Manitou Blood (43 page)

All the same, as she reached down between my legs, and guided me inside her, she bent her head forward and kissed me on the lips. Her lips were wet and warm and slippery, and she was the same inside. In spite of everything, I couldn't help groaning.

She rode up and down in silence. Each time she lifted up her hips, she almost lost me, but somehow she managed to judge the moment exactly, and slide herself back down again, until my naked cock was buried in her up to the hilt. The only sound was the bed creaking, and Jenica's
panting. Her perspiration dripped onto my lips, and it tasted like swimming in the ocean.

As I felt my climax rising up between my legs, I couldn't stop myself from gripping the cheeks of her bottom, and digging my fingers deep into her flesh. Now she was almost galloping, and she started to pant “
Samodiva! Samodiva! Samodiva!
” The smoke from the burning molasses seemed to grow more and more pungent, until I could smell and taste nothing else, and I was sure that the shadows on the ceiling were dancing in time to our fucking, like mad goblins out of the Transylvanian forests.

Without warning, Jenica began to quake with orgasm. I had never heard a woman make a noise like that before. It was like a low, vibrato dirge. “
Ohhhhhhh
,
ohhhhhh
,
dragostea
,
ohhhhhhhhh
.” It was so erotic and so revealing, as if she had opened up her whole personality to me, everything she was, her folk culture and her fantasies, and everything that she had grown up to be, from her Romanian girlhood.

She arched herself right back, until the back of her head was actually touching her bottom, and I was deeper inside her than I had physically thought possible. I had forgotten that she was partly
strigoica
, and that she could bend herself like a contortionist. That did it. I said, “Jesus, Jenica,” and ejaculated, and ejaculated again, and then again.

Afterward, we lay together in sweaty silence. The shadows had stopped dancing, too, as if the Transylvanian goblins were taking a breather, or maybe the candles had simply burned low. I heard the clock in the living room whirr and then strike four, and between the bedroom curtains I could see that the sky outside was already growing light.

Jenica lifted her head and stared at me. “There is one more thing, just to make sure.”

“Really? I don't mind doing it again, if you don't.”

She put her hand down between her thighs, and then lifted it up to my lips.

“What's this?”

“Taste. It is the taste of me, and the taste of you, and the taste of the
strigoica
.”

I licked her fingertips. “Now what? Does this mean I'm infected?”

“Now you sleep. Later, I will bring you tea, or wine, whatever you want.”

“I don't think I can sleep.”

“Then close your eyes and rest.”

She climbed off the bed and picked up her shirt. I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to get to sleep, not after having sex like that, and not when I knew that we were going to go hunting for Misquamacus. But I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

I could hear Jenica in the kitchen. She was singing what sounded like a love song, but for all the Romanian I knew, it could have been the Romanian equivalent of “You're So Vain.”

Suddenly, I felt something cool and wet on my stomach. I opened my eyes and Jenica was wiping the writing off my skin with a makeup-removal pad.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked me.

“Give me a chance, I've only been lying here for a couple of minutes.”

“You've been sleeping for nine hours. It's ten past one in the afternoon.”

I sat up. “
What?
You're kidding me!”

But the clock next to the bed said 1:09 and through the triangular crack in the curtains I could see that the sun was shining. Jenica had changed into a black-and-white check shirt and tight blue Levis, and she had brushed her hair back and tied it with a black scarf.

“Why didn't you wake me up earlier? Come on, Jenica, if we're going to go after Misquamacus we need all the daylight we can get!”

“Ssh,” she said. “You slept so long because you were exhausted.
Besides, you needed time to absorb the
strigoica
strain into your bloodstream.”

“Yeah, I forgot. I'm half a vampire now.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I don't
feel
any different. Apart from having a bean like a bowling ball.”

“Believe me, Harry, you
are
different. You can do things now that you could never do before. Look.”

