Children of The Night

Chapter Twenty-five

When O'Rourke was finished talking, the three of them stood in silent tableau there in the hissing lamplight, Lucian frozen halfway between the hot plate and the door, O'Rourke standing in shadow by the sprung sofa, and Kate standing closest to the lantern. Her gaze had been moving back and forth between the haggardlooking priest and the younger man, but now she stared only at Lucian. Her thought was, If he runs we will have to chase him down. O'Rourke looks exhausted. I will have to do it myself.

Lucian did not run.

O'Rourke rubbed his stubbled cheek. There was no victory in his eyes, only sadness.

If Lucian is one of them, thought Kate, then they know where we are. The men in black. The men who killed Tom and Julie and Chandra. The men who stole Joshua .... She felt her heartbeat accelerate, was vaguely conscious of her. fists knotting as if of their own accord.

Lucian stepped back to the hot plate, lifted the wooden spoon, and slowly stirred the nowbubbling soup.

Kate wanted to strangle him at that moment. “Is it true?” she asked. “Lucian, was it you?”

If he had shrugged, she would have lifted the wooden chair behind her and brought it down on his head at that moment.

He did not shrug. “Yes,” he said. “It was me.” He looked at her a second and then lifted the spoon and tasted the soup.

“Put the spoon down,” said Kate. She found herself wondering if she could dodge in time if Lucian threw the pan of boiling soup at her.

Lucian set the spoon down and took a step toward her.

O'Rourke stepped between them just a~ Kate raised both fists. Lucian raised both hands, palms outward.

“Let me explain,” he said softly. His Romanian accent seemed stronger. “Kate, I would never do anything to hurt Joshua . . .”

She felt her composure slip then and remembered pulling the trigger when the man in black had seemed to threaten her baby three months earlier . . . an eternity earlier. She wished that she had a gun now.

“No, I mean it,” said Lucian, reaching past O'Rourke to touch her arm.

She pulled her arm away. Lucian held up his hands again. “Kate, it was my job to get the baby out of the country safely, never to hurt him.”

It seemed as if Michael O'Rourke had not blinked during the entire exchange. Now he stepped aside, unplugged the hot plate, and carefully set the pan of soup aside on a tile ledge, out of Lucian's reach. “You said you can explain.” He crossed his arms. “Explain.”

Lucian tried to smile. “I expect you'll have some explaining to do yourself, priest. After all, it's hardly coincidence that you“

“Lucian!” snapped Kate. “We're talking about you.”

The young man nodded and raised his hands again as if urging calm. “All right . . . where to begin?”

“It was your job to get the baby out of the country,” said O'Rourke. “What do you mean your job? Who gave you that job? Who are you working for?'.”

Kate glanced at the door, half expecting Securitate forces to break in. There were no sounds except for the hiss of the lantern and the pounding of her heart.

“I'm not working for anyone,” said Lucian. “I'm working with a group that's been fighting for freedom for years . . . centuries. “

Kate made a rude sound. “You're a partisan. Freedom fighter. Sure. And you fight the tyrants by kidnapping babies. “

Lucian looked at her. His eyes were very bright. “By kidnapping babies from tyrants.”

“Explain,” said Father Michael O'Rourke.

Lucian sighed and dropped into the couch. “Can we all sit?”

“You sit,” said Kate, folding her arms to keep her hands from shaking. “Sit and talk.”

“OK,” said Lucian. He took another breath. “I'm a member of a group that resisted Ceausescu when he was in power. Before that, my father and mother fought Antonescu and the Nazis. “

“By kidnapping babies,” interrupted Kate. She could not keep her voice from shaking.

Lucian looked at her. “Only when they belong to the Voivoda Strigoi.”

O'Rourke shifted his weight as if his artificial leg were paining him. His face looked very strong in the lantern light. “Explain. “

Lucian twitched a smile. “You know about the strigoi,” he said, “You Franciscans have been fighting them for centuries. “

“Lucian,” said Kate, stepping between the men, “why did you take Joshua from the orphanage in Tirgoviste? Were you working for Popescu's people?”

