Manitou Blood (46 page)

Razvan Dragomir stayed where he was, on his knees, his gray pants soaked black, watching Vasile Lup with his mouth open in stupefaction, like an artist who sees his life's work destroyed right in front of his eyes. Jenica came cautiously down to the edge of the water and stood close to him, but none of us spoke while the Vampire Gatherer was still on fire.

As the last shreds of smoke fled away between the trees, however, there was a sound like the wind rushing, and the surface of the water actually
shuddered.
Something huge and invisible slammed between us, really close, like a truck that speeds past you on the highway, and almost sucks you along with it. I turned around and looked at Jenica in bewilderment, and Jenica looked at me, but I could tell that she didn't know what it was, either.

Razvan Dragomir slowly stood up. At first, he appeared exactly like himself, the Razvan Dragomir I had seen in all of those blurry photographs in the Dragomirs' apartment. Urbane, swarthy, with a very Romanian face. But as he rose to his full height, he grew taller and taller. His face began to distort and his shoulders hunched over.

I looked up at him and although he still resembled Razvan Dragomir, he had changed into somebody else, too. His eyes were deep-set, his slab-like cheeks were scarred with magical cicatrices, and he was wearing a living headdress made of cockroaches and beetles and wriggling larvae.

“
Misquamacus
,” I said.

“You think that you are my nemesis, white man?” he said. I could feel his voice vibrating through the bones in my skull, rather than my ears. “You think that you have defeated me?”

I was breathless, and my heart was beating like a tomtom. “Looks that way, from where I'm standing.”

“You are a fool. You are a man of grass. Have I not shown you now that even in death I can never be defeated? I will remain your implacable enemy, forever, until the lands that were once ours are restored to us, and your cities have vanished beneath the earth.”

“Misquamacus—you just don't get it, do you? We've lived in this country for four hundred years now and there's millions of us and what do you think you're going to do, kill every single one of us? You count for absolutely nothing! You don't even have your own
spirit
for Christ's sake! Look at you—hiding inside some white man's soul!”

“Without me, this man is powerless,” said Misquamacus. “Without me, he could never have raised up the Vampire Gatherer, and without the Vampire Gatherer he could never have done what he so desired to do, and raise up the blood-drinkers.”

“What are you saying?” Jenica demanded. She was almost hysterical. “What are you
saying?
”

Misquamacus turned toward her, and his face went through an eerie transformation, like morphing, so that he looked much more like Jenica's father. When he spoke, his voice was soft and rich and heavily accented.

“My darling—didn't I always tell you how wonderful the world could be, if men and women were immortal? A world of learning, and culture. A world in which genius was no longer buried, generation after generation. Yes, we would have to live by moonlight, and conceal ourselves by day. But what a small price to pay!”

“
You
raised Vasile Lup?” said Jenica.

“I always dreamed of it, but I could never do it until I found the sacred bone.”

I looked at him narrowly. “The sacred bone? You mean,
this
bone?”

“It is the leg bone of Father Juan de Palos who came to Florida in September of 1542, with the Spanish fleet of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca.”

Jenica shook her head as if she had water in her ears. “I don't understand, father. I don't understand.”

“It isn't difficult, my darling. Father Juan was a
vampiro
, which is what the Spanish call the
strigoi
. Cabeza de Vaca had brought him on his expedition so that he could exterminate the Apelachan Indians, because they were so hostile to the Spanish explorers. But one night, off the coast of Florida, five of Cabeza de Vaca's ships were wrecked in a storm, and Father Juan was swept ashore, and captured. When the sun rose, it burned him alive, as it does all
strigoi
. But a great Apelachan wonder-worker kept his leg bone, and carved it with magical symbols, and invested it with the power of Dachilin. In Apelachan legend, Dachilin is the
manitou
who can call the dead from limbo to serve the living—or, if he so wishes, dismiss them back to limbo.

“The wonder-worker did this so that the Apelachan would have a weapon that they could use against any more
strigoi
that the Spaniard conquistadores brought with them—although, as it turned out, they never did.”

