sickles raised
up, watching us closely for any sign that we were going to lose our
nerve and make a run for it. Apart from their blood-spattered clothes
and their staring eyes, they looked just like regular everyday people. I
saw a man who could have been my accountant, in a red polo shirt and
glasses; and a fiftyish-looking guy in a bus driver's uniform. I saw a
woman who looked like Lucy's grade-school teacher, and another woman in
a white silk blouse and pearls. They were ordinary men and women, the
same men and women that you would pass every day in the street and never
even glance at--but because they were so ordinary, they were ten times
more scary than zombies in decaying tuxedos, or vampires wrapped up in
tattered winding-sheets.

"How are we going to play this, Gil?" I asked him, trying to be confident.

"There's only one way, Harry," said Gil. "Them or us."

"Hmm. 'Them or us. You know, I never really understood

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what that meant. I mean, if it's 'them,' does that mean that they win?
And what happens if it's 'us'?"

Gil said, "Just hit the bastards and keep on hitting them until they
stop moving. You can worry about the grammar afterward."

Without any warning, the man in the red polo shirt and glasses came
running toward me, screaming. I had never taken any classes in martial
arts, but I crouched down and whirled my scaffolding pole like a kendo
thingy, and shouted out, "iais Ahaki! Ahaki-waki-baki!" Then I swung my
scaffolding pole and hit the man on his upraised elbow.

It could have been a lucky swing, but it struck him so hard that his
craft knife went flying and I think I might even have broken his arm. He
dropped sideways onto the ground, making a high, piping noise, like a
run-over squirrel.

"Finish him!" Gil shouted at me.

"He doesn't need finishing! He's finished already!"

"Finish him! If you don't finish him, the others will think that we
don't have the stones!"

"For Christ's sake! I can't murder him!"

"Keep your back against me!" Gil ordered.

"What?"

Gil nudged me with his left shoulder, hard. Then he edged his way around
until he was facing the man in the red polo shirt. I didn't have any
choice but to edge around, too, to protect his back. With no hesitation
at all, Gil hefted up his length of timber with both hands and whacked
it into the man's face. It made a dull, wooden bang, and a nasty crack,
too, which must have been the man's skull breaking. Gil pulled the
timber up again, and the razor wire dragged half of the man's face with
it, including his right eye and his upper lip. The man was screaming in
a piercing falsetto, but Gil whacked him again, and then again, and then
again, and bloody shreds of his face were flying around everywhere.

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I was thinking: Jesus! But I didn't have time to think anything more. A
bald-headed man in a sweaty gray T-shirt came ducking and weaving toward
me, closely followed by a frizzy-haired woman waving a straight razor,
of all things. I swung my scaffolding pole from side to side, trying to
look threatening, but the two of them suddenly rushed at me, with two
other men close behind them, one of them brandishing a carving knife.

Now I knew what Gil meant by "them or us." I shouted out "hakamundo!"
and struck the woman on the side of the head. She screamed and dropped
to her knees, with her left ear smashed into scarlet gristle. The bald
man stepped back in surprise, and as he did so I brought the scaffolding
pole right down on the top of his skull, as hard as I could. The pole
rang, like a bell, and I could feel the shock of hitting him all the way
up to my shoulder joints.

The man fell facedown in front of me, dropping a horn-handled camping
knife with a clatter.

One of the other men lunged at me, but I brandished my scaffolding pole
in a furious criss-cross pattern. He managed to touch it with the tip of
his knife, so that it went ting!! But then he backed away, and kept on
backing away, and the crowd behind him started to back away, too.

Gil was still furiously waving his length of timber, but after they had
seen what he had done to the man in the red polo shirt, the rest of the
crowd had clearly lost its appetite. Part of the man's nose was still
dangling on the razor wire, and whatever pain these people were going
through, and no matter how much they thirsted for blood, they didn't
seem to think that it was worth losing their schnozzes for. They stepped
back--grudgingly at first, one step at a time, but then Gil screamed,
"Come and get it! Come on, you freaks! Come and get it!" and took two or
three steps toward them. Without any more hesitation, they all turned
around and hurried away down Houston Street, their feet pattering
urgently on the tarmac. At the corner, one of the women let

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out a hair-raising, vixen-like shriek, but I think she was crying out in
pain rather than frustration. These people were hurting too badly to
waste any more time on Gil and me: They needed blood and they needed it
quickly, before their burning became unbearable.

Gil threw down his length of timber and said, "Good job, Harry."

I was sweating and shaking and I could hardly keep my balance. I had
never had to fight for my life like that, not hand-to-hand. In fact I
don't think I had ever hit anybody since Jimmy Ruggio in the second
grade. But I managed to give my scaffolding pole a last defiant flourish
in the air before I threw that down, too, with an echoing clang. "Them
or us, Gil," I told him. "Them or us."

It was well past eleven o'clock. "Why don't you go back to see your
family?" I suggested. "Give me a call before you come back out again. If
this Romanian guy isn't home, or if he doesn't want to talk to me, you
don't want to risk running into those ghouls again, do you?"

Gil gripped my shoulder so hard that it hurt, although I didn't let on.
I've never had too many friends, especially friends who were capable of
beating the crap out of people, but that night I believed that I had
found a friend in Gil. I really liked his straightforwardness, and his
complete lack of cynicism. He was GI Joe, right out of the box. But most
of all I liked him because he had shown me that I could beat the crap
out of people, too, if I really needed to. He had made me feel brave.

He said, "Okay then, I'll catch you later." Then he turned and walked
back toward Seventh Avenue and I walked off in the direction of Leroy
Street, although I had to stop on the corner, and drag out the tail of
my shirt, and wipe my face with it.

Along this stretch of Hudson Street, every store window and restaurant
had a smashed frontage. Only one

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fluorescent light was still flickering, the lettering outside the Hudson
Street Grill, and out of those only three letters were left
unbroken--the "L" of "Grill" and the "up" of "Suppers."

I stopped and stared at it for a few moments, but Singing Rock had
already given me my message, so I didn't think that "I up" could mean
anything.

Razvan Dragomir's house was a tall, narrow brownstone in the row between
Washington Street and Greenwich Street. Two well-clipped bay trees stood
in huge ceramic pots on the front steps, secured with chains that you
could have used to dock the Mauretania. I looked up and down the double
row of shiny brass doorbells until I found a bell marked R. Dragomir in
mauve ink, right at the top, and pushed it.

There was no answer, so I pushed it again. It would be just my luck if
Amelia's friend was out of town. When people try to save the world in
movies, everybody they ask for help is always at home. But in real life
it never works out that way.

I had already turned around, ready to leave, when the intercom made a
popping noise and a woman with a strongly accented voice said, "Da? Who
is it who is there?"

I jumped back to the door. "Oh! Hi! Sorry to disturb you! My name's
Harry Erskine, I'm a friend of Amelia Crusoe. Well, Amelia Carlson, as
she is these days. I'm looking for Mr. Razvan Dragomir."

"Oh, yes. Mrs. Carlson called earlier to say that you might be coming.
I'm sorry but my father is away for two weeks in Bucharest."

"I see. Is there any way I can contact him? I really seriously need his
advice."

"Mrs. Carlson explains this all to me. About this epidemic, the people
who are dying. I can help you."

"You can help me? Really?"

"I am my father's daughter. What my father knows, I know. Wait, I will
let you inside. Top floor, take the elevator."

The door release buzzed and I pushed my way inside.

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The hallway was gloomy and smelled of lavender polish and musty old
plaster and mold. I turned around and saw this scruffy-looking deadbeat
standing right next to me, and almost had a heart attack, but it was a
mirror, hanging in an alcove.

At the end of the hallway I found a rickety old elevator with one of
those handles that you swung up for "Up." It slowly cranked me to the
fourth story, although I was sure that I could hear the wires twanging,
one by one. When I forced open the door and stepped out, I found myself
in a large apartment, dimly lit by pierced brass lamps. There was nobody
there to meet me.

The deadbeat that I had encountered in the lobby had come up with me,
because there he was again, reflected in a huge full-length mirror
opposite the front door. The mirror had a dark mahogany frame that was
carved with all kinds of fruit and vegetables, apples and cabbages and
summer squash.

"Hallo?" I called out. I could smell cloves, and stale tobacco, and
something sickly sweet, as if somebody had burned a panful of condensed
milk.

I slammed the elevator door. The Dragomir apartment looked like a
Romanian folk museum. It was crammed with blood-red velvet couches and
blood-red velvet chairs and embroidered footstools. Every wall was hung
with gilt-framed mirrors and Oriental rugs, and between the mirrors and
the rugs hung oil paintings of frowning men with magnificent moustaches
and felt hats with peacock feathers spouting out of them; and dark-eyed
women in white lace headscarves and richly decorated blouses. The place
was knee-deep in shining brass-topped tables crammed with ornaments and
family photographs, and shining brass storks, and feathery ferns in
shining brass vases.

"Hallo?" I repeated.

"Welcome, Mr. Erskine," said the strongly accented voice. From behind a
heavy velvet curtain that was draped

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over one of the doorways, Razvan Dragomir's daughter appeared, as if she
were making an entrance in a 1930s horror movie.

She was tall, over six foot one in her shoes, at least as tall as me and
probably taller, with short, black glossy hair that was severely cut
around her face, Vidal Sassoon-style. Her eyes were slanted and deep
set, and she had high, sharply defined cheekbones, and belligerently
pouting lips. She was wearing a very short black shift, with red
embroidery on it, and puffy little sleeves that accentuated her very
wide shoulders, and her legs went on till next Labor Day. Her breasts
were huge, but far too heavy and complicated in their movement to be
anything but natural. In her cleavage hung a five-pointed gold star,
studded with garnets.

She held out a hand with rings on every finger, including her thumbs.
"My name is Jenica Dragomir, but of course you can call me Jenica."

"Harry Erskine, but of course you can call me Harry."

"Mr. Harry, you have hurt your face. It is bleeding."

"Oh, that, yes." I touched the plaster that Laticia had stuck on my
cheek. It was soaked with blood, and hanging half off. The cut must have
opened up again when I was fighting with the crowds in the street.

"Here, Mr. Harry, come with me," said Jenica. She drew back the curtain
again and indicated that I should walk through. I hesitated for a
moment, but then I did as I was told. As I passed her, my arm brushed
against her breasts and I breathed in her perfume, which was like
crushed roses and Turkish Delight, combined with that musky aroma of
warm hair. I don't think I could have dated Jenica, even if she had
agreed to go out with me. I would have spent the whole evening trying to
hide my hard-on.

"This way." Jenica ushered me along a narrow, wallpapered corridor. At
the very end, she opened another door, and then she took my hand as if I
were a child and led me inside. I found myself standing in the most amazing

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bathroom that I had ever visited. It was decorated like a Moorish
temple, with pillars and arches and peacock-blue mosaic tiles, and it
had green stained-glass windows with herons and leaping fishes on them,
and it echoed. Jenica opened up her elaborately carved medicine cabinet
and took out some cotton pads and a bottle of lurid yellow antiseptic.

"You are brave?" she asked me.

"A little pain never hurt anyone," I told her, gritting my teeth.

She dabbed my cut with antiseptic and it stung so much that I couldn't
help yelping.

"You will have to very, very brave to face strigoi," she murmured.

I looked at her cautiously. "You said the word. You said it out loud."

"Of course. Some ignorant people think it is dangerous to say the word
strigoi. But it is only dangerous to speak the name of any particular
strigoi!"

"I see." I realized then that I hadn't yet received the whole message.
Singing Rock had told me that I was looking for a vampire, but I didn't
yet know which vampire.

Jenica and I stared at each other and we both knew that we weren't
really looking into each other's eyes. We were staring into the abyss.

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13

Blood Hunt

Frank couldn't stop shivering. The thermostat on his air-conditioning
unit said that it was 94 degrees in his bedroom, and he was basted in
sweat, but he felt chilled to the very core, as if his skeleton had been
taken out of his body and stored in the freezer overnight, and then put
back. Even his teeth felt as if they were frozen.

He didn't know what time it was but he knew that something nightmarish
had happened. Every time he swallowed he could taste metal, and the roof
of his mouth felt as if it were thickly coated in congealed fat. He had
a jumbled memory of somebody shouting, and blood, and struggling, but
his brain refused to focus on it in any detail. It occurred to him that
he might have been involved in a serious accident, and that he was
suffering from shock.

It didn't occur to him that he was dying.

He tried to sit up. After two attempts, he managed to prop himself up on
one elbow. It was then that he saw Susan Fireman sitting on the end of
his bed watching him. It was

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still dark outside, although the city sounded much quieter than it had
before. No helicopters, and only an occasional siren.

"I feel cold," he croaked.

Susan Fireman stood up and moved around the bed with a strange gliding
walk. She looked down at him and she was smiling. "It won't be long
now," she told him. "You took care of me, and now I'm taking care of you."

"I feel so cold. Why do I feel so cold?"

"You won't feel cold for much longer, Frank."

He lay back down on the bed. "What's happening to me?" he asked her.

She stroked his sweat-beaded forehead with her fingertips, and then
sucked them, one after the other. "The greatest adventure that can
happen to anyone."

"I don't understand."

"You will, Frank, once you pass over. It will all become shining clear
to you, as if the moon has come up."

"The moon?"

"Of course. You can never see the sun again."

Frank slept, and dreamed that he was running through the dunes at
Hyannis, on Cape Cod, where he used to live when he was a boy. The wind
was fluffing in his ears and the long grass was whipping his legs. In
his dream he was aware that something was badly wrong but he didn't know
what. He turned his head to see if anybody was running after him but
there was nobody there. Only the dunes, and the clouds, and the slowly
circling seagulls.

The sky was so blue that it was almost black, like night.

As he climbed the dunes toward the roadway, he saw a dazzling flash of
light. It flashed again, and it was so bright that he had to lift his
hand to shield his eyes. He struggled up through the deep, soft sand
until he reached a white picket fence. An old black Mercury Marquis was
parked about fifty yards away, its side panels smeary with wax. It

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looked at first like the same car that had once belonged to his
grandfather, but then he realized that it had been converted into a
hearse, and that there was a gray metal casket lying in the back. His
grandfather, Stephen, was sitting in the driver's seat, his white hair
combed so that it was shining like a halo. He was staring out toward the
ocean.

Not far away from the front of the car stood Susan Fireman. She was
naked except for a strange hat that looked as if it had been folded out
of stiff black paper. Beside her was the cheval-mirror that usually
stood in the corner of his bedroom, and she was deliberately angling it
into his eyes.

He reached the tarmac and started to walk toward her. The sand crunched
under his shoes. "What are you doing here?" he shouted at her, although
his voice sounded flat and muffled, as if he were shouting into a metal
bucket.

She didn't answer, so he walked right up to her. She lifted her head and
smiled at him, and both of her eyes were totally crimson.

"What's happening?" he asked her.

"You can't go out in the sun any more," said Susan Fireman. "I thought
you would like to see its reflection, to remember it by."

Frank turned around. Behind him, it was nighttime. The sky was dark and
the ocean was nothing but a thin, phosphorescent line of foam. Inside
the cheval-mirror, however, it was still daylight, and the sun was
shining on the sand.

"What's happening?" Frank repeated.

"Don't you know, Frank? You're passing over. The sun will be coming up
soon. Why don't you step inside the looking glass, where it's bright?
You can be safe there, until it's dark."

"What do you mean, 'step inside the looking glass'?"

"A looking glass is a door, Frank. It's not a wall. A looking glass is a
way through."

"I can't step inside, it's impossible."

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"Come on, Frank. You're one of the pale people now. You can do anything
you want. Climb walls, step into mirrors."

Susan Fireman walked around so that she was facing the mirror. She
turned to look at Frank and then she stepped straight into the glass, so
that she joined up with her own reflection, like two brightly colored
shapes in a kaleidoscope. The next thing Frank knew, she was standing
inside the mirror, in the sunshine, and she was no longer beside him, in
the dark. She laughed, and he could hear her, but she sounded as if she
were laughing on the other side of a closed window. Alarmed, he looked
around. The wind was rising and he was alone. His grandfather had gone,
too. The black hearse stood empty, its chrome spotted with rust and its
windows all milky.

"Come on, Frank," said Susan Fireman. "It only takes a single step."

"I'm not coming," he told her.

"You have to, Frank. You don't have any choice."

"I told you, I'm not coming!"

It was then that he saw something on the shoreline, about a half-mile
behind Susan Fireman, right at the ocean's edge. It was tall and dark
and angular, and it was striding toward her. It reminded him of the
mirage in Lawrence of Arabia, the black-robed Arab gradually approaching
Lawrence across the desert, except that it was so stretched-out and
disproportionate that it looked more like an ungainly combination of
horse and man, or something else altogether, something totally monstrous.

As it came nearer, he saw that it was the same creature that he had
encountered in the storeroom at the Sisters of Jerusalem. He saw its
face, first leaning one way, and then the other, and its eyes,
constantly shifting and changing, from the stone eyes of a garden statue
to the glassy amber eyes of a tigerskin rug.

It approached Susan Fireman at extraordinary speed,

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growing larger and larger, and as it came nearer a high trail of sand
was whipped up behind it, and whirled away by the wind.

"Hurry up, Frank!" Susan Fireman urged him. "He'll come after you
anyhow, whatever you do!"

Frank turned around. He thought about running, but he knew that he was
dreaming and that he could never run fast in dreams. The dark attenuated
creature was so close now that it would probably catch him before he
could reach the dunes.

There was only one thing he could do. He took three steps back, and
picked up a broken brick from the parking lot wall. Gripping it tight,
he walked right up to the mirror and hit it, hard, right where Susan
Fireman's face was. The mirror cracked from side to side--but he smashed
again, and again, and again, until there was nothing but a glittering
heap of glass and an empty oval frame.

He dropped the brick, and stood back. He was so cold that he could
barely think, but he felt that he had saved himself, at least for now.
He was still standing there when the moon rose, and shone through the
empty oval frame like the face of a long-dead friend.

He opened his eyes. His bedroom was filled with blurry sunlight. He lay
staring at the wall for a very long time, feeling so cold that he was
unable to move. If he moved, he felt that his knees and elbows would
probably break, and his finger bones would crackle. But at least he was
sure that he wasn't dead.

Eventually the sun inched its way across the lower part of the bed. It
burned his toes, blistering the skin and actually sending up wisps of
smoke, but at least his feet felt warmer.

He knew now that everything that had happened to him was real. Susan
Fireman, the blood-drinking epidemic, the

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morgue filled with corpses. The people in winding-sheets climbing out of
the hospital window and over the rooftops. The dark, angular figure with
eyes that changed from glass to stone. It had really happened, and it
had happened to him.

It was then that he remembered last night's dream--the beach at Hyannis
and the shattered mirror. Slowly, with a grunt of pain, he managed to
lift up his head, and look toward the far corner of the room.

"Oh, Jesus," he whispered. General Grant's cheval-mirror was nothing but
an empty oval frame, with a heap of sparkling fragments all around it.
Close to the wall lay a heavy black onyx box that Christina had given
him for his thirty-second birthday, the only gift that he had ever liked.

He shifted himself around, so that he could see through the open
doorway, into the corridor. At first he couldn't understand what he was
looking at, but then he realized that somebody was sprawled on the
carpet. He could see a pair of shiny black shoes, and a pair of legs,
dark-trousered, and a hand, with a heavy signet ring on it. He lifted
his head a little more and saw that it was Lieutenant Roberts, whose
blood he had swallowed, warm and thick, directly out of the spouting
wound in his neck.

"Errkk!" he choked. The sudden recollection of it made his stomach
muscles cramp up, and he retched, again and again, until his throat was
so sore that he couldn't retch any more.

His head dropped back and he lay on the bed for almost another hour,
exhausted and feverish. Then he thought to himself: I have to get up, I
have to get out of here. I have to find help. Otherwise another day
would pass by and darkness would return and he didn't have any doubt
that Susan Fireman would be coming back for him. And she would bring
that angular shadow-creature, too, whatever that was.

Slowly and painfully, like a man twice his age, Frank

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managed to sit up, and ease his legs off the bed. His bed was like some
grotesque piece of modern art. The sheets were covered in hardened blood
and twisted into strange shapes, like tortured faces. He gripped the
head of the bed and pulled himself up, so that he was standing. For a
moment, he felt as if all the blood had dropped out of his head and he
was going to faint, but he took five or six very deep breaths, and
steadied himself.

He walked stiffly out of the bedroom, stepping over Lieutenant Roberts'
body on the floor. The wound in Lieutenant Roberts' neck was gaping so
wide that Frank could see into his open windpipe. Lieutenant Roberts was
staring at nothing at all, and his face was gray, as if had been dusted
with ash from a crematorium. Frank looked down at him, and said, "Sorry,
pal. Rest in peace." He didn't know what Lieutenant Roberts' religion
had been, and he couldn't think what else to say.

Further along the corridor, on his back, lay Detective Mancini. His eyes
were closed but he still looked terrified. His arms and legs were
sticking out at awkward angles and his mouth was caught in mid-gag, as
if he were choking on a fishbone. His neck was cut wide open, too, like
Lieutenant Roberts', and it was obvious from the pallor of his face that
he had been exsanguinated. There were only a few brown squiggles of
blood on the carpet, so Frank guessed that Susan Fireman had drunk the
rest of it.

The thought of that made him feel nauseated again. He walked through to
the kitchen and hung over the sink, and vomited lumps of half-digested
blood. It was black, like raw liver, and it slid down the drain as if it
had a life of its own. He hunched there for almost five minutes, his
stomach muscles clenching and unclenching, but at last he managed to
straighten himself up, tear off a sheet of paper towel, and wipe his mouth.

God, he thought, physician heal thyself. He didn't want to die,
especially if it meant that he was going to be

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reincarnated like Susan Fireman, or any of the other people who were
roaming the city, thirsty for human blood. He knew he was very sick, but
if this was an illness, there had to be a cure for it.

He dragged out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. His tongue
felt as if it had been sandpapered, and he desperately needed a drink,
but even the thought of running water gave him the dry heaves.

The Death Troll was wrong. This disease wasn't at all like hemorrhagic
dengue fever. It was much more like rabies. Just like rabies, it started
with irritability and feverishness, and soon afterward, the sufferer
started to have nightmares, and irrational terrors. Just like rabies, it
was characterized by an irrational dread of water, which was why rabies
was often called "hydrophobia."

Unlike rabies, however, this disease didn't seem to be transmitted by
animal bites, or by bites of any kind. If Frank's own experience was
anything to go by, it was communicated through the exchange of bodily
fluids, like HIV

He didn't know how Susan Fireman had persuaded him to have sex with her.
His memory of it was nothing but a jumble of pornographic images. But
she had done it somehow, and dug her nails into his scrotum while she
did it, and so the chances were that he had contracted the disease
through his open scratches. Just to make sure, she had made him swallow
a drop of his own infected semen.

He guessed that a man could probably pass the disease to a woman in much
the same way--through vaginal lacerations, or maybe by ejaculating into
her mouth.

One thing was plain: once they were infected, victims quickly began to
feel an unbearable burning sensation all over their skin surface, and a
raging thirst for human blood. They also showed symptoms that violent
and radical changes were taking place in their metabolism. They became
"pale people," so highly charged with adrenaline that they could climb
near-vertical walls and contort their

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bodies--as Susan Fireman had done--into near-impossible knots. They
started to have suffocating nightmares of being shut up in boxes, and
speak in foreign languages, although Frank couldn't even begin to
understand how this could happen.

Although their thirst for human blood was so overwhelming, it was
obvious that the "pale people" couldn't digest it in any great
quantities, which led to them vomiting most of it back up again. But
once they had died, or "passed over," as Susan Fireman had called it,
they seemed to be able to drink copious amounts of blood, and keep it down.

Frank looked down at his hands. His skin was burning so painfully that
he had to curl his fingers, and he bit his lips to stop himself from
sobbing out loud. But he knew that sobbing wouldn't do him any good. He
needed to think. Think, Frank. He was a doctor. He needed to find out
where this disease had originated, and how it was being spread so
rapidly. He needed to find out how to cure himself, before he "passed
over," too. And then he had to work out a way to inoculate the rest of
the city's population.

Before he did anything, he knew that he had to accept one impossible
fact: People who were infected by this disease could walk and talk after
they had appeared to be clinically dead. Susan Fireman had died, and yet
she had managed to climb into his apartment and kill Lieutenant Roberts
and Detective Mancini. Already, the city streets must be crowded with
people like her. Dead people--or technically dead people--walking.

He searched his apartment, room by room. He opened cupboard doors and
even checked under the sink. There was no sign of Susan Fireman
anywhere, so she must have left. But what had she asked him, in his dream?

"Why don't you step inside the looking glass? You can be safe there."

He went back to the hallway. It suddenly came back to

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him now. Susan Fireman had been standing inside the mirror. Not her
reflection--her, behind the glass. Detective Mancini had backed toward
her, and she had reached out of the mirror and cut his throat.

Frank stepped over Lieutenant Roberts again. There were bloody smudges
all over the carpet, in every direction. The pile was too thick for them
to be clearly identified as footprints, except in the bedroom, around
the spot where Susan Fireman had actually cut Lieutenant Roberts'
throat. Here, there was a huge dark patch of blood that was still wet,
and small bare footprints crisscrossing right through it. On one side,
however, the footprints headed directly toward the cheval-mirror. Where
they finished.

Shaking with pain, Frank knelt down on the carpet and carefully picked
up a handful of shattered glass. At least two of Susan Fireman's
footprints were underneath the glass, so the mirror must have been
smashed after she walked up to it. But there were no footprints heading
away from it.

So maybe his dream hadn't all been illusory. Maybe Susan Fireman had
stepped into the cheval-mirror, and maybe she had beckoned him to follow
her inside. And maybe the half-brick hadn't been a half-brick, but his
onyx box.

He suddenly thought to himself: vampires can't survive in sunlight, can
they? Not in the legends, at least. That's why they return to their
coffins, when dawn breaks. But what if they can't find coffins to hide
in, or seamlessly dark places? Where do they go?

It seemed impossible, but maybe there was a hiding place for vampires. A
hiding place that was always bright, but which no light could ever
penetrate. The world of mirrors.

Frank went into the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer, and took out the
hammer that he used for flattening steaks. Then he walked around the
whole apartment, smashing

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every single mirror, even the shaving mirror in the bathroom. Maybe he
was losing his mind, but mirrors could be replaced, and if he was right,
he might have found a way to protect himself from Susan Fireman and her
shadow-creature. If they hid inside mirrors during daylight hours, then
breaking mirrors was as good as bricking up doors.

He looked at the square black Italian clock in the living room. It was
7:37 in the morning. He needed to get back to the Sisters of Jerusalem
and tell the Death Troll what he had discovered. He was sure that if the
hospital's pathology team knew what they were really up against, they
could isolate the cause of this epidemic much more quickly. He lifted
one arm, and sniffed. He stank of blood and stale sweat, but he couldn't
face the idea of taking a shower. Instead, he went back to the bathroom
and pulled down the blind. Then he took off all of his clothes, and
carefully wiped himself all over with a facecloth soaked in Dolce &
Gabbana aftershave--face, neck, chest and underarms. He winced when he
wiped the scratches on his scrotum, but he needed to feel clean and
sterilized all over.

When he was finished cleaning himself, he smothered his face with a
thick layer of sunscreen, factor 30, which he had bought for his skiing
vacation last year in Vail. Then he dressed in a pair of black jeans and
a black turtleneck sweater, and gloves. Finally, he pulled a black ski
hood over his head, and put on a pair of Ray-Bans. He looked like the
Invisible Man.

Before he opened his front door, he stood with his hand pressed against
it, breathing deeply to control his pain. His skin was on fire, and his
thirst for blood was so fierce that he felt like one of the addicts who
were brought into the Sisters of Jerusalem, quaking with need, all of
their humanity lost to their addiction. They would kill for drugs, most
of those addicts, and he was sorely tempted to forget

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about the Sisters of Jerusalem, and do the same. "Tatal nostru? he
whispered, "carele esti in ceruri."

The sun blinded him as he came down the front steps of his house, even
though he was wearing dark glasses. He hadn't imagined how much the sun
would burn him, even through his clothes, and he let out a staccato cry
of agony that was almost a laugh. But he managed to cross the street
into the shadow of the houses opposite, and he found that if he kept
himself out of direct sunlight, the burning was nearly bearable.

"Tatal nostru," he repeated. "Carele esti in ceruri." For some reason
the words gave him hope that everything was going to turn out for the
better, and that his agony would soon be over.

Murray Hill was deserted. In the distance, uptown, Frank thought that he
could see people hurrying down Third Avenue, and the sharp glint of an
automobile window, and from over on the West Side he could hear the
wok-wok-wok of police sirens. But here, midtown, the streets were almost
completely silent, and there seemed to be nobody left alive. A
burned-out Lexus lay halfway across the street, and two or three blocks
away Frank thought that he could see bodies lying on the sidewalk,
surrounded by squabbling crows, but the glare of the sun was too bright
for him to see how many there were.

"Tatal nostru," he whispered.

He hurried across Third Avenue and Lexington and Park. He felt as if he
were the only person in New York City left alive. Up above him, the sky
was cloudless, except for a few streaks of mares' tails toward the
northwest. Some of the debris that was lying in the streets was so
strange that he couldn't imagine who had left it there, or why. On
Lexington, a grand piano was standing in the middle of the road, and on
Park he came across piles of men's tuxedos,

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strewn across the sidewalk. It looked as if an orchestra had been
attacked by marauding Indians, and this was all that was left.

By the time he reached Fifth Avenue, he was close to collapse. His legs
were blistering underneath his jeans, and his lips felt as if he had
kissed a hot electric iron. Maybe he should turn back. Maybe he should
try to find somebody whose blood he could drink. A down-and-out, maybe,
somebody whose death wouldn't really matter. After all, he was much more
important than some bum, wasn't he? If he were to die, nobody would find
out the truth about the epidemic, and thousands more people would be killed.

By the time he reached Thirty-third Street, he had almost persuaded
himself to go in search of a victim whose throat he could cut. But as he
hurried around the corner, he was suddenly faced by two police cars, and
six or seven police officers with dogs and riot shields.

"Stop!" shouted one of the cops. "Hit the sidewalk, face down!"

Frank didn't hesitate. He turned and ran. He knew what would happen if
they caught him. They would take off his sunglasses and his hood and the
sunlight would incinerate him, right in front of them. That's if they
didn't shoot him first.

He ran and ran and kept on running, dodging from one street to the next,
and cutting through alleys whenever he could. He heard one of the police
cars coming after him, its tires squealing as it slid around the corner.
He even glimpsed it, momentarily, as it flashed across Twenty-eighth
Street, but he dodged into the doorway of a dry cleaner's, and stayed
there, gasping for breath, until he was sure that it wasn't going to
come doubling back.

"Tatal nostru?" he panted. Smoke was pouring out of his sleeves. "Tatal
nostru, nu ne ducepre noi in ispita ... but deliver us from evil, amen."
Then he started running again.

For a while, a mongrel ran alongside him, barking, but

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when he reached Washington Square it caught sight of a brindled bitch,
and tore off after it, between the trees.

He slowed to a walk. He was burning so badly now that he hardly cared if
they caught him. Maybe he should allow himself to die, so that he could
join Susan Fireman in the world of mirrors, and absolute darkness.
Anything had to be better than this. Even if he could help to isolate an
antidote, there was no guarantee that he was going to be able to cure
himself.

He stumbled on and on, crossing street after street. He had completely
lost his sense of direction. He didn't know where the Sisters of
Jerusalem was and he no longer cared. He just wanted the pain to stop.

Halfway across Barrow Street, he dropped to his knees. He stayed there,
with his head lowered, trying to summon up the strength to carry on. Our
Father, which art nowhere to be found, please rescue me. Gradually,
however, he became aware that somebody was standing in front of him. He
looked up, slowly, and saw a muscular young man in a khaki T-shirt and
Desert Storm pants. The man was holding a pickax handle in one hand,
which he kept slapping into the palm of his other hand.

"Don't think you're coming any further, fella," the young man told him,
flatly.

Frank coughed, and coughed, and spat blood. "I don't think I could come
any further if I tried."

"This area is off-limits to bloodsuckers. Maybe your problem isn't your
fault, but we don't want you around here. So I suggest you turn around
and stagger back the way you come."

"I'm a doctor," said Frank.

"What?"

"I'm a doctor. I've caught the virus, but I haven't cut anybody's throat
yet, and with any luck I won't have to."

He tried again to climb to his feet but the young man jabbed him in the
breastbone with his pickax handle, so

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that he dropped back onto his knees. "You stay away from me, man. You
hear me? You stay well away. I don't want to catch that thing, too."

"I don't think that's very likely," said Frank. "It's a sexual
disease... it gets passed from person to person through the exchange of
bodily fluids."

"You mean like AIDS?"

"Exactly like AIDS."

"So how do you know that?"

"Because I'm a doctor. And because that's the way I caught it."

"Through having sex?"

"That's right, through having sex. Now I'm trying to get back to the
Sisters of Jerusalem. I can't call them because all the phone lines are
dead, and my cell phone won't work, and my computer server's down, too.
But they need to know what I've discovered."

"If you're trying to get to the Sisters of Jerusalem, man, you're way
off. Do you know where you are?"

Frank looked around. His eyes were blinded by the sun and his head was
throbbing so hard that he could barely think.

"I don't know... Seventh Avenue, in the twenties?"

"You're way down in the West Village. Hudson Street, at Barrow."

Frank managed to get up on one knee. "I have to get to the Sisters of
Jerusalem."

"I don't care where you have to get to, buddy, so long as you turn
yourself around and head back exactly where you came from."

"But nobody else understands. They're vampires, that's what they are.
Not just ordinary people sucking blood. They're real, genuine vampires.
They call themselves strigoi!"

The young man stared at him acutely. "Did you just say what I thought
you just said?"

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Frank felt confused. His head was throbbing more painfully than ever,
and he was sure that he could smell his body hair burning. "What? I
don't know what I said."

"You said strigoi. You know about strigoi?"

"Well, no--not very much. But I know what they are, and I know where
they hide when the sun comes up. At least, I'm pretty sure I do. And I
think I know how to stop them coming back, when it gets dark."

"But you're one of them."

"Not yet. I've been infected, yes, but I haven't passed over."

The young man didn't seem to know what to do. He looked left and right,
and then he said, "You can't go back to the Sisters of Jerusalem."

"Why not?"

"No point. The last I heard, the place was overrun, and it was on fire."

"I still need to find somebody in charge. Somebody from the city health
authority, or the CDC."

"I don't know, man ... the whole damn city's turned into a nuthouse."

Frank coughed up more blood. The young man watched him for a while, and
then he said, "Listen, I met this guy, and he knows something about
these strigoi, too. I think the best thing you can do right now is come
to meet him."

"You're sure?"

"Not really, but what else am I going to do?"

