“Why?” she whispered.

“Why what, Doctor Neuman?”

Kate leaned closer and also whispered. “Why this insane ritual? Why the exercise in perversion? I know about your socalled Sacrament. I know about your family disease. I can cure it, Mr. Trent . . . cure it while offering you a substitute for the human blood you have had to steal. I can cure you while offering you a chance to help humanity rather than prey onit. “

The old man's head turned then, slowly, like a clockwork mannikin. His eyes did not blink. “Tell me,” he whispered.

Kate felt a surge of hope. She kept her voice calm and professional even while the thrill in her grew. I have something to barter for our lives. All of our lives.

She told him then: about the Jretrovirus, about Chandra's studies, about the hope the applied retrovirus held out for curing AIDS and cancer, and, finally, about the success of human hemoglobin substitute with Joshua.

` . . . and it works,” she concluded. “It provides the building materials necessary for the retrovirus to maintain its immunoreconstructive role without having to consume whole blood. With frequent doses, the hemoglobin substitute can be administered intravenously so that the hormonal and mood altering effects of the bloodabsorption mutation organ can be moderated, if not bypassed altogether. “ She stopped, out of breath and terrified that she had gotten too technical and lost the old man. “What I mean to say,” she said, heart pounding, “is that I brought some of this experimental blood substitute with me. Your men took my bag, but I have medical, supplies in it . . . several vials of the artificial hemoglobin that I tested on Joshua.”

He blinked now, slowly, and when he looked at her again his eyes were tired. “Somatogen.”

It was Kate's turn to blink. “What?”

“Somatogen,” said the old man, shifting slightly to find a more comfortable position. “It is a biotech firm in your own city of Boulder, Colorado. You should know it.”

“Yes.” Kate's voice was weak.

“Oh, it is not one of my corporations. I do not even own a majority of its stock. But I . . . we . . . the more progressive members of the Family . . . have been monitoring its research on artificial hemoglobin. You are probably aware of DNX Corporation and Alliance Pharmaceutical. They have announced their breakthroughs, although a bit prematurely perhaps . . . but Somatogen will make its announcement at the Tenth Annual Hambrecht and Quist Lifesciences Conference in San Francisco in January of the new year.”

Kate stared at the old man.

He raised a white eyebrow. “Do you think the Family would be uninterested in such research? Do you think that all of us live in Eastern Europe and keep orphanages stocked for our needs?” There came a rattling, rasping sound that might have been a cough or a laugh. “No, Doctor Neuman, I am aware of your miracle cure. I have tried the prototypes and they work . . . after a fashion. Most of all, I am aware of the commercial applications for it.” He smiled. “Did you know, Doctor Neuman, that the market for safe transfusions in the United States alone would be over two billion dollars a year . . . and that is now, while the AIDS epidemic is in its early stages?” He coughed or laughed again. “No, Doctor Neuman, it is not the addiction of blood that is so hard to break . . . “

Kate sat back in her rough chair. Her body felt boneless, nerveless.

“What is it, then?”

The old man lifted a single finger with its long yellow nail. “The addiction to power, Doctor Neuman. The addiction to license. The addiction to the taste of violence without consequence. Did you bring a cure for that in your travel bag?”

Kate stared at him but no longer saw him. There was a long silence which she was only dimly aware of. If I stand up and run now I might make it to the door of the room. If I make it out the door, the others might not be waiting on the landing. If I make it out of the building . . . At that second she saw all of Romania as a giant black extension of the lightless pit she had spent the last six or seven hours in. A pit with sides too steep to climb; a pit with police and military and customs people and an air force, all following orders to find her and kill her. Beyond Romania she saw the reach of the strigoi like a long black arm, as boneless as a tentacle but with no end to its reach, and the hand on that arm had razor claws instead of fingernails. If I magically escaped with Joshua, how long would it be until I awoke in the night to find a stranger in black in my room . . . in my child's room? How many would they send after me? They would never stop. Never.

“What . . .” Kate stopped and cleared her throat. “What is going to happen to Father O'Rourke and me?”

The old man did not open his eyes again. His voice was vague, dreamy. “Tomorrow night you will be taken to a sacred place, you and the priest. The Family will be there. Young Vlad will be there. At the proper time, you and the priest will be impaled upon two stakes of gold. Then the new prince's uncle . . . Uncle Radu . . . our new leader in all things . . . will open your femoral artery.”

There was a ringing in Kate's ears and her vision clouded with dark spots.

“You will feed your child first,” whispered the old man. “And then you will feed the Family.”

For several minutes the old man did not appear to be breathing at all, but then the tortured rasping began again. He was asleep. Kate did not stir until the door opened. Radu Fortuna beckoned the strigoi named Ion into the room, her hands were bound in front of her, and she was taken immediately back to the pit in the basement of the clock tower.

O'Rourke was not there. She did not see him again that night. Whatever ceremony the strigoi held there in Sighisoara on that cold October midnight, they held it without Kate's presence or understanding.

Late in the unrelieved darkness of the next morning, they came for her.

Chapter Thirty-five

Kate had never been comfortable in the dark. As a child she had used a nightlight until she was ten years old; even as an adult she preferred a tiny plugin light in the bathroom or hallwayanything to lessen the darkness.

The pit was absolute darkness. The single 20watt bulb in the basement above her must have been turned off since not even the faintest glow crept around the cracks in the trapdoor. Even though it was dark up there, she sensed that one of the strigoi was up there. She could not hear him, but she felt a presence there. It was not reassuring.

It seemed like hours passed and Kate knew that sunrise must have come, but the darkness and stench and scrabbling did not change. At other times she felt that time was not moving at all, that it had been only minutes since she had been returned to the pit. The next minute she would be sure that the next day had already come and gone, that Joshua had already been initiated into the clan of blood drinkers.

No, it will be my blood he drinks first. I will be there.

Kate dozed only once and awoke with a rat creeping across her skirt and bare legs. She did not scream, but her body rippled with revulsion in the seconds after she had flung the thing across the pit. It screamed as it hit the wall:

By any sane measurement of mood, Kate knew, this should be the most despondent few hours of her life. Her realization that there could be no real escape for Joshua, O'Rourke, and her, that the strigois' reach was too long, their evil too powerful, should have sent her spiraling into hopelessness and despair.

It did not.

In those black hours in the pit, Kate found all of her external identity stripped away: honored scholar, doctor, respected researcher, wife, former wife, lover, mother. What remained had nothing to do with identity, with who she was, but everything to do with what she was.