Manitou Blood (44 page)

“We don't need to go back. Don't you get it? This isn't a dream. This is the Kensico Country Inn.”

“But how? How did we get to be here, exactly where we wanted to be?”

“I don't have any idea. But my guess is that Frank had something to do with this. It was like he came through the mirror and somehow he left the door open, so that we could come back.”

“But how did we manage to go through the mirror in my house, and find ourselves here? It is like the two houses are standing side by side, yet we know that they are miles and miles apart!”

“You're right. But when the Vampire Gatherer came out of the mirror in your apartment, and Susan Fireman took Frank away with her—you didn't see your corridor reflected in that mirror, did you? You saw some beach someplace. Whatever goes on in back of mirrors, it seems to me like the usual laws of physics definitely don't apply.”

Jenica looked up at me. Then she licked her middle finger
and rubbed it against the side of my cheek. “You still have somebody's name there. Teresa.”

Two enormous mirrors hung in the lobby of the Kensico Country Inn—one behind the reception desk, and the other in the corridor—the “silver door” through which Jenica and I had stepped to get here. When the time came, these would be the first two for us to smash. We wouldn't be able to go back to the city the same way that we had arrived, but we couldn't leave Misquamacus any escape routes.

We went along the corridor to the Valhalla Restaurant & Bar. There were thirty tables, all set for breakfast, with shining white tablecloths and cleverly folded napkins. On each table stood a vase of dead roses.

“There's a long mirror behind the bar,” said Jenica. “Another one over there, beside the kitchen door.”

The kitchens were deserted. On the woodblock table in the center lay three whole legs of lamb, on plates. They were crawling with blowflies, and the smell of rancid lamb fat was enough to make Jenica press her hand over her face.

We returned to the reception area and opened up every door, one after the other. A cloakroom, a closet, men's and women's restrooms (plenty of mirrors to be broken there), and a corridor that led along the back of the inn to a large glass conservatory. We were only on the first floor and we had counted over thirty-five mirrors already.

Jenica went up a low flight of three stairs and opened the door at the top. “Harry,” she said.

“What's wrong?”

I followed her up the stairs and looked into the room. It was obviously a conference room, with a projection screen at the far end, and an easel with a brightly colored business graph on it. But I wasn't looking at the display. In the center of the room stood a long boardroom
table made of pale polished oak, with at least forty matching chairs. The table was heaped high with bodies, arms and legs all tangled together. Men and women, some of them still wearing business suits, some of them naked, but all with their throats cut wide open. There must have been more than thirty of them, although I didn't feel like making an exact count. Maggots were silently dropping off them and squirming across the carpet. The lamb had smelled sickening enough, but this was ten times worse.

I closed the door and exhaled. There was nothing that we could do. Obviously the Vampire Gatherer and some of his
strigoi
had arrived here through the mirrors, the same way that we had, and taken the hotel staff and guests by surprise. They wouldn't have been shown any mercy. As far as Vasile Lup was concerned, human beings were nothing more than a source of sustenance, or recruits for his ever-increasing legion of
strigoi
; and as far as Misquamacus was concerned, this, at long last, was his glorious revenge.

It took us nearly two hours to search the whole of the Kensico Country Inn for mirrors. We even searched the maids' bedrooms in the attic rooms and took the makeup mirrors out of their purses, and collected them together, ready to be smashed.

The power was out. The phones were dead, and all I could hear on my cell phone was a distant crackling. The
strigoi
must have taken over much more of New York State than we knew. All through that afternoon, not a single vehicle passed along the main highway at the end of the drive, and we didn't hear a single airplane or a single helicopter. All we heard was birdsong.

We went back to the kitchens. Although the refrigerators had stopped working, we found some Monterey Jack cheese and some Italian salami that were slightly sweaty but still edible. We took them outside and sat on the grass
overlooking the pond. The sun was beginning to sink toward the distant hills.

