“Why don’t you put down your box?” it smiled.
There was a moment when I considered running, and opening up my Kit, and taking out my silver mirror and my silver whip and trying to destroy Duca with all the religious and superstitious paraphernalia that I had used for so long. But Duca was infinitely faster than me, and somehow I knew that the time for all of those ancient and medieval artifacts was past. This was the modern age, and both Duca and I had to get used to the idea.
I set down my Kit, and pushed it with my foot underneath one of the varnished benches that ran around beneath the fascia of the cocktail lounge.
“There you are,” I told it. “Satisfied?”
Duca took hold of my left elbow. Its grip was painfully strong, and its thumb dug deep into my nerve, so that my forearm felt numb.
“I assume you know which cabin I reserved?” said Duca.
“Yes,” I told it.
“In which case—” it said, and started to steer me along the deck. The
Queen Elizabeth
’s siren blew again, and then again, which was the signal for those who weren’t sailing to go ashore. Duca was saying something else—something which caused it to smile, but I couldn’t hear what it was.
We reached the elevator and waited. Duca’s grip on my elbow was unrelenting.
“You really think you’re going to get away?” I asked it.
“You know I am.”
“So where are you going?”
“I have an appointment to keep in America.”
“An
appointment
? Who the hell with?”
This seemed to amuse Duca even more. “Before you and I finish our business together, Captain, I will tell you. I want to see the expression on your face.”
“Oh, yes?”
The elevator doors opened. Duca had to step back to allow half a dozen people to get out, and as it did so I half-twisted myself around and stabbed it in the forearm with my hypodermic. Duca flinched, but dead Screechers are not as sensitive as we are. Before it could turn its head and realize what I was doing, I had jammed down the plunger with my thumb and injected it with the full 5cc of polio vaccine.
Duca slammed me against the side of the elevator door. Two women were trying to get into the elevator and one of them shrilled in alarm.
“What have you done to me?” Duca shouted at me. It seized my wrist and forced the hypodermic out of my grasp. “What is this? What have you done to me?”
“You’re just about to find out, friend,” I told it.
Duca dropped the hypodermic on the deck and stamped on it. Then it struggled out of its coat, yanked out its cufflinks and pulled up its shirtsleeve. The needle-prick was clearly visible, and the skin around it was already looking inflamed.
“What have you done to me?” Duca raged. It lowered its head and tried to suck the needle-prick, but it was out of its reach, and it let out an incoherent roar of utter frustration. I backed away, intending to retrieve my Kit, but Duca came after me, as fast as a camera shutter. It seized my arm and threw me across the deck, so that I collided with the rail. Then it came after me again, as if it was going to rip me apart.
It twisted my coat in both hands and shouted directly into my face, so that I could feel its freezing breath. “Tell me what you have done to me!” it screamed. “Tell me what poison you have given me!”
“Like I said, Duca,” I panted. I felt as if my shoulder was dislocated. “You’ll soon find out for yourself.” At least I hoped it would. Supposing I were wrong, and anti-polio vaccine had no effect on dead Screechers at all? Or supposing—even if it
did
work—that it took hours before the dead viruses came back to life, or even days?
There was a crowd around us now, but Duca was too enraged to take any notice of them. A white-jacketed steward came up to us and said, “Now, then! Pack it in, you two, or I’ll call the police and have you thrown off the ship!”
Duca jerked its head up and snarled at him like a wild beast. Its face was so distorted with fury that the steward raised both hands and said, “OK, mate. OK. Just take it easy, all right?” The rest of the crowd shuffled back, too, some of them stepping on each other’s feet.
Duca gripped my coat even tighter and its fists trembled with effort. “I am going to drag out your intestines for this, Captain. I am going to hoist you on a pole and watch the crows eat your eyes out!”
It was half-choking me, and I could barely speak. But I managed to say, “Wrong country, Duca. You’re not in Romania any more. Worse than that—wrong century.”
Duca began to shudder, and its breathing started to become more labored. It looked into my eyes and I could tell now that I had compromised its immortality.
“I have an appointment in America,” it said. “I swore that I would get my revenge, and I shall.”
