Children of The Night

Chapter Twenty-nine

THE police ahead, not content to wait until the traffic reached their roadblock, were moving down the line of cars, peering in windows and demanding papers. O'Rourke revved the motorcycle and began turning around on the narrow stretch of road.

Kate tugged at his sleeve.

“I see the Mercedes,” he said, the loose strap of his flying helmet flapping. “We'll just have to risk it.”

Kate used both hands to clutch the rim of the sidecar, lowered her head so that little more than her scarf and goggles were visible, and peered to her left as they roared back the way they had come.

The four men in the Mercedes did not glance up as they passed. Looking back, Kate could see the Mercedes sweep out of line and drive on the left side of the road to the barricades. The police saluted and let it through. Other cars and a few motorcycles were turning back from the roadblock.

O'Rourke pulled over when they were in the fringe of the city again, parking near some workers' apartments. Kate studied the grim Stalinist buildings, each with its complement of empty shops on the ground floor, while the priest studied the map. She shifted her legs in the tight pod and turned back to him. “What next?”

“Maybe take the main road to Pitesti,” he said. “Take E 70 to this village . . . Petesti, south of Gaesti . . . and then follow 72 north to Tirgoviste.”

“What if they have E 70 blocked?” asked Kate.

O'Rourke tucked the map back in its elastic slot. “We'll deal with that when it happens.”

E 70 was blocked. The line ran back almost two miles. The priest understood enough Romanian to decipher the grumbles of truck drivers walking back to their rigs: the police were examining papers at the point the street left the city and became a fourlane highway to Pitesti.

O'Rourke turned the motorcycle around and drove back into the city. It was already early afternoon and Kate's stomach was growling. She had eaten no real breakfast and she could remember only a few spoonfuls of soup the night before.

There were bread shops along this main street of Bulevardul Pacii, but they were empty and had been since seven A.M. Aggressive streetcars, ignoring other traffic, made O'Rourke swerve across uneven brick and cracked asphalt, and Kate thought that the sidecar was going to flip over more than once: She saw a truckers' restaurant open near the railroad tracks and pointed it out to the priest. Once in the parking lot, with the motorcycle engine quieted, O'Rourke took off his flying helmet and rubbed a sweaty forehead.

“Do we dare go in?” asked Kate.

“If you're as hungry as I am, you'll dare,” said O'Rourke. They left their goggles and his helmet in the sidecar and went inside.

The space was cavernous, cold, and filled with smoke from a hundred cigarettes. Waiters hurried from table to table, carrying large bottles of beer. Each trucker had half a dozen empty beer bottles in front of him and seemed intent upon ordering half a dozen more.

“Why so many at once?” whispered Kate as they found a table near the kitchen.

O'Rourke smiled. Kate noticed for the first time that he had removed his Roman collar and was wearing just a dark shirt and pants under the heavy wool coat. “They're afraid the place will run out of beer,” he said. “And they will before dinnertime.” He tried to wave down a waiter but the men in dark vests and grimy white shirts ignored him. Finally the priest stood and planted himself in front of one of the hurrying men.

“Datine supa, va rog,” said O'Rourke. Kate's stomach rumbled at the thought of a large bowl of soup.

The waiter shook his head. “Nu . . .” He snapped off an angry string of syllables, obviously expecting O'Rourke to move aside. He did not.

“Mititei? Brinzd? Cirnafi?” asked the priest.

As nervous as Kate was, her mouth watered at the thought of sausage and cheese.

“Nu!” The waiter glared at them. “American?”

Kate stood and took a twenty-dollar bill from her purse.

“Ne puteti servi mai repede, va rog, ne grabim!”

The waiter reached for the bill. Kate folded it back between her fingers. “When we get the food,” she said. “Mititei. Brinzd. Salam. Pastrama.”

The waiter glared again but disappeared into the kitchen. O'Rourke and Kate stood until he returned. Truck drivers stared at them.

“Nothing like being inconspicuous,” whispered the priest.

Kate sighed. “Would you rather we starved?”

The waiter returned with a less surly manner and a greasy white bag. Kate looked in, saw the wrapped sausages, stuffed eggs, and slices of salami. He reached for the twenty dollars again but Kate held up one finger. “Bduturd?” she said. “Something to drink?”