The young man laughed, more easily this time. “Kate, nobody works for Popescu. That medical pimp worked for anyone who paid him. We paid him.”

“Who is `we'?” snapped Kate.

“The Order. The group my family has belonged to for centuries. Our struggle has been not just for the political survival of our country, but for the survival of its soul. Behind the Ceausescus, behind the previous Communist regimes, behind Ion Antonescu, behind them all . . . have been the strigoi. The evil ones who walk like people but who are not. The Dark Advisors. The ones with power who drain our nation's future away as surely as they have drained the lifeblood of its people.”

“Vampires,” said Kate. Her attention was so focused on Lucian at that moment that the periphery of her vision seemed to fade.

The young man did shrug this time. “That is the Western name. Most of the myth is yours . . . the sharp teeth, the opera cape . . . Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee: Your nosferatu and vampires are stories to frighten children. Our strigoi are all too real.”

Kate found herself blinking rapidly. “Why should we believe you?”

“You don't have to believe me, Kate. You were the one person who could discover the truth of the strigoi on your own. Go ahead . . . tell me what you and your fellow researchers found at America's famous CDC. Tell, me!” He did not wait for her reply. “You found a child's immune system which can repair itself, reverse the effects of even Severe Combined Immune Deficiency . . . if it has blood.”

Kate tried to swallow but her throat was too constricted.

“Did you isolate the bloodabsorption mechanism in the stomach lining?” asked Lucian. “I have. In the corpses of their dead and the bodies of their living . . . like Joshua. Were you able to track the immunoreconstruction process in Tcells and Bcells as the retrovirus revitalized the purine pathway? Do I really have ~ to convince you that there are human beings here who rebuild their bodies using the DNA properties from other people's blood? Or that they have amazing recuperative powers? Or that they couldtheoretically live for centuries?”

Kate licked her lips. “Why did you and Popescu take Joshua from the Tirgoviste orphanage? Why did you lead me to him and pull strings to have me adopt him?”

Lucian sighed. His voice was tired. “You know the answer to that, Kate. You've seen our medical equipment in this country. We know that the strigoi disease is similar to the HIV virus. We know that the strigoi retrovirus has amazing properties. But serious genetherapy analysis is beyond this country's abilities. My God, Kate, you've seen our toilets . . . do you really think that we can construct and operate an effective ClassVI lab?”

“Who is `we'?” repeated O'Rourke. “What is the `Order'?”

Lucian looked at the priest towering over him. “The Order of the Dragon.”

Kate heard the sudden intake of her own breath. “I've read about that. Vlad the Impaler belonged to that“

“He defiled it,” snapped Lucian, his voice angry for the first time that night. “Vlad Dracul and his bastard son pissed on everything the Order stood for . . . strands for.”

“And what does it stand for?” asked O'Rourke.

Lucian jumped to his feet so quickly that Kate thought he was attacking O'Rourke and her. Instead, the young man ripped the buttons off his shirt and exposed his chest.

The amulet there glinted gold: a dragon, talons extended, body curling in a circle, the circle of scales superimposed on a double cross. The amulet was very old, the words inscribed on the cross almost rubbed away. “Go ahead,” Lucian said to O'Rourke. “You can read Latin.”

“ `Oh, how merciful is God!' “ read O'Rourke, leaning closer. “And `Just and Faithful.' “ He stepped back. “Just and Faithful to whom?”

“To the Christ defiled by Vlad Dracul and his spawn,” said Lucian. He closed the front of his shirt, sealing it with the only remaining button. “To the people whom the Order was created to defend.”

“To defend by stealing babies,” said Kate, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Lucian wheeled on her. “Yes! If the baby is the next Prince of the Voivoda Strigoi.”

Kate began laughing. She backed up until she felt the wooden chair behind her legs and dropped onto it, still laughing. She stopped just as the laughter began sounding like sobs. “You kidnapped Dracula's baby so that I could adopt him . . .”

“Yes.” Lucian smoothed his hair back with both hands. His hands were shaking slightly. He nodded toward O'Rourke. “Ask him, Kate. He knows more than he has told you. “

She looked at the priest.

