Children of The Night

Chapter Thirty-five

Kate had never been comfortable in the dark. As a child she had used a nightlight until she was ten years old; even as an adult she preferred a tiny plugin light in the bathroom or hallwayanything to lessen the darkness.

The pit was absolute darkness. The single 20watt bulb in the basement above her must have been turned off since not even the faintest glow crept around the cracks in the trapdoor. Even though it was dark up there, she sensed that one of the strigoi was up there. She could not hear him, but she felt a presence there. It was not reassuring.

It seemed like hours passed and Kate knew that sunrise must have come, but the darkness and stench and scrabbling did not change. At other times she felt that time was not moving at all, that it had been only minutes since she had been returned to the pit. The next minute she would be sure that the next day had already come and gone, that Joshua had already been initiated into the clan of blood drinkers.

No, it will be my blood he drinks first. I will be there.

Kate dozed only once and awoke with a rat creeping across her skirt and bare legs. She did not scream, but her body rippled with revulsion in the seconds after she had flung the thing across the pit. It screamed as it hit the wall:

By any sane measurement of mood, Kate knew, this should be the most despondent few hours of her life. Her realization that there could be no real escape for Joshua, O'Rourke, and her, that the strigois' reach was too long, their evil too powerful, should have sent her spiraling into hopelessness and despair.

It did not.

In those black hours in the pit, Kate found all of her external identity stripped away: honored scholar, doctor, respected researcher, wife, former wife, lover, mother. What remained had nothing to do with identity, with who she was, but everything to do with what she was.

Kate Neuman was a woman who was not about to go gently into that good night. She was not about to surrender the man she lovedthe realization that she loved Mike O'Rourke was like a light slowly growing brighter in the darknor the child she had sworn to protect. It did not matter that the strigois' power was almost beyond imagining. It did not matter that she had no secret weapon left after the old man's dismissal of her “miracle cure”; it did not matter that no new plan had occurred to her yet there in the lightless pit. She would think of something. And if she did not think of something, she would act without thinking in the faith that the mere fact of acting would change the set of variables.

So let the strigoi do their worst. Fuck them.

When they opened the trapdoor to take her away an eternity later, she was smiling.

Kate had not wept in the pit, but the sunlight outside, as weak and watery as it was, made her eyes brim over. She could not wipe them away because her hands were still tied. The plastic binding was the same, but they had secured her, arms in front of her after her interview with the old man the night before and not so tightly as to cut off circulation this time.

Ion and two smaller men, all of them wearing the kind of cheap, baggy suits which seemed the hallmark of Eastern Europe, led her outside to a waiting Mercedes. A second black car sat farther down the hill. The wind was cold and from the north. Radu Fortuna was standing in the middle of the street with his arms folded, looking quite pleased with himself.

Kate glanced at her watch. It was 1:40 P.m. The early afternoon offered the kind of ebbing light that warned of winter's approach. Am I really never going to see another season? Another sunrise? Are all of the experiences remaining to me to be suffered in the next twelve hours . . . and then nothing? Kate shook her head and pushed the thoughts away before they filled her chest with panic. She was pleased to feel that just underneath the fluttering surface of terror remained the iron core of resolve she had found in the darkness.

“I hope you sleeped . . . no, slept? . . . yes, slept well last night,” beamed Radu Fortuna.

Kate just stared at him. Suddenly her attention was drawn to four men walking up the cobblestone street from the direction of another stone tower beyond the grassy area. One of the men was Mike O'Rourke. Kate first saw that he was limping; then, as the four men drew closer, she realized that he was being supported by two of the strigoi guards. Even from thirty feet away she could see that his face was bruised, one eye was swollen shut, and his lips were puffy and discolored.

O'Rourke saw her, smiled through his swollen lips, and raised his bound hands in a salute. The guards opened the rear door to a second Mercedes and began shoving the ex-priest into the car. O'Rourke's gaze never left her.

“Mike!” she shouted, being restrained now by her own strigoi thugs. “I love you!”

