"What did you learn last night, Jew?" Kaempffer said.

Cuza heaved himself over onto his buttocks and leaned wearily against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes a moment, then reopened them, squinting at Kaempffer. He appeared to be almost blind without his glasses.

"Not much more. But there is evidence that the keep was built by a fifteenth-century boyar who was a contemporary of Vlad Tepes."

"Is that all? Two days of study and that is all?"

"One day, Major," the professor said, and Woermann sensed some of the old spark edging into the reply. "One day and two nights. That's not a long time when the reference materials are not in one's native tongue."

"I did not ask for excuses, Jew! I want results!"

"And have you got them?" The answer seemed important to Cuza.

Kaempffer straightened his shoulders and pulled himself up to his full height as he replied. "There have been two consecutive nights without a death, but I don't believe you have had anything to do with that." He rotated the upper half of his body and gave Woermann a haughty look. "It seems I have accomplished my mission here. But just for good measure, I'll stay one more night before continuing on my way."

"Ah! Another night of your company!" Woermann said, feeling his spirits soar. "Our cup runneth over!" He could put up with anything for one more night—even Kaempffer.

"I see no need for you to remain here even that long, Herr Major," Cuza said, visibly brightening. "I'm sure other countries have much greater need of your services."

Kaempffer's upper Up curled into a smile. "I shan't be leaving your beloved country, Jew. I go to Ploiesti from here."

"Ploiesti? Why Ploiesti?"

"You'll learn soon enough." He turned to Woermann. "I shall be ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning."

"I shall personally hold the gate open for you."

Kaempffer shot him an angry look, then strode from the room. Woermann watched him go. He sensed that nothing had been solved, that the killings had stopped of their own accord, and that they could begin again tonight, tomorrow night, or the next. It was only a brief hiatus they were enjoying, a moratorium; they had learned nothing, accomplished nothing. But he had not voiced his doubts to Kaempffer. He wanted the major out of the keep as much as the major wanted to be out. He would say nothing that might delay his departure.

"What did he mean about Ploiesti?" Cuza asked from behind him.

"You don't want to know." He looked from Cuza's ravaged, troubled face to the table. The silver cross his daughter had borrowed yesterday lay there next to the professor's spectacles.

"Please tell me, Captain. Why is that man going to Ploiesti?"

Woermann ignored the question. The professor had enough problems. Telling him that the Romanian equivalent of Auschwitz was in the offing would do him no good. "You may visit your daughter today if you wish. But you must go to her. She cannot come in."

He reached over and picked up the cross. "Did you find this useful in any way?"

Cuza glanced at the silver object for only an instant, then looked sharply away. "No. Not at all."

"Shall I take it back?"

"What? No—no! It still might come in handy. Leave it right there."

The sudden intensity in Cuza's voice struck Woermann. The man seemed subtly changed since yesterday, less sure of himself. Woermann could not put his finger on it, but it was there.

He tossed the cross onto the table and turned away. He had too many other things on his mind to worry about what was troubling the professor. If indeed Kaempffer were leaving, Woermann would have to decide what his next move would be. To stay or to go? One thing was certain: He now would have to arrange for shipment of the corpses back to Germany. They had waited long enough. At least with Kaempffer out of his hair he would be able to think straight again.

Preoccupied with his own concerns, he left the professor without saying good-bye. As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that Cuza had rolled his chair up to the table and fixed his spectacles over his eyes. He sat there holding the cross in his hand, staring at it.

At least he was alive.

Magda waited impatiently while one of the gate sentries went to get Papa. They had already kept her waiting a good hour before they opened the gates. She had rushed over at first light but they had ignored her pounding. A sleepless night had left her irritable and exhausted. But at least he was alive.

Her eyes roamed the courtyard. All quiet. There were piles of rubble strewn about the rear from the dismantling work, but no one was working now. All at breakfast, no doubt. What was taking so long? They should have let her go get him herself.

Against her will, her thoughts drifted. She thought of Glenn. He had saved her life last night. If he hadn't held her back when he had, she would have been shot to death by the German sentries. Luckily, he had been strong enough to hold her until she came to her senses. She kept remembering the feel of him as he had pressed her against him. No man had ever done that—had ever been close enough to do that. The memory of it was good. It had stirred something in her that refused to return to its former quiescent state.

She tried to concentrate on the keep and on Papa, forcing her thoughts away from Glenn...

... yet he had been kind to her, soothing her, convincing her to go back to her room and keep her vigil at the window. There was nothing to be done at the edge of the gorge. She had felt so utterly helpless, and he had understood. And when he had left her at her door, there had been a look in his eyes: sad, and something else. Guilt? But why should he feel guilty?

She noticed a movement within the entrance to the tower and stepped across the threshold. All the light and warmth of the morning drained away from her as she did—like stepping out of a warm house into a blustery winter night. She backed up immediately and felt the chill recede as soon as her feet were back on the causeway. There seemed to be a different set of rules at work within the keep. The soldiers didn't appear to notice; but she was an outsider. She could tell.

Papa and his wheelchair appeared, propelled from behind by a reluctant sentry who seemed embarrassed by the task. As soon as she saw her father's face, Magda knew something was wrong. Something dreadful had happened last night. She wanted to run forward but knew they would not let her. The soldier pushed the wheelchair to the threshold and then let go, allowing it to roll to Magda unattended. Without letting it come to a complete halt, she swung around behind and pushed her father onto the causeway. When they were halfway across and he had yet to speak to her, even to say good morning, she felt she had to break the silence.

"What's wrong, Papa?"

"Nothing and everything."

"Did he come last night?"

"Wait until we're over by the inn and I'll tell you everything. We're too close here. Someone might overhear."

Anxious to learn what had disturbed him so, she hurriedly wheeled him around to the back of the inn where the morning sun shone brightly on the awakening grass and reflected off the white stucco of the building's wall.

Setting the chair facing north so the sun would warm him without shining in his eyes, she knelt and gripped both his gloved hands with her own. He didn't look well at all; worse than usual; and that caused her a deep pang of concern. He should be home in Bucharest. The strain here was too much for him.

"What happened, Papa? Tell me everything. He came again, didn't he?"

His voice was cold when he spoke, his eyes on the keep, not on her: "It's warm here. Not just warm for flesh and bone, but warm for the soul. A soul could wither away over there if it stayed too long."

"Papa—"

"His name is Molasar. He claims he was a boyar loyal to Vlad Tepes."

Magda gasped. "That would make him five hundred years old!"

"He's older, I'm sure, but he would not let me ask all my questions. He has his own interests, and primary among them is ridding the keep of all trespassers."

"That includes you."

"Not necessarily. He seems to think of me as a fellow Romanian—a 'Wallachian,' as he would say—and doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by my presence. It's the Germans—the thought of them in his keep has driven him almost insane with rage. You should have seen his face when he talked about them."

"His keep?"

"Yes. He built it to protect himself after Vlad was killed."

Hesitantly, Magda asked the all-important question: "Is he a vampire?"

"Yes, I believe so," Papa said, looking at her and nodding. "At least he is whatever the word 'vampire' is going to mean from now on. I doubt very much that many of the old traditions will hold true. We are going to have to redefine the word—no longer in terms of folklore, but in terms of Molasar." He closed his eyes. "So many things will have to be redefined."

With an effort, Magda pushed aside the primordial revulsion that welled up in her at the thought of vampires and tried to step back and analyze the situation objectively, allowing the long-trained, long-disciplined scholar within her to take over. "A boyar under Vlad Tepes, was he? We should be able to trace that name."

Papa was staring at the keep again. "We may, and we may not. There were hundreds of boyars associated with Vlad throughout his three reigns, some friendly to him, some hostile ... he impaled most of the hostile ones. You know what a chaotic, fragmented mess the records from that period are: If the Turks weren't invading Wallachia, someone else was. And even if we did find evidence of a Molasar who was a contemporary of Vlad's, what would it prove?"

"Nothing, I guess." She began filtering through her vast learning on the history of this region. A boyar, loyal to Vlad Tepes...

