Manitou Blood (39 page)

I could see Bertie looking fidgety, so I kissed her on the forehead and said, “You know me. Erskine the Indestructible. Come on, Gil, we'd better
frappez le trottoir
.”

Gil left me on the corner of Leroy Street so that he could go back to his apartment and check up on his wife and daughter. The city was still silent as I walked back, but just as I climbed the steps of the Dragomirs' house, I was convinced that I heard a man screaming. I stopped, and listened, but it wasn't repeated. I went inside, and made sure that the door was locked behind me.

Upstairs, Jenica was lying on the couch asleep. One of her father's diaries was lying open on the carpet beside her. I shook her shoulder and she opened her eyes and stared at me as if she didn't recognize me.

“Oh. . . . I was having such a strange dream.”

“Nothing could be stranger than what we just did.”

Jenica sat up and stretched her back. “How did it go? Did your séance work?”

“
Work?
We raised up the meanest vampire-hunting SOB you can possibly imagine. Monster Slayer! Like,
yesss
! He was made up of smoke, and dust, that's all. But you should have seen him. He has these horns like a demon, and this dazzling light that comes out of his eyes. It's like a death ray.
Zap!
And then
bam!
And there's a huge great hole in the wall.”

“Will he fight the
strigoi
for us?”

“You should have been there, Jenica, I mean it. Changing Woman appeared and she was four different women, only the same woman at four different ages. Then Changing Woman called up Monster Slayer. Amelia's whole apartment was totaled, I mean it was
wrecked
, but the whole thing was unbelievable.”

“Harry—this Monster Slayer—will he fight the
strigoi
for us?”

I began to calm down. “Yes, yes. He'll fight the
strigoi
. Well, he said he would. All we can do is wait and see.”

“Then that is good, is it not? That was a successful mission?”

“Yes, that was a successful mission. Well, I hope it was. We certainly did our best.”

Jenica picked up her father's diary. “I have learned very much, too, while you were gone.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Harry—listen to me. I have learned things that before now I never understood. For instance, why my father was always so obsessed with hunting down the
strigoi
.”

“I could really use a drink, Jenica.”

“I also learned very important information about myself.”

I poured myself a glass of
palinca
, and I was about to knock it back when I realized that Jenica was trying to tell me something very serious.

I stared at her. “You're upset, aren't you?”

“It has been a shock. I never knew any of this before.”

“Tell me.”

“In his diary, my father says that he met my mother in 1969 when he was a student, in university in Romania, and she was working in the café where he used to study. He says they fell in love deeply and wanted to get married, but her father, Nicolai, threw a big rage when they told him
about their relationship and forbade them to see each other anymore. After many arguments my father took my mother to United States with him and they were married here in New York, without her father's knowledge.”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“My father and my mother were very happy and they could never understand why my grandfather had been so angry that they should not marry. But three years later, when my mother was expecting me, my father took her back to Romania, so that they should have a reconciliation with my grandfather. My father is very honorable, and he believed that no man should be estranged from his daughter or his grandchild.

“I'm with you so far,” I said. I swallowed
palinca
, and let out a bark like a sheepdog. “What makes me think that this happy family reunion didn't turn out so happy?”

“Because, now that my mother was pregnant, my grandfather was forced to tell my father and my mother why he had opposed so fiercely their relationship. He said that when
she
was pregnant, my grandmother, Ecaterina, had traveled to Horezu in the mountains to visit her cousins. On the way, the bus broke down, and when night was falling, the driver and the seven passengers had been stranded in the forest near Caciulata.

“In the morning, the driver and six of the passengers were found murdered, with their throats cut, but my grandmother had survived, just—although she had been raped many times.