“Can you imagine what this country would be like, if the
strigoi
took over?” I asked Jenica. “Deserted during the day, just like this. Silent. Nothing would happen, except at night. Then they'd all come crawling out of their coffins and creeping out of their mirrors, and it would be hell on earth. If you were still human, your life wouldn't be worth living. They'd be hunting for you, every single night.”

Jenica said, “Of course, but to some people, that would not be hell, but a sort of heaven. We would live forever, yes? And so we would be able to experience everything, every taste, every sensation, and visit every wonder that the world had to offer. My father once said that if everybody lived forever, human learning would blossom beyond our wildest imagination, because great scholars would never die, the way they do now. He said, think of Einstein—how much was lost when Einstein died, and what more he could have done if he had lived for another three centuries! Think of some of our greatest writers and our greatest musicians! But what can any of us hope to learn in the space of a human lifetime? Hardly anything at all, and when we breathe our last breath, even the tiny fraction of knowledge that we have acquired so painfully is buried with us, beyond the reach of our sons and daughters, or anybody else who might benefit from it.”

“Sounds like your father is a pretty radical kind of guy.”

“He is a very original thinker. He always used to tell me that we should never be prejudiced against any idea, just because it was thought of by somebody we despise. Much brilliant science came from the Nazis, for instance; and much great art from some of the world's most oppressive regimes.”

“So even if we don't exactly approve of their dietary habits, we should appreciate the
strigoi
because they've been around so long, and because they know so much?”

Jenica didn't answer me, but turned toward the pond. The sun was even lower now, a sullen, smoky red, and it was reflected in the water, so that there were two suns.

“The pond,” she said. “What are we going to do about that? It is outside, yes, but even if the sun is shining, I think there is a chance that the
strigoi
might be able to reach it, and escape.”

I stood up and walked around the edge of the pond. Nearer the house, the bank was higher, and there was a cluster of bulrushes in one corner. On the opposite side, where the ground sloped away, the bank had been artificially built up, and there was a short concrete dam, and a stopcock.

“Look at this,” I said. “They must use this to drain the water when they want to clean it.”

“Then we can empty it, while Vasile Lup is away.”

“We can try. I don't know how long it's going to take.”

It was beginning to grow damp and chilly. Jenica took hold of my arm and pulled me closer. “This is a very strange adventure we are having, you and me.”

I nodded, and thought of the other woman who had said that to me, not so long ago.

As it grew dark, we climbed into one of the SUVs, a Toyota Landcruiser. We decided that it was probably safer than hiding in the inn, because the
strigoi
would be less likely to pick up the warmth of our blood. Not only that, the owner had left the keys in it, and if the
strigoi
did realize that we were there, we could burn rubber out of there.

We were cautious enough to stop using the words “
strigoi
” and “
strigoica
” and the name “Vasile Lup.” Now that night had fallen, the vampires and the Vampire Gatherer would be stirring inside their mirrors, and they would be hungry, and highly sensitive to any disturbance that would indicate the closeness of human blood.

We hunched down in the front seats as low as we could, and we shared three chocolate bars and a small pack of
peanuts. I kept thinking about Katz's salt-beef sandwiches, sliced very thin and very rare, and I wondered if that was anything to do with my newly acquired vampirism. But maybe I was just hungry. I doubt if vampires like rye bread and pickles to go with their blood.

Over an hour went by, and Jenica leaned her head against my shoulder and started to breathe deeper and slower, with occasional gasps, as if she were dreaming.

I was almost nodding off myself when I saw a dark, irregular shape coming out of the inn and crossing the porch. It was followed by another, and another, and then a paler shape.
Strigoi
, at least five of them. They came down the steps and walked across the driveway, until they were standing together less than twenty feet away.

I nudged Jenica and she said, “
Fff!
What? What is it?”

“Ssh. Keep down. Look.”

