Frank said, “Well, no. I never heard of that either. But I can’t think why they’re doing it, or how. Look—you’ll have to forgive me. I’m not feeling too good myself. I was trying to get home.”

  “That’s okay, doc. We can give you a ride.”

  “I’d be very grateful. I think the stress is beginning to get to me.”

  Lieutenant Roberts went over to the police lines, and spoke to the sergeant in charge. The sergeant called forward six or seven officers to help them through the crowds toward their car. There was some pushing and shoving and indignant shouting, but nobody became really aggressive. They climbed into Lieutenant Roberts’ Buick, and locked the doors. People stared into the windows, and smeared blood all over the glass, but they seemed to be curious rather than hostile, and when Detective Mancini started up the engine and gradually nudged the car through the crowds, they shuffled out of the way and let them through.

  “This thing is just spreading and spreading,” said Lieutenant Roberts. “Unless you doctors can find out what’s causing it, I don’t see what we can do to stop it. We’ve had so many homicides, citywide, people with their throats cut, we’ve completely lost count. And there doesn’t seem to be any logic to it. None at all.”

  Frank thought of Susan Fireman, back at his apartment. He wondered if she was still there (if she had ever been there, and this wasn’t a nightmare). Susan Fireman seemed to know what this epidemic was all about. She could climb impossible walls and she knew all about “passing through,” whatever that was. Darkness, and shadows, and closed boxes. Maybe if Lieutenant Roberts could arrest her, and interrogate her, she might give them the leads that they were looking for.

  His hands were burning so fiercely that he clamped them under his armpits to relieve the pain.

  Lieutenant Roberts heaved himself around in the front passenger seat and said, “You okay, doc? You’re really looking logey.”

  “I’m okay. Just tired, I guess.”

  “Hmh! Just so long as you don’t start chanting that ‘tattle nostrew’ stuff.”

  “Me? No, no. I don’t think I’m quite that bad.” Although he couldn’t help thinking, “tatal nostru . . . carele esti in ceruri . . . sfinteasca-se numele tau . . .” He could almost hear it sung inside his head, in a high, childish soprano.

  “Si nu ne duce pre noi in inspita . . . lead us not into temptation . . . ci ne scapa de cel rau . . . but deliver us from evil. Amin.”

  They reached Frank’s apartment building in the tree-lined street on Murray Hill and Detective Mancini pulled into the curb.

  Lieutenant Roberts said, “Listen, doc, if you think of anything—give me a call. Anything, even if you think it sounds stupid.”

  “Well . . . there is something. That girl Susan Fireman . . . the first one to get sick.”

  “What about her?”

  “I think I might have been hallucinating, or dreaming, maybe. But she appeared in my apartment.”

  “She appeared in your apartment,” Lieutenant Roberts repeated.

  “This was after she died, right?” asked Detective Mancini.

  “Yes.”

  Lieutenant Roberts thought about that for a while, and then he said, “Maybe you need to take some time off, doc. A situation like this . . . well, it can throw you off-balance more than you realize.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, lieutenant, I’m a doctor. I’m fully prepared to admit that I might have been suffering from exhaustion, or stress, or some kind of mental aberration. But it certainly didn’t feel like a mental aberration, at the time. And it still doesn’t feel like it, even now. In fact, I’m ninety percent confident that if I go upstairs right now, she’ll still be there, waiting for me.”

  Lieutenant Roberts puffed out his cheeks, and thought some more. “So what do you want me to do, doc? Ms. Susan Fireman is wanted for multiple homicide, and if she’s really hiding in your apartment, then I need to go up there and arrest her. But I know for a fact that Ms. Susan Fireman is deceased, so why should I waste my time?”

  “She’s dead, yes,” Frank admitted. “I was right there in the room when she died. But somehow she came back. She climbed up into my apartment when I was asleep and she—”

  “She what, doc?” asked Detective Mancini.

  Frank opened the Buick’s door. “Nothing. You’re right. I must have dreamt it.”

  “She what?” repeated Lieutenant Roberts.

  Frank hesitated, but when he saw that they weren’t going to leave him until he had given them an answer, he said, “She forced me to have intercourse with her. It was a sex dream, I guess.”