“But why did
you
need it?” I asked him.

“Because I wanted to rouse the
strigoi
, and the
strigoi
can only be roused from their coffins by one of the
svarcolaci
, and I discovered that, in his turn, a
svarcolaci
can only be roused from his coffin by the spirits of the land in which he finds himself. There are no Romanian spirits here in America, thousands of miles away from the Carpathian mountains. Gheorghe Vlad's plan to wipe out the Sioux would never have succeeded, because he would never have been able to wake up Vasile Lup, not without the sacred bone, and the power of Dachilin.”

Jenica said, “You never told me about this. You never even told me that you had found the
strigoi's
coffins.”

“My darling, I found them many years ago. But what was the point of telling you that I had found them, if I had no way of bringing them back to life?”

“What was the
point?
I am your daughter! I am your flesh and blood! I am half-
strigoica
myself!”

“Well, I am sorry if you think that I have deceived you. I wasn't sure that you would approve of what I wanted to do. You are so much like your dearest mother.”

“How did you find the bone?” Jenica demanded. She was so angry that she couldn't speak straight.

“It was very difficult, my darling. It took me more than a quarter of a century. Sometimes I despaired, but I never gave up, because I knew it was the key to my great design. I discovered it at last in a private collection in Pascagoula. It was owned by an old woman, a retired anthropologist who had no idea what it was, or what it could do.

“Only this sacred bone could revive Vasile Lup . . . and only a Native American medicine man would understand the ritual to make it work.

He gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “After all of my years of searching, though, my great design almost came to nothing. Do you think I could find a Native American wonder-worker who understood how the bone worked, or knew the rituals of Dachilin? I read all the books and articles I
could find on Apelachan magic, but there was nothing about raising the dead.

“Then—like an act of God—came nine-eleven. Of course I understood nothing of what had happened. How could I know that the fire in the World Trade Center towers had literally welded back together the spirit of Misquamacus? I only discovered this much later, when I was able to gain access once more to the vaults under St. Stephen's church. As soon as I entered, I felt immediately as if I was blown by a hurricane. Misquamacus entered me like a great wind, and spoke to me. He gave me the power and the knowledge to use the bone, so that I could bring Vasile Lup back to life.”

“Talk about a deal with the devil,” I said.

“Yes, if you wish to call it that, we made a deal. Misquamacus would revive Vasile Lup, and once he was revived, Misquamacus could live within him. Vasile Lup did not wish to be woken from his sleep, but he had no choice, and I left the bone in his casket so that he could never return to it.”

“So you gave Misquamacus a war party of vampires?”

“If you like. The
strigoi
would feed on the blood of white men, and anyone else whom Misquamacus counted as an enemy—but not, of course, on Native Americans. Within a few years, the Native Americans would have their lands returned to them by day, and the
strigoi
would rule the country by night.”

“Nice scenario,” I told him.

But Razvan Dragomir turned to Jenica. “It is a tragedy that you had to interfere, my darling . . . you and this man, whoever he is. This could have been a golden age for two great peoples . . . the Native Americans and the
strigoi
.”

I approached him, and prodded him with the end of the bone. He stepped back, almost as if it had shocked him, like a cattle prod.

“So this bone can call spirits out of limbo, can it? And it can send them back, too?”

“Not without the Apelachan ritual.”

“Oh, I don't think I need an Apelachan ritual. I just think I need to shove this sacred bone right where it hurts the most. Maybe I could do a bit of Draculea-style impaling, if you know what I mean.”

I prodded him again, and this time he literally jumped, and his eyes rolled up, like an epileptic. “I do not know who you are, but there is nothing you can do to stop the
strigoi
now. They are everywhere, and every night there will be more of them, and more.”

“Oh, yes? That's what you think. The monster slayers are after them, Changing Woman's grandchildren, and they're going to hunt them all down, every single one of them, and frazzle them. And even if some of them manage to stay alive, or undead, or whatever it is—what do you think Misquamacus is going to do, once all his enemies have been wiped out?”

