“Thanks,” said O'Rourke and cleared his throat. He turned and pointed to the southwest. “The Arges River and Vlad's castle is out that way.”

“How far?”

“For a bird, maybe a hundred klicks. Sixty, maybe seventy miles. By road . . .” He chewed his lip. “Probably about eight hours of driving.”

Kate glanced at him. “We're not wrong, Mike. It's Sighisoara tonight.”

He looked at her and then nodded. “What do you say we find a better place to park up on the summit, get the bike away from the road, and eat lunch?”

There had been bread and cheese at the monastery, and enough bottles of wine to make all of Transylvania drunk. O'Rourke had explained that the monks still grew vineyards and bottled wine for the local region. It was a way to help pay expenses. Kate had loaded three bottles under the seat of the sidecar and left fifty American dollars in a kitchen drawer.

The cheese was good, the bread was stale but delicious, and the wine was excellent. They had no glasses but Kate did not mind swigging directly from the bottle. She drank only a bit; she was, after all, driving. The last of the sunlight before the clouds won the aerial battle warmed her skin and brought back sensuous thoughts of the previous day and night.

“Do you have a plan?” said O'Rourke, leaning back against a tree and chewing on a tough strand of crust.

“Hmm? What?” Kate felt like someone had thrown cold water on her.

“A plan,” said O'Rourke. “For when we catch up to the strigoi.”

Kate set her chin. “Get Joshua back,” she said tightly. “Then get out of the country.”

O'Rourke chewed slowly, swallowed, and nodded. “I won't even ask about part two,” he said. “But how do we achieve part one? If the baby is really their new prince or whatever, I don't think they'll want to give him up.”

“I know that,” said Kate. The clouds now obscured the sun. A cold wind blew down from the snowfields above them.

“So . . .” O'Rourke opened his hands.

“I think we can negotiate,” said Kate.

O'Rourke frowned slightly. “With what?”

She nodded toward her travel bag. “I've brought samples of the hemoglobin substitute I was giving Joshua. It should allow the strigoi to break their addiction . to whole human blood and still allow the Jvirus to work on their immune systems. “

“Yes,” said O'Rourke, “but why would they want to go on methadone when they enjoy heroin?”

Kate looked out at the now shadowed valley. “I don't know. Do you have any better suggestions?”

“These are the people who killed Tom and your friend Julie,” said O'Rourke, his voice very low.

“I know that!” Kate did not mean for her voice to be so sharp.

He nodded. “I know you know that. What I mean is, did you come just to get Joshua, or is revenge on your agenda?”

Kate turned her face back to him. “I don't know. I don't think so. The medical research . . . the breakthrough potential of this retrovirus . . .” She looked down and touched her breast where it ached. “I just want Joshua back.”

O'Rourke slid closer and put his arm around her. “We're a strange choice for the dynamic duo,”. he whispered.

She looked up, not understanding.

“Caped crime fighters. Superheroes. Batman and Robin?”

“What do you mean?” The ache in her chest subsided slightly.

“You said that you shot that intruder the first time he entered your home in Colorado,” said O'Rourke. “The strigoi. But you didn't kill him.”

“I tried to,” said Kate. “His body rejuvenated because of“

“I know. I know.” The pressure of O'Rourke's arm was reassuring, not condescending. “What I mean is that you haven't killed anyone yet. But you might have to if we keep going on this quest. Will you do it?”

“Yes,” Kate said flatly. “If Joshua's life and liberty depend on it.” Or yours, she added silently, looking at his eyes.

O'Rourke finished his bread and drank some wine. For a giddy moment Kate wondered how many times this man . . this lover of hers . . . had said Mass, had prepared the Eucharist for Communion. She shook her head.

“I won't kill anyone,” he said softly. “Not even to save the person most dear to me in the world. Not even if your life depended on it, Kate.”

Kate saw the sadness in him. “But“

“I've killed people, Kate. Even in Vietnam, where none of the usual reasons made sense anymore, there was always a good reason to kill. To stay alive. To keep your buddies alive. Because you were attacked. Because you were scared . . .” He looked down at his hands. “None of the reasons are good enough, Kate. Not anymore. Not for me.”

For the first time since she had met the priest . . . expriest . . . she did not know what to say.

He tried to smile. “You've gone on this mission with the worst choice for a partner that you could have made, Kate. At least if killing people is going to be called for.” He took a breath. “And I think it is.”

Kate's gaze was very steady. “Are you sure these . . . these strigoi are people?”

His head moved almost imperceptibly back and forth. “No. But I wasn't sure that the shadows in Vietnam were human either. They were gooks.”

“But that was different.”

“Maybe,” said O'Rourke and began cleaning up their modest picnic site. “But even if the strigoi have become so alien from human emotions that they're another species . . . which I won't believe until I see more evidence . . . it's not enough. Not for me.”

Kate stood and brushed off her skirt. She pulled a jacket on over her sweater. The wind was colder now, the sky grayer. The brief return to autumn was over and winter was blowing down from the Carpathians.

“But you'll help me find Joshua,” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

“And you'll help me get him out of this . . . country.”

“Yes,” he said. He did not have to remind her of the police, the military, the border guards, the informants, the air force, the Securitate . . . all obeying the orders of those who took orders from the strigoi.

“That's all I ask,” Kate said honestly. She touched his arm. “We'd better get moving if we have another hundred miles or so before we get to Sighisoara.”

“The main highway is faster,” said O'Rourke. He hesitated. “Did you want to continue driving for a while?”

Kate paused for only a second. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

The road down from the pass was a series of hairraising switchbacks, but Kate had got the hang of handling the bike now, and used the compression of the lower gears to keep the brakes from overheating. O'Rourke had doublechecked the gas tank and thought they would have enough to get to Brasov, but the uncertainty made Kate nervous.

There was no traffic at all on this steep stretch of the highway and Kate saw only a handful of cottages set far back in the pine trees. Then they were in the outskirts of Sinaia and the homes grew more frequent and larger, obviously country houses for the privileged Nomenclaturethose party apparatchiks and smiledupon bureaucrats who earned extra perks from the state. Sinaia itself looked like a typical Eastern European resort townlarge old hotels and estates which had been fine places a century earlier and which had received little maintenance since, signs to winter sports facilities where a “ski lift” would involve ropes and the occasional Tbar, and a newer, larger section of town featuring Stalinist apartments and heavy industry pouring pollution into the mountain valley.

But the scenery above the town could not be compromised by socialist ugliness. On either side of Sinaia and the busy Highway 1 that ran through it, the Bucegi Mountains rose in almost absurd relief, leaping skyward to bare peaks whose summits reached 7,000 feet. Kate's homeher exhome in the foothills above Boulder had been at 7,000 feet, and the peaks of the Rockies to the west had risen to almost 14,000 feet, but these Bucegi Mountains were much more dramatic, rising vertically as they did from the. Prahova River Valley that was not far above sea level. The result, Kate thought, glancing up at the scenery while winding the motorcycle through truck traffic exiting from what looked like a steel mill, was a mountain scene that looked the way the nineteenthcentury painter Bierstadt only wanted the Rockies to look: vertical, craggy, the summits lost in clouds and mist.