Manitou Blood (34 page)

Jenica was close behind us.

“What's happening to Frank?” I asked her.

“I don't know! I didn't see! We have to leave quick, and find someplace to hide ourselves! The Vampire Gatherer is after us!”

“I'm not leaving here without Frank!”

“He's
dead
, man!” said Gil. “There's nothing you can do for him now!”

There was another thunderous crash against the other side of the kitchen door, and this time the frame began to come away from the plaster. I could hear something else, too. The same cathedral-like whispering that I had heard in my bedroom, when Singing Rock had first conjured up the Vampire Gatherer for me. Scores of voices,
hundreds
of them, and all of them chanting for our blood.

“Let's just get the hell out of here!” said Gil.

But Jenica said, “No—there will be many more waiting for us outside. We won't stand a chance!”

“Then what?”

“I need my crucifix, and my candles, and the book of
svarcolaci.
These strigoi are only Vasile Lup's children, but Vasile Lup himself will be coming for us, and our only chance is to send him back to his casket!”

Crash!
The kitchen door began to splinter, and dust sifted down from the ceiling.
Crash!
One of the center panels broke, and two or three knives started furiously chopping at it from the other side.

We turned toward the living room, but as we did so Susan Fireman abruptly appeared from the bedroom. She stood in the hallway and there was something about her that electrified me with dread. She was staring at us wide-eyed and her irises were so pale that it looked as if she had no irises at all. But she looked triumphant.

“Come,” she said, and made a beckoning gesture. Not to us, but toward the bedroom.

“Oh, Christ,” said Gil. “Tell me this isn't true.”

But we had to believe it, because he came out of the bedroom and he looked just the same as he had when he was alive. Frank, his cheeks drained of color, just like Susan Fireman's, his eyes unfocused, but walking, and obviously conscious.

“Frank,” I said. “Frank, can you hear me?”

He turned his head slightly and stared at me. At that instant,
crash!
the kitchen door was shaken yet again, and this time another panel was kicked right out. Three or four hands came struggling through, trying to find the key.

“I can hear you, Harry,” said Frank. “I might be dead but I'm not deaf.” His voice didn't sound any different, except that it had a kind of
empty
quality about it, as if he were reading his words from a script, and didn't really understand what he was saying.

“Frank, you should stay here, Frank. The
strigoi
want to take you away, but you're better off dead, believe me.”

“I have to go, Harry. I don't have any choice.”

“My
book
,” Jenica muttered. “My
book
, and my crucifix, and my holy water.”

She went into the living room. As she did so, one of the lower panels of the kitchen door was kicked out. Gil started to beat at the vampires' feet with his baseball bat. It was only going to be seconds now, before they came through—and then I knew that we were finished. There were too many of them, and they were thirsting for our blood too badly.

“Come on, Frank,” said Susan Fireman, taking his arm. “Vasile is ready for us. Come.”

The two of them took a step toward us, and the second they did so,
snap
, the entire hallway was flooded with blinding sunlight. It lit up everything—the draperies, the oil paintings, the dusty chandeliers. I turned around, and saw that the huge full-length mirror opposite the front door wasn't showing a reflection any more, but a sunlit beach, with dry white sand, and blowing grass, and white-painted summer houses, and clouds.

Gil said, “Shit. It's the
mirror
, man. Frank was telling us the truth.”

Susan Fireman led Frank along the hallway, arm in arm. I stepped right in front of them and said, “Stop.”

But Susan Fireman simply smiled. “You can't stop us, not now. You should know that—
you
, of all people.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because it was you who gave Vasile the power to come back.”

“
I
gave him the power? How did I give him the power? What are you trying to say to me?”

She didn't answer. She was looking right past me, toward the mirror, and the windy seashore. I looked around, too, and in the distance I could see a dark figure walking quickly toward us, with a long, determined stride. It was the same figure that Singing Rock had shown me, in my bedroom. It was slanting, and distorted, and it always seemed to lean away from the sunlight, as if it were a collection of shadows, rather than a man.