Frank looked up at him, shielding his eyes with his hand. "You may as
well know that I have a raging thirst for human blood. I can't pretend
that I don't. My skin feels like it's on fire, and if you take me with
you, then I can't give you any guarantees that I'm not going to cut your
throat and drink your blood."

"What's your name?" the young man asked him.

"Frank Winter, MD."

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"Well, doc, my name's Gil Johnson, and I'm a National Guardsman with the
Rainbow Division, and if you even look at my throat, I'm going to take
this pickax handle and I'm going to beat your brains into raspberry Jell-O."

Very unsteadily, Frank stood up. "Believe me, Gil, that would probably
be a blessed relief."

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14

Blood of Draculea

Jenica poured us two glasses of sweet white Romanian wine, and offered
me a plate of almond biscuits that tasted like very fine sand. She sat
next to me on the velvet-upholstered couch, close enough for our knees
to keep touching.

"My father telephoned me from Bucharest as soon as he heard what was
happening in New York. His very first word was, strigoi."

I coughed on my biscuit. "Singing Rock specifically warned me not to say
that name out loud. You know, in case they heard me saying it, and came
after me. He said they would tear me to pieces."

"No, no," Jenica reassured me. The word strigoi alone is not enough to
alert them. Strigoi is just general name for vampires, not any special
vampire. Your spirit-guide was warning you, yes, but he must have told
you another name, too. A special name."

I shook my head. "If he did, I didn't pick up on it."

"Well, if he has not told you yet, he will very soon,"

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Jenica assured me. "If so many strigoi are suddenly loose in New York,
they must have come from a nest."

"I don't follow you."

"A nest is many strigoi who are hiding together, or perhaps sealed up by
vampire-hunters. Sometimes they remain concealed for centuries, waiting
to escape. My father studied strigoi when he was in Romania, at the
university in Babes Bolyai. He was always convinced right from beginning
that there was a nest hidden someplace in New York. He has searched for
it for many years, ever since he first came to America. He has visited
many libraries and studied many old maps and diaries, but he could never
locate them.

Jenica took hold of my hand and began to emphasize what she meant by
tracing patterns on my palm--a sensation that was strangely erotic. "A
nest of strigoi will always be guided and controlled by a very powerful
vampire spirit, one of the svarcolaci. In English I suppose you would
translate one of the svarcolaci as a dead vampire. He does not inhabit
his physical body any more, like one of the strigoi, who are the undead.
He is what you would call a ghost, or a wandering soul."

"Svarcolaci? I never heard of svarcolaci. Mind you, I never heard of
strigoi, either, before today."

"In Romanian folk stories, another name for one of the svarcolaci is
Vampire Gatherer. Once the strigoi from the nest have infected people,
the Vampire Gatherer goes out searching for them, and leads them back to
the nest. There he teaches them the ways of the night, so that they
become strigoi, too.

"I am sure that it was one of the svarcolaci that your spirit guide was
warning you about, because a Vampire Gatherer can hear his name called,
at any distance, even in a whisper ... even if you say it in your
dreams. Sometimes you only have to think his name, and he will prick up
his ears and come after you."

"So--uh--what are they like, these Vampire Gatherers?"

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"They take many different shapes, Mr. Harry, and many different faces.
But mostly people call them the Slanting Ones, because they always
appear like shadows, leaning away from any source of light. I will show
you."

Jenica walked across the living room, and brought back a small red
leather-bound book from one of the shelves. She opened it up and handed
it to me. The text was all in Romanian, but the engraved illustration
didn't need any translation. It showed two small children sleeping in a
wooden bed, with a guttering candle on their bedside table. Above them
stood a sloping, dark, impossibly stretched-out figure, exactly like the
figure that had appeared in my apartment when I was reading Ted Busch's
fortune. I felt a chilly, sinking sensation in my stomach-- the feeling
you get when you know that things are going badly wrong and there's
nothing that you can do but sit and wait for the worst to happen.

"I've seen him," I told Jenica, handing the book back. "I've seen this
sucker for real. Singing Rock showed him to me, in my apartment. This is
him, or something very much like him."

"Then now we are absolutely sure what we are dealing with," said Jenica.
She studied the picture for a moment and then she closed the book
tightly and put it down on the table, with a heavy glass paperweight on
top of it, as if the Vampire Gatherer might find a way to escape from
between the pages. "There are many svarcolaci and I think my father
knows them all, but of course I cannot contact my father yet, until the
phones are back."

"But your father really believes that there's a nest of strigoi here in
New York?"

"He is completely sure. He found some letters from the nineteenth
century and also some bills of lading from a shipping company. Some of
the letters were written in a kind of code, but it was not a difficult
code to break."

She poured me another glass of wine. I didn't really want

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one, especially since it tasted like sweaty leather watchbands. But it
was well past 2:00 in the morning and even though I felt exhausted and
bruised and more than ready for bed, my brain was still jumping. Maybe
the wine would act as a sedative, and maybe it would stop me from
dreaming, too. Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do tonight was dream.

Jenica said, "In 1869, two of the richest men in New York were Charles
Redding, from New England, and Gheorghe Vlad, from Cluj-Napoca, in Romania."

"Sure, I've heard of them. Well, Charles Redding, anyhow. He founded
Redding's Department Store, didn't he? And he built some incredible
Greek-style mansion right next door to the Astors on Fifth Avenue."

"That's right. Charles Redding and Gheorghe Vlad were business partners.
Together they made millions of dollars by importing luxury goods from
Europe and the Middle East--women's fashions and furniture and carpets
and glassware. Charles Redding was satisfied to stay in New York. But
Gheorghe Vlad believed that they could become a hundred times richer if
they opened department stores all over America--first in Denver, in
Colorado, and then others in California. He traveled to Denver, and
found a site for a new store, and then he sent back to New York for his
wife and his six young children to join him. On their way across the
Plains, though, his family was attacked by a war party of Teton Sioux,
and all of them were tortured and killed, even his newly born baby.

"Vlad swore an oath in front of God that he would have his revenge on
the Indians, and that he would wipe out the Sioux--men, women and
children, just as they had wiped his family out. He took his family's
remains back to Romania, and arranged a traditional funeral. But my
father discovered that he arranged something else, too. He went to a
village near Borsa in Transylvania, and arranged to take

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two hundred coffins from the vaults of the local churches, where they
had been sealed since 1767 for safekeeping. According to the letters
that my father found, these coffins contained strigoi, the undead, as
well as a special iron sarcophagus containing one of the svarcolaci.

"Gheorghe Vlad's intention was to ship them to America, and then to have
them carried to Sioux territory, where he would revive them, and they
would exterminate every single Sioux they could find."

"Jesus," I said. "That was a hell of a plan. But even in those days, how
did he think that he was going to get away with it? I mean, anybody who
wanted to cart two hundred dead bodies into Indian country wouldn't
exactly have been inconspicuous, would he?"

"Of course. But there is some documentary evidence that Gheorghe Vlad
was actually given support by the U.S. military, and even an offer of
wagons. The Army saw it as an opportunity to defeat one of the most
warlike of all the Indian tribes without having to risk any casualties
among their own troops."

"But letting all those strigoi loose--that was a pretty risky idea,
don't you think? Once they'd wiped out the Indians, who were they going
to feed on then? They would still have been looking for a regular diet
of human blood, wouldn't they?"

"I don't know for certain," Jenica admitted. "Maybe Gheorghe Vlad had
thought of what he was going to do with all of those strigoi once he had
taken his revenge. Maybe he hadn't. But you have to understand that he
would have had very strong control over them, through the Vampire
Gatherer. The Vampire Gatherer is a dead vampire, remember. He would not
have been able to come back to life until Gheorghe Vlad had performed
the appropriate rituals to revive him, and once he was revived, he would
have had to obey Gheorghe Vlad's wishes, whatever they were. It is

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like the story from the Arabian Nights of the genie in the lamp. Whoever
revives the Vampire Gatherer controls the vampires."

"But Gheorghe Vlad didn't wipe out the Sioux, did he? I mean, the U.S.
Army did it in the end."

"Well, you are right. The ship carrying the coffins arrived safely in
New York harbor... my father found a written record of that.
Unfortunately for him, Gheorghe Vlad died of a stroke an hour before the
ship docked. So here were all these coffins in the ship's hold, but
nobody knew what was in them, or why they had been shipped all the way
from Romania. Apart, that is, from the clerics in Borsa, in Romania, and
two or three senior officers in the U.S. Army. Once Gheorghe Vlad was
dead, of course, nobody from the Army was going to come forward to
requisition the coffins. Even if any of their officers had known how to
revive the strigoi, which they didn't, somebody in authority would have
asked what they wanted them for, and they wouldn't have been prepared to
admit that they were planning on genocide."

"So what happened to the coffins?"

"Charles Redding ordered them to be stored in the basement of Redding's
Department Store until he could find out why his partner had brought
them across the Atlantic. He thought that maybe they were the remains of
Gheorghe Vlad's relatives, and that Vlad had wanted them all to be
buried in America, where he could pay his respects to them and tend
their graves. He sent letters of inquiry to Bucharest, but he never
received any replies, and only five months later, in the winter of 1871,
he himself died, of pneumonia.

"Redding's Department Store almost went bankrupt after his death, and it
was bought by Green's, and then by Bloomberg's, and nobody knows what
happened to the coffins. Presumably they were bricked up and buried in
the foundations when Redding's Department Store was demolished in 1907."

"But now it looks like they've showed up?"

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"Yes. My father and I, we both believe that these strigoi have come from
Gheorghe Vlad's nest. But there is a big question. Who has revived them?
They must have been discovered by somebody who knew how to bring the
Vampire Gatherer back to life."

"There can't be many people who would know how to do that."

"Of course. But we have no ideas who it is. Somebody who knows old
Romanian legends perhaps."

"So what's the plan?"

"I don't know. If we want to stop this epidemic, we have to find out
where is the nest, and where is the Vampire Gatherer, and who has
revived him."

"And why he revived him, surely? I mean, whoever knew how to do it, they
must have had some idea of what the consequences would be."

"Of course. So we are looking perhaps for a terrorist. Or maybe somebody
worse than a terrorist. A complete madman, maybe."

"That's encouraging."

I tried my cell phone again, but it was still dead. I listened, but for
now the city seemed to be weirdly silent. No sirens, no helicopters, no
traffic.

"Do you want to come to bed?" asked Jenica.

"Excuse me?"

"You can sleep in my father's bed if you wish. There is nothing more we
can do tonight."

"Oh, right. That would be great. And I could really use a toothbrush, if
you have one. My mouth feels like I've been French-kissing an armadillo."

Jenica smiled. "That is Romanian wine. They say it gives a man such
breath that he can knock down a house made of brick."

I was woken up by somebody touching my shoulder. I thought it was Karen
at first, and I batted her away.

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"Sleep," I protested.

"Mr. Harry, I have brought you tea."

I opened one eye and tried to focus. Jenica was standing over me,
wearing a silky fuchsia-pink robe, very loosely tied. I lifted my head
and looked around, and realized that I was lying on her father's
cement-slab four-poster bed, in his gloomy museum of a bedroom, and that
I was fully dressed, apart from my shoes.

I sat up. I could see myself in a blotchy mirror on the opposite side of
the room. My hair was sticking up like Erskine the Mad, and my left
cheek was embossed with Oriental patterns from the cushion that I had
used as a pillow. There was a hole in my fawn-colored sock, and my big
toe was poking out of it.

"What time is it?" I asked her.

"Six."

"Six? Oh, wonderful. Almost three-and-a-half hours' sleep."

"Yes, but now the sun is bright we can begin to search for the strigoi."

Strigoi. It was the crack of dawn and she wanted to go looking for
strigoi. She placed a glass on the table beside me. "Would you like
breakfast?" she asked me. "I have yogurt and honey and farina with dried
apricots."

"Oh, no. I'm fine, thanks. I make it a rule not to put anything solid
into my mouth until I'm officially awake, and I'm not officially awake
until noon."

I picked up the glass and took a sip of tea. I'm not a tea person, as a
rule. As far as I'm concerned, a drink should (a) wake you up or (b)
nourish you or (c) knock you unconscious, which is why I stick to strong
black coffee and Guinness and Jack Daniel's. Tea is just leafy water,
and you can find leafy water in the woods.

Jenica looked pleased with herself. "I have looked through my father's
library and found his book of all the

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svarcolaci. It was compiled by a special brotherhood of priests in the
late 1700s, the Black Purifiers. In those days, vampires were spreading
through Transylvania and Wallachia faster than a plague, and so the
bishops of the Romanian Orthodox Church demanded a purge of every
svarcolaci and strigoi and moroi.

The Black Purifiers searched every cellar and every steeple, and they
impaled every vampire they found, or beheaded them, or burned them
alive; or else they sealed them up in caskets and sarcophagi. The book
has the pictures and names of every known svarcolaci that they managed
to track down."

"That's terrific. Maybe you can give me a couple of minutes for my eyes
to focus, and then I can take a look at it."

"You would like more tea? It is bison grass tea. It is supposed to make
men have the more virility."

I peered short-sightedly into the depths of Jenica's cleavage and
thought that the last thing I wanted right now was to have the more
virility.

"I hate to be ungrateful," I said, "but do you think there's any chance
of some coffee?"

"Of course. Wash, and I will make you coffee. I have laid out towels."

I limped into the Moorish bathroom and climbed into the shower. It had a
baffling array of old-fashioned faucets, and I blasted myself three
times with freezing cold water before I managed to adjust it to a heavy,
tepid downpour, the kind where you have to hold your breath to stop
yourself from drowning.

I was toweling myself dry when Jenica walked into the bathroom as
unself-consciously as if we were married. "You would like cake?"

"No, no. Just coffee."

"Always I used to think that it was not really true, about the strigoi
in New York, even though my father was so sure.

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Who would believe that it was true? Who would believe that we would have
to hunt the strigoi, you and I?"

"We don't have to hunt them, you know. We could always barricade
ourselves in and wait until they've gone away."

"You are losing your nerve, Mr. Harry?"

"Of course not. I'm just saying that we're not actually obliged to go
out looking for them. Nobody's going to think any the less of us if we
don't."

Jenica shook her head. "We will think less of us. Besides, the strigoi
will never go away until they have drunk the last drop of human blood in
the city. Then, this will only be a city of the night, and there will be
no people here by day. It happened before, in Tirgu Mures, in Romania.
It can happen here."

The trouble was, I knew she was right. It seemed impossible that the
most important city in the United States was being overrun by
blood-sucking creatures from the Dark Ages. In fact, it seemed insane.
But on September 11,2001, New York's two tallest buildings had been
brought down by a handful of nut jobs armed with nothing more than box
cutters, and more than three thousand of its citizens killed, and on the
evening of September 10, who could have imagined anything more insane
than that?

It's always hard to believe that anybody can hate you that much, for no
reason at all. Once I was dressed, I went through to the living room and
found Jenica poring through her father's book. It was a very thin book,
bound in cracked tan leather that had the texture of dried human skin,
with some kind of mystic symbol on the front, an oval with an eye in the
middle. On each page there was a finely rendered woodcut of a man's
face, and a few paragraphs of dense handwritten text.

"Here is your coffee," said Jenica, and passed me a tiny blue porcelain
cup that she must have burgled from a doll's house. I peered into it and
it was only a third full. But it had a rich nutty aroma, and when I
tipped it back and

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swallowed it, I felt as if I had instantly grown a thick black beard,
and I was quite surprised when I didn't start talking like James Earl Jones.

"Perhaps soon your Singing Rock will give you the name of your Vampire
Gatherer," said Jenica.

"I guess I could try asking him, although I doubt if he will. I think
there's a strong possibility that he might have given it to me already
and I just haven't realized it, and he's kind of huffy about doing
things twice."

Jenica said, "It is most important for us to have this name. We need to
know which of the svarcolaci we are looking for, because a different
ritual is necessary to dismiss each one of them. This ritual is what you
would call the disenchantment, and it is supposed to force the
svarcolaci to return to their coffins and to seal them up until they are
summoned again."

I peered at the page she was pointing at, although I couldn't understand
any of the words, let alone pronounce them. "Ci, ii dracul cu dracoaica,
striga cu strigoiul, deochiu cu deochitorul, pocitura cu pocitorul,
potca cu potcoiul...."

But then I looked more closely at the woodcut. It depicted a man,
smiling, with his eyes closed. Around his face was a decorative border
of toads and dragonflies and tiny flowers. Although the man's face was
different, and the border was different, the design bore a strikingly
close resemblance to the medallion that I had taken from Ted Busch. I
wedged my hand into my back pants pocket and dragged the medallion out.

"Here," I told Jenica, holding it up. "I took this from the young guy I
was telling you about last night."

Jenica held it in her hand, and peered at it closely. Then she looked at
me with those dark, liquid eyes as if I was the village idiot. "Why did
you not show me this before?" she demanded.

"I don't know. I forgot about it."

"How could you forget about it? This is one of the svarcolaci."

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"Well, I know that now."

She turned it over. "The inscription on the back, this is a kind of
protection. From vampires and from a home with vampires, from those who
cast the evil eye, keep me safe."

"The poor guy said that it was given to him by a Russian-looking girl."

"Hmnh," said Jenica, dismissively. "I would be sure that she was
Romanian, probably, and she was the strigoica who infected him. You see,
she would have given him the medallion to keep him safe from other
vampires who wanted to cut his throat and drink his blood. She must have
liked him, and wanted him to become strigoi like her, one of her lovers."

"How about the face?"

"We have to look through the book."

I stood close beside her as she carefully turned each page. There were
over eighty svarcolaci and most of them were very similar--handsome, in
a Slavic way, thin-faced and pointy-nosed, although some were very
swarthy-looking and some were sporting huge moustaches and enormous
beards. Maybe they'd been drinking Jenica's coffee. Each svarcolaci,
however, had a different decorative border drawn around his
face--everything from songbirds to razors to mulberry leaves.

"Here," said Jenica, suddenly. "This, I am thinking, is our Vampire
Gatherer."

I was thinking that she was right. The man in the woodcut was wearing a
striped turban wound around his head, and one elaborate earring, but it
was definitely the same man whose likeness was embossed on Ted Busch's
medallion. The border was the same, too--snakes intertwined with each
other, and stars. His expression was grim, as if he were seriously
pissed that we had discovered him.

The name below the picture was Vasile Lup. Jenica immediately covered it
with her hand and said, "Do not read

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this out loud. This could be the name that your spirit guide was warning
you about."

"My lips are sealed, believe me."

Jenica took her hand away and began to translate. "His name means The
Wolf. It says here that he was a cousin of Vlad Tepes, known as Vlad the
Impaler, or Draculea."

"You're kidding me. Draculea as in Dracula?"

"Well, of course. But Draculea himself was only a man of very extreme
cruelty, the voivode of Wallachia."

"The what of where?"

"He was like a prince, in the southern part of Romania. But he was never
a vampire."

"But this guy was?"

"That's right." Jenica's fingers traced along the thick black lines of
Romanian script. "It says here, 'Late in September 1457 when he was
hunting in the mountains for wild boar'--well, I shall say The Wolf each
time, instead of his real name--'The Wolf became hopelessly lost, and he
was forced to spend several nights sleeping in the forest. Each night as
soon as it grew dark he was approached by swarms of strigoica'. These
were the female vampires who were always looking for male lovers, so
that they could turn them into strigoi.

" "There were too many strigoica and The Wolf's efforts to keep them at
bay were hopeless. He became one of the undead himself. When he
eventually found his way back to Draculea's castle he would say nothing
of what had happened to him, although after his return from the forest
he was never seen abroad during the day and he became very secretive in
his behavior.'"

"That doesn't surprise me. I think I'd be pretty secretive if I was dead."

Jenica frowned at me. She was so serious about all of this strigoi stuff
that it was hard not to believe that it was all true--even though,
hello? we were talking about Dracula

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here, and real live dead people who were five-and-a-half centuries old.

" 'The Wolf began to gather around him some of Draculea's many
disaffected courtiers with the intention of assassinating Draculea and
taking over as voivode. In those days, you see, assassination was the
usual way to seize power, even amongst sons and brothers. 'But Draculea
had many spies and discovered what The Wolf was plotting. When The Wolf
was dragged from his bed, and exposed to daylight, Draculea immediately
realized that he was one of the undead. He ordered him to be impaled on
a high pole, which was the usual way in which he dealt with traitors and
liars and people who displeased him. On one occasion Draculea had
impaled three thousand people in a single day. The pole was blunt and
very well oiled, so that The Wolf would not immediately die of shock,
and it was pushed into The Wolf's buttocks until it came out of his
mouth. It was then erected in the shadow of the castle walls, so that
The Wolf would not be incinerated by the rays of the sun, and would
suffer great agony for days on end.'"

I was tempted to say something about right royal pains in the ass, but
decided against it.

Jenica turned the page." 'However Draculea's mistress, Lenuta, who had
once been The Wolf's wife, and had been forcibly taken by Draculea, took
pity on him. She shone her hand mirror from the battlements so that the
rays of the sun set him on fire, and cremated him to ashes, and so
delivered him from his pain. The Wolf thus became a dead vampire, or a
svarcolaci. Draculea discovered what his mistress had done, and had her
stomach cut open, so that everybody could see where he had been. The
Wolf had to wait many years to take his revenge on Draculea, but
eventually did so. On the second night of the Battle of Bucharest in
December 1476, five strigoi entered Draculea's tent. They slit his
throat and drank his blood, and then they cut off his

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head and mounted it on a pole, so that the victorious Turks would
discover it in the morning, when the sun rose."

"Well, that's not exactly bedtime reading, is it? Does it say how The
Wolf was caught by the priests?"

"Only briefly," said Jenica. "In 1767 the Black Purifiers tracked down
The Wolf and his nest of strigoi to a house near Borsa in Transylvania.
The priests diverted a stream so that the house was surrounded on all
sides by running water, which vampires are unable to cross, and then
they tore the house down so that the vampires were exposed to sunlight."
The Wolf, of course, could not be killed, but it says here that "he was
wound around with a mile of silver wire and then he was shut up in an
iron casket lined with silver, which was sealed with wax made from
melted church candles mixed with crushed garlic. Or rather--"

Jenica frowned, and read the words again.

"Something wrong?" I asked her.

"I do not completely understand this. It does not actually say that The
Wolf himself was bound with silver wire and shut up in a silver-lined
casket. If you translate the words literally, they mean 'his perfect
picture'. Or maybe 'his exact likeness' would be more accurate."

"Well," I suggested, "he was a spirit, wasn't he, rather than a walking
dead person? And spirits can assume all kinds of really strange shapes.
When Singing Rock brought him into my apartment, he was all stretched
out--more like a shadow than a person. Maybe the priests were trying to
say that whatever shape he was, it was definitely him. His exact likeness"

"I'm still not sure," said Jenica. "But anyway, the casket was taken to
Borsa, and bricked up in the vaults of the Chapel of St. Basil, and that
must have been where Gheorghe Vlad found it."

"So this is the Vampire Gatherer we have to go looking for?"

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"That's right. Although I do not know how we are going to find him. The
svarcolaci are notorious for concealing themselves so that not even the
most skillful purifiers can discover their hiding places."

"Maybe I should try saying The Wolf's real name. That way, he'd come
looking for me."

"No! You do not know what are you suggesting, Mr. Harry. If the
svarcolaci becomes aware that you are hunting for him, he will always
make sure that you are dead before the next sun rises. And yes, your
spirit guide is right. You will be ripped to pieces so that there is
nothing left to bury of you but human rags."

"Okay, then," I said. "So what's Plan B?"

"I will look through my father's books, and see if I can discover how it
was that the Black Purifiers discovered where The Wolf was hiding."

"Very good idea. You're not just an extraordinary looking woman, are you?"

She stared at me, as if she were waiting for me to say something else.

"What do you want me to tell you?" I said. "I think you're beautiful,
and if you don't know that you're beautiful, then you've been looking in
the wrong mirrors."

"Mr. Harry, we are looking for a Vampire Gatherer."

"Yes. I'm sorry. But I just thought I'd let you know that I'm not
completely impervious. You know, to the way you look. And that tickly
thing you did, on the palm of my hand. And you walked into the bathroom,
didn't you, when I was taking a shower?"

Jenica looked totally baffled. You can't even imagine how relieved I was
when the doorbell rang.

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15

Cold Blood

We drew the velvet drapes together as tightly as we could. Apart from a
few triangular chinks of sunlight, it was so gloomy that we could hardly
see each other, but Dr. Winter still couldn't stop shivering. Gil had
given him a gilded, straight-backed dining chair to sit in, but the poor
guy kept doubling forward in pain. His face was thick with
yellowish-white sunblock, and there was dried blood on his chin, like a
beard. His black pants were filthy and one of his sleeves was torn.

"Maybe I shouldn't have brung him up here," said Gil.

"No," I said. "I think you did right."

Jenica was pacing up and down. "What if The Wolf sent him here to tear
us to pieces? How can we know for sure that he will not turn on us, and
cut our throats, and drink all our blood?"

The answer was, um, we couldn't. But for some reason I felt that we
could trust him, at least some of the way. He didn't have the same
unhinged stare as those people who had attacked Gil and me in the
street. He was very sick, no

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doubt about it, but it was obvious that he was struggling hard to keep
his sickness from overwhelming him. And he was a doctor. Once upon a
time he had taken an oath to save people's lives, for what that was worth.

I sat on the couch next to him. "It's Frank, isn't it, doc?"

Frank lifted his head, and attempted a smile. "I want to thank you, for
taking me off the street. I think I'd be dead by now, if you hadn't."

"Gil says you've been infected."

"That's right. It was a girl called Susan Fireman, a patient of mine.
She died, or at least I thought she was dead. She climbed into my
bedroom the night after she was taken to the morgue. We had sex."

"A dead girl climbed into your bedroom and you actually managed to have
sex? Jesus. I'd have been halfway to the Canadian border, leaving a
brown trail behind me."

Frank coughed, and nodded. "It was like a dream. Well, more like a
nightmare. I can't really explain how it happened. But I'm pretty sure
that's how the vampires pass their infection on, from one person to
another, through the exchange of bodily fluids. It's perfect... the
quickest way to spread an epidemic, bar none. You should see how the HIV
virus was spread in India... by long-distance truck drivers, using
roadside prostitutes. Millions got infected. Five million, in a few
months, all across the continent. The same thing's going to happen here,
with this."

"So you think it's a virus?"

"It's some kind of viral-type infection. Our pathologists at the Sisters
of Jerusalem were trying to isolate it, but from what your friend tells
me--"

"The Sisters of Jerusalem was burning, the last I heard," Gil put in.
"St. Vincent's too, and Bellevue."

I turned back to Frank. "So how do you feel? Do you think you're going
to be able to beat this thing, or what?"

"I don't know. My skin's burning. I feel like a pig, to tell you the
truth, roasting on a spit. I'm so thirsty I can hardly

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swallow, but even thinking about water makes me sick to my stomach. All
I can think about is human blood. It's worse than being an alcoholic and
needing a drink."

"Are you hungry? When was the last time you ate?"

"I can't remember. Yesterday morning, I think."

"Do you think you could manage to eat something?"

"I don't know. Some raw meat, maybe."

"Jenica?" I asked her.

"I have some chopped liver in the fridge," she said, although she didn't
make any effort to hide her disgust.

"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll blend some chopped liver with
some Romanian wine, and we'll see if you can keep going on that. If you
don't drink any human blood, Frank, maybe you can beat this infection,
you know?"

"I'll try," said Frank.

I scraped the chicken livers out of their bloodstained paper into
Jenica's Waring blender. Then I poured in half a bottle of Feteasca
Neagra, and blitzed the livers into a smooth, dark-brown glop. It
smelled appalling, like a rabbit that had died after a weekend on the
booze, but Frank needed feeding and I couldn't think of anything else
that he might be able to stomach.

Gil came into the kitchen while I was making it, and between blitzes I
told him everything that Jenica and I had found out about strigoi and
svarcolaci.

"Most important of all--we think we've found out the name of the actual
Vampire Gatherer who's here in New York. Back in Romania they used to
call him The Wolf."

"So what's his real name?"

I scraped the brown glop into a cereal bowl and rooted around in the
cutlery drawer, looking for a spoon. "We daren't say his name out loud,
in case he picks up on it, and comes looking for us. And from what
Jenica tells me, he doesn't take prisoners."

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Gil said, "Shit, man, we really have to take some action. And I mean,
like, now. Outside in the streets--it's like a goddamned war zone out
there. Bodies lying everywhere. Men, women, kids. It's worse than Kosovo."

Gil had managed to shower and shave when he was home, and he was wearing
a clean khaki T-shirt and clean Desert Storm-style pants. But he had
haunted, dark circles under his eyes and I could tell from his
disconnected speech how exhausted he was.

"Is your family okay?" I asked him.

He nodded. "I've barricaded them into our apartment, and they're pretty
well supplied with food and bottled water. I've left Marie my gun, too,
and she knows how to use it."

"That's good."

"Yes--but we still need to do something. We can't just sit on our duffs
talking about it, for Christ's sake."

"We're not going to," I reassured him. "For starters, we're going to go
looking for the nest."

"Then we can frag it, right?"

"I don't think you can beat these suckers by fragging them. They're
undead, remember, which means they're dead already. What we have to do
is, identify which casket belongs to the Vampire Gatherer. He's in
charge of all of the rest of the vampires. Jenica has a book, and it has
the ritual in it for sealing him up again. So if we can catch the
Vampire Gatherer during the day, while he's hiding in there, we can stop
him from ever getting out again."

"So where do we start looking?"

"Well, I'm not sure, exactly. I was hoping that the doc might have some
ideas. I mean, he's halfway to being one of the strigoi, isn't he?"

"And what if he doesn't? If Jenica's old man hasn't been able to find
it, after all these years, what hope do we have?"

"I don't know, Gil. Maybe we'll have to put our faith in the Lord."

I carried the brown glop back into the living room. Frank

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took it, and sniffed it, and prodded it with his spoon. But then he
tried a little, and managed to swallow it.

"How is it?" I asked him.

"Don't ever try to open a restaurant, but I think I can keep it down."

I sat beside him as he tried to eat. I had to admire the guy. He was
obviously going through seven kinds of hell, but he was trying very hard
to hold on to his humanity-- even to his sense of humor. All the same,
there was something in his eyes that told me that he was fighting a
losing battle. A kind of looking inwards. I had seen that expression
before on people who knew they were soon going to die. Like, how can the
world be so heartless as to leave me behind?

"We need to find the place where the vampires' coffins are hidden," I
told him. "I was wondering if you had any ideas."

"My father always believed that they were still downtown someplace," put
in Jenica. "But we have no records of where they might be. Maybe you
have some special intuition."

Frank attempted a smile. "I'm not one of the undead yet," he remarked.
"But I'll tell you something--from what I've seen, the strigoi don't
need coffins to hide during the day. This was what I wanted to tell the
pathology people at the Sisters of Jerusalem. It sounds crazy, I know,
but they can hide inside mirrors."

"What?"

"They can walk into a mirror just like it's a door, and they can stay
there until it gets dark."

"How the hell do they do that?"

"I'm not sure. But the early tests we did at the hospital showed that
they had an enzyme in their bloodstream with a silver element attached.
In some way, they seem to have a metabolic association with silver, and
maybe this allows them to penetrate the reflective surface of a mirror
and pass through to the other side." He coughed. "Or maybe it doesn't.
Maybe it's black magic, who knows?

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He managed another spoonful of liver and wine. "This is truly
disgusting," he said.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "But it should help you to keep your strength
up."

Little by little, as he ate, Frank told us what had happened in his
apartment. He explained how Susan Fireman had climbed in through the
window, even though she was clinically dead, and how she had reached out
of the mirror in the hallway and cut the detective's throat. "There was
blood just about everywhere."

"Weren't you at all... tempted?" asked Jenica. She was a sharp one, no
question about that.

"Tempted?" Frank shook his head, but as he did so he gave me a quick,
shifty glance, and I strongly suspected that he was lying. But who was I
to judge? He was infected with a virus that had already turned hundreds
of people into murdering blood-drinkers, and nobody knew how to cure it.
He was a victim, too.

"I had a dream that Susan Fireman stepped into this tilting mirror that
I have in my bedroom," said Frank. "Well--it may have been a dream, or
maybe I was hallucinating. In any case, I refused to follow her. I
smashed the mirror to stop Susan Fireman from coming back through, or
the Vampire Gatherer from coming after me, and when I woke up, I found
that I had broken my mirror for real. I think that's the only thing that
saved me.

He had another fit of coughing, but then he said, "The reason I was
trying to get back to the Sisters of Jerusalem--I needed to talk to our
chemists. If they can find some agent that can break down this silver
enzyme-- maybe we could inject people with it when they first show signs
of infection."

"But would that stop them from turning into strigoi?" asked Jenica.

"I doubt it. But it would probably stop them from

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escaping into mirrors. When the sun came up, they wouldn't have anyplace
to hide, and they would burn up, and die for good. Eventually the
strigoi would stop spreading so fast, and we could hunt them down and
get them under control."

"That's kind of extreme," I told him. "That's like stopping a forest
fire by cutting down the forest."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Well, like I said, I think we need to find out where these freaks are
hiding and hit them where they live. Or where they're undead, rather.
That would be a start. But we also have to find out who revived the
strigoi, and why, and we have to get rid of him, whoever he is."

"Of course, Harry, this is the best plan," Jenica put in. "But this is
not going to be such a simple proposition. For all of his adult life my
father has been searching for the Vampire Gatherer and his nest of
strigoi, and he could never find them. Besides, we must be rational. The
strigoi are surrounded by myths and legends, remember, not established
facts."

"You think so?" said Gil. "The way I see it, all those dead people in
the streets, they weren't killed by myths and legends--but if they were,
then the myths and legends must be pretty much true. Like the doc says,
this is either some complicated kind of bio-chemistry, or else it's
black magic. Dead people can't climb up buildings, and nobody can hide
inside mirrors, whether they're dead or alive. But, hell--here they are,
doing it. So if all the intelligence we've got to go on is myths and
legends, that's still better than no intelligence at all, believe me. In
Bosnia once I had this superstitious feeling that the Serbs had set up a
booby trap inside a children's hostel, and that superstitious feeling
saved me from getting my ass blown inside out.

He paused, and then he said to Jenica, "You don't have any kind of candy
bar, do you?"

224

"What?"

"I think my blood-sugar level is dropping."

"Well... I have Romanian chocolate. Romania is famous for chocolate."

"Sure, anything. This morning I ate four Snickers bars one after the
other, and that was my breakfast. Once I start getting hyped up, I have
to have candy."

I have to admit that our whole situation looked slightly worse than
totally hopeless. I mean, what a bunch of clowns--what could we do to
save New York City, the four of us, sitting in this stuffy downtown
apartment with the drapes drawn? Shivery, Sleepy, Superstitious and Sexy.