Magda had always thought of Vlad as a blood-red blot on Romanian history. As son of Vlad Dracul, the Dragon, Prince Vlad was known as Vlad Dracula—Son of the Dragon. But he earned the name Vlad Tepes, which meant Vlad the Impaler, after his favorite method of disposing of prisoners of war, disloyal subjects, treacherous boyars, and virtually anyone else who displeased him. She remembered drawings she had seen depicting Vlad's St. Bartholomew's Day massacre at Amlas when 30,000 citizens of that unfortunate city were impaled on long wooden poles which were then thrust into the ground; the sufferers were left pierced through and suspended in the air until they died. There was occasionally a strategic purpose for impaling: In 1460 the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses of Turkish prisoners rotting in the sun outside Targoviste so horrified an invading army of Turks that they turned back and left Vlad's kingdom alone for a while.

"Imagine," she mused, "being loyal to Vlad Tepes."

"Don't forget that the world was very different then," Papa said. "Vlad was a product of his times; Molasar is a product of those same times. Vlad is still considered a national hero in these parts—he was Wallachia's scourge, but he was also its champion against the Turks."

"I'm sure this Molasar found nothing offensive in Vlad's behavior." Her stomach turned at the thought of all those men, women, and children impaled and left to die, slowly. "He probably found it entertaining."

"Who is to say? But you can see why one of the undead would gravitate to someone like Vlad: never a shortage of victims. He could slake his thirst on the dying and no one would ever guess that the victims had died from anything other than impalement. With no unexplained deaths around to raise questions, he could feast with no one suspecting his true nature."

"That does not make him any less a monster," she whispered.

"How can you judge him, Magda? One should be judged by one's peers. Who is Molasar's peer? Don't you realize what his existence means? Don't you see how many things it changes? How many cherished concepts assumed to be facts are going to wind up as so much garbage?"

Magda nodded slowly, the enormity of what they had found pressing on her with new weight. "Yes. A form of immortality."

"More than that! Much more! It's like a new form of life, a new mode of existence! No—that's not right. An old mode—but new as far as historical and scientific knowledge is concerned. And beyond the rational, look at the spiritual implications." His voice faltered. "They're... devastating."

"But how can it be true? How?" Her mind still balked.

"I don't know. There's so much to learn and I had so little time with him. He feeds on the blood of the living—that seems self-evident from what I saw of the remains of the soldiers. They had all been exsanguinated through the neck. Last night I learned that he does not reflect in a mirror—that part of traditional vampire lore is true. But the fear of garlic and silver, those parts are false. He appears to be a creature of the night—he has struck only at night, and appeared only at night. However, I doubt very much that he spends the daylight hours asleep in anything so melodramatic as a coffin."

"A vampire," Magda said softly, breathily. "Sitting here with the sun overhead it seems so ludicrous, so—"

"Was it ludicrous two nights ago when he sucked the light from our room? Was his grip on your arm ludicrous?"

Magda rose to her feet, rubbing the spot above her right elbow, wondering if the marks were still there. She turned away from her father and pulled the sleeve up. Yes ... still there ... an oblong patch of gray-white, dead-looking skin. As she began to pull the sleeve back down, she noticed the mark begin to fade—the skin was returning to a pink healthy color under the direct light of the sun. As she watched, the mark disappeared completely.

Feeling suddenly weak, Magda staggered and had to clutch at the back of the wheelchair to steady herself. Struggling to maintain a neutral expression, she turned back to Papa.

She needn't have bothered—he was again staring at the keep, unaware that she had turned away.

"He's somewhere in there now," he was saying, "waiting for tonight. I must speak to him again."

"Is he really a vampire, Papa? Could he really have been a boyar five hundred years ago? How do we know this isn't all a trick? Can he prove anything?"

"Prove?" he said, anger tingeing his voice. "Why should he prove anything? What does he care what you or I believe? He has his own concerns and he thinks I may be of use to him. 'An ally against the oulanders,' he said."

"You mustn't let him use you!"

"And why not? If he has need of an ally against the Germans who have invaded his keep, I just might go along with him—although I can't see what use I'd be. That's why I've told the Germans nothing."

Magda sensed that the Germans might not be the only ones; he was holding back from her as well. And that wasn't like him.

" Papa, you can't be serious!"

"We share a common enemy, Molasar and I, do we not?"

"For now, perhaps. But what about later?"

He ignored her question. "And don't forget that he can be of great use to me in my work. I must learn all about him. I must talk to him again. I must!" His gaze drifted back to the keep. "So much is changed now ... have to rethink so many things..."

Magda tried but could not comprehend his mood.

"What's bothering you, Papa? For years you've said you thought there might be something to the vampire myth. You risked ridicule. Now that you're vindicated, you seem upset. You should be elated."

"Don't you understand anything? That was an intellectual exercise. It pleased me to play with the idea, to use it for self-stimulation and to stir up all those rock-bound minds in the History Department!"

"It was more than that and don't deny it."

"All right ... but I never dreamed such a creature still existed. And I never thought I would actually meet him face to face!" His voice sank to a whisper. "And I in no way considered the possibility that he might really fear..."

Magda waited for him to finish, but he did not. He had turned inward, his right hand absently reaching into the breast pocket of his coat.

"Fear what, Papa? What does he fear?"

But he was rambling. His eyes had strayed again to the keep while his hand fumbled in his pocket. "He is patently evil, Magda. A parasite with supranormal powers feeding on human blood. Evil in the flesh. Evil made tangible. So if that is so, where then does good reside?"

"What are you talking about?" His disjointed thoughts were frightening her. "You're not making sense!"

He pulled his hand from his pocket and thrust something toward her face. "This! This is what I'm talking about!"

It was the silver cross she had borrowed from the captain. What did Papa mean? Why did he look that way, with his eyes so bright? "I don't understand."

"Molasar is terrified of it!"

What was wrong with Papa? "So? By tradition a vampire is supposed to—"

"By tradition! This is no tradition! This is real! And it terrified him! It nearly drove him from the room! A cross!"

Suddenly, Magda knew what had been so sorely troubling Papa all morning.

"Ah! Now you see, don't you," he said, nodding and smiling a small sad smile.

Poor Papa! To have spent all night with all that uncertainty. Magda's mind recoiled, refusing to accept the meaning of what she had been told.

"But you can't really mean—"

"We can't hide from a fact, Magda." He held up the cross, watching the light glint off its worn, shiny surface. "It is part of our belief, our tradition, that Christ was not the Messiah. That the Messiah is yet to come. That Christ was merely a man and that his followers were generally goodhearted people but misguided. If that is true..." He seemed to be hypnotized by the cross. "If that is true ... if Christ were just a man ... why should a cross, the instrument of his death, so terrify a vampire? Why?"

"Papa, you're leaping to conclusions. There has to be more to this!"

"I'm sure there is. But think: It's been with us all along, in all the folk tales, the novels, and the moving pictures derived from those folk tales. Yet who of us has ever given it a second thought? The vampire fears the cross. Why? Because it's the symbol of human salvation. You see what that implies? It never even occurred to me until last night."

Can it be? she asked herself as Papa paused. Can it really be?

Papa spoke again, his voice dull and mechanical. "If a creature such as Molasar finds the symbol of Christianity so repulsive, the logical conclusion is that Christ must have been more than a man. If that is true, then our people, our traditions, our beliefs for two thousand years, have all been misguided. The Messiah did come and we failed to recognize him!"

"You can't say that! I refuse to believe it! There has to be another answer!"

"You weren't there. You didn't see the loathing on his face when I pulled out the cross. You didn't see how he shrank away in terror and cowered until I returned it to the box. It has power over him!"

It had to be true. It went against the most basic tenets of Magda's learning. But if Papa had said it, seen it, then it must be true. She yearned for something to say, something soothing, reassuring. But all that came out was a sad, simple, "Papa."

He smiled ruefully. "Don't worry, child. I'm not about to throw away my Torah and seek out a monastery. My faith goes deep. But this does give one pause, doesn't it? It does raise the question that we could be wrong ... we all could have missed a boat that sailed twenty centuries ago."

He was trying to make light of it for her sake, but Magda knew he was being flayed alive in his mind.

She sank to the grass to think. And as she moved, she caught a flash of motion at the open window above. A glimpse of rust-colored hair. She clenched her fists as she realized that the window opened into Glenn's room. He must have heard everything.

Magda kept watch for the next few minutes, hoping to catch him eavesdropping, but saw nothing. She was about to give up when a voice startled her.

"Good morning!"

It was Glenn, rounding the southern corner of the inn, a small wooden ladderback chair in each hand.

"Who's there?" Papa asked, unable to twist around in his seat to see behind him.

"Someone I met yesterday. His name is Glenn. He has the room across the hall from me."

