The Sixth Day

by Catherine Coulter

  Nicholas said, “It’s time to put a stop to this, Radu. We have your brother in custody.”

  “No, that’s a lie. My brother called me, he was about to blow up a theater, I believe.”

  Nicholas felt the blood drain from his head. He called over his shoulder, “Gareth, you and Mike cover him.” And unspoken was If he tries to kill her, shoot him dead.

  Gareth was sitting on the other side of the oubliette, one of his socks tied around his wounded leg. He raised his gun to point at Radu. “I’m okay.”

  Nicholas turned away, tapped his comms. “Is anyone there?”

  There was silence.

  He pulled his mobile out of his zippered thigh pocket and dialed his father’s number. It went to voice mail.

  He called Adam, who answered on the first ring.

  “Nicholas, are you and Mike alive?”

  “Yes, but it’s very complicated. My father?”

  “We lost comms with your dad. Nicholas, there’s been a bombing at the Prince Edward Theatre. We don’t have any information yet, but I’ll call the moment I get anything. Keep your phone close, okay? Your dad, I’m sure he’s okay.”

  Nicholas pushed down the rage and the fear, pushed away the sight of his father’s body, dead, burned. His mother’s face—he felt the fear clog his throat, then: “You call me the moment you know something. We’re talking to Radu Ardelean, Roman’s twin brother. Do you know where Ardelean is?”

  “No, we don’t. The whole operation went sideways. There are several teams heading your way, with medical services. You’re bringing out both the brother and Dr. Marin?”

  “To be determined.” Nicholas turned back to Radu. He said, his voice so rough with rage Mike flinched. What had he been told? Nicholas enunciated every word. “Where. Is. Your. Brother?”

  Radu shrugged. “So he’s escaped you. I never doubted he’d beat you. Killed your team, did he?”

  “He murdered my father!” Nicholas raised his Glock, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. He couldn’t run at him, the oubliette was in his path.

  But Isabella saw her chance. She drove her elbow into Radu’s belly, and he went flailing backward. The tubing in both their arms tore free.

  There was a moment of silence, then Radu cried out. He was looking at his arm, watching blood begin to well at the site of the needle. He pressed down so hard his knuckles whitened with the pressure, but it didn’t stop the blood. He had to compress the vein so no more blood could get through. It was physically impossible—only it wasn’t. Radu said, his voice strangely calm, remote, “There is hemostatic gauze in the drawer. I need it.”

  Mike said, “We can’t get to you. The oubliette is in the way.”

  “On the wall, to your left. There’s an override switch. Please, hurry.”

  Gareth slapped at the button, and the floor closed. Nicholas rushed to Radu, rolled him onto the hospital bed. Radu cried out in pain and curled into a ball, moaning. “No, don’t touch me, I can’t stand it.”

  Mike came up to his side. “All right, it’s all right. We won’t touch you.”

  Radu whispered, “The gauze. Please.”

  Mike didn’t hesitate. She reached out her hand. Nicholas said, “Don’t, Mike,” but she ignored him and opened the drawer, then stopped short. She looked at Radu.

  “I swear to you it’s not a trick. It’s not a trick. The drawer won’t explode. If you don’t get it on the wound, I’m going to bleed to death.”

  They saw blood dripping from between his fingers now, saw the stark fear on his face. She pulled open the drawer, saw a stack of military-grade hemostatic gauze packages with the brand name QuikClot on them.

  She opened one and slapped it on his arm. “You won’t bleed to death, you’ll see, the pressure will cut off the vein.”

  Nicholas quickly released Isabella from the webbing. She ran to stand over Radu, the tubing dangling from the needle in her arm. “What he has, it’s a different kind of illness.”

  Radu answered, his voice remote as he stared down at his arm. “Most hemophiliacs can’t simply bleed to death. It’s true, I have a disorder that isn’t treatable. My blood simply won’t clot. Even with the vein compressed, it doesn’t matter.”

  Mike said, “What else can we do?”

  “Pressure, and the medicine on the counter. The green self-injectable tube. It’s still in development, experimental, but it’s my only chance.”

