Children of the Night

by Dan Simmons

  Suddenly Kate did not want to. She rose, bowing and thanking the two women. Ana stood smiling and blinking in the doorway as Kate moved toward it.

  They heard the helicopter first. O’Rourke grabbed her hand and they ran out into the small yard just as the red and white machine roared in over the leafless trees and barn. When it passed, another, smaller chopper, black, looking all bubble and skids, buzzed in over the farmhouse like a furious hornet.

  Kate and O’Rourke looked once at Ana and Marina standing in the doorway, fingers to their mouths, and then the two Americans ran for the road.

  Police cars and military vehicles blocked the road a hundred yards away in each direction. Men in black cradled automatic weapons as they encircled the farmhouse. Even from a distance, Kate could hear radios squawking and men shouting. She and O’Rourke skidded to a halt on the gravel road, looking wildly around.

  The two helicopters returned, one hovering above them while the larger Jet Ranger circled, hovered, and settled onto its skids fifteen yards away. The blast from the rotors threw dust and gravel over O’Rourke and Kate.

  She pivoted, thought about running toward the barn, saw the black-clad figures already there, saw more of them moving through the yard and up the road. The black helicopter buzzed above them, darting back and forth.

  “Marina turned the radio up so we wouldn’t hear the phone call,” said O’Rourke. “Or the trucks coming. Goddamn her.” He gripped Kate’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

  The door of the Jet Ranger opened; three men jumped out and walked quickly toward them. O’Rourke whispered the name of the short man: Radu Fortuna. The second man was the dark-eyed stranger Kate had seen twice before—once in her son’s bedroom, once on the night they tried to kill her. The third man was Lucian.

  Radu Fortuna stopped three feet from them and smiled. He had a slight gap between his strong front teeth. “I think you have created much mischiefs, yes?” He smiled at O’Rourke, shook his head, and made a clucking sound. “Well, the time for mischiefs is over.” He nodded and the men in black jogged forward, pinning O’Rourke’s arms, grabbing Kate’s wrists. She wished Lucian would come closer so she could spit in his face.

  He looked at her with no expression and kept his distance.

  Radu Fortuna snapped something at one of the men and he jogged back to the house and gave something to Ana and Marina. Fortuna smiled at Kate. “In this country, Madame, one out of every four peoples works for the secret police. Here we are all either the…how do you say it?…the informed or the informed on.”

  Radu Fortuna nodded. Kate and O’Rourke were suddenly grabbed and half-dragged, half-carried toward the waiting helicopter.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  ROMANIA from the air was beautiful. The helicopter stayed low, below a thousand feet, following the upper regions of the Olt River northeast and then swinging northwest up a broad valley. Kate saw a ribbon of highway below, sparsely traveled, and thought it must be the highway from Braşov to Sighişoara. The valley gave way to a high plateau which was still green in places, relatively free of trees except where thick copses grew on hilltops, and ridged with passes connecting the snowclad Făgăraş and Bucegi ranges in the south to the unnamed mountain wilderness stretching as far north as Kate could see. The helicopter wove its way up the ascending plateau, often flying past tumbledown castles, huge stone abbeys that looked as if no one had visited for centuries, and medieval keeps that sat atop hilltops and crags which dominated the valley below. There were few farms in the valley and those few were collective monstrosities that seemed to be nothing more than a collection of long barns and stone buildings. Villages were small and scarce. The rest of the scenery was forest, mountain slopes, steep canyons boiling with low clouds, and ancient ruins. It was dramatic and beautiful.

  Kate Neuman did not give a good goddamn about the scenery.

  She and O’Rourke sat on a padded bench in the rear of the Jet Ranger cabin, their wrists still tied uncomfortably behind them. No one had tightened their seat belts, and the updrafts, thermals, crosswinds, and other vagaries of small aircraft travel jostled them and left them lurching uncomfortably. Kate especially hated the nauseating feeling when the helicopter dropped suddenly and she lifted a bit off her seat. She had always hated roller coasters.

