Frank looked down at his hands. His skin was burning so painfully that he had to curl his fingers, and he bit his lips to stop himself from sobbing out loud. But he knew that sobbing wouldn’t do him any good. He needed to think. Think, Frank. He was a doctor. He needed to find out where this disease had originated, and how it was being spread so rapidly. He needed to find out how to cure himself, before he “passed over,” too. And then he had to work out a way to inoculate the rest of the city’s population.

  Before he did anything, he knew that he had to accept one impossible fact: People who were infected by this disease could walk and talk after they had appeared to be clinically dead. Susan Fireman had died, and yet she had managed to climb into his apartment and kill Lieutenant Roberts and Detective Mancini. Already, the city streets must be crowded with people like her. Dead people—or technically dead people—walking.

  He searched his apartment, room by room. He opened cupboard doors and even checked under the sink. There was no sign of Susan Fireman anywhere, so she must have left. But what had she asked him, in his dream?

  “Why don’t you step inside the looking glass? You can be safe there.”

  He went back to the hallway. It suddenly came back to him now. Susan Fireman had been standing inside the mirror. Not her reflection—her, behind the glass. Detective Mancini had backed toward her, and she had reached out of the mirror and cut his throat.

  Frank stepped over Lieutenant Roberts again. There were bloody smudges all over the carpet, in every direction. The pile was too thick for them for them to be clearly identified as footprints, except in the bedroom, around the spot where Susan Fireman had actually cut Lieutenant Roberts’ throat. Here, there was a huge dark patch of blood that was still wet, and small bare footprints crisscrossing right through it. On one side, however, the footprints headed directly toward the cheval-mirror. Where they finished.

  Shaking with pain, Frank knelt down on the carpet and carefully picked up a handful of shattered glass. At least two of Susan Fireman’s footprints were underneath the glass, so the mirror must have been smashed after she walked up to it. But there were no footprints heading away from it.

  So maybe his dream hadn’t all been illusory. Maybe Susan Fireman had stepped into the cheval-mirror, and maybe she had beckoned him to follow her inside. And maybe the half-brick hadn’t been a half-brick, but his onyx box.

  He suddenly thought to himself: vampires can’t survive in sunlight, can they? Not in the legends, at least. That’s why they return to their coffins, when dawn breaks. But what if they can’t find coffins to hide in, or seamlessly dark places? Where do they go?

  It seemed impossible, but maybe there was a hiding place for vampires. A hiding place that was always bright, but which no light could ever penetrate. The world of mirrors.

  Frank went into the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer, and took out the hammer that he used for flattening steaks. Then he walked around the whole apartment, smashing every single mirror, even the shaving mirror in the bathroom. Maybe he was losing his mind, but mirrors could be replaced, and if he was right, he might have found a way to protect himself from Susan Fireman and her shadow-creature. If they hid inside mirrors during daylight hours, then breaking mirrors was as good as bricking up doors.

  He looked at the square black Italian clock in the living-room. It was 7:37 in the morning. He needed to get back to the Sisters of Jerusalem and tell the Death Troll what he had discovered. He was sure that if the hospital’s pathology team knew what they were really up against, they could isolate the cause of this epidemic much more quickly. He lifted one arm, and sniffed. He stank of blood and stale sweat, but he couldn’t face the idea of taking a shower. Instead, he went back to the bathroom and pulled down the blind. Then he took off all of his clothes, and carefully wiped himself all over with a facecloth soaked in Dolce & Gabbana aftershave—face, neck, chest and underarms. He winced when he wiped the scratches on his scrotum, but he needed to feel clean and sterilized all over.

  When he was finished cleaning himself, he smothered his face with a thick layer of sunscreen, factor 30, which he had bought for his skiing vacation last year in Vail. Then he dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater, and gloves. Finally, he pulled a black ski hood over his head, and put on a pair of Ray-Bans. He looked like the Invisible Man.

