Fortuna snapped his fingers and the dark man handed Lucian a thick wad of Romanian bills.

He sold Joshua and me out for lei, thought Kate. She felt physically ill.

The waiting car was neither Dacia nor Mercedes, but some intermediate level of German car. Lucian took the money, got in the backseat, and did not look out again as the driver started the car and drove out of sight under the courtyard arch.

“Come,” said Radu Fortuna. There were several of the security guards in black in the square now and they took Kate and O'Rourke by the arm and led them after the briskly striding Fortuna.

They came out of the square into a smaller open area, a sort of corner park, and then strode down the cobblestoned hill only a hundred feet or so to the massive clock tower Kate had seen from the air. The hands on the clock face sixty feet above them were frozen.

Fortuna led them past the small main door that had a tiny sign which said MUSEUM, down some stone stairs, through a thick door which was opened as he approached, through a narrower second door, down another flight of worn stone steps, and into a cellar lit only by two naked 20watt bulbs.

“Ion!” snapped Fortuna.

The intruderHe and his men killed Tom and Julie! He threw me off a cliff!stepped forward and lifted a heavy woodandiron trapdoor set in the stone floor. The opening was a square into blackness.

Radu Fortuna smiled and beckoned Kate forward. “Come, come. You have traveled a long way in search of our hospitality. Now enjoy it.” He nodded and the guards pushed her forward and lowered her into the darkness, her arms still tied behind her and protesting in pain.

There was an almost vertical stairway of wooden steps, but her foot missed it and she dropped three or four feet to a stone floor. The impact knocked the wind out of her and she could do nothing but roll to one side as O'Rourke was tossed in after her.

Radu Fortuna stood above them, his face and shoulders a silhouette in the open trapdoor. “Our tower has a wonderful view, our modest museum a fascinating collection. But I think you will not, perhaps, have time to enjoy these things, yes? But do make the most of your final moments together.”

He stepped back and the trapdoor slammed down with a noise that Kate would not have believed if she had not heard it. There came the sound of a bolt sliding and clicking above.

The darkness was not quite absolute: there was the dimmest of dim glows, a light so faint as to be almost illusory, around the edge of the trapdoor. She fought her way to a sitting position and raised her face to the promise of light.

There were voices and laughter above. Heavy boots trod on the trapdoor itself and then scuffed across stone. A laugh came from farther away and for several minutes there was no sound at all, although Kate sensed someone up there, waiting, guarding. She twisted toward a slight stirring near her. “Mike?”

“Yeah. “ His voice sounded pained. He had hit harder than she had. Kate wondered if his artificial leg had been damaged.

“Are you all right, O'Rourke?”

“Yeah.” He took deep breaths in the darkness. “How about you, Neuman?”

She nodded, realized he could not see her, and said, “Yes.” Her nose was running and she craned to wipe it on her shoulder. Her wrists were still tied very tightly behind her; she could barely feel her hands now.

“We fucked up,” whispered the priest.

Kate said nothing. She wiggled closer until she could feel his right arm tied back. She moved until they were back to back, her hands reaching for his wrists. She had some idea of untying his bonds while he did the same for her, but she found unrelenting plastic there, clipped together with a snap like a hospital bracelet.

“It's no use,” he whispered. “Cops use these plastic restraints in the States. You can't break them or untie them. You can't even cut them with scissors. They've got a special shears that cuts them off.”

Kate folded her fingers into fists. “What are they going to do to us?” She realized how stupid the question was even as she had to say it.

O'Rourke leaned closer. It was cold and damp in the pit and his warmth was welcome. “Well, didn't Lucian say that none of the strigoi drank human blood until the last night of the Ceremony?”

“No,” whispered Kate. “He said that legends had it that the young prince who was being invested didn't drink blood until the fourth night . . . the last night.” She laughed out loud, a strange and somewhat frightening sound in the darkness. “Although I'd say that the veracity of some of the things Lucian told us might be a little suspect. Jesus . . .” Her laughter died.

“On the other hand;” O'Rourke whispered, his voice low and steady as if to calm her, “it does seem he knows a bit more about the strigoi than he let on. Maybe his information is accurate.”

Kate tried to laugh again but her mouth was suddenly too dry, her throat too constricted. She forced saliva into her mouth and licked her lips. “I'm sorry I got you into this, O'Rourke. “

“Kate, you don't have to“

“No, listen. Please. I'm sorry I got you into this, but I swear I'll get us out of it. And Joshua.”

O'Rourke said nothing. Suddenly a scrabbling was audible from several directions.

“Oh, shit,” breathed Kate, her skin crawling. “Rats.” She and O'Rourke huddled closer, their backs together and knees drawn up. Clumsily, with almost no feeling in their fingers as circulation ceased, they reached behind and between themselves and held hands in the darkness.

Time became unmeasurable except for the growing pressure in Kate's bladder. She halfdozed, felt O'Rourke sag against her in his own state of dull exhaustion, and awoke only when the pressure to urinate became more urgent. She closed her eyes and prayed to no one in particular that someone would come and let them out before she had to wet her skirt or crawl into a comer and try to pull her underwear down.

The darkness was too deep to reveal any detail, but they had moved around enough to know that the pit was, just that, a pit about ten feet by ten feet. There seemed to be no straw, no chains, no iron bracelets complete with dangling skeletons on the wall as far as they could tell from kicking out with their feet, only cold, wet stone and the occasional scurry of rats in the comers. I hope they're only rats.

Finally she could stand it no longer and whispered to O'Rourke, “Excuse me.” She hobbled into the comer that seemed to have had the least sound of rodent toenails on stone, squatted, managed to get her skirt up and underpants down, and urinated. The sound of her water on the stone seemed very loud.

“There doesn't seem to be any toilet paper,” she said aloud.

O'Rourke chuckled in the dark. “I'll call housekeeping.”

Kate managed to get everything rearranged and crawled back to the center of the pit on her knees, feeling damp, uncomfortable, a little embarrassed, and infinitely relieved.

She leaned against O'Rourke and rested her head on his shoulder. “Something will happen,” she whispered.

“Yes.” He kissed her on the cheek and she felt the comfortable rasp of his beard. If she nestled just right, she could feel his heartbeat.

Kate had dozed off when the trapdoor slammed up with a noise that made her heart freeze. She crashed out of a dream.

God, this is real.

The dim light from the 20watt bulb was as bright as sunlight in their pained and darkadapted eyes. Kate squinted up through tears at the silhouette of the man named Ion.

“You are to say goodbye to the other,” Ion said in heavily accented English. “You see one the other no more.”

Two men came down and dragged O'Rourke up and out.

Kate screamed and stood then, shouting at them, berating them, trying not to weep but weeping anyway. Two men in black came down the steep stairs and she kicked at them. One of them kicked her back, his heavy boots sending shock waves down her shin.