Kate shook her head. “Your father was a poet, not a doctor. I met him, remember?”

Lucian did not blink. “My foster father was a poet. My foster mother was director of the State Virology Research Institute from nineteen sixtyfive until nineteen eightyseven. She was the reason I went to medical school. To learn about the strigoi. To learn how to destroy them but to isolate the retrovirus so that it could be used“

“The thing in the tank,” whispered Kate.

Lucian nodded. “Not the first. We needed to experiment to see how the strigoi survive what should be mortal wounds. Mother worked for years to isolate the virus.” Lucian turned and squeezed the steering wheel until his fingers turned white. “We never had the proper equipment . . . access to the proper journals. “ He looked away out his window. A truck roared by on the highway.

Kate shook her head slowly. “But you worked for the strigoi . . .”

“As a . . . what do you call them in your James Bond movies? A double agent.A mole. A flunky who observed things that had to be observed.”

Kate squinted at him. Her head hurt terribly. “You went to the United States.. Not with your parents, but as a guest of Vernor Trent's institute.”

Lucian was nodding with her words. “And to West Germany. And once to France. I ran errands for several of the more powerful Family members. The strigoi trusted me as a messenger. They helped pay for my medical schooling so that I could work with them on the human blood substitute they were helping to research in America and elsewhere.”

Kate folded her arms and moved away from him. “Why would they trust you?”

He stopped talking and looked at her for a silent moment. “Because my biological parents were strigoi,” he said at last.

“But you said . . .”

He nodded. “I am not strigoi. That is true. Remember, Kate, it's a very rare double recessive. Most of the Jvirus positive who mate have normal children. The regression is toward the norm ninetyeight percent of the time. Otherwise the world would be overrun by strigoi. And usually, when the strigoi have normal children, they do what normal parents in Romania do with retarded children, or diseased children, or malformed children . . .”

“They abandon them,” whispered Kate. She rubbed her temples. “So your foster mother and father found you, adopted you . . . “

“No,” said Lucian, his voice so soft she could hardly hear him. “I was taken out of the orphanage and placed with Mother and Father by someone who hates the Family more than you or I do. By someone who had decided to act against them. I've worked for this person and for our shared goal of destroying the strigoi family for most of my life.”

“Who is it?” said Kate.

Lucian shook his head. “This is the only thing I cannot tell you, Kate. I have given my word of honor never to reveal my mentor's identity.”

“But there is no Order of the Dragon?” said Kate.

Lucian smiled. “Only me. And the person who has sponsored me.” The smile faded. “And Mother and Father until the strigoi destroyed them.”

Kate looked askance at him. “Why would they trust you after they discovered your foster parents?”

Lucian had bitten his lip. “Because I informed on them. I had to. It was just a matter of weeks until they would have been discovered. We . . . I had to go to the strigoi so that I would be beyond suspicion. The stakes were too high this summer to allow everything to be destroyed at the last minute. “

“What stakes?” said Kate. “You mean Joshua? You helped' me adopt him and then you helped the strigoi steal him back.”

Lucian shook his head. “My hope was that you would find the secret of the retrovirus before they found you. You did.”

Kate lost it then, flying across the seat at Lucian, pounding at his chest with her fists. “They killed Tom and Julie, you lying son of a bitch! They killed them and burned my house and took my baby and . . . goddamn it!” Only when her fingers clawed toward his eyes did he restrain her wrists.

“Kate,” he whispered, “it had to be. Just as the death of my parents had to be. The stakes are too high.”

She pulled away from him and threw herself against the far door. “What stakes? What are you talking about?”

Lucian put the car in gear and pulled out onto the empty highway. “The destruction of the strigoi Family,” he said. “All of them. Tonight.”

The stone kilometer marker read COPRA MICA8 KM. The road wound along the Tirvana Mare River through isolated uplands with no farmhouses, no villages, and no traffic except for the occasional rubberwheeled cart. The clouds were low and a cold wind blew leaves across the narrow road and slammed against the Dacia like invisible fists.

“Tell me,” demanded Kate.

Lucian did not take his eyes off the road. “It would be foolish, Kate. There is little chance that they will come after us today . . . they won't notice you're missing for several hours . . . and we'll be far away from here by then. Still, if we were caught . . . “

“Tell me,” said Kate. Her voice held an imperative that she had honed through long hours in emergency rooms, operating rooms, and conference rooms.

Lucian glanced at her. “Really, it would be stupid to“

“Tell me.” Her tone left no choice in the matter.

Lucian licked his lips and smoothed back his spikey haircut. “It's arranged, Kate. Tonight the strigoi Family is going to die. All of them.”

“How?” Kate said flatly.

Lucian shook his head but kept talking. “They're gathering at the castle on the Arges . . . Poienari Citadel, it's called . . . the ancient keep that Vlad rebuilt more than five hundred years ago. It's been arranged . . . they won't survive the ceremony. “

“How has it been arranged?” Her voice showed her disbelief.

“The citadel has been abandoned and shunned since the days of Vlad,” said Lucian. “The locals still fear it. The government ignored it. The tourist bureau led the few tourists to fake `Castle Draculas' like Bran Castle near Brasov rather than acknowledge the real site on the Arges River.”

“So?” said Kate.

“So this ceremony has been anticipated for years. Ceausescu began reconstruction of Poienari Citadel more than three years ago. The new government has finished it, despite the economic collapse. The strigoi demanded it.” He paused and looked at her, then went on. “Explosives were planted there during the reconstruction.” He let out a deep breath. “They're timed to go off tonight during the Ceremony. The entire mountain is wired. None of the strigoi will leave alive. “

Kate folded her arms. “You're lying again.”

He seemed startled at her attitude. “No, Kate, I swear . . .”

“You have to be lying. The strigoi would never allow someone access to one of their Ceremony sites like that. Also, their security people would sweep the place before the Ceremony. They're cruel bastards, but they're not idiots.”

They were entering the valley town of Copsa Mica. It was an industrial town unlike anything Kate had ever seen: the streets were black with soot, the houses were black, the people walking by were gray and black, and tall smokestacks belched out more pollution. Lucian pulled the car into a rutted area beside the railroad tracks. “Kate,” he said, “it's true. I swear it.”

She stared at him.

He sighed. “The construction was authorized by the strigoi Family leaders, was paid for primarily by Vernor Deacon Trent's foundation, and was carried out by Radu Fortuna's construction company.”

Kate's arms were still folded across her chest. “And you're saying that Fortuna just happened to ignore your mythical bombs being planted. Or is it going to be done the way they tried to kill Hitler . . . one strigoi turncoat with a bomb in his briefcase?”

Lucian gripped her arms and then released them quickly when he felt her stiffen up. “I'm sorry. Listen, Kate . . . Fortuna almost never visited the site. Most of the work was done by Hungarian artisans. During my summers I worked as a supervisor on the project . . . “ He stopped when he saw her look of disbelief. “The strigoi trusted me, Kate. I had been an international courier as a teenager. I was ambitious and greedy and showed loyalty only to those with the ,power to help me. And I had help . . .” He stopped.