Kate Neuman was a woman who was not about to go gently into that good night. She was not about to surrender the man she lovedthe realization that she loved Mike O'Rourke was like a light slowly growing brighter in the darknor the child she had sworn to protect. It did not matter that the strigois' power was almost beyond imagining. It did not matter that she had no secret weapon left after the old man's dismissal of her “miracle cure”; it did not matter that no new plan had occurred to her yet there in the lightless pit. She would think of something. And if she did not think of something, she would act without thinking in the faith that the mere fact of acting would change the set of variables.

So let the strigoi do their worst. Fuck them.

When they opened the trapdoor to take her away an eternity later, she was smiling.

Kate had not wept in the pit, but the sunlight outside, as weak and watery as it was, made her eyes brim over. She could not wipe them away because her hands were still tied. The plastic binding was the same, but they had secured her, arms in front of her after her interview with the old man the night before and not so tightly as to cut off circulation this time.

Ion and two smaller men, all of them wearing the kind of cheap, baggy suits which seemed the hallmark of Eastern Europe, led her outside to a waiting Mercedes. A second black car sat farther down the hill. The wind was cold and from the north. Radu Fortuna was standing in the middle of the street with his arms folded, looking quite pleased with himself.

Kate glanced at her watch. It was 1:40 P.m. The early afternoon offered the kind of ebbing light that warned of winter's approach. Am I really never going to see another season? Another sunrise? Are all of the experiences remaining to me to be suffered in the next twelve hours . . . and then nothing? Kate shook her head and pushed the thoughts away before they filled her chest with panic. She was pleased to feel that just underneath the fluttering surface of terror remained the iron core of resolve she had found in the darkness.

“I hope you sleeped . . . no, slept? . . . yes, slept well last night,” beamed Radu Fortuna.

Kate just stared at him. Suddenly her attention was drawn to four men walking up the cobblestone street from the direction of another stone tower beyond the grassy area. One of the men was Mike O'Rourke. Kate first saw that he was limping; then, as the four men drew closer, she realized that he was being supported by two of the strigoi guards. Even from thirty feet away she could see that his face was bruised, one eye was swollen shut, and his lips were puffy and discolored.

O'Rourke saw her, smiled through his swollen lips, and raised his bound hands in a salute. The guards opened the rear door to a second Mercedes and began shoving the ex-priest into the car. O'Rourke's gaze never left her.

“Mike!” she shouted, being restrained now by her own strigoi thugs. “I love you!”

O'Rourke was crammed in the backseat of the car, doors slammed, and the vehicle moved away, passing under the arched gateway of the Old City and out of sight down the steep and narrow street. Kate did not know if O'Rourke had heard her.

Radu Fortuna chuckled and nudged Ion. “How very touching,” laughed Fortuna. “How deeply moving.”

Kate wheeled on him. “Why did you beat him?”

Radu Fortuna said nothing, but Ion evidently felt he could add to the mirth of the moment. “The idiot priest, he have notreal leg. We do not know this. When men come last night to take him out of cell to see Father, idiot priest hit Andrei and Nicolae over head with leg he take off. He try to leave. Nicolae unconscious. Andrei and three others do not like and hit. Hit for long time and . . .”

“Shut up, Ion,” snapped Radu Fortuna, no longer smiling.

Ion shut up.

So Mike also saw the old man.

One of the strigoi guards opened the back door of the idling Mercedes. Kate made a mental note that if she somehow got out of this alive, she would never buy one of these goddamn cars.

“Well, I wish you good trip,” said Radu Fortuna, standing by the open door while one of the thugs shoved her inside.

“Where am I going?” She was disappointed to see Ion going around the car to slide in the backseat with her. The strigoi thug with a scar above his left eye slipped behind the wheel while the other thug stood just outside.

Radu Fortuna opened his hands in a dismissive gesture. “You wish to see Ceremony, yes? You have, I think, come a long way for this privilege. Tonight you have privilege.” He grinned at her and she saw a certain resemblance between Fortuna's gaptoothed smile and the incessant TV images of Saddam Hussein from the previous winter and spring: both men's facial expressions did not involve their eyes. Radu Fortuna's eyes were as dead as black glass. Only the mouth muscles went through the motion of human emotions.

“Well,” he continued, voice still brimming with humor, “I think maybe we must say our goodbyes now. I will see you tonight, yes, but. there will be many peoples there and you may be too busy for chitchat. Bye-bye.” He slapped his palm on the roof of the car, the other strigoi thug slid in next to her so she was sandwiched between Ion and this one with his garlic breath, Radu Fortuna slammed the door, and the Mercedes glided away, drove under the arch of the wall, down the hill past homes that were old in the Middle Ages, and out of Sighisoara.

They turned right onto a narrow highway. Kate looked past Ion and saw the white sign: MEDIAL 36 KM, SIBIU 91 KM. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the map she and O'Rourke had been referring to for several days. If the series of highways they had been on constituted a rough circle, ignoring the mountains and countless diversions, then she imagined traveling counterclockwise with Bucharest the starting point at the six o'clock position. Tirgoviste was not on the circumference of the circle but just beneath the center where the hands were attached. Brasov would be at the three o'clock position, Sighisoara at the twelve, and Sibiu would be somewhere around the nine.

Where was the castle on the Arges? Somewhere between the nine and Tirgoviste near the center. Would Sibiu be on the road to the Arges castle? It didn't seem likely. She and O'Rourke must have guessed wrong about Vlad Tepes' castle being important to the ceremony. Sibiu was their probable destination.

How many miles until I reach the place where I will die?

Less than sixty miles. Kate wiped her moist palms on her dark skirt. Suddenly her stomach growled.

Ion glanced at her and did not hide his smirk. “You do not like the breakfast?”

There had been no breakfast, no food the night before. Kate tried to remember the last thing she had eaten, and the memory of the chocolate biscuits she had shared with the women, Ana and Marina, made her dizzy with nausea.

There were few other cars on the road today, and those few were almost driven off the road as the strigoi driver honked at them and overtook them at what seemed breakneck speed for such a rough and winding road. The Mercedes slowed for nothing but animals, but even flocks of sheep were sent scurrying.

Kate thought that the Transylvanian countryside that she was watching pass by so quickly must be beautiful in the summer: high green meadows, thick forests rising into areas unscarred by roads, crumbling abbeys on hilltops, the onion domes of Orthodox churches visible in tiny villages down along the river, and the colorfully dressed peasant farmers and Gypsies working in fields. But even in October the weight of winter now lay on the land like a gray pall. The trees were black stripes against gray rock, the peasants walking with heads down along the highway or staring from muddy fields were gray faces in black wool, and the few villages seemed to be studies in gray stone and black wood.