There was Frank, with his face as white as a papier-mâché mask,
shivering and coughing and grunting every two or three minutes because
he felt like he was burning up alive. He was a doctor, sure, but right
now his medical expertise wasn't much use to anybody, least of all
himself. Then there was Gil. He was a trained soldier, but he was so
tired and wired by what he had seen in the streets that he was eating
chocolate with his eyes closed. Me--I had some practical experience of
malevolent things from beyond, but I didn't have the slightest idea how
to deal with real live vampires, and I wasn't at all sure that I was
brave enough or public-spirited enough to go out and try. And
Jenica--well, she was highly academic, and she was very sexy, but in my
opinion it was going to take more than a deep cleavage and a Ph.D. to
handle a 550-year-old svarcolaci.

More to the point, did any of us have the strength or the guile or the
know-how to fight whoever had raised The Wolf up out of his casket, and
defeat him? Or it? Or whatever it was? Remember that I once saw a
mythical lizard appear out of nowhere and bite a doctor's fingers off,
so I was prepared to believe in anything at all--and you should be, too,

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because that kind of shit happens, no matter how much you don't want to
believe in it.

In the end, though, Gil was right. We might have been clowns, but we had
to do something, because it didn't look as if anybody else in New York
City had our unique combination of peculiar knowledge and contacts with
the spirit world.

I snapped off a piece of Gil's chocolate while he still had his eyes
closed. "So, okay," I said, "where exactly are we going to start looking
for these vampires? If they can hide in mirrors, we don't stand a
chance, unless we break every mirror in Manhattan."

"We still need to find the nest," said Jenica. "Strigoi need to gather
together from time to time. They are very vicious, but their emotional
strength is very brittle. They are thousands of miles away from their
homeland, remember, and they have outlived their friends and their loved
ones by hundreds of years. My father always says that they are
dangerous, but very lonely, and perhaps their loneliness makes them even
more dangerous still."

"Okay, then, let's use some logic. If your father couldn't find the
nest, why couldn't he find it?"

"He has several suspicions. He has always been sure that when Reddings
Department Store was demolished in

1907, the coffins could not have been taken very far away. It would have
been too expensive to carry them far, and who would want to pay for dead
people they did not even know? Also, there is no mention in any of the
newspapers of so many coffins being transported out of New York, or sent
back to Romania, and that would have been a newsworthy item."

"Maybe they were taken to a cemetery and buried?"

"Perhaps. There is a Romanian Orthodox Cemetery in New Jersey, but the
records show that they were not interred there. In fact, no cemetery of
any faith within two

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hundred miles of New York City has records of so many coffins being
interred in one day--even Potters' Field on Hart Island, where the
city's paupers were buried."

"What would you logically do with two hundred coffins?" I wondered. "If
you weren't going to have them cremated, and if you didn't bury them in
a cemetery, where would you stash them?"

Jenica said, "I will show you a map." She went over to the bookcase and
came back with a large-scale street map of downtown New York in 1914,
which she spread out over the coffee table. It was yellowed with age,
and the creases had been reinforced with Scotch tape to prevent it from
falling apart. A sheet of tracing paper was fastened over the pages that
showed Wall Street and Battery Park, on which her father had penciled
the location of Redding's Department Store on Cortlandt Street, and
several other locations where he had obviously thought that the coffins
might have been buried, or re-housed.

"Of course this map was drawn seven years after the coffins were moved,
so many of the buildings would have been different. In those days,
everything in the business district was being torn down and rebuilt,
almost constantly. The streets were always filled with rubble. Every
bank wanted a grander headquarters, every stockbroker wanted a taller
office. Private houses were disappearing and moving uptown, new
factories were opening and closing."

"So--if the buildings were changing so often, it's unlikely that the
coffins were stored in a warehouse, or an attic? They would have been
easily discovered, if they were."

"So you're thinking cellar," put in Gil, without opening his eyes.

"Cellar, or wine vault, or sewer maybe. But someplace underground,
that's my guess. Even if the building above it was torn down, a cellar
could have stayed intact."

Frank eased himself out of his chair and came across to the couch to sit
beside me. He stared at the map for a long

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time, trying to suppress his coughing, and then he said, "What's this?
St. Stephen's Church?"

"That's right," said Jenica. "St. Stephen's Romanian Orthodox Church, on
Cedar Street. It was opened in 1916, but it stood right at the foot of
the World Trade Center. When the South Tower collapsed, it was totally
demolished."

"Yes, of course, I remember seeing it on TV. The streets on this map are
all so different, I didn't realize that this was the same church. But
Saint Stephen--that's very strange."

"Why is it strange?"

"In my dream, I saw my grandfather. He was sitting in his old black
Mercury Marquis, only it was converted into a funeral car. What I really
noticed was that my grandfather's hair was shining like a halo, and I
thought: He looks just like a saint."

"This was the dream with Susan Fireman?" asked Jenica. "The dream when
she was trying to persuade you to go through the mirror?"

Frank coughed, and cleared his throat. "Yes, but I'm beginning to
believe that it wasn't a dream at all. It was more like a hypnotic
trance. She was inside my head, just like a hypnotist. She was conjuring
up my childhood memories so that I would feel that everything was fine
and there was nothing for me to worry about. I could walk through the
mirror, I could die, I could turn into one of the strigoi, everything
would be wonderful. It looked like my world, but it was entirely
controlled by her."

"I don't follow you," I told him.

"Everything in that dream had some kind of significance. The beach, the
mirror, everything. So what was my grandfather doing there? And why was
he sitting in a hearse? And why did he have a halo? I keep on turning
that over and over in my mind, and the more I think about it, the more
sure I am that Susan Fireman was trying to show me something in a way
that I would understand it. My memories, but her meanings. You're going
to meet an elder,

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and you're going to respect him, the same way you used to respect your
grandfather, and you're going to love him."

"Your grandfather looked like a saint," said Jenica, nodding her head as
if she was beginning to understand what Frank was getting at--which was
a damn sight more than I was. "What was your grandfather's name?"

"That's the whole point. His name was Stephen."

"So, in this dream you saw Stephen, looking like a saint, and sitting in
a funeral car?"

"That's right."

"Did the funeral car have a casket in it?"

Frank closed his eyes, and thought for a moment. Then he said, "Yes...
yes, it did. A big gray casket, made of metal. But it was very scabby
and corroded, as if it had been buried underground for hundreds of years."

"And were there any flowers around the casket?"

"No, no flowers--but now I come to think, there was something twined
around it. Like branches, silver and green--only they were shiny, and I
could swear that they were moving."

"Snakes? said Jenica.

"Snakes?" I asked her.

"Of course. This young strigoica was trying to persuade Frank to join
her in the place where the strigoi were hiding, yes? She was thinking so
strongly about it that her thoughts appeared in Frank's dream, or
trance, or whatever it was. But they appeared in the way that thoughts
always appear in dreams--as symbols, or riddles."

"So Frank's grandfather Stephen looked like a saint?" I asked her. "And
the saint was looking after the casket with the Vampire Gatherer in it."

"Yes. But Saint Stephen is not a man ... St. Stephen is a building. St.
Stephen is St. Stephen's Romanian Orthodox Church."

"But the church was flattened on 9/11."

"Yes. But maybe not the vaults underneath it."

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"Your father--didn't he ever search St. Stephen's Church?" I asked
Jenica. "It seems to me like the first place he would have checked out.
Not only that, it's only three blocks away from Redding's Department Store."

"Of course. He searched it in the 1960s, on the pretext that he was a
student of religious architecture, but he found nothing at all. I know
this, because he mentioned it to me after we heard that St. Stephen's
had been demolished.

"He said that he tried to search it again in the 1970s, after there was
a documentary on TV about the building of the World Trade center towers.
It showed them excavating the foundations, and my father realized how
soft the soil was, because it was all landfill, and how easy it was to
dig so deep. I remember him wondering if St. Stephen's Church had vaults
beneath vaults, like some of the older churches in Transylvania and
Wallachia. Most of them used to have catacombs and tunnels that ran deep
below the Carpathian mountains, and this is where they hid all their art
and their treasure during the time of the Ottoman empire.

"My father asked the church authorities if he could make another search,
but by this time they knew from articles in the newspapers that he was
trying to find strigoi, and they refused. The Orthodox Primate of New
York was not going to allow the media to say that he had welcomed a
vampire hunter onto the premises!"

"Well, I may be barking up the wrong building," I said, "but if your
father thought that St. Stephen's Church was worth a second look, I
think we ought to do just that."

Frank coughed, and nodded. "I have an intuition that you may be right,
Harry."

"Are you okay?" I asked him. "You don't want me to make you another
liver-and-wine smoothie?"

He couldn't speak at first, but he vigorously shook his head.
Eventually, he managed to choke out, "Harry--I'd rather die first."

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After a brief and bad-tempered argument, we agreed that we would all go
looking for the vampire's nest. Jenica thought that it was far too risky
to take Frank along with us. He was so sick, and he would slow us down,
and supposing he was already much more infected by the strigoi virus
than he was letting on, and led us into a trap? But Gil was confident
that he could handle Frank, even if Frank did try to double-cross us. As
for Frank--Frank was desperate not to be left behind on his own,
coughing his lungs all over the carpet and waiting for the Vampire
Catcher to come for him.

"What do you think, Harry?"

"I think he should come with, if he's feeling up to it. This situation
can't be any more suicidal than it is already."

Out on the streets it seemed twenty times hotter. The sky was a weird
shade of laurel green, as if we were on another planet, and there was a
noticeable absence of shadows: as if they, too, were hiding away from
the vampires. The back of my shirt was soaked in sweat before I had even
walked down the front steps of Jenica's house, and I had to keep wiping
my face with a balled-up Kleenex.

Frank wore oven gloves and a hood and he had thickly smeared his face in
even more Ambre Solaire. Jenica had draped a net curtain over his head
to strain out as much light as possible, so that he looked like a
medieval leper. Even so, when he took his first step into the sunshine
he sucked in his breath, like, itttthhhhh! and for a moment I thought he
was going to turn around and stumble back inside.

"Frank? Frank? Think you can make it?"

"I'm a survivor, Harry, don't you worry about me. I'm not going to die.
And besides--" cough! "--I'm damned if I'm going to let that goddamned
wife of mine take all of my property."

I turned to Gil with exaggerated wonderment. "Did you hear that? This
must be the first vampire who's more worried about his divorce
settlement than he is about drinking blood."

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"Same thing, from what I've heard."

Jenica was still acting sulky, but I happen to like petulant women. She
was wearing a short linen dress, in a natural color, with blue and
yellow flowers embroidered across the yoke, and soft cream leather
boots. She carried an embroidered bag across her shoulders, which
contained her vampire-hunting kit. This consisted of a large crucifix,
set with amber and bloodstones, which had been given to her father by
the Orthodox monks from Maramures Monastery in Romania, and which he had
always taken with him when he went looking for strigoi; as well as a
round brass bottle of holy water, several sticks of pale green sealing
wax, and a screwtop jar full of garlic paste, thickly mixed with silver
filings from a maker of religious icons. Most important of all, though,
she had the book of svarcolaci, and the words that could seal the
Vampire Gatherer back in his casket--hopefully, for another five
hundred-fifty years.

Gil had brought all the practical equipment, most of it hung around his
waist. Two flashlights, a large screwdriver, a hunting knife and a
baseball bat.

The streets were uncannily silent, like an abandoned movie set, but
there were bodies everywhere, and in the heat and humidity they were
beginning to stink. Every block was cluttered with wrecked and
burned-out cars and trucks, and almost every vehicle contained a corpse,
either incinerated into a black matchstick person, or hugely bloated
with gas, like a blown-up doll. At one intersection there was a whole
bus full of blown-up dolls, all of different ethnic origins.

I saw three small children lying on the sidewalk next to a dumpster,
hand-in-hand, and their bodies were glittering with blowflies. I saw a
middle-aged woman in a red-and-yellow dress, curled up next to a fire
hydrant. I thought she was winking at me, until I realized that maggots
were dropping from her forehead into her empty eye socket.

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"What did I tell you?" said Gil. "This is like the end of the frigging
world."

We kept on walking, although my stomach made a horrible gurgling noise,
and I would have given anything to go back to Jenica's apartment and
slam the door behind me and lock it, and wait for somebody to tell me

that it was safe to come out.

Almost all of the victims had their throats cut--some so severely that
their spines were practically severed-- although there was very little
blood on the pavement. "Strigoi did this," said Jenica. "They cut, they
drink their fill. And you see how many bodies? They must be multiplying
very very fast."

The stores were deserted, even though many of them had their windows
smashed and their doors had been left wide open. Some of their stock had
been strewn around across the sidewalks, but it didn't look as if
anything much had been stolen. The strigoi had been looking for fresh
human blood, not microwave ovens.

We looked into a Greek delicatessen. A young woman lay dead on the
black-and-white tiled floor, her face covered by her upraised dress, her
legs wide apart. "Hold up a minute," said Gil. I waited on the sidewalk
while he went inside. He bent over the young woman's body and tugged
down her dress to make her decent. Then he covered her face with a
red-checkered napkin, and crossed himself.

He came out again, saying nothing, but I understood then why he was
helping us to find the vampires. He believed in human dignity, and he
understood the true value of human life. He had seen for himself what
happens when men become devils.

We walked six blocks and we saw no signs of life, except for a curtain
listlessly waving in a fifth-story window. No traffic, no sirens, no
helicopters, no ships whooping in the harbor. No dogs, even. Only
bodies, some of which were so repulsively mutilated that they didn't
looked human. A

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man was wearing his own fleshless ribcage like a massive helmet. A young
boy of maybe three or four had been run over by a truck, and his head
was completely flat, and nearly two feet wide.

At last we reached Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers had
collapsed, and where the Freedom Tower was already starting to rise.
Again, there was nobody here--nobody alive, anyway. The construction
huts were all deserted, and the heavy machinery stood silent, backhoe
diggers and bulldozers and concrete mixers. I saw a man's body suspended
from a crane, twenty or thirty feet in the air, like a lynching, with
two or three seagulls picking at it.

This site had stirred up enough emotions when I had come downtown to
view it after September eleventh. But that had been right in the middle
of the cleanup, and it had been noisy and busy and bustling with
purpose. This morning it was just plain eerie, a deserted construction
site in a city populated by rotting corpses, and undead people who could
only come out when it was dark. The crane clanked, and clanked, and one
of the seagulls screamed in frustration.

"Where's the frigging federal government?" Gil demanded in a sudden
burst of frustration. "Where's the rescue teams? Where's the frigging
marines? Don't tell me they've just abandoned us. You can't just abandon
a whole frigging city!"

Frank leaned against a barrier and coughed. "You can if it's contagious."

"You mean they've put up the shutters and left us here to die?"

"What would you do? Like Harry says, this thing could spread across the
eastern seaboard like wildfire."

"But there's no helicopters even!"

Frank coughed again. "They probably don't want to give us any false
hopes," he said, wryly.

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At that moment Jenica called out, "It's here! St. Stephen's Church!" Her
voice sounded flat, like someone shouting in a dream.

We gathered around 155 Cedar Street, where St. Stephen's Church had
stood. The layout of the street was being changed, and there were metal
fences everywhere, and rubble, and long coiling hoses, and portable
generators. A narrow trench had been excavated along the side of the
street, where new utility pipes were being laid, and this was heaped
with bodies, too, although I couldn't count how many, and I didn't want
to look at them too close. One man's face was already looking runny.

Frank straightened up, and sniffed the air, as if strigoi gave off a
detectable smell.

"Well?" I asked him.

"I can feel something, but I'm not sure what. A kind of emptiness."

"Emptiness? What do you mean?"

"It's like when you're moving out of a house--and you take a last look
around--just to make sure you haven't left anything behind--but really
you're trying to remember everything you did there--but you can't--"

"What about strigoi?" said Gil.

"I don't know. But there's something here. My skin's burning. And my
teeth are aching. Believe me--they really, really hurt, right down to
the roots."

Even through the folds of the net curtain I could see that he was
suffering. "Do you want to go back?" I asked him.

"No," he said, emphatically. "This is where the nest is, I'm sure of it.
Let's go find these bastards and finish them off."

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16

Blood Heat

I squeezed around a metal fence and walked across the construction site.
St. Stephen's had been only a tiny building, with a street frontage of
only fifty feet and a depth of no more than seventy-five feet. The site
had been completely scraped down to floor level, and the mosaic flooring
had now been cleaned and swept and covered in heavy-duty plastic
sheeting, to protect it. I looked down and there was St. Stephen staring
up at me through the vinyl, dark-skinned and sad-eyed, with a tarnished
gold halo.

The buildings on either side had been less seriously damaged, so the
site was like a gap where a molar had been extracted, and we stood deep
in shadow.

Gil and Jenica followed me as I picked my way to the very back of the
building. Here, there were two raised platforms, where the altar had
once stood, and off to the left I could see a three-foot space in the
mosaic where the door to the vaults must have been. The stairs leading
downward were covered over by rusty metal sheeting, but it looked as

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if somebody had shifted it, just enough to allow somebody very thin to
creep in. Or maybe creep out.

Frank came to join us. "I can feel that emptiness even more strongly.
It's almost--I don't know--sad."

"Okay, let's go down and see what St. Stephen has been hiding from us
all these years."

Between us, Gil and I managed to manhandle the metal sheeting away from
the staircase, even though it felt like it weighed half a ton, and after
we had moved it I had to walk around in a circle like Groucho Marx,
until I straightened myself up. The staircase was wooden, and very
dusty. After six or seven steps it took a sharp turn off to the right,
toward the back of the construction site, and was swallowed by darkness.

Gil switched on the larger of his two flashlights. "I'll go first.
Jenica--I think you should maybe come next. You have all the
vampire-hunting gear. Harry--you should take up the rear."

"Don't trust me?" asked Frank.

"I'm a grunt," said Gil. "Grunts don't trust nobody, never."

Jenica said, "We should be safe, if the strigoi are sleeping. But like I
told you before, we know about them only through myths and legends, and
we cannot be absolutely sure that they will not attack us."

"That's a risk we'll have to take," I told her. "Come on-- we're dealing
with the supernatural here, and when you're dealing with the
supernatural, you don't get a manufacturer's warranty."

She looked at me, and there was something in her eyes that made me feel
as if the ground was sliding sideways, underneath my feet. "Of course,"
she said. "Life is full of unexpected terrors."

Gil tested his weight on the top step of the staircase. "Seems okay," he
commented. Then he went down the next step, and the next. "It's a little
creaky, but otherwise I think it's sound."

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He disappeared around the bend in the stairs, although we could still
hear his voice. "It's pretty dusty down here, but it's dry. There's
another bend in the stairs, and then there's an archway. Are you coming
on down?"

Jenica took her eyes away from me and followed Gil down the stairs, her
boot heels going clomp, clomp, clomp on every tread.

"Are you going to be able to manage this?" I asked Frank.

Underneath his net curtain, he nodded. "This is the only way. If I don't
do this, I'm going to die. Worse than that, I'm going to die and I won't
be dead."

"Keep fighting it, Frank."

"I'm trying, Harry, believe me. Do you know something--I've treated
patients with stomach cancer, and they've taken hold of my sleeve, and
they've begged me to kill them. Begged me, with tears in their eyes.
Kill me, doc! Kill me!

He paused, and then he said, "I never knew what they were suffering, not
until now. But you can't get your revenge on cancer, can you? I think
those people would have wanted to go on living, if they could, no matter
how much pain they were going through."

"Look, if this gets too much for you--"

"Harry, I'm a doctor. I'll know when it's time to pull the plug. But,
thanks."

"Right, then. Let's go."

Frank felt his way down the staircase and I followed close behind him,
giving a quick glance around the construction site to make sure that
nobody was watching us. I'd seen too many of those movies when Dr. Van
Helsing goes into Dracula's cellars to put a crucifix and a bunch of
garlic in his coffin, only to be caught by the vampire coming back home
from a night's blood-sucking.

We had to duck our heads to go around the corner in the staircase. It
was narrow, and it was very low. As Gil had warned us, we had to
negotiate another bend, and then we

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found ourselves in a cellar, with red brick arches, and a red brick
floor. It was obvious that it had been completely swept clean, probably
by the N.Y Department of Environmental Protection, after September
eleventh. It smelled of nothing but brick dust, and there was nothing
stored here--no boxes, no religious paraphernalia, and definitely no
coffins.

Gil went over to the far side of the cellar, so that the arches hid his
head. He flicked his flashlight left and right, up and down, but then he
came back and said, "Looks like we've drawn a blank. I can't see any
trapdoors, or secret passages. Maybe the vampires were here, they're not
here now, and that's for sure."

"I could feel them," Frank insisted.

"You felt emptiness," I reminded him. "And whatever you say about it,
this is emptiness."

"Anyway, we will have to think again," said Jenica. "If they are not
here, then where are they? If only I could talk to my father, he would
have more ideas where we could look."

I borrowed Gil's spare flashlight, and took a slow walk around the
cellar, peering at every crack between the bricks.

"You're wasting your time, Harry," said Gil. "If there is another vault,
underneath this one, my guess is that it was sealed up years ago.
Remember this part of downtown gets flooded pretty often. That's why
they had to build the World Trade Center in kind of a concrete bathtub."

I had almost completed a circuit of the cellar when I noticed that the
shadow to the left of one of the arches appeared to be slightly wider
than any of the others. If you had been giving the cellar nothing more
than a quick, superficial search, you never would have seen it. In fact,
unless you were specifically looking for a concealed entrance, you never
would have seen it at all.

Jenica was already making her way back up the staircase, but I called
out, "Hey! Wait up!"

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"You got something?" asked Gil.

I had to go up really close to the arch before I realized why the shadow
was wider. There was a niche there, but it was only about eighteen
inches wide, if that, and it was cleverly concealed by protruding
brickwork. But when I shone the flashlight directly into it, I realized
that it ran right behind the arch. After about five feet, I could see
narrow brick steps. The steps led downward, and then turned sharply and
steeply to the right, so that they disappeared below the building next door.

"This is it," I called out. "Here's the way down."

Gil came around to look at it. "Jesus, that's skinny. Nobody over a
hundred and eighty-five pounds need apply."

"No claustrophobics, either."

Jenica and Frank joined us. Because there was no sunlight down here,
Frank had pulled off his net curtain, and his hood. Frank said, "I knew it."

Gil said, "Let's be realistic about this. If we go down there, and we
get ambushed, it isn't going to be easy to get out."

"Do we have a choice?" I asked him.

Frank said, "Why don't I go first? If we don't find these bastards, I'm
going to die anyway. And maybe they won't attack me, if they think that
I'm one of them. Or nearly one of them."

"That is what frightens me," said Jenica. "Supposing you have been
leading us into an ambush, all along?"

"Well, I don't feel well enough to make an issue of it," said Frank.
"I'm just saying that if you want me to go first, then I will."

"I trust him," I said. In reality, I wasn't entirely sure that I did,
but I was entirely sure that I didn't want to go first.

Gil shrugged. Then he took a pack of Fruit Loops out of one of the patch
pockets on his pants, shook out a handful, and crammed them into his
mouth. "AH right by me," he said, indistinctly.

I gave Frank my flashlight and he edged his way into the

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niche. He had to go in sideways, and to hold his breath, too. The
flashlight shone upward into his face, which made him look even more
ghoulish than he did already. "It's not too bad," he said, but then he
started coughing, and he was forced to stop.

"Do you want to come back?" I asked him, but he managed to clamp his
hand over his throat.

"I'm okay. I can make it."

He inched his way toward the steps, and then gradually he disappeared
out of sight. We could still see his flashlight dancing on the
brickwork, and we could hear his shoes scraping on the steps, but that
was all. Then the flashlight disappeared, too, and there was darkness,
and silence.

"Frank? I called out.

Still silence.

"Frank, are you there? What do you see?"

More silence, but then a distorted, echoing voice. "It's incredible!
It's incredible! You got to come down here!"

"Frank? Is everything okay down there?"

"Come see for yourself!"

"Are there any strigoi down there?" asked Jenica.

"Come see."

"It's a trap," said Jenica. "I am sure that he is trying to trap us."

"I still trust him," I told her. "And he doesn't sound like he's in any
kind of trouble."

Gil lifted up his baseball bat. "I'll go down first. If you hear me
shout, just get out of here as quick as you can."

He squeezed himself into the niche, and worked his way sideways down the
steps. I get panicky in confined spaces. My sister locked me in the
linen closet when I was four years old, and I didn't stop screaming for
three days. Well, my mom said that it felt like three days. This was
even worse. First I had to exhale, and then I had to pull my stomach in,
and even then it took a whole lot of effort to force myself along. The
brickwork was scraping at my belt

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buckle, and I seriously began to think that I was going to get stuck
here, and starve to death. It didn't help that I was starting to
hyperventilate.

"You can go faster," Jenica scolded me. She may have been bosomy, but
she was a whole lot slimmer than me.

"I'm going as fast as I can, okay?"

"And what if we have to escape?"

I didn't answer. I was too busy struggling round the corner. I had never
felt so panicky in my life, even when Misquamacus had brought down
hordes of giant rats from the Great Beyond, and I hated rats almost as
much as I hated confined spaces.

After I had turned the corner, however, I found that the niche began to
widen, and that the ceiling was higher. The last twenty steps were very
steep, but they led down into a huge, dark vault, with massive cast-iron
pillars to support it. Gil was there, and Frank, too, and they were
criss-crossing their flashlight beams in all directions.

Between the pillars lay hundreds of coffins, hundreds, and they were all
lying open, with their lids tilted. Further back, the flashlights picked
up the glitter of water, where part of the vault was flooded, and some
of the coffins were afloat.

"Strigoi? whispered Jenica, as she came down the last step, and joined us.

Frank approached the nearest coffin. It looked like oak, and it must
have been varnished black when it was made, but now the varnish was
blistered and faded. Inside, the fabric lining was yellow and stained,
and spotted with mold, and there was a clear impression of somebody's
body. There were even a few dry brown hairs on the pillow, and Frank
picked them up, and rubbed them between his fingers.

"Frank?"

He turned to me, and he looked totally shattered, even beneath that
thick mask of sunblock. "It's true," he said.

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"They really exist. The undead. I haven't been dreaming, have I?"

I didn't know what to say to him. He turned away, and went from one
coffin to the other, as if he were searching for evidence that this was
all some kind of monstrous fake. Some of the coffins had nameplates on
them, and he read them out.

"Naum Ciomu, Valeriu Erhan, loan Stefanescu ..."

Jenica was over on the other side of the vault with Gil, but when she
heard Frank reading out the names she called out, "Harry! Tell him to
stop! Some of the strigoi might be able to pick him up!"

"Frank," I warned him, and he held up his hand and said, "Okay. I heard
her."

He came back and stood next to me. "She really doesn't trust me, does she?"

"No. But she knows a whole lot more about vampires than we do, and maybe
they can't be trusted, as a rule."

"I'm not a vampire, Harry, and I don't intend to become one."

I watched Jenica climbing over a row of empty coffins, with Gil close
behind her. "Maybe she had a bad experience with vampires, who knows?"

"She had a bad experience with vampires?"

I looked at him. I didn't know what to say. I could only guess what
agony he was suffering.

"Who would have thought that this was all true?" he asked me. "All those
horror comics we used to read when we were kids... all of those Dracula
movies. All of that stuff about the vampire Lestat. And all the time, it
was true."

It was then that Gil waved his flashlight in our direction, and Jenica
called, "Harry! Harry, we've found it! The Wolf's casket, it's over here!"

The Vampire Gatherer's coffin was enormous, like a 1940s sedan, and it
had been propped up on bricks to keep it

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clear of the water. Just like the coffin that Frank had described in his
dream, it was forged out of iron, and it was thick with overlapping
scales of dirt and corrosion. It had six huge handles in the shape of
shaggy wolf heads, holding rings in their jaws, and its edges were
thickly decorated with intertwined snakes.

In common with all the other coffins, its lid had been lifted off and
tilted aside, although it was raised up so high that we couldn't see if
there was anybody lying in it.

Gil immediately genuflected in front of me and cupped his hands.
"Here--I'll give you a boost up."

"Just a goddam minute," I protested. "What if he's in there?"

"If he's in there, I don't know. You hammer a stake through his heart."

"We don't have a stake."

"It would do no good, anyway," said Jenica. "The Wolf is already dead.
His heart is buried in Wallachia."

"So if he's in there, what do I do?"

"You say nothing. You stay silent. I will cross him with holy water, and
read the dismissal from the book of svarcolaci, and then we will close
his coffin with wax."

"And that will seal him up again, for good?"

"As you say, Harry, this is the supernatural. It does not arrive with a
manufacturer's warranty."

I put my foot into Gil's cupped hands, and gripped his shoulders. He
said, "Ready?"--but before I could tell him that I wasn't, he was
heaving me upward, with my arms wildly waving to keep my balance.

I managed to catch a glimpse inside The Wolf's casket before I teetered
sideways and had to jump back down to the floor, but only for a split
second. He wasn't in there, thank all the saints of Wallachia. I saw a
filthy gray pillow, and lace ruffles that had turned yellow with age,
but that was all.

"You want to try again?" asked Gil.

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"Forget it, it's empty."

"He's probably hiding in a mirror someplace," said Frank. "In fact, I'll
bet all of them are."

"I would like to look in the casket for myself, please," put in Jenica.

"Okay," said Gil, and knelt down again. Jenica placed her booted foot
into his interlaced hands, and I stood next to her, holding her elbow,
to help her to keep her balance. Gil lifted her up, and we both made a
serious effort not to look up at her thin white lacy thong. She peered
over the edge of the coffin, and confirmed, "Yes, he is gone." But just
when Gil was about to lower her back down, she said, "Wait--wait up a
second! There is something here!"

When she climbed down, she was wielding something that looked like a
thick brown stick, a little over a foot long, with a knob at each end.
It was only when Gil shone the flashlight on it that we realized what it
was. A very old bone, heavily decorated with all kinds of zig-zag
patterns, and with a hole drilled through one end, with feathers attached.

Frank coughed, and said, "That's a shinbone. A human tibia."

"You sure about that?"

"Trust me, I'm a doctor."

I took the bone from Jenica and peered at it closely. I couldn't think
why, but I found it oddly evocative, like some smell that you haven't
smelled in years, or some song that you can't quite remember. "Do you
know what this is used for?" I asked Jenica. "I mean, is it part of any
vampire ritual?"

Jenica shook her head. "It is not Romanian, I don't think."

"So what's it doing in the Vampire Gatherer's casket?"

Frank approached the casket and touched it with the fingertips of both
hands. "You know, I can almost feel this guy," he said, hoarsely. "That
emptiness I was talking about.

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It's very, very strong." He traced one finger across the corroded plaque
on the end of the casket. "I think I can see some letters here."

I said, "Here," and shone my flashlight onto them, and Frank slowly read
them out. "N--U--M ... E--L--E... M--E--U--E--S--T... and then there's
an E...what does that mean in English?"

Jenica said, "Can you repeat that?"

"N--U--M--"

"That's all right, I understand it," Jenica interrupted him. " 'Numele
meu estel It simply means 'my name is--'"

"-Vasile Lup," Frank whispered.

We stared at him, stunned. "You said it," said Gil.

"What?" said Frank, blinking at us.

"You said it, man. You said the fucking name! You're not supposed to say
it, otherwise he can pick it up on his radar and he can tell that you're
looking for him."

Frank looked distraught. "I know that, I know. But I didn't mean to, I
swear it. I just--"

"You didn't mean to?" snapped Jenica. "Harry! Didn't I warn you that he
couldn't be trusted! Now he has spoken the Vampire Gatherer's name and
the Vampire Gatherer knows that we are trying to find him! He will find
us first, believe me, and he will kill us all!"

Frank said, "Listen! I really didn't intend to say it out loud. I don't
know... it just kind of came out."

"Oh! So you think we are fools? You are already one of the strigoi! You
wanted to stay with us just to make sure that we were all trapped, and
torn into pieces!"

Frank started to cough. "I didn't mean to say the goddam name, okay? I
want to see this son-of-a-bitch get his comeuppance even more
desperately than you do!"

"You will have your wish, sooner than you know!"

I said, "Hey, come on, Jenica, take it easy. You said yourself that most
of this vampire stuff is only myths and

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legends. So all this stuff about saying the name, maybe that's just
mythical, too. Gil thought you only had to say the word strigoi, didn't
he, and the vampires would come and hunt you down? And like, think about
it. How could this Wolf character hear Frank whispering his name, when
we're right down in this cellar, right, and he's probably twenty blocks
away, in some multi-story parking lot, hiding inside somebody's rearview
mirror?"

But Jenica wouldn't lighten up. "There is so much historical evidence,"
she said, stalking backwards and forwards. "People have spoken the name
of a strigoi or a svarcolaci, and next day their bodies are scattered
over the fields, for the crows to feed on! The famous historian
Alexandru Dutu, that happened to him in 1954, in Bucharest! He gave a
speech at the university, and he said out loud the name of a svarcolaci.
That night, they say that his blood came down on Presei Libere like rain!"

"Okay," I acknowledged. "But even if Frank did say the name
deliberately, which I don't believe he did, maybe he's saved us all the
trouble of looking for this character. Come on, Jenica. We have to face
up to him sooner or later."

"In the daylight, yes, when we have the advantage! But later--"

"I know. In the night, in the dark!"

"You mock me, Harry."

"Jenica, I wouldn't dare."

At that moment, however, we heard a splash, and then a quick, sharp
patter. Over in the far corner of the vault, three or four of the
floating coffins started to knock together, like canoes. Gil raised his
flashlight and tracked it slowly from side to side. There was another
patter, and another splash. Then more coffins began to sway.

"Oh my God," said Jenica. "Look!"

I lifted my flashlight, too, and it was then that I saw them.
Rats--there must have been thousands of them, swarming

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over the coffins like giant gray lice. Some of them were struggling in
the water, drowning, while scores more of them were running over their
backs. Their eyes glittered bright yellow and the vault was suddenly
filled with their chittering and squeaking.

I could smell them, too, in a nauseating wave of long-confined air. They
stank of raw sewage and something a whole lot worse.

"I think we need to get out of here," said Gil.

He didn't have to repeat himself. Jenica was already climbing the steps,
and Frank was close behind her. "Go on, Harry," Gil told me, lifting up
his baseball bat. "I'll hold them off." I hesitated for a moment, but
then I turned and started to make my way back up.

"Come on, rodents!" Gil shouted. "Come and get your teeth knocked out!"

It took me only a few seconds to reach the bend in the steps, where they
narrowed into a niche. When I glanced back, however, the rats had
already poured over every coffin in the vault, and they were rushing
toward Gil in a tidal wave of greasy gray fur.

Jenica had made it through the niche, but Frank was stuck. He had
managed to squeeze himself a little way in between the bricks, but now
he was coughing with pain and panic, and he couldn't go any further.

"Frank!" I shouted at him. "Try to relax! Take a couple of deep breaths!"