Glenn nodded cheerily to Magda as he walked around her and stood before Papa, towering over him like a giant. He wore woolen pants, climbing boots, and a loose-fitting shirt open at the neck. He set the two chairs down and thrust his hand toward her father.

"And good morning to you, sir. I've already met your daughter."

"Theodor Cuza," Papa replied hesitantly, with poorly veiled suspicion. He placed his gloved hand, stiff and gnarled, inside Glenn's. There followed a parody of a handshake, then Glenn indicated one of the chairs to Magda.

"Try this. The ground's still too damp to sit on."

Magda rose. "I'll stand, thank you," she said with all the haughtiness she could manage. She resented his eavesdropping, and she resented his intrusion into their company even more. "My father and I were just leaving anyway."

As Magda moved toward the back of the wheelchair, Glenn laid a gentle hand on her arm.

"Please don't go yet. I awoke to the sound of two voices drifting through my window, discussing the keep and something about a vampire. Let's talk about it, shall we?" He smiled.

Magda found herself speechless, furious with the boldness of his intrusion and the casual presumption of his touching her. Yet she did not snatch her arm away. His touch made her tingle. It felt good.

Papa, however, had nothing to hold him back: "You must not mention one word of what you just heard to anyone! It could mean our lives!"

"Don't give yourself a moment's worry over that," Glenn said, his smile fading. "The Germans and I have nothing to say to each other." He looked back to Magda. "Won't you sit? I brought the chair for you."

She looked at her father. "Papa?"

He nodded resignedly. "I don't think we have too much choice."

Glenn's hand slipped away as Magda moved to seat herself, and she felt a small, unaccountable void within her. She watched him swing the other chair around and seat himself on it backwards, straddling the ladderback and resting his elbows on the top rung.

"Magda told me last night about the vampire in the keep," he said, "but I'm not sure I caught the name he gave you."

"Molasar," Papa said.

"Molasar," Glenn said slowly, rolling the name over on his tongue, his expression puzzled. "Mo ... la ... sar." Then he brightened, as if he had solved a puzzle. "Yes—Molasar. An odd name, don't you think?"

"Unfamiliar," Papa said, "but not so odd."

"And that," Glenn, said, gesturing to the cross still clutched in the twisted fingers. "Did I overhear you say that Molasar feared it?"

"Yes."

Magda noted that Papa was volunteering no information.

"You're a Jew, aren't you, Professor?"

A nod.

"Is it customary for Jews to carry crosses around?"

"My daughter borrowed it for me—a tool in an experiment."

Glenn turned to her. "Where did you get it?"

"From one of the officers at the keep." Where was all this leading?

"It was his own?"

"No. He said it came from one of the dead soldiers." She began to grasp the thread of deduction he seemed to be following.

"Strange," Glenn said, returning his attention to Papa, "that this cross did not save the soldier who first possessed it. One would think that a creature who feared the cross would pass up such a victim and search for another, one carrying no protective—what shall we call it?—charm."

"Perhaps the cross was stuffed inside his shirt," Papa said. "Or in his pocket. Or even back in his room."

Glenn smiled. "Perhaps. Perhaps."

"We didn't think of that, Papa," Magda said, eager to reinforce any idea that might bolster his sagging spirits.

"Question everything," Glenn said. "Always question everything. I should not have to remind a scholar of that."

"How do you know I'm a scholar?" Papa snapped, a spark of the old fire in his eyes. "Unless my daughter told you."

"Iuliu told me. But there's something else you've overlooked, and it's so obvious you're both going to feel foolish when I tell you."

"Make us feel foolish, then," Magda told him. Please!

"All right: Why would a vampire so afraid of the cross dwell in a structure whose walls are studded with them? Can you explain that?"

Magda stared at her father and found him staring back at her.

"You know," Papa said, smiling sheepishly. "I've been in the keep so often, and I've puzzled over it for so long, I no longer even see the crosses!"

"That's understandable. I've been through there a few times myself, and after a while they do seem to blend in. But the question remains: Why does a being who finds the cross repulsive surround himself with countless crosses?" He rose and easily swung the chair onto his shoulder. "And now I think I'll go get some breakfast from Lidia and leave you two to figure out an answer. If there is one."

"But what's your interest in this?" Papa asked. "Why are you here?"

"Just a traveler," Glenn said. "I like this area and visit regularly."

"You seem to be more than a little interested in the keep. And quite knowledgeable about it."

Glenn shrugged. "I'm sure you know far more than I do."

"I wish I knew how to keep my father from going back over there tonight," Magda said.

"I must go back, my dear. I must face Molasar again."

Magda rubbed her hands together. They had gone cold at the thought of Papa's returning to the keep. "I just don't want them to find you with your throat torn open like the others."

"There are worse things that can happen to a man," Glenn said.

Struck by the change in his tone, Magda looked up and found all the sunniness and lightness gone from his face. He was staring at Papa. The tableau held for only a few seconds, then he smiled again.

"Breakfast awaits. I'm sure I'll see you again during our respective stays. But one more thing before I go."

He stepped around to the rear of the wheelchair and turned it in a 180-degree arc with his free hand.

"What are you doing?" Papa cried. Magda leaped to her feet.

"Just offering you a change of scenery, Professor. The keep-is, after all, such a gloomy place. This is much too beautiful a day to dwell on it."

He pointed to the floor of the pass. "Look south and east instead of north. For all its severity, this is a most beautiful part of the world. See how the grass is greening up, how the wild flowers are starting to bloom in the crags. Forget the keep for a while."

For a moment he caught and held Magda's eyes with his own, then he was gone, turning the corner, the chair balanced on his shoulder.

"A strange sort, that one," she heard Papa say, a touch of a laugh in his voice.

"Yes. He most certainly is." But though she found Glenn strange, Magda felt she owed him a debt of gratitude. For reasons known only to him, he had intruded on their conversation and made it his own, lifting Papa's spirits from their lowest ebb, taking Papa's most painful doubts and casting doubt in turn upon them. He had handled it deftly and with telling effect. But why? What did he care about the inner torment of a crippled old Jew from Bucharest?

"He does raise some good points, though," Papa went on. "Some excellent points. How could they not have occurred to me?"

"Nor to me?"

"Of course," his tone was softly defensive, "he's not fresh from a personal encounter with a creature considered until now a mere figment of a gruesome imagination. It's easy for him to be more objective. By the way, how did you meet him?"

"Last night, when I was out by the edge of the gorge keeping watch on your window—"

"You shouldn't fret over me so! You forget that I helped raise you, not the other way around."

Magda ignored the interruption. "—he rode up on horseback, looking like he intended to charge right into the keep. But when he saw the lights and the Germans, he stopped."

Papa seemed to consider this briefly, then switched topics. "Speaking of Germans, I'd better be getting back before they come looking for me. I'd prefer to reenter the keep on my own rather than at gunpoint."

"Isn't there a way we could—"

"Escape? Of course! You'll just wheel me down the ledge road, all the way to Campina! Or perhaps you could help me onto the back of a horse—that would certainly shorten the trip!" His tone grew more acid as he spoke. "Or best of all, why don't we go and ask that SS major for a loan of one of his lorries—just for an afternoon drive, we'll tell him! I'm sure he'll agree."

"There's no need to speak to me that way," she said, stung by his sarcasm.

"And there's no need for you to torture yourself with any hope of escape for the two of us! Those Germans aren't fools. They know I can't escape, and they don't think you'll leave without me. Although I want you to. At least one of us would be safe then."

"Even if you could get away, you'd return to the keep! Isn't that right, Papa?" Magda said. She was beginning to understand his attitude. "You want to go back there."

He would not meet her eyes. "We are trapped here, and I feel I must use the opportunity of a lifetime. I would be a traitor to my whole life's work if I let it slip away!"

"Even if a plane landed in the pass right now and the pilot offered to fly us to freedom, you wouldn't go, would you!"

"I must see him again, Magda! I must ask him about all those crosses on the walls! How he came to be what he is! And most of all, I must find out why he fears the cross. If I don't, I—I'll go mad!"

Neither spoke for the next few moments. Long moments. But Magda sensed more than silence between them. A widening gap. She felt Papa drawing away, drawing into himself, shutting her out. That had never happened before. They had always been able to discuss things. Now he seemed to want no discussion. He wanted only to get back to Molasar.

"Take me back," was all he said as the silence went on and on, becoming unbearable.

