Manitou Blood (45 page)

“Have you done the men's yet?”

“I didn't like to. I left that for you.”

“There's nobody
in
there, for Christ's sake.”

Hour after hour, room by room, we smashed every single mirror in the Kensico Country Inn. The moon watched us through one window after another, and then finally sank out of sight. Every now and then, we stopped smashing and listened, in case we heard Vasile Lup and his
strigoi
coming back, but even when the sky flushed pink and the birds started to twitter, they still hadn't returned, and we had finished. We made a last, thorough check, going from one end of the inn to the other, opening closets in case we had missed a mirror that was screwed to the back of a door. We even opened up nightstand drawers, in case somebody had left a vanity mirror next to his Gideon Bible.

Broken glass glittered everywhere and not a single piece of it was large enough for anyone to see one eye in. I had even gone outside and smashed the rearview mirrors of the two SUVs parked on the driveway.

During the night, the level of the pond had fallen dramatically, revealing heaps of soggy green chickweed, and slime-covered rocks, and a child's rusted scooter. There was still an oval-shaped pool of water remaining, about two feet deep and twenty feet across, but it continued to pour steadily out of the drainpipe, and I reckoned that it wouldn't take longer than twenty minutes before it was totally drained.

I looked toward the east. The rim of the sun was just beginning to nibble at the trees.

“They must be back soon,” said Jenica. “I pray that they didn't find themselves another place to hide.”

“I pray, too.”

We went into the inn, and hid in the corner of the lobby, between the heavy blue drapes and a longcase clock. Jenica took out her crucifix and her holy water and laid them on the windowsill. Then she took out the book of
svarcolaci
and turned to the page where Vasile Lup's disenchantment was printed.

“You're ready?” I asked her.

She looked at me with that unreadable expression again.

I was just about to say something else when there was a deafening bang like a bomb going off. The Vampire Gatherer came storming into the lobby, accompanied by his five
strigoi.
He seemed even bigger and darker than he had before, and this time the whole band of them were trailing clouds of smoke. They must have been caught by the sunlight just as they arrived back outside.

They circled around the lobby, beating at their burning coats. All five of the
strigoi
had bloody chins, and the fronts of their clothes were drenched in blood, like slaughterhouse workers. At first, they were too preoccupied with extinguishing their smoldering clothes to notice that anything was different. It was only when the smoke was beginning to clear that the Vampire Gatherer screamed in bewilderment and rage. He stalked up to the broken mirrors, and then twisted around, his shadows slanting away from the windows. His face was contorted with anger, and it seemed as if his shadows were actually
bristling.

Susan Fireman ran across to the mirror in the corridor—the one that Jenica and I had used to get here. When she saw that this mirror was broken, too, she let out a moan of dread. She must have realized what had happened, and she could guess what the outcome was going to be. The tall
strigoi
opened the doors to the restrooms. The other two hurried up the stairs to the conference room. But yes, Jenica and I had even been back in there, where the bodies were all heaped up. We had broken the three floor-to-ceiling mirrors that stood between the windows, and we had search the pockets of the dead.

Of all the
strigoi
, Frank alone stayed where he was, in the center of the lobby. His head was bowed and smoke was creeping out from under his coat. Susan Fireman came up to him with her pale eyes staring. “It was
you!
This is
your
doing, isn't it? I trusted you, Frank! I trusted you! I could have cut your throat and drunk your blood, but I gave you
immortality! Where are they, Frank? Where are they? You brought them here, didn't you? You went to see them and you left the mirrors back-to-back!”

The Vampire Gatherer came up behind Susan Fireman and stared at Frank with such hatred that I felt my skin on my bare scalp shrinking. Frank lifted his head and looked up at him. A thin bar of sunlight was shining across the polished wood floor, and Frank's shoes were starting to smolder.

“You forgot one thing,” said Frank, and he sounded infinitely tired. “When some people make promises, they make them because they intend to keep them, even after death. I promised to value human life, and not even you could force me to go back on that.”