  Before he opened his front door, he stood with his hand pressed against it, breathing deeply to control his pain. His skin was on fire, and his thirst for blood was so fierce that he felt like one of the addicts who were brought into the Sisters of Jerusalem, quaking with need, all of their humanity lost to their addiction. They would kill for drugs, most of those addicts, and he was sorely tempted to forget about the Sisters of Jerusalem, and do the same.

  “Tatal nostru,” he whispered, “carele esti in ceruri.”

  The sun blinded him as he came down the front steps of his house, even though he was wearing dark glasses. He hadn’t imagined how much the sun would burn him, even through his clothes, and he let out a staccato cry of agony that was almost a laugh. But he managed to cross the street into the shadow of the houses opposite, and he found that if he kept himself out of direct sunlight, the burning was nearly bearable.

  “Tatal nostru,” he repeated. “Carele esti in ceruri.” For some reason the words gave him hope that everything was going to turn out for the better, and that his agony would soon be over.

  Murray Hill was deserted. In the distance, uptown, Frank thought that he could see people hurrying down Third Avenue, and the sharp glint of an automobile window, and from over on the West Side he could hear the wok-wok-wok of police sirens. But here, midtown, the streets were almost completely silent, and there seemed to be nobody left alive. A burned-out Lexus lay halfway across the street, and two or three blocks away Frank thought that he could see bodies lying on the sidewalk, surrounded by squabbling crows, but the glare of the sun was too bright for him to see how many there were.

  “Tatal nostru,” he whispered.

  He hurried across Third Avenue and Lexington and Park. He felt as if he were the only person in New York City left alive. Up above him, the sky was cloudless, except for a few streaks of mares’ tails toward the northwest. Some of the debris that was lying in the streets was so strange that he couldn’t imagine who had left it there, or why. On Lexington, a grand piano was standing in the middle of the road, and on Park he came across piles of men’s tuxedos, strewn across the sidewalk. It looked as if an orchestra had been attacked by marauding Indians, and this was all that was left.

  By the time he reached Fifth Avenue, he was close to collapse. His legs were blistering underneath his jeans, and his lips felt as if he had kissed a hot electric iron. Maybe he should turn back. Maybe he should try to find somebody whose blood he could drink. A down-and-out, maybe, somebody whose death wouldn’t really matter. After all, he was much more important than some bum, wasn’t he? If he were to die, nobody would find out the truth about the epidemic, and thousands more people would be killed.

  By the time he reached Thirty-third Street, he had almost persuaded himself to go in search of a victim whose throat he could cut. But as he hurried around the corner, he was suddenly faced by two police cars, and six or seven police officers with dogs and riot shields.

  “Stop!” shouted one of the cops. “Hit the sidewalk, face down!”

  Frank didn’t hesitate. He turned and ran. He knew what would happen if they caught him. They would take off his sunglasses and his hood and the sunlight would incinerate him, right in front of them. That’s if they didn’t shoot him first.

  He ran and ran and kept on running, dodging from one street to the next, and cutting through alleys whenever he could. He heard one of the police cars coming after him, its tires squealing as it slid around the corner. He even glimpsed it, momentarily, as it flashed across Twenty-eighth Street, but he dodged into the doorway of a dry cleaner’s, and stayed there, gasping for breath, until he was sure that it wasn’t going to come doubling back.

  “Tatal nostru,” he panted. Smoke was pouring out of his sleeves. “Tatal nostru, nu ne duce pre noi in ispita . . . but deliver us from evil, amen.” Then he started running again.

  For a while, a mongrel ran alongside him, barking, but when he reached Washington Square it caught sight of a brindled bitch, and tore off after it, between the trees.

  He slowed to a walk. He was burning so badly now that he hardly cared if they caught him. Maybe he should allow himself to die, so that he could join Susan Fireman in the world of mirrors, and absolute darkness. Anything had to be better than this. Even if he could help to isolate an antidote, there was no guarantee that he was going to be able to cure himself.

  He stumbled on and on, crossing street after street. He had completely lost his sense of direction. He didn’t know where the Sisters of Jerusalem was and he no longer cared. He just wanted the pain to stop.