"I can't, I--cough!--I can't breathe--coughF

I looked back down again. The rats had already reached Gil's feet and he
was whacking at them left and right with his baseball bat. He had killed
at least ten of them, but three of them were already clinging to his
back, and more were starting to run up his legs. He swung his bat again
and again, and pieces of bloody rat went flying across the vault, but
one rat managed to jump up and grip his sleeve with its

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teeth, and even while he was swinging at the other rats, it dangled from
side to side, refusing to let go, and more rats kept jumping up to join it.

I turned back to Frank. "Frank!" I shouted at him. "If you don't
dislodge yourself, dude, we're all going to die! For God's sake force
yourself!"

Frank still couldn't stop coughing and his face in the jiggling
flashlight was almost maroon. I put my shoulder up against him, and I
pushed him--I literally forced him into that niche, and then I shouted
up to Jenica, "Take Frank's hand! Take his hand and pull him through!
He's having a panic attack!"

He wasn't the only one. My heart was banging and I could hear the blood
rushing in my head. Gil was still furiously beating at the rats, but now
he had four or five of them hanging from each arm, and they had climbed
right up on top of his shoulders so that he looked like a hunchback.
With each blow, rat blood sprayed everywhere, and a bristly rat head hit
me in the cheek. But the vault was heaving with vermin now, from one
wall to the other, and all up the cast-iron arches, and more were still
pouring in, and I could see that they were going to bury us.

"Gil!" I screamed. "Get back up the steps!"

He turned around and saw me, beating two rats off his shoulders as he
did so. But one of them had already savaged his left earlobe, and three
more were climbing up his back and tearing at his T-shirt. He tried to
climb the steps, but he staggered and fell sideways, and the rats
immediately saw their chance. They seethed over him, until he was
covered in rats, and the massed weight of their bodies made it almost
impossible for him to stand up again. He tried. He was like a monstrous
rat-man, covered entirely in gray fur and writhing tails. I heard him
shout something indistinct, maybe it was "momF but then he dropped back
down again, and so many rats scrambled over him that I couldn't even see
where he was.

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Now the rats came after me, too. Frank had disappeared into the niche
and I could only pray that he had made it through to the other side, and
wasn't stuck halfway. Please God, if I never ask you anything, ever
again, let Frank not be stuck halfway. If he was, he and I were going to
be trapped together between those two brick walls with scores of rats
tearing us to shreds. Maybe Jenica had been right. Maybe this was Vasile
Lup's way of destroying us, and ripping us into so many pieces that we
wouldn't be worth burying, even if there was anybody in New York left to
bury us.

A huge gray rat ran at my ankle, and bit at the cuff of my pants. I
kicked at it, and kicked again, and then I swung the bone at it--the
shinbone that Jenica had found in the Vampire Gatherer's coffin. I
didn't even hit it, but the rat abruptly tumbled over. I was going to
swing the bone again and smash its head in when I realized that it was
already dead--or apparently dead. Its eyes were closed and it was lying
sprawled on the step with its pale gray belly exposed. Blood was leaking
from its anus.

Another rat scurried up, and then another. I swung the bone again, and
both rats flopped over and rolled back down the steps. I couldn't
believe it. I swished the bone from side to side, and as I did so the
rats fell dead, in their dozens. Swish, and they collapsed to the right.
Swish, and they collapsed to the left. They dropped into the empty
coffins, with hundreds of muffled thuds. They dropped from the cast-iron
arches, into the water.

I advanced on them, swinging the bone, and it was a massacre.

By the time I reached the heap of rats that was wriggling on top of Gil,
I was squashing and sliding over so many dead and half-dead rats that I
could hardly keep my balance. But I managed to swing the bone right over
the top of them, one way and then the other. The rats toppled off him in
heaps, until he reappeared. He was crouched down on his knees and
elbows, his hands clamped over his face. His

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scalp was bloody and both of his ears were ripped. But he was still
alive, and he was gasping for air.

"Gil! Gil, it's Harry! You can get up!"

"Harry?" He slowly took his hands away from his face and looked up at me
in disbelief. His upper lip had been bitten and he could barely speak.
"Harry, what happened?"

I held up the bone. I didn't have to swing it any more. All around the
vault, the rats were rushing away, running between the coffins and into
the water. In only a few minutes, almost all of them had disappeared,
except for their hundreds of dead. The vault was silent, although the
musky smell of rats made my eyes water.

"I think I got the power of the voodoo," I told Gil.

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17

Blood-Red Moon

Jenica did her Girl Scout bit and patched us up. She stuck Band-Aids all
over Gil's scalp, in criss-cross patterns, and she even managed to sew
back a torn flap of flesh that was dangling from his right earlobe,
using nylon button thread. Throughout the operation, Gil sat on the
dining chair, whistling tunelessly between his teeth, but when she was
tying the thread into a knot, he allowed himself a single, "Shit!"

Gil and I had suffered not much more than scratches and bruises and rat
bites. But Frank was growing steadily worse. He had retreated to one of
the Dragomirs' spare bedrooms, and he was lying in the dark, shivering
and mumbling with pain. His temperature was way up, and his eyes kept
rolling up into his head, and we were beginning to worry that he wasn't
going to last out the night.

The power was completely out now, so we couldn't even make ourselves
anything hot to eat. I opened up a can of

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frankfurters and served them with crackers and cheese and overripe
bananas. The water supply was still working, and the water seemed to be
clean, but all the same I filled up the bathtub, just in case the
faucets ran dry.

After we had eaten, we sprawled in the overstuffed armchairs in Jenica's
over-decorated living room and Jenica poured us another huge glass of
death-breath Romanian red wine. The sun was beginning to sink over the
Jersey shore, and her face was illuminated in bright orange, so that she
looked like a medieval painting of herself. St. Jenica of the Vampires.

"I hate to speculate on this," said Gil, "but what do we do if Frank
buys the farm?" I hadn't liked to say so, but that was exactly what I
was wondering, too.

Jenica shielded her eyes from the setting sun. "If he dies from this
infection, then of course he will become one of the strigoi. We will
have to dismember his body and burn it and we will have to keep his
heart in a jar filled up with holy water."

"We have to cut him up?" I asked her. "Jesus, I can't even skin a
chicken without barfing."

"We will have no choice, Harry--not just for our own protection, but for
his sake, too. To become one of the undead ... that is the greatest
curse that anybody can suffer. What Frank said about emptiness... that
is all the undead can ever feel, because they have no loved ones any
more, nor homes to return to, and as each century goes by, they grieve
ever more deeply for the life that they have left so far behind."

Gil sipped his wine and sniffed. "You're almost making me feel sorry for
the bastards."

"Well, don't," said Jenica. "They feel sentimental for themselves, but
not for you or me. You think the dead hate us? The undead hate us even
more. They resent us beyond anything you can imagine, and they never
have any guilt about drinking our blood."

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The shinbone that Jenica had found in the Vampire Gatherer's casket was
lying on the coffee table in front of me. I picked it up and waved it
from side to side. "So what do we think this is, apart from the best
rat-exterminating device known to man? I'll tell you something, if we
get out of this in one piece, I'm going to patent this sucker. Erskine's
Amazing Rat-Zapper, two for $14.99, and I'm going to sell them on the
shopping channel. I wonder if they work for mice. Or roaches, even."

Jenica said, "It is not Romanian. I have never seen anything like it
before."

"But what was it doing in the Wolf's coffin? I mean, it looks kind of
ritualistic, doesn't it? Maybe it was part of the ceremony that brought
him back to life."

"I don't think so," said Jenica. "In the book of svarcolaci, it says
that the way to revive a dead vampire's spirit is to use salt and silver
and drops of your own blood, and to recite the Seven Red Prayers. There
is no mention of bones, or feathers."

I finished my glass of wine and then I went into the bedroom to see
Frank. We had wiped off the sunblock, but his face was so white that I
thought for a moment that he was already dead. When I sat down on the
bed next to him, though, he opened his eyes and tried to focus on me.

"Think I'm passing over, Harry."

"No way, Frank. You stick with us."

He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. I was convinced that I
could see smoke seeping out of the collar of his shirt. "I'm burning,
Harry. I'm burning alive. Now I know why they jumped, those people."

"Who people?"

"Nine-eleven. Those people who jumped from their offices. It's
unbearable, Harry. I never knew that pain like this could even exist."

I tried to touch his hand but he twitched it away. "You'll

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get through it, Frank," I told him. "All you have to do is grit your
teeth and hold on."

"I don't think so. Maybe I'm getting what I've always deserved."

"What are you talking about? Nobody deserves this."

"I don't know. I've always been so--arrogant, and self-opinionated. I've
always behaved like I'm God."

"Well, you're a doctor, Frank. To some people, you are God."

He licked his lips, and coughed up blood. "I'm going to make you a
promise," he said. "No matter what happens to me, I took an oath to
preserve human life. If you need me, and if it's possible that I can
help you, then I will."

"I appreciate that, Frank. But the only thing that's going to happen to
you is that you're going to get better. We'll have you back on your feet
before you know it."

Frank almost managed a smile. "Don't try to kid a kidder, Harry. I've
used those very same words more times than you can imagine. A doctor
says you're going to get well-- you mark my words, that's the time to
start panicking."

While Frank slept, Jenica and I searched through Razvan Dragomir's
bookshelves, trying to find anything informative on mirrors and
vampires. All the time the sun was hurrying down, until the living room
was so gloomy that we could hardly see each other. Jenica lit dark red
candles that smelled like spices.

The strigoi might have abandoned their coffins at St. Stephen's, but
there was nothing in any of Razvan Dragomir's books to suggest that
Frank might be right, and they were able to hide inside mirrors instead.

I used to be pretty skeptical about the supernatural. After all, I
peddled it for a living. But once I realized that there is a spirit
world, and there are such things as demons, I guess I accepted every
strange phenomenon without too much critical thought about it. Jenica,
on the

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other hand, believed in vampires only because her father had given
satisfactory proof of their existence, and on the whole she was much
more skeptical than I was, and much more analytical. She thought that
the vampires could have concealed themselves in cellars, or down in the
subway, anyplace that the sun could never penetrate. She even suggested
that they might have gone to funeral homes, and shut themselves in
unsold coffins during the hours of daylight.

But mirrors? "In all of Romanian legend, there is nothing about strigoi
hiding in mirrors."

I was finished with Legends of Moldavia and so I started leafing through
a musty old book on Romanian Folk Beliefs, 1886. It had dozens of
engravings of naked women in it, which led me to believe that it hadn't
been published entirely in the interest of anthropology. In fact it was
more of an academic stroke book. But halfway through I came across a
picture of a deathbed with a woman's empty nightgown lying on it. The
nightgown was beautifully arranged, as if its owner had managed to take
it off without disturbing it at all. Its embroidered sleeves were neatly
crossed over the bodice, and white lilies were spread on top of it.

The shock of the picture was the woman herself, who was stark naked, and
who was climbing into a large mirror that was hanging above her bedroom
fireplace. One of her arms, like Alice's, had already penetrated the
glass, and could dimly be seen inside the reflected room. She was
looking back regretfully at her real bedroom and saying (according to
the caption) "Farewell, My Mortal Existence."

On the facing page, there was a paragraph that said, "In rural
communities in Romania, when a family member lay dying of certain
ailments, looking glasses were turned to face the wall, in order that,
upon death, the spirit should rise unimpeded to Heaven, and that the
deceased should

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not be tempted to pursue physical immortality by entering the world of
reflections. In the world of reflections, it was believed, one can live
for all eternity. But the price of living for all eternity is eternal
misery, since those who choose to enter it can never walk again in
daylight, and can never find that perfect peace and spiritual
contentment which only the Lord can offer us."

Jenica read it, but then she passed it back to me with a shrug. "This
tells us nothing."

"It doesn't tell us a whole lot, I'll grant you. But it does kind of
suggest that dead people might be able to pass through mirrors, doesn't
it? Or some dead people, depending what they died of."

"Perhaps. But there is no specific mention of strigoi, is there?"

"No--but it does say certain ailments, doesn't it? One of those ailments
could be the vampire infection."

"Yes, Harry, but this is always the problem with myths and legends. It
is so easy to use them to support any theory you want them to."

"But Frank saw this Susan Fireman woman stepping out of a mirror, and
what do we have here? A woman stepping into a mirror."

"I am not saying that you are wrong, Harry. Maybe this woman in the
picture is strigoica. But it does not categorically say that she is.
Also, it does not explain how you can discover if strigoi are hiding
inside a mirror; or how to stop them from coming out of it; or if it is
possible to follow them into this world of reflection, to pursue them,
and destroy them."

"Well, this is a book of popular beliefs, that's all. But at least it
shows that there's a folk story about people going into mirrors. What
you're talking about is a technical manual for hunting down
vampires--you know, like the Catholics have for exorcizing demons."

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She shook her head. "I doubt if anyone has ever written such a book.
Most Romanian clergy deny absolutely the existence of strigoi, even in
the face of all the evidence. They prefer to be sweeping it under their
carpets. Only the Romanian Tourist Board insists on keeping alive the
legends of vampires, and what they are doing is ludicrous, with their
balloon rides over the Transylvanian mountains and champagne breakfasts
in Dracula's birthplace."

"All the same," I said, "I still think that Frank is telling it like it
really happened, and that Susan Fireman did come out of the mirror."

"I'm not too sure," Gil put in. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that he
was deliberately falsifying, but you have to admit that he was pretty
delirious. I seen men like that before, in Bosnia. They used to rave
about all kinds of things."

"He's sick, for sure but--"

"He is much more than sick," Jenica interrupted. "He is one of the pale
people, not yet dead but already half strigoi."

"But that's exactly why I believe him. He could have jumped on us at any
time, couldn't he? He's burning up, and he'd do anything to drink our
blood, but he's fighting it. He might be half strigoi but he's still
half human, and that's what he's trying to cling on to. Why else would
he warn us that the vampires can hide in mirrors? He doesn't want us to
be taken by surprise, that's why. He's trying to protect us. He thinks
it's the final human gesture he can make before he passes over, and
becomes one of them."

Outside, the last gleam of crimson sunset had been swallowed up by
darkness, like the lining of Bela Lugosi's cloak. Gil looked up at the
gilded clock and said, "Nine-thirty. I guess it won't be too long now
before we find out what's really real and what really ain't."

Jenica opened her embroidered bag and took out her

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vampire-hunting paraphernalia--her crucifix and her holy water and her
garlic paste. "All we can do now is to pray that the legend is wrong,
and that the svarcolaci are deaf to their names being spoken." "How
about a game of Hold 'Em'?" asked Gil.

I don't remember when I fell asleep, but I suddenly jerked awake and all
of the candles had burned down except for one, and that was dipping and
winking and just about to go out. I looked up and the hands on the
gilded clock were pointing to twenty-five after one.

I was sure that something had woken me, but when I listened the night
outside was absolutely silent.

"Gil?" I whispered. Gil was leaning sideways in his chair, snoring like
a duck. Jenica had stretched out on the couch with her dress hitched up,
and I could see her bare hip shining in the candlelight.

I eased myself out of my chair and walked across the living room to the
shelf where we had left our flashlights. I switched one of them on, but
I kept the beam aimed at the carpet. I didn't want to wake up Gil and
Jenica unless I really had to.

Out of the window, I could see that the city was in total darkness. The
buildings looked like monuments in a massive cemetery. The heat and
humidity were overwhelming, and sweat dripped off the end of my nose.
For the first time since this vampire epidemic had broken out, I began
to be convinced that--sooner rather than later--we were all going to die.

I tippy-toed into the corridor and along to Frank's bedroom. He was
lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. I shone the flashlight in his
face and whispered, "Frank? Frank, are you still with us?"

He didn't answer and he didn't move. I came up closer and I could tell
at once that he was dead. He wasn't staring at the ceiling at all. He
was staring at infinity.

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"Safe journey, Frank," I told him. "I think God's going to forgive you
for playing God. It's better than playing the devil."

"Sweet words," said a woman's voice, right behind me.

My heart jumped up and practically hit me under the chin, and I dropped
my flashlight onto the bed.

"Jenica! You scared the shit out of me!"

But almost instantly I knew that it wasn't Jenica. It didn't sound like
Jenica and Jenica wasn't wearing white and Jenica was six foot tall. I
scrabbled for the flashlight and shone it directly into the woman's face.

She made no attempt to cover her eyes. She was small-boned and very pale
and her dark brown hair was tangled and knotted. She was wearing a plain
white linen smock, more like a shroud than a dress. The front of it was
splattered with brown and yellow stains, and there were burrs and
thistles sticking to it, as if she had been walking through a waste lot,
or a railroad yard.

"What are you doing here?" I garbled. I don't think I was even speaking
English. "How the hell did you get in?"

"You shouldn't be frightened," she told me, and she actually smiled.
"I've come to collect Frank, that's all."

"You've come to do what? Frank's dead."

"No, no. Frank's passed over, that's all."

"Listen, I don't know who you are, but you need to get out of here now."

"Don't tell me that Frank didn't mention my name? Susan Fireman. Frank
and me, we're very good friends."

I edged carefully around the side of the bedroom, keeping the flashlight
pointed at her face. Susan Fireman, shit. She didn't even blink.

"Jenica!" I shouted.

"What's the matter?" Susan Fireman asked me. "You shouldn't be
frightened. I won't hurt you."

"Oh, like you never--like you never hurt Frank?"

"Frank's been stubborn. If he hadn't been so wilful, he wouldn't have
suffered at all."

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"Jenica!"

Susan Fireman touched her fingertip to her lips. One second she was
standing by the door and then blink she was standing right in front of
me, and I hadn't even seen her move. "There isn't any point in calling
for help," she said. "There are too many of us now, and every minute
there are more."

"So what are you going to do, Ms. Fireman? You're going to drink my blood?"

"Of course not!" She paused, and then she said, almost seductively, "Not
unless you want me to."

"Jenica! I need you in here now, Jenica!"

Susan Fireman turned and blink she was standing on the opposite side of
the bed, leaning over Frank, and stroking his forehead.

"Frank," she whispered. "Frank, it's Susan. We've come to take you home
with us, Frank."

At that moment, Jenica appeared in the doorway. She looked almost as
pale as Susan Fireman. Gil was close behind her, with his baseball bat.

"Who is this person?" Jenica demanded. Susan Fireman didn't even look at
her. She carried on stroking Frank's forehead, and breathing over his
face. "Wake up, Frank. All of your pain is over now. The long, long
night is just beginning."

Jenica took two more steps into the room. "Harry, who is this? What is
she doing here? How did she get in?"

"Susan Fireman," I told her. "Frank's dead, and she says that she's come
to take him home."

"Strigoica," breathed Jenica. Then she screamed out, "Strigoica! Get out
of my house!"

Susan Fireman looked up at her. "Quiet. You don't have to get
hysterical. You'll only make things worse for yourselves."

"Hold up a minute," said Gil. He disappeared, and I heard him going from
room to room throughout the apartment, banging doors.

Susan Fireman said, "I don't want to do you any harm. I

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want to leave here with Frank, that's all. Frank's new life is waiting
for him, don't deny him that."

Gil reappeared. "Kitchen window, that's how she got in. Though Christ
knows how she climbed up there. It has to be eighty feet, minimum, and
not even a rainwater pipe to hold on to."

I slowly approached the bed. "You listen to me, Ms. Fireman. This isn't
what Frank wanted. Frank struggled hard to stay human, and when you're
human, dead means dead. So he's not going anywhere, except a crematorium."

"You don't know anything, do you?" said Susan Fireman.

"I know one thing for sure. I'm not going to let you take Frank."

I heard a noise in the kitchen, a pan being knocked over. Gil turned
around and said, "Jesus! There's more of them!"

A tall, white-faced man appeared in the hallway behind him, dressed in a
heavily bloodstained sweatshirt. He was closely followed by a young
woman with wild red hair, and another man, shaven-headed, in dirty
mechanics' coveralls. I caught the shine of knives in their hands.

Without any hesitation, Gil tilted back against the wall and hit the
white-faced man with his baseball bat. The man collided with the girl
behind him, and as he was trying to regain his balance, Gil hit him
again, and again. I heard a sharp crack and the man's forehead suddenly
split apart, and blood sprayed across the wallpaper.

I took hold of Jenica's sleeve and pulled her back behind me. Then I
frantically looked around the bedroom for something to use as a weapon.
All I could see was a three-legged stool, so I picked it up and swung it
around my head. One of the legs hit me on the forehead and I almost
concussed myself.

Susan Fireman--blink--was back on the opposite side of Frank's bed. She
knelt on the floor and cradled his head in her arms. But right now I
couldn't worry about Frank.

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The white-faced man had collapsed onto the carpet in the hallway, but
the red-haired girl was lunging at Gil with a ten-inch kitchen knife,
and the man in the coveralls had blinked himself into the bedroom,
waving a craft knife at me. I could see another man making his way
toward us, and then another two women, one of them gray-haired and
wild-eyed, like a lunatic Gloria Steinem, and another one smothered in
dried blood, so that her hair stuck up like a punk.

They were all making a low, needy noise--urrrrhhhh, "Rrrrhhhh,
urrrhhhh--" as if they couldn't wait to cut our throats and start
drinking our blood.

Partly out of anger, but mostly out of panic, I started to lose my
self-control. I lifted the stool clear over my head and struck the man
in the coveralls on the shoulder. He dropped his craft knife and I
struck him again, right on the bridge of the nose. I hit him again, and
then again, and then again, until he was down on his knees, and then I
swung the stool sideways and caught him in the side of the head, and
this time blink he was out of the bedroom and crawling back along the
hallway toward the kitchen.

Together, screaming with rage and terror, Gil and I began to beat the
strigoi back toward the kitchen. They were panting for our blood, but
both of us were in a frenzy, and right then I don't think that there was
anything natural or supernatural that could have stood up to us. I hit
the Gloria Steinem woman straight in the face, and she staggered
backward, bringing down the blood-covered girl behind her, and then I
went mad on both of them, hitting their arms and their legs and their
heads until they were mewling in pain.

When we reached the kitchen door, we found that it was crowded with
twenty or thirty strigoi, and more were climbing in through the window.
It was only open about six

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inches, but somehow they managed to slide through it,

"The door!" shouted Gil. We kicked two strigoi away from the door, and
then we slammed it shut, and Gil twisted the key. Immediately the
vampires threw themselves at the other side of the door, and we heard
the panels crack. We probably wouldn't be able to hold them in there for
long, but a couple of minutes would give us time to get away.

Jenica was close behind us.

"What's happening to Frank?" I asked her.

"I don't know! I didn't see! We have to leave quick, and find someplace
to hide ourselves! The Vampire Gatherer is after us!"

"I'm not leaving here without Frank!"

"He's dead, man!" said Gil. "There's nothing you can do for him now!"

There was another thunderous crash against the other side of the kitchen
door, and this time the frame began to come away from the plaster. I
could hear something else, too. The same cathedral-like whispering that
I had heard in my bedroom, when Singing Rock had first conjured up the
Vampire Gatherer for me. Scores of voices, hundreds of them, and all of
them chanting for our blood.

"Let's just get the hell out of here!" said Gil.

But Jenica said, "No--there will be many more waiting for us outside. We
won't stand a chance!"

"Then what?"

"I need my crucifix, and my candles, and the book of svarcolaci. These
strigoi are only Vasile Lup's children, but Vasile Lup himself will be
coming for us, and our only chance is to send him back to his casket!"

Crash! The kitchen door began to splinter, and dust sifted down from the
ceiling. Crash! One of the center panels broke, and two or three knives
started furiously chopping at it from the other side.

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We turned toward the living room, but as we did so Susan Fireman
abruptly appeared from the bedroom. She stood in the hallway and there
was something about her that electrified me with dread. She was staring
at us wide-eyed and her irises were so pale that it looked as if she had
no irises at all. But she looked triumphant.

"Come," she said, and made a beckoning gesture. Not to us, but toward
the bedroom.

"Oh, Christ," said Gil. "Tell me this isn't true."

But we had to believe it, because he came out of the bedroom and he
looked just the same as he had when he was alive. Frank, his cheeks
drained of color, just like Susan Fireman's, his eyes unfocused, but
walking, and obviously conscious.

"Frank," I said. "Frank, can you hear me?"

He turned his head slightly and stared at me. At that instant, crash!
the kitchen door was shaken yet again, and this time another panel was
kicked right out. Three or four hands came struggling through, trying to
find the key.

"I can hear you, Harry," said Frank. "I might be dead but I'm not deaf."
His voice didn't sound any different, except that it had a kind of empty
quality about it, as if he were reading his words from a script, and
didn't really understand what he was saying.

"Frank, you should stay here, Frank. The strigoi want to take you away,
but you're better off dead, believe me."

"I have to go, Harry. I don't have any choice."

"My book" Jenica muttered. "My book, and my crucifix, and my holy water."

She went into the living room. As she did so, one of the lower panels of
the kitchen door was kicked out. Gil started to beat at the vampires'
feet with his baseball bat. It was only going to be seconds now, before
they came through--and then I knew that we were finished. There were too
many of them, and they were thirsting for our blood too badly.

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"Come on, Frank," said Susan Fireman, taking his arm. "Vasile is ready
for us. Come."

The two of them took a step toward us, and the second they did so, snap,
the entire hallway was flooded with blinding sunlight. It lit up
everything--the draperies, the oil paintings, the dusty chandeliers. I
turned around, and saw that the huge full-length mirror opposite the
front door wasn't showing a reflection any more, but a sunlit beach,
with dry white sand, and blowing grass, and white-painted summer houses,
and clouds.

Gil said, "Shit. It's the mirror, man. Frank was telling us the truth."

Susan Fireman led Frank along the hallway, arm in arm. I stepped right
in front of them and said, "Stop."

But Susan Fireman simply smiled. "You can't stop us, not now. You should
know that--you, of all people."

"Me? Why me?"

"Because it was you who gave Vasile the power to come back."

"I gave him the power? How did I give him the power? What are you trying
to say to me?"

She didn't answer. She was looking right past me, toward the mirror, and
the windy seashore. I looked around, too, and in the distance I could
see a dark figure walking quickly toward us, with a long, determined
stride. It was the same figure that Singing Rock had shown me, in my
bedroom. It was slanting, and distorted, and it always seemed to lean
away from the sunlight, as if it were a collection of shadows, rather
than a man.

All the same, I could see its face--or faces, rather, because they
appeared to shift with every step it took. One second it was thin and
wolf-like, the next it was nothing but a white oval, with slits for
eyes. It approached faster and faster and I had never seen anything so
frightening in my life.

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I turned back to Frank, but suddenly Frank and Susan Fireman had blinked
along the hallway until they were facing the mirror. Inside the glass,
the sand was blowing and the grass was whistling and the sea was all
churned up, but I couldn't feel any wind inside the apartment, and I
couldn't hear the surf. Here in the hallway, it was hot and airless, and
I was deafened by the sound of Gil beating at the kitchen door, and the
cracking of the door frame, and the feverish whispering of all those
thirsty strigoi.

"Frank!" I yelled at him. Then, much more quietly, "Frank, don't do it!"

Frank looked around. I couldn't make out if he was feeling regretful, or
resigned. The next thing I knew, he was taking a step toward the mirror,
and he walked clear through the glass as if there was nothing there at
all. His image was momentarily warped, as if I was looking at him
through water. But then I could actually see him standing three or four
feet away, on the sand, with the wind ruffling his hair. The dark
slanting creature was less than a hundred feet away from him now, and it
was still loping toward us.

Susan Fireman hesitated for a moment. "Bring him back," I asked her.

"I can't do that. He's one of us now, and he always will be. He's mine."

"You like him, don't you?"

But again she didn't answer me. She turned her back on me and stepped
right into the mirror. There was that momentary distortion, and there
she was standing right next to Frank.

I thought for a split second that the mirror was going to darken again,
and go back to being a normal mirror. But it stayed brightly sunlit, and
Frank and Susan Fireman began to walk away, quite quickly, in the
direction of the dunes, and the distant summer houses; while Vasile Lup

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the Vampire Gatherer continued to advance on us.

I suddenly remembered what Frank had told us about Susan Fireman coming
out of the mirror and cutting that detective's throat. Vampires could
step in and out of mirrors as if they were doors. And this one, the
arch-vampire, the svarcolaci, was heading straight for us. Now it was
less than thirty feet away, and its pace was even quicker than before.
It was almost running. It was coming for us.

"Jenica!" I dodged into the living room and almost collided with her.
She was coming out with her crucifix and her bottle of holy water, with
her book open at the page on Vasile Lup.

At the same time, Gil shouted, "Harry! Help me, man! They're breaking
through!" The strigoi had smashed all of the panels out of the kitchen
door, and all that was holding them back were the central cross rails.
Gil was beating frantically at their groping arms, but it was clear that
he couldn't hold them off for much longer.

I picked up the nearest weapon I could find--the decorated bone which we
had found in the Vampire Gatherer's casket. I went back into the hallway
just as the Vampire Gatherer himself was materializing out of the
mirror. He was huge, dark, and slanting, with a hundred faces, and he
was so cold that he made me gasp. The temperature in the hallway must
have dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds.

Jenica lifted up her jewel-studded crucifix. I knew that she was just as
terrified as I was, but there was a look of elation on her face, as if
she had been born to do this.

"I dismiss you, Vasile Lup! I send you back to your sarcophagus! Let the
earth take back the flesh it has given you, and the wind take back the
breath it has given you, and the rivers take back their blood! Let the
ashes of your soul be scattered like the ashes of your body!"

The apparition opened its mouth, and then another mouth, and yet another
mouth. I saw black, ribbed palates

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and rows of razor-sharp teeth. It let out a noise that was like the
whole of existence being twisted, a groan that made me feel as if every
organ in my body was being displaced, and I was going mad.

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Blood Brother

Gil clamped his hands over his ears, and I fell back against the door
frame, stunned, but Jenica held her ground. The Vampire Gatherer was
looming over her now, its slanting head almost touching the ceiling, and
its face had taken the form that I had seen in the book of Svarcolaci...
handsome, but very Romanian, with a thin hawk-like nose and heavily
lidded eyes.

"I dismiss you, Vasile Lup!" Jenica repeated, and now she flung holy
water at him, in the sign of the cross. "May your memory be dispersed
with the dust; and your name erased from the tongues of all who ever
spoke it. May the stars forget that they ever foretold your destiny; and
the moon deny that you ever walked beneath her."

Vasile Lup threw back his head so that it disappeared into the shadows
of his shoulders, and let out another terrible groan. This time, his cry
was taken up by the strigoi who were crowded in the kitchen, and they
kicked and kicked at the cross bars until the door gave way. They poured
out into the hallway, bloody and bedraggled, both men and

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women, and all of them carrying knives or razors or shards of broken glass.

Gil backed away, brandishing his baseball bat two-handed. The strigoi
edged forward, panting urrrhhhhhhh, urrrrrrrhhhhh, urrrrrhhhhh, until
Gil and I were pressed close together, right behind Jenica. She looked
around quickly, to see what was happening, but she didn't catch my eye,
or give me any indication that she was frightened. She was too busy
concentrating on Vasile Lup.

"The seal that was put upon you was more than a seal of wax," she
recited, although her voice was beginning to waver. "It was a seal of
the spirit, and its influence remains. The seven prayers that were said
upon your incarceration were more than words, and their influence
remains. You are disenchanted, Vasile Lup, until the Day of Judgment,
and only then can your soul take shape again, so that you may raise your
face to the Lord and pledge Him your obedience."

Gil said, "This is bullshit, man. This is bullshit. These motherfuckers
are going to cut us to pieces."

He shouted, "Back off!" and made a sudden thrust at the nearest two
strigoi, his bat clanking against their knives. They lifted their arms
to shield themselves, but then they started advancing on us again. Two
ordinary looking men in torn and bloodstained shirts. One of them was a
bus driver and the other was probably an office worker of some kind, and
there was a pasty-faced girl behind them who reminded me of the girl who
served in my local coffee shop.

"I said back off!" Gil repeated, and this time he struck the bus driver
on the shoulder. The bus driver retaliated by slashing at Gil's arm, and
cutting the heel of his hand.

"Motherfucker!" Gil swore at him, and started to beat wildly at the
strigoi, left and right, with his blood spraying up the wallpaper.

At the same moment, the Vampire Gatherer seemed to rise up higher and
higher, his shadow covering the ceiling,

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and the hallway had grown so cold that our breath steamed. Jenica took a
step back, still holding up the crucifix, but freezing vapor was pouring
out of the darkness and covering her with sparkling particles of ice. It
was in her hair, and on her eyebrows, and on her lips. Some of it fell
onto my face, too, and it was like being breathed on by a Polar bear,
cold and fetid and wet.

"I dismiss you, Vasile Lup!" Jenica screamed at him. "I dismiss you in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!"

The ice particles fell thicker and thicker, until they were blinding,
and my hair was encrusted with them. The Vampire Gatherer appeared to
open its arms, or its wings, and lean down toward Jenica as if were
trying to embrace her. They weren't really arms, or wings, they were
shadows, but I could guess what would happen if Jenica got folded up in
them.

I struck out at the Vampire Gatherer with my decorated leg bone, and
shouted out, "Get off her, you bastard! You've been exorcized!"

Something very weird happened then. I felt as if the leg bone had been
plugged into the mains. It felt electric, and alive, and it almost
hummed. I held it up, and I felt as if I was holding up the most
powerful weapon in the world, more powerful than any sword. Suddenly, I
didn't feel afraid any more. I was calm, and I was strong, and I knew my
enemy.

I heard myself speaking. It was my voice, but the words were somebody
else's. It was extraordinary. My tongue was moving as if it didn't
belong to me, and I didn't even know what I was going to say next.

"So you have managed to come back to us, O worker of magic and miracles,
and this is where you have been concealing yourself! A spirit concealed
within a spirit, concealed within a reflection! I should have known it
was you. Only you could be so vengeful. Only you could have such
wholesale bloodlust!"

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Jenica turned and stared at me but all I could do was shake my head.
"It's not me!" I told her.

She stared up at the Vampire Gatherer. The shower of ice particles was
already easing off, and the shadowy creature seemed to be edging away
from us. Its face changed to an expressionless mask, like a Japanese noh
player, and then it flickered through twenty or thirty different
changes--so quickly that I could barely see them.

"It's no use trying to hide yourself," I told him. "Now I know who you
are, I know how to hunt you down, and defeat you. I have done it before
and I will do it again--but this time I will make certain that you are
banished from this earth for all eternity!"

The Vampire Gatherer let out yet another groan. It felt as if the fabric
of the whole apartment block was being moved, brick grinding on brick,
floorboards squealing against floorboards, joints straining against
joints. Jenica was shaking her head from side to side and Gil was
roaring "Shut him up! For Christ's sake, shut him up!"

But then there was silence. The Vampire Gatherer whirled around in a
complicated counterplay of shadows, and stormed back through the mirror,
onto the sand, and started to walk away from us. Above him, in the
mirror world, the sky began to darken. Black clouds rolled over from the
ocean, as quickly as a speeded-up movie, and seagulls were tossed in the
wind like sheets of newspaper.