  They did not talk. The sound of the jet engine and rotors was simply too loud to carry on a conversation even if anyone had wanted to. Radu Fortuna sat in the front right seat where a copilot would normally sit, Lucian was belted into a jump seat behind the pilot, facing backward, and the dark man whom Kate thought of only as the intruder sat between O’Rourke and her. The man was firmly strapped in. Lucian was looking out the window to his right with a calm, almost distracted expression. Kate tried not to look at him. Her mind was rushing but it found no answers, no clever plans, and very few branches of hope to cling to.

  The helicopter banked left, Kate gasped as she slid helplessly against the strigoi intruder—he smelled of musk and sweat—and then they were rushing down a narrower valley with higher peaks on either side. A thin ribbon of highway ran along another river below. The roar of the engine and rotors made Kate’s headache almost intolerable. Her left arm, still bandaged and aching, throbbed in unison with her migraine.

  Radu Fortuna was wearing a communications headphone, and now he slid one of his earphones off, put his hand over the mike, twisted in his seat, and shouted, “Sighişoara.”

  Kate looked out and ahead with dull eyes.

  The town was like a fairy tale city: perched on a small mountain between taller ones, bound about with high stone walls and battlements, its steep hillsides pocked with crenellated towers, steep slate roofs, cobblestone streets, covered walkways, and tall tan and yellow homes that had been built almost a thousand years earlier.

  Then the chopper banked and Kate caught a glimpse of the socialist reality of “new Sighişoara.” Industry on the outskirts of town, a single highway lined with cheap cinderblock structures, and a few Nomenclature estates sitting fat and arrogant on opposing hillsides. But unlike so much else in Romania, this intrusion of postwar ugliness made no real dent in the atmosphere of the medieval city proper. The highest hill was all Old City, and the Old City must appear much as it had when Vlad Ţepeş’ father first rode into it and established his headquarters there in 1431.

  The helicopter banked again and this time Kate saw the military vehicles along the roads, the police cars at the roadblocks, and the almost total absence of vehicles within the city.

  “You see, it would not have been too easy for uninvited peoples to visit us tonight,” shouted Radu Fortuna. “Yes?” Kate did not answer and he put the earphones back on and said something to the pilot.

  They came in over the Old City on the hill, and the towers, red tile roofs, narrow streets, tiny courtyards, and steep stairways become larger and more real. Kate saw that Sighişoara proper had been laid out within its protective walls, and although steps and a few winding roads connected it to the larger village below, both the wall and the Old City remained intact. They flew over the wall, banked sharply around a tower with a large clockface, slowed with a suddenness that almost sent Kate lurching off the bench, and then settled with a jar, a slight rising again, and then a solid thump as the machine lost its ability to fly. The pilot threw switches while Lucian and Radu Fortuna were out of the machine and moving away in a crouching run. The second helicopter, the strange little bubble-cockpitted black machine, buzzed angrily overhead and disappeared behind the tower.

  The strigoi in the middle shoved Kate out and then O’Rourke. Kate almost tripped and landed face first on the sharp cobblestones, but the man’s strong hand seized her roughly by the upper arm and pulled her upright.

  They had landed in a grassy area near the edge of the fortifications, a small square looking down on the Old City walls which offered a view of the New City below, a river, and the wooded hills across the valley. Behind them, ancient Sighişoara stacked its steep-roofed homes up the mo
untainside. Kate saw a church spire through the trees above them. She tried to see everything, to get her bearings now, in case she escaped and needed to know which way to run.

  She did not know which way to run.

  Lucian took a step in her direction as if he were going to say something. If he had come any closer, she would have kicked him, but he paused and then turned away, walking to a waiting car and talking to the swarthy man. Radu Fortuna came up to her, saw the direction and intensity of her gaze, and said, “Oh, you think that your friend is a part of our Family, eh? No, no, no.” He shook his head and showed his broad grin. “The young student works for money, just as so many do in our country. He has served his purpose.”