  She had the tube in her hand when she saw the edges of the hemostatic gauze were already red and pooling.

  “Inject that into my neck, please. Just here. Please do not touch me with your skin while you do so. I don’t like being touched. Except Isabella. She’s my sister.” He pointed at the artery. He bent his head, and she jammed the auto-injector pen against his neck and depressed the button. He winced but didn’t make a sound.

  “This is experimental, how, exactly?” she asked.

  “As in I’ve never tried it before. I haven’t had a bleed in years.”

  He lifted the edge of the now soaked gauze. Even Mike knew this was bad—the QuikClots were designed to stop bleeding, to save lives on the battlefield, but for Radu, it wasn’t enough to stop a simple IV needle removal. And he believed Isabella’s blood would cure him? She pressed down against the site with all her strength, but it didn’t help, blood still poured out of the wound in his arm. Her hands were red with his blood. But how could that be? Was he bleeding internally?

  Mike said, “Your neck is bruising, Radu. It’s almost black.” And she slapped a fresh gauze pack in place, applied more pressure.

  Isabella touched his uninjured arm. “We need to get you to a hospital, Radu. Surely they’ll be able to do something.”

  Radu said, his voice still remote, almost disinterested, “It won’t matter. The bruising on my neck wasn’t supposed to happen. It means the medicine didn’t work. At the rate I’m bleeding, I’ll be dead soon now.” He raised glazed eyes to their faces. “Roman researched a dozen people, so many that could possibly be of our line, tracked them down, and exsanguinated them to give me their blood. None worked until Isabella.” He gave a laugh so thin and insubstantial it was like smoke. “And now I’m self-exsanguinating.”

  The blood was pooling beneath him now, dripping onto the floor.

  “We’ve designed a whole life around making sure I didn’t have a bleed. Isabella, you are my only hope.” He spoke to her in that strange, guttural language. She whispered back in the same language, then turned to them. “I’m going to try to hook us back up. My blood—it might help.”

  Nicholas said, “I’m sorry, we don’t have the training for that. Listen, the medics will be here soon—”

  Radu lifted the gauze from his arm and stared at the pulsing blood. He whispered, “Roman is going to be furious with you. He has tried so hard.” And he slid over onto his side, his eyes closed, his hand pressed against the gauze in the crook of his elbow, now red with his blood. He called, “Isabella? You’re all I have.”

  She grabbed the needle adhesive still sticking to his arm and shoved the needle back in, hoping she’d hit the vein. She straightened the tubing on her own arm and lay down beside him. She took his hand in hers. “Lie still and feel my blood come into you, Radu. You will live, do you hear me? My blood will make you live.”

  She felt him sigh. Felt him squeeze her hand. He was so cold, shivering now, though it was very warm in the lab. “I’m here, Radu.”

  He whispered in Voynichese, “Tell Roman, tell him your blood is the key. Your blood. The potion isn’t important, not the book, not the pages. You are the cure, for me. Make sure he knows. I don’t want him to blame you, kill you.” His voice faded until his last words were a faint whisper.

  His eyes closed.

  “I’ll tell him, Radu. You must hold on. My blood is flowing into you. You must hold on.”

  Nicholas and Mike watched the blood, Isabella’s blood now, flowing out of his arm, pooling on the floor.

  Gareth limped up to stand bes
ide them. Isabella pulled the needle out of her arm, applied pressure. They all stood in silence, helpless, and watched Radu Ardelean die.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  If you stand on the pavement outside the Royal Hotel on Whitby’s West Cliff and look out across the harbour town as the sun goes down, you can pretty much see, in their entirety, the early chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Across the bay, in the shadow of the half-ruined abbey, sits St. Mary’s Churchyard, where Lucy Westenra was attacked by the vampiric count. Below is Tate Hill Sands, where the ship carrying Dracula ran aground, its crew missing, its dead skipper lashed to the wheel. The 199 steps, known locally as the Church Stairs, rise to the East Cliff, up which Dracula, in the guise of a black hound, ran after arriving in Whitby.

