Children of The Night

Chapter Thirty-four

IT was night outside and the streets were absolutely empty. They took Kate to a tall old house on the corner not far from the clock tower. An elaborate sign hung over the single door in front. Kate glanced up and saw that it was a golden dragon curling almost in a circle, its talons extended and mouth gaping. Inside, the place looked like an abandoned restaurant or wine cellar. Cobwebs connected the dark bar counter to low beams.

The man named Ion walked ahead of her up the stairway while one of the nameless strigoi in black followed, occasionally pushing her when she faltered on the steep steps. The wooden stairs were so old that they were worn down in the middle. The carpet on the thirdfloor landing had been walked on until any color or pattern in it was long since lost.

On the thirdfloor landing, Ion removed a blunt shears from his pocket and clipped the plastic restraint free from her wrists. Kate raised her hands and tried to flex her fingers while hiding her agony from the two men.

“You speak not unless Father asks question,” said Ion, repeating Radu Fortuna's admonition. The intruder's eyes seemed black. “You understand, yes?”

Kate nodded. Despite her best efforts, her eyes had filled with tears at the pain in her hands.

Ion smiled and opened the door.

It was not a large room and it was lit by only two candles. There was a bed near the tiny windows against the east wall and Kate could see a bundled figure in it.

One of the shadows moved then and Kate jumped as she saw two huge men in opposite corners. They were gigantic, at least six-foot-four or five and massiveand their shaved heads gleamed in the weak light. Each wore black clothes and a long mustache. The closer of the two gestured for her to approach the bed. There was a single chair set near it.

Kate went closer and stood behind the chair. She tried to see the man lying under the covers as if she were just a doctor assessing a patient for the first time: only his head and shoulders and yellowed fingers were above the covers; he looked to be in his mid to late eighties; he was almost bald except for long strands of white hair which fanned out from above his ears and lay across the linen pillow; his face was heavily lined, liverspotted, and gaunt to the point of emaciation, with sunken eyes and the sharp turtle's beak mouth of the very old or very sick; his nose, underlip, cheeks, and chin were protuberant, the jaw prognathous; air rasped in and out of his open mouth with the terrible cadence of CheyneStokes breathing and the breath was sourKate could smell it from three feet awayas was often the case with people who had been fasting so long that the body was metabolizing needed tissue; he still had his teeth.

Kate stood there, unable to think diagnostically, barely able to think at all. She had seen a younger version of this face not long before: in Vienna's Kunsthistoriches Museum, in a portrait of Vlad Tepes on loan from Castle Ambras' “Monster Gallery.”

Then the terrible breathing stopped and the old man opened his eyes like an owl awakening at the sound of prey.

Kate stood very still and resisted the impulse to flee. Her fingers, still pulsing with the pain of renewed circulation, grew white again as she gripped the back of the chair, her fingernails gouging splinters.

For several minutes the two looked at one another. Kate noticed his eyes: how large and dark and commanding they were. Then his fingers flexed above the blankets and Kate noticed his nails were two inches long at least, and yellowed to the color of old parchment. The silence stretched.

The old man said something in what sounded like Turkish or Persian. The words emerged softly, like the halfheard crawl of large insects in rotten wood.

Kate did not understand and said nothing.

The old man blinked slowly, licked his thin, cracked lips with a white tongue that seemed far too long, and whispered, “Cum te numesti?”

Kate understood this simple Romanian. “I am Doctor Kate Neuman,” she said, amazed that her voice was as steady as it was. “Who are you?”

He ignored the question. “Doctorul Neuman,” he whispered to himself and Kate felt her flesh crawl at the sound of her name in his mouth.

She wondered if the old man was rational, or if Alzheimer's had wreaked as much havoc on his mind as the years had to his body.

He licked his lips again and Kate thought of a lizard she had once seen sunning itself in the Tortugas. “Are you the Doctor Neuman the hematologist from the Centers for Disease Control?” he whispered in unaccented English.

Kate blinked her surprise. “Yes.”

The old man nodded. The turtle beak turned up in the smallest of smiles. “I prided myself in knowing most of the major blood specialists in the country.” He closed his eyes for a long moment and Kate thought that perhaps he had gone back to sleep, but then his voice rattled again. “Are you comfortable here, Doctor Neuman?”

Kate had no idea what “here” meantRomania? His house? The pit in the clock tower?but she knew her answer. “No,” she said flatly. “My child, my friend, and I have been kidnapped, I've been assaulted by thugs, and they're keeping me against my will right now. If . . . When the American Embassy hears about this, there will be a major international incident. Unless . . . unless we are released immediately.”

The old man nodded, his eyes still closed. It was hard to tell if he had heard. “Do you know me, Doctor Neuman?”

Kate hesitated. “You're Vernor Deacon Trent. “ It was not quite a statement.

“I was Vernor Deacon Trent. “ The old man coughed with the sound of stones rattling in something hollow. “An indulgence, that name. After a while one feels that time and space are barriers to memory. Always a mistake.”

One of the bald men in the shadows approached, lifted the old man's head and shoulders with infinite tenderness, and helped him drink water from a small glass. Finished, the huge man returned to the shadows.

“One of the young Dobrins,” whispered the old man. “Their ancestors were very helpful when . . . but never mind. What do you think will happen to you, your child, and the priest you traveled with, Doctor Neuman?”

Kate opened her mouth to speak but a sudden terror gripped her bowels and throat. She had to sit down. “I don't know.”