  Lieutenant Roberts climbed out of the car. “I think I’m going to take a look in your apartment, Dr. Winter. I don’t believe for one moment that Ms. Fireman is actually there, but I need to satisfy my insatiable curiosity.”

  “Believe me, lieutenant—”

  “I do believe you, doc. I believe that you believe that Ms. Fireman came to visit you after she was deceased, and had carnal relations with you. But I want to know why you believe such a thing.”

  “I didn’t steal her body from the hospital, if that’s what you’re trying to imply. When she climbed into my apartment she was alive, and she was talking, and she was quite capable of forcing me to have sex with her.”

  “You’re saying she raped you?”

  “Not exactly. But she was very compelling, and I was afraid of her. Well, anybody would have been afraid of her. She was supposed to be dead. She was dead.”

  Lieutenant Roberts took hold of Frank’s arm. “Come on, doc, let’s make a quick inspection, shall we? I don’t need a search warrant, do I, seeing as how you’re inviting me up to your apartment?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t think—I’m really not feeling too good—”

  “Won’t take but a minute, doc,” said Lieutenant Roberts, and helped him up the front steps, gripping his arm so tightly that Frank didn’t have a chance of breaking free. Frank found his keys and opened the front door.

  His apartment was in darkness, and so he switched on the spotlights. Lieutenant Roberts walked into the center of the living room and looked around, while Detective Mancini went through to the kitchen.

  “Very stylish place you have here,” said Lieutenant Roberts. He picked up a small chrome statuette of a dancing nude. “Jon Diavolo,” he said. “Must have cost you a good few ulcer treatments.”

  “It was a gift from my sister.”

  Lieutenant Roberts put it down. He picked up a book of matches from the Red Bench on Sullivan Street, a onetime Mafia hangout, but now a popular bar for SoHo drinkers who didn’t like tourists. “Where did you say Ms. Fireman climbed in?”

  “I didn’t. But the bedroom window was the only one that was open.”

  “You want to show me?”

  Frank led him through to the bedroom. The sheets were still twisted, and the pillows were scattered across the floor.

  “Rough night?” asked Lieutenant Roberts. Frank shrugged, but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His throat was raging, and his skin felt as if he had burned himself sunbathing, and then climbed into a scalding bath.

  Lieutenant Roberts inspected the window and then he said, “Beats me how anybody could get in there. Even a contortionist.”

  “I’m really going to have to lie down,” said Frank. Maybe if he wrapped himself up in a sheet and crouched on the bed in the fetal position, his skin wouldn’t burn so fiercely. Oh God, help me, he thought. Tatal nostru, carele esti in ceruri.

  “Are you in a hurry to get rid of us?” asked Lieutenant Roberts. He opened up Frank’s closet and inspected his neatly arranged shirts and suits. “Very nice threads,” he remarked. “Good to see a man who cares about his clothes.”

  At that moment Detective Mancini came in.

  “Nobody?” said Lieutenant Roberts.

  Detective Mancini shook his head. “I even checked the laundry hamper.”

  “Okay, then. It looks like we need to get back to the precinct, and add to the general sense of helplessness. Thanks for showing us around, doc. Why don’t you get some rest, that’s my recommendation, and maybe something solid to eat.”

  Through the bedroom door, Frank saw a quick, pale flicker. At first glance he thought that it was Detective Mancini’s shirt, reflected in the full-length mirror that hung in the hall. But as Detective Mancini stepped to one side, away from the mirror, Frank saw to his horror that it was Susan Fireman. She was wearing her simple white gown, and her face was white, too, as if it had been dusted with flour. But she wasn’t in the hall.

  She was inside the mirror, as if the mirror were an open doorway, and she were standing in another room.

  Detective Mancini had his back to the mirror, and couldn’t see her, even though he was only five or six inches away. “Ready to hit the bricks then, Lieutenant?”

  “Mmh-hmh. I’m coming.” Lieutenant Roberts was taking a last look under the bed, just to make sure that nobody was hiding there.

  Frank shouted out, in a hoarse, breathless voice, “There! For Christ’s sake! She’s there! Look! Behind you! She’s there!”