The waiter looked pained.

“Niste apd,” said Kate. “Apa minerals.”

The waiter, nodded tiredly and looked at O'Rourke. “Beer,” said the priest.

The waiter returned a minute later with two large bottles of mineral water and three bottles of beer. He obviously wanted the transaction to be over. O'Rourke took the bottles; the waiter took the twenty-dollar bill. The truckers resumed their conversations.

Outside, it was drizzling again. Kate stuffed the food and bottles under the cowl of the sidecar. O'Rourke was out on the street and headed east in a minute. “I don't know what to do except head back into town,” he shouted.

Kate was watching the trolley and train tracks that ran parallel to the road here. There were graveled ruts running alongside them. “The tracks run west here!” she shouted and pointed.

O'Rourke understood immediately. He wheeled the motorcycle in front of an oncoming streetcar, bounced across a curb, pounded across a littered field, and swerved onto the graveled track. In a minute they were echoing between the backs of Stalinist apartment buildings. The priest tried to avoid the broken bottles and jagged bits of metal along the track.

Near the edge of town, the graveled path turned to mud and then died out altogether. “Hang on!” shouted O'Rourke and jerked the motorcycle up onto a crossing, then down onto the railroad ties. Kate's sidecar hung over the rail.

They bounced along for three or four miles, Kate sure every inch of the way that her fillings were going to vibrate out. She could not imagine how O'Rourke could see; her own vision was a vibrating triple image dulled by the goggles and drizzle. “What if a train comes?” she shouted as they passed the last of the outlying peasant homes. Only a few old men in their gardens had looked up.

“We die!” O'Rourke shouted back.

Five miles out of the city and at least three miles beyond the roadblock, they stopped at a junction with a muddy dirt road that led north and south. Ahead of them, around a thick copse of trees, a train's whistle seemed very loud.

“Guess we get off here,” said O'Rourke and swung north on the road. The track was muddy and Kate had to get out and push twice before they reached a junction with Highway E 70, running northwest like an abandoned and unpatched Interstate. It seemed like a century since O'Rourke had driven her to Pitesti along this road to see the babybuying in action last May.

There were no police cars on the westbound lane. They saw no black Mercedes when they switched to a narrow and bumpy Highway 72 beyond the large village of Gaesti. The sign said TIRGOVI~TE 30 KM.

No longer speaking above the engine roar, Kate's head throbbing from the beating along the railroad tracks, they drove north toward the mountains and the gathering dark.

They stopped to eat along the Dimbovita River, less than ten kilometers from Tirgoviste. Highway 72 was narrow, winding, and unencumbered by villages larger than a few modest homes tucked next to the road. O'Rourke parked the motorcycle deep under the trees, near the slowmoving river. The cheese was sharp, the sausage old, and the oua umpluti the stuffed eggsstuffed with something neither of them recognized. The meal was one of the most delicious Kate could ever remember, and she drank straight from the mineral water bottle to wash it down. The rain had stopped, and although the sun showed no sign of coming out, it seemed warmer than it had been in days. Kate found bits of her clothing that were actually dry.

“Your Romanian seems to have worked back at the restaurant,” said O'Rourke. He seemed to be savoring the beer.

Kate licked her fingers. “Basic survival tactics last spring. Not all my meals were at the hospital restaurant.” She paused before attacking her last bit of stuffed egg. “I hope those truckers were at the end of their haul rather than the beginning. “

O'Rourke nodded. “The beer, you mean? Yes. Well, driving sober is a rarity in this country.” He glanced at his own almostempty bottle. “I guess I'll stop with one.”

Kate took off her scarf. “You said `shit' twice today and now you're swilling beer. Hardly the behavior of a proper priest. “

Instead of laughing, O'Rourke looked out at the river. His eyes were a lustrous gray and in that second Kate caught a glimpse of the handsome boy in the tired and bearded face of the man. “It's been a long time,” he said, “since I was a proper priest.”

Kate hesitated, embarrassed.

“If the Romanian trip hadn't come up two years ago, putting me in touch with the orphan problem here,” he went .on, “I would have resigned then.” He took another drink.

“That sounds funny,” Kate said. “The word `resigned,' I mean. One doesn't think of priests resigning.”