  —The Guardian

  Whitby, England, the Southern Coast

  July 1890

  The sea looked glorious and smooth as glass. The storm had passed, and the air felt light, as if anything was possible.

  He sat on the bench and relaxed. He deserved this holiday, needed to rest and rejuvenate before his family arrived in a fortnight. He’d been exhausted by the work on his latest play.

  After he’d moved into his rooms at Mrs. Veazey’s guesthouse at 6 Royal Crescent, he’d gone out to ramble through the town, climbed the 199 steps to the ancient, crumbling abbey. He even wandered through the boneyard, touched by the graves—some of which had no occupants, the stones markers for those lost at sea—writing names in the notebook he always carried in his breast pocket. Finally, pleased, he took a seat on a bench and watched the ships at sail.

  Something about this place intoxicated him. Perhaps he felt a certain oppression, a Gothic sort of darkness despite the cheery red roofs and the calls of the gulls over the water. It spoke to his creative mind, his heart. A fog bank rolled in, and he delighted in the sudden coolness, the droplets of moisture gathering on his mustache. He closed his eyes, content.

  “Hello. May I?” He opened his eyes to see a stranger standing before him, a great white-and-gray falcon on the man’s fist. Would she get lost in the thick fog if her jesses were removed? “Certainly,” he said, and made room. “What a magnificent falcon.”

  “Her name is Mina. She is a peregrine.”

  He saw the stranger wore a leather gauntlet, and when he said the bird’s name, he put a chunk of raw meat on the glove. The bird gobbled it down. He asked, “Have you toured Whitby before?”

  “Oh, I live here. Over there.” The stranger waved a negligent hand toward the cliffs. “I am called Reuben Stow.”

  “I am Bram Stoker. It’s a pleasure.”

  Stow asked, “You’re up from London?”

  “I am. I’m a writer. Well, and a producer, a financier.”

  Stow’s eyes seemed to glow. He leaned toward Stoker. “You are?”

  “I am. I wanted to spend some time alone, to relax, to let errant ideas slip into my brain, until my family arrives.” He grinned at what he’d said, shrugged. “A writer is always on the lookout for ideas, for inspiration, I suppose.”

  Stow threw his arm forward, and the bird launched into the sky. She pirouetted in the air above them, the long stokes of her wings taking her out of the sea. They watched her dance in and out of the clouds.

  Stow said, “Mr. Bram Stoker, writer, for your inspiration, I suggest you look in the Whitby library, at the end of the street below. There you will find a book written by a fellow countryman of yours, Wilkerson, and his travels will give you what you seek. It will spark your imagination, and the rest of the story will come to you then.”

  “What I seek? No, you misunderstand me. I’m not looking for anything.”

  “Yes, you are. A writer is always seeking. My beautiful Mina is a wonderful example. She seeks the hunt, fresh meat, the ability to fly and to sleep safely. I provide her with all of these, and so she stays with me. You, my new friend, are very much like the falcon. You seek a story, a story to make you famous. A story to both delight and terrorize. A story to make your friend Irving happy, yes?”

  Stoker was unnerved. How did this stranger know this? He felt vaguely alarmed, not a little afraid.

  “I suppose I am always looking for a good story,” he said stiffly, and he rose. “Perhaps it’s time for me to be off.”

  “I know a good story.”

  Stoker stopped, couldn’t help himself. “You do?”

  “Oh, yes. It is the story of brothers bound by blood. They walk the earth together, never at rest.”

  “Oh, I see. They’re ghosts.”

  “No, no, not ghosts. They are something very different indeed. Something very old. It is the blood, you see. They have pages from a long-lost book that gave them the knowledge they needed to use blood as food. It’s quite a gruesome tale. I can tell it to you if you like.”

  Stoker relaxed. He knew this sort of fellow. He would wait for his prey in the boneyard of the abbey, scare the tourists with a ridiculous tale, then demand coin. He was a modern-day bard.

  Still, there was something about this man that made him uneasy, ran little skitters of alarm up his arms. Stoker stood. “I imagine it is quite a story. Sadly, it’s getting late, and I must be off.”