  Susan Fireman turned toward him and gave him a wicked, conspiratorial smile.

  “There!” Frank repeated.

  Detective Mancini frowned, and said, “What? Where?”

  He started to turn around, but Susan Fireman’s arms flowed out of the mirror and Frank saw the sharp glint of steel. With one deep, diagonal cut, she sliced Detective Mancini’s throat all the way across, flooding his collar with scarlet. Detective Mancini took one jerky step forward, trying to balance, then another. He looked totally bewildered. But then his head tilted backward and a huge fountain of blood came gushing out of his neck, spurting right up to the ceiling and all across the magnolia-painted walls. He tipped sideways and fell against the hall bureau, knocking his head against the brass handles. He lay on his stomach, his feet jiggling in a desperate little dance.

  Lieutenant Roberts said, “What the fuck—” He reached inside his coat, trying to pull his gun out, but he wasn’t quick enough for Susan Fireman. She stepped out of the mirror and then—blink—she was already in the bedroom, as if several frames of her movements had been edited out. Lieutenant Roberts was turning around to face her, his gun half out of its holster, but then—blink—she was standing right behind him.

  Frank shouted, “Susan!” but he was already too late. Susan Fireman slit Lieutenant Roberts’ throat so quickly that he didn’t even see her do it. Blood burst out from beneath his chin and immediately soaked the front of his shirt.

  Without hesitation, Susan Fireman pushed Lieutenant Roberts onto his knees, but then she seized his collar so that he couldn’t fall forward onto his face. She looked up at Frank and her pale-blue eyes were bulging. “Here!” she panted. “Here’s what you need, Frank! This will make you feel better!”

  She gripped Lieutenant Roberts’ curly gray hair and pulled his head back, so that the wound in his throat gaped even wider. She had cut incredibly deep, right through his sternocleidomastoid muscle, severing his external jugular vein and his carotid artery.

  Frank stared at the wound in horror, and then at Susan Fireman. Her face was almost luminous with excitement. “Look at it!” she told him. You’re letting it all go to waste! God almighty, Frank, if you don’t have it, then I will!”

  As a doctor, Frank had sworn never to hurt anybody. Above all, I shall not play God. But Lieutenant Roberts was probably semiconscious by now, and there was absolutely no chance of saving his life. Meanwhile, Frank’s skin was burning hotter and hotter. He felt as if he had been doused in gasoline and set ablaze, and his throat was so dry and constricted that his vocal cords had shriveled.

  And there was something else, too. A dark and uncontrollable need was rising up inside him like a shark rising to the surface of the ocean, drawn by the scent of blood. Frank had never realized before how strongly blood smelled, even fresh blood, but he could smell it now. Warm, and metallic, and teeming with life. In spite of his agony, or partly because of it, his penis began to harden, and he began to salivate.

  Oh God forgive me, he thought. He hesitated for a moment, looking one way and then the other, but then he knelt down, cupping Lieutenant Roberts’ chin in his left hand, and placing his right hand flat on his chest, so that he could tilt his head back even further. Blood was jumping seven or eight inches out of Lieutenant Roberts’ carotid artery, and when Frank leaned forward with his mouth open, it splashed against Frank’s cheek, and then his nose. For a split second, he thought that he could find the strength to turn away, but then blood spurted across his lips, and when he involuntarily licked it, the taste overwhelmed him.

  With a grunt of sheer greed, he clamped his lips over Lieutenant Roberts’ wound so that his warm blood would jet directly onto the roof of his mouth. The flavor was astonishing. It tasted like iron, and molasses, and raw meat, and oysters, and the fresh juices of sexually aroused women. He swallowed, and almost at once his throat began to open up, and he felt an extraordinary cooling sensation, starting at the top of his head, and gradually sinking down his body, as if somebody with very cold hands was lightly teasing him from top to toe. He swallowed more, and more. He couldn’t swallow enough of it. His penis was so rigid that it hurt, and when the blood flow from Lieutenant Roberts’ carotid artery started to weaken, and he had to suck harder, he felt himself ejaculate, and his shorts fill up with sticky wet semen.