“The Franciscans here have heard rumors of the strigoi for centuries,” said O'Rourke. “And of the Order of the Dragon.”

“How do we know you're not one of the strigoi?” said Kate, never looking away from the young medical student.

Lucian paused. “Did you see John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks' The Thing?”

“No.

“Shit,” said Lucian. “I mean, that doesn't matter. Anyway . . . they find out who's human in the movie by testing the other guys' blood. I'd be willing to give some if you two would. “

O'Rourke arched an eyebrow. “You're serious, aren't you?”

“You're goddamn right I'm serious, priest. I can vouch for Kate, but between thee and me, I'm not too sure about thee. “

“What would a test prove?” said Kate. “If you don't show signs of having the retrovirus, you could still be working for the . . . strigoi. “

Lucian nodded. “Sure. But you'd know I wasn't one of them. “

Kate sighed and rubbed her face. “I think I may be going crazy.” She squinted up at Lucian. “What was all that with Amaddi tonight . . . some sort of elaborate scam?”

“No,” said Lucian. “My father and other members of the Order have known about Amaddi's contacts with the strigoi Nomenclature for some time. But none of us have been able to approach him.”

“But you did business with him.”

“To gain his confidence.”

“So the name he gave us is real?” asked Kate. “The man is really strigoi?”

Lucian shrugged. “During the past few months, both the strigoi and the few surviving members of the Order have gone into hiding. If this person is strigoi, it explains several things. “

“I'm not saying that I believe any of this,” said Kate. “But if it's true . . . and you say your parents are members of the Order of the Dragon . . . can they help us find this man?” Kate had only met Lucian's parents once, but it had been a gracious afternoon of special wine and homecooked treats in a lovely old apartment in east Bucharest. Lucian's father, a writer and intellectual, had impressed her as someone of great wisdom and influence.

“The strigoi murdered my parents in August,” said Lucian. His voice was soft. “Most of the members of the Order here in Bucharest were tracked down and killed. Most simply disappeared. My parents' bodies were left hanging in the apartment where my sister or I would find them. A warning. The strigoi are very sure of themselves these days.”

Kate fought down the urge to hug Lucian or touch his cheek. He may be lying. Every instinct she trusted said that he wasn't.

“You talked about the hospital administrator. . . Popescu . . . in the past tense,” said O'Rourke.

Lucian nodded. “Dead. The police found his body, drained of blood, in the same week that Mr. Stancuyour Ministry manended up on the slab at the medical school.”

“Why would they kill Mr. Popescu?” asked Kate. She heard the answer in her own mind a second before Lucian spoke again.

“They tracked the child . . . Joshua . . . from the orphanage to Popescu's hospital. I'm certain that the weasel told them everything he knew about you . . . and me . . . before they cut his throat.”

“And you've been in hiding since then?” said O'Rourke.

“I've been in hiding since the day Kate left,” said Lucian.

“I urged my parents and friends to flee, but they were stubborn . . . brave.” Lucian turned away, but not before Kate saw his eyes fill with tears.

Maybe strigoi are good actors, she thought. She was exhausted. The lingering smell of the hot soup in the room made her a bit dizzy.

“Look,” said Lucian, spreading his large hands on his knees as he sat on the sofa arm. “I can't show you any other credentials than this . . .” He tapped his chest. “. . . proving that I belong to the Order, or that the Order exists. But use common sense. Why would I have helped smuggle Joshua to the hospital and then helped you adopt him if I were strigoi?”

“We don't even know if your strigoi exist,” said Kate.

Lucian nodded. “All right. But I think I can give you a demonstration that may prove it.”

Kate and O'Rourke waited.

“First we go to the medical school tonight and do a blood test on me to prove that I am not strigoi,” said Lucian. “The equipment is primitive, but a simple interactive test should show whether my blood exhibits the strigoi retrovirus reaction.”

“Jvirus,” Kate said softly.

“What?”