  Fortuna snapped his fingers and the dark man handed Lucian a thick wad of Romanian bills.

  He sold Joshua and me out for lei, thought Kate. She felt physically ill.

  The waiting car was neither Dacia nor Mercedes, but some intermediate level of German car. Lucian took the money, got in the backseat, and did not look out again as the driver started the car and drove out of sight under the courtyard arch.

  “Come,” said Radu Fortuna. There were several of the security guards in black in the square now and they took Kate and O’Rourke by the arm and led them after the briskly striding Fortuna.

  They came out of the square into a smaller open area, a sort of corner park, and then strode down the cobblestoned hill only a hundred feet or so to the massive clock tower Kate had seen from the air. The hands on the clockface sixty feet above them were frozen.

  Fortuna led them past the small main door that had a tiny sign which said MUSEUM, down some stone stairs, through a thick door which was opened as he approached, through a narrower second door, down another flight of worn stone steps, and into a cellar lit only by two naked 20-watt bulbs.

  “Ion!” snapped Fortuna.

  The intruder—He and his men killed Tom and Julie! He threw me off a cliff!—stepped forward and lifted a heavy wood-and-iron trapdoor set in the stone floor. The opening was a square into blackness.

  Radu Fortuna smiled and beckoned Kate forward. “Come, come. You have traveled a long way in search of our hospitality. Now enjoy it.” He nodded and the guards pushed her forward and lowered her into the darkness, her arms still tied behind her and protesting in pain.

  There was an almost vertical stairway of wooden steps, but her foot missed it and she dropped three or four feet to a stone floor. The impact knocked the wind out of her and she could do nothing but roll to one side as O’Rourke was tossed in after her.

  Radu Fortuna stood above them, his face and shoulders a silhouette in the open trapdoor. “Our tower has a wonderful view, our modest museum a fascinating collection. But I think you will not, perhaps, have time to enjoy these things, yes? But do make the most of your final moments together.”

  He stepped back and the trapdoor slammed down with a noise that Kate would not have believed if she had not heard it. There came the sound of a bolt sliding and clicking above.

  The darkness was not quite absolute: there was the dimmest of dim glows, a light so faint as to be almost illusory, around the edge of the trapdoor. She fought her way to a sitting position and raised her face to the promise of light.

  There were voices and laughter above. Heavy boots trod on the trapdoor itself and then scuffed across stone. A laugh came from farther away and for several minutes there was no sound at all, although Kate sensed someone up there, waiting, guarding. She twisted toward a slight stirring near her. “Mike?”

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded pained. He had hit harder than she had. Kate wondered if his artificial leg had been damaged.

  “Are you all right, O’Rourke?”

  “Yeah.” He took deep breaths in the darkness. “How about you, Neuman?”

  She nodded, realized he could not see her, and said, “Yes.” Her nose was running and she craned to wipe it on her shoulder. Her wrists were still tied very tightly behind her; she could barely feel her hands now.

  “We fucked up,” whispered the priest.

  Kate said nothing. She wiggled closer until she could feel his right arm tied back. She moved until they were back to back, her hands reaching for his wrists. She had some idea of untying his bonds while he did the same for her, but she found unrelenting plastic there, clipped together with a snap like a hospital bracelet.

  “It’s no use,” he whispered. “Cops use these plastic restraints in the States. You can’t break them or untie them. You can’t even cut them with scissors. They’ve got a special shears that cuts them off.”

  Kate folded her fingers into fists. “What are they going to do to us?” She realized how stupid the question was even as she had to say it.

  O’Rourke leaned closer. It was cold and damp in the pit and his warmth was welcome. “Well, didn’t Lucian say that none of the strigoi drank human blood until the last night of the Ceremony?”