O'Rourke nodded slightly, but kept his eyes on the river.

“Why would you leave the priesthood?” Kate said very softly. There was no traffic on the road and the river made little noise.

O'Rourke spread his fingers and Kate realized how large and strong his hands looked. “The usual reason,” he said. “Inability to suspend one's' disbelief. “ He lifted a stick and drew geometric shapes in the soft loam.

“But you said once that you believed“ began Kate.

“In evil,” finished the priest. “But that hardly qualifies me to be a priest. To administer sacraments. To act as a sort of halfassed intermediary between people who believe much more than I and God . . . if there is a God.” He tossed the stick into the river and both of them watched it whirl out of sight in the steady current.

Kate licked her lips. “O'Rourke . . . why are you here? Why did you come with me?”

He looked at her then and his gray eyes seemed very clear and very honest. “You asked me to,” he said.

Tirgoviste was a town of about fifty thousand people set in the valley of another river, the Ialomita, and beyond it Kate could see the foothills of the Carpathians rising into cloud. At first glance, Tirgoviste was as polluted and industrial as the oil town Pitesti, but then they rumbled through the busy outskirts and found themselves in the old center of the premedieval city.

“That's the old palace,” said O'Rourke, taking his right hand off the throttle to point at ruins beyond a sixfoot wall. “It was founded by Mircea the Old back in the late thirteen hundreds, but Vlad the Impaler burned it down in a battle with the Turks in 14622. Just before he lost power, I think.”

Kate wiped mud from her goggles. '

“That's the Chindia Tower,” said O'Rourke, pointing to a circular stone tower visible above the compound wall. “Old Vlad built it as a watchtower and as an observation post to watch the tortures he held in the courtyard below. The new building just outside the wall there is the museum. “ O'Rourke pulled the motorcycle into a side street, but signs on the door proclaimed the museum closed. “Too bad,” said the priest. “I know the assistant curator there. He's an officious little prick . . . quite loyal to Ceausescu . . . but he knows an awful lot about Tirgoviste's history.”

Kate shifted her weight in the sidecar. Her feet were almost asleep. “Two shits and a little prick,” she said. “Your debits are adding up, Father.”

“And have been for years, sister.” He gunned the throttle and moved slowly down the side street. “My guess was that this is where they'd hold tonight's part of the ceremony, but I don't see any preparations.” All of the gates to the palace historical compound had been chained and padlocked with signs saying CLOSED in English and French.

“It's not dark yet,” said Kate. “Vampires don't come out until it's dark.” She closed her eyes. She felt very sleepy and very discouraged. But when she closed her eyes she saw a perfect image of Joshua laughing at one of his monthly birthday parties, his small hands clenching and unclenching in delight, his dark eyes luminous in candlelight .... Kate snapped her eyes open: “Now what?” she said.

O'Rourke stopped the motorcycle. “I think we need to find a place to hide the bike and ourselves,” he said. “And then we wait until the vampires come out.”

“And if they don't?” said Kate. “If this isn't the site?”

“Then we're well and royally screwed.”

Kate patted his arm. “Two shits, a little prick, and now a royally screwed,” she said. “You'd better get to confession soon, O'Rourke. “

The priest pulled off his leather helmet and vigorously rubbed his scalp. His hair stood in matted clumps. He was grinning through his beard. “I agree,” he said. “And since all of the priests in Tirgoviste have been rounded up by the Securitate, you may just have to hear my confession.”

Kate made a face. The motorcycle moved on through quiet side streets.

The barn was all by itself in an empty field less than half a mile from the palace grounds. It obviously had not been used in years except to store the remains of a tractor with iron wheels and no engine, although the hay in the loft was relatively new. There was no farmhouse around. Across half a mile of field, the towers of a petrochemical plant were visible through a renewed drizzle.

“Systematization,” said O'Rourke, looking both ways before pushing the motorcycle off the narrow lane and down the path to the barn. “Ceausescu probably bulldozed the farmhouse. “

“The hay is recent,” said Kate.

O'Rourke nodded to two scrawny cows far across the field, their ribs visible even at that distance. “With all the chemical dumping, their milk probably glows a nice toxic green,” he said.

“Nice thought,” said Kate, following him into the barn and pulling the sagging doors as closed as they would go. She was shivering visibly now. Her head felt warm and she was dizzy.