“Jvirus.” She looked up. “We named it after Joshua at CDC. “

“OK,” said Lucian. “We do a simple Jvirus test, and then we stake out . . . if you'll pardon the expression . . . the house of the man Amaddi named. We follow him wherever he goes.”

“What?” said O'Rourke.

“Because if he's strigoi,” said Lucian, “he'll lead us to the others. My father was certain that Joshua had been the child chosen for the Investiture Ceremony . . . and it must be almost time for that to begin.”

“What is“ began Kate.

“I'll explain when we drive over to the medical school labs,” said Lucian. He lifted the soup onto the burner and plugged the hot plate in again.

“What are you doing?” asked O'Rourke.

“If we're going vampire hunting, I want something in my stomach,” said Lucian. He did not smile as he began stirring the soup.

The University Medical School was dark except for the south wing, where a guard sat dozing. Lucian led them through leafscattered gardens to a basement door. He fumbled with a heavy ring of keys and unlocked a portal that Kate thought would have looked more at home on a Gothic castle than as part of a medical school.

The basement corridor was narrow, crammed with battered chairs and cobwebbed desks, and it smelled of rat droppings. Lucian had brought a penlight. At one point he unlocked a side door which swung open with a creak.

Who's waiting for us? thought Kate. She tried to catch O'Rourke's eyes but the priest seemed lost in thought.

The room appeared to be a storage room for even more ancient medical textsKate could smell the mildew and see the rat droppings hereexcept that a blanketed cot, a reading lamp, and a countertop hot plate had been added. Kate noticed recent American paperbacks stacked alongside medical texts.

“You've been living here?” asked O'Rourke.

Lucian nodded. “The strigoi ransacked my apartment, terrorized homes of friends of mine, and . . . I told you about my parents. But they only made a cursory check of the medical school. “ He smiled. “If I were to return to classes . . . well, a dozen of my `friends' and instructors would inform on me . . . but this wing of the building is empty at night.” He shut off the light and led them farther down the corridor, then up two darkened flights of stairs.

In the lab, Kate said, “I don't understand. Are the strigoi et charge of the police and border guards? Are the police part of this?”

Lucian paused in arranging his microscope and equipment. “No,” he said. “But in this country . . . and others, I am told . . . everyone works for the strigoi at one time or another. They control those who control. “

Kate was finding it hard to believe that this area was the working section of a medical school laboratory: there was. a clutter of preWorld War IItype optic microscopes, cracked beakers, dusty test tubes, chipped tile counters, and battered wooden stools. The place looked like someone's nightmare image of an American ghetto high school's science lab years after it had been deserted. Only Lucian had said that this was the laboratory area for the medical school.

“So Ceausescu was a strigoi?” asked O'Rourke.

Lucian shook his head. “Ceausescu . . . both of the Ceausescus . . . were instruments of the strigoi. They took orders from the leader of the Voivode Strigoi family.”

“The Dark Advisor,” said O'Rourke.

Lucian glanced up sharply. “Where did you hear that term?”

“So there was a Dark Advisor?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lucian. He moved an antique autoclave onto the counter and plugged it in. “Kate, would you find some lancets?”

Kate glanced around, hunting for sterilepacs, but Lucian said, “No, there in the sink.”

A chipped enamel bedpan held several steel lancets. She shook her head and handed the pan to Lucian. He set the pan in the autoclave and it began to hum.

“This test isn't important,” she said. “It proves nothing.”

“I think it does,” said Lucian. He pulled down blackout shades on the windows and turned on a light over the microscope bench. “Besides, I have something else to show you.” Lucian crouched in front of a small refrigerator and removed a small vial. “Standard whole blood,” he said. He used an eyedropper to prepare three slides with the whole blood. Then he removed the lancets from the autoclave and brought alcohol and swabs out from under the counter. “Who's first?”

“What are we supposed to see here?” said O'Rourke. “Little vampire platelets leaping on our blood cells?”

Lucian turned to Kate. “Do you want to explain?”