O'Rourke was crammed in the backseat of the car, doors slammed, and the vehicle moved away, passing under the arched gateway of the Old City and out of sight down the steep and narrow street. Kate did not know if O'Rourke had heard her.

Radu Fortuna chuckled and nudged Ion. “How very touching,” laughed Fortuna. “How deeply moving.”

Kate wheeled on him. “Why did you beat him?”

Radu Fortuna said nothing, but Ion evidently felt he could add to the mirth of the moment. “The idiot priest, he have notreal leg. We do not know this. When men come last night to take him out of cell to see Father, idiot priest hit Andrei and Nicolae over head with leg he take off. He try to leave. Nicolae unconscious. Andrei and three others do not like and hit. Hit for long time and . . .”

“Shut up, Ion,” snapped Radu Fortuna, no longer smiling.

Ion shut up.

So Mike also saw the old man.

One of the strigoi guards opened the back door of the idling Mercedes. Kate made a mental note that if she somehow got out of this alive, she would never buy one of these goddamn cars.

“Well, I wish you good trip,” said Radu Fortuna, standing by the open door while one of the thugs shoved her inside.

“Where am I going?” She was disappointed to see Ion going around the car to slide in the backseat with her. The strigoi thug with a scar above his left eye slipped behind the wheel while the other thug stood just outside.

Radu Fortuna opened his hands in a dismissive gesture. “You wish to see Ceremony, yes? You have, I think, come a long way for this privilege. Tonight you have privilege.” He grinned at her and she saw a certain resemblance between Fortuna's gaptoothed smile and the incessant TV images of Saddam Hussein from the previous winter and spring: both men's facial expressions did not involve their eyes. Radu Fortuna's eyes were as dead as black glass. Only the mouth muscles went through the motion of human emotions.

“Well,” he continued, voice still brimming with humor, “I think maybe we must say our goodbyes now. I will see you tonight, yes, but. there will be many peoples there and you may be too busy for chitchat. Bye-bye.” He slapped his palm on the roof of the car, the other strigoi thug slid in next to her so she was sandwiched between Ion and this one with his garlic breath, Radu Fortuna slammed the door, and the Mercedes glided away, drove under the arch of the wall, down the hill past homes that were old in the Middle Ages, and out of Sighisoara.

They turned right onto a narrow highway. Kate looked past Ion and saw the white sign: MEDIAL 36 KM, SIBIU 91 KM. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the map she and O'Rourke had been referring to for several days. If the series of highways they had been on constituted a rough circle, ignoring the mountains and countless diversions, then she imagined traveling counterclockwise with Bucharest the starting point at the six o'clock position. Tirgoviste was not on the circumference of the circle but just beneath the center where the hands were attached. Brasov would be at the three o'clock position, Sighisoara at the twelve, and Sibiu would be somewhere around the nine.

Where was the castle on the Arges? Somewhere between the nine and Tirgoviste near the center. Would Sibiu be on the road to the Arges castle? It didn't seem likely. She and O'Rourke must have guessed wrong about Vlad Tepes' castle being important to the ceremony. Sibiu was their probable destination.

How many miles until I reach the place where I will die?

Less than sixty miles. Kate wiped her moist palms on her dark skirt. Suddenly her stomach growled.

Ion glanced at her and did not hide his smirk. “You do not like the breakfast?”

There had been no breakfast, no food the night before. Kate tried to remember the last thing she had eaten, and the memory of the chocolate biscuits she had shared with the women, Ana and Marina, made her dizzy with nausea.

There were few other cars on the road today, and those few were almost driven off the road as the strigoi driver honked at them and overtook them at what seemed breakneck speed for such a rough and winding road. The Mercedes slowed for nothing but animals, but even flocks of sheep were sent scurrying.