“Only a few days later, my grandmother developed a burning fever, just like Frank. She gave birth to my mother prematurely, and then she died. She had been infected by the
strigoi
, and she had become one of the pale people. My grandfather named my mother Mariana, which means ‘bitter grace.' ”

Jenica handed me her father's diary, with its floppy leather cover. She pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of
the page, and said, “Read.” Razvan Dragomir's writing was very neat, and intense, the writing of a man who has a terrible thing to tell, but wants it to be clearly understood.

“ ‘Nicolai told me that after Ecaterina had died, one of the oldest and most venerable of the gynecologists at the Pitesti Clinic took him into a private room. The gynecologist said that he would explain to Nicolai what had happened to Ecaterina, and what might happen to Mariana as she grew up, but he must never breathe a word to anybody, for fear of attracting the attention of the undead.

“ ‘Given certain conditions, baby Mariana's health should not be adversely affected by the sickness that had claimed her mother's life. However her bloodstream would always carry the
strigoica
strain, which could never be eliminated, even by complete transfusion. This strain would be passed down through the female side of the family, forever. Unlike a full-blooded
strigoica
, Mariana would not be unduly sensitive to sunlight, and she would not have the same insatiable thirst for human blood. But she would have many of the characteristics of the pale people, such as the ability to contort her body into seemingly impossible positions, and to climb seemingly impossible obstacles. Furthermore, the gyneocologist said that she would also be able to ‘pass through the silver doors' whenever she wished, although he did not clearly explain to Mariana's father what he meant by this.”

I lowered the diary. “Silver doors,” I said. “Could that mean mirrors? Don't tell me your mother could walk through mirrors.”

But Jenica said, “Carry on. There's more.”

“ ‘The gynecologist clearly explained to Nicolai that if Mariana were to bear any girl-child, that girl-child would similarly be infected with the
strigoica
strain. Boy-children would not be affected, and neither would any man with whom she had sexual congress, except if she performed the ritual of Samodiva before she did so. The ritual of
Samodiva would make the man's blood vulnerable to the
strigoica
strain, and he would almost certainly become infected, too.”

I put the book down again. “So what your dad's saying in his diary—your grandmother passed the
strigoica
strain onto your mother, and your mother passed the strain onto you, and if
you
ever have a daughter, she's going to be the same. Jesus, Jenica, you're half a vampire. And he never
told
you? Jesus.”

Jenica's eyes were glistening with tears. “He has always tried to keep me away from boys, all my life.”

“Don't tell me you've never—”

“No, no, of course not. How could he stop me? But he has always turned very cold and hostile if he thinks that I am serious about any particular boyfriend, and he never allows me to bring any of them back to this apartment. He always says that the only man a girl really needs is her father. I always used to think that he was being over-possessive. But all he wanted to do was to stop me from having children. Girl-children, anyhow.”

“This gets madder by the minute. Did you ever guess your mother could walk through mirrors? Do you think that
she
ever guessed that she could walk through mirrors?”

“I don't think so. From what my father wrote in his diary, I believe that he did not really understand what ‘silver doors' were, any more than my grandfather, Nicolai, did. After all, there is very little in any of the legends to say that
strigoi
can hide inside mirrors, is there? So even with all of his research he may not discovered what this meant.”

I was finding it almost impossible to get my head around all of this, but I could understand why Jenica was so distressed. It was bad enough finding out that you were blood-related to the undead, without discovering that your father had known about it for years, and kept it quiet.

I poured myself another glass of
palinca
, right to the brim, and I filled up Jenica's glass, too.

Jenica said, “Look.” She held up her left hand, and bent her thumb right back until it was touching her wrist. “I could always do things like this. I used to think that it was ordinary.”

It was grotesque, but it was fascinating, too. “Pity we don't have any mirrors left,” I said. “
You
could try walking through the silver doors, too.”

“I don't think I would wish to try that. Who knows what kind of a world there is, on the other side of the mirror? Who knows if I could ever find my way back? And if that is where the
strigoi
are all hiding during the day—what a frightening place it must be.”

“Still, it would be interesting to see if you could just maybe poke your pinkie into a mirror.”

