She reacted in less than a second, twisting, swinging her right arm over Ion's forearm, seizing the open shears and slashing up and to the left in a single movement that could not be blocked. She felt the blade slice through cheek muscle and rattle along teeth. Ion screamed and spit blood onto the black leather upholstery. All the while, his hips continued to move against her, his penis batting against her crotch.

Kate shoved backward, lifted her knees, got her feet on Ion's shoulders, and shoved him out the door. She clambered backward but the other door was locked.

Ion was bellowing, staggering for balance as his lowered pants fell below his knees. The strigoi clamped his hand to his cheek, squeezed shut the flap of sliced skin and muscle that ran from his ear to his mouth, spat blood, and said, “I kill you now.”

“No,” said a voice behind him.

Ion whirled. Lucian stepped into Kate's line of vision, raised a black pistol with a very long barrel, and shot Ion in the face from three feet away.

Chapter Thirty-six

Lucian walked to the open door of the Mercedes and Kate set her back against the locked door and held the shears in front of her, her thumb tight on the top of the blades. She was gasping, trying not to hyperventilate even while her lungs demanded more air.

“Kate,” said Lucian, lowering the longbarreled pistol and holding his hand out.

Kate clenched her teeth and lifted the shears like a knife. “Stay away. Don't touch me.”

Lucian nodded and stepped back. He reached into the grass below the car, came up with her underpants, and set them carefully on the rear seat. “I'll be out here,” he said softly.

Kate sat watching, the shears still raised, while Lucian dragged the body of the driver out, then returned for the other two. She pulled on her pants, her body still rippling with disgust and shock, and then peered out the car door before getting out.

Lucian had moved the bodies to the far side of the car, near the collapsed barn. The pistol was tucked in his belt but there was an ax in his hands. “Kate, come look at this.”

She leaned against the car a moment. She was shivering and her mind refused to focus. Colors seemed to shift and part of her still wanted to scream or weep, or both.

“Kate, please come look.” Lucian was kneeling by the body of the driver.

She approached slowly, the shears by her side. The sight of the driver lying there still twitching triggered some medical part of her mind and she knelt next to the man, her fingers probing the neck for a pulse. There was none. The driver's hands and legs still twitched.

“I shot him in the throat and the forehead,” Lucian said emotionlessly. “Wouldn't you agree that he should be dead?”

Kate stared at the young medical student as if seeing him for the first time.

Lucian touched the twitching fingers. “It's the virus that refuses to die, Kate: Even now it's sealing off the wounds, coagulation working at an impossible rate. The virus is directing a surfeit of oxygen to the brain even as body temperature drops to that of a corpse.”

Kate felt for the nonexistent pulse again. She was surprised to hear her own voice. “It can't send blood to the brain. His heart has stopped. “

Lucian nodded and set three fingers deep into the driver's solar plexus. “.Feel here. No? All right . . . but the shadow organ, the bloodabsorption mutation, is taking over minimal circulation chores. The virus wants to live. This man is clinically dead, Kate. But if he receives whole blood within the next forty-eight hours or so, the body will rebuild. There'll be no brain damage . . . or at least minimal. This . . . thing . . . will be walking again if the strigoi find him and supply the blood. Stand back.”

Kate stood up and moved away as Lucian spread his legs, hefted the ax, and brought it down in a single vicious arc. Blood sprayed and the driver's head was separated from his body.

“Oh, Jesus . . .” said Kate and turned away. She went and leaned against the Mercedes as Lucian did the same to Ion and the younger strigoi.

Lucian had dragged the headless corpses into the tumbledown shack. Now he picked up the heads one by one, carried them to the copse of trees, and tossed them far into the weeds. He took clumps of dried grass, rubbed blood from his pant legs and boots, and walked back to the car. Kate stood rubbing her arms, the shears unnoticed in her right hand. Lucian took them away from her and threw them into the high grass. “Stand right here,” he said softly, moving her away from the car.

He opened the door on the driver's side, brushed shattered glass from the slick leather, started the car, and drove the Mercedes under the tumbled roof of the shed. When he came out he pulled the ax from the soft dirt where he had buried the blade, hefted it, and walked to Kate. “I had to leave my car down the road and cross the field on foot. I kept the trees between me and the car. Come. “

He started to take her hand but Kate pulled back. Lucian nodded and started off down the lane. Kate waited a minute and then followed.

The white Dacia was much like the blue Dacia that Lucian had driven in Bucharest. It squeaked, rattled, and smoked the same, and there was no second gear. Kate settled back in the cracked vinyl seat and let Lucian drive her west and south.

“It was a temptation to take the Mercedes,” he was saying. “Everyone would have recognized it as a strigoi car and left us alone. But it would have been too visible from the air . . . and everyone would remember which way we went.”

“You followed me,” said Kate. It was not exactly a question.

Lucian nodded. “They drove me to Bucharest, I got my car, my father's target pistol, the ax, and binoculars and drove straight back. I saw them drive the priest east. They must be going to the castle by way of Brasov and Pitesti.”

“The castle?” Words seemed strange in Kate's mouth. Her mind kept replaying the moments of the rape, the helpless feeling as he pinned her down, the sense of becoming someone and something else than herself . . .

“Vlad's castle on the Arges River,”, said Lucian. “It's where tonight's ceremony is. They drove the priest the west way; they Were taking you via Sibiu and Calimanesti. It's just habit, in case they were followed. I only followed your car. “ He glanced at her.

Kate looked him in the eye for the first time. “You betrayed us.”

Lucian glanced back at the road where a Gypsy wagon was weaving ahead of him. He honked, passed the wagon, dodged some sheep, and looked back at her. “No, Kate. I never did...”

She clenched her fists. “You were working for them. For all I know, you're still working for them.”

Lucian took a breath. “Kate, you saw me kill those three“

“You said yourself that the strigoi fight among themselves!”' She had not meant to shout. “Factions! You may be with them and against them at the same time. You betrayed us. Lied to us. Informed on us.”

Lucian was nodding. “I had to . . . to keep you both alive. The strigoi knew you were coming. As long as I kept tabs on you, they were reassured . . .”

“You're one of them,” whispered Kate.

“You know I'm not!” snapped Lucian. “That's why I ran the assay test.”

“Blood tests can be faked.”

Lucian pulled the Dacia to the side of the road and turned toward her. “Kate, I've been fighting the strigoi since I was a child. My adopted parents died fighting them.”

“Adopted parents?” Kate remembered the old poet with his elegant manners, his gracious wife; she remembered the two bloodless corpses on the slab in the medical school morgue.

Lucian nodded. “I was an orphan. I was adopted by them when I was four. My parents were killed because of the medical experiments they were doing on strigoi . . . trying to isolate the retrovirus. “