“I did it.” His gaze seemed normal, neither angry nor penitent. “I found him alone; knocked him on the back of the head with a longhandled shovel . . . I think you call it a spade . . . and then chopped him up as you see.”

O'Rourke crouched next to the tank. Kate could see droplets of blood spattering the back of the priest's hand as he clutched the steel rim. “Who is he?”

Lucian raised his eyebrows. “Didn't you guess? This is one of the men who murdered my parents.” He moved to the oscilloscope on the metal cart next to the tank and changed the display by throwing a switch..

Kate stared at the corpse in the tank. The man's left ear was missing and that side of his face had been sliced open from the cheekbone to chin; the neck was almost severed, she could see the spinal cord as the body bobbed slightly, and there were massive gouges on his upper shoulder, arm, and chest. Kate could see exposed ligaments and ribs. The body had been opened up at the waist and the interior organs were clearly visible ....

The body opened like a medical student's cadaver.

Kate looked at Lucian. Then she noticed for the first time what the electronic monitors behind him were monitoring.

She backed away from the tank with an involuntary intake of breath. “It's alive,” she whispered.

O'Rourke glanced up, startled, and then wiped his hands on the side of the tank. “How could this poor“

“It's alive,” Kate whispered again. She walked to the instruments, ignoring Lucian. Blood pressure was flat, heart rate was so low that it registered little except the occasional spasm of a random surge as the cardiac muscle moved blood through its chambers and back into the medium of blood that surrounded it, and the EEG was like nothing she had ever seen: alpha and theta spikes so irregular and far apart that they might as well have been messages from some distant star.

But not flatline. Not brain dead.

The thing in the tank was in some state more removed from reality than sleep, but more alert than a coma victim. And it was definitely alive.

Kate looked at Lucian again: still the friendly, open expression and the soft smile. The smile of a murderer. No, the smile of a sadist perhaps.

“They slaughtered my parents,” he said. “They hung my mother and father by their heels, slit their throats as if they were swine, and drank from their open wounds. “ He looked back at the corpse in the tank. “This thing should have died a century ago.”

Kate moved back to the tank, rolled up her sleeves, and reached in with both hands, her fingers sliding through lesions and broken ribs to touch the man's heart. After half a moment there was the slightest movement, as of a swallow stirring slightly in the palm of one's hand. A second later, there was an almost indiscernible movement of the man's whitened eyes.

“How can this be?” asked Kate, but she knew . . . had known since she herself had pulled the trigger of Tom's shotgun and then seen the same man again on the night of the fire.

Lucian gestured at the instruments. “That's what I'm trying to find out. It's why I can't leave the medical school.” He waved at the body in the tank. “The legends say that the nosferatu come back from the dead, but the fact is that they can die . . . .”

“How?” said O'Rourke. “If this man is still alive after this . . . savagery, how would you kill one?”

Lucian smiled. “Decapitation. Immolation. Evisceration. Multiple amputation. Even simple defenestration . . . if they fell far enough onto something hard enough.” The smile wavered. “Or just deny them blood after their injuries, and they'll die. Not easily, but eventually.”

Kate frowned. “What do you mean, `not easily'?”

“The retrovirus feeds on foreign blood cells in order to rebuild its own immune system . . . or entire physical systems,” said Lucian. “You've seen it on the micro level at your CDC lab. “ He opened his palm toward the tank. “Now you see it on the macro level. But . . .” He walked to a multipleIV feed above the tank and unclipped the drip. “Deny it fresh blood, host blood, and the virus will feed on itself.”

Kate looked at the man in the tank. “Feeding on its own cells? Cannibalizing its own blood cells even though the retrovirus has already transcribed the DNA there?”

“Not just the blood cells,” said Lucian. “The Jvirus attacks whatever host cells it can reach, first along the arterial system, then the major organs; then brain cells.”

Kate folded her arms and shook her head. “It doesn't make sense. It has no survival value for the person at all. It . . .” She stopped, realizing.

Lucian nodded. “At that point the retrovirus is trying to save only the retrovirus. Cannibalism allows a few weeks' grace time, even while the body is decaying around it. Perhaps months. Perhaps . . . in a body that has been transcripted for centuries . . . years.”

Kate shuddered.

O'Rourke walked to the instruments, then back to the tank. His limp was . visible. “If I understand what you two are saying, then a strigoi could linger in a type of physical Hell for months or more after clinical death. But surely he couldn't be conscious!”

Lucian pointed to the EEG. Where Kate had palpated the man's heart, the brain waves had shown a definite series of spikes.

O'Rourke closed his eyes.

“Are you torturing this man?” asked Kate.

“No. I'm documenting the reconstruction.” He opened a drawer in one of the carts and handed Kate a stack of Polaroid photographs. They looked like standard autopsy photosshe could see the steel examination table under the white flesh of the corpsbut the man's body was much more mutilated than it looked now in the tank. There were deep wounds in the photographs where only livid scars were visible on the actual torso.

“Sixteen days ago,” said Lucian. “And I'm almost sure from the data that the reconstructive process is accelerating. Another two weeks and he'll be whole and hearty again.” He chuckled. “And probably a little bit pissed at me.”

Kate shook her head again. “The simple question of body mass . . . “

“Every gram of body fat is converted, absorbed and reabsorbed and genedirected to fill in as building material where needed,” said Lucian. He shrugged. “Oh, you wouldn't get the whole man back if I cut off his legs or removed his pelvis . . . mass redistribution has its limits . . . but anything short of that and . . . voila!” He bowed toward the tank.

“And they need fresh blood,” said Kate. She glared at the medical student. “Is this Joshua's fate?”

“No. The child has received transfusions, but as of the time he left Romania, he had not partaken of the Sacrament. “

“Sacrament?” said O'Rourke.

“The actual drinking of human blood,” said Lucian.

“That's sacrilege,” said O'Rourke.

“Yes. “

“The shadow organ,” muttered Kate, Then, louder, “When they drink the blood directly, the Jvirus carries out the DNA transcription and immunoreconstruction more efficiently?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lucian.

“And it has other effects? On the brain? The personality?”

Lucian shrugged. “I'm no expert on theeffects of psychological and physical addiction, but“

“But the strigoi . . . change . . . after they've actually drunk human blood?” said Kate.

“We think so.”

Kate leaned against an oscilloscope. Random spikes pulsed green echoes onto her skin. “Then I've lost him,” she whispered. “They've turned him into something else.” She stared at a dark corner of the large room.

Lucian moved closer, lifted a hand toward her shoulder, then dropped it. “No, I don't think so, Kate.'

Her head snapped up.

“I think they're saving Joshua for the Investiture Ceremony,” he said. “That will be the first time he partakes of the Sacrament.”

Father Michael O'Rourke made a sarcastic noise. “You're suddenly quite the expert on matters strigoi.”