All the same, I could see its face—or
faces
, rather, because they appeared to shift with every step it took. One second it was thin and wolf-like, the next it was nothing but a white oval, with slits for eyes. It approached faster and faster and I had never seen anything so frightening in my life.

I turned back to Frank, but suddenly Frank and Susan Fireman had
blinked
along the hallway until they were facing the mirror. Inside the glass, the sand was blowing and the grass was whistling and the sea was all churned up, but I couldn't feel any wind inside the apartment, and I couldn't hear the surf. Here in the hallway, it was hot and airless, and I was deafened by the sound of Gil beating at the kitchen door, and the cracking of the door frame, and the feverish whispering of all those thirsty
strigoi.

“
Frank!
” I yelled at him. Then, much more quietly, “Frank, don't do it!”

Frank looked around. I couldn't make out if he was feeling regretful, or resigned. The next thing I knew, he was taking a step toward the mirror, and he walked clear through the glass as if there was nothing there at all. His image was momentarily
warped
, as if I was looking at him through water. But then I could actually see him standing three or four feet away, on the sand, with the wind ruffling his hair. The dark slanting creature was less than a hundred feet away from him now, and it was still loping toward us.

Susan Fireman hesitated for a moment. “Bring him back,” I asked her.

“I can't do that. He's one of us now, and he always will be. He's mine.”

“You like him, don't you?”

But again she didn't answer me. She turned her back on me and stepped right into the mirror. There was that momentary distortion, and there she was standing right next to Frank.

I thought for a split second that the mirror was going to darken again, and go back to being a normal mirror. But it stayed brightly sunlit, and Frank and Susan Fireman began to walk away, quite quickly, in the direction of the dunes, and the distant summer houses; while Vasile Lup
the Vampire Gatherer continued to advance on us.

I suddenly remembered what Frank had told us about Susan Fireman coming out of the mirror and cutting that detective's throat. Vampires could step in and out of mirrors as if they were doors. And this one, the arch-vampire, the
svarcolaci
, was heading straight for us. Now it was less than thirty feet away, and its pace was even quicker than before. It was almost running. It was coming for us.

“Jenica!” I dodged into the living room and almost collided with her. She was coming out with her crucifix and her bottle of holy water, with her book open at the page on Vasile Lup.

At the same time, Gil shouted, “
Harry!
Help me, man! They're breaking through!” The
strigoi
had smashed all of the panels out of the kitchen door, and all that was holding them back were the central cross rails. Gil was beating frantically at their groping arms, but it was clear that he couldn't hold them off for much longer.

I picked up the nearest weapon I could find—the decorated bone which we had found in the Vampire Gatherer's casket. I went back into the hallway just as the Vampire Gatherer himself was materializing out of the mirror. He was huge, dark, and slanting, with a hundred faces, and he was so cold that he made me gasp. The temperature in the hallway must have dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds.

Jenica lifted up her jewel-studded crucifix. I knew that she was just as terrified as I was, but there was a look of elation on her face, as if she had been born to do this.

“I dismiss you, Vasile Lup! I send you back to your sarcophagus! Let the earth take back the flesh it has given you, and the wind take back the breath it has given you, and the rivers take back their blood! Let the ashes of your soul be scattered like the ashes of your body!”

The apparition opened its mouth, and then another mouth, and yet another mouth. I saw black, ribbed palates
and rows of razor-sharp teeth. It let out a noise that was like the whole of existence being twisted, a groan that made me feel as if every organ in my body was being displaced, and I was going mad.

Gil clamped his hands over his ears, and I fell back against the door frame, stunned, but Jenica held her ground. The Vampire Gatherer was looming over her now, its slanting head almost touching the ceiling, and its face had taken the form that I had seen in the book of
svarcolaci
. . . handsome, but very Romanian, with a thin hawklike nose and heavily lidded eyes.