Behind me, I heard murmuring, and shuffling, and when I turned around, I
saw that the strigoi were beginning to retreat back into the kitchen.
Gil prodded them with his baseball bat, harder and harder, and they
struggled back through the doorway, pushing and jostling each other.
They were snarling at Gil with frustration, but for some reason they
seemed to have lost their appetite, and their nerve.

Jenica took hold of my wrist. "Look," she said. Back in the mirror
world, the Vampire Gatherer had stopped, and was staring at us.

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His shadows slanted sideways, away from the wind, at an increasing
angle. Forty-five degrees, and then fifty, and then sixty. No human
being could have stood at an angle like that. But as the shadows
slanted, they revealed a figure standing in the middle of them--a figure
who stood tall and upright.

"Oh God," I whispered.

"What?" said Jenica. "What is it?"

I took a step toward the mirror, and then another, and then all I could
do was to stand there, staring into a world that I could never enter, at
the man who had turned my whole life into pain and turmoil.

He looked exactly like his photograph, the one taken at Pyramid Lake in
1865. His face was like chiseled granite, his cheeks embossed with
magical scars. His eyes were as cold and glittering as ever. Now,
however, he was wearing his full war bonnet, a huge headdress fashioned
from the skull of a buffalo, and hung about with crow feathers and
strings of beads, and crawling with shiny black beetles, thousands of
them, which dropped onto his shoulders and scuttled over his cloak.

His cloak was sewn with hundreds of crow skulls, and dried ribbons of
human flesh--pieces that his followers had cut from their own bodies and
given to him in homage. There were ears, and strips of thigh muscle, and
fingers, and even penises, all shriveled up and orange with age.

He stood very tall, but the fierce wind that was blowing across the sand
seemed to make his figure sway slightly, as if he were standing two or
three inches above the ground.

I was afraid of him. I couldn't pretend that I wasn't. I had seen how
cruel and ruthless he could be, and I knew that his hatred for the
people who had swarmed all over his land was deep and dark and utterly
bottomless--as bottomless as the world of death that exists below our
feet, the Happy Hunting Ground.

He said nothing. He didn't need to. Although I had no

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idea how he had managed to resurrect himself, I knew why he was here,
and what he wanted to do. He wanted to see the pages of history turned
back six hundred years. He wanted to see every American city deserted,
and strewn with dead, whether they were white or black or Hispanic or
Oriental. He wanted the crows to circle, and pick our bones.

Above all, he wanted to see Indians riding across the plains again, so
that they could come to the top of a rise, with the wind lashing the
grass all around them and lightning dancing on the distant hills, and
know that this land was theirs, all of it, forever.

He was probably the last remaining Native American who refused to admit
that there was no such thing as "forever." But then his name was
Misquamacus, and he was the greatest wonder-worker who had ever lived,
and died, and lived again, and been dispersed to the elements. And here
he was again, and for all the pompous words that had magically come out
of my mouth, I knew that we were royally screwed.

In the mirror, the sky grew blacker and blacker, until I found myself
staring at nothing but my own reflection. I turned round and Jenica was
standing close to me, with about six different expressions on her face.

"Who was that?" she asked. "Do you know him?"

Gil came out of the kitchen and laid his baseball bat down on the
hallway table. "They've gone," he said. He had wound a tea towel around
his hand, but it was already soaked with blood.

Jenica said, "Here ... let me see that."

"It's not too bad. At least it's clean." He looked back into the kitchen
as if he couldn't believe what he had witnessed. "You should have seen
them hightailing it out that window... like roaches when you switch on
the light. And they climbed right down the wall, like, headfirst, man.
How do you climb down a wall headfirst?"

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"Count Dracula did it, in the original novel," I told him.

Jenica said, "They defy gravity, the strigoi, because they are no longer
alive."

I lifted up the decorated bone and looked at it again. I had no idea
what its origins were, or what the symbols on it might have meant, but
it definitely contained some extraordinary power, and not Romanian-type
power, either.

"I could sure use a drink," said Gil. "How about opening another bottle
of death-breath?"

"There is one thing I must do before that," said Jenica. She picked up
Gil's baseball bat, went up to the mirror, and hit it as hard as she
could. Her first blow only starred it, but then she swung the bat again,
and this time the glass dropped onto the floor in a sparkling heap, and
there was nothing left in the frame but a plain wooden backing. "I think
I owe Frank an apology," she said. "And you too, Harry, for doubting you."

"Little bit late for Frank, I'm afraid."

We went into the living room and sat down. Jenica said, "I think my
father would understand if I open his palinca."

"Excuse me?"

She held up a clear glass bottle. "Plum brandy, from Transylvania. Very
strong."

She poured us each a large measure, and we took a swallow without making
a toast.

"Jesus wept," said Gil, gasping for breath. "You could dissolve diamonds
in this."

"My father says that every person who drinks palinca becomes in their
heart a Romanian, whatever their passport says."

I took another swallow. I don't know what it was doing for my
nationality, but it was certainly doing my cojones good. I reckoned that
after half a bottle of palinca I could probably fight a whole legion of
strigoi, and any svarcolaci you cared to bring on.

"So what exactly happened out there?" said Gil. "I don't understand why
those strigoi suddenly turned tail."

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"I am not so sure, either," said Jenica. "I spoke the ritual for
disenchanting the Vampire Gatherer, and at first I thought that it had
not worked. Yet suddenly he turned around and returned to the mirror
world, and when he did that, all of the strigoi left, too." All the time
she was looking at me, because she wanted to know who that figure in the
war bonnet was, and she knew that I knew.

"That creature ..." I said, "that shadow thing... that looks like the
spirit of Vasile Lup, and it is the spirit of Vasile Lup, mostly. But
he's like somebody who gets possessed by a demon ... you know, like
Regan in The Exorcist? Outwardly, you know, they seem to be the same
person. Their appearance is the same, but they're not in control of
their own personality. It's the demon who's taken charge of everything
they say and everything they do."

"So what are you telling us?" said Gil. "That Vasile Lup's spirit is
possessed by another spirit? How does that work?"

"Spirits are just the same as living people. Some of them are leaders
and some of them are followers."

"Vasile Lup must be a pretty dominant character, though, if he was able
to rouse up all of these vampires. And he not only roused them up, he
got them to spread themselves all over the city in less than forty-eight
hours. Think about it. A couple of hundred vampires have managed to do
in two days what even al Qaeda could never have done, even with a
nuclear bomb. They've killed thousands of people and they've recruited
thousands more to do the same, so the killing is spreading, like,
exponentially."

"Sure," I said. "But Vasile Lup didn't start this epidemic himself.
Somebody had to rouse him, didn't they? That's why I think that he's
been possessed by some spirit that's even more powerful than he is."

"You know who this spirit is, don't you?" said Jenica. "It was that man
with the headdress on. The one you saw in the mirror."

"You actually know who that was?" said Gil.

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I nodded. "He's a Native American wonder-worker called Misquamacus. He
was the greatest medicine man of his time--or any other time, for that
matter. I've had a couple of run-ins with him before. I thought I
managed to destroy him. Well, I thought I managed to destroy him four
times over. Three times he came back, but the last time I thought was
for keeps."

"A Native American wonder-worker," said Gil, haltingly, as if he was
trying to say "Please direct me to the nearest restroom" in a foreign
language. "And how exactly did you come to get yourself involved with a
Native American wonder-worker?"

I swallowed another mouthful of palinca. "It was partly by accident, but
mostly through the fortune-telling. I don't have any kind of natural
ability for it, not like Amelia, but even the dumbest person in the
world has some psychic sensitivity. Even though I never really believed
in it, I guess I dealt out so many Tarot cards and read so many tea
leaves, I started to make contact with the spirit world."

"And this Misquamacus? What's his beef?"

"His beef is that he doesn't like America occupied by white people, or
any other kind of people for that matter, only Indians. He tried to call
down his ancient gods to get rid of us, but that didn't work, so he
tried to demolish all of our buildings, but that didn't work. So this
time it looks as if he's using one of our own superstitions to get rid
of us. It's like spiritual karate--use your enemy's own strength against
him. Like al Qaeda used our own airplanes, only this is going to be a
million times worse."

"But he went back into the mirror," said Jenica. "He was about to seize
me, but then he turned away. If he is a Native American, and not
Romanian, why could I send him back with a ritual that was meant for
svarcolaci?"

"Well, I guess your ritual must have weakened his host," I suggested.
"But I'm pretty sure that this bone had a lot to do with it. I waved it
at him, and all of these words came out

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of my mouth and it wasn't even me speaking. And it buzzed, you know. I
felt like Luke Skywalker with a light saber."

Gil took the bone, and waved it from side to side. "Maybe it's some kind
of magic wand."

"Of a kind, yes, it probably is. My guess is that Misquamacus used it to
wake up Vasile Lup, and that he left it in his casket for a reason."

"If you are right," said Jenica, "perhaps we can do to this
wonder-worker what he is trying to do to us, and use his own weapon
against him."

I took the bone back. "First of all, I think we need to find out exactly
what it is, and how to use it."

"And how do you suggest we do that?"

"We ask the expert. My spirit guide, Singing Rock."

Gil stared at me. "You're serious, aren't you?"

I lit three of Jenica's spicy candles and arranged Singing Rock's
bracelet around the biggest of them. We had finished almost the whole
bottle of palinca between us, and although Jenica had opened a tin of
Romanian tea cookies, I was feeling slightly unsteady, to say the least,
like crossing over to Staten Island on a choppy day.

While I was preparing the table, Gil went around the Dragomir apartment
and broke every mirror he could find, although he hesitated when he came
to the gilt-framed antiques. Jenica took the baseball bat away from him
and smashed them herself. "Better that my father comes home to find a
few broken mirrors, rather than a dead daughter."

"That's the spirit," I told her. "How about one more shot of palinca, to
give us some Romanian courage?"

"I'll grant you one thing, Harry," said Gil. "You can sure put it away."

"I've had a disappointing life, Gil, that's why."

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"You know what your trouble is, buddy? You expect too much. Me, I've
never expected nothing, so everything that's ever come my way, it's like
a bonus, you know?"

"Gil--I've never expected nothing, either, but that's precisely what I
got. Nothing."

We sat around the table. I thought that we were all looking exhausted.
All of the adrenaline that had charged us up while we were fighting the
strigoi had drained away now, and none of us had slept well. But I
needed to talk to Singing Rock, if only to confirm that it was
Misquamacus who was wreaking so much havoc in New York City, and to tell
me if this decorated bone was really as powerful a weapon as I thought
it was.

I clasped my hands together and said, "Singing Rock, I know that I've
been making a whole lot of demands on you lately, but I really need some
advice. It looks like it was Misquamacus who brought all of these
vampires back to life, and if that's the case, we're in much more
serious trouble here than I first imagined, even though I never imagined
that we weren't in serious trouble, only this is a whole lot more
seriouser. You know, given that Misquamacus is just about as powerful as
any enemy that you could think of."

Gil frowned at me, but Jenica gave him a little shake of her head.
Jenica knew that you didn't need to be too logical when it came to
summoning up spirits. It was your concentration that counted, your belief.

"Singing Rock, I know that you're probably going to be very reluctant to
square up to Misquamacus again. He killed you, after all. But there has
to be a way of beating him again, and I'm ready to take him on myself,
but I really need some tips about how to do it."

I carried on for over fifteen minutes, begging and cajoling Singing Rock
to help me. As time went by, I even began to lose my temper. "All right,
don't help me! I don't give a

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rat's ass! I'm a white man, leave me to fight your Indian demon all by
myself! I don't need any help from you!"

Jenica reached across the table and held my hand. "He is not coming
tonight, is he? Never mind, maybe we should get some sleep and think
about what we are going to do."

"Yeah, come on, man," said Gil. "Let's finish the bottle and crash out."

"Okay," I said. "Maybe you're right. He's probably sick of trying to
help me."

We drained the last of the plum brandy. Gil told us some long and
rambling story about trying to teach the Bosnians to play baseball, and
totally lost the thread. I helped him to bed, even though I was so drunk
that I nearly fell into bed next to him.

Jenica stayed up a little longer, but she was still recovering from the
shock and strangeness of what had happened today, and she didn't say too
much.

Before she went to bed, however, she leaned over and kissed me on the
forehead. "I think I have to thank you. I think that creature would have
killed me today, if not for you."

"You were very brave," I told her. "I think that it would have killed
all of us, if you hadn't said that ritual. Misquamacus is hiding inside
Vasile Lup, and if Vasile Lup has to go back to his casket, then what is
Misquamacus going to do?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything at all about Native American magic."

"It's very strong. That's because it takes its power from the elements.
From water, and wind, and earth, and fire."

"I am sorry that your spirit guide did not come to you."

"Well, me too. He's probably sulking. But don't worry, we'll think of
something."

"Harry?"

I don't quite know what she wanted to say to me, but

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when people are stressed or frightened they often say very emotional
things that they don't really mean. In my experience they do, anyhow. So
all I did was squeeze her hand and say, "Sleep well, okay?"

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19

Blood Pact

I opened my eyes. It was 3:47 in the morning and the first hallucinatory
light of dawn was beginning to lighten up the sky toward the east. I
lifted my head from Razvan Dragomir's sandbag of a pillow, and Singing
Rock was sitting in a chair in the opposite corner of the room.

"Singing Rock?"

"Of course, little brother. You didn't really think that I would leave
you to fight alone against Misquamacus, did you?"

I shuffled on my butt down to the end of the bed, like a kid. "Did you
know it was Misquamacus? Right from the beginning?"

"No. He concealed himself very well. I only caught the smell of him when
your friend recited her ritual, and the spirit in which he is hiding
himself started to weaken."

"Vasile Lup, the Vampire Gatherer."

"A spirit, yes, and the spirit of a very strong man, a warrior. But only
a man, and not a wonder-worker, like Misquamacus."

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It was so dark in the corner where Singing Rock was sitting that I
couldn't see more than his outline--the shine from his glasses, and his
combed-back hair, and the buffalo-bone necklace that he always used to wear.

"I thought that I had gotten rid of Misquamacus for good," I told him.
"I thought that he was totally dispersed, into the elements."

"You did, and he was. But one element is greater than all of the others,
and that is fire. Fire can dry water, and split rock, and fire can
swallow the very air that men breathe. It was fire that brought
Misquamacus back to life--fire that fused his soul back together again."

"Fire? What fire?"

"A fire that killed many, but which had far greater consequences. A fire
that burned at one thousand four hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and was
intense enough to draw back together the separated parts of his being."

"You mean--you mean nine-eleven? The World Trade towers?"

"I have spoken to the souls of many who died that day. Each one of them
remembers a great light, and a great rush of wind, and a word spoken in
a language that they could not understand. Some of them believed that it
was a last Islamic prayer, as the terrorists offered themselves to
Allah. But the word they heard was malitsoh.?

"Malitsoh? What does that mean?"

"It means Wolf in Navajo. It was Misquamacus calling for the spirit of
Vasile Lup to rise up, so that he could possess him. After Misquamacus
was dispersed to the elements, he no longer would have had any coherent
spiritual substance of his own, so he could not have appeared in the
world of men without Vasile Lup's spirit to wear... like a borrowed suit
of clothes."

I climbed off the bed and went to the window. The sky was growing
lighter and lighter, and I imagined that all of the strigoi who now
infested Manhattan were slinking back

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to their coffins, or their mirrors, or wherever they were hiding during
the day.

"You were going to warn me about Vasile Lup," I said. "You warned me
about the strigoi, for sure, but you never got round to Lup."

"I did, but once your friend had told you about the strigoi, you stopped
looking for the signs. Don't you remember walking past the Hudson Street
Grill?"

I smacked the back of my head. "You're right. Hudson Street Grill, with
only the L still lit up, and 'supper with only the 'up'. 'L' and 'up'.
Lup. Mind you--I probably wouldn't have realized what it meant."

"It is of no consequence now. You have discovered who your enemy really
is, and you know that he is far more dangerous than Vasile Lup."

"But if Misquamacus can't appear in the real world without using Vasile
Lup--we can seal Lup back in his casket, can't we, and then Misquamacus
won't be able to get out?"

"Misquamacus gives Vasile Lup's spirit a far greater resistance to your
friend's rituals than he normally would have possessed. Vasile Lup has
considerable strength of his own, but Misquamacus has also given him the
influence of the Great Old Ones. Your friend's ritual was able to weaken
Vasile Lup, yes, to the point where Misquamacus had to reveal himself,
but it was not enough to force him to return to his casket."

"So what can we do?"

"You must follow Vasile Lup, and find out where he is hiding during the
hours of daylight. Even with your friend's ritual, you won't be able to
send him back to his casket because Misquamacus won't allow it. You will
have to destroy him, utterly, so that Misquamacus no longer has a spirit
in which to hide himself."

"I see. But Vasile Lup hides in mirrors. How am I going to corner him,
without smashing every single mirror in the continental United States?"

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"I don't have any idea. I know Native American magic, but nothing of
svarcolaci!"

"Well, you're a terrific help. Not."

"I am always willing to give you my advice, little brother, but I cannot
tell you what I do not know."

I sat down on the end of the bed again. As the morning brightened,
Singing Rock's image grew fainter and fainter, and now I could barely
see him at all.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know there's no easy answer."

"There is one thing I can help you with. I can help you to fight against
the strigoi, and if the strigoi are beaten, Vasile Lup will no longer
have an army to protect him."

I looked up. "You can do that? How?"

"Have you ever heard of Changing Woman?"

"No. Except that she sounds like every woman I ever tried to have a
relationship with."

"The story of Changing Woman is the Navajo story of creation. In the
time before time began, the world was ruled by the Great Old Ones, who
were the gods of chaos and destruction. Those were the gods that
Misquamacus first called upon to destroy the white man, and which are
still giving him strength."

Singing Rock was talking in that deep, portentous voice he always used
for telling Native American legends, but I was too tired to rib
him--and, besides, if he knew something that could help us to beat the
strigoi, I wanted to hear it.

"In those times the world was terrorized by monsters that the Navajo
used to call Binaayee', and it was a place of darkness and appalling
violence. Almost all of the human race had been slaughtered, except for
First Man and First Woman, along with their two young children. But
First Man and First Woman were too old to bear any more children, and
their children were related by blood.

"One day, however, a black cloud came down upon the mountain
Ch'ooli'i'i, and there was thunder and lightning

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around its peak. First Man climbed the mountain and found a turquoise
figurine. It was only the size of a small baby, yet it had the body of a
fully grown woman. He took the figurine back to First Woman, and at
first they were unsure of what to do with it, so First Woman suggested
they take it back to the top of the mountain.

"Up on the mountaintop, in a storm, Nilchi the Wind transformed the
figurine into two living deities, Changing Woman, and her sister White
Shell Woman.

"Changing Woman and White Shell Woman felt very strong attractions
toward the elements. So one day Changing Woman lay naked on the
mountainside, with her thighs wide apart, and opened the lips of her
vagina with her fingers so that the Sun could shine its warmth directly
inside her as it made its way across the sky. White Shell Woman did the
same in a shallow stream, letting the water flow into her body.

"In four days, both women discovered that they were pregnant, and in
four more days they both delivered boys. White Shell Woman's son was
named Water Child and Changing Woman's son was named Monster Slayer.

"Four days later, when he was grown up, Changing Woman's son called on
his father the Sun to help him to exterminate the Binaayee. Like the
strigoi, the Binaayee could be fatally burned by sunlight, and when
Changing Woman's son had picked up their scent, and dug them out of
their dark hiding places under the earth, he would shine his eyes on
them and incinerate them into ashes.

"Changing Woman's son killed all of the Binaayee' and so the world
became a safer place where humans could flourish once more. All his
hundreds of children were born to be monster slayers, too, so that the
tribes would no longer be threatened by creatures from the time before
time began. Monster Slayer's children were called
People-With-Sun-Behind-Their-Eyes.

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"Monster Slayer had the constancy of his father and the changeability of
his mother--both different, yet in harmony, which is the way in which
all Navajo men and women were encouraged to live.

"Changing Woman said, 'You are male and I am female. You are of sky and
I am of earth. You are constant in your brightness but I must change
with the seasons. You move constantly at the edge of heaven while I must
be fixed in one place. Remember, as different as we are, you and I, we
are of one spirit. Unlike each other as we are, there can be no harmony
in the universe as long as there is no harmony between us.'

"Changing Woman rubbed skin from different parts of her body and each
time she did so, she created two adult males and two adult females, and
these males and females created clans of their own--the Bitahnii, the
Within-His-Cover People; the Id'chanii, the Bitter Water Clan; the
Hashtuishnii, the Mud Clan; and many others.

"She took all of these people to the west, where they lived together in
prosperity and peace. This was centuries ago, in the time when time had
just begun. But Changing Woman is still alive today, because she
constantly rejuvenates herself, with every season. As winter approaches,
she becomes a grandmother, all curled up. But in spring she hobbles on a
cane of white shell and walks into a room to the east, and grows
stronger. Then she takes a cane of turquoise, and walks into a room to
the west, and comes out a proud young woman. Finally she walks into a
northfacing room, and returns as a young girl so beautiful that people
bow their heads in wonder.

"She is the cycle of human life. She goes forward, with the seasons, and
the turning of the sun, yet she walks in the opposite direction, from
old age to youth. Do you understand, little brother?"

"Well," I said, uneasily. It was a fascinating legend--even

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more entertaining than Adam and Eve and the Serpent. But I couldn't see
how it was going to help us to destroy the strigoi.

Singing Rock must have read my mind. He opened his left hand and held it
out flat, and then his right hand. "On one side, Harry Erskine, you have
the demons of darkness and chaos, who are trying to destroy you. On the
other, you have the power of human life, and fertility, and light.

"You have to ask Changing Woman to help you. Only she can call on her
son the Monster Slayer, the People-With-SunBehind-Their-Eyes, and only
they can kill the strigoi for you."

"Is that it? That's all I have to do? Talk to the mother of all human
creation?"

Singing Rock nodded.

"And what do I say--like, always supposing that I can get in touch with
her? Dear Changing Woman, I'd really appreciate it if you could send
your boys around to kick some strigoi ass for me?'"

"Why do you always mock?"

"Because I'm confused, that's why, and I'm scared shitless, and I don't
think I've got what it takes to call on Changing Women or any other kind
of gods. Sure, I believe you believe in all of this earth-mother stuff,
and monster slayers, and I believe it all exists, in some reality,
someplace. I've seen it, and I'm talking to you, aren't I, and by all
the usual criteria you don't exist. But it's not my culture, is it? I
don't have any affinity with it, I don't have any faith. It's like
asking me to talk to Buddha."

"You don't need faith, Harry Erskine. Changing Woman is real. You must
have noticed that it grows cold in winter, and the earth grows tired.
Yet spring always returns, doesn't it, and the corn shoots up? Changing
Woman walks in the opposite direction, but you've turned around and seen
her, haven't you, even if it was only a glimpse? You've seen her in the
fields? You've seen her in the city streets? You know she's there."

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For a fraction of a second, I think I understood what he was talking
about. You know what it's like, when you see a pretty young woman
walking across the street, and the sun momentarily lights up her face,
and she looks at you, and for some reason you feel that something
important has happened, but you're not sure what. Singing Rock was
saying that she really walks among us, the spirit of change, and that
we've all seen her, even if we haven't realized it.

"All right," I said. "Maybe she's real. Maybe I've seen her. But I don't
have the first idea how to talk to her, do I?"

"Of course you do. Changing Woman is always looking for harmony. She was
deeply saddened when her people were driven from their lands, but she
recognizes that all things must change, and that there is brutality in
the world, as well as compassion. Out of death rises new life. Out of
cruelty comes understanding. Changing Woman grieves, yes, but she never
seeks revenge--not like Misquamacus. If you are fighting for harmony,
she will listen to you, and help you."

"Okay. But how? What do I have to do?"

"If you wish to speak to a spirit, where do you go?"

The window suddenly filled up with sunlight, and all I could see of
Singing Rock was the glistening of his eyes.

"You don't mean--?" I asked him.

"You have very little time. You must hurry."

"Singing Rock--"

"No, Harry Erskine. I have already given you more guidance than I
should. The living cannot always rely on the dead, or else they are as
good as dead themselves."

"But what if I need you again?"

There was no answer. Singing Rock was gone.

I wanted to go alone, but Gil said it was going to be far too dangerous
out on the streets, even in daylight. The strigoi might be hiding away
in their coffins and their mirrors, but the looters and the crazies
would be out and about, and

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maybe the military, too, who would probably have orders to shoot first
and play Wheel of Fortune afterwards.

In case we got held up, and we couldn't make it back before nightfall,
Gil double-checked that he had closed and locked all of the windows in
the Dragomirs' apartment and broken every single mirror, so the strigoi
couldn't get inside, and Jenica would stay safe.

Jenica had plenty to keep her occupied. In her father's desk she had
discovered a Ruthenian book about dead vampires called Oper, and a
pamphlet from Transylvania Tales of Siscoi--Siscoi being a more
localized name for the undead. She had also found seven volumes of her
father's diaries, all bound in maroon leather, and dating right back to
1971.

"I shall be good," she promised, "Don't worry. I have one more bottle of
palinca, so I shall be happy."

"Happy and unconscious," Gil remarked, as we left the apartment. "I've
got myself the Daddy Bear and Mommy Bear of all hangovers. It even hurts
to think about it."

We stepped out onto the streets, and here we were, back in a 1970s
science-fiction movie, walking through a brown, photosynthetic smog,
with cars and garbage strewn everywhere, and crows still picking over
the corpses. The city was utterly silent. I was pretty sure that there
were plenty of people left alive--thousands, probably--but I guessed
that they were all cowering in their apartments, just like us. The only
difference was that they didn't know that they had to break their
mirrors, to stop the strigoi from getting them, and we had no way to
warn them.

"You should go see your wife and daughter," I told Gil, as we crunched
up Hudson Street over a sidewalk covered with broken glass.

"I will. But first let's see if we can contact this Changing Woman
broad. At least I'll feel that we've started to hit back."

"Suit yourself."

As we crossed Morton Street, we saw four or five people

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in the distance. They were kneeling on the sidewalk, flapping their arms
and howling like wolves. Gil squinted at them through his binoculars,
and then handed them across to me.

I could make out three men and two women, all naked, or nearly naked.
Their skin was covered in huge red blisters, and smoke was pouring out
of their hair.

"Pale people," said Gil. "They're all burning up, the same way that
Frank was."

"Well, let's get going before they see us. We know what the pale people
want, don't we, and that's blood."

We saw nobody else before we reached Christopher Street. Nobody else
alive, that is, although we came across a heap of bodies on the corner
of Barrow Street and the whole heap was heaving with maggots.

Around the side of Christopher Street Cashmere, I pressed the shiny
brass doorbell for Amelia's apartment and then we waited, wiping the
perspiration from our faces with the backs of our hands.

"What if she ain't in?" asked Gil. He didn't add "or dead" because he
didn't need to. I was just as worried as he was that the strigoi might
have reached her already.

I pressed the buzzer again, and almost immediately Bertie's voice said,
"Who is it?"

"It's me, Bertie. Harry Erskine."

"Harry! What the hell do you want now?"

"I need to talk to Amelia. It's really important."

"You need to go away and leave us alone."

"Bertie, if you don't open this door and let us in, we're going to knock
it down and come in anyhow."

There was a very long pause, and then the door opened.

Inside the Carlson apartment, it was hot and airless and flies were
droning around, just like everyplace else. Bertie was wearing a blue and
yellow-striped bathrobe, the Swedish national colors, although his face
was crimson.

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Amelia came out of the bedroom in a floaty white linen cloud with white
flowers embroidered on it.

"Harry," she said. "And--Gil, isn't it?"

"You got it, ma'am."

"Did you get to see Razvan?"

"Razvan's in Bucharest right now, but we got to see his daughter, and
she knows as much about strigoi as he does."

"You said it out loud."

"What? Strigoi? Yes ... according to Jenica, it doesn't matter too much,
so long as they're not very close by, like right outside your window, or
hiding under your bed, and provided they're not especially thirsty. You
just have to be careful about mentioning their individual names."

"Well, this is a great relief," said Bertie. "Especially since I don't
know any vampires by name."

"Don't make a joke of it, Bertie. You don't know how relieved I am to
see that you're both okay. These strigoi characters can get in almost
anywhere."

"Not here. Nobody can get in here. My alarm system here is
state-of-the-art."

"I think you'd better sit down," I told him. "You too, Amelia."

As briefly as I could I told them how we had discovered the coffins in
the vaults under St. Stephen's Church. I also told them how Gil had come
across Frank, and brought him back to the Dragomirs' apartment, and what
Frank had told us about mirrors. I told her how the strigoi had climbed
in through the windows, and how Vasile Lup had appeared in the hallway.

"But Vasile Lup's spirit was brought to life by an even stronger spirit.
Misquamacus."

Amelia stared at me in disbelief. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

"I wish it was. I saw him with my own eyes, Amelia. Living head dress,
trophy-cloak, everything."

Amelia stood up and walked across to the window. On

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the sill stood a blue glass vase with five dead lilies in it, surrounded
by fallen petals. She looked down at the street below, and there was a
look on her face that I had never seen before--the look of a woman who
has tried to escape the fate that has always been waiting for her, but
failed.

"This is the same Misquamacus that you fought with earlier?" asked Bertie.

"There's only one Misquamacus, I'm afraid."

Amelia turned around. "I suppose you've talked to Singing Rock?"

"First thing I did."

"And Singing Rock said?"

I told her all about Changing Woman, and her son the Monster Slayer, and
the People-With-Sun-Behind-Their-Eyes.

Amelia listened patiently, but then she said, "Why can't he communicate
with her--Singing Rock? He's far better qualified than I am. He's a
Native American, after all, and he's a medicine man, too."

"I know, but Singing Rock has two serious problems. One, he's a Sioux,
and I don't think that the Navajo and the Sioux are exactly bosom
buddies. Two, he's a man, and Changing Woman doesn't answer to men."

"This is making me insane," said Bertie.

"Better insane than exsanguinated," I told him.

"Harry," said Amelia, "I don't think I can do this. I've read quite a
lot about Changing Woman, and she isn't like the spirit of somebody's
Aunt Mildred. She's a deity."

"I know. But from what Singing Rock told me, she's a very sympathetic
deity, as deities go. And she's very much in favor of life, as opposed
to having your throat cut and bleeding all over the rug."

It was then that Bertie stood up, and went over to Amelia, and took both
of her hands in his. "Amelia," he said, "you should do this."

"Bertie?" I said. "I didn't think you believed in any of this mumbo-jumbo."

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Bertie spoke with surprising dignity. "Just now, what I believe in is
not very important. You only have to look out of the window to see that
the city is dying, and that the authorities have abandoned us. If nobody
is coming to help us we must help ourselves, and if this is the only way
that has been suggested to us ... well, we must try it."

Amelia said, "I don't know, Bertil. I really don't think that my psychic
power is strong enough."

"How do you know, Amelia, unless you try? This Misky Marcus, you fought
him before, didn't you, and you sent him packing? If you did it once,
you could do it again."

Amelia looked across at me, but all I could do was shrug. "It's your
choice, sweetheart."

So it was that we sat around the glass dining room table, underneath a
Scandinavian chandelier that was made out of dozens of triangles of blue
and white frosted glass. It was almost midday, and the humidity was so
high that we were all dripping. Bertie started to fan himself with a
table mat, so that the chandelier tinkled, but Amelia said, "No, darling
... you mustn't disturb the air."

"So I should melt?" asked Bertie, irritably.

"Think about an ice-cold Coke," I suggested.

Amelia reached out and we all held hands. She closed her eyes for a
while, and then she said, "I am calling on any spirit who can help me."

It always made my scalp prickle when she said that. She had an echoey
quality in her voice, like she wasn't here at all, but standing in
another room. No matter how many times I talked to Singing Rock, or
tried to summon up other spirits, I could never make my voice sound like
that.

"I am calling on any spirit who can guide me to Changing Woman. I am
calling on any spirit who can touch her shoulder and ask her to speak to
me."

We waited in silence, with our hands growing sweatier and sweatier. I
could feel a drop of perspiration roll off the end of my nose, and fall
onto the table, and I could feel

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another one building up to follow it, but there was nothing I could do
to stop it. The link between us couldn't be broken.

"I am asking to be taken to Changing Woman, to pay my respects to her,
and to beg her for a favor, in the names of those who gave her life,
Sa'ah Naaghaii and Bikeh H-zh."

I had to hand it to Amelia, she always knew her stuff. She had said
offhandedly that she had "read quite a lot" about Changing Woman, but
knowing her, that probably meant that she had graduated summa cum laude
in Navajo mysticism.

"Changing Woman, I honor you. Changing Woman, I give you my respect.
Changing Woman, I implore you to speak to me."

By the expression on his sweaty, deep red face, I could tell that Bertie
was beginning to grow increasingly uncomfortable, but it was obvious
that he respected Amelia's talents, even though he found it so hard to
believe in spirits and vampires. I might have thought he was an asshole
when I first met him, but that was only because I was jealous. I could
tell that he loved her, damn it.

"Changing Woman, speak to me. I need your life, and your strength, and
your wisdom. I need you to bring me the power of the sun, so that
darkness is banished from our city. I need you to bring me your son

Monster Slayer, and your son's sons, and your son's daughters, too."

God, I felt like sneezing. I wrinkled and distorted my face, but the
itch in my nose grew stronger and stronger, until I felt that I had to
pull my hand away from Gil's, or I was going to let out a blast that
would hit Bertie right in the face.

But then I saw a shudder in the air, right behind Amelia's chair, and
the urge to sneeze was completely dispelled. It looked as if the air was
actually wrinkling, like the heat from a metal rooftop on a very hot
day. Right in front of my eyes, an old woman appeared, transparent at
first, but then more and more visible. She was tiny, and hunched, with

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braided white hair and a face so desiccated that she looked like a
monkey, rather than a human. She was wearing a pale gray woolen cloak,
and in one hand she was holding a thin stick, which was shiny turquoise
blue.

Amelia kept her eyes closed, and continued to call on the spirits to
help her. I didn't know if I should say something like "look behind
you!" but I was pretty sure that she must be aware that Changing Woman
had actually appeared. I had learned from previous experience not to
break the spell in the middle of a séance. It could ruin everything, and
it could be dangerous, too.

"Changing Woman, I need your courage. Changing Woman, I need your
warmth. Changing Woman, I need your benevolence."

Now the air behind Bertie's chair began to shimmer, too. Within a few
seconds, another woman had appeared, a handsome woman in her mid-forties
or thereabouts. She was wearing a headdress of brown leaves, and a
coarse brown blanket, and her cheeks were marked with red paint. She was
standing right opposite me, staring at me over the top of Bertie's head,
and her eyes were dead black, as if the inside of her skull was empty.

Gil had opened his eyes, and he gripped my hand tighter to indicate that
he had seen these two women, too.

"Don't say anything," I murmured.

At that moment, however, he gripped my hand again, and jerked his head
upward.

"Behind you," he said, without moving his lips.

"What? I mouthed.