  Halfway across Barrow Street, he dropped to his knees. He stayed there, with his head lowered, trying to summon up the strength to carry on. Our Father, which art nowhere to be found, please rescue me. Gradually, however, he became aware that somebody was standing in front of him. He looked up, slowly, and saw a muscular young man in a khaki T-shirt and Desert Storm pants. The man was holding a pickax handle in one hand, which he kept slapping into the palm of his other hand.

  “Don’t think you’re coming any further, fella,” the young man told him, flatly.

  Frank coughed, and coughed, and spat blood. “I don’t think I could come any further if I tried.”

  “This area is off-limits to bloodsuckers. Maybe your problem isn’t your fault, but we don’t want you around here. So I suggest you turn around and stagger back the way you come.”

  “I’m a doctor,” said Frank.

  “What?”

  “I’m a doctor. I’ve caught the virus, but I haven’t cut anybody’s throat yet, and with any luck I won’t have to.”

  He tried again to climb to his feet but the young man jabbed him in the breastbone with his pickax handle, so that he dropped back onto his knees. “You stay away from me, man. You hear me? You stay well away. I don’t want to catch that thing, too.”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely,” said Frank. “It’s a sexual disease . . . it gets passed from person to person through the exchange of bodily fluids.”

  “You mean like AIDS?”

  “Exactly like AIDS.”

  “So how do you know that?”

  “Because I’m a doctor. And because that’s the way I caught it.”

  “Through having sex?”

  “That’s right, through having sex. Now I’m trying to get back to the Sisters of Jerusalem. I can’t call them because all the phone lines are dead, and my cell phone won’t work, and my computer server’s down, too. But they need to know what I’ve discovered.”

  “If you’re trying to get to the Sisters of Jerusalem, man, you’re way off. Do you know where you are?”

  Frank looked around. His eyes were blinded by the sun and his head was throbbing so hard that he could barely think.

  “I don’t know . . . Seventh Avenue, in the twenties?”

  “You’re way down in the West Village. Hudson Street, at Barrow.”

  Frank managed to get up on one knee. “I have to get to the Sisters of Jerusalem.”

  “I don’t care where you have to get to, buddy, so long as you turn yourself around and head back exactly where you came from.”

  “But nobody else understands. They’re vampires, that’s what they are. Not just ordinary people sucking blood. They’re real, genuine vampires. They call themselves strigoi.”

  The young man stared at him acutely. “Did you just say what I thought you just said?”

  Frank felt confused. His head was throbbing more painfully than ever, and he was sure that he could smell his body hair burning. “What? I don’t know what I said.”

  “You said strigoi. You know about strigoi?”

  “Well, no—not very much. But I know what they are, and I know where they hide when the sun comes up. At least, I’m pretty sure I do. And I think I know how to stop them coming back, when it gets dark.”

  “But you’re one of them.”

  “Not yet. I’ve been infected, yes, but I haven’t passed over.”

  The young man didn’t seem to know what to do. He looked left and right, and then he said, “You can’t go back to the Sisters of Jerusalem.”

  “Why not?”

  “No point. The last I heard, the place was overrun, and it was on fire.”

  “I still need to find somebody in charge. Somebody from the city health authority, or the CDC.”

  “I don’t know, man . . . the whole damn city’s turned into a nuthouse.”

  Frank coughed up more blood. The young man watched him for a while, and then he said, “Listen, I met this guy, and he knows something about these strigoi, too. I think the best thing you can do right now is come to meet him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Not really, but what else am I going to do?”

  Frank looked up at him, shielding his eyes with his hand. “You may as well know that I have a raging thirst for human blood. I can’t pretend that I don’t. My skin feels like it’s on fire, and if you take me with you, then I can’t give you any guarantees that I’m not going to cut your throat and drink your blood.”

  “What’s your name?” the young man asked him.

  “Frank Winter, MD.”