She took hold of my right hand, and pulled back my index finger. It was incredible. Without any effort at all, it bent right over until it was practically touching the back of my wrist. I tried my middle finger, and I could bend it back just as far.

“That's fantastic. Harry Erskine, the India-Rubber Fortune-Teller. He unravels your future while he ties himself in knots.”

I bent back all of my other fingers, and they were just as flexible.

“There's something else,” said Jenica. “While you were sleeping I went downstairs. I did what you suggested, and pushed my hand into the mirror.”

“Don't tell me it wouldn't go in?”

“At first, no. I had to try three times, but then it happened. But only when I said to myself, Jenica, this is nothing but a doorway. It needs very strong faith, I think, as well as
strigoica
blood.”

“Well, thank God. I'd hate to think that what we did last night was a waste of time.”

“Why don't you dress now? Try some of my father's clothes. I will make us some coffee.”

I got up, drew back the drapes, and stretched myself. To my amazement, I found that I could lean over backward almost as far as Jenica had. Actually, I
did
feel different. Looser, somehow, more active and alive, as if I were ten years younger.

I rummaged through Razvan Dragomir's closet and
found a black silk shirt and a pair of black pants. The pants were a little too snug between the nuts, but Razvan Dragomir probably didn't drink nine cans of Guinness every day. I went into the kitchen where Jenica was making coffee with club soda, which was the only water we had left. There was no milk, of course, so I ate handfuls of cornflakes out of the box.

“We need to go to the Kensico Country Inn while it's still daylight,” I said. “We need to check out how many mirrors they have. And after what happened yesterday, with that guy coming out of the bathtub, I think we should scout around for any kind of reflective water surface, too. Rain barrels, ponds, that kind of thing.”

“Then we wait until it gets dark, yes, and Vasile Lup comes out of his mirror?”

“You've got it. While he's away, we break every mirror in the whole place, so that when he comes
back
, at sunrise, he doesn't have any place to hide. That's when you recite the disenchantment. Vasile Lup will be sent back to where he came from, and that leaves Misquamacus without a spirit to hide himself in.”

“But you still don't know how you will destroy your Misquamacus.”

“I'm counting on that bone.”

“Is that all?”

“What else can I do? Agreed—I don't have any idea what it does, or how it works, or why. But it seems to keep the
strigoi
at bay, doesn't it, and it can kill rats better than Ramik Green, and Misquamacus didn't seem to be at all happy when I waved it at him.”

“And that is all of your plan?”

“I guess so. I can't think of anything else I can do.”

“Maybe you should call on your Singing Rock.”

I shook my head. “He won't answer me, Jenica. I've already asked him for far too much help, and he's a great believer in working things out for yourself. Don't keep looking
to dead people for advice, that's his motto, or you might as well be dead yourself.”

“Okay,” said Jenica. “Then what shall we do? Go?”

I finished my coffee, stood up, and said, “Why not? You only live once.”

Jenica said, “I have one question. Once we step into the mirror, how do we find our way to the Kensico Country Inn?”

“In the ordinary way, I guess, except back-to-front.”

“You are not making me feel very confident.”

“Jenica, the whole world has gone crazy. Nine-eleven was madness but this is even madder. Let's just try to take it as it comes. It's the only way.”

She looked at me acutely. “You lost something very special, didn't you, when you lost your wife and your daughter?”

“I never lost them. I mislaid them, that's all.”

“You must never think that life is not really worth living. There is somebody waiting for you, somewhere.”

“Maybe. Right now, I have a vengeful Native American wonder-worker to deal with.”

Jenica packed her woven bag with her crucifix and her holy water and her book of
svarcolaci
. I took nothing except the bone.

We went downstairs to the hallway and stood in front of the mirror. Jenica said to me, “Try it first with your finger. Make sure that you can pass through it.”

I looked at my reflection. In my black silk shirt and my tight black pants, I reminded myself of an out-of-work conjuror. And now, for my next astounding trick, I will push my finger into the surface of this absolutely genuine real mirror, and it will penetrate the glass as if by magic. Which it did.