Susan Fireman took two quick steps toward him. She was so quick that I didn't see the knife in her hand. All I saw was a semicircular spray of blood, like a bright red fan, and then Frank pitched backward, with his head falling sideways from his neck as if it was attached by a hinge.

The Vampire Gatherer let out another scream, and this time it sounded like a whole choir, thousands of tortured souls screaming in unison. He took one ungainly lurch toward Frank's body, and then another.

“
Now!
” I told Jenica, and pushed her out from the curtain.

The Vampire Gatherer and his
strigoi
turned to stare at Jenica in astonishment and anger. The
strigoi
were probably the scariest bunch that you could ever meet, with their wild eyes and their blood-soaked coats and smoke pouring out of their collars. But Vasile Lup was a nightmare—the way he kept slanting from one side to the other, and his face shifted and altered from blandness to fury, all in nothing but a few seconds.

What was even more frightening about him was that Misquamacus was hiding inside him, giving him an overwhelming vengefulness far greater than he had ever possessed before, even as a
svarcolaci
.

But Jenica, God bless her, she walked toward them as if they didn't frighten her at all. She held up her jewel-studded crucifix and she sprayed her holy water from side to side and she recited the words of the disenchantment in a high, precise voice.

“I dismiss you, Vasile Lup! I disperse your spirit! 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 Vampire Gatherer tilted forward and roared at her. But Jenica lashed him again with holy water and shouted, “I dismiss you, Vasile Lup! May your memory vanish with the dying day; and your name be washed from the lips of all who ever spoke it. May the stars forget that they ever guided your destiny; and the moon deny that you ever walked beneath her!”

Now the Vampire Gatherer took one staggering step toward her. He opened his mouth, and then another mouth appeared, and yet another, and his screaming made the whole building reverberate, as if a jet bomber were flying right over us.

Jenica turned the page in her book, and she was just about to recite the final dismissal when Susan Fireman rushed toward her and grabbed the book in both hands. Jenica tried to pull it away from her, but Susan Fireman twisted it free.

“
Harry!
” shouted Jenica.

Susan Fireman was heading for the open doors, with the book held close to her chest. I dodged out from behind the curtains and tried to cut her off, but she was too quick for me. She ran down the steps and across the driveway, straight into the rays of the rising sun.

She hadn't run more than twenty feet before smoke began to billow out of her coat. As I ran after her, it blew thicker and thicker, and she began to slow down. Suddenly her hair caught fire, and she screamed in agony.

“Harry! The book!” shouted Jenica. “Don't let her burn the book!”

But it was too late. Susan Fireman had only just reached the grassy slope that led down to the pond when she exploded into flame. She fell sideways and rolled over and over, blazing fiercely. I caught up with her, and tried to
snatch the book, but she was clutching it too close to her, and the heat that rippled up from her was so intense that I couldn't get within three feet of her without burning my hands.

She had stopped screaming now, and she was simply lying in a fetal position on the grass, staring up at me, as the sun cremated her. The skin on her face blistered and blackened, her lips swelled up and cracked. I could see her finger bones appearing through the charred flesh of her hands. The smell of scorched wool and barbecued meat was so strong that I couldn't stop retching.

I swear to God that she smiled at me. I don't know why. Maybe she had always suspected that it would come to this. Even though she was one of the
strigoica
, maybe she still felt some remorse for the people she had murdered.

“Harry!” called Jenica.

I was about to turn around when Susan Fireman blew up, in a pick-a-stick scattering of blackened bones. The book lay among the wreckage of her burned body, its ashy pages curling up one by one, and I could see that it was beyond saving.

“Harry, they're getting away!”

Now I looked back to see the Vampire Gatherer and the three remaining
strigoi
running across the driveway, toward the pond. The oval of water had shrunk even more, but there was still enough reflective surface for Vasile Lup to escape. I drew the decorated bone out of my belt and started to run toward the pond, too. I was sweating and panting and cursing the name of Guinness Breweries with every step.