He jerked his head again, and I suddenly realized that another spirit
must have manifested itself right behind me. I very slowly turned my
head, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a young woman, dressed in
fluorescent white, with maroon zig-zag patterns on her clothes. I
couldn't turn around far enough to see her face, but if Gil's expression

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was anything to go by, it was just as hair-raising as the woman who was
standing behind Bertie.

"Changing Woman, hear me. Come to me, from all the four corners of the
world. From the east, where the sun rises and everything is born. From
the south, where everything grows and ripens. From the west, where the
sun sinks in fullness and satisfaction. From the north, where everything
dies."

Now, behind Gil's chair, there was another tremble of disturbed air. It
flowed for a moment like clear water running over rocks, and then it
gradually took on the shape of a young woman, completely naked except
for red-and-white beads around her wrists and ankles, and for
complicated patterns of terracotta paint on her skin. Her silvery-black
hair flowed over her shoulders and halfway down her back.

Gil was sitting on the north side of the table, and when this young
woman appeared, I knew that Amelia had succeeded in calling up Changing
Woman. Hadn't Singing Rock told me that Changing Woman always walks in
the opposite direction? From the north, which usually symbolizes
coldness and death, the loveliest of young women had appeared, bringing
the hope of fertility, and new life.

Amelia slowly opened her eyes. "You're here," she said, and she couldn't
stop herself from smiling.

'You called me" said four voices at once. There was so much psychic
charge in the room that it crackled with static electricity. When
Changing Woman spoke, blue sparks crept around the edge of the dining
table, and all of our hair stood up on end. A caterpillar of electricity
even crawled around Gil's dog tags, and up the silver chain that hung
around his neck.

"We need your help, Changing Woman," said Amelia. "Misquamacus the
wonder-worker has returned, in the cloak of a borrowed spirit. He has
raised a tribe of undead

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people from a far-off place beyond the eastern ocean. They have already
slaughtered many thousands, and their evil will spread all across the
country unless we can destroy them."

"I know of this thing!" said Changing Woman. I could hardly tolerate the
sound of her voice, because it made my teeth buzz and my skin feel as if
fire ants were crawling all over me.

"Then will you help us?" asked Amelia. "We need monster slayers, who can
discover where these undead people are hiding, and can burn them with
the sunlight that shines from their eyes."

"You are speaking of my son's clan!'

"We don't know anybody else who has the power to help us."

The four women slowly walked around the table, until the young woman was
standing behind me, and the old woman was facing me, from behind
Bertie's back. Gil was staring at me apprehensively but there was
nothing I could do to reassure him, except shrug.

"You know what Misquamacus intends to do?"

"Yes," said Amelia. "He wants to rid this country of all but Native
Americans."

"Can you think of any reason why I should stand in his way? Tens of
thousands of my people died at the hands of the white man, or because of
his greed, and strangers of many different beliefs now walk across the
sacred places where our hogans once stood!"

"I know that our people did you some terrible wrongs," said Amelia. "All
I can do is appeal to your humanity."

The four women changed positions again. As they did so, I glanced
quickly at each of them, trying to judge from their expressions whether
Changing Woman was going to help us or not. But each one of them was
impassive, and unreadable, especially the old woman, whose wizened face
was barely human at all.

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"I am the daughter of Sa'ah Naaghaii and Bik'eh H-zh-" said Changing
Woman. "Sa'ah Naaghaii is the way that all living things achieve
immortality through reproduction. Bik'eh H-zh- is the peace and harmony
which is essential to the perpetuation of life.

"Because I am the daughter of Sa'ah Naaghaii and Bik 'eh H-zh-, I will
help you to be rid of the undead tribe."

I had never heard words that bucked up my spirits so much, so to speak.
Amelia smiled, and said, "Thank you, Changing Woman, and bless you," and
even Bertie couldn't stop grinning. Gil said, "Now we can kick some ass."

The atmosphere in the dining room was now so charged up with static that
sparks were jumping between the chairs, and the glass triangles that
hung from the chandelier were tinkling and clinking like wind chimes.
The young girl walked around the table to the place where the young
woman in the shining white cloak was standing. They stood side by side
for a moment and then somehow the two of them overlapped, and melted
together, so that only the young girl was left. She walked around the
table again, and this time she melted into the middle-aged woman.

"It is the law of nature that everything must grow old and die," said
the old woman and the young girl, speaking in unison. "Everything must
be reborn. There is no place in this world for those who are dead but
not dead."

With that, the young girl melted into the old woman, so that she was
left standing alone, naked, incredibly beautiful, her hair rising from
her shoulders as if it were being blown by an unfelt wind.

"I call on my son, and my son's children. I call on the clan of the
People-With-Sun-Behind-Their-Eyes. I call on them to seek out the undead
tribe, and annihilate them.

She started to chant, a high-pitched repetitive incantation that went on
and on for nearly five minutes. As she did so, she began to fade, the
same way that Singing Rock

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faded, until all I could see were the faint dancing filaments of her
wind-blown hair.

Gil let go of my hand and stood up. Amelia immediately shouted, "No,
Gil! Not yet!"

There was a crack like a giant tree breaking in half, and then a flash
of light that almost blinded me. The chandelier exploded, showering us
all in glass, and then the glasstopped table shattered, too. Paintings
dropped from the walls, and Bertie's spindly sculpture was sent flying
across the living room. One after the other, all the windows in the
apartment were blown in, and the noise was so deafening that we couldn't
hear each other shout.

Underneath all of this cracking and splintering, I heard another noise.
It was so deep and vibrant that I felt it, rather than heard it. It was
like a huge electrical generator; or a thousand voices humming basso
profundo.

"What's happening?" said Bertie. "I thought they were going to help us."

"Please, Bertil, just wait."

He didn't have to wait long. The humming grew louder and louder, and all
of the debris in the apartment was drawn toward the middle of the living
room--fragments of glass, broken furniture, pieces of sculpture, pebbles
and compost from overturned plant pots, magazines, letters and dead flowers.

They rose up, all of these bits and pieces, glittering and tumbling in
the air, and behind them I could see a dark figure forming, like a man
made out of smoke. He was huge--nearly seven feet tall--and he actually
smelled like smoke--like grassfires burning on a hot summer day.

He was insubstantial--after all, he was a spirit, rather than a real
man--but he was using the debris to define his outline, so that we could
see him better.

Out of the turmoil of shattered glass, his head gradually formed. He
looked as if he were wearing a headdress made out of buffalo horns,
which gave him a very Satanic

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appearance, but this magic that had nothing to do with Satan--or with
God, for that matter. This was Monster Slayer of the Navajo, whose
mother was Changing Woman and whose father was the Sun itself.

"My mother has asked me to help you," he rumbled, and his voice sounded
like a fire blazing up a chimney. "She tells me that you wish me to seek
out the tribe of the undead, and burn them."

"We honor you, Monster Slayer," said Amelia.

Monster Slayer raised both hands, and said, "That which my mother asks
of me, I will always do."

"Just be careful, sir," said Gil, with unexpected bravado. "The undead
tribe, they're not stupid, and there's hundreds of them, and they can
move as quick as a lizard off a hot brick."

Monster Slayer turned his huge, smoky head, and then abruptly opened his
eyes. Out of each eye socket burst a dazzling ray of light, so intense
that I had to turn my face away. The twin rays of light hit the wall and
with a sharp detonation they burned right through the paint, right
through the plasterboard, and into the kitchen. The whole apartment was
filled with smoke.

Monster Slayer closed his eyes, and it seemed like everything went
suddenly dark, except for the lime-green afterimages swimming in front
of me. As my sight gradually came back to me, I saw Monster Slayer take
a step away from us, and then another. With each step, all of the debris
that he had used to form his material shape made a noise like somebody
shoveling gravel. choosh, choosh, choosh.

Gil, still rubbing his eyes, looked at the hole in the wall. "Jesus," he
said. "This character sure doesn't need any hints on unarmed combat,
does he?"

Monster Slayer stepped back, and back, and then the smoke that had made
up his body swirled away, and the debris clattered and sifted to the floor.

When he was gone, Amelia raised both arms, and closed

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her eyes. "I bless your name, son of Changing Woman," she said, in a
high, sing-song voice. "May the Great Manitou lend you all the trickery
you need." "Amen to that," said Gil.

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20

Blood Stream

Monster Slayer's appearance had trashed Amelia and Bertie's apartment so
comprehensively that we helped them to move to the colonial-style
apartment upstairs, whose owners were on vacation on the Turks and
Caicos Islands. I was trying to convince myself that Monster Slayer and
his clan would succeed in hunting down the strigoi, but I still didn't
think it was safe for Amelia and Bertie to stay in a place with no glass
in the windows.

Before we left, Gil and I went around their temporary new accommodation
room by room and smashed every single mirror.

Amelia said, "Nigel's really going to love us, when he sees this."

"Hey," I reassured her. "Nigel won't care about his front door, or his
mirrors. He'll just be happy that you've managed to survive."

"Do you want something to eat?" asked Bertie. "Of course we can't give
you any hot food, but we have some cans of soup, and some Swedish rye
bread."

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"That's all right," I told him. "We'd better be getting back to Jenica.
I don't like leaving her too long on her own."

Amelia came up to me and held both of my hands. "Another strange
adventure," she said. "Why do these things always happen to us, Harry?"

"We're mystics. It's our job. Who else is going to do it, if we don't?"

"Do you think this will work? Calling up Monster Slayer?"

"I don't know. I hope so. But I still have to find Misquamacus, and fix
him."

"You'll come back to see me, won't you? I don't want you to disappear
and never find out what's happened to you."

I could see Bertie looking fidgety, so I kissed her on the forehead and
said, "You know me. Erskine the Indestructible. Come on, Gil, we'd
better frappez le trottoir."

Gil left me on the corner of Leroy Street so that he could go back to
his apartment and check up on his wife and daughter. The city was still
silent as I walked back, but just as I climbed the steps of the
Dragomirs' house, I was convinced that I heard a man screaming. I
stopped, and listened, but it wasn't repeated. I went inside, and made
sure that the door was locked behind me.

Upstairs, Jenica was lying on the couch asleep. One of her father's
diaries was lying open on the carpet beside her. I shook her shoulder
and she opened her eyes and stared at me as if she didn't recognize me.

"Oh I was having such a strange dream."

"Nothing could be stranger than what we just did." Jenica sat up and
stretched her back. "How did it go? Did your séance work?"

"Work? We raised up the meanest vampire-hunting SOB you can possibly
imagine. Monster Slayer! Like, yesss!" He was made up of smoke, and
dust, that's all. But you should have seen him. He has these horns like
a demon, and this dazzling light that comes out of his eyes. It's like a
death ray.

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Zap! And then bam! And there's a huge great hole in the wall."

"Will he fight the strigoi for us?"

"You should have been there, Jenica, I mean it. Changing Woman appeared
and she was four different women, only the same woman at four different
ages. Then Changing Woman called up Monster Slayer. Amelia's whole
apartment was totaled, I mean it was wrecked, but the whole thing was
unbelievable."

"Harry--this Monster Slayer--will he fight the strigoi for us?"

I began to calm down. "Yes, yes. He'll fight the strigoi. Well, he said
he would. All we can do is wait and see."

"Then that is good, is it not? That was a successful mission?"

"Yes, that was a successful mission. Well, I hope it was. We certainly
did our best."

Jenica picked up her father's diary. "I have learned very much, too,
while you were gone."

"Oh, yes?"

"Harry--listen to me. I have learned things that before now I never
understood. For instance, why my father was always so obsessed with
hunting down the strigoi."

"I could really use a drink, Jenica."

"I also learned very important information about myself."

I poured myself a glass of palinca, and I was about to knock it back
when I realized that Jenica was trying to tell me something very serious.

I stared at her. "You're upset, aren't you?"

"It has been a shock. I never knew any of this before."

Tell me."

"In his diary, my father says that he met my mother in

1969 when he was a student, in university in Romania, and she was
working in the cafe where he used to study. He says they fell in love
deeply and wanted to get married, but her father, Nicolai, threw a big
rage when they told him

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about their relationship and forbade them to see each other anymore.
After many arguments my father took my mother to United States with him
and they were married here in New York, without her father's knowledge."

"Okay," I nodded.

"My father and my mother were very happy and they could never understand
why my grandfather had been so angry that they should not marry. But
three years later, when my mother was expecting me, my father took her
back to Romania, so that they should have a reconciliation with my
grandfather. My father is very honorable, and he believed that no man
should be estranged from his daughter or his grandchild.

"I'm with you so far," I said. I swallowed palinca, and let out a bark
like a sheepdog. "What makes me think that this happy family reunion
didn't turn out so happy?"

"Because, now that my mother was pregnant, my grandfather was forced to
tell my father and my mother why he had opposed so fiercely their
relationship. He said that when she was pregnant, my grandmother,
Ecaterina, had traveled to Horezu in the mountains to visit her cousins.
On the way, the bus broke down, and when night was falling, the driver
and the seven passengers had been stranded in the forest near Caciulata.

"In the morning, the driver and six of the passengers were found
murdered, with their throats cut, but my grandmother had survived,
just--although she had been raped many times.

"Only a few days later, my grandmother developed a burning fever, just
like Frank. She gave birth to my mother prematurely, and then she died.
She had been infected by the strigoi, and she had become one of the pale
people. My grandfather named my mother Mariana, which means 'bitter grace.'"

Jenica handed me her father's diary, with its floppy leather cover. She
pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of

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the page, and said, "Read." Razvan Dragomir's writing was very neat, and
intense, the writing of a man who has a terrible thing to tell, but
wants it to be clearly understood.

"Nicolai told me that after Ecaterina had died, one of the oldest and
most venerable of the gynecologists at the Pitesti Clinic took him into
a private room. The gynecologist said that he would explain to Nicolai
what had happened to Ecaterina, and what might happen to Mariana as she
grew up, but he must never breathe a word to anybody, for fear of
attracting the attention of the undead.

"'Given certain conditions, baby Mariana's health should not be
adversely affected by the sickness that had claimed her mother's life.
However her bloodstream would always carry the strigoica strain, which
could never be eliminated, even by complete transfusion. This strain
would be passed down through the female side of the family, forever.
Unlike a full-blooded strigoica, Mariana would not be unduly sensitive
to sunlight, and she would not have the same insatiable thirst for human
blood. But she would have many of the characteristics of the pale
people, such as the ability to contort her body into seemingly
impossible positions, and to climb seemingly impossible obstacles.
Furthermore, the gynecologist said that she would also be able to 'pass
through the silver doors' whenever she wished, although he did not
clearly explain to Mariana's father what he meant by this."

I lowered the diary. "Silver doors," I said. "Could that mean mirrors?
Don't tell me your mother could walk through mirrors."

But Jenica said, "Carry on. There's more."

"The gynecologist clearly explained to Nicolai that if Mariana were to
bear any girl-child, that girl-child would similarly be infected with
the strigoica strain. Boy-children would not be affected, and neither
would any man with whom she had sexual congress, except if she performed
the ritual of Samodiva before she did so. The ritual of

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Samodiva would make the man's blood vulnerable to the strigoica strain,
and he would almost certainly become infected, too."

I put the book down again. "So what your dad's saying in his diary--your
grandmother passed the strigoica strain onto your mother, and your
mother passed the strain onto you, and if you ever have a daughter,
she's going to be the same. Jesus, Jenica, you're half a vampire. And he
never told you? Jesus."

Jenica's eyes were glistening with tears. "He has always tried to keep
me away from boys, all my life."

"Don't tell me you've never--"

"No, no, of course not. How could he stop me? But he has always turned
very cold and hostile if he thinks that I am serious about any
particular boyfriend, and he never allows me to bring any of them back
to this apartment. He always says that the only man a girl really needs
is her father. I always used to think that he was being over possessive.
But all he wanted to do was to stop me from having children.
Girl-children, anyhow."

"This gets madder by the minute. Did you ever guess your mother could
walk through mirrors? Do you think that she ever guessed that she could
walk through mirrors?"

"I don't think so. From what my father wrote in his diary, I believe
that he did not really understand what 'silver doors' were, any more
than my grandfather, Nicolai, did. After all, there is very little in
any of the legends to say that strigoi can hide inside mirrors, is
there? So even with all of his research he may not have discovered what
this meant."

I was finding it almost impossible to get my head around all of this,
but I could understand why Jenica was so distressed. It was bad enough
finding out that you were blood-related to the undead, without
discovering that your father had known about it for years, and kept it
quiet.

I poured myself another glass of palinca, right to the brim, and I
filled up Jenica's glass, too.

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Jenica said, "Look." She held up her left hand, and bent her thumb right
back until it was touching her wrist. "I could always do things like
this. I used to think that it was ordinary."

It was grotesque, but it was fascinating, too. "Pity we don't have any
mirrors left," I said. "You could try walking through the silver doors,
too."

"I don't think I would wish to try that. Who knows what kind of a world
there is, on the other side of the mirror? Who knows if I could ever
find my way back? And if that is where the strigoi are all hiding during
the day--what a frightening place it must be."

"Still, it would be interesting to see if you could just maybe poke your
pinkie into a mirror."

Jenica was silent for a while. Then she wiped her eyes with her fingers
and said, "Are you hungry? You must be hungry. I have some canned pasta,
I think." Jenica made us a meal of cold Chef Boy-ar-Dee spaghetti
Bolognese and Saltine crackers. We sat in the living room in the
gathering gloom and I told her all about Changing Woman and Amelia's
séance. I didn't want to ask her any more about her father's diaries.
She obviously needed time to think them over.

"So--how do you plan to find this Misquamacus?" she asked me.

"I'm hoping that Monster Slayer is going to track down Vasile Lup, and
burn him up. If he does that, Misquamacus won't have a spirit to hide in
anymore."

"All the same, he sounds tenacious, this Misquamacus. To revive himself,
even when his spirit was scattered."

"He's not going to rest until he gets his revenge, that's why."

"You should take a rest. You look exhausted."

I stood up, and took Jenica's plate for her. "I will, when this is over.
Maybe you and I could take a vacation together. You could show me Romania."

"Romania? I never want to go back to Romania. Without

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the superstition of Romania, this would never have happened. They are
fools and peasants in Romania. How do you think they tolerated Ceaucescu
for so long?" "Don't ask me. We reelected Bill Clinton."

The sun set, messy and yellow, like a fried egg with the yolk broken,
but still Gil wasn't back. I stood by the open window, keeping a lookout
and trying to make the best of a slack, sultry breeze. By 10:45 pm. it
was almost ridiculously dark, with two hours to go before moonrise, so I
was peering out at total blackness. Now and then I thought I glimpsed a
hunched-up shape scurry from one side of the street to the other. Could
have been the pale people, could have been strigoi, could have been my
eyes playing tricks on me. I heard screaming again, over toward James
Walker Park; and then again, to the south, toward Clarkson Street, and
about twenty minutes later I saw six or seven small fires burning.

I was sure that I could feel hysteria in the air, although it may have
been nothing but my own exhaustion. I was hoping that the monster
slayers were out there tonight, running down the strigoi, but as the
hours went by I became less and less convinced that they would really
come to save us. Did Native American spirits always keep their promises?
They probably did--but did they keep their promises to white men?

I was about to close the window when I heard shouting in the street
below, and footsteps. I leaned out, but at first I couldn't see anybody.
Then I saw a flashlight dancing from side to side, as if it was being
held by somebody who was running.

"Harry! Open the door, Harry! The bastards are after me!"

"Hold on!" I shouted back.

I vaulted over the couch, into the hallway, and out of the apartment
door. Jenica said, "Harry? What is it? Harry!

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Gil was already beating on the front door, and screaming out, "Harry!
For Christ's sake open the door!"

I took the stairs, gripping the handrails and vaulting down them seven
at a time. When I reached the second landing I staggered and twisted my
ankle, but I managed to do a complicated pirouette and regain my
balance. I threw myself down the next flight, hobbled along the hallway
and wrenched open the front door.

Gil threw himself at me and we both went sprawling backward onto the
floor. I jarred my shoulder blade and there was blood everywhere--all
over my hands, all over my face, all over my shirt. I looked over Gil's
shoulder and there stood three pale-faced men, caught in the upward beam
from Gil's flashlight. One of them was wearing a heavily bloodstained
sweatshirt, as if he had been working in an abattoir. The second was
half-naked, and flabby-bellied, and covered in huge blue weals; and the
third was dressed in a tattered suit, like a down-and-out mortician. I
saw knives glinting, and I heard that thick, thirsty hurrrrhhhhhhh,
hurrrrhhhhhh, hurrrhhhhhh.

"Gil!" I yelled at him. "Gil, for Christ's sake get off me!"

Gil opened his eyes and stared at me. He coughed, right in my face, and
then he managed to heave himself up onto one knee. I wriggled out from
under him, twisted myself to one side, and kicked out at the first of
the strigoi as he tried to step into the hallway.

Gil climbed to his feet, and pulled me up, too, even though his hands
were slippery with blood. We turned to face the strigoi but this time I
seriously thought we were finished. They advanced on us, holding their
knives high. The mortician had a very long boning knife that was
rusty-colored with dried blood.

The strigoi in the sweatshirt blinked into the hallway right next to us.
Gil kicked at him, then karate-chopped him on the side of the neck, but
the strigoi leaned backward at an

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impossible angle, so that Gil missed him, and then he swung back upright
again, and started stabbing at Gil so frenziedly that his knife looked
like a blur of twenty different knives. Gil's hands and forearms were
smothered in blood, and I could see a gaping slice in the muscle of his
right shoulder.

"Goddamned--blood-drinking--bastards!" Gil was gasping.

The mortician ducked his head down, and the next thing I knew he was
right behind me, trying to hook his arm around me so that he could cut
my throat. I grabbed hold of his wrist and hit it hard against the
banister, and then the hall table, and then the banister again, and then
I threw myself backward against him with all of my weight. I felt his
ribs crunch between me and the wall.

I was about to turn around and give him the old Three Stooges poke in
the eyes with my stiffened fingers but suddenly he wasn't there any
more. He had blinked back onto the porch, and he was almost running at
me with his knife held up high.

Gil was wrestling with both of the other two strigoi and roaring,
"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh!" so loud that I could hardly hear anything else.

The mortician swished his knife one way, and then swished it the other.
There was nothing in his eyes at all. No rage, no hatred, no madness.
Nothing. But I knew that he wouldn't back off and that he was determined
to kill me and slit my throat and drink the blood as it pumped straight
out of my neck.

And then--he exploded. Right in front of me, only inches away, he
exploded. There was only the softest of whoompphs, but his insides
seemed to detonate. His head flew off sideways and his body burst into
the fiercest of flames, and in only a few seconds he had dropped onto
the floor and he was blazing like a KKK crucifix.

The other two strigoi looked around, their faces

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questioning, but they didn't stay alive long enough to find out the
answer. They, too, exploded, and for a few seconds the hallway was
filled with burning bits of them--hands, feet, pelvic girdles, lungs,
and loops of rapidly shriveling intestine.

Panting, bleeding, Gil and I looked out of the front door in thankful
bewilderment. Out in the street, utterly silent, stood six or seven very
dark shapes. They were only visible because of the flaming strigoi whose
dismembered body parts littered our front doorstep. I thought that I
could make out horns, and necklaces, and for a split second I thought
that I saw two eyes open, as narrow as the slits in a steelworker's
mask, and a molten white light too bright to be looked at.

"Monster slayers," I said, and I couldn't hide how awestruck I was. "The
People-With-Sun-Behind-Their-Eyes."

Gil said, "First time the Injuns have come riding to the rescue." Then
he sneezed, and sprayed me with blood.

"Hold on," I said. I kicked all the blazing body parts onto the
sidewalk. The intestines were the worst because they stuck to my shoes
and got themselves tangled around my ankles, and all the time I was
trying to get them loose they were making a loud frying noise. Soon,
however, all that remained was the mortician's fiery skull, which was
lying on the doormat, burning the bristles. I hooked my left foot around
it and booted it down the steps, and it bounced all the way across the
street, still blazing, until it hit the curb on the opposite side.

By the time I closed the front door, the horn-headed figures of the
monster slayers were long gone. Hunting for more strigoi, I hoped. This
was their land, after all, the grandsons and granddaughters of Changing
Woman, and because it was theirs they could draw on all of its richness
and all of its spiritual power. Judging by what had happened on this
doorstep, the strigoi needed to find themselves some pretty dark places
to hide.

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Gil's hands and arms were criss-crossed with cuts, and his shoulder was
bleeding badly, but otherwise he didn't seem to be too seriously
injured. I helped him up from the floor, and for a moment we stood
looking at ourselves in the hallway mirror. We looked like two walking
wounded from a full-scale war.

"Forgot to break that one," said Gil, nodding at the mirror. "Don't want
them getting into the building through there."

"Let me get you upstairs. Then I'll come back down here and do the honors."

It was a struggle climbing the stairs. Gil had to stop every now and
then, and catch his breath.

"You should have come back before nightfall," I said.

He leaned back against the paneled staircase. "I know. But to tell you
the truth, I have a confession to make. I tried to get my wife and
daughters over to Jersey."

"What?"

"I went back home and they were terrified. The strigoi had tried to
break into our apartment three or four times. So I got them to pack a
bag and we went to the Holland Tunnel. I thought maybe, because I was
military, they would let me through. But there was no way. They have
barricades, they have razor wire. They have orders to shoot you on
sight, if you try to get through. So I had no choice. I had to bring
them back home, and barricade them in again."

"You could have stayed with them, Gil. You should have stayed with them.
I would have understood."

Gil wiped blood across his upper lip. "I'm a soldier, Harry. I know the
meaning of duty."

"Well, I appreciate your coming back. At least we know that the monster
slayers are out and about, and doing what they promised. Did you see
that old guy blow up, right in front of me? That was something, wasn't it?"

"Harry?" called Jenica, her voice echoing down the stairwell. "Are you
okay down there?"

"Battered but unbowed," I called back.

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I wrapped Gil's arm around my shoulders, and heaved him up the last two
flights of stairs to the Dragomirs' apartment. Jenica was waiting for
us, and she immediately helped Gil through to the living room, and
together we lowered him onto the couch. Almost at once I could see that
he was much more badly hurt than I had thought. The front of his T-shirt
was wet with blood, and when Jenica dragged it off him, we could see
that it wasn't just from the cuts on his arms. He had a puncture-wound
just below his ribcage, and it was bubbling.

"I will bring antiseptic, and bandage," said Jenica. "Meantime, Harry,
press this tissues against this hole, to stop more blood."

"It's nothing," said Gil, peering down at it. "Minor stab wound, that's
all. I had shrapnel in my leg, in Bosnia. Thirty-seven stitches."


"How about a drink?" I asked him. "Nothing like palinca to ease any kind
of pain, physical or spiritual."

"Why not? I'll tell you something, Harry, when this is all over, I'm
going to open a palinca bar on Seventh Avenue, and I'm going to call it
Amnesia."

Jenica brought in a plastic basin filled with water from the bathtub.
She sponged Gil's stomach and his shoulder and dressed his wounds with
Band-Aids and clean, folded handkerchiefs. Then we helped him to limp
through to the bedroom and eased him down on the bed.

"What you need is sleep," said Jenica, and she leaned over and kissed
him on the forehead.

"Frank died in this bed," Gil protested.

"Well, he did and he didn't. Frank isn't exactly dead yet."

"Thanks for the comforting reminder."

Jenica and I went back to the living room. I could have done with some
sleep myself, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to close my eyes.
Besides, I had to go down to the hallway and break the mirror. I doubted
if the strigoi would try

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to come back here, after the monster slayers had been around, but I
decided that it was better to be over-cautious than lose my entire blood
supply to some dead-eyed wacko with a box cutter.

Jenica picked up the decorated bone that we had found in Vasile Lup's
casket. "You know, I have been wondering all day about this. Where it
came from, why it seems to have such power."

"I've seen something like it before. Two of them, as a matter of fact.
They were bones from a wonder-worker's legs, which you could tap
together, as if he was running, and you could follow him into the spirit
world. They used to belong to White Bull, who was medicine-man for Crazy
Horse."

"Did they work?"

I didn't really want to talk about it, because it had been a bad
experience, but I nodded. "Yes, they did. But not in the same way as
this." I reached across and took the bone away from her and lifted it
up. "White Bull's bones had to be used as part of a sacred ritual... but
this one--this has some kind of internal energy all of its own, doesn't it?"

"I ask myself, why was it lying in the Vampire Gatherer's casket?"

"Who knows? Maybe there was no special reason. After Misquamacus had
roused up the Vampire Gatherer, maybe he just didn't need it any more,
and so he left it behind."

"An artifact so powerful as this? I don't think so. I think your
wonder-worker left it lying in the Vampire Gatherer's casket for some
purpose. And remember that when you shook at it him, he walked away,
very quick, as if it possessed a magic that he could not defy."

I examined the bone more closely. There were tiny figures carved all
along it, all intertwined. The interesting thing was--unlike the figures
you usually saw in Native American carving--they were all fully dressed,
like white men.

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Jenica said, "What I ask myself is, how did Misquamacus obtain this
bone? So, yes, we know from your spirit guide Singing Rock that the very
hot fire of nine-eleven forged back together again the separated parts
of his manitou, so that his spirit was again whole. But his spirit still
had no substance, did it?--what the nineteenth-century mediums used to
call ectoplasm. So with no substance, how did he find the bone, and how
did he carry it to Vasile Lup's casket, so that he could revive him? It
is eggs and chickens."

"You're asking me for answers I don't even know the questions to."

Jenica's eyes were shining in the candlelight. "Something is missing in
this equation. I sense that somebody else is behind the scenes of what
happened here."

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Bloodstream

On the marquetry side table, among the jewel boxes and the decorative
paperweights, I found a small bronze ornament of a grinning Romanian
gnome. He was only a little guy, but very heavy, with a pointed hat, and
he was perfect for breaking a mirror. Hefting him up in the palm of my
hand, I hobbled downstairs as quickly as I could.

There was a stomach-turning stench of scorched carpet and burned
intestines still hanging around the stairwell, like the rottenest
barbecue you ever smelled in your life, and I couldn't stop my mouth
from filling up with undigested spaghetti Bolognese, before I swallowed
it again.

When I reached the hallway, I gripped the gnome firmly by the base, and
approached myself in the mirror. I pulled a suitably determined face,
and lifted up the gnome. But I was just about to smash the mirror to
pieces when I saw something reflected in it--a postcard, lying on the
hall table. A postcard that certainly wasn't there before, when we were
fighting the strigoi.

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I turned around and picked it up. The picture on the front showed a
large white house, under a deep blue sky, with crimson maple trees in
front of it, and a small circular lake. The Kensico Country Inn,
Valhalla, N. Y. I turned it over. There was no stamp on it, and no
address, but someone had scrawled Heref.

I frowned at it. Heref? Maybe somebody was trying to write Hereford, but
was interrupted halfway through.

I looked around. The question was, who had put it here? The front door
was firmly locked and bolted. I had done it myself. And so far as we
knew, there was nobody else in the building. All of the other residents
were either on vacation or else they had gone out for one reason or
another and hadn't returned. Caught by the pale people, probably, or
sucked dry by strigoi.

I went across and tried the door of the first-floor apartment. It was
locked. Then I went to the end of the hallway and tried the door that
must have led out to the back yard. That was locked, too, and bolted
from the inside. There was only one other way in that I could think of.
The mirror.

I slowly approached the mirror until my forehead was pressed against it,
and stared right into it. All I could see was me. Only the strigoi could
have come through this mirror--but if they had, why hadn't they tried to
attack us, and why had they left this postcard?

Then it occurred to me. Frank. The postcard had been left here by Frank.
Hadn't he promised me that, whatever happened, he would never forget his
oath to protect human life? The scrawl said "Here" and then "f." Frank
had come here to tell me where Misquamacus was hiding.

I was still staring at the mirror, trying to decide if I ought to break
it or not, when I heard a piercing scream from upstairs, and a door
slamming, and the sound of chairs crashing to the floor.

"Harry! shouted Jenica. "Harry, come quick!?

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I might have hobbled down the stairs but I ran back up them like a
mountain goat with a firecracker up its ass. The door to the Dragomirs'
apartment was wide open, and Jenica was standing outside on the landing,
panting with fear, holding up the bone to protect herself. Inside,
halfway along the corridor, stood a thin, wild-eyed man in a
loose-fitting caftan, which was heavily soaked in blood. He had
shoulder-length hair, which was dripping wet, and a scraggly, unkempt
beard. He was carrying a machete, which was dripping blood onto the floor.

"I think he's killed Gil," said Jenica.

"Where the hell did he come from? You didn't open any windows, did you?"

"Of course not, are you crazy? I don't know where he came from. I went
to see if Gil was all right, and he was standing over his bed, and there
was so much blood. Gil-- I think he's cut his head off."

The wild-eyed man stared at us, but he came no closer. For some reason
he looked edgy and undecided, as if he couldn't work out what to do
next. He was making that coarse, greedy sound under his breath, but it
almost seemed as if he was afraid to attack us.

"It's the bone," I said to Jenica. "He's afraid of the bone."

"What?"

"Give it to me. Let me try something."

Jenica handed me the bone. I lifted it up in my right hand and shook it,
and chanted the only Native American language I knew. "Hauf Wicasa
cikala! He 'cu sniyo! Lo wa 'cin!"

At first, the wild-eyed man stayed right where he was. I took a step
toward him, and repeated my chant. I waved the bone from side to side,
and then I prodded it toward him.

" Wakatanka Itakan nitawal!" I shouted.

The wild-eyed man raised his machete. My heart was

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thumping, but I took another step toward him, waving the bone, and then
another. He stared at me and slowly drew his lips back, in a horrible
parody of a smile. I thought for one moment that he knew what I was
chanting, and that he was laughing at me, but then he turned around and
rushed toward the bathroom, his caftan catching on the door handle.

I rushed after him, but he had managed to tear his caftan free, and
before I could grab him he had run across the bathroom and dived
headfirst into the tubful of water. He disappeared below the surface,
and he was gone. Not a single splash. He hadn't even caused a ripple.

Holding the bone high in front of me, I walked right up to the edge of
the bathtub. There was nothing in it but water. Only a thin swirl of
blood betrayed the fact that one of the strigoi had used it as a means
of escape.

I was still standing there when Jenica came in. She looked around, and
then she said, "Where is he? Where did he go?"

"Same place he came from, I'll bet."

"What do you mean?"

"We've just learned something new about the strigoi. Not only can they
hide inside mirrors ... they can hide inside water, too. It's obvious,
when you think about it. All they need is a perfect reflection."

"Empty the tub," said Jenica.

"If we do that, what are we going to drink?"

"I don't know. I don't care. There is still plenty of wine and beer."

"Okay," I said, and pulled out the plug.

Jenica came up close to me, and together we watched the water gurgling
down the wastepipe.

"Gil is dead," she said. "If only I had known that the strigoi can walk
through water."