“When Chandra . . . when the experts at our CDC had isolated the Jvirus,” she said, “it became easy in retrospect to, notice the effect on wholeblood and immunodeficient precultured samples. The Jvirus . . . it's really a retrovirus . . . binds gp120 glycoprotein to CD4 receptors in Thelper lymphocytes“

“Whoa, whoa,” said O'Rourke. “You mean you can just look at blood samples in a microscope and tell if they're strigoi?”

Kate paused and looked at Lucian. “It's not quite that simple. We can't just look in the eyepiece, but .... yes, you can tell a difference when the Jretrovirus interacts with alien blood cells. “

Lucian set the first slide in place. “Did you discover the amazing ratio of infected cells?” He was talking. to Kate.

“We placed it at almost ninetynine percent,” she said.

“What does that mean?” asked O'Rourke.

Kate explained. “The HIV retrovirus goes after about one CD4 cell in a hundred thousand. That's a lot when you realize how many billions of cells we have. But the Jvirus . . . well, it's greedy. It tries to infect all of the alien blood cells it encounters.”

O'Rourke took a step away from the counter. His face looked very pale above his dark suit and Roman collar. “But it can't be that contagious . . . we'd all be vampires . . . strigoi . . . if it worked like that.”

Kate made herself smile. “No, it's not contagious at all, as far as we can tell. It's generated in the host's body by a complex recessiverecessive gene trait that we don't understand. It's also codependent upon the SCIDtype immune deficiency disease that comes as part of the package.”

“Which means?” said O'Rourke.

Lucian answered without lifting his face from the microscope. “Which means that you have to be dying of a rare blood disease in order ,to gain virtual immortality from the same disease. It's not catching.” He looked up. “Although we might all wish that it were. Who goes first?”

Kate made a “you first” gesture.

“Awesome, dude,” said Lucian in his mock mutant turtle dialect. He lifted a lancet, pricked his finger, squeezed enough blood free so that he could transfer a smear to the prepared slide, and handed the lancet pan to Kate. “You want to do the honors with our Father here?”

Kate swabbed O'Rourke's middle finger, drew blood, prepared his slide, and did the same forherself. “I still say that this proves nothing,” she said.

Lucian spent several minutes treating the samples while Kate watched. “Well, at least it proves that we can't see any little vampire platelets in my sample,” he said at last, standing back from the microscope. Kate bent over and peered through.

O'Rourke waved away his turn. “I could never see anything but my own eyelashes,” he said. “What's all the stuff you're doing to it?”

Kate's sample went onto the slide tray next. “Preparing it for an assay to check reverse transcriptase,” said Kate.

O'Rourke sounded disappointed. “So we couldn't see little vampire platelets even if we tried?”

“Sorry, dude,” said Lucian and brought out a centrifuge that Kate thought looked as if it had been designed in the Middle Ages. “But the assay shouldn't take too long.” He held up a clean vial. “Now I want to take one more sample.”

Kate had the impulse to glance over her shoulder. She wondered what she would do if someone were standing in the shadows there. “From whom?” she said.

“Exactly,” said Lucian. He doused the light and led them by penlight down the corridor, back into the basement, and then down another flight of stairs into an even deeper basement.

Kate smelled it first. “The morgue,” she whispered to O'Rourke.

Lucian stopped at the last set of swinging doors. “It's OK. This is the old morgue. The students and teachers use the newer, smaller one in the west wing. But this is where the cadavers are stored before the students get them. And sometimes the city uses it as an overflow depot for unclaimed bodies. “

“Mr. Stancu from the Ministry?” said Kate.

“Yeah, this is where I saw him. But my letter to you wasn't totally candid, Kate. I'd been tipped by a friend in the Order that Stancu had been murdered. Just like Popescu.”

“Can we meet this friend of yours?” said O'Rourke.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was murdered the same week they killed my parents,” said Lucian. “They cut his head off. “ He opened the doors and the three of them went into the chilly darkness. Bare steel tables with ceramic basins and pedestals loomed in the darkness. They were not clean.

“You know,” said O'Rourke, his voice flat, “that we only have your word that your parents were killed.”