O'Rourke set his hand against her forehead. “My God, Neuman . . . you're burning up.”

She clutched her bag closer. “I've got antibiotics, aspirin...”

“What you need is to get warm,” he said, clambering up a rotted wooden ladder to the loft. “It's OK,” he called down.

The straw was not actually fresh, but it was relatively clean.

O'Rourke made a nest in it and set the sidecar blanket down. “Take off the raincoat and your outer layers,” he said. He was pulling his own sodden coat off.

Kate hesitated only a second. Then she shucked off her wet coat and scarf, found her cheap sweater and polyester pants soaked through, and tugged them off. Even her underwear was damp, but she left on her bra and white cotton pants. Her legs and arms were a mass of goosebumps and she knew that her nipples were visible through her unstructured bra. Kate dropped into the straw and pulled half of the blanket up and around her. The wool was scratchy and smelled of gasoline. “I have a change of clothes in the bag,” she said through chattering teeth. '

“You wouldn't have some for me in there would you?” asked O'Rourke. He was much wetter than she had been. He squeezed his black shirt and water ran out. The skin of his chest and upper arms was very white and Kate could see his fingers shaking with the cold. His black trousers were visibly soaked, but he hesitated a moment after unbuttoning them. “Close your eyes,” he said.

“Don't be silly,” snapped Kate, clenching jaw muscles to keep her teeth from chattering. “I'm a doctor, remember? Do you want a lecture on hypothermia?”

“No,” said O'Rourke and unzipped his pants. He put both their sets of clothes on a wooden railing where the weak sunlight could reach them through the single filthy window in the loft.

He doesn't wear underwear! was Kate's single thought. Only then did she notice the plastic of the prosthesis beginning just below his left knee and realized that his request might have come from something other than simple modesty.

Kate's eyes left the prosthetic leg and looked at the man. Father Michael O'Rourke was not as lean as Lucian, muscles not quite as well defined, but when he turned to spread the clothes on the railing, Kate found herself admiring his small rear end in a way that was far from medical. When he turned around, she followed the line of dark hair from where it covered his chest down to the thick patch of pubic hair. His penis and scrotum were contracted from the cold.

Kate turned away and fumbled in her bag for clothes.

“Don't get the other clothes wet,” said O'Rourke, slipping onto the blanket and pulling up the loose end. He was facing her, their knees not quite touching, and there was just enough extra blanket to cover him. “ feet warm first, then put them on.”

In other circumstances, with any other man, she would have known that was a line. Now, with Michael O'Rourke, she wasn't sure. “Just a sweater,” she said, pulling out a navy cotton sweater and tugging it on while undoing the clasp of her wet bra and slipping it off as subtly as she could before putting her arms through the arms of the sweater. She was not unaware that the motion made her breasts seem larger. “The rest is mostly jeans and skirts that would look out of place here,” she whispered, tugging the blanket tight again. “I'll have to wear the damn polyester stuff Lucian bought me if we're going back out on the street.” She pulled a dry pair of underpants from the bag and slipped them under the comer of the blanket. How to do this without being so obvious? She gave up being subtle, hunkered down in the blanket, slipped off the wet panties, and pulled, on the dry ones.

O'Rourke clasped his bare arms outside the blanket, and Kate realized that he was also trying to keep from shivering. He was not succeeding. She wondered if any of the shivers were from nervousness. They were huddled in their little depression in the straw like two Indians crouched facetoface.

“'Come here,” whispered Kate and lay back in the straw, pulling the blanket so that O'Rourke was obliged to come with it. There was an awkward moment of rearranging the blanket and then they were lying next to each other, not quite touching but sharing warmth under the wool. Kate tried to think of a joke to break the tension palpable between them, then decided not to. O'Rourke was looking at her with those clear gray eyes, and she was not quite sure if there was a question there or not.

“Turn around,” she whispered.

With each of them in a fetal position, there was just enough blanket to cover them securely. Without hesitating, Kate slipped against him spoon fashion, feeling her breasts compress under the cotton sweater, feeling the backs of his thighs still moist with rain against the front of hers. Her hands touched his cold shoulders, slipped down his arms. She could feel the muscles tense and quivering with cold and realized that O'Rourke had been soaked and freezing during most of the long drive to Tirgoviste. She snuggled closer and slid her bandaged left arm around his body, her hand flat against his chest.