"Stay a little longer. You've been in the keep too much. I think it's affecting you."

"I'm perfectly fine, Magda. And I'll decide when I've been in the keep too long. Now, are you going to wheel me back or do I have to sit here and wait until the Nazis come and get me?"

Biting her lip in anger and dismay, Magda moved behind the chair and turned it toward the keep.

TWENTY

He seated himself a few feet back from the window where he could hear the rest of the conversation below yet remain out of sight should Magda chance to look up again. He had been careless earlier. In his eagerness to hear, he had leaned on the sill. Magda's unexpected upward glance had caught him. At that point he had decided that a frontal assault was in order and had gone downstairs to join them.

Now all talk seemed to have died. As he heard the creaky wheels of the professor's chair start to turn, he leaned forward and watched the pair move off, Magda pushing from behind, appearing calm despite the turmoil he knew to be raging within her. He poked his head out the window for one last look as she rounded the corner and passed from view.

On impulse, he dashed to his door and stepped out into the empty hall; three long strides took him diagonally across to Magda's room. Her door opened at his touch and he went directly to the window. She was on the path to the causeway, pushing her father ahead of her.

He enjoyed watching her.

She had interested him from their first meeting on the gorge rim when she had faced him with such outward calm, yet all the while clutching a heavy stone in her hand. And later, when she had stood up to him in the foyer of the inn, refusing to give up her room, and he was seeing her then for the first time in the light with her eyes flashing, he had known that some of his defenses were softening. Deep-brown doe eyes, high-colored cheeks ... he liked the way she looked, and she was lovely when she smiled. She had done that only once in his presence, crinkling her eyes at the corners and revealing white, even teeth. And her hair ... the little wisps he had seen of it were a glossy brown ... she would be striking with her hair down instead of hidden away.

But the attraction was more than physical. She was made of good stuff, that Magda. He watched her take her father to the gate and give him over to the guard there. The gate closed and she was left alone on the far end of the causeway. As she turned and walked back, he retreated to the middle of her room so he wouldn't be visible at the window. He watched her from there.

Look at her! How she walks away from the keep! She knows every pair of eyes on that wall is upon her, that at this very moment she is being stripped and ravished in half a dozen minds. Yet she walks with her shoulders back, her gait neither hurried nor dalliant. Perfectly composed, as if she's just made a routine delivery and is on her way to the next. And all the while she's cringing inside!

He shook his head in silent admiration. He had long ago learned to immerse himself in a sheath of impenetrable calm. It was a mechanism that kept him insulated, kept him one step removed from too intimate contact, reducing his chances for impulsive behavior. It allowed him a clear, serene, dispassionate view of everything and everyone around him, even when all was in chaos.

Magda, he realized, was one of those rare people with the power to penetrate his sheath, to cause turbulence in his calm. He felt attracted to her, and she had his respect—something he rarely awarded to anyone.

But he could not afford to get involved now. He must maintain his distance. Yet ... he had been without a woman for so long, and she was awakening feelings he had thought gone forever. It was good to feel them again. She had slipped past his guard, and he sensed he was slipping past hers. It would be nice to—

No! You can't get involved. You can't afford to care. Not now. Of all times, not now! Only a fool—

And yet...

He sighed. Better to lock up his feelings again before things got out of hand. Otherwise, the result could be disastrous. For both of them.

She was almost to the inn. He left the room, carefully closing the door behind him, and returned to his own. He dropped onto the bed and lay with his hands behind his head, waiting for her tread on the stair. But it did not come.

To Magda's surprise, she found that the closer she got to the inn, the less she thought about Papa and the more she thought about Glenn. Guilt tugged at her. She had left her crippled father alone, surrounded by Nazis, to face one of the undead tonight, and her thoughts turned to a stranger. Strolling around to the rear of the inn, she experienced a light feeling in her chest and a quickening of her pulse at the thought of him.

Lack of food, she told herself. Should have had something to eat this morning.

There was no one there. The ladderback chair Glenn had brought for her sat empty and alone in the sunlight. She glanced up to his window. No one there, either.

Magda picked up the chair and carried it around to the front, telling herself it wasn't disappointment she felt, only hunger.

She remembered Glenn saying he intended to have breakfast. Perhaps he was still inside. She quickened her pace. Yes, she was hungry.

She stepped in and saw Iuliu sitting in the dining alcove to her right. He had sliced a large wedge from a wheel of cheese and was sipping some goat's milk. He seemed to eat at least six times a day.

He was alone.

"Domnisoara Cuza!" he called. "Would you like some cheese?"

Magda nodded and sat down. She now wasn't as hungry as she had thought, but she did need some food to keep going. Besides, there were a few questions she wanted to ask Iuliu.

"Your new guest," she said casually, taking a slice of white cheese off the flat of the knife blade, "he must have taken breakfast to his room."

Iuliu's brow furrowed. "Breakfast? He didn't have any breakfast here. But many travelers bring their own food with them."

Magda frowned. Why had he said he was going to see Lidia about breakfast? An excuse to get away?

"Tell me, Iuliu—you seemed to have calmed down since last night. What upset you so about this Glenn when he arrived?"

"It was nothing."

"Iuliu, you were trembling! I'd like to know why—especially since my room is across the hall from his. I deserve to know if you think he's dangerous."

The innkeeper concentrated hard on slicing the cheese. "You will think me a fool."

"No, I won't."

"Very well." He put the knife down and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. "When I was a boy my father ran the inn and, like me, paid the workers in the keep. There came a time when some of the gold that had been delivered was missing—stolen, my father said—and he could not pay the keep workers their full amount. The same thing happened after the next delivery; some of the money disappeared. Then one night a stranger came and began beating my father, punching him, hurling him about the room as if he were made of straw, telling him to find the money. 'Find the money! Find the money!' " He puffed out his already ample cheeks. "My father, I am ashamed to say, found the money. He had taken some and hidden it. The stranger was furious. Never have I seen such wrath in a man. He began beating and kicking my father again, leaving him with two broken arms."

"But what does this have to do—"

"You must understand," Iuliu said, leaning forward and lowering his voice even further, "that my father was an honest man and that the turn of the century was a terrible time for this region. He only kept a little of the gold as a means of being certain that we would eat during the coming winter. He would have paid it back when times were better. It was the only dishonest thing he had done in an otherwise good and upright—"

"Iuliu!" Magda said, finally halting the flow of words. "What has this to do with the man upstairs?"

"They look the same, Domnisoara. I was only ten years old at the time, but I saw the man who beat my father. I will never forget him. He had red hair and looked so very much like this man. But," he laughed softly, "the man who beat my father was perhaps in his early thirties, just like this man, and that was forty years ago. They couldn't be the same. But in the candlelight last night, I—I thought he had come to beat me, too."

Magda raised her eyebrows questioningly, and he hurried to explain.

"Not that there's any gold missing now, of course. It's just that the workers have not been allowed to enter the keep to do their work and I've been paying them anyway. Never let it be said that I kept any of the gold for myself. Never!"

"Of course not, Iuliu." She rose, taking another slice of cheese with her. "I think I'll go upstairs and rest awhile."

He smiled and nodded. "Supper will be at six."

Magda climbed the stairs quickly, but found herself slowing as she passed Glenn's door, her eyes drawing her head to the right and lingering there. She wondered what he was doing in there, or if he was there at all.

Her room was stuffy, so she left the door open to allow the breeze from the window to pass through. The porcelain water pitcher on her dresser had been filled. She poured some of the cool water into the bowl beside it and splashed her face. She was exhausted but knew sleep was impossible ... too many thoughts swirling in her head to allow her to rest just yet.

A high pitched chorus of cheeps drew her to the window. Amid the budding branches of the tree that grew next to the north wall of the inn was a bird's nest. She could see four tiny chicks, their heads all eyes and gaping mouth, straining their scrawny necks upward for a piece of whatever the mother bird was feeding them. Magda knew nothing about birds. This one was gray with black markings along its wings. Had she been home in Bucharest she might have looked it up. But with all that had been happening, she found she couldn't care less.

Tense, restless, she wandered about the tiny room. She checked the flashlight she had brought with her. It still worked. Good. She would need it tonight. On her way back from the keep, she had reached a decision.