The
strigoi
appeared to be waiting for something. The moon hadn't yet risen, but the night sky was gradually beginning to grow lighter, and after a while I could see that the pale shape was a woman with dark hair. She turned and looked toward us, and I realized that it was Susan Fireman. Standing next to her, looking white-faced and very wild, was Frank. I didn't know the other three
strigoi
. One of them was very tall, with slicked-back hair, like Christopher Lee. Even if he hadn't been a real vampire, he could have easily passed for one. The other two looked like construction workers, shaven-headed and heavily built.

At last the moon appeared, shining through the silver birches like a horrified face. As its light brightened, a huge figure emerged from the doorway. It sloped away from the moon, this figure, a complex arrangement of impenetrable shadows, and it kept shifting and changing and disassembling itself with every step. It was the Vampire Gatherer, Vasile Lup, the
svarcolaci
, the one in whose spirit Misquamacus was concealed, like the blackest of moths folded inside a chrysalis.

One second, the Vampire Gatherer was standing on the porch. The next, in the blink of an eye, he was standing among his
strigoi
. I could see his face shifting—benign and human one moment, white and masklike the next. Then, without warning, he turned his head around.

“Oh my God,” said Jenica. “Do you think he's seen us?”

It certainly looked as if he had. He was staring directly toward the Landcruiser, and his eyes were shining. For one terrible moment I thought,
oh shit, this little escapade is going to end for us before it's even begun
,
and end bloodily, too
. The Vampire Gatherer appeared to lurch toward us, and the
strigoi
turned around, too.

But then, jerkily, like characters in a badly chopped art movie, they all vanished, and reappeared halfway down the drive. They vanished again, and the next thing we knew, they were down by the road, more than a hundred yards away. Another blink, and they were utterly gone.

Jenica puffed out her cheeks in relief.

“Where do you think they're going?” I asked her.

“Who knows? Some small town somewhere, I expect. It is the way they always spread, like a stain.”

We climbed out of the Landcruiser. The first thing I did was cross the driveway and walk down to the far side of the pond. I knelt down on the concrete dam and tried to turn the stopcock, but it was rusted up and it wouldn't budge.

“I'll have to find some kind of lever,” I said. “Listen—you get inside and start breaking mirrors.”

Together we walked quickly back toward the inn. Inside the lobby, I went straight to the antique fireplace. There was a large woven basket next to it containing a small hatchet, and fire tongs, and a long iron poker with a heavy brass knob on the end. I gave the hatchet to Jenica and said, “Okay—get smashing! And for God's sake don't miss any. Not one.”

She went straight up to the huge gilt-framed mirror behind the reception desk and hit it dead center with the back of the hatchet. With a sharp
crack
, the whole mirror split diagonally from side to side and then dropped onto the floor. Jenica stamped on the larger pieces, to break them up even smaller, and then she bashed up the fragments so that it was impossible for anybody to see a coherent reflection in them.

As I went back outside, I heard her break the mirror in the corridor, and start to pulverize that with her hatchet, too.

I jogged down to the pond. The night air was thick with mosquitoes, and I had to spit one out of my mouth. I knelt down on the dam again, and inserted the end of the poker into the stopcock. Then I stood up and hauled back on it as hard as I could. I made a whole lot of effortful noise, like
ngggggghhhhhh
and
gurrrrrrrrr
, but it still wouldn't move, and I began to think that it was rusted up solid.

Then I thought: you're half
strigoi
. You have the strength. If you can bend yourself backward, you can open this stopcock. Have faith in yourself, Harry. Believe in what you can do.

I repositioned my hands, and then I hauled on the poker again, gritting my teeth with effort. This time I heard a harsh grating noise, and the stopcock actually moved. I hauled again, and it suddenly turned, and water started to trickle out the drainpipe that ran under the dam. Now the stopcock was loose enough for me to turn it by hand, and the trickle turned into a gush. Within a few minutes, water was pouring across the field below the pond, and shining in the moonlight like the Mississipi delta.

I picked up the poker and ran back to the inn. Jenica was in the women's restroom now, smashing all the mirrors over the washbasins.