“I dismiss you, Vasile Lup!” Jenica repeated, and now she flung holy water at him, in the sign of the cross. “May your memory be dispersed with the dust; and your name erased from the tongues of all who ever spoke it. May the stars forget that they ever foretold your destiny; and the moon deny that you ever walked beneath her.”

Vasile Lup threw back his head so that it disappeared into the shadows of his shoulders, and let out another terrible groan. This time, his cry was taken up by the
strigoi
who were crowded in the kitchen, and they kicked and kicked at the cross bars until the door gave way. They poured out into the hallway, bloody and bedraggled, both men and
women, and all of them carrying knives or razors or shards of broken glass.

Gil backed away, brandishing his baseball bat two-handed. The
strigoi
edged forward, panting
urrrhhhhhhh, urrrrrrrhhhhh, urrrrrhhhhh
, until Gil and I were pressed close together, right behind Jenica. She looked around quickly, to see what was happening, but she didn't catch my eye, or give me any indication that she was frightened. She was too busy concentrating on Vasile Lup.

“The seal that was put upon you was more than a seal of wax,” she recited, although her voice was beginning to waver. “It was a seal of the spirit, and its influence remains. The seven prayers that were said upon your incarceration were more than words, and their influence remains. You are disenchanted, Vasile Lup, until the Day of Judgment, and only then can your soul take shape again, so that you may raise your face to the Lord and pledge Him your obedience.”

Gil said, “This is bullshit, man. This is bullshit. These motherfuckers are going to cut us to pieces.”

He shouted, “
Back off!
” and made a sudden thrust at the nearest two
strigoi
, his bat clanking against their knives. They lifted their arms to shield themselves, but then they started advancing on us again. Two ordinary looking men in torn and bloodstained shirts. One of them was a bus driver and the other was probably an office worker of some kind, and there was a pasty-faced girl behind them who reminded me of the girl who served in my local coffee shop.

“I said back off!” Gil repeated, and this time he struck the bus driver on the shoulder. The bus driver retaliated by slashing at Gil's arm, and cutting the heel of his hand.

“
Motherfucker!
” Gil swore at him, and started to beat wildly at the
strigoi
, left and right, with his blood spraying up the wallpaper.

At the same moment, the Vampire Gatherer seemed to rise up higher and higher, his shadow covering the ceiling,
and the hallway had grown so cold that our breath steamed. Jenica took a step back, still holding up the crucifix, but freezing vapor was pouring out of the darkness and covering her with sparkling particles of ice. It was in her hair, and on her eyebrows, and on her lips. Some of it fell onto my face, too, and it was like being breathed on by a Polar bear, cold and fetid and wet.

“
I dismiss you, Vasile Lup!
” Jenica screamed at him. “
I dismiss you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
”

The ice particles fell thicker and thicker, until they were blinding, and my hair was encrusted with them. The Vampire Gatherer appeared to open its arms, or its wings, and lean down toward Jenica as if were trying to embrace her. They weren't really arms, or wings, they were shadows, but I could guess what would happen if Jenica got folded up in them.

I struck out at the Vampire Gatherer with my decorated leg bone, and shouted out, “Get off her, you bastard! You've been exorcized!”

Something very weird happened then. I felt as if the leg bone had been plugged into the mains. It felt electric, and alive, and it almost
hummed
. I held it up, and I felt as if I was holding up the most powerful weapon in the world, more powerful than any sword. Suddenly, I didn't feel afraid any more. I was calm, and I was strong, and
I knew my enemy.

I heard myself speaking. It was my voice, but the words were somebody else's. It was extraordinary. My tongue was moving as if it didn't belong to me, and I didn't even know what I was going to say next.

“So you have managed to come back to us, O worker of magic and miracles, and this is where you have been concealing yourself! A spirit concealed within a spirit, concealed within a reflection! I should have known it was you. Only you could be so vengeful. Only you could have such wholesale bloodlust!”