Her eyes fell on the mandolin propped in the corner by the window. She picked it up, seated herself on the bed and began to play. Tentatively at first, adjusting the tuning as she plucked out a simple melody, then with greater ease and fluidity as she relaxed into the instrument, segueing from one folk tune to another. As with many a proficient amateur, she achieved a form of transport with her instrument, fixing her eyes on a point in space, her hands playing by touch, humming inwardly as she jumped from song to song. Tensions eased away, replaced by an inner tranquility. She played on, unaware of time.

A hint of movement at her open door jarred her back to reality. It was Glenn.

"You're very good," he said from the doorway.

She was glad it was he, glad he was smiling at her, and glad he had found pleasure in her playing.

She smiled shyly. "Not so good. I've gotten careless."

"Maybe. But the range of your repertoire is wonderful. I know of only one other person who can play so many songs with such accuracy."

"Who?"

"Me."

There it was again: smugness. Or was he just teasing her? Magda decided to call his bluff. She held out the mandolin.

"Prove it."

Grinning, Glenn stepped into the room, pulled the three-legged stool over to the bed, seated himself, and reached for the mandolin. After making a show of "properly" tuning the instrument, he began to play. Magda listened in awe. For such a big man with such large hands, his touch on the mandolin was astonishingly delicate. He was obviously showing off, playing many of the same tunes but in a more intricate style.

She studied him. She liked the way his blue shirt stretched across the width of his shoulders. His sleeves were rolled back to the elbows, and she watched the play of the muscles and tendons under the skin of his forearms as he worked the mandolin. There were scars on those arms, crisscrossing the wrists and trailing up to the point where the shirt hid the rest of him. She wanted to ask him about those scars but decided it was too personal a question.

However, she could certainly question him about how he played some of the songs.

"You played the last one wrong," she told him.

"Which one?"

"I call it 'The Bricklayer's Lady.' I know the lyrics vary from place to place, but the melody is always the same."

"Not always," Glenn said. "This was how it was originally played."

"How can you be so sure?" That irritating smugness again.

"Because the village tauter who taught me was ancient when we met, and she's now been dead many years."

"What village?" Magda felt indignation touch her. This was her area of expertise. Who was he to correct her?

"Kranich—near Suceava."

"Oh ... Moldavian. That might explain the difference." She glanced up and caught him staring at her.

"Lonely without your father?"

Magda thought about that. She had missed Papa sorely at first and had felt at a loss as to what to do with herself without him. But at the moment she was very content to be sitting here with Glenn, listening to him play, and yes, even arguing with him. She should never have allowed him in her room, even with the door open, but he made her feel safe. And she liked his looks, especially his blue eyes, even though he seemed to be a master at preventing her from reading much in them.

"Yes," she said. "And no."

He laughed. "A straightforward answer—two of them!"

A silence grew between them, and Magda became aware that Glenn was very much a man, a long-boned man with flesh packed tightly to those bones. There was an aura of maleness about him that she had never noticed in anyone else. It had escaped her last night and this morning, but here in this tiny room it filled all the empty spaces. It caressed her, making her feel strange and special. A primitive sensation. She had heard of animal magnetism ... was that what she was experiencing now in his presence? Or was it just that he seemed so alive? He fairly bristled with vitality.

"You have a husband?" he asked, his gaze resting on the gold band on her right ring finger—her mother's wedding band.

"No."

"A lover then?"

"Of course not."

"Why not?"

"Because..." Magda hesitated. She didn't dare tell him that except in her dreams she had given up on the possibility of life with a man. All the good men she had met in the past few years were married, and the unmarried ones would remain so for reasons of their own or because no self-respecting woman would have them. But certainly all the men she had ever met were stooped and pallid things compared with the one who sat across from her now. "Because I'm beyond the age when that sort of thing has any importance!" she said finally.

"You're a mere babe!"

"And you? Are you married?"

"Not at the moment."

"Have you been?"

"Many times."

"Play another song!" Magda said in exasperation. Glenn seemed to prefer teasing to giving her straight answers.

But after a while the playing stopped and the talking began. Their conversation ranged over a wide array of topics, but always as they related to her. Magda found herself talking about everything that interested her, starting with music and with the Gypsies and Romanian rural folk who were the source of the music she loved, and on to her hopes and dreams and opinions. The words trickled out fitfully at first, but swelled to a steady stream as Glenn encouraged her to go on. For one of the few times in her life, Magda was doing all the talking. And Glenn listened. He seemed genuinely interested in whatever she had to say, unlike so many other men who would listen only as far as the first opportunity to turn the conversation to themselves. Glenn kept turning the talk away from himself and back toward her.

Hours slipped by, until shadows began darkening the inn. Magda yawned.

"Excuse me," she said, "I think I'm boring myself. Enough of me. What about you? Where are you from?"

Glenn shrugged. "I grew up all over western Europe, but I guess you could say I'm British."

"You speak Romanian exceptionally well—almost like a native."

"I've visited often, even lived with some Romanian families here and there."

"But as a British subject, aren't you taking a chance being in Romania? Especially with the Nazis so close?"

Glenn hesitated. "Actually, I have no citizenship anywhere. I have papers from various countries proclaiming my citizenship, but I have no country. In these mountains, one doesn't need a country."

A man without a country? Magda had never heard of such a thing. To whom did he owe allegiance? "Be careful. There aren't too many red-haired Romanians."

"True." He smiled and ran a hand through his hair. "But the Germans are in the keep and the Iron Guard stays out of the mountains if it knows what's good for it. I'll keep to myself while I'm here, and I shouldn't be here that long."

Magda felt a stab of disappointment—she liked having him around.

"How long?" She felt she had asked the question too quickly, but it couldn't be helped. She wanted to know.

"Long enough for a last visit before Germany and Romania declare war on Russia."

"That's not—!"

"It's inevitable. And soon." He rose from the stool.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to let you rest. You need it."

Glenn leaned forward and pressed the mandolin back into her hands. For a moment their fingers touched and Magda felt a sensation like an electric shock, jolting her, making her tingle all over. But she did not pull her hand away ... Oh, no ... because that would make the feeling stop, would halt the delicious warmth spreading throughout her body and down along her legs.

She could see that Glenn felt it, too, in his own way.

Then he broke contact and retreated to the door. The feeling ebbed, leaving her a trifle weak. Magda wanted to stop Glenn, to grasp his hand and tell him to stay. But she could not imagine herself doing such a thing and was shocked that she even wanted to. Uncertainty held her back, too. The emotions and sensations boiling within were new to her. How would she control them?

As the door closed behind him, she felt the warmth fade away, replaced by a hollow space deep within her. She sat quietly for a few moments, and then told herself that it was probably all for the best that he had left her alone now. She needed sleep; she needed to be rested and fully alert later on.

For she had decided that Papa would not face Molasar alone tonight.

TWENTY-ONE

The Keep

Thursday, 1 May

1722 hours

Captain Woermann sat alone in his room. He had watched the shadows grow long across the keep until the sun was out of sight. His uneasiness had grown with them. The shadows shouldn't have disturbed him. After all, for two nights in a row there had been no deaths, and he saw no reason why tonight should be different. Yet there was this sense of foreboding.

The morale of the men had improved immensely. They had begun to act and feel like victors again. He could see it in their eyes, in their faces. They had been threatened, a few had died, but they had persisted and were still in command of the keep. With the girl out of sight, and with none of their fellows newly dead, there was a tacit truce between the men in gray uniforms and those in black. They didn't mingle, but there was a new sense of comradeship—they had all triumphed. Woermann found himself incapable of sharing their optimism.

He looked over to his painting. All desire to do further work on it had fled, and he had no wish to start another. He did not even have enough ambition to get out his pigments and blot out the shadow of the hanging corpse. His attention centered now on the shadow. Every time he looked it appeared more distinct. The shape looked darker today, and the head seemed to have more definition. He shook himself and looked away. Nonsense.

No ... not quite nonsense. There was still something foul afoot in the keep. There had been no deaths for two nights, but the keep had not changed. The evil had not gone away, it was merely... resting. Resting? Was that the right word? Not really. Holding back was better. It certainly had not gone away. The walls still pressed in on him; the air continued to feel heavy and laden with menace. The men could slap one another on the back and talk one another out of it. But Woermann could not. He had only to look at his tainted painting and he knew with leaden certainty that there had been no real end to the killings, merely a pause, one that might last for days or might end tonight. Nothing had been overcome or driven out. Death was still here, waiting, ready to strike again when the occasion suited it.

He straightened his shoulders to ward off a growing chill. Something was going to happen soon. He could feel it in the core of his spine.

