Kate sighed and rubbed her face. “I think I may be going crazy.” She squinted up at Lucian. “What was all that with Amaddi tonight . . . some sort of elaborate scam?”

“No,” said Lucian. “My father and other members of the Order have known about Amaddi's contacts with the strigoi Nomenclature for some time. But none of us have been able to approach him.”

“But you did business with him.”

“To gain his confidence.”

“So the name he gave us is real?” asked Kate. “The man is really strigoi?”

Lucian shrugged. “During the past few months, both the strigoi and the few surviving members of the Order have gone into hiding. If this person is strigoi, it explains several things. “

“I'm not saying that I believe any of this,” said Kate. “But if it's true . . . and you say your parents are members of the Order of the Dragon . . . can they help us find this man?” Kate had only met Lucian's parents once, but it had been a gracious afternoon of special wine and homecooked treats in a lovely old apartment in east Bucharest. Lucian's father, a writer and intellectual, had impressed her as someone of great wisdom and influence.

“The strigoi murdered my parents in August,” said Lucian. His voice was soft. “Most of the members of the Order here in Bucharest were tracked down and killed. Most simply disappeared. My parents' bodies were left hanging in the apartment where my sister or I would find them. A warning. The strigoi are very sure of themselves these days.”

Kate fought down the urge to hug Lucian or touch his cheek. He may be lying. Every instinct she trusted said that he wasn't.

“You talked about the hospital administrator. . . Popescu . . . in the past tense,” said O'Rourke.

Lucian nodded. “Dead. The police found his body, drained of blood, in the same week that Mr. Stancuyour Ministry manended up on the slab at the medical school.”

“Why would they kill Mr. Popescu?” asked Kate. She heard the answer in her own mind a second before Lucian spoke again.

“They tracked the child . . . Joshua . . . from the orphanage to Popescu's hospital. I'm certain that the weasel told them everything he knew about you . . . and me . . . before they cut his throat.”

“And you've been in hiding since then?” said O'Rourke.

“I've been in hiding since the day Kate left,” said Lucian.

“I urged my parents and friends to flee, but they were stubborn . . . brave.” Lucian turned away, but not before Kate saw his eyes fill with tears.

Maybe strigoi are good actors, she thought. She was exhausted. The lingering smell of the hot soup in the room made her a bit dizzy.

“Look,” said Lucian, spreading his large hands on his knees as he sat on the sofa arm. “I can't show you any other credentials than this . . .” He tapped his chest. “. . . proving that I belong to the Order, or that the Order exists. But use common sense. Why would I have helped smuggle Joshua to the hospital and then helped you adopt him if I were strigoi?”

“We don't even know if your strigoi exist,” said Kate.

Lucian nodded. “All right. But I think I can give you a demonstration that may prove it.”

Kate and O'Rourke waited.

“First we go to the medical school tonight and do a blood test on me to prove that I am not strigoi,” said Lucian. “The equipment is primitive, but a simple interactive test should show whether my blood exhibits the strigoi retrovirus reaction.”

“Jvirus,” Kate said softly.

“What?”

“Jvirus.” She looked up. “We named it after Joshua at CDC. “

“OK,” said Lucian. “We do a simple Jvirus test, and then we stake out . . . if you'll pardon the expression . . . the house of the man Amaddi named. We follow him wherever he goes.”

“What?” said O'Rourke.

“Because if he's strigoi,” said Lucian, “he'll lead us to the others. My father was certain that Joshua had been the child chosen for the Investiture Ceremony . . . and it must be almost time for that to begin.”

“What is“ began Kate.

“I'll explain when we drive over to the medical school labs,” said Lucian. He lifted the soup onto the burner and plugged the hot plate in again.

“What are you doing?” asked O'Rourke.

“If we're going vampire hunting, I want something in my stomach,” said Lucian. He did not smile as he began stirring the soup.

The University Medical School was dark except for the south wing, where a guard sat dozing. Lucian led them through leafscattered gardens to a basement door. He fumbled with a heavy ring of keys and unlocked a portal that Kate thought would have looked more at home on a Gothic castle than as part of a medical school.

The basement corridor was narrow, crammed with battered chairs and cobwebbed desks, and it smelled of rat droppings. Lucian had brought a penlight. At one point he unlocked a side door which swung open with a creak.

Who's waiting for us? thought Kate. She tried to catch O'Rourke's eyes but the priest seemed lost in thought.

The room appeared to be a storage room for even more ancient medical textsKate could smell the mildew and see the rat droppings hereexcept that a blanketed cot, a reading lamp, and a countertop hot plate had been added. Kate noticed recent American paperbacks stacked alongside medical texts.

“You've been living here?” asked O'Rourke.

Lucian nodded. “The strigoi ransacked my apartment, terrorized homes of friends of mine, and . . . I told you about my parents. But they only made a cursory check of the medical school. “ He smiled. “If I were to return to classes . . . well, a dozen of my `friends' and instructors would inform on me . . . but this wing of the building is empty at night.” He shut off the light and led them farther down the corridor, then up two darkened flights of stairs.

In the lab, Kate said, “I don't understand. Are the strigoi et charge of the police and border guards? Are the police part of this?”

Lucian paused in arranging his microscope and equipment. “No,” he said. “But in this country . . . and others, I am told . . . everyone works for the strigoi at one time or another. They control those who control. “

Kate was finding it hard to believe that this area was the working section of a medical school laboratory: there was. a clutter of preWorld War IItype optic microscopes, cracked beakers, dusty test tubes, chipped tile counters, and battered wooden stools. The place looked like someone's nightmare image of an American ghetto high school's science lab years after it had been deserted. Only Lucian had said that this was the laboratory area for the medical school.

“So Ceausescu was a strigoi?” asked O'Rourke.

Lucian shook his head. “Ceausescu . . . both of the Ceausescus . . . were instruments of the strigoi. They took orders from the leader of the Voivode Strigoi family.”

“The Dark Advisor,” said O'Rourke.

Lucian glanced up sharply. “Where did you hear that term?”

“So there was a Dark Advisor?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lucian. He moved an antique autoclave onto the counter and plugged it in. “Kate, would you find some lancets?”

Kate glanced around, hunting for sterilepacs, but Lucian said, “No, there in the sink.”

A chipped enamel bedpan held several steel lancets. She shook her head and handed the pan to Lucian. He set the pan in the autoclave and it began to hum.

“This test isn't important,” she said. “It proves nothing.”

“I think it does,” said Lucian. He pulled down blackout shades on the windows and turned on a light over the microscope bench. “Besides, I have something else to show you.” Lucian crouched in front of a small refrigerator and removed a small vial. “Standard whole blood,” he said. He used an eyedropper to prepare three slides with the whole blood. Then he removed the lancets from the autoclave and brought alcohol and swabs out from under the counter. “Who's first?”

“What are we supposed to see here?” said O'Rourke. “Little vampire platelets leaping on our blood cells?”