Descendant

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 — creme 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.

“No!” screamed Duca. Smoke poured out of its face, and its eyes literally fried in front of me, so that they turned opaque.

The young detective with the Webley revolver came up close now, and pointed the muzzle at Duca’s right temple.

“Don’t!” I warned him. “You won’t be able to kill it! Bring me that hammer!”

But Duca let out a terrible screech, and the detective jerked backward and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang and a bony chunk of Duca’s right eye socket was blown away, but at the same time the shot ignited the holy oil.

Duca exploded into flames, still relentlessly gripping my wrist. I felt a scorching blast of heat on my face, and I heard my hair crackle. My silk necktie caught fire and flared up around my neck.

“Get it off me!” I screamed out, but Duca was blazing so fiercely that George and the two detectives couldn’t get close.

There was only one thing I could do. I heaved myself upward, so that I was kneeling, and then I gave another heave, so that I was on my feet. The pain was horrifying. I felt as if my face was being blasted with a blowtorch. All of my clothes were alight now and I was sure that I was going to die.

Duca was a dead weight, and a burning dead weight, but somehow I managed to drag it across the cocktail lounge to the doors.

“Open the doors!” I shouted at George. “Open the goddamned doors!”

George and one of the detectives ran ahead of me and opened them. I pulled Duca out of the cocktail lounge and onto the deck.