One more night... just give me one more night.

If death held off until tomorrow morning, Kaempffer would depart for Ploiesti. After that, Woermann could again make his own rules—without the SS. And he could move his men out of the keep immediately should trouble start again.

Kaempffer ... he wondered what dear sweet Erich was doing. He hadn't seen him all afternoon.

SS-Sturmbannführer Kaempffer sat hunched over the Ploiesti rail map spread out before him on his cot. Daylight was fading fast and his eyes ached from straining at the tiny interconnecting lines. Better to quit now than try to continue under one of the harsh electric bulbs.

Straightening, he rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. At least the day had not been a total loss. The new map of the rail nexus had yielded some useful information. He would be starting from scratch with the Romanians. Everything in the construction of the camp would be left to him, even choice of the site. He thought he had found a good one. There was a row of old warehouses on the eastern edge of the nexus. If they were not in use or not being put to any important use, they could act as the seed of the Ploiesti camp. Wire fences could be strung within a matter of days, and then the Iron Guard could get about the business of collecting Jews.

Kaempffer wanted to get started. He would let the Iron Guard gather up the first "guests" in whatever haphazard fashion they wished while he oversaw the design of the physical plant. Once that was under way he would devote more of his time to teaching the Romanians the SS's proven methods of corraling undesirables.

Folding the map, he found his thoughts turning to the immense profits to be earned from the camp, and of ways to keep most of those profits for himself. Get the prisoners' rings, watches, and jewelry immediately; gold teeth and the women's hair could be taken later. Commandants in Germany and in Poland were all becoming rich. Kaempffer saw no reason why he should be an exception.

And there would be more. In the near future, after he got the camp running like a well-oiled machine, there were certain to be opportunities to rent out some of the healthier inmates to Romanian industry. A growing practice at other camps, and very profitable. He might well be able to hire out large numbers of inmates, especially with Operation Barbarossa soon to be launched. The Romanian Army would be invading Russia along with the Wehrmacht, draining off much of the country's able-bodied work force. Yes, the factories would be anxious for laborers. Their pay, of course, would go to the camp commandant.

He knew the tricks. Hoess had taught him well at Auschwitz. It was not often that a man was given an opportunity to serve his country, to improve the genetic balance of the human race, and to enrich himself all at once. He was a lucky man...

Except for this damnable keep. At least the problem here seemed to be under control. If things held as they were, he could leave tomorrow morning and report success back to Berlin. The report would look good:

He had arrived and had lost two men the first night before he had been able to set up counteroffensive action; after that, there were no further killings. (He would be vague as to how he had stopped the killings but crystal clear as to whom the credit belonged.) After three nights with no further deaths, he departed. Mission accomplished. If the killings resumed after his departure, it would be the fault of that bungler, Woermann. By then Kaempffer would be too involved with setting up Camp Ploiesti. They would have to send someone else to bail Woermann out.

Lidia's tap on the door to announce dinner startled Magda out of her sleep. A few splashes of water from the basin onto her face and she was fully awake. But not hungry. Her stomach was so knotted she knew it would be impossible to get down a bite of food.

She stood at the window. There were still traces of daylight left in the sky, but none down in the pass. Night had come to the keep, yet the bright courtyard lights had not been turned on. There were windows illuminated here and there in the walls like eyes in the dark, Papa's among them, but it was not yet lit up like—what was it Glenn had called it that first night?—"a cheap tourist attraction."

She wondered if Glenn was downstairs at the dinner table now. Was he thinking of her? Waiting for her, perhaps? Or was he intent solely on his meal? No matter. She could not under any circumstances let him see her. One look into her eyes and he would know what she intended and might try to stop her.

Magda tried to concentrate on the keep. Why was she thinking of Glenn? He obviously could take care of himself. She should be thinking about Papa and her mission tonight, not of Glenn.

And yet her thoughts persisted in turning to Glenn. She had even dreamed of him during her nap. Details were fuzzy now, but the impressions that lingered were all warm and somehow erotic. What was happening to her? She had never reacted to anyone this way, ever. There had been times in her late teens when young men had courted her. She had been flattered and briefly charmed by two or three of them, but nothing more. And even Mihail... they had been close, but she had never desired him.

That was it: Magda realized with a shock that she desired Glenn, wanted him near her, making her feel—

This was absurd! She was acting like a simple-minded farm girl in heat upon meeting her first smooth-talking man from the big city. No, she could not allow herself to become involved with Glenn or with any man. Not while Papa could not fend for himself. And especially not while he was locked up in the keep with the Germans and that thing. Papa came first. He had no one else, and she would never desert him.

Ah, but Glenn ... if only there were more men like him. He made her feel important, as if being who she was, was good, something to take pride in. She could talk to him and not feel like the book-bound misfit others seemed to see.

It was past ten o'clock when Magda left the inn. From her window she had watched Glenn slink down the path and take up a position in the brush at the edge of the gorge. After waiting to make sure he had settled himself there, she tied her hair up in its kerchief, snatched her flashlight from the bureau, and left her room. She passed no one on her way down the stairs, through the foyer, and into the darkness outside.

Magda did not head for the causeway. Instead, she crossed the path and walked toward the towering shadows of the mountains, feeling her way in the dark. She could not use the flashlight until she was inside the keep; turning it on out here or in the gorge would risk giving her presence away to one of the sentries on the wall. She lifted her sweater and tucked the flashlight into the waistband of her skirt, feeling the cold of its metal against her skin.

She knew exactly where she was going. At the juncture of the gorge and the western wall of the pass was a large wedge-shaped pile of dirt, shale, and rocky rubble that had been sliding down the mountain and collecting there for ages. Its slope was gentle and the footing good—she had learned this years ago when she had embarked on her first trip into the gorge in search of the nonexistent cornerstone. She had made the climb numerous times since then, but always in sunlight. Tonight she would be hampered by darkness and by fog. There would not even be moonlight since the moon was not due to rise until after midnight. This was going to be risky, but Magda felt certain she could do it.

She reached the mountain wall where the gorge came to an abrupt halt. The wedge of rubble formed a half-cone, its base on the floor of the fog-filled gorge some sixty feet below and its point ending two paces from the site where she stood.

Setting her jaw and breathing deeply once, twice, Magda began the descent. She moved slowly, cautiously, testing each foothold before putting her full weight on it, holding on to the larger rocks for balance. She was in no great hurry. There was plenty of time. Caution was the key—caution and silence. One wrong move and she would begin to slide. The jagged rocks along the way would tear her flesh to shreds by the time she reached bottom. And even if she survived the fall, the rock slide she caused would alert the sentries on the wall. She had to be careful.

She made steady progress, all the while shutting out the thought that Molasar might well be waiting for her in the gorge below. There was one bad moment; it came after she had progressed below the gently undulating surface of the fog. For a moment she could not find any footing. She clung to a slab of rock with both legs dangling below her in a misty chasm, unable to make contact with anything. It was as if the whole world had fallen away, leaving her hanging from this jutting stone, alone, forever. But she fought off her panic and inched to her left until her questing feet found a bit of purchase.

The rest of the descent was easier. She reached the base of the wedge unharmed. More difficult terrain lay ahead, however. The floor of the gorge was a never-never land, a realm of jagged rocks and rank grasses, steeped in cloying fog that swirled around her as she moved, clutching at her with wispy tentacles. She moved slowly and with utmost care. The rocks were slick and treacherous, capable of causing a bone-breaking fall at her first unwary step. She was all but blind in the fog, but she kept moving. After an eternity, she passed her first landmark: a dim, dark strip of shadow overhead. She was under the causeway. The base of the tower would be ahead and to the left.

She knew she was almost there when her left foot suddenly sank ankle deep in icy water. She quickly drew back to remove her shoes, her heavy stockings, and to hike her skirt above her knees. Then she steeled herself. Teeth clenched, Magda waded ahead into the water, her breath escaping in a rush as cold spiked into her feet and lower legs, driving nails of pain into her marrow. Yet she kept her pace slow, even, determinedly suppressing the urge to splash over to the warmth and dryness of the far bank. Rushing would mean noise, and noise meant discovery.

She had walked a good dozen feet beyond the water's far edge before she realized she was out of it. Her feet were numb. Shivering, she sat on a rock and massaged her toes until sensation returned; then she stepped into her stockings and shoes again.