“Mmhmm,” agreed Lucian. He handed the penlight to Kate. “Thank you,” he said as she held it steady. He opened a door and slid the long tray out. Lucian lifted the sheet.

“Kate, do you recognize?” said Lucian, his voice very tight.

“Yes.” The last time she had seen Lucian's father, the man had been complimenting her in French, laughing, and pouring more wine for everyone at the table. Now it looked as if his throat had been cut in two places. His skin was very white.

Lucian closed the drawer and opened the one next to it. “And this?”

Kate looked at the middleaged woman who had blushed with pleasure at Kate's invitation for the Forsea family to visit her in Colorado when Lucian brought them over after finishing medical school. Mrs. Forsea had done her hair especially for their afternoon meeting. Kate could still see a curl of the graying hair. The throat wounds were almost identical to her husband's.

“Yes,” said Kate, grasping O'Rourke's hand and squeezing without meaning to. What if they were actors? Not really Lucian's parents? The whole thing a complex plot? Kate knew better.

Lucian slid the drawer shut.

“Is this what you wanted to show us?” said O'Rourke.

“No.” He fumbled with the ring of keys and unlocked a heavy steel door set in the far wall. It was colder and darker in the next room, but Kate could see glowing dials and diodes illuminating a low, metal cylinder that looked like one of the steel watering tanks she had seen on ranches in Colorado. The surface of the tank was bubbling and broiling.

Two steps closer and Kate stopped, her hands flying to her face.

“Jesus!” breathed O'Rourke. He raised one hand as if to cross himself.

“Come,” whispered Lucian. “We'll take the final sample. “ He led them forward.

The steel tank was about three feet deep and seven feet long and it was filled with blood. At first Kate could not believe it was blood despite the color revealed in the dim light and the obvious viscosity, but Lucian had watched her reaction and said, “Yes, it is whole blood. I stole it from District One Hospital and other places. Much of it comes from the American relief agencies.”

Kate thought of the dying children who had needed whole blood transfusions while she was working in Bucharest the previous May, but before she could snap something at Lucian she saw what floated in the tank just beneath the rolling surface.

“Oh, my God.” She had whispered. Now, despite her horror, she leaned closer to peer into the tank, squinting in the red and green glow from the dozen or so medical instruments that clustered at one end of the trough, insulated leads and cables flowing into the bath of slowly ,bubbling human blood.

It was . . . or had been . . . a man, naked now, eyes and mouth wide open as the face floated just beneath the surface. Different parts of his body gleamed in the oily light as unseen currents in the blood moved him to the surface and then let him submerge again. He had been slashed almost to pieces with what lookedto Kate's eye, trained to trauma woundsto have been a large, bladed weapon.

“A sharpened shovel,” said Lucian, as if reading her mind. Kate licked her lips. “Who did it?” She knew what Lucian would answer.

“I did it.” His gaze seemed normal, neither angry nor penitent. “I found him alone; knocked him on the back of the head with a longhandled shovel . . . I think you call it a spade . . . and then chopped him up as you see.”

O'Rourke crouched next to the tank. Kate could see droplets of blood spattering the back of the priest's hand as he clutched the steel rim. “Who is he?”

Lucian raised his eyebrows. “Didn't you guess? This is one of the men who murdered my parents.” He moved to the oscilloscope on the metal cart next to the tank and changed the display by throwing a switch..

Kate stared at the corpse in the tank. The man's left ear was missing and that side of his face had been sliced open from the cheekbone to chin; the neck was almost severed, she could see the spinal cord as the body bobbed slightly, and there were massive gouges on his upper shoulder, arm, and chest. Kate could see exposed ligaments and ribs. The body had been opened up at the waist and the interior organs were clearly visible ....

The body opened like a medical student's cadaver.

Kate looked at Lucian. Then she noticed for the first time what the electronic monitors behind him were monitoring.

She backed away from the tank with an involuntary intake of breath. “It's alive,” she whispered.