  “Well, doc, my name’s Gil Johnson, and I’m a National Guardsman with the Rainbow Division, and if you even look at my throat, I’m going to take this pickax handle and I’m going to beat your brains into raspberry Jell-O.”

  Very unsteadily, Frank stood up. “Believe me, Gil, that would probably be a blessed relief.”

  14

  BLOOD OF DRACULEA

  Jenica poured us two glasses of sweet white Romanian wine, and offered me a plate of almond biscuits that tasted like very fine sand. She sat next to me on the velvet-upholstered couch, close enough for our knees to keep touching.

  “My father telephoned me from Bucharest as soon as he heard what was happening in New York. His very first word was, strigoi.”

  I coughed on my biscuit. “Singing Rock specifically warned me not to say that name out loud. You know, in case they heard me saying it, and came after me. He said they would tear me to pieces.”

  “No, no,” Jenica reassured me. “The word strigoi alone is not enough to alert them. Strigoi is just general name for vampires, not any special vampire. Your spirit-guide was warning you, yes, but he must have told you another name, too. A special name.”

  I shook my head. “If he did, I didn’t pick up on it.”

  “Well, if he has not told you yet, he will very soon,” Jenica assured me. “If so many strigoi are suddenly loose in New York, they must have come from a nest.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “A nest is many strigoi who are hiding together, or perhaps sealed up by vampire-hunters. Sometimes they remain concealed for centuries, waiting to escape. My father studied strigoi when he was in Romania, at the university in Babes-Bolyai. He was always convinced right from beginning that there was a nest hidden someplace in New York. He has searched for it for many years, ever since he first came to America. He has visited many libraries and studied many old maps and diaries, but he could never locate them.

  Jenica took hold of my hand and began to emphasize what she meant by tracing patterns on my palm—a sensation that was strangely erotic. “A nest of strigoi will always be guided and controlled by a very powerful vampire spirit, one of the svarcolaci. In English I suppose you would translate one of the svarcolaci as a dead vampire. He does not inhabit his physical body any more, like one of the strigoi, who are the undead. He is what you would call a ghost, or a wandering soul.”

  “Svarcolaci? I never heard of svarcolaci. Mind you, I never heard of strigoi, either, before today.”

  “In Romanian folk stories, another name for one of the svarcolaci is Vampire Gatherer. Once the strigoi from the nest have infected people, the Vampire Gatherer goes out searching for them, and leads them back to the nest. There he teaches them the ways of the night, so that they become strigoi, too.

  “I am sure that it was one of the svarcolaci that your spirit guide was warning you about, because a Vampire Gatherer can hear his name called, at any distance, even in a whisper . . . even if you say it in your dreams. Sometimes you only have to think his name, and he will prick up his ears and come after you.”

  “So—uh—what are they like, these Vampire Gatherers?”

  “They take many different shapes, Mr. Harry, and many different faces. But mostly people call them the Slanting Ones, because they always appear like shadows, leaning away from any source of light. I will show you.”

  Jenica walked across the living room, and brought back a small red leather-bound book from one of the shelves. She opened it up and handed it to me. The text was all in Romanian, but the engraved illustration didn’t need any translation. It showed two small children sleeping in a wooden bed, with a guttering candle on their bedside table. Above them stood a sloping, dark, impossibly stretched-out figure, exactly like the figure that had appeared in my apartment when I was reading Ted Busch’s fortune. I felt a chilly, sinking sensation in my stomach—the feeling you get when you know that things are going badly wrong and there’s nothing that you can do but sit and wait for the worst to happen.

  “I’ve seen him,” I told Jenica, handing the book back. “I’ve seen this sucker for real. Singing Rock showed him to me, in my apartment. This is him, or something very much like him.”

  “Then now we are absolutely sure what we are dealing with,” said Jenica. She studied the picture for a moment and then she closed the book tightly and put it down on the table, with a heavy glass paperweight on top of it, as if the Vampire Gatherer might find a way to escape from between the pages. “There are many svarcolaci and I think my father knows them all, but of course I cannot contact my father yet, until the phones are back.”