A few more steps took her to the outcropping of granite that formed the base on which the keep rested. Its rough surface was easy to follow to the spot where the leading edge of the tower stretched down to the floor of the gorge. There she felt the flat surfaces and right angles of man-made block begin.

She felt around until she found the oversized block she sought, and pushed. With a sigh and a barely audible scrape, the slab swung inward. A dark rectangle awaited her like a gaping mouth. Magda didn't let herself hesitate. Pulling the flashlight from her waistband, she stepped through.

The sensation of evil struck her like a blow as she entered, breaking her out in beads of icy perspiration, making her want to leap headlong back through the opening and into the fog. It was far worse than when she and Papa had passed through the gate Tuesday night, and worse, too, than this morning when she had stepped across the threshold at the gate. Had she become more sensitive to it, or had the evil grown stronger?

He drifted slowly, languidly, aimlessly, through the deepest recesses of the cavern that formed the keep's subcellar, moving from shadow to shadow, a part of the darkness, human in form but long drained of the essentials of humanness.

He stopped, sensing a new life that had not been present a moment ago. Someone had entered the keep. After a moment's concentration, he recognized the presence of the crippled one's daughter, the one he had touched two nights ago, the one so ripe with strength and goodness that his ever insatiable hunger quickened to a ravening need. He had been furious when the Germans had banished her from the keep.

Now she was back.

He began to drift again through the darkness, but his drifting was no longer languid, no longer aimless.

Magda stood in the stygian gloom, shaking and indecisive. Mold spores and dust motes, disturbed by her entry, irritated her throat and nose, choking her. She had to get out. This was a fool's errand. What could she possibly do to help Papa against one of the undead? What had she actually hoped to accomplish by coming here? Silly heroics like this got people killed! Who did she think she was, anyway? What made her think—

Stop!

A mental scream halted her terrified thoughts. She was thinking like a defeatist. This wasn't her way. She could do something for Papa! She did not know what, exactly, but at the very least she would be at his side to give moral support. She would go on.

Her original intention had been to close the hinged slab behind her. But she could not bring herself to do it. There would be comfort of a sort, scant comfort, in knowing her escape route lay open behind her.

She thought it safe to use the flashlight now, so she flicked it on. The beam struggled against the darkness, revealing the lower end of a long stone stairway that wound a spiral path up the inner surface of the tower's base. She flashed the beam upward but the light was completely swallowed by the darkness above.

She had no choice but to climb.

After her shaky descent and her trek through the fog-enshrouded gorge, stairs—even steep ones—were a luxury. She played the flashlight back and forth before her as she moved, assuring herself that each step was intact before she entrusted her weight to it. All was silence in the huge, dark cylinder of stone except for the echo of her footfalls and remained so until she had completed two of the three circuits that made up the stairway.

Then from off to her right she felt a draft. And heard a strange noise.

She stood motionless, frozen in the flow of cold air, listening to a soft, far-away scraping. It was irregular in pitch and in rhythm, but persistent. She quickly flashed the light to her right and saw a narrow opening almost six feet high in the stone. She had seen it there on her previous explorations but had never paid any attention to it. There had never been a draft flowing through it. Nor had she ever heard any noise within.

Aiming the beam through the hole, Magda peered into the darkness, hoping and at the same time not hoping to find the source of the scraping.

As long as it's not rats. Please, God, let there be no rats in there.

Inside she saw nothing but an empty expanse of dirt floor. The scraping seemed to come from deep within the cavity. Far off to the right, perhaps fifty feet away, she noticed a dim glow. Dousing the flashlight confirmed it: There was light back there, faint, coming from above. Magda squinted in the darkness and dimly perceived the outline of a stairway.

Abruptly, she realized where she was. She was looking into the subcellar from the east. Which meant that the light she saw to her right was seeping down through the ruptured cellar floor. Just two nights ago she had stood at the foot of those steps while Papa had examined the...

... corpses. If the steps were to her right, then off to her left lay the eight dead German soldiers. And still that noise continued, floating toward her from the far end of the subcellar—if it had an end.

Repressing a shudder, she turned her flashlight on again and continued her climb. There was one last turn to go. She shone the beam upward to the place where the steps disappeared into a dark niche at the edge of the ceiling. The sight of it spurred her on, for she knew that the buttressed ceiling of the stairwell was the floor of the tower's first level. Papa's level. And the niche lay within the dividing wall of his rooms.

Magda quickly completed the climb and eased into the space. She pressed her ear to the large stone on the right; it was hinged in a way similar to the entrance stone sixty feet below. No sound came through to her. Still she waited, forcing herself to listen longer. No footsteps, no voices. Papa was alone.

She pushed on the stone, expecting it to swing open easily. It didn't move. She leaned against it with all her weight and strength. No movement. Crouching, feeling locked in a tiny cave, Magda's mind raced over the possibilities. Something had happened. Five years ago, she had moved the stone with little effort. Had the keep settled in the intervening years, upsetting the delicate balance of the hinges?

She was tempted to rap the butt of her flashlight against the stone. That at least would alert Papa to her presence. But then what? He certainly couldn't help her move the stone. And what if the sound traveled up to one of the other levels and alerted a sentry or one of the officers? No—she could not rap on anything.

But she had to get into that room! She pushed once more, this time wedging her back against the stone and her feet against the opposing wall, straining all her muscles to their limit. Still no movement.

As she huddled there, angry, bitterly frustrated, a thought occurred to her. Perhaps there was another way—via the subcellar. If there were no guards there, she might make it to the courtyard; and if the bright courtyard lights were still off, she might be able to steal across the short distance to the tower and to Papa's room. So many ifs ... but if at any time she found her way blocked, she could always turn back, couldn't she?

Quickly, she descended to the opening in the wall. The cold draft was still there, as were the far-off scraping sounds. She stepped through and began walking toward the stairs that would take her up to the cellar, making her way toward the light that filtered down from above. She played her flashlight beam down and just ahead of her, careful not to let it stray off to the left where she knew the corpses lay.

As she moved deeper into the subcellar, she found it increasingly difficult to keep up her pace. Her mind, her sense of duty, her love for her father—all the higher strata of her consciousness—were pushing her forward. But something else was dragging at her, slowing her. Some primal part of her brain was rebelling, trying to turn her around.

She pushed on, overriding all warnings. She would not be stopped now ... although the way the shadows seemed to move and twist and shift about her was ghastly and unsettling. A trick of the light, she told herself. If she kept moving, she'd be all right.

Magda had almost reached the stairs when she saw something move within the shadow of the bottom step. She almost screamed when it hopped up into the light.

A rat!

It sat hunched on the step with its fat body partially encircled by a twitching tail as it licked its claws. Loathing welled up in her. She wanted to retch. She knew she could not take another step forward with that thing there. The rat looked up, glared at her, then scuttled off into the shadows. Magda didn't wait for it to change its mind and come back. She hurried halfway up the steps, then stopped and listened, waiting for her stomach to calm.

All was quiet above—not a word, not a cough, not a footstep. The only sound was the scraping, persistent, louder now that she was in the subcellar, but still far away in the recesses of the cavern. She tried to block it out. She could not imagine what it might be and did not want to try.

Again she flashed her light around to make sure no more rats were about. Then she took the stairs, slowly, carefully, silently. Near the top, she peered cautiously over the edge of the hole in the floor. Through the ruptured wall to her right was the cellar's central corridor, alight with a string of incandescent bulbs, and apparently deserted. Three more steps brought her up to floor level, and another three took her to the ruined wall. Again she waited for the sound of guards. Hearing none, she peeked into the corridor: deserted.

Now came the truly risky part. She would have to travel the length of the corridor to the steps that led up to the courtyard. And then up those two short flights. And after that-One step at a time, Magda told herself. First the corridor. Conquer that before worrying about the stairs.

She waited, afraid to step out into the light. Until now she had moved in darkness and seclusion. Exposing herself under those bulbs would be like standing naked in the center of Bucharest at noon. But her only other alternative was to give up and go back.

She stepped forward into the light and moved quickly, silently, down the corridor. She was almost at the foot of the stairs when she heard a sound from above. Someone coming down. She had been ready to dart into one of the side rooms at the first sign of anyone approaching, and now she made that move.

Inside the doorway, Magda froze. She neither saw, heard, nor touched anyone, but she knew she was not alone. She had to get out! But that would expose her to whoever was coming down the steps. Suddenly, there was movement in the darkness behind her and an arm went around her throat.