  But he went on swallowing, and swallowing, and gasping for air, until he suddenly it was all too rich for him, and he retched, and vomited blood all down the front of Lieutenant Roberts’ coat.

  Slowly, he lifted his head. Susan Fireman was looking down at him with an expression that he had never seen on any human being before. In a way, it reminded him of the slanting shadow-creature that he had seen in the morgue. It was a mixture of contempt, and pity, but relief, too, as if he were a wayward son who had at last decided to come home.

  12

  BLOOD RELATIVES

  “I can’t help you with this, Harry,” said Amelia. “This isn’t your Uncle Walter trying to get his revenge on you because you sold off his precious stamp collection.”

  “Amelia, I never had an Uncle Walter.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I’m simply trying to tell you that this is way out of my league.”

  “But you’re the best! You’re the crème de la milk.”

  Amelia emphatically shook her head. “When it comes to small-scale stuff, like people’s dead relatives, I’m fine, Harry, I can handle it. A wife dies, her husband remarries. The wife’s dead but she still feels jealous. She starts throwing pots and pans across the kitchen, or maybe she creates obnoxious smells in the bedroom, when her husband’s trying to make love. I can talk to a spirit like that, negotiate with her, calm her down. I can make her understand that life has to go on, even though she’s passed over. But this is something else altogether. This is one of the reasons I gave up clairvoyance. This is very deep water, Harry, and you could easily drown.”

  I had picked up my beer bottle to take a swig but now I put it down again. “Amelia—when Misquamacus was reincarnated—you were amazing. He was the greatest Indian wonder-worker in history, and you were more than a match for him, weren’t you? We wouldn’t even have known who Misquamacus was, or what he was trying to do, if it hadn’t been for you.”

  Bertie cleared his throat. “If my wife does not feel that she can help you, Harry, you will have to accept it.”

  “But she can help us. She has to. I mean, who else is there?”

  Amelia picked up the piece of paper with STRIGOI written on it. “Your friend Gil here is absolutely right. This is one of the Romanian words for ‘vampires.’ I don’t know very much about them, only what my friend Razvan Dragomir has told me, but I do know that these are supposed to be real, live vampires, not storybook vampires, and that most Romanians are still very afraid of them—not just peasants, city-dwellers, too—educated people, like doctors and university professors and lawyers.”

  “So I was right, and we are being invaded by vampires?”

  “This is absurdness!” Bertie protested. “Just because you can’t understand something, you believe immediately that it must be supernatural! Wampires indeed! Are we children? There is no such thing as wampires!”

  None of us said anything, but we all looked at each other, like students waiting for their angry teacher to finish ranting.

  Bertie said, “In a few days, hopefully, the doctors will discover that this epidemic is caused by a pathogen that infects people with a very unpleasing thirst for human blood. The pathogen will be isolated and an antidote will be formulated. It will be straightforward science, my friend. Nothing to do with garlic and crosses and stakes through the heart.”

  “You think so?” I challenged him. “In that case, how come I saw Singing Rock and Singing Rock gave me the letters that make up the Romanian word for vampires? That wasn’t straightforward science, was it?”

  “No,” said Bertie. “It was your fevered imagination, running like a guinea pig in a little wheel.”

  “Now come on, Bertie—” I began.

  But Amelia said, “Harry . . . Bertil simply doesn’t believe in ghosts and demons and things like that. He thinks that they’re caused by a glitch in the human brain.”

  “In particular, an aberration of the amygdala,” said Bertie, “the center of human fear.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “Amelia hasn’t told you about Misquamacus?”

  “Of course. Amelia has told me everything about the life she lived before we met.”

  “Bertie—Misquamacus was no aberration of the Dalai Lama, or whatever it is. He was an Indian wonder-worker from three hundred years ago and he was reincarnated in a woman’s neck. Not just any woman, either, but the woman I married. We saw it for ourselves. I saw it, Amelia saw it. Misquamacus almost managed to summon up some of the greatest forces that the ancient world had ever known. Storms, lightning, earthquakes, it was unbelievable. He could have reduced the whole of Manhattan to rubble. If it hadn’t been for Amelia and Singing Rock . . . well, God knows what would have happened. But that was real.”