Kate thought that the Transylvanian countryside that she was watching pass by so quickly must be beautiful in the summer: high green meadows, thick forests rising into areas unscarred by roads, crumbling abbeys on hilltops, the onion domes of Orthodox churches visible in tiny villages down along the river, and the colorfully dressed peasant farmers and Gypsies working in fields. But even in October the weight of winter now lay on the land like a gray pall. The trees were black stripes against gray rock, the peasants walking with heads down along the highway or staring from muddy fields were gray faces in black wool, and the few villages seemed to be studies in gray stone and black wood.

Both the driver and the young strigoi to her right were smoking and there seemed to be no ventilation in the car. She could smell the sweatandurine reek of the men, and the odor of garlic from the young one to her right seemed stronger every mile. There was no silence during the ride. The driver was talking with either Ion or the young man all the way, each of them speaking in such rapidfire Romanian that she could not understand any of it. They all laughed a lot. Frequently she caught their glances toward her just before or after a laugh. Although the words were gibberish to her, she knew the tone and arrogance very well: it was the swaggering selfassurance of the notterriblyintelligent male bully in a situation with a woman he knew, he controlled. Kate had heard these same tones of conversation, seen the same leers and glances, and suffered the same laughter as a girl in the company of older boys, as a student with sexist teachers, as a young doctor with fellow interns out to prove something, and as a divorced woman on her own. She knew these sounds well.

“You know there will be big party tonight,” said Ion, setting his huge hand on her knee. “You are invite . . . you are special guest. “ He translated for his cronies and the smelly air was filled with their laughter.

Ion's hand slid up the inside of her leg until Kate clamped her tied wrists against her thigh and stopped it. Ion said something and the men laughed again. He removed his hand and lit a cigarette.

If Kate had been sitting by one of the doors, she would have waited until the Mercedes slowedwhich it did only occasionallyand then thrown herself from the car. The road here was cracked concrete or pitted asphalt, the shoulder alongside it almost nonexistent, but jumping would to preferable to sitting here like a fat steer being driven to the slaughterhouse.

But the men crowded her on either side and she knew that she could not get the doors opened before they shoved her back in her center seat.

They passed through the city of Media, much larger than Sighisoara, but Kate had little impression of it except for factories, more factories, littered rail yards, a terrible stench that may have come from one of the many petroleum or textile plants, and the glimpse of a single church spire, very tall, rising above the industrial towers like a black ghost from the past. Then they were in the country again and following Highway 14 toward Sibiu.

She noticed a strange thing leaving Media. A factory shift must have let out and there were scores, hundreds, of workers standing along the highway leaving the ugly town. Traffic was backed up along a section of the road that was unpaved and these men, black with soot and grease, would step in front of the Dacias and other cars, wave their arms imperiously, palms down, as if they were ordering the automobiles to stop. ~ Kate realized that it was a Romanian version of the upraised hitchhiker's thumb.

The men did not try to wave down the Mercedes. Kate leaned forward and even raised her bound hands so that she could be seen, but the workers looked down and away from the black car. Some stepped back from the road almost fearfully.

They left the town behind and Kate settled back in her seat. She felt sick with hunger, thirst, and a level of fear she had never imagined.

A few mules out of town, Ion set his thick fingers on her leg again. He said something to the young strigoi to her right and this time the laughter in the smokefilled car was strained with a new tone.

“My friend,” said Ion, leaning so close that Kate could see bits of food caught between his teeth, “says he has never fucked an American woman.”

Kate said nothing. She imagined her body made of razors. Ion said something else and rubbed his hand up her leg again. When she tried to stop him, he slapped away her wrists. Ion said something to the garlicsmelling man; a moment later this one set his left hand on her right thigh.

Kate closed her eyes and tried to remember the selfdefense classes she had taken at the Boulder Rec Center years before. All she could remember was the laconic comment Tom had made when she returned home from the exercises, feeling bruised but powerful: “Kat,” he had said, “the bad news is what my daddy taught menamely, a good big guy can always beat the shit out of a good little guy. I'm afraid that even when you get good at all this kicking and gouging stuff, you'll always be a little guy. So carry Mace. Learn to use the gun I keep in the closet.” He had hugged her then. “Or just stick close to me, kid.”