  Stow looked away from him, out to the sea. He whistled once, sharp and low, held out his arm. “Good day to you, Mr. Stoker. Do not forget to visit the library. It is really critical to you and your career.”

  The bird landed hard on the man’s fist. He gave her a treat and bowed his head toward Stoker, then stood and turned away.

  Stoker shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Impossible. Impossible. It seemed from one moment to the next, the man and falcon were simply gone, disappeared.

  He was tired from the journey, exhausted from managing Irving. He was hungry and thirsty, and now he was seeing things.

  Yes, he needed a rest.

  He took a last look around the abbey and started toward the stairs. Supper and sleep, and he’d explore the rest of the town in the morning.

  He felt eyes on him, and he whirled back to look at the bench, at the grounds of the abbey, at the cliff, but no one was there. He saw a mist move through the boneyard, obscuring the gravestones. It moved toward him, closer and closer. He was frozen until the mist began to curl around his feet. As if released from a trance, he ran down the stairs, not looking back.

  Later that evening, as he made plans to visit the town’s library, he was compelled to record a name in his notebook—why, he didn’t know.

  Mina. And I will name my heroine Mina.

  THE FIFTH DAY

  SATURDAY

  Dracula, a 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, introduced Count Dracula and established many conventions of subsequent vampire fantasy. The novel tells the story of Dracula’s attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and a woman [Wilhelmina “Mina” Murray Harker—Jonathan Harker’s wife] led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing. . . .

  After Dracula learns of the group’s plot against him, he attacks Mina on three occasions, and feeds Mina his own blood to control her. This curses Mina with vampirism and changes her but does not completely turn her into a vampire.

  —WIKIPEDIA

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Sky News

  London

  6:00 a.m.

  We’re coming to you live with breaking news. There was a bombing last evening outside the Prince Edward Theatre, resulting in the death of Corinthian Jones, Lord Barstow, prominent consultant to MI6.

  “Also, a military helicopter was downed on the grounds of the home in Twickenham of the genius scientist and founder of Radulov Industries, Roman Ardelean. Mr. Ardelean is being sought by police to answer questions for a variety of charges, including the assassination of Lord Barstow last night. We start the news now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  A feather-perfect hawk, sitting on a clean perch, with well-greased jesses and a c
lean leash, in proper accommodation, is a pleasure to behold. Hawks wearing poor and ill-kept furniture, sitting on filthy blocks and perches and in no proper accommodation are a disgrace to the falconer and, indeed, to the sport.

  —Emma Ford, Falconry: Art and Practice

  The Savoy Hotel

  Strand, London

  Roman Ardelean called Radu’s personal line. There was no answer. He called Iago’s phone. No answer. What had happened? Had he taken all of Marin’s blood in his greed to be cured immediately? He called one of the house lines, but it appeared to be dead. He felt fear begin to thrum deep. And then he turned on the television to see his face plastered at the bottom on the newscaster’s desk. And he heard about the helicopter crash at the Old Garden.

  They’d found him. They’d found Radu. Where was his brother? Had they taken him into custody? How to find out?

  Roman had killed Barstow, the sodding bastard, so that was something, but now he didn’t care. Where was Radu?

  Would they find him here at the Savoy? He’d used the Laurence Bruce disguise and a fake name. But they’d found out everything else. He listened to the news talk about the man with Lord Barstow, who had escaped serious injury—Harold Drummond, consultant to MI5.

  He kept dialing both Iago’s and Radu’s private phones. Still no answer. He was worried, too, about his cast. He had instructed the cast to fly north to the estate, but Arlington refused to be parted from him. She’d flown to him last night without his calling her, her talons digging into his arm, drawing blood, and he’d had to smuggle her into the hotel under his coat. What did she know that he didn’t? Did she have some sort of extra-sensory ability to sense danger to him?

  She sat now on the back of a chair, her talons gripping the silk, watching the television, as he was. He’d ordered room service for them both, asked for pheasant, raw, and a juicy steak, rare. The hotel, circumspect as always, delivered both without comment. He was grateful for Arlington’s steadying presence. He stroked her feathers, and she rubbed her face against his hand. He thumbed another dose of LSD onto his tongue.