“I don't think . . .” began O'Rourke.

“Shhh,” whispered Kate, molding his legs and hips to hers. “It's all right. We'll just get warm and rest a bit until it gets dark.” She felt his chest expand as if he were going to say something else, but he stayed silent. A moment later she felt him relax.

Kate felt her own excitement, felt the warmth and moisture between her thighs and the slight sense of heaviness in her breasts that always signified arousal in her, but she also felt a great sense of calm descend on her for the first time since the fire. She set her face close to the back of his neck, feeling the soft tickling where his uncut hair curled slightly there and breathing in the clean male scent of him. He had stopped shivering.

Kate was very aware of her nipples separated from his skin by only the light cotton, was conscious of the warmth of the. cheeks of his behind against her thighs, and sensed the curve of his back solid against the cusp of her belly, but she let the urgency such proximity produced just slide away for now, become a pleasant background sensation, as she relaxed into the warmth of the moment.

And slept.

It was dark when she woke and for a second there was a surge of panic that they had overslept and missed the Ceremony, but then Kate saw the dim remnants of twilight through the dusty panes and knew that the sun had just set. They had hours left until midnight.

O'Rourke was asleepKate had not even the briefest confusion about where she was or whom she was withbut he had turned in his sleep so that they lay facing each other. Kate's bandaged left arm was still encircling him, but O'Rourke had huddled closer under the small blanket, his hands clasped together in front of him so that they lay in the warm valley between her breasts. There was no chance that he was feigning sleep; O'Rourke was snoring ever so softly, his mouth open slightly in that vulnerable unselfconsciousness Kate had seen so often when she checked on Joshua in the night.

Kate studied O'Rourke's face in the bit of light available: his lips were full and soft, his eyelashes longshe could imagine how cute he had been as a boyand there were traces of red and premature gray in his brown beard. His relaxed face made her realize how much subtle strain there usually was in his otherwise open and friendly countenance, as if Mike O'Rourke carried a heavy weight which he relinquished only in sleep.

Kate glanced down but could not see the artificial leg in the gap where the small blanket had parted above them. She did see the long curve of his naked thigh where his leg lay next to hers.

Without thinking about it, because thinking would change her mind, Kate leaned closer, kissed O'Rourke's cheek, andwhen his eyes opened and lips closed in surprise kissed him softly but firmly on the mouth. He did not pull away. Kate pulled back a second to let her eyes focus on his, saw something more important than surprise there, and brought her face closer to kiss him again. This time her lips parted only seconds before his did. She used her bandaged left arm to pull him tighter against her, feeling his hands, still folded, between her breasts and the slow but steady rise of his penis against her thigh.

They gasped for breath and then kissed again, and this time something infinitely more complex than their mutual urgency and excitement was communicated in the kissit was a slow and simultaneous opening of sensation, a resonance as real as the pounding of their hearts.

Kate pulled back, her senses literally swimming in a vertigo of feeling. “I'm sorry, I“

“Hush,” whispered O'Rourke, lifting his hands to the back of her head, fingers sliding into and under her hair, pulling her close again for another kiss.

Kate thought that the moist perfection of that kiss would never end. When it did, her voice was shaky. “I mean, it's all right if we do. I mean, I have an IUD . . . but, really, I understand if you“

“Hush,” he whispered again and lifted her sweater over her head. Her nipples responded to the cold air at the same instant her eyes were covered, then she could see again and he was pulling the blanket back in place. “Shhh,” he said, touching her lips with one finger while his other hand found her underpants and tugged them down and off.

“If you don't want to, it's all“she began, voice thick.

“Shut up,” whispered O'Rourke. “Please.” He kissed her again, then slipped his left arm behind her, fingers strong on her back, and rolled half on top of her, his left arm taking the weight.

“Please,” she echoed and said no more as she lifted her face and kissed him, one hand splayed on the back of his head, the other sliding down his back to the base of his spine. There were scar ridges theremost small, but at least one long and ridged. She felt the briefest touch of the prosthesis as he lifted and then lowered himself between her legs, but then she was aware only of the warmth of the rest of his body, of his kisses, and of his erection warm and insistent against the curve of her belly.