Kate opened her eyes. The driver was glancing back over his shoulder. His face was flushed.

Ion pointed to a gravel road leading away from the highway to a small copse of white trees. The driver nodded and turned off the highway. A single Dacia passed them and then the road was empty. The Mercedes' suspension absorbed the ruts and bumps as they crawled their way ahundred yards to the grove of trees and an old house or barn that had once stood there. Nothing remained now but stones and the collapsed roof.

Ion's fingers slid up her thighs to her crotch. He poked at her through the thin cotton of her underpants.

When I count to three, I wall claw has eyes. I wall sank my nails in and pull his eyes from their sockets. Let it end here if it has to. She curled her fingers, feeling her unkempt nails and wishing they were longer. One . . . two . . .

As if reading her mind, Ion slapped her in the face. It had seemed a casual movement, almost languorous, but the force of the big man's hand knocked her back into the seat cushions and made her almost lose consciousness. She tasted blood in her mouth and nose. When she was fully aware of where she was and what was happening, she was stretched half across the seat, the garlicsmelling,, pockmarked man had gotten out and gone around to stand behind Ion in the open door, and Ion was shoving up her skirt and pulling off her pants. Ion was half standing, half leaning in the car. His weight was on her lower legs. She had no leverage to kick; no chance to squirm away. The driver was turned fully in his seat now, his arms hanging over the leather seatback and his fingers flexing the way she had seen men's hands do at prizefights and football games.

Ion snapped something at the other two and then smirked at her. “I tell them, we take the turns. Three times for the each of us. One time for each of your holes . . . yes?” He reached into his coat pocket, removed a pair of shears, cut through the plastic that bound her wrists and handed the shears to the driver. He said something and garlicbreath laughed eagerly.

“I tell him,” translated Ion, “if you struggle, to cut your nose off.” His wet lips curled up. “But I say, he hold you down while he is to do it so that I am not interrupted.” Ion unbuttoned his pants and lowered them with a violent tug. He spit on one hand and rubbed his halferect and uncircumcised penis vigorously while his other hand spread her thighs apart.

I am not here. This is rot me.

The strigoi called Ion leaned over and breathed in her face. “I remember . . . you try to kill me, bitch . . . now I fuck you to death.” His mouth opened wide and descended on hers. His tongue was like moist sandpaper against her closed lips. She could feel his wet member thrusting against her thighs and groin.

Kate was concentrating so hard on not being there, on feeling and sensing nothing, that the sharp sound at first seemed remote, unrelated to anything. It came again, like the crack of a branch being snapped, and Kate opened her eyes. Ion pulled his mouth away. He was not quite inside her, but his face was sagging in the slack, alarmed vacuity that some men show at the second of orgasm. There was another crack and the garlicsmelling strigoi behind Ion seemed to throw himself away from the open car door.

The driver shouted something, the branch cracked again, glass shattered and sprayed, and the shears fell to the carpet near Kate's right shoulder.

She reacted in less than a second, twisting, swinging her right arm over Ion's forearm, seizing the open shears and slashing up and to the left in a single movement that could not be blocked. She felt the blade slice through cheek muscle and rattle along teeth. Ion screamed and spit blood onto the black leather upholstery. All the while, his hips continued to move against her, his penis batting against her crotch.

Kate shoved backward, lifted her knees, got her feet on Ion's shoulders, and shoved him out the door. She clambered backward but the other door was locked.

Ion was bellowing, staggering for balance as his lowered pants fell below his knees. The strigoi clamped his hand to his cheek, squeezed shut the flap of sliced skin and muscle that ran from his ear to his mouth, spat blood, and said, “I kill you now.”

“No,” said a voice behind him.

Ion whirled. Lucian stepped into Kate's line of vision, raised a black pistol with a very long barrel, and shot Ion in the face from three feet away.