  “No,” whispered Kate. “He said that legends had it that the young prince who was being invested didn’t drink blood until the fourth night…the last night.” She laughed out loud, a strange and somewhat frightening sound in the darkness. “Although I’d say that the veracity of some of the things Lucian told us might be a little suspect. Jesus…” Her laughter died.

  “On the other hand,” O’Rourke whispered, his voice low and steady as if to calm her, “it does seem he knows a bit more about the strigoi than he let on. Maybe his information is accurate.”

  Kate tried to laugh again but her mouth was suddenly too dry, her throat too constricted. She forced saliva into her mouth and licked her lips. “I’m sorry I got you into this, O’Rourke.”

  “Kate, you don’t have to—”

  “No, listen. Please. I’m sorry I got you into this, but I swear I’ll get us out of it. And Joshua.”

  O’Rourke said nothing. Suddenly a scrabbling was audible from several directions.

  “Oh, shit,” breathed Kate, her skin crawling. “Rats.” She and O’Rourke huddled closer, their backs together and knees drawn up. Clumsily, with almost no feeling in their fingers as circulation ceased, they reached behind and between themselves and held hands in the darkness.

  Time became unmeasurable except for the growing pressure in Kate’s bladder. She half-dozed, felt O’Rourke sag against her in his own state of dull exhaustion, and awoke only when the pressure to urinate became more urgent. She closed her eyes and prayed to no one in particular that someone would come and let them out before she had to wet her skirt or crawl into a corner and try to pull her underwear down.

  The darkness was too deep to reveal any detail, but they had moved around enough to know that the pit was just that, a pit about ten feet by ten feet. There seemed to be no straw, no chains, no iron bracelets complete with dangling skeletons on the wall as far as they could tell from kicking out with their feet, only cold, wet stone and the occasional scurry of rats in the corners. I hope they’re only rats.

  Finally she could stand it no longer and whispered to O’Rourke, “Excuse me.” She hobbled into the corner that seemed to have had the least sound of rodent toenails on stone, squatted, managed to get her skirt up and underpants down, and urinated. The sound of her water on the stone seemed very loud.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any toilet paper,” she said aloud.

  O’Rourke chuckled in the dark. “I’ll call housekeeping.”

  Kate managed to get everything rearranged and crawled back to the center of the pit on her knees, feeling damp, uncomfortable, a little embarrassed, and infinitely relieved.

  She leaned against O’Rourke and rested her head on his shoulder. “Something will happen,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” He kissed her on the cheek and she felt the comfortable rasp of his beard. If she nestled just right, she could feel his heartbeat.

  Kate had dozed off when the trapdoor slammed up with a noise that made her heart freeze. She crashed out of a dream.

  God, this is real.

  The dim l
ight from the 20-watt bulb was as bright as sunlight in their pained and dark-adapted eyes. Kate squinted up through tears at the silhouette of the man named Ion.

  “You are to say good-bye to the other,” Ion said in heavily accented English. “You see one the other no more.”

  Two men came down and dragged O’Rourke up and out.

  Kate screamed and stood then, shouting at them, berating them, trying not to weep but weeping anyway. Two men in black came down the steep stairs and she kicked at them. One of them kicked her back, his heavy boots sending shock waves down her shin.

  They lifted her roughly by arms that had gone beyond pins and needles to stilettos of pain. Kate was almost sick then, almost threw up as they lifted her up and out of the pit. She did not know if the nausea was coming from the pain, terror, anger, or from pure relief at being taken out of the pit.

  Radu Fortuna was standing there. His dark eyes gleamed. “He wants to see you first, woman,” He raised a hairy hand and lifted the back of it toward her. “No, do not speak. If you say anything to anger me, I will take a needle and deep-sea fishing line and sew your lips shut. You may speak only when He asks you a question. Do you understand?” He had not lowered his large hand.

  Kate nodded.

  “Good,” said Radu Fortuna. He snapped his fingers. “Ion, take her up to the house. Father wishes to meet the woman.”

  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 third-floor landing had been walked on until any color or pattern in it was long since lost.