Smoke was pouring from the Vampire Gatherer's shadows, and by the time they reached the grass, the three
strigoi
were actually alight, with flames flapping behind them like orange flags.

“Harry, you have to stop him!”

I don't know how I managed to run down to that pond
so fast. Maybe Singing Rock had summoned up the Spirit of Wind, to get behind my back and blow me there. Maybe Adelaide Bright caught hold of one hand, and Frank Winter caught hold of the other, and they pulled me along, because they didn't want to have died for nothing.

Whatever it was, I came hurtling down that slope with my arms rotating like windmills, and I splashed knee-deep into the water while the Vampire Gatherer was still thirty feet away from me. The three
strigoi
didn't stand a chance. They were still only halfway down the slope before they exploded, and their fiery remains were strewn across the grass.

I stood in the water, facing the Vampire Gatherer, and I held up the bone.

“That's it, Lup! Don't come any further!”

The Vampire Gatherer's shadows were slanting at almost forty-five degrees away from the sun, and so much black smoke was pouring out of him that I could hardly see his face. He was burning, he was seething with anger, but he stopped where he was. Whatever power that bone contained, it held much more power than the sun.

I saw flames, amid the smoke, and the Vampire Gatherer screamed at me with a thousand voices, like a congregation trapped in a burning cathedral.

“You stay there!” I shouted at him. “You and Misquamacus both!”

I was still standing there with the bone upraised when I saw a black SUV speeding up the driveway, between the maple trees. Jenica was hurrying down toward me, but she must have seen it, too, because she stopped, and stared at it, and shaded her eyes.

Without slowing down, the SUV left the driveway and drove between the trees. It came directly toward us, over the grass, and only twenty yards away, it stopped. A man in
a gray shirt and gray pants climbed out of it, and came hurrying toward me.

“Get the hell out of here!” I yelled at him. “Do you want to get yourself killed?”

But the man ignored me and came splashing into the water to stand beside me. He was fiftyish, with greased-back hair, and a hooked nose. A complicated earring dangled from his left ear, silver and feathery, like a miniature dreamcatcher.

“I am Razvan Dragomir,” he said. Then, as if I hadn't heard him, “I—am Razvan Dragomir.”

“What the hell? You're supposed to be in Bucharest, aren't you?”

“I have always been here. It is too long to explain. Quick—you must let the
svarcolaci
into the water, before he burns.”

“Excuse me? I don't think so. Don't you know what this sucker has done to New York City? He's killed thousands!”

The Vampire Gatherer roared again. More flames were lapping through his shadows, and smoke was trailing all the way across the grassy slope and through the trees. Jenica was skirting around him, one hand lifted to protect her face from the heat, and she was looking totally baffled.

“Father?”

“Jenica, there is no time for me to tell you what has happened. But this man must allow Vasile Lup to escape,
now
, or everything I have ever worked for is finished!”

He took two splashing steps toward me, and tried to grab the bone, but I changed it the other hand and pushed him away.

“There is no time!” he shouted at me. “There is no time! You must let him escape, or he will be lost forever!”

“You must be out of your freaking mind,” I screamed back at him. “Do you know how many people have died?
Do you know how many people have been turned into vampires?”

“Of course I know! Of course! This was how it was always meant to be! Now please allow the Vampire Gatherer to escape from the sunlight! I am begging you! Please!”

He lunged at me again, but I took two steps back and he fell to his knees in the dwindling oval of water. He looked up at me in utter desperation, but it was too late. At that moment, the Vampire Gatherer let out one last multi-throated scream and burst into flame.

The fire crackled and spat, and it was blinding, like burning magnesium. I couldn't look at it directly, but I could see that, bit by bit, it was erasing Vasile Lup's shadows, like a child rubbing out a drawing.