Kate moaned and moved her right hand down, under his thighs, cupped him, slid up him, and guided him to her. She was very wet as she raised her knees and cradled him.

O'Rourke was in no hurry. He kissed her deeply, raised his face to look at her with what seemed infinite tenderness, then kissed her again so slowly and so passionately that Kate thought she might have lost consciousness for a second or two. Her hips moved and he entered her then, with no clumsiness, no rough male desperation, but with the same moist, slow firmness that she felt in his kiss.

Kate stopped breathing for an instant as he paused and seemed ready to withdraw, but he returned with infinite slowness. Then he was moving deep within her, still slowly, so slowly that she could feel the perfect contact as he moved across the most sensitive interior part of her and then almost withdrew and moved again.

The next few minutes were like memories of a future in which their lovemaking had grown better and better, more intimate with each act of love. Nothing seemed forced or awkward. They moved together for several urgent moments, Kate's senses lifted to a point of excitement where she could hardly breathe, and then O'Rourke shifted his weight slightly and his right hand was between them, part of the moisture and contact, and each time he drew back a bitthe slow movement then making Kate feel as if she were folding around him and in on herselfhis moist fingers stroked her gently downward, she felt the sensation of being rubbed against both his fingers and the shaft of his penis, and then his hand would rise slowly against her even as he slid deeper. In moments Kate found herself excited beyond anything she had experienced before, her hips moving more rapidly, demandingly, then slowing as the cadence of their movement slowed, their tempo increasing again in a perfect unison of lubricated friction.

Kate was no novice at making loveshe had been passionate with Tom and with a few lovers in the years before and after Tombut nothing had prepared her for the intimacy and excitement she felt now. Just when it felt like neither she nor O'Rourke could last another instant, that each would have to shudder to orgasm in the same movement, then their rhythm would change as if choreographed through long experience and they would begin rising through another circle of sensation.

They rolled together now, the blanket falling away unheeded, ending with Kate on top and O'Rourke's broad hand on her chest so that his fingers touched both breasts. He was looking at her, his face lost in that sensuous zone between pain and pleasure. She saw that he had bitten his lip and she lowered her face to kiss away the drop of blood there. He tried to slow her movements now with his hand firm on her hip, but Kate sensed that there could be no more slowing, no more waiting. Throwing her face back, she set both hands on his chest and moved with a rocking, downward shifting motion that brought them to the edge and beyond. For a throbbing second, Kate did not know whose impending orgasm she was feeling more strongly, hers or O'Rourke's.

Then O'Rourke's eyes closed, Kate's closed a second later, she came with a flood of warmth that echoed through her in widening ripples, and an instant after that she felt O'Rourke pulsing inside her as he groaned.

A moment later Kate lay full length on him while O'Rourke hugged her close and pulled the blanket above them. He remained in her, still hard, holding her with strong hands as she halfdozed with her cheek against his chest. It grew full dark. The cold was a palpable thing in the barn now. Somewhere far across the field, a goat bleated.

“Does this ruin everything?” Kate whispered at last, coming out of a halfdream. '

“It doesn't ruin anything,” whispered O'Rourke. His hands rubbed her back.

“But your vows . . .”

“I'd already decided to leave the priesthood, Kate. My trip to Chicago was to resign in person.” He turned his face to one side and freed his hand long enough to brush away a bit of straw that clung to his beard. He returned the hand to her back. “I've honored the vow of celibacy for eighteen years without believing in the reason for it.”

“Eighteen years,” whispered Kate. She touched his chest with her fingertips. When she lifted her face from his chest to whisper something, he kissed her.

“Did you feel . . .” she began.

“As if we had been lovers for years?” he finished. “As if we were remembering times we had made love in the past? Yes, I did. Do.”

Kate shook her head. She did not believe in the supernatural, had never believed in miracles . . . but this physical telepathy made her shiver. O'Rourke pulled the blanket tighter and kissed her ear. “We'd better get dressed and find out if the ceremony is happening tonight,” he whispered.

It rushed in then: the alien place, the cold, the dark, the nightmare of Joshua in the hands of cruel strangers. “Hold me just another minute,” she whispered back, lowering her cheek to his chest again.

He held her.