The old man's head nodded imperceptibly. “I will tell you. Tomorrow night, Doctor Neuman, your adopted son . . . my true son . . . will become the prince and heir apparent of a rather unique Family. Tomorrow night the child will be given the name Vlad and will taste the Sacrament. And then the family will disperse to a hundredsome cities in twenty-some nations, and the heir will grow to manhood here while his . . . uncle . . . will manage the vast and varied affairs of the Family while he waits for me to die. Is there anything else you would like to know, Doctor Neuman?”

The old man's voice had grown progressively weaker but his eyes were fierce.

“Why?” she whispered.

“Why what, Doctor Neuman?”

Kate leaned closer and also whispered. “Why this insane ritual? Why the exercise in perversion? I know about your socalled Sacrament. I know about your family disease. I can cure it, Mr. Trent . . . cure it while offering you a substitute for the human blood you have had to steal. I can cure you while offering you a chance to help humanity rather than prey onit. “

The old man's head turned then, slowly, like a clockwork mannikin. His eyes did not blink. “Tell me,” he whispered.

Kate felt a surge of hope. She kept her voice calm and professional even while the thrill in her grew. I have something to barter for our lives. All of our lives.

She told him then: about the Jretrovirus, about Chandra's studies, about the hope the applied retrovirus held out for curing AIDS and cancer, and, finally, about the success of human hemoglobin substitute with Joshua.

` . . . and it works,” she concluded. “It provides the building materials necessary for the retrovirus to maintain its immunoreconstructive role without having to consume whole blood. With frequent doses, the hemoglobin substitute can be administered intravenously so that the hormonal and mood altering effects of the bloodabsorption mutation organ can be moderated, if not bypassed altogether. “ She stopped, out of breath and terrified that she had gotten too technical and lost the old man. “What I mean to say,” she said, heart pounding, “is that I brought some of this experimental blood substitute with me. Your men took my bag, but I have medical, supplies in it . . . several vials of the artificial hemoglobin that I tested on Joshua.”

He blinked now, slowly, and when he looked at her again his eyes were tired. “Somatogen.”

It was Kate's turn to blink. “What?”

“Somatogen,” said the old man, shifting slightly to find a more comfortable position. “It is a biotech firm in your own city of Boulder, Colorado. You should know it.”

“Yes.” Kate's voice was weak.

“Oh, it is not one of my corporations. I do not even own a majority of its stock. But I . . . we . . . the more progressive members of the Family . . . have been monitoring its research on artificial hemoglobin. You are probably aware of DNX Corporation and Alliance Pharmaceutical. They have announced their breakthroughs, although a bit prematurely perhaps . . . but Somatogen will make its announcement at the Tenth Annual Hambrecht and Quist Lifesciences Conference in San Francisco in January of the new year.”

Kate stared at the old man.

He raised a white eyebrow. “Do you think the Family would be uninterested in such research? Do you think that all of us live in Eastern Europe and keep orphanages stocked for our needs?” There came a rattling, rasping sound that might have been a cough or a laugh. “No, Doctor Neuman, I am aware of your miracle cure. I have tried the prototypes and they work . . . after a fashion. Most of all, I am aware of the commercial applications for it.” He smiled. “Did you know, Doctor Neuman, that the market for safe transfusions in the United States alone would be over two billion dollars a year . . . and that is now, while the AIDS epidemic is in its early stages?” He coughed or laughed again. “No, Doctor Neuman, it is not the addiction of blood that is so hard to break . . . “

Kate sat back in her rough chair. Her body felt boneless, nerveless.

“What is it, then?”

The old man lifted a single finger with its long yellow nail. “The addiction to power, Doctor Neuman. The addiction to license. The addiction to the taste of violence without consequence. Did you bring a cure for that in your travel bag?”

Kate stared at him but no longer saw him. There was a long silence which she was only dimly aware of. If I stand up and run now I might make it to the door of the room. If I make it out the door, the others might not be waiting on the landing. If I make it out of the building . . . At that second she saw all of Romania as a giant black extension of the lightless pit she had spent the last six or seven hours in. A pit with sides too steep to climb; a pit with police and military and customs people and an air force, all following orders to find her and kill her. Beyond Romania she saw the reach of the strigoi like a long black arm, as boneless as a tentacle but with no end to its reach, and the hand on that arm had razor claws instead of fingernails. If I magically escaped with Joshua, how long would it be until I awoke in the night to find a stranger in black in my room . . . in my child's room? How many would they send after me? They would never stop. Never.

“What . . .” Kate stopped and cleared her throat. “What is going to happen to Father O'Rourke and me?”

The old man did not open his eyes again. His voice was vague, dreamy. “Tomorrow night you will be taken to a sacred place, you and the priest. The Family will be there. Young Vlad will be there. At the proper time, you and the priest will be impaled upon two stakes of gold. Then the new prince's uncle . . . Uncle Radu . . . our new leader in all things . . . will open your femoral artery.”

There was a ringing in Kate's ears and her vision clouded with dark spots.

“You will feed your child first,” whispered the old man. “And then you will feed the Family.”

For several minutes the old man did not appear to be breathing at all, but then the tortured rasping began again. He was asleep. Kate did not stir until the door opened. Radu Fortuna beckoned the strigoi named Ion into the room, her hands were bound in front of her, and she was taken immediately back to the pit in the basement of the clock tower.

O'Rourke was not there. She did not see him again that night. Whatever ceremony the strigoi held there in Sighisoara on that cold October midnight, they held it without Kate's presence or understanding.

Late in the unrelieved darkness of the next morning, they came for her.