“We have a pact. We have an agreement. Native Americans by day,
strigoi
by night.”

“You might have Misquamacus hiding inside of your soul, sir, but you don't know him at all, do you? Do you seriously think that he's going to let a bunch of blood-sucking white folks roam around his precious prairies all night? He's using you, pal. He's using you to get his revenge, and once he's gotten his revenge, you and your vampires are going to be screwed back into your coffins where you all belong.”

“
Silence!
” shouted Razvan Dragomir, and his face changed dramatically to the face of Misquamacus. He snatched at the bone, but he missed it, and I jabbed him with it again, and again, and each time he convulsed.

“
Strigoi!
” he roared. “I need you!
Strigoi
, rise up and take this man! His blood is yours, take it!”

I took a step back into the water. It was almost drained away now, but there were still three or four inches left. As I stepped back, though, a hand reached out of the reflection and seized my ankle. Another hand followed it, holding a triangular-bladed kitchen knife, and it stabbed straight through my shoe and into the side of my foot. It hurt. I can't even describe how much it fucking hurt.

I shouted, “Get the hell off of me!” and whacked at the hands with the bone, but another hand appeared, and then another, and another, until twenty or thirty of them had risen from the water to snatch at my feet and legs. They blistered and smoked, because the sun was shining on them, but they started to drag me downward. I suddenly thought: shit, I'm half-
strigoi
myself, which means that I can be pulled into reflections, too. I kept on struggling and hitting them with the bone, but the hands clung on harder and harder and they wouldn't let go. Even though the water was only inches deep, it wasn't long before I had sunk into that morning-sky reflection as far as my hips.

“Jenica!” I shouted, but when I looked around I saw her running away, toward the inn. “
Jenica!
”

Misquamacus came closer. “I am going to let these blood-drinkers take you wherever they wish, and slaughter you like a buffalo, and empty your veins. Then I shall feed your carcass to the crows.”

I was frantic now, but the hands were too many and they were much too strong for me. It took them less than a minute to pull me down into the reflection up to my chest, and soon I couldn't even swing my arm wide enough to knock them away. I saw six or seven knives shining, and they started to stab at my buttocks and my thighs and my back. I shouted out with pain, but Misquamacus did nothing but stare at me, his headdress alive with insects.

“Jenica!” I yelled, but now I couldn't see her at all, and already
the
strigoi's
fingers were clawing at the back of my shirt collar.

“You have fought me many times, my friend,” said Misquamacus. “But you cannot fight your destiny. Your destiny lies here, in this piece of sky.”

It was then that I realized where Jenica had gone. She must have run across to Susan Fireman's body and picked up her knife, and now she was standing right behind Misquamacus where I couldn't see her. Without any warning at all, she reached around with one hand and cut his throat, just like that. One slice, left to right. Then she stepped away from him. Her face was a picture of horror and alarm, like a character from a children's nursery book.

Misquamacus was still staring at me, but his expression had changed entirely. Instead of triumphant, he looked disbelieving. He raised one hand toward his neck, but only halfway. As blood began to spout down his shirt, his face started to collapse and alter, and right in front of my eyes he shrank back into the features of Razvan Dragomir. By the time he was falling to the ground, he was no longer the vengeful Native American wonder-worker, but the Romanian academic, Jenica's father, and he was plastered down to his knees in blood.

At the same time, the
strigoi
in the pond began to release me. The last of the water drained away, and they disappeared, as if they had been sucked into a swamp. I found myself on my hands and knees, my pants soaked in blood, wet and coughing and cursing.

Razvan Dragomir lay amid the heaps of pondweed, his blood squirting out of his neck, his eyes glazing over.

As he lay there, I saw a glassy, liquid figure rise out of him—a figure that rippled in the morning sunlight. It was huge, and it was so cold and malevolent that ice began to crackle on the pondweed, and my breath steamed. Misquamacus,
almost invisible now, because his spirit had no ectoplasm.