The sensation was extraordinary. I felt as if the glass was clinging to my finger, cold and heavy and liquid, like mercury. But my finger went in, and joined up with the finger in my reflection, and then it came out again, unharmed.

I turned to Jenica and said, “How about that. How
about
that.”

“Then, you see, the ritual of Samodiva really works.”

“I'm half a vampire. Shit. I can't believe it.”

“Now you have
strigoi
in your blood, yes. Now you are the same as me.”

Suddenly I felt very serious. I had taken risks before. I had fought against Misquamacus before. But this time I didn't think that either of us had much of a chance of surviving. I lifted Jenica's chin and kissed her. “At least nobody can say that we didn't go out with a bang.”

I decided that I would go first. If something went seriously wrong, I told Jenica that she should stay where she was, and not try to follow me. Even with Misquamacus spreading
strigoi
all across the Northeastern states, she would stand some chance of staying alive.

I stood right in front of the mirror. Harry Erskine, this is a very bad idea. You don't know where the hell you're going or what you're going to do when you get there. But I stepped forward, and I knew and I utterly believed that the mirror was a silver doorway, and that it led right through the frame into a world of reflections.

I closed my eyes. I felt a hard, cold, silent collision, like falling from the top diving board into a swimming pool, and rolling around in noisily bubbling water. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself standing in a hallway, but a very different hallway than the one I had just left. It was light, and airy, with a polished wood floor, and double doors that were open onto a white stone porch. A warm wind was blowing in from outside, and I could hear birds singing.

Strangely, Jenica was standing next to me here, while a second Jenica was still staring at us from the hallway that I had just left. I was here, inside the mirror. I was through.

“Come on,” I waved at Jenica, mouthing my words as if she were deaf. “I think it's okay.”

I wasn't sure that she could hear me, but she slowly approached the mirror and her reflection approached the mirror just as slowly, until they were both standing with their hands pressed against each other, looking into each other's eyes.

“It's okay!” I shouted. “You can do it!”

She hesitated a moment longer, and then she lowered her head and walked through. There was a sound like crushing glass, and a sparkling explosion of colors and shapes. Jenica and her reflection seemed to smash themselves softly together into one person. Then there was just the two of us, side by side, and the hallway we had left behind was empty.

Jenica stared at me. “Where are we? What is this place?”

“I don't know. I thought that if we went through the mirror we'd simply end up in the same hallway, only in reverse. But, well, apparently not.”

Jenica walked over to an antique satinwood bureau and stared up at an oil painting of a man in a curly white wig. “I do not understand this,” she said. “Maybe it is better if we go back.”

I crossed the hallway to the double doors and stepped out onto the porch. I had expected to see Leroy Street. Well, you would, even if it was teertS yoreL. But outside the front door there was a wide, empty courtyard, and an avenue of maple trees with a white fence running beside it. Through the maple trees I could see a circular pond shining, with geese on it, and in the distance lay a range of hills, with low clouds lying on top of them like down comforters. There was no sign of Leroy Street, no sign of Manhattan at all. On the wall there was a sign saying No Parking, and the writing was the right way round, not a mirror image at all. So this wasn't looking glass land. We had
simply walked through one mirror in Manhattan and out of another, someplace else altogether. But where?

Jenica came out and stood beside me, shading her eyes against the glare. The sky was filled with thick, white, cumulus clouds, although there were one or two ragged fragments of blue. The air was warm and humid I could actually smell freshly mown grass. Two silver SUVs were parked beside a stable block, but there was no sign of any life.

“Maybe this is a dream, or some kind of hallucination,” said Jenica. “It gives me a very bad feeling.”

We went back inside. In one corner of the hallway stood an antique desk with a visitor's book lying open on it. I went over and picked the book up. There was blood spattered across the pages and when I looked down there was blood on the floor, too. I closed the book and read the inscription on the green leather cover.