Jenica was silent for a while. Then she wiped her eyes with her fingers and said, “Are you hungry? You must be hungry. I have some canned pasta, I think.” Jenica made us a meal of cold Chef Boy-ar-Dee spaghetti Bolognese and Saltine crackers. We sat in the living room in the gathering gloom and I told her all about Changing Woman and Amelia's séance. I didn't want to ask her any more about her father's diaries. She obviously needed time to think them over.

“So—how do you plan to find this Misquamacus?” she asked me.

“I'm hoping that Monster Slayer is going to track down Vasile Lup, and burn him up. If he does that, Misquamacus won't have a spirit to hide in anymore.”

“All the same, he sounds tenacious, this Misquamacus. To revive himself, even when his spirit was scattered. . . .”

“He's not going to rest until he gets his revenge, that's why.”

“
You
should take a rest. You look exhausted.”

I stood up, and took Jenica's plate for her. “I will, when this is over. Maybe you and I could take a vacation together. You could show me Romania.”

“Romania? I never want to go back to Romania. Without
the superstition of Romania, this would never have happened. They are fools and peasants in Romania. How do you think they tolerated Ceaucescu for so long?”

“Don't ask me. We reelected Bill Clinton.”

The sun set, messy and yellow, like a fried egg with the yolk broken, but still Gil wasn't back. I stood by the open window, keeping a lookout and trying to make the best of a slack, sultry breeze. By 10:45
P.M
. it was almost ridiculously dark, with two hours to go before moonrise, so I was peering out at total blackness. Now and then I thought I glimpsed a hunched-up shape scurry from one side of the street to the other. Could have been the pale people, could have been
strigoi
, could have been my eyes playing tricks on me. I heard screaming again, over toward James Walker Park; and then again, to the south, toward Clarkson Street, and about twenty minutes later I saw six or seven small fires burning.

I was sure that I could feel hysteria in the air, although it may have been nothing but my own exhaustion. I was hoping that the monster slayers were out there tonight, running down the
strigoi
, but as the hours went by I became less and less convinced that they would really come to save us. Did Native American spirits always keep their promises? They probably did—but did they keep their promises to white men?

I was about to close the window when I heard shouting in the street below, and footsteps. I leaned out, but at first I couldn't see anybody. Then I saw a flashlight dancing from side to side, as if it was being held by somebody who was running.

“Harry! Open the door, Harry! The bastards are after me!”

“Hold on!” I shouted back.

I vaulted over the couch, into the hallway, and out of the apartment door. Jenica said, “Harry? What is it?
Harry!
”

Gil was already beating on the front door, and screaming out, “Harry! For Christ's sake open the door!”

I took the stairs, gripping the handrails and vaulting down them seven at a time. When I reached the second landing I staggered and twisted my ankle, but I managed to do a complicated pirouette and regain my balance. I threw myself down the next flight, hobbled along the hallway and wrenched open the front door.

Gil threw himself at me and we both went sprawling backward onto the floor. I jarred my shoulder blade and there was blood everywhere—all over my hands, all over my face, all over my shirt. I looked over Gil's shoulder and there stood three pale-faced men, caught in the upward beam from Gil's flashlight. One of them was wearing a heavily bloodstained sweatshirt, as if he had been working in an abbatoir. The second was half-naked, and flabbybellied, and covered in huge blue weals; and the third was dressed in a tattered suit, like a down-and-out mortician. I saw knives glinting, and I heard that thick, thirsty
hurrrrhhhhhhh
,
hurrrrhhhhhh
,
hurrrhhhhhh.

“Gil!” I yelled at him. “Gil, for Christ's sake get off me!”

Gil opened his eyes and stared at me. He coughed, right in my face, and then he managed to heave himself up onto one knee. I wriggled out from under him, twisted myself to one side, and kicked out at the first of the
strigoi
as he tried to step into the hallway.