“Come on, gents,” said the steward, warily. “Get up off the floor and let’s be having you. This is the
Queen Elizabeth
, not the bloody Isle of Wight ferry.”
Duca grasped my throat and pressed its thumbs into my Adam’s apple. I took hold of its wrists and tried to pull its hands away, but it was still far too strong for me.
“I have an appointment,” it repeated, and now its voice was softer and hoarser. “I have an appointment . . . in America.”
I tried to cough, but I couldn’t. I could see tiny prickles of light swimming in front of my eyes. I thought with a strange feeling of serenity that I was going to die here, with all of these well-dressed people watching me, and none of them lifting a finger to help me.
But Duca’s hands began to tremble more and more
violently, and little by little its grip began to weaken. I managed to take a breath, and then another.
“Come on, mate,” said the steward, and laid his hand on Duca’s shoulder.
Only a few minutes before, Duca would probably have twisted the steward’s arm off, but now it reached out and held on to him for support. Slowly, painfully, it managed to climb on to its feet, and to lurch across to the hand-rail. It stood there for a while, its chest rising and falling as if it had been running a marathon, its face ashy, its bloodred mouth gaping open.
Two men helped me to stand up, too. “What’s the matter with your sparring partner?” said one of them. “Is he ill or something?”
“I’ll call the ship’s doctor,” said the steward.
“There are two police detectives down by the main gangway,” I told him. “I’d like you to call them, too. And please—” I coughed “—can we clear all of these people away?”
I took out my identity card and held it up. “Please—MI6. This man is a dangerous suspect.”
The steward said, “Blimey.” Then, “Come on, ladies and gentlemen, if you’d be so kind. Can we give this gentleman a bit of breathing space?”
As the crowds of passengers reluctantly began to disperse, I approached Duca and stood facing it—although I made sure that I didn’t get too close. Duca stared back at me with utter hatred, one hand pressed against its chest, but it didn’t have enough breath to be able to speak.
“What did I tell you?” I said. “This is where you find out what it’s like to be mortal.”
Duca took one step forward, and then another, and
slowly shuffled its way toward the cocktail lounge. I followed it, but I still kept my distance. It may have been affected by creeping paralysis, but I didn’t trust it one inch. It turned to me and said, “You are going to die for this, Captain.” Then it opened the door to the cocktail lounge and disappeared inside.
I hurried along the promenade deck and dragged my Kit out from under the bench. Then I shouldered my way into the cocktail lounge, urgently looking left and right to see where Duca had gone.
The lounge wasn’t open yet, and it was deserted, although a syrupy orchestral version of “Diana” was playing over the loudspeaker system. It was decorated in the highly contemporary 1950s style of all of the
Queen Elizabeth
’s public spaces, with sycamore-paneled walls dyed to the color of lobster shells, inlaid with marquetry pictures of scenes from the circus. Behind the bar stood scores of shining bottles—crème de menthe and Pernod and grenadine, and rows of chromium cocktail-shakers.
I couldn’t see Duca at first, but then I saw a spasmodic movement halfway up the panel that depicted a trapeze artist. Duca was slowly and painfully climbing up the wall, clinging to the paneling like a dying man crawling across a desert. When I came in, it managed to turn its head around, but it didn’t speak. Instead it continued its climb, gasping for breath with every few inches that it managed to ascend.
I set down my Kit on one of the polished wood tables and opened it. I took out my Bible, my holy oil, my hammer and my nails. I felt like a priest, taking out everything he needed for an exorcism. This was the day when the devil got what the devil deserved.
“Duca! Dorin Duca! Are you going to come down from there, or do I have to pull you down?”
Duca had nearly reached the top of the wall now. The polio virus was already stiffening its arms and its legs, because it clawed feebly at the ceiling two or three times before it managed to get a grip, and I thought for a moment that it was going to fall. Eventually, however, it started to creep upside down toward the central light fitting.
I couldn’t understand where Duca thought it was going, or how it was going to escape me. Maybe it was giving me a final demonstration of its supernatural abilities, its superiority, its differentness. I opened my Bible at Revelation and stood directly underneath Duca.
“You feel this, Duca? You feel the power of the Word?”
There was a long silence, punctuated only by Duca’s agonized breathing.
“I will kill you, Captain. You and all your kin.”