We went through to the bedroom. Gil was lying on his

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side with his head thrown back, so that he was staring blindly at the
headboard. His neck had been cut through to the spine, and the sheets
were dark with blood. It reminded me horribly of those terrorist videos,
where hostages have their heads cut off. I picked up the pale blue
bedcover from the floor, and dragged it over the bed to cover him.

"Shit. He was such a great guy. He didn't deserve to die like this."

"You must not feel guilty, Harry. He was a soldier. He knew how
dangerous this might be."

I looked down at the bedcover, which already had blood creeping across
it. "I'll have to find his wife and daughters somehow, and tell them
that they won't be seeing him again."

"We will do that together."

I followed Jenica out of the bedroom and closed the door behind me. And
locked it. I was sure that Gil was properly dead, unlike Frank, but you
know, why take chances? If wild-eyed men with machetes could rise out of
the bathwater, who knows what was possible?

We went into the living room. The palinca was all finished so, without
being asked, I took a bottle of deathbreath red wine and started to open it.

"So we must revenge him," said Jenica. "It seems as if revenge is the
only language that your Misquamacus understands. If only we could know
where he is."

"I don't know what good it's going to do us... but I believe that we
might." I stopped twisting the corkscrew and took the postcard out of my
pocket.

"The Kensico Country Inn? Where did you get this?"

"I found it downstairs. I think that Frank brought it. See-- it says
'here' and then it's signed with an F."

"And this is all?"

"It must have been Frank. Nobody could have gotten into the house,
except through the hallway mirror. And

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who else do we know who's a vampire? Well, present company excepted."

Jenica waited while I opened the wine and poured us each a large glass.
It smelled so strong that you could almost get intoxicated just by
breathing it in. She took a sip, and then she said, "You didn't yet
break the mirror downstairs?"

"Not yet, no. If Frank is using it to bring us inside information ... I
thought it might be better if I left it intact. We can always lock the
doors, can't we? And our trusty bone seems to frighten off strigoi?"

"What did you say to him? Was that Native American language?"

"Lakota Sioux. I said, 'hallo, little man! Don't do that! I'm hungry!'"

Jenica's eyes widened. "Is that all?"

"Well, a couple of words from the Gospel according to St. Luke."

She smiled. "Perhaps the way to fight madness is with more madness."

"Hey--we called in the monster slayers, didn't we? It isn't easy to get
much madder than that."

"But this will not be finished until we have destroyed Vasile Lup, or
sealed him back in his casket, and your Misquamacus who hides inside him."

"With any luck, the monster slayers will track him down."

"Maybe they will. But remember that Vasile Lup is svarcolaci, a dead
vampire, and he leaves no scent that any creature can follow, man or
beast or monster slayer. And from what you have told me of your
Misquamacus, do you think he will allow the monster slayers to disperse
his manitou back to the elements? He is a Native American wonder-worker,
and the monster slayers are Native American spirits."

"I don't know what else we can do."

"Listen to me, Harry. Even if the monster slayers can find

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and kill every strigoi but one, it is impossible to stop them from
spreading. So long as the spirit of Vasile Lup is still living, and the
manitou of Misquamacus is living inside him, the strigoi will multiply
all across America, and you can believe me that darkness will fall in
every city and every community from New York to San Francisco."

"Yes. Very dramatically put. But Misquamacus isn't going to make it easy
for us, I can tell you. And for starters, we can't get even out of
Manhattan. Gil tried, with his wife and daughters, but the military
wouldn't let him through, and he's a soldier." I paused, and then I
added, "Was a soldier, poor bastard."

Jenica held up the postcard. "So how do you think that Vasile Lup
managed to avoid the roadblocks? How did he manage to get out of
Manhattan, and all the way up to Valhalla? That is way up past White
Plains, isn't it?"

"He went through the mirror, didn't he? He used the good old silver door."

"Yes?"

"What do you mean, 'yes'?"

"I have strigoica in my blood, Harry. I can use the good old silver
door, too."

"You don't mean--"

"I can go after Vasile Lup. I can follow him to Valhalla, and I can send
him back to his casket, and seal him there. I have the disenchantment,
after all."

"What about Misquamacus? He's not going to allow you to do that, just
like he didn't allow you to do it right here, in this apartment."

"I have the bone, yes? That will protect me. Once I have disenchanted
Vasile Lup, Misquamacus will have no spirit to hide in. I will think of
some way."

"You're out of your mind. You said yourself that the mirror world is far
too dangerous. For Christ's sake, Jenica, once you go through that
mirror, even supposing you can, it's going to be wall-to-wall vampires
in there. You won't last

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two minutes. And if you think you can beat Misquamacus on your own, and
without any kind of a plan, forget it. He'll have your soul trapped
forever inside some flea-ridden prairie dog before you can say Gitche
Manitou.'"

"I will take the risk. What else can I do? I am the only person in this
city who has both the knowledge to send the Vampire Gatherer back to his
casket, and the ability to find him."

She paused for a moment. Her face was shiny with perspiration and her
black hair was stuck to her forehead. "Gil died for us. Gil died for a
purpose. I am prepared to do the same, if it is necessary."

I swallowed wine, and for a moment I thought I was going to experience
the re-regurgitation of the spaghetti Bolognese. "It's a very noble
idea," I said. "But like most very noble ideas, it's incredibly dumb.
Supposing you disappear into the mirror and that's the last I see of
you? How am I going to know if you managed to send Vasile Lup back to
his box? How am I going to know if you destroyed Misquamacus?" "Your
spirit guide will tell you." "No, no, this is not going to work. It's
suicide." "Then what are we going to do? Stay in this apartment until we
die of dehydration?"

Outside, in the street, there was hideous screaming--the screaming of
somebody who was suffering unimaginable agony. Jenica and I went to the
window and looked down. The moon had risen now, and we could see at
least a dozen black figures, strung right across the street from one
sidewalk to the other.

They were monster slayers, creatures of smoke and darkness, their
outlines glittering with broken glass and other debris that they had
attracted from the surface of the street.

I could see their horns and their necklaces and their strange stilted
legs, which gave them the appearance of heavy-headed buffalo.

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Facing them were three strigoi, two men, one of them completely naked,
and a half-naked women. A fourth strigoi was lying in pieces on the
asphalt, with thick smoke pouring out of him, and a few small flames
still licking his head.

As we watched, two of the monster slayers stepped forward. The strigoi
turned to run away, but two rays of searing white light leaped out of
the monster slayers' eyes and hit the naked man directly in the middle
of his back. For a fraction of a second I could see his insides burning,
so that his ribcage glowed luminous scarlet, like a lamp. Then he blew
apart, and his arms and his legs went flying, and all of his intestines
and his internal organs were strewn across the street, blazing ferociously.

The other two strigoi had reached a house on the opposite side of the
street. They started to climb the front wall, as swiftly as squirrels,
but the monster slayers were too quick for them. They were only halfway
up the second story when three monster slayers lifted their heads and
opened their eyes, and six blinding rays of light hit them in the head
and the back. I heard the woman scream before she exploded, and it
sounded like somebody who has just had her first experience of hell.

Fiery pieces of strigoi fell into the basement in front of the house.
The woman's head rolled under a parked car, and it was still burning
when the monster slayers had walked down to the end of Leroy Street and
turned right into Hudson. I knew that they were on our side, but all the
same I found them very scary, especially that bison-like way they walked.

"There," I said to Jenica. "We're winning."

"You know that we can never win until the Vampire Gatherer is gone, and
your Misquamacus with him."

"I wish you'd stop calling him 'my' Misquamacus. That mook has caused me
nothing but misery, ever since I first heard his name."

I turned away from the window. But then Jenica said,

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"He is 'your' Misquamacus, Harry. I know how to disenchant Vasile Lup, I
believe that you can think of a way to destroy Misquamacus. You remember
that ritual my father mentioned?"

"Ritual?"

"In his diary, he said that the strigoica strain could be passed from a
woman to a man if he underwent the ritual of Samodiva. That would make
his blood susceptible to her infection."

"I don't understand what you're trying to suggest here. Actually, I
think I do, but I'm not at all sure that I like it."

"But you do not want me to go into the mirror to face Vasile Lup alone,
do you? So what better answer than if you come with me?"

"Now I know you've lost it."

Jenica came up to me and took hold of both of my hands, tightly. I just
adored the beads of perspiration on her upper lip. "Harry--nobody else
can disenchant Vasile Lup but me, and I cannot do it without you. So
what choice do we have?"

"I thought dying of dehydration sounded quite attractive, by comparison."

"I am sure that my father has the words of the ritual of Samodiva in one
of his books."

"Okay, but who exactly is Samodiva? Sounds like an Irish opera-singer to
me."

"Samodiva is different in different mythology. In Bulgaria she is a wood
fairy. In Romania it is neither a he or a she, but the recorder of
death. It lives deep in the forests and its face is always hidden in
darkness. In Samodiva's book the names of the living are written in red
ink, and the names of the dead are written in black."

"So you perform the ritual of Samodiva, and my blood is then open to
your infection? I can become half a vampire, too? And I can step through
the silver door, just like you?"

Jenica nodded. "It means, yes, you can come with me."

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"Well, that's exactly what I'm getting at. In order for me to become
infected with this strigoica strain, we have to--you know, become intimate."

"Yes."

"And that isn't a problem, as far as you're concerned?"

"Why should it be?"

"I don't know. No special reason. If it's okay with you, then it's
absolutely fine by me."

She reached up and gently took hold of my earlobe, and rubbed it between
finger and thumb. It was the most arousing thing that a woman had ever
done for me.

"Harry," she said, "we have no choice, do we? Our destiny says that we
must."

I finished another glass of wine while Jenica looked up Samodiva in her
father's books of Romanian mythology. I needed something to give me
courage, after all. I wasn't scared about being infected with
vampiritis, especially the way that Jenica was going to do it, but I was
deeply afraid of Misquamacus. I had been hoping that the monster slayers
would do the job for me, but now that Misquamacus had escaped from
Manhattan, I knew that the chances of that happening were slim to anorexic.

"Here," said Jenica, at last. "'The ritual of Samodiva, which takes away
a man's natural defenses against the strain of strigoica, and other
infections caused by witches and possessed women. It adds his name to
the list of the dead without erasing it from the list of the living,
because he does not actually die."

"You're sure about that?"

"One day, Harry, we will all die, and all of our names will be written
in black."

"Go on, then. Tell me what we have to do."

"This is in very old Muntenian dialect, from Wallachia. 'To commence,
the woman or witch must purify the man by shaving him.'"

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I rubbed my chin, which now had three days stubble on it. "That's okay,
I could use a shave anyway. Better to die looking sharp, don't you think?"

"'The razor must be stained with the blood of the woman or the witch.'"

"Oh. Well, I guess you could just nick the ball of your thumb, couldn't
you? That wouldn't hurt too much."

" 'The man must be completely shaved from head to toe.'"

"Say what?"

Jenica ignored me, and carried on translating." 'His skin is to be used
as the parchment on which the names of the dead are to be written. Every
person he has known who is now dead shall have their name inscribed in
black ink upon his skin. The names of these people will be his passport
and his protection in the world of the dead that he will now partly
inhabit. When these names are written and the ink is dry, the witch or
the woman shall recite these words three times, while sugar and thyme
shall be burned together in a bowl. "Accept this man's name in the list
of the dead, O Samodiva. Record his entry into the realm of shadows and
paint his likeness on the face of the moon. For the names of all people
living or dead are yours to record, and in the columns of blood and in
the columns of darkness his name shall appear according to your something.'"

"According to your something?"

"It's an old word, borrowed from the Church Slavic. I think it means
'judgment' or 'decision' or 'whim.'"

"You're going to shave me bald on somebody's whim?"

"It says here that this is the authentic ritual of Samodiva, which can
be traced back as far as 1189. It was usually used when a man wanted to
talk to a dead friend ... for instance, if his friend had died without
telling him where all his money was hidden."

"All right, then, if that's what we have to do. Bring on the shaving cream."

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* * *

It was well past midnight. The moon was shining high above the
blacked-out Empire State building, and the Hudson was gleaming like a
sheet of polished steel. Every now and then we saw a bright flicker of
intense white light, as if somebody was welding, and we heard men and
women screaming, which told us that the monster slayers were still out
and about. There was still a feeling of hysteria in the air, but at
least we knew that the strigoi were on the run.

Because we had emptied the bathtub, Jenica had to fill the washbasin
with water bailed out of the toilet cistern. In her father's bedroom
bureau she found an old straight razor in a mahogany box. It was clear
from the very detailed) etchings in Jenica's book that a Gillette Mach 3
was not going to be suitably mythological for the ritual of Samodiva.

First of all, Jenica sat me down in the middle of the kitchen. She took
a large pair of scissors and cut my hair off as close to the scalp as
she could. I was glad there were no mirrors for me to see myself. I felt
like a half-plucked turkey.

When she was done chopping, we went through to the bathroom. I pulled
off my sweaty shirt and stepped out of my pants and my red-and-white
striped shorts. For some reason I felt incredibly shy, and I stood there
with my hands protectively cupped between my legs.

Jenica picked up the razor and opened it.

"I hope it's sharp," I said.

Without hesitation, she sliced the ball of her thumb, so that blood
welled up. "Yes," she said, "it is extremely sharp." She smeared her
blood along the blade, on both sides. Then she sucked her thumb and
wrapped a piece of toilet tissue around it to stop it from bleeding any
more. "Are you ready?" she asked me.

"I guess so. Shave away."

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She wet my prickly scalp and rubbed menthol shaving gel all over it.
When she was halfway through, however, she stopped and said, "You're
embarrassed."

"Embarrassed? Me? Do I look embarrassed?"

"Yes, you do. You are standing like a small boy."

"I'm just... keeping all my bases covered, that's all."

"I know what I will do," said Jenica. She wiped her hands on a towel,
crossed her arms, and lifted up her short linen dress. Underneath she
was wearing a lacy white bra and a lacy white thong. "Here," she said,
turning her back to me. "Undo me."

I was never Harry Houdini when it came to bra hooks, but this time I
managed to slide the hooks out of the eyes with one amazingly deft
movement. Her enormous breasts came out of the cups like perfectly set
blancmanges. She turned around again, and laid one hand on my shoulder
to balance herself while she tugged off her thong. She had black pubic
hair that was trimmed like a pair of butterfly wings.

"Now you have no need to be embarrassed," she said. She was kidding,
wasn't she? My cock started to stiffen and by the time she started
shaving my scalp I needed at least two more pairs of hands to hide it.

She shaved my scalp quickly and silently, with the tip of her tongue
held between her teeth. She was very good at it, very assured, as if she
had often used a straight razor before, and she only nicked my ear once.
I stayed as still as I possibly could, even when her nipples brushed
against my arms.

Next, she smothered my face and my throat with shaving gel, and started
to shave my chin. She was so close that I could feel her breath. When
she reached my neck, she held her hand against my chin to stretch my
skin. I closed my eyes and didn't move a muscle while the blade scraped
around my Adam's apple.

I felt the edge of the razor against the left side of my throat and then
she suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes

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and found that she was staring at me from only inches away. There was an
expression on her face that I couldn't interpret. I thought to myself:
Harry, this woman is half a vampire. She has the strigoica strain in her
system, and whatever the legends say, that makes her a drinker of human
blood. And she is holding a straight razor right across your carotid artery.

"What?" I asked her.

For one very long moment she said nothing. Then she carried on scraping
the stubble from my throat. "I was thinking," she said. "What will you
do, when all this is finished? You will still have the infection in your
blood."

"It doesn't affect you, does it? You never even knew you had it."

"But I am a woman. Maybe it affects men differently."

"Maybe it does. But if I start eating steak tartare for breakfast, at
least I'll know why."

Once she had turned me into Mr. Clean, she lifted my arms in turn and
shaved my armpits. I didn't have a whole lot of hair on my chest, just a
sketchy kind of a crucifix, but she shaved that off, too.

She shaved all the hair off my legs, which gave me an extraordinary
sensation, especially up the backs of the thighs. By the time she had
finished my cock was sticking out like a hard, curved tusk, and steadily
beating in time to my heart. Without hesitation, though, she rubbed gel
into my pubic hair and all over my balls and deep between the cheeks of
my ass. Then she knelt down next to me and slowly began to edge the hair
away, a little at a time, wiping the blade on pieces of toilet paper.

She was very careful, but she still managed to cut me two or three
times. A drop of blood ran down my right thigh, and she dabbed at it
with her finger and sucked it. Another drop ran down, and she leaned
forward and licked that with her tongue.

Now she was shaving the last few hairs away from my

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cock, and the razor was right across my distended vein. I held my breath
in. I couldn't help it. She had tasted my blood now, and here was her
chance to have it gushing out of me like a hosepipe.

But "there," she said, and sat back on her heels, and splashed three
handfuls of water between my legs, and picked up a towel. "Now you are a
parchment, Harry, ready for me to write on you."

I made myself comfortable on Jenica's bed while she rummaged through her
father's desk to find a fine brush and a bottle of India ink. All around
the bedroom she had lit clusters of red and yellow candles, rose- and
vanilla-scented. Naked and completely hairless, I felt strangely new
born, and different. Spiritual, almost. I could understand why Buddhist
holy men shaved their bodies.

Beside the bed stood six or seven silver-framed photographs of Jenica
and her father. I recognized some of the places where the pictures had
been taken: the Champs Elysees, in Paris; St Mark's Square, in Venice;
the Houses of Parliament, in London. I thought that maybe my eyes were
tired, but in almost every photograph her father seemed to be slightly
out of focus, as if he had moved. From what I could make out, though, he
looked quite handsome, in a very Romanian way, and he was wearing a
dangly earring in his left ear.

Jenica came back into the room, wearing a man's white dress shirt, with
a wing collar, and only one button fastened. She sat down next to me,
unscrewed her hexagonal glass bottle of India ink, and dipped her brush
into it.

"Tell me the name of somebody you know who is now dead."

"Anybody?"

"Anybody at all, so long as they are no longer living."

"Singing Rock," I said. Under the circumstances, I thought that my
spirit guide deserved pride of place.

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Very carefully, in beautiful italic handwriting, Jenica painted the name
Singing Rock across my chest.

When she had finished, I said, "David Erskine. That's my father. George
Erskine, that's my grandfather. Jimmy Bonasinga--he was in my class at
school."

Without a word, Jenica covered my naked body in names. I was amazed and
sad at how many dead people I had known. It took her nearly three hours,
and by the time she had finished I had more than a hundred names written
all over me. There on my left shoulder was Adelaide Bright, God bless
her, who had taught me how to read the Tarot and the tea leaves and most
of all how to read the future in people's faces. Along my right forearm
was my woodworking teacher, Kenneth Bukaski, who had shown me that
putting up shelves that stayed up was more than a matter of faith. And
here on my thigh was Sandra Lowenstein, pale and fey, who had written
incomprehensible poems for me about smoke and flowers, and eventually
died of an overdose in some shitty squat in Baltimore.

I couldn't see the names that were written across my back, but their
memories were just as dear to me. The only name that was written on my
penis was Jane Forward, my very first love. Jane had been stunning, even
with braces on her teeth. Green eyes, long blonde hair, and over two
inches taller than I was. We all thought that she was going to be a
famous actress, but she had married a stock analyst called Roger and
moved to Darien, Connecticut, and drowned in a stupid swimming-pool
accident. Eventually Jenica put down her brush and screwed the top back
onto her bottle of ink. She took off the shirt that she was wearing and
lay down next to me. "Do you know what you are now? You are the book of
the dead."

"After all this, I just hope that this works."

With her fingertip, she touched the last name that she had written, John
Franzini. "I think that John Franzini is dry now. We can start the ritual."

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She had brought in a small ceramic dish. It was filled with molasses and
dried thyme, mixed together. She lit a taper and laid its flame in the
center of the dish so that the sugar and the herbs started to bubble and
burn. The smell was very evocative, but I couldn't think what it
reminded me of. Something that had happened a long time ago and very far
away.

Jenica opened the book of mythology and laid it on the pillow. Then she
leaned over me, with her left nipple brushing against my right nipple.
She was so close to my face that I couldn't focus on her properly.

"Accept this man's name in the list of the dead, o Samodiva," she
recited. "Record his entry into the realm of shadows and paint his
likeness on the face of the moon."

She said this three times, as instructed. As she started the third
recitation, however, she took hold of my cock in her right hand and
started to massage it. I have to admit that the sensation was not
entirely unpleasant. By the time she had said, "... according your
judgment," Jane Forward's name was at least twice as long as it had been
before.

Jenica climbed on top of me. I tried to reach up to touch her breasts,
but she pushed my hand away. Since she was in charge of this particular
ritual, I decided that I should just lie there and follow instructions.
After all, we weren't supposed to be doing this for our own gratification.

All the same, as she reached down between my legs, and guided me inside
her, she bent her head forward and kissed me on the lips. Her lips were
wet and warm and slippery, and she was the same inside. In spite of
everything, I couldn't help groaning.

She rode up and down in silence. Each time she lifted up her hips, she
almost lost me, but somehow she managed to judge the moment exactly, and
slide herself back down again, until my naked cock was buried in her up
to the hilt. The only sound was the bed creaking, and Jenica's

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panting. Her perspiration dripped onto my lips, and it tasted like
swimming in the ocean.

As I felt my climax rising up between my legs, I couldn't stop myself
from gripping the cheeks of her bottom, and digging my fingers deep into
her flesh. Now she was almost galloping, and she started to pant
"Samodiva! Samodiva! Samodiva!" The smoke from the burning molasses
seemed to grow more and more pungent, until I could smell and taste
nothing else, and I was sure that the shadows on the ceiling were
dancing in time to our fucking, like mad goblins out of the
Transylvanian forests.

Without warning, Jenica began to quake with orgasm. I had never heard a
woman make a noise like that before. It was like a low, vibrato dirge.
"Ohhhhhhh, ohhhhhh, dragostea, ohhhhhhhhh." It was so erotic and so
revealing, as if she had opened up her whole personality to me,
everything she was, her folk culture and her fantasies, and everything
that she had grown up to be, from her Romanian girlhood.

She arched herself right back, until the back of her head was actually
touching her bottom, and I was deeper inside her than I had physically
thought possible. I had forgotten that she was partly strigoica, and
that she could bend herself like a contortionist. That did it. I said,
"Jesus, Jenica," and ejaculated, and ejaculated again, and then again.

Afterward, we lay together in sweaty silence. The shadows had stopped
dancing, too, as if the Transylvanian goblins were taking a breather, or
maybe the candles had simply burned low. I heard the clock in the living
room whirr and then strike four, and between the bedroom curtains I
could see that the sky outside was already growing light.

Jenica lifted her head and stared at me. "There is one more thing, just
to make sure."

"Really? I don't mind doing it again, if you don't."

She put her hand down between her thighs, and then lifted it up to my lips.

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"What's this?"

"Taste. It is the taste of me, and the taste of you, and the taste of
the strigoica."

I licked her fingertips. "Now what? Does this mean I'm infected?"

"Now you sleep. Later, I will bring you tea, or wine, whatever you want."

"I don't think I can sleep."

"Then close your eyes and rest."

She climbed off the bed and picked up her shirt. I knew that there was
no way that I was going to be able to get to sleep, not after having sex
like that, and not when I knew that we were going to go hunting for
Misquamacus. But I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

I could hear Jenica in the kitchen. She was singing what sounded like a
love song, but for all the Romanian I knew, it could have been the
Romanian equivalent of "You're So Vain."

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22

Blood Group

Suddenly, I felt something cool and wet on my stomach. I opened my eyes
and Jenica was wiping the writing off my skin with a makeup-removal pad.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked me.

"Give me a chance, I've only been lying here for a couple of minutes."

"You've been sleeping for nine hours. It's ten past one in the afternoon."

I sat up. "what? You're kidding me!"

But the clock next to the bed said 1:09 and through the triangular crack
in the curtains I could see that the sun was shining. Jenica had changed
into a black-and-white check shirt and tight blue Levis, and she had
brushed her hair back and tied it with a black scarf.

"Why didn't you wake me up earlier? Come on, Jenica, if we're going to
go after Misquamacus we need all the daylight we can get!"

"Ssh," she said. "You slept so long because you were

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exhausted. Besides, you needed time to absorb the strigoica strain into
your bloodstream."

"Yeah, I forgot. I'm half a vampire now." I rubbed the back of my head.
"I don't feel any different. Apart from having a bean like a bowling ball."

"Believe me, Harry, you are different. You can do things now that you
could never do before. Look."

She took hold of my right hand, and pulled back my index finger. It was
incredible. Without any effort at all, it bent right over until it was
practically touching the back of my wrist. I tried my middle finger, and
I could bend it back just as far.

"That's fantastic. Harry Erskine, the India-Rubber Fortune-Teller. He
unravels your future while he ties himself in knots."

I bent back all of my other fingers, and they were just as flexible.

"There's something else," said Jenica. "While you were sleeping I went
downstairs. I did what you suggested, and pushed my hand into the mirror."

"Don't tell me it wouldn't go in?"

"At first, no. I had to try three times, but then it happened. But only
when I said to myself, Jenica, this is nothing but a doorway. It needs
very strong faith, I think, as well as strigoica blood."

"Well, thank God. I'd hate to think that what we did last night was a
waste of time."

"Why don't you dress now? Try some of my father's clothes. I will make
us some coffee."

I got up, drew back the drapes, and stretched myself. To my amazement, I
found that I could lean over backward almost as far as Jenica had.
Actually, I did feel different. Looser, somehow, more active and alive,
as if I were ten years younger.

I rummaged through Razvan Dragomir's closet and

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found a black silk shirt and a pair of black pants. The pants were a
little too snug between the nuts, but Razvan Dragomir probably didn't
drink nine cans of Guinness every day. I went into the kitchen where
Jenica was making coffee with club soda, which was the only water we had
left. There was no milk, of course, so I ate handfuls of cornflakes out
of the box.

"We need to go to the Kensico Country Inn while it's still daylight," I
said. "We need to check out how many mirrors they have. And after what
happened yesterday, with that guy coming out of the bathtub, I think we
should scout around for any kind of reflective water surface, too. Rain
barrels, ponds, that kind of thing."

"Then we wait until it gets dark, yes, and Vasile Lup comes out of his
mirror?"

"You've got it. While he's away, we break every mirror in the whole
place, so that when he comes back, at sunrise, he doesn't have any place
to hide. That's when you recite the disenchantment. Vasile Lup will be
sent back to where he came from, and that leaves Misquamacus without a
spirit to hide himself in."

"But you still don't know how you will destroy your Misquamacus."

"I'm counting on that bone."

"Is that all?"

"What else can I do? Agreed--I don't have any idea what it does, or how
it works, or why. But it seems to keep the strigoi at bay, doesn't it,
and it can kill rats better than Ramik Green, and Misquamacus didn't
seem to be at all happy when I waved it at him."

"And that is all of your plan?"

"I guess so. I can't think of anything else I can do."

"Maybe you should call on your Singing Rock."

I shook my head. "He won't answer me, Jenica. I've already asked him for
far too much help, and he's a great believer in working things out for
yourself. Don't keep looking

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to dead people for advice, that's his motto, or you might as

well be dead yourself."

"Okay," said Jenica. "Then what shall we do? Go?" I finished my coffee,
stood up, and said, "Why not? You

only live once." Jenica said, "I have one question. Once we step into
the mirror, how do we find our way to the Kensico Country Inn?"

"In the ordinary way, I guess, except back-to-front." "You are not
making me feel very confident." "Jenica, the whole world has gone crazy.
Nine-eleven was madness but this is even madder. Let's just try to take
it as it comes. It's the only way."

She looked at me acutely. "You lost something very special, didn't you,
when you lost your wife and your daughter?" "I never lost them. I
mislaid them, that's all." "You must never think that life is not really
worth living. There is somebody waiting for you, somewhere."

"Maybe. Right now, I have a vengeful Native American wonder-worker to
deal with."

Jenica packed her woven bag with her crucifix and her holy water and her
book of svarcolaci. I took nothing except the bone.

We went downstairs to the hallway and stood in front of the mirror.
Jenica said to me, "Try it first with your finger. Make sure that you
can pass through it."

I looked at my reflection. In my black silk shirt and my tight black
pants, I reminded myself of an out-of-work conjuror. And now, for my
next astounding trick, I will push my finger into the surface of this
absolutely genuine real mirror, and it will penetrate the glass as if by
magic. Which it did.

The sensation was extraordinary. I felt as if the glass was clinging to
my finger, cold and heavy and liquid, like mercury. But my finger went
in, and joined up with the finger in my reflection, and then it came out
again, unharmed.

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I turned to Jenica and said, "How about that. How about that."


"Then, you see, the ritual of Samodiva really works." "I'm half a
vampire. Shit. I can't believe it." "Now you have strigoi in your blood,
yes. Now you are the same as me."

Suddenly I felt very serious. I had taken risks before. I had fought
against Misquamacus before. But this time I didn't think that either of
us had much of a chance of surviving. I lifted Jenica's chin and kissed
her. "At least nobody can say that we didn't go out with a bang."

I decided that I would go first. If something went seriously wrong, I
told Jenica that she should stay where she was, and not try to follow
me. Even with Misquamacus spreading strigoi all across the Northeastern
states, she would stand some chance of staying alive.

I stood right in front of the mirror. Harry Erskine, this is a very bad
idea. You don't know where the hell you're going or what you're going to
do when you get there. But I stepped forward, and I knew and I utterly
believed that the mirror was a silver doorway, and that it led right
through the frame into a world of reflections.

I closed my eyes. I felt a hard, cold, silent collision, like falling
from the top diving board into a swimming pool, and rolling around in
noisily bubbling water. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself
standing in a hallway, but a very different hallway than the one I had
just left. It was light, and airy, with a polished wood floor, and
double doors that were open onto a white stone porch. A warm wind was
blowing in from outside, and I could hear birds singing.

Strangely, Jenica was standing next to me here, while a second Jenica
was still staring at us from the hallway that I had just left. I was
here, inside the mirror. I was through.

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"Come on," I waved at Jenica, mouthing my words as if she were deaf. "I
think it's okay."

I wasn't sure that she could hear me, but she slowly approached the
mirror and her reflection approached the mirror just as slowly, until
they were both standing with their hands pressed against each other,
looking into each other's eyes.

"It's okay!" I shouted. "You can do it!"

She hesitated a moment longer, and then she lowered her head and walked
through. There was a sound like crushing glass, and a sparkling
explosion of colors and shapes. Jenica and her reflection seemed to
smash themselves softly together into one person. Then there was just
the two of us, side by side, and the hallway we had left behind was empty.

Jenica stared at me. "Where are we? What is this place?"

"I don't know. I thought that if we went through the mirror we'd simply
end up in the same hallway, only in reverse. But, well, apparently not."

Jenica walked over to an antique satinwood bureau and stared up at an
oil painting of a man in a curly white wig. "I do not understand this,"
she said. "Maybe it is better if we go back."

I crossed the hallway to the double doors and stepped out onto the
porch. I had expected to see Leroy Street, but outside the front door
there was a wide, empty courtyard, and an avenue of maple trees with a
white fence running beside it. Through the maple trees I could see a
circular pond shining, with geese on it, and in the distance lay a range
of hills, with low clouds lying on top of them like down comforters.
There was no sign of Leroy Street, no sign of Manhattan at all. On the
wall there was a sign saying No Parking, and the writing was the right
way round, not a mirror image at all. So this wasn't looking glass land.
We had

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simply walked through one mirror in Manhattan and out of another,
someplace else altogether. But where?

Jenica came out and stood beside me, shading her eyes against the glare.
The sky was filled with thick, white, cumulus clouds, although there
were one or two ragged fragments of blue. The air was warm and humid. I
could actually smell freshly mown grass. Two silver SUVs were parked
beside a stable block, but there was no sign of any life.

"Maybe this is a dream, or some kind of hallucination," said Jenica. "It
gives me a very bad feeling."

We went back inside. In one corner of the hallway stood an antique desk
with a visitor's book lying open on it. I went over and picked the book
up. There was blood spattered across the pages and when I looked down
there was blood on the floor, too. I closed the book and read the
inscription on the green leather cover.

"We don't need to go back. Don't you get it? This isn't a dream. This is
the Kensico Country Inn."

"But how? How did we get to be here, exactly where we wanted to be?"

"I don't have any idea. But my guess is that Frank had something to do
with this. It was like he came through the mirror and somehow he left
the door open, so that we could come back."

"But how did we manage to go through the mirror in my house, and find
ourselves here? It is like the two houses are standing side by side, yet
we know that they are miles and miles apart!"

"You're right. But when the Vampire Gatherer came out of the mirror in
your apartment, and Susan Fireman took Frank away with her--you didn't
see your corridor reflected in that mirror, did you? You saw some beach
someplace. Whatever goes on in back of mirrors, it seems to me like the
usual laws of physics definitely don't apply."

Jenica looked up at me. Then she licked her middle

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finger and rubbed it against the side of my cheek. "You still have
somebody's name there. Teresa."

Two enormous mirrors hung in the lobby of the Kensico Country Inn--one
behind the reception desk, and the other in the corridor--the "silver
door" through which Jenica and I had stepped to get here. When the time
came, these would be the first two for us to smash. We wouldn't be able
to go back to the city the same way that we had arrived, but we couldn't
leave Misquamacus any escape routes.

We went along the corridor to the Valhalla Restaurant & Bar. There were
thirty tables, all set for breakfast, with shining white tablecloths and
cleverly folded napkins. On each table stood a vase of dead roses.

"There's a long mirror behind the bar," said Jenica. "Another one over
there, beside the kitchen door."

The kitchens were deserted. On the woodblock table in the center lay
three whole legs of lamb, on plates. They were crawling with blowflies,
and the smell of rancid lamb fat was enough to make Jenica press her
hand over her face.

We returned to the reception area and opened up every door, one after
the other. A cloakroom, a closet, men's and women's restrooms (plenty of
mirrors to be broken there), and a corridor that led along the back of
the inn to a large glass conservatory. We were only on the first floor
and we had counted over thirty-five mirrors already.

Jenica went up a low flight of three stairs and opened the door at the
top. "Harry," she said.

"What's wrong?"

I followed her up the stairs and looked into the room. It was obviously
a conference room, with a projection screen at the far end, and an easel
with a brightly colored business graph on it. But I wasn't looking at
the display. In the center of the room stood a long boardroom

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table made of pale polished oak, with at least forty matching chairs.
The table was heaped high with bodies, arms and legs all tangled
together. Men and women, some of them still wearing business suits, some
of them naked, but all with their throats cut wide open. There must have
been more than thirty of them, although I didn't feel like making an
exact count. Maggots were silently dropping off them and squirming
across the carpet. The lamb had smelled sickening enough, but this was
ten times worse.

I closed the door and exhaled. There was nothing that we could do.
Obviously the Vampire Gatherer and some of his strigoi had arrived here
through the mirrors, the same way that we had, and taken the hotel staff
and guests by surprise. They wouldn't have been shown any mercy. As far
as Vasile Lup was concerned, human beings were nothing more than a
source of sustenance, or recruits for his ever-increasing legion of
strigoi; and as far as Misquamacus was concerned, this, at long last,
was his glorious revenge.