O'Rourke glanced up, startled, and then wiped his hands on the side of the tank. “How could this poor“

“It's alive,” Kate whispered again. She walked to the instruments, ignoring Lucian. Blood pressure was flat, heart rate was so low that it registered little except the occasional spasm of a random surge as the cardiac muscle moved blood through its chambers and back into the medium of blood that surrounded it, and the EEG was like nothing she had ever seen: alpha and theta spikes so irregular and far apart that they might as well have been messages from some distant star.

But not flatline. Not brain dead.

The thing in the tank was in some state more removed from reality than sleep, but more alert than a coma victim. And it was definitely alive.

Kate looked at Lucian again: still the friendly, open expression and the soft smile. The smile of a murderer. No, the smile of a sadist perhaps.

“They slaughtered my parents,” he said. “They hung my mother and father by their heels, slit their throats as if they were swine, and drank from their open wounds. “ He looked back at the corpse in the tank. “This thing should have died a century ago.”

Kate moved back to the tank, rolled up her sleeves, and reached in with both hands, her fingers sliding through lesions and broken ribs to touch the man's heart. After half a moment there was the slightest movement, as of a swallow stirring slightly in the palm of one's hand. A second later, there was an almost indiscernible movement of the man's whitened eyes.

“How can this be?” asked Kate, but she knew . . . had known since she herself had pulled the trigger of Tom's shotgun and then seen the same man again on the night of the fire.

Lucian gestured at the instruments. “That's what I'm trying to find out. It's why I can't leave the medical school.” He waved at the body in the tank. “The legends say that the nosferatu come back from the dead, but the fact is that they can die . . . .”

“How?” said O'Rourke. “If this man is still alive after this . . . savagery, how would you kill one?”

Lucian smiled. “Decapitation. Immolation. Evisceration. Multiple amputation. Even simple defenestration . . . if they fell far enough onto something hard enough.” The smile wavered. “Or just deny them blood after their injuries, and they'll die. Not easily, but eventually.”

Kate frowned. “What do you mean, `not easily'?”

“The retrovirus feeds on foreign blood cells in order to rebuild its own immune system . . . or entire physical systems,” said Lucian. “You've seen it on the micro level at your CDC lab. “ He opened his palm toward the tank. “Now you see it on the macro level. But . . .” He walked to a multipleIV feed above the tank and unclipped the drip. “Deny it fresh blood, host blood, and the virus will feed on itself.”

Kate looked at the man in the tank. “Feeding on its own cells? Cannibalizing its own blood cells even though the retrovirus has already transcribed the DNA there?”

“Not just the blood cells,” said Lucian. “The Jvirus attacks whatever host cells it can reach, first along the arterial system, then the major organs; then brain cells.”

Kate folded her arms and shook her head. “It doesn't make sense. It has no survival value for the person at all. It . . .” She stopped, realizing.

Lucian nodded. “At that point the retrovirus is trying to save only the retrovirus. Cannibalism allows a few weeks' grace time, even while the body is decaying around it. Perhaps months. Perhaps . . . in a body that has been transcripted for centuries . . . years.”

Kate shuddered.

O'Rourke walked to the instruments, then back to the tank. His limp was . visible. “If I understand what you two are saying, then a strigoi could linger in a type of physical Hell for months or more after clinical death. But surely he couldn't be conscious!”

Lucian pointed to the EEG. Where Kate had palpated the man's heart, the brain waves had shown a definite series of spikes.

O'Rourke closed his eyes.

“Are you torturing this man?” asked Kate.

“No. I'm documenting the reconstruction.” He opened a drawer in one of the carts and handed Kate a stack of Polaroid photographs. They looked like standard autopsy photosshe could see the steel examination table under the white flesh of the corpsbut the man's body was much more mutilated than it looked now in the tank. There were deep wounds in the photographs where only livid scars were visible on the actual torso.

“Sixteen days ago,” said Lucian. “And I'm almost sure from the data that the reconstructive process is accelerating. Another two weeks and he'll be whole and hearty again.” He chuckled. “And probably a little bit pissed at me.”

