by Dan Simmons
“Well,” he continued, voice still brimming with humor, “I think maybe we must say our good-byes 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 Sighişoara.
They turned right onto a narrow highway. Kate looked past Ion and saw the white sign: MEDIAŞ 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. Tîrgovişte was not on the circumference of the circle but just beneath the center where the hands were attached. Braşov would be at the three o’clock position, Sighişoara at the twelve, and Sibiu would be somewhere around the nine.
Where was the castle on the Argeş? Somewhere between the nine and Tîrgovişte near the center. Would Sibiu be on the road to the Argeş castle? It didn’t seem likely. She and O’Rourke must have guessed wrong about Vlad Ţepeş’ 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 sweat-and-urine 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 rapid-fire 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 self-assurance of the not-terribly-intelligent 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 slowed—which it did only occasionally—and then thrown herself from the car. The road here was cracked concrete or pitted asphalt, the shoulder alongside it almost nonexistent, but jumping would be 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 Mediaş, much larger than Sighişoara, but Kate had little impression of it except for factories, more factories, littered railyards, 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 Mediaş. 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 miles 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 smoke-filled 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 garlic-smelling man; a moment later this one set his left hand on her right thigh.
Kate closed her eyes and tried to remember the self-defense 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 me—namely, 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 a hundred 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 will claw his eyes. I will sink 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 garlic-smelling, 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 garlic-breath 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 half-erect and uncircumcised penis vigorously while his other hand spread her thighs apart.
I am not here. This is not 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 garlic-smelling 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.
Chapter Thirty-six
LUCIAN walked to the open door of the Mercedes and Kate set her back against the locked door and held the shears in front of her, her thumb tight on the top of the blades. She was gasping, trying not to hyperventilate even while her lungs demanded more air.
“Kate,” said Lucian, lowering the long-barreled pistol and holding his hand out.
Kate clenched her teeth and lifted the shears like a knife. “Stay away. Don’t touch me.”
Lucian nodded and stepped back. He reached into the grass below the car, came up with her underpants, and set them carefully on the rear seat. “I’ll be out here,” he said softly.
Kate sat watching, the shears still raised, while Lucian dragged the body of the driver out, then returned for the other two. She pulled on her pants, her body still rippling with disgust and shock, and then peered out the car door before getting out.
Lucian had moved the bodies to the far side of the car, near the collapsed barn. The pistol was tucked in his belt but there was an ax in his hands. “Kate, come look at this.”
She leaned against the car a moment. She was shivering and her mind refused to focus. Colors seemed to shift and part of her still wanted to scream or weep, or both.
“Kate, please come look.” Lucian was kneeling by the body of the driver.
She approached slowly, the shears by her side. The sight of the driver lying there still twitching triggered some medical part of her mind and she knelt next to the man, her fingers probing the neck for a pulse. There was none. The driver’s hands and legs still twitched.
“I shot him in the throat and the forehead,” Lucian said emotionlessly. “Wouldn’t you agree that he should be dead?”
Kate stared at the young medical student as if seeing him for the first time.
Lucian touched the twitching fingers. “It’s the virus that refuses to die, Kate. Even now it’s sealing off the wounds, coagulation working at an impossible rate. The virus is directing a surfeit of oxygen to the brain even as body temperature drops to that of a corpse.”
Kate felt for the nonexistent pulse again. She was surprised to hear her own voice. “It can’t send blood to the brain. His heart has stopped.”
Lucian nodded and set three fingers deep into the driver’s solar plexus. “Feel here. No? All right…but the shadow organ, the blood-absorption mutation, is taking over minimal circulation chores. The virus wants to live. This man is clinically dead, Kate. But if he receives whole blood within the next forty-eight hours or so, the body will rebuild. There’ll be no brain damage…or at least minimal. This…thing…will be walking again if the strigoi find him and supply the blood. Stand back.”
Kate stood up and moved away as Lucian spread his legs, hefted the ax, and brought it down in a single vicious arc. Blood sprayed and the driver’s head was separated from his body.
“Oh, Jesus…” said Kate and turned away. She went and leaned against the Mercedes as Lucian did the same to Ion and the younger strigoi.
Lucian had dragged the headless corpses into the tumbledown shack. Now he picked up the heads one by one, carried them to the copse of trees, and tossed them far into the weeds. He took clumps of dried grass, rubbed blood from his pantlegs and boots, and walked back to the car. Kate stood rubbing her arms, the shears unnoticed in her right hand. Lucian took them away from her and threw them into the high grass. “Stand right here,” he said softly, moving her away from the car.
He opened the door on the driver’s side, brushed shattered glass from the slick leather, started the car, and drove the Mercedes under the tumbled roof of the shed. When he came out he pulled the ax from the soft dirt where he had buried the blade, hefted it, and walked to Kate. “I had to leave my car down the road and cross the field on foot. I kept the trees between me and the car. Come.”
He started to take her hand but Kate pulled back. Lucian nodded and started off down the lane. Kate waited a minute and then followed.
The white Dacia was much like the blue Dacia that Lucian had driven in Bucharest. It squeaked, rattled, and smoked the same, and there was no second gear. Kate settled back in the cracked vinyl seat and let Lucian drive her west and south.
“It was a temptation to take the Mercedes,” he was saying. “Everyone would have recognized it as a strigoi car and left us alone. But it would have been too visible from the air…and everyone would remember which way we went.”
“You followed me,” said Kate. It was not exactly a question.
Lucian nodded. “They drove me to Bucharest, I got my car, my father’s target pistol, the ax
, and binoculars and drove straight back. I saw them drive the priest east. They must be going to the castle by way of Braşov and Piteşti.”
“The castle?” Words seemed strange in Kate’s mouth. Her mind kept replaying the moments of the rape, the helpless feeling as he pinned her down, the sense of becoming someone and something else than herself…
“Vlad’s castle on the Argeş River,” said Lucian. “It’s where tonight’s ceremony is. They drove the priest the west way; they were taking you via Sibiu and Calimaneşti. It’s just habit, in case they were followed. I only followed your car.” He glanced at her.
Kate looked him in the eye for the first time. “You betrayed us.”
Lucian glanced back at the road where a Gypsy wagon was weaving ahead of him. He honked, passed the wagon, dodged some sheep, and looked back at her. “No, Kate. I never did…”
She clenched her fists. “You were working for them. For all I know, you’re still working for them.”
Lucian took a breath. “Kate, you saw me kill those three—”
“You said yourself that the strigoi fight among themselves!” She had not meant to shout. “Factions! You maybe with them and against them at the same time. You betrayed us. Lied to us. Informed on us.”
Lucian was nodding. “I had to…to keep you both alive. The strigoi knew you were coming. As long as I kept tabs on you, they were reassured…”
“You’re one of them,” whispered Kate.
“You know I’m not!” snapped Lucian. “That’s why I ran the assay test.”