It took us nearly two hours to search the whole of the Kensico Country
Inn for mirrors. We even searched the maids' bedrooms in the attic rooms
and took the makeup mirrors out of their purses, and collected them
together, ready to be smashed.

The power was out. The phones were dead, and all I could hear on my cell
phone was a distant crackling. The strigoi must have taken over much
more of New York State than we knew. All through that afternoon, not a
single vehicle passed along the main highway at the end of the drive,
and we didn't hear a single airplane or a single helicopter. All we
heard was birdsong.

We went back to the kitchens. Although the refrigerators had stopped
working, we found some Monterey Jack cheese and some Italian salami that
were slightly sweaty but still edible. We took them outside and sat on
the grass

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overlooking the pond. The sun was beginning to sink toward the distant
hills.

"Can you imagine what this country would be like, if the strigoi took
over?" I asked Jenica. "Deserted during the day, just like this. Silent.
Nothing would happen, except at night. Then they'd all come crawling out
of their coffins and creeping out of their mirrors, and it would be hell
on earth. If you were still human, your life wouldn't be worth living.
They'd be hunting for you, every single night."

Jenica said, "Of course, but to some people, that would not be hell, but
a sort of heaven. We would live forever, yes? And so we would be able to
experience everything, every taste, every sensation, and visit every
wonder that the world had to offer. My father once said that if
everybody lived forever, human learning would blossom beyond our wildest
imagination, because great scholars would never die, the way they do
now. He said, think of Einstein--how much was lost when Einstein died,
and what more he could have done if he had lived for another three
centuries! Think of some of our greatest writers and our greatest
musicians! But what can any of us hope to learn in the space of a human
lifetime? Hardly anything at all, and when we breathe our last breath,
even the tiny fraction of knowledge that we have acquired so painfully
is buried with us, beyond the reach of our sons and daughters, or
anybody else who might benefit from it."

"Sounds like your father is a pretty radical kind of guy."

"He is a very original thinker. He always used to tell me that we should
never be prejudiced against any idea, just because it was thought of by
somebody we despise. Much brilliant science came from the Nazis, for
instance; and much great art from some of the world's most oppressive
regimes."

"So even if we don't exactly approve of their dietary habits, we should
appreciate the strigoi because they've been around so long, and because
they know so much?"

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Jenica didn't answer me, but turned toward the pond. The sun was even
lower now, a sullen, smoky red, and it was reflected in the water, so
that there were two suns.

"The pond," she said. "What are we going to do about that? It is
outside, yes, but even if the sun is shining, I think there is a chance
that the strigoi might be able to reach it, and escape."

I stood up and walked around the edge of the pond. Nearer the house, the
bank was higher, and there was a cluster of bulrushes in one corner. On
the opposite side, where the ground sloped away, the bank had been
artificially built up, and there was a short concrete dam, and a stopcock.

"Look at this," I said. "They must use this to drain the water when they
want to clean it."

"Then we can empty it, while Vasile Lup is away."

"We can try. I don't know how long it's going to take."

It was beginning to grow damp and chilly. Jenica took hold of my arm and
pulled me closer. This is a very strange adventure we are having, you
and me."

I nodded, and thought of the other woman who had said that to me, not so
long ago.

As it grew dark, we climbed into one of the SUVs, a Toyota Land Cruiser.
We decided that it was probably safer than hiding in the inn, because
the strigoi would be less likely to pick up the warmth of our blood. Not
only that, the owner had left the keys in it, and if the strigoi did
realize that we were there, we could burn rubber out of there.

We were cautious enough to stop using the words strigoi and strigoica
and the name "Vasile Lup." Now that night had fallen, the vampires and
the Vampire Gatherer would be stirring inside their mirrors, and they
would be hungry, and highly sensitive to any disturbance that would
indicate the closeness of human blood.

We hunched down in the front seats as low as we could, and we shared
three chocolate bars and a small pack of

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peanuts. I kept thinking about Katz's salt-beef sandwiches, sliced very
thin and very rare, and I wondered if that was anything to do with my
newly acquired vampirism. But maybe I was just hungry. I doubt if
vampires like rye bread and pickles to go with their blood.

Over an hour went by, and Jenica leaned her head against my shoulder and
started to breathe deeper and slower, with occasional gasps, as if she
were dreaming.

I was almost nodding off myself when I saw a dark, irregular shape
coming out of the inn and crossing the porch. It was followed by
another, and another, and then a paler shape. Strigoi, at least five of
them. They came down the steps and walked across the driveway, until
they were standing together less than twenty feet away.

I nudged Jenica and she said, uFff! What? What is it?"

"Ssh. Keep down. Look."

The strigoi appeared to be waiting for something. The moon hadn't yet
risen, but the night sky was gradually beginning to grow lighter, and
after a while I could see that the pale shape was a woman with dark
hair. She turned and looked toward us, and I realized that it was Susan
Fireman. Standing next to her, looking white-faced and very wild, was
Frank. I didn't know the other three strigoi. One of them was very tall,
with slicked-back hair, like Christopher Lee. Even if he hadn't been a
real vampire, he could have easily passed for one. The other two looked
like construction workers, shaven-headed and heavily built.

At last the moon appeared, shining through the silver birches like a
horrified face. As its light brightened, a huge figure emerged from the
doorway. It sloped away from the moon, this figure, a complex
arrangement of impenetrable shadows, and it kept shifting and changing
and disassembling itself with every step. It was the Vampire Gatherer,
Vasile Lup, the svarcolaci, the one in whose spirit Misquamacus was
concealed, like the blackest of moths folded inside a chrysalis.

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One second, the Vampire Gatherer was standing on the porch. The next, in
the blink of an eye, he was standing among his strigoi. I could see his
face shifting-- benign and human one moment, white and mask-like the
next. Then, without warning, he turned his head around.

"Oh my God," said Jenica. "Do you think he's seen us?"

It certainly looked as if he had. He was staring directly toward the
Land Cruiser, and his eyes were shining. For one terrible moment I
thought, oh shit, this little escapade is going to end for us before
it's even begun, and end bloodily, too. The Vampire Gatherer appeared to
lurch toward us, and the strigoi turned around, too.

But then, jerkily, like characters in a badly chopped art movie, they
all vanished, and reappeared halfway down the drive. They vanished
again, and the next thing we knew, they were down by the road, more than
a hundred yards away. Another blink, and they were utterly gone.

Jenica puffed out her cheeks in relief.

"Where do you think they're going?" I asked her.

"Who knows? Some small town somewhere, I expect. It is the way they
always spread, like a stain."

We climbed out of the Land Cruiser. The first thing I did was cross the
driveway and walk down to the far side of the pond. I knelt down on the
concrete dam and tried to turn the stopcock, but it was rusted up and it
wouldn't budge.

"I'll have to find some kind of lever," I said. "Listen--you get inside
and start breaking mirrors."

Together we walked quickly back toward the inn. Inside the lobby, I went
straight to the antique fireplace. There was a large woven basket next
to it containing a small hatchet, and fire tongs, and a long iron poker
with a heavy brass knob on the end. I gave the hatchet to Jenica and
said, "Okay--get smashing! And for God's sake don't miss any. Not one."

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She went straight up to the huge gilt-framed mirror behind the reception
desk and hit it dead center with the back of the hatchet. With a sharp
crack, the whole mirror split diagonally from side to side and then
dropped onto the floor. Jenica stamped on the larger pieces, to break
them up even smaller, and then she bashed up the fragments so that it
was impossible for anybody to see a coherent reflection in them.

As I went back outside, I heard her break the mirror in the corridor,
and start to pulverize that with her hatchet, too.

I jogged down to the pond. The night air was thick with mosquitoes, and
I had to spit one out of my mouth. I knelt down on the dam again, and
inserted the end of the poker into the stopcock. Then I stood up and
hauled back on it as hard as I could. I made a whole lot of effortful
noise, like ngggggghhhhhh and gurrrrrrrrr, but it still wouldn't move,
and I began to think that it was rusted up solid.

Then I thought: you're half strigoi. You have the strength. If you can
bend yourself backward, you can open this stopcock. Have faith in
yourself, Harry. Believe in what you can do.

I repositioned my hands, and then I hauled on the poker again, gritting
my teeth with effort. This time I heard a harsh grating noise, and the
stopcock actually moved. I hauled again, and it suddenly turned, and
water started to trickle out the drainpipe that ran under the dam. Now
the stopcock was loose enough for me to turn it by hand, and the trickle
turned into a gush. Within a few minutes, water was pouring across the
field below the pond, and shining in the moonlight like the Mississipi
delta.

I picked up the poker and ran back to the inn. Jenica was in the women's
restroom now, smashing all the mirrors over the washbasins.

"Have you done the men's yet?"

"I didn't like to. I left that for you."

"There's nobody in there, for Christ's sake."

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Hour after hour, room by room, we smashed every single mirror in the
Kensico Country Inn. The moon watched us through one window after
another, and then finally sank out of sight. Every now and then, we
stopped smashing and listened, in case we heard Vasile Lup and his
strigoi coming back, but even when the sky flushed pink and the birds
started to twitter, they still hadn't returned, and we had finished. We
made a last, thorough check, going from one end of the inn to the other,
opening closets in case we had missed a mirror that was screwed to the
back of a door. We even opened up nightstand drawers, in case somebody
had left a vanity mirror next to his Gideon Bible.

Broken glass glittered everywhere and not a single piece of it was large
enough for anyone to see one eye in. I had even gone outside and smashed
the rearview mirrors of the two SUVs parked on the driveway.

During the night, the level of the pond had fallen dramatically,
revealing heaps of soggy green chickweed, and slime-covered rocks, and a
child's rusted scooter. There was still an oval-shaped pool of water
remaining, about two feet deep and twenty feet across, but it continued
to pour steadily out of the drainpipe, and I reckoned that it wouldn't
take longer than twenty minutes before it was totally drained.

I looked toward the east. The rim of the sun was just beginning to
nibble at the trees.

"They must be back soon," said Jenica. "I pray that they didn't find
themselves another place to hide."

"I pray, too."

We went into the inn, and hid in the corner of the lobby, between the
heavy blue drapes and a longcase clock. Jenica took out her crucifix and
her holy water and laid them on the windowsill. Then she took out the
book of svarcolaci and turned to the page where Vasile Lup's
disenchantment was printed.

"You're ready?" I asked her.

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She looked at me with that unreadable expression again.

I was just about to say something else when there was a deafening bang
like a bomb going off. The Vampire Gatherer came storming into the
lobby, accompanied by his five strigoi. He seemed even bigger and darker
than he had before, and this time the whole band of them were trailing
clouds of smoke. They must have been caught by the sunlight just as they
arrived back outside.

They circled around the lobby, beating at their burning coats. All five
of the strigoi had bloody chins, and the fronts of their clothes were
drenched in blood, like slaughterhouse workers. At first, they were too
preoccupied with extinguishing their smoldering clothes to notice that
anything was different. It was only when the smoke was beginning to
clear that the Vampire Gatherer screamed in bewilderment and rage. He
stalked up to the broken mirrors, and then twisted around, his shadows
slanting away from the windows. His face was contorted with anger, and
it seemed as if his shadows were actually bristling.

Susan Fireman ran across to the mirror in the corridor-- the one that
Jenica and I had used to get here. When she saw that this mirror was
broken, too, she let out a moan of dread. She must have realized what
had happened, and she could guess what the outcome was going to be. The
tall strigoi opened the doors to the restrooms. The other two hurried up
the stairs to the conference room. But yes, Jenica and I had even been
back in there, where the bodies were all heaped up. We had broken the
three floor-to-ceiling mirrors that stood between the windows, and we
had search the pockets of the dead.

Of all the strigoi, Frank alone stayed where he was, in the center of
the lobby. His head was bowed and smoke was creeping out from under his
coat. Susan Fireman came up to him with her pale eyes staring. "It was
you! This is your doing, isn't it? I trusted you, Frank! I trusted you!
I could have cut your throat and drunk your blood, but I gave you

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immortality! Where are they, Frank? Where are they? You brought them
here, didn't you? You went to see them and you left the mirrors
back-to-back!"

The Vampire Gatherer came up behind Susan Fireman and stared at Frank
with such hatred that I felt my skin on my bare scalp shrinking. Frank
lifted his head and looked up at him. A thin bar of sunlight was shining
across the polished wood floor, and Frank's shoes were starting to smolder.

"You forgot one thing," said Frank, and he sounded infinitely tired.
"When some people make promises, they make them because they intend to
keep them, even after death. I promised to value human life, and not
even you could force me to go back on that."

Susan Fireman took two quick steps toward him. She was so quick that I
didn't see the knife in her hand. All I saw was a semicircular spray of
blood, like a bright red fan, and then Frank pitched backward, with his
head falling sideways from his neck as if it was attached by a hinge.

The Vampire Gatherer let out another scream, and this time it sounded
like a whole choir, thousands of tortured souls screaming in unison. He
took one ungainly lurch toward Frank's body, and then another.

"Now," I told Jenica, and pushed her out from the curtain.

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23

Manitou Blood

The Vampire Gatherer and his strigoi turned to stare at Jenica in
astonishment and anger. The strigoi were probably the scariest bunch
that you could ever meet, with their wild eyes and their blood-soaked
coats and smoke pouring out of their collars. But Vasile Lup was a
nightmare--the way he kept slanting from one side to the other, and his
face shifted and altered from blandness to fury, all in nothing but a
few seconds.

What was even more frightening about him was that Misquamacus was hiding
inside him, giving him an overwhelming vengefulness far greater than he
had ever possessed before, even as a svarcolaci.

But Jenica, God bless her, she walked toward them as if they didn't
frighten her at all. She held up her jewel-studded crucifix and she
sprayed her holy water from side to side and she recited the words of
the disenchantment in a high, precise voice.

"I dismiss you, Vasile Lup! I disperse your spirit! Let the earth take
back the flesh it has given you, and the wind

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take back the breath it has given you, and the rivers take back their
blood! Let the ashes of your soul be scattered like the ashes of your body!"

The Vampire Gatherer tilted forward and roared at her. But Jenica lashed
him again with holy water and shouted, "I dismiss you, Vasile Lup! May
your memory vanish with the dying day; and your name be washed from the
lips of all who ever spoke it. May the stars forget that they ever
guided your destiny; and the moon deny that you ever walked beneath her!"

Now the Vampire Gatherer took one staggering step toward her. He opened
his mouth, and then another mouth appeared, and yet another, and his
screaming made the whole building reverberate, as if a jet bomber were
flying right over us.

Jenica turned the page in her book, and she was just about to recite the
final dismissal when Susan Fireman rushed toward her and grabbed the
book in both hands. Jenica tried to pull it away from her, but Susan
Fireman twisted it free.

"Harry!" shouted Jenica.

Susan Fireman was heading for the open doors, with the book held close
to her chest. I dodged out from behind the curtains and tried to cut her
off, but she was too quick for me. She ran down the steps and across the
driveway, straight into the rays of the rising sun.

She hadn't run more than twenty feet before smoke began to billow out of
her coat. As I ran after her, it blew thicker and thicker, and she began
to slow down. Suddenly her hair caught fire, and she screamed in agony.

"Harry! The book!" shouted Jenica. "Don't let her burn the book!"

But it was too late. Susan Fireman had only just reached the grassy
slope that led down to the pond when she exploded into flame. She fell
sideways and rolled over and over, blazing fiercely. I caught up with
her, and tried to

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snatch the book, but she was clutching it too close to her, and the heat
that rippled up from her was so intense that I couldn't get within three
feet of her without burning my hands.

She had stopped screaming now, and she was simply lying in a fetal
position on the grass, staring up at me, as the sun cremated her. The
skin on her face blistered and blackened, her lips swelled up and
cracked. I could see her finger bones appearing through the charred
flesh of her hands. The smell of scorched wool and barbecued meat was so
strong that I couldn't stop retching.

I swear to God that she smiled at me. I don't know why. Maybe she had
always suspected that it would come to this. Even though she was one of
the strigoica, maybe she still felt some remorse for the people she had
murdered.

"Harry!" called Jenica.

I was about to turn around when Susan Fireman blew up, in a pick-a-stick
scattering of blackened bones. The book lay among the wreckage of her
burned body, its ashy pages curling up one by one, and I could see that
it was beyond saving.

"Harry, they're getting away!"

Now I looked back to see the Vampire Gatherer and the three remaining
strigoi running across the driveway, toward the pond. The oval of water
had shrunk even more, but there was still enough reflective surface for
Vasile Lup to escape. I drew the decorated bone out of my belt and
started to run toward the pond, too. I was sweating and panting and
cursing the name of Guinness Breweries with every step.

Smoke was pouring from the Vampire Gatherer's shadows, and by the time
they reached the grass, the three strigoi were actually alight, with
flames flapping behind them like orange flags.

"Harry, you have to stop him!"

I don't know how I managed to run down to that pond

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so fast. Maybe Singing Rock had summoned up the Spirit of Wind, to get
behind my back and blow me there. Maybe Adelaide Bright caught hold of
one hand, and Frank Winter caught hold of the other, and they pulled me
along, because they didn't want to have died for nothing.

Whatever it was, I came hurtling down that slope with my arms rotating
like windmills, and I splashed knee-deep into the water while the
Vampire Gatherer was still thirty feet away from me. The three strigoi
didn't stand a chance. They were still only halfway down the slope
before they exploded, and their fiery remains were strewn across the grass.

I stood in the water, facing the Vampire Gatherer, and I held up the bone.

"That's it, Lup! Don't come any further!"

The Vampire Gatherer's shadows were slanting at almost forty-five
degrees away from the sun, and so much black smoke was pouring out of
him that I could hardly see his face. He was burning, he was seething
with anger, but he stopped where he was. Whatever power that bone
contained, it held much more power than the sun.

I saw flames, amid the smoke, and the Vampire Gatherer screamed at me
with a thousand voices, like a congregation trapped in a burning cathedral.

"You stay there!" I shouted at him. "You and Misquamacus both!"

I was still standing there with the bone upraised when I saw a black SUV
speeding up the driveway, between the maple trees. Jenica was hurrying
down toward me, but she must have seen it, too, because she stopped, and
stared at it, and shaded her eyes.

Without slowing down, the SUV left the driveway and drove between the
trees. It came directly toward us, over the grass, and only twenty yards
away, it stopped. A man in

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a gray shirt and gray pants climbed out of it, and came hurrying toward me.

"Get the hell out of here!" I yelled at him. "Do you want to get
yourself killed?"

But the man ignored me and came splashing into the water to stand beside
me. He was fiftyish, with greased-back hair, and a hooked nose. A
complicated earring dangled from his left ear, silver and feathery, like
a miniature dreamcatcher.

"I am Razvan Dragomir," he said. Then, as if I hadn't heard him, "I am
Razvan Dragomir."

"What the hell? You're supposed to be in Bucharest, aren't you?"

"I have always been here. It is too long to explain. Quick--you must let
the svarcolaci into the water, before he burns."

"Excuse me? I don't think so. Don't you know what this sucker has done
to New York City? He's killed thousands!"

The Vampire Gatherer roared again. More flames were lapping through his
shadows, and smoke was trailing all the way across the grassy slope and
through the trees. Jenica was skirting around him, one hand lifted to
protect her face from the heat, and she was looking totally baffled.

"Father?"

"Jenica, there is no time for me to tell you what has happened. But this
man must allow Vasile Lup to escape, now, or everything I have ever
worked for is finished!"

He took two splashing steps toward me, and tried to grab the bone, but I
changed it the other hand and pushed him away.

"There is no time!" he shouted at me. "There is no time! You must let
him escape, or he will be lost forever!"

"You must be out of your freaking mind," I screamed back at him. "Do you
know how many people have died?

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Do you know how many people have been turned into vampires?"

"Of course I know! Of course! This was how it was always meant to be!
Now please allow the Vampire Gatherer to escape from the sunlight! I am
begging you! Please!"

He lunged at me again, but I took two steps back and he fell to his
knees in the dwindling oval of water. He looked up at me in utter
desperation, but it was too late. At that moment, the Vampire Gatherer
let out one last multithroated scream and burst into flame.

The fire crackled and spat, and it was blinding, like burning magnesium.
I couldn't look at it directly, but I could see that, bit by bit, it was
erasing Vasile Lup's shadows, like a child rubbing out a drawing.

Razvan Dragomir stayed where he was, on his knees, his gray pants soaked
black, watching Vasile Lup with his mouth open in stupefaction, like an
artist who sees his life's work destroyed right in front of his eyes.
Jenica came cautiously down to the edge of the water and stood close to
him, but none of us spoke while the Vampire Gatherer was still on fire.

As the last shreds of smoke fled away between the trees, however, there
was a sound like the wind rushing, and the surface of the water actually
shuddered. Something huge and invisible slammed between us, really
close, like a truck that speeds past you on the highway, and almost
sucks you along with it. I turned around and looked at Jenica in
bewilderment, and Jenica looked at me, but I could tell that she didn't
know what it was, either.

Razvan Dragomir slowly stood up. At first, he appeared exactly like
himself, the Razvan Dragomir I had seen in all of those blurry
photographs in the Dragomirs' apartment. Urbane, swarthy, with a very
Romanian face. But as he rose to his full height, he grew taller and
taller. His face began to distort and his shoulders hunched over.

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I looked up at him and although he still resembled Razvan Dragomir, he
had changed into somebody else, too. His eyes were deep-set, his
slab-like cheeks were scarred with magical cicatrices, and he was
wearing a living headdress made of cockroaches and beetles and wriggling
larvae.

"Misquamacus" I said.

"You think that you are my nemesis, white man?" he said. I could feel
his voice vibrating through the bones in my skull, rather than my ears.
"You think that you have defeated me?"

I was breathless, and my heart was beating like a tom-tom. "Looks that
way, from where I'm standing."

"You are a fool. You are a man of grass. Have I not shown you now that
even in death I can never be defeated? I will remain your implacable
enemy, forever, until the lands that were once ours are restored to us,
and your cities have vanished beneath the earth."

"Misquamacus--you just don't get it, do you? We've lived in this country
for four hundred years now and there's millions of us and what do you
think you're going to do, kill every single one of us? You count for
absolutely nothing! You don't even have your own spirit for Christ's
sake! Look at you--hiding inside some white man's soul!"

"Without me, this man is powerless," said Misquamacus. "Without me, he
could never have raised up the Vampire Gatherer, and without the Vampire
Gatherer he could never have done what he so desired to do, and raise up
the blood-drinkers."

"What are you saying?" Jenica demanded. She was almost hysterical. "What
are you saying?"

Misquamacus turned toward her, and his face went through an eerie
transformation, like morphing, so that he looked much more like Jenica's
father. When he spoke, his voice was soft and rich and heavily accented.

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"My darling--didn't I always tell you how wonderful the world could be,
if men and women were immortal? A world of learning, and culture. A
world in which genius was no longer buried, generation after generation.
Yes, we would have to live by moonlight, and conceal ourselves by day.
But what a small price to pay!"

"You raised Vasile Lup?" said Jenica.

"I always dreamed of it, but I could never do it until I found the
sacred bone."

I looked at him narrowly. "The sacred bone? You mean, this bone?"

"It is the leg bone of Father Juan de Palos who came to Florida in
September of 1542, with the Spanish fleet of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca."

Jenica shook her head as if she had water in her ears. "I don't
understand, father. I don't understand."

"It isn't difficult, my darling. Father Juan was a vampiro, which is
what the Spanish call the strigoi. Cabeza de Vaca had brought him on his
expedition so that he could exterminate the Apelachan Indians, because
they were so hostile to the Spanish explorers. But one night, off the
coast of Florida, five of Cabeza de Vaca's ships were wrecked in a
storm, and Father Juan was swept ashore, and captured. When the sun
rose, it burned him alive, as it does all strigoi. But a great Apelachan
wonder-worker kept his leg bone, and carved it with magical symbols, and
invested it with the power of Dachilin. In Apelachan legend, Dachilin is
the manitou who can call the dead from limbo to serve the living--or, if
he so wishes, dismiss them back to limbo.

"The wonder-worker did this so that the Apelachan would have a weapon
that they could use against any more strigoi that the Spaniard
conquistadores brought with them--although, as it turned out, they never
did."

"But why did you need it?" I asked him.

"Because I wanted to rouse the strigoi, and the strigoi

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can only be roused from their coffins by one of the svarcolaci, and I
discovered that, in his turn, a svarcolaci can only be roused from his
coffin by the spirits of the land in which he finds himself. There are
no Romanian spirits here in America, thousands of miles away from the
Carpathian mountains. Gheorghe Vlad's plan to wipe out the Sioux would
never have succeeded, because he would never have been able to wake up
Vasile Lup, not without the sacred bone, and the power of Dachilin."

Jenica said, "You never told me about this. You never even told me that
you had found the strigoi's coffins."

"My darling, I found them many years ago. But what was the point of
telling you that I had found them, if I had no way of bringing them back
to life?"

"What was the point? I am your daughter! I am your flesh and blood! I am
half-strigoica myself!"

"Well, I am sorry if you think that I have deceived you. I wasn't sure
that you would approve of what I wanted to do. You are so much like your
dearest mother."

"How did you find the bone?" Jenica demanded. She was so angry that she
couldn't speak straight.

"It was very difficult, my darling. It took me more than a quarter of a
century. Sometimes I despaired, but I never gave up, because I knew it
was the key to my great design. I discovered it at last in a private
collection in Pascagoula. It was owned by an old woman, a retired
anthropologist who had no idea what it was, or what it could do.

"Only this sacred bone could revive Vasile Lup ... and only a Native
American medicine man would understand the ritual to make it work.

He gave a harsh, humorless laugh. "After all of my years of searching,
though, my great design almost came to nothing. Do you think I could
find a Native American wonderworker who understood how the bone worked,
or knew the rituals of Dachilin? I read all the books and articles I

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could find on Apelachan magic, but there was nothing about raising the dead.

"Then--like an act of God--came nine-eleven. Of course I understood
nothing of what had happened. How could I know that the fire in the
World Trade Center towers had literally welded back together the spirit
of Misquamacus? I only discovered this much later, when I was able to
gain access once more to the vaults under St. Stephen's church. As soon
as I entered, I felt immediately as if I was blown by a hurricane.
Misquamacus entered me like a great wind, and spoke to me. He gave me
the power and the knowledge to use the bone, so that I could bring
Vasile Lup back to life."

"Talk about a deal with the devil," I said.

"Yes, if you wish to call it that, we made a deal. Misquamacus would
revive Vasile Lup, and once he was revived, Misquamacus could live
within him. Vasile Lup did not wish to be woken from his sleep, but he
had no choice, and I left the bone in his casket so that he could never
return to it."

"So you gave Misquamacus a war party of vampires?"

"If you like. The strigoi would feed on the blood of white men, and
anyone else whom Misquamacus counted as an enemy--but not, of course, on
Native Americans. Within a few years, the Native Americans would have
their lands returned to them by day and the strigoi would rule the
country by night."

"Nice scenario," I told him.

But Razvan Dragomir turned to Jenica. "It is a tragedy that you had to
interfere, my darling... you and this man, whoever he is. This could
have been a golden age for two great peoples ... the Native Americans
and the strigoi!"

I approached him, and prodded him with the end of the bone. He stepped
back, almost as if it had shocked him, like a cattle prod.

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"So this bone can call spirits out of limbo, can it? And it can send
them back, too?"

"Not without the Apelachan ritual."

"Oh, I don't think I need an Apelachan ritual. I just think I need to
shove this sacred bone right where it hurts the most. Maybe I could do a
bit of Draculea-style impaling, if you know what I mean."

I prodded him again, and this time he literally jumped, and his eyes
rolled up, like an epileptic. "I do not know who you are, but there is
nothing you can do to stop the strigoi now. They are everywhere, and
every night there will be more of them, and more."

"Oh, yes? That's what you think. The monster slayers are after them,
Changing Woman's grandchildren, and they're going to hunt them all down,
every single one of them, and frazzle them. And even if some of them
manage to stay alive, or undead, or whatever it is--what do you think
Misquamacus is going to do, once all his enemies have been wiped out?"

"We have a pact. We have an agreement. Native Americans by day, strigoi
by night."

"You might have Misquamacus hiding inside of your soul, sir, but you
don't know him at all, do you? Do you seriously think that he's going to
let a bunch of blood-sucking white folks roam around his precious
prairies all night? He's using you, pal. He's using you to get his
revenge, and once he's gotten his revenge, you and your vampires are
going to be screwed back into your coffins where you all belong."

"Silence!" shouted Razvan Dragomir, and his face changed dramatically to
the face of Misquamacus. He snatched at the bone, but he missed it, and
I jabbed him with it again, and again, and each time he convulsed.

"Strigoi!" he roared. "I need you! Strigoi, rise up and take this man!
His blood is yours, take it!"

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I took a step back into the water. It was almost drained away now, but
there were still three or four inches left. As I stepped back, though, a
hand reached out of the reflection and seized my ankle. Another hand
followed it, holding a triangular-bladed kitchen knife, and it stabbed
straight through my shoe and into the side of my foot. It hurt. I can't
even describe how much it fucking hurt.

I shouted, "Get the hell off of me!" and whacked at the hands with the
bone, but another hand appeared, and then another, and another, until
twenty or thirty of them had risen from the water to snatch at my feet
and legs. They blistered and smoked, because the sun was shining on
them, but they started to drag me downward. I suddenly thought: shit,
I'm half-strigoi myself, which means that I can be pulled into
reflections, too. I kept on struggling and hitting them with the bone,
but the hands clung on harder and harder and they wouldn't let go. Even
though the water was only inches deep, it wasn't long before I had sunk
into that morning-sky reflection as far as my hips.

"Jenica!" I shouted, but when I looked around I saw her running away,
toward the inn. "Jenica!"

Misquamacus came closer. "I am going to let these blood-drinkers take
you wherever they wish, and slaughter you like a buffalo, and empty your
veins. Then I shall feed your carcass to the crows."

I was frantic now, but the hands were too many and they were much too
strong for me. It took them less than a minute to pull me down into the
reflection up to my chest, and soon I couldn't even swing my arm wide
enough to knock them away. I saw six or seven knives shining, and they
started to stab at my buttocks and my thighs and my back. I shouted out
with pain, but Misquamacus did nothing but stare at me, his headdress
alive with insects.

"Jenica!" I yelled, but now I couldn't see her at all, and

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already the strigoi's fingers were clawing at the back of my shirt collar.

"You have fought me many times, my friend," said Misquamacus. "But you
cannot fight your destiny. Your destiny lies here, in this piece of sky."

It was then that I realized where Jenica had gone. She must have run
across to Susan Fireman's body and picked up her knife, and now she was
standing right behind Misquamacus where I couldn't see her. Without any
warning at all, she reached around with one hand and cut his throat,
just like that. One slice, left to right. Then she stepped away from
him. Her face was a picture of horror and alarm, like a character from a
children's nursery book.

Misquamacus was still staring at me, but his expression had changed
entirely. Instead of triumphant, he looked disbelieving. He raised one
hand toward his neck, but only halfway. As blood began to spout down his
shirt, his face started to collapse and alter, and right in front of my
eyes he shrank back into the features of Razvan Dragomir. By the time he
was falling to the ground, he was no longer the vengeful Native American
wonder-worker, but the Romanian academic, Jenica's father, and he was
plastered down to his knees in blood.

At the same time, the strigoi in the pond began to release me. The last
of the water drained away, and they disappeared, as if they had been
sucked into a swamp. I found myself on my hands and knees, my pants
soaked in blood, wet and coughing and cursing.

Razvan Dragomir lay amid the heaps of pondweed, his blood squirting out
of his neck, his eyes glazing over.

As he lay there, I saw a glassy, liquid figure rise out of him--a figure
that rippled in the morning sunlight. It was huge, and it was so cold
and malevolent that ice began to crackle on the pondweed, and my breath
steamed.

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Graham Masterton

Misquamacus, almost invisible now, because his spirit had no ectoplasm.

I held up the sacred bone of Dachilin. "By all the power invested me by
a free America, in the name of common humanity, in the memory of Singing
Rock, in the name of Changing Woman and the spirit of forgiveness, get
the hell out of here."

I saw things then that still give me nightmares. As the fluid figure of
Misquamacus grew larger and larger, I saw a living kaleidoscope of
suffering and cruelty. I saw demons and gods. I saw crows gathering, to
turn the sky black, and herds of buffalo falling like landslides. I saw
history, like a huge river of screaming people, carrying us all away.

I swept the sacred bone from side to side, and advanced on these visions
as if I were going into battle. As I did so, I heard a hollow sucking
sound, as if all the oxygen was being dragged out of the air. There was
a split second of intense compression, and then there was a massive
thunderclap. I was thrown backward across the pond and up against the
concrete dam, jarring my shoulder. Stunned, I looked up. Misquamacus had
gone, and the air had rushed in to fill the vacuum that he had left behind.

Awkwardly, I stood up, and limped out of the pond and up the slope.
Jenica was sitting on the grass with her head bowed, still holding the
bloody knife with which she had cut her father's throat. I stood beside
her for a while and then she looked up at me with tear-blotted eyes.

"You're hurt," she said. "You're bleeding."

The sun had risen high above the trees now, and the last scattered
remains of the strigoi were smoldering into dead white ashes. The birds
began to twitter again, and I saw cows moving in a distant field.

I helped Jenica onto her feet and then the two of us

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walked up toward the inn, saying nothing. As I climbed the steps, I
stopped, and turned around, and looked up at the sky.

Jenica said, "What is it?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I think I was trying to see God."

370 OTHER BOOKS BY GRAHAM MASTERTON

THE DOORKEEPERS

Julia Winward has been missing in England for nearly a year. When her
mutilated body is finally found floating in the Thames, her brother,
Josh, is determined to find out what happened to his sister and exactly
who--or what--killed her.

But nothing Josh discovers makes any sense. Julia had been working for a
company that went out of business sixty years ago, and living at an
address that hasn't existed since World War II. The only one who might
help Josh is a strange woman with psychic abilities. But the doors she
can open with her mind are far better left closed. For behind these
doors lie secrets too horrible to imagine.

371 SPIRIT

GRAHAM MASTERTON

Peggy Buchanan is such an adorable little girl, all blond curls and
sweetness. Then comes the tragic day when her family finds Peggy
floating in the icy water of their swimming pool, dead, her white dress
billowing around her. Her sisters, Laura and Elizabeth, can't imagine
life without Peggy. They know from that day forward their lives will be
changed forever. But they can't know the nightmare that waits for them.
Peggy may be dead--but she hasn't left them. As the sisters grow up, a
string of inexplicable deaths threatens to shatter their lives. No
matter how warm the weather, each corpse shows signs of severe
frostbite... and each victim's dying moments are tortured by a merciless
little girl in a white dress, whose icy kiss is colder than death.

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