Kate shook her head again. “The simple question of body mass . . . “

“Every gram of body fat is converted, absorbed and reabsorbed and genedirected to fill in as building material where needed,” said Lucian. He shrugged. “Oh, you wouldn't get the whole man back if I cut off his legs or removed his pelvis . . . mass redistribution has its limits . . . but anything short of that and . . . voila!” He bowed toward the tank.

“And they need fresh blood,” said Kate. She glared at the medical student. “Is this Joshua's fate?”

“No. The child has received transfusions, but as of the time he left Romania, he had not partaken of the Sacrament. “

“Sacrament?” said O'Rourke.

“The actual drinking of human blood,” said Lucian.

“That's sacrilege,” said O'Rourke.

“Yes. “

“The shadow organ,” muttered Kate, Then, louder, “When they drink the blood directly, the Jvirus carries out the DNA transcription and immunoreconstruction more efficiently?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lucian.

“And it has other effects? On the brain? The personality?”

Lucian shrugged. “I'm no expert on theeffects of psychological and physical addiction, but“

“But the strigoi . . . change . . . after they've actually drunk human blood?” said Kate.

“We think so.”

Kate leaned against an oscilloscope. Random spikes pulsed green echoes onto her skin. “Then I've lost him,” she whispered. “They've turned him into something else.” She stared at a dark corner of the large room.

Lucian moved closer, lifted a hand toward her shoulder, then dropped it. “No, I don't think so, Kate.'

Her head snapped up.

“I think they're saving Joshua for the Investiture Ceremony,” he said. “That will be the first time he partakes of the Sacrament.”

Father Michael O'Rourke made a sarcastic noise. “You're suddenly quite the expert on matters strigoi.”

“No more than you . . . priest,” Lucian snapped back. “You Franciscans and Benedictines and Jesuits, you watch and watch and watch . . . for centuries you watch . . . while these animals bleed my people dry and lead our nation into ruin.”

O'Rourke stared without blinking. Lucian turned away and busied himself with the IV, resuming the drip.

“You can't just leave it . . . him . . . here,” said Kate, gesturing toward the tank.

Lucian licked his lips. “There are others who will benefit from the data even if I die. Even if all of us die. “ He whirled at them and clenched his fists. “And do not worry. There are few of us in the Order of the Dragon who have survived, but even if I die someone will come here and cremate this . . . this dracul. There is no way that I will allow it to live and prey upon us again. No way at all. “

The medical student removed a large syringe from the drawer, extracted blood directly from the body's neck, resumed the IV drip, locked both the inner door and the morgue, and led them upstairs to the lab. He finished the assay in ten minutes and showed Kate the results: three normal samples and one teeming with the Jretrovirus attacking introduced blood cells.

Lucian led them out of the lab, out into the rainy night again. Kate breathed deeply in the parking lot, allowing the soft rain to wash away the stink of formaldehyde and blood from her clothes.

“What now?” asked Kate. She felt exhausted and emotionally brittle. Nothing was clear.

Lucian turned on the single wiper blade, its squeak timing the night like a metronome. “One of us should stake out this man's house.” He held up Amaddi's slip of paper.

“Let me see that,” said O'Rourke. He looked at the slip of paper in the dim light, blinked, and then laughed until he collapsed against the hard cushions of the backseat.

“What?” said Kate.

O'Rourke handed back the slip of paper and rubbed his eyes. “Lucian, does this man work for the ONT?”

Lucian frowned. “For the Office of National Tourism? No, of course not. He's a very rich contractor who dabbled in the black market for heavy equipment . . . his statesupported company erected the presidential palace and many of the huge, empty buildings Ceausescu ordered built in this section of the city. Why?”

O'Rourke looked as if he was going to laugh again. He rubbed his cheek instead. “The name . . . Radu Fortuna. Is he a short man? Swarthy? A thick mustache and a gap between his front teeth

“Yes,” said Lucian, puzzled. “And one of us should be watching his house around the clock.” He glanced at his watch. “It is almost eleven P.m. I will take the first shift.”

O'Rourke shook his head. “Let's all go,” he said. “We'll watch the house while we watch each other.”

Lucian shrugged and then pulled the Dacia out into the empty, rainglistened streets.