“I don’t think so, Duca. There are too many people who want their revenge on
you
.”
I laid down the Bible and unstoppered the bottle of holy oil. Taking a couple of steps backward, I flicked my wrist in a crisscross pattern so that the oil sprayed all over Duca’s back, and over its hair. Duca’s evil was so intense that the oil actually
smoked
on contact with it, and it let out a howl of pain.
I sprayed it again and again, and the smoke poured out thicker and faster. It reached around with one hand, trying to tear the oil-soaked shirt from its back, and as it did so it spontaneously burst into flames.
These weren’t the flames that I would have expected from olive oil, no matter who had blessed it. These flames were fierce and bluish-white, like burning naphtha.
Duca clung on to the ceiling, screaming hoarsely with its half-paralyzed lungs, while all around it the light gray paint was blackened with twists and whorls of sooty smoke.
Suddenly, Duca dropped to the floor. It rolled over and over, still blazing, and I had to step smartly sideways to avoid it. It rolled up against the cocktail bar and lay there, not moving, while the flames subsided and flickered out. I picked up my hammer and my nails and approached it.
Its face was charred and raw and most of its hair was burned off. Its shirt had been reduced to a few blackened shreds. But when it opened its eyes and looked up at me I wasn’t surprised: a
strigoi mort
couldn’t be killed by fire, or by bullets, no matter what the bullets had been cast out of; and it couldn’t be killed by polio, either, even if it remained paralyzed for all eternity.
Duca whispered, “I will kill you for this, I promise. You and all of your kin.” Smoke actually leaked out of its mouth.
I knelt down beside it. I detested it, and all of the death and bereavement it had caused, and I only wished that its suffering could have lasted longer. I thought of Ann De Wouters’s children, and all of the other children who had been orphaned by Duca and its disciples. Most of all I thought of my mother.
I lifted one of the nails and held it over Duca’s right eye. It didn’t even blink. Then I raised my hammer.
At that moment, the doors to the cocktail lounge swung open and the two detectives came running in, closely followed by George.
“Bloody hell!” said one of the detectives. “What’s all
this bloody smoke? What the bloody hell’s happened to him?”
“Keep away!” I warned him. But in that split second of distraction, Duca snatched my wrist, and wouldn’t let go. The skin on its fingers was crusted and split, like pork crackling, but its grip was bony and incredibly strong.
With a deep grunt, it seized the shaft of my hammer, and twisted it around so viciously that I dropped it. It bounced across the Korkoid floor, well out of my reach.
“Jim—
Jim
!” asked George, in a panic. “What do you want us to do?” One of the detectives pulled out a large Webley revolver and waved it at us, but Duca and I were so close together that he was obviously too scared to shoot. Not that a bullet would have done any good, even if it had hit Duca right between the eyes.
“Oil!” I told George. “There, on the table!”
“What?”
“There’s a bottle of oil on the table! Pour it over it!”
Now that it had relieved me of my hammer, Duca was concentrating on the crucifixion nail that I was holding in my left hand, trying to screw it around so that it was pointing at my heart. Duca’s breathing was harsh, and it kept coughing up a thick, bloody mucus. Its eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, but it was absolutely determined to kill me. I could hear the cartilage in my wrist crackle as it gradually bent my hand around the wrong way, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “
Gah!
Shit!
Agh!
”
“You want to talk—about mortality?” it wheezed. It had managed to lodge the point of the nail underneath my rib cage, and was pressing hard. “You want to talk about—death?”
I felt the point of the nail break my skin. The pain was so intense that I went cold all over. Even my blood felt cold, as it soaked down the front of my shirt.
“You want to talk about revenge?” said Duca. “This is my revenge!”
It hooked its left arm around my back, trying to pull me downward, so that the nail would penetrate my rib cage, and force its way upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, into my heart. It was making thick, animal-like grunts, almost as if it were trying to violate me.
I didn’t see George. But I suddenly felt something slippery slide down the side of my face and pour directly onto Duca’s forehead, and into its eyes. The holy oil couldn’t harm me at all, but it had a devastating effect on Duca. Its face began to crackle, and what was left of its skin began to crumple up like cellophane thrown into an open fire.