“Are you taking me home?” Musa Ali asked. “I can’t go home until I find my sister.”
He was a brave kid. “You go home,” I said. “We’ll find your sister.”
“Okay,” he said. He was brave, but he wasn’t a fool.
“We’re going to the cemetery, Bill,” I said. “It’s the only logical place to look for Sheba.”
“They won’t let me into the cemetery, pal,” he said.
“Who won’t?”
“The dead people. They won’t let me into the cemetery because I’m American.”
“They don’t have dead people in America?” I asked. I had already forgotten my promise to myself.
“Oh, sure they do,” Bill said. “But the dead people here in the city still hold it against Americans that they have the wrong unlucky number. It’s not thirteen, see, like Americans believe, because —” I stopped listening. I reached up and chipped in the Van Helsing moddy instead.
There was another moment of disorientation, but it passed quickly. “Stakes!” Van Helsing said loudly. “We need sharp wooden stakes! How could Audran have forgotten them? We have to stop and find some!”
“Don’t worry about stakes,” Bill said calmly. “Got ‘em in the trunk. I got some in case I ever get a tent.” Van Helsing was wise enough not to pursue it any further.
Because Van Helsing wasn’t as familiar with the city as Audran, he didn’t notice immediately that Bill, for all his many years of experience, was getting pretty damn lost. The probable explanation was that his invisible evil temptresses were leading him astray. Both Van Helsing and Audran would have understood that. Instead, though, the vampire hunter stared out the taxi’s window, watching the neighborhoods slide by.
Time passed, and the sun dropped silently toward the horizon. It was almost dark when Bill finally drove past the Budayeen’s eastern gate. He jammed on the brakes, and Van Helsing and he jumped out of the car. More time was spent as Bill searched for the trunk key. At last they armed themselves with the stakes; they couldn’t find a hammer, but Bill carried an old, dead battery that could be used for pounding purposes.
“We’ll need something to cut off Sheba’s head, too,” Van Helsing said in a worried voice. “We’ll need to get a large cleaver. And garlic to stuff into her mouth.”
Bill nodded. “There’s an all-night convenience store on our way.”
Van Helsing still seemed apprehensive. “Sheba will be at her full powers soon.”
“Well,” Bill said, smiling broadly, “so am I.” That didn’t do very much to reassure his companion.
There are sixteen blocks between the eastern gate and the cemetery, the length of the Street, the width of the Budayeen. They hurried as fast as they could, but Bill had never been very agile, and Van Helsing was not a young man anymore. They pushed through the crowds of local folk and foreign tourists with growing desperation, but by the time they arrived at their goal, the sun had set. It was night. They would have to face the full fury of the vampire’s power.
“Have no fear,” Van Helsing said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve challenged the Undead on their own territory. You have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Bill said. “You don’t have to worry about the ground opening up in horrible fissures right in front of you.”
Van Helsing paused. “Bill,” he said at last, “the ground isn’t opening up.”
Bill put a finger alongside his nose. “No, you’re right,” he confided, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about it.”
Van Helsing looked up to Heaven, where God was watching. “Come on,” he told Bill. “We mustn’t be too late to save the little girl.”
They arrived at the cemetery. No one else was nearby. Van Helsing saw the flowers and other offerings on the ground near where Mahdi il-Mallah had been laid to rest. The boy’s parents couldn’t afford an above-ground tomb, so he’d been interred in a small, oven-like vault built into one of the cemetery’s red brick walls.
“Oh my God,” Bill cried. He motioned toward the back of the graveyard.
Van Helsing turned and looked where Bill was pointing. He saw Sheba, dressed in a long, filthy black shift. Her hair was wildly disheveled and matted with leaves and twigs. There were streaks of dirt on her face and bare arms. She stared at Van Helsing and snarled. Even from that distance, the Dutchman could see the great, long canine teeth, the mark of the vampire.
“It’s her,” Van Helsing said in a quiet voice.
“You mean, ‘It’s she,’” Bill said.
“Or what remains of her earthly body, now inhabited by something of unspeakable foulness. Take warning: Remember that she has the strength of a dozen or more normal people.” Beneath Van Helsing’s overwhelming presence, Audran realized that the vampire moddy was constructed with an endocrine controller, letting a flood of adrenalin loose in Sheba’s bloodstream. Whoever was correct — Audran or Van Helsing, believer in natural law or in evil magic — it made no difference. The ultimate effect was the same.
“You know,” Bill said thoughtfully, “she wouldn’t be half-bad looking if she’d just fix herself up a little.”
Van Helsing did not deign to reply. He moved toward Sheba, feeling terror, determination, and an odd longing mixed together. Sheba stood before a large whitewashed tomb, its marble front panel removed and cast aside. This was where she’d taken up residence after leaving behind her human dwelling place. There was a vile stench emanating from the tomb. Nevertheless, Van Helsing summoned his courage and stepped nearer.
He heard small rustling noises, and behind Sheba he saw movement. It had to be Musa Ali’s sister, still alive, but bound and made captive by this loathsome creature. “Thanks be to all the angels that we are yet in time,” he said.
Sheba did not cry out or utter any verbal challenges; it was as if she’d lost the power of speech. Instead, she made harsh, guttural, animal noises deep in her throat.
“Unbind the child and let her go free,” Van Helsing demanded.
Once again Sheba bared her perilous fangs and hissed at them, not like a snake, but like a great feral cat. Then she rushed forward more swiftly than even Van Helsing had anticipated and leaped on him, reaching for his unprotected throat with her clawed fingers and savaging him with her demon teeth.
Bill hurried to Van Helsing’s defense. “Not again,” he said. “Not another one.”
“What?” Van Helsing asked.
“Another, what you call, an abomination. Yeah. Bloodthirsty, too. Bad luck always comes in threes, you know. So the third one is going to be a real showstopper.”
Bill attacked first, clouting the hideous thing with all the strength he had. The blow had little effect. Bill lurched backward, shaking his injured hand. His enemy was very tall, towering over him in a confident slouch. Despite his mental and physical handicaps, Bill was a better boxer than his opponent; he had a quicker punch, and his bob-and-weave was deft by comparison. Again and again Bill struck, but for all the pain he was causing himself, and for the complete lack of results he was achieving against his foe, Bill might as well have been beating up the brick wall.
Meanwhile, Van Helsing had as much as he could handle with Sheba. She fought like a cornered beast, ripping and tearing and biting at him. He ordered her again to release the young girl. Then he tried to reason with Sheba. Finally, he resorted to threats. Nothing worked. She was no longer human, no longer susceptible to his powers of persuasion.
He was covered with his own blood when he finally managed to throw Sheba to the ground. He’d put a foot behind one of hers, then shoved her shoulder heavily. She toppled backward, shrieking in incoherent rage. Van Helsing wasted no time congratulating himself. He reached for one of the sharpened stakes and a loose brick.
Sheba glared up at him, her lips drawn back in an animal growl. She was completely in the power of the vampire now, no longer human in any respect, yet there was also a frightened pleading in her eyes —