"What have we here?" said a voice in German. A sentry had been in the room! He dragged her back toward the corridor. "Well, well! Let's have a look at you in the light!"

Magda's heart pounded with terror as she waited to see the color of her captor's uniform. If gray, she might have a chance, a slim one, but at least a chance. If it was black...

It was black. And there was another einsatzkommando running toward them.

"It's the Jew girl!" said the first. His helmet was off and his eyes were bleary. He must have been dozing in the room when she slipped in.

"How'd she get in?" the second said as he came up.

Magda tried to shrink inside her clothes as they stared at her.

"I don't know," said the first, releasing her and pushing her toward the stairs to the courtyard, "but I think we'd better get her up to the major."

He leaned into the room to retrieve the helmet he had removed for his nap. As he did, the second SS man came alongside her. Magda acted without thinking. She pushed the first into the room and raced back toward the break in the wall. She did not want to face that major. If she could get below, she had a chance to reach safety, for only she knew the way.

The back of her scalp suddenly turned to fire and her feet almost left the ground as the second soldier yanked viciously on the fistful of hair and kerchief he had grabbed as she leaped past him. But he was not satisfied with that. As tears of pain sprang to her eyes, he pulled her toward him by her hair, placed a hand between her breasts, and slammed her against the wall.

Magda lost her breath and felt consciousness fade as her shoulders and the back of her head struck the stone with numbing force. The next few moments were a collage of blurs and disembodied voices:

"You didn't kill her, did you?"

"She'll be all right."

"Doesn't know her place, that one."

"Perhaps no one's ever taken the time to properly teach her."

A brief pause, then: "In there."

Still in a fog, her body numb, her vision blurred, Magda felt herself dragged by the arms along the cold stone floor, pulled around a corner and out of the direct light. She realized she was in one of the rooms. But why? When they released her arms, she heard the door close, saw the room go dark, felt them fall upon her, fumbling over each other in their urgency, one trying to pull her skirt down while the other tried to lift it up to her waist to get at her undergarments.

She would have screamed but her voice was gone, would have fought back but her arms and legs were leaden and useless, would have been utterly terrified had it not all seemed so far away and dreamlike. Over the hunched shoulders of her assailants she could see the lighted outline of the door to the corridor. She wanted to be out there.

Then the outline of the door changed, as if a shadow had moved across it. She sensed a presence outside the door. Suddenly, there was a thundering crash. The door split down the middle and smashed open, showering them all with splinters and larger fragments of wood. A form—huge, masculine—filled the doorway, blotting out most of the light.

Glenn! she thought at first, but that hope was instantly doused by the wave of cold and malevolence flooding in from the doorway.

The startled Germans cried out in terror as they rolled away from her. The form seemed to swell as it leaped forward. Magda felt herself kicked and jostled as the two soldiers dove for the weapons they had lain aside. But they were not quick enough. The newcomer was upon them with blinding swiftness, bending down, grasping each soldier by the throat and then straightening up again to his full height.

Magda's head began to clear as the horror of what she was watching broke through to her. It was Molasar who stood over her, a huge, black figure silhouetted in the light from the corridor, two red points of fire where his eyes should be, and in each hand a struggling, kicking, choking, gagging einsatzkommando held out at arm's length on either side of him. He held them until their movements slowed and their strangled, agonized sounds died away, until they both hung limp in his hands. He then shook them violently, so violently that Magda could hear the bones and cartilage in their necks snap, break, grind, and splinter. Then he threw them into a dark corner and disappeared after them.

Fighting her pain and weakness, Magda rolled over and struggled to a crouching position on her hands and knees. She still was not able to get to her feet. It would take a few more minutes before her legs would support her.

Then came a sound—a greedy, sibilant sucking noise that made her want to retch. It drove her to her feet and, after she leaned against the wall for an instant, propelled her out toward the light of the corridor.

She had to get out! Her father was forgotten in the wake of the unspeakable horror taking place in the room behind her. The corridor wavered as she stumbled toward the ruptured wall, but she determinedly held on to consciousness. She reached the opening without falling, but as she stepped through, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

Molasar was coming, his long, purposeful stride bringing him swiftly, gracefully closer, his cloak billowing behind him, his eyes bright, his lips and chin smeared with blood.

With a small cry, Magda ducked inside the wall and ran for the steps to the subcellar. It did not seem even remotely possible that she could outrun him, yet she refused to give in. She sensed him close behind her but did not look around. Instead, she leaped for the steps.

As she landed, her heel skidded on slime and she began to fall. Strong arms, cold as the night, gripped her from behind, one slipping around her back, the other under her knees. She opened her mouth to scream out her terror and revulsion but her voice was locked. She felt herself lifted and carried downward. After one brief, horrified glance at the angular lines of Molasar's pale, blood-flecked face, his long, unkempt, stringy hair, the madness in his eyes, she was carried out of the light and into the subcellar and could no longer see anything. Molasar turned. He was bearing her toward the stairwell in the base of the watchtower. She tried to fight him but his grip easily overcame her best efforts. Finally she gave up. She would save her strength until she saw a chance to escape.

As before, there was numbing cold where he touched her, despite her multiple layers of clothing. There was a heavy, stale odor about him. And although he did not appear physically dirty, he seemed... unclean.

He carried her through the narrow opening into the base of the tower.

"Where...?" Her voice croaked out the first word of her question before her terror strangled it.

There was no answer.

Magda had begun to shiver as they had moved through the subcellar; now, on the stairwell, her teeth were chattering. Contact with Molasar seemed to be siphoning off her body heat.

All was dark around them, yet Molasar was taking the steps two at a time with ease and confidence. After a full circuit around the inner surface of the tower's base, he stopped. Magda felt the sides of the niche within the ceiling press around her, heard stone grate upon stone, and then light poured in on her.

"Magda!"

It was Papa's voice. As her pupils adjusted to the change in light, she felt herself placed on her feet and released. She put a hand out toward the voice and felt it contact the armrest of Papa's wheelchair. She grasped it, clung to it like a drowning sailor clutching a floating plank.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in a harsh, shocked whisper.

"Soldiers..." was all she could say. As her vision adjusted, she found Papa staring at her open mouthed.

"They abducted you from the inn?"

She shook her head. "No. I came in below."

"But why would you do such a foolish thing?"

"So you would not have to face him alone." Magda did not make any gesture toward Molasar. Her meaning was clear.

The room had darkened noticeably since her arrival. She knew Molasar was standing somewhere behind her in the shadows by the hinged stone, but she could not bring herself to look in his direction.

She went on: "Two of the SS soldiers caught me. They pulled me into a room. They were going to..."

"What happened?" Papa asked, his eyes wide.

"I was..." Magda glanced briefly over her shoulder at the shadow... "saved."

Papa continued to stare at her, no longer with shock or concern, but with something else—disbelief.

"By Molasar?"

Magda nodded and finally found the strength to turn and face Molasar. "He killed them both!"

She stared at him. He stood in shadow by the open slab of stone, cloaked in darkness, a figure out of a nightmare, his face dimly seen but his eyes bright. The blood was gone from his face, as if it had been absorbed through the skin rather than wiped away. Magda shuddered.

"Now you've ruined everything!" Papa said, startling her with the anger in his voice. "Once the new bodies are found I'll be subjected to the full force of the major's wrath! And all because of you!"

"I came here to be with you," Magda said, stung. Why was he angry with her?

"I did not ask you to come! I did not want you here before, and I do not want you here now!"

"Papa, please!"

He pointed a gnarled finger at the opening in the wall. "Leave, Magda! I have too much to do and too little time in which to do it! The Nazis will soon be storming in here asking me why two more of their men are dead and I will have no answer! I must speak to Molasar before they arrive!"

"Papa—"

"Go!"

Magda stood and stared at him. How could he speak to her this way? She wanted to cry, wanted to plead, wanted to slap some sense into him. But she could not. She could not defy him, even before Molasar. He was her father, and although she knew he was being brutally unfair, she could not defy him.

Magda turned and rushed past the impassive Molasar into the opening. The slab swung closed behind her and she was again in darkness. She felt in her waistband for the flashlight—gone! It must have fallen out somewhere.

Magda had two alternatives: return to Papa's room and ask for a lamp or a candle, or descend in the dark. After only a few seconds she chose the latter. She could not face Papa again tonight. He had hurt her, more than she had ever known she could be hurt. A change had come over him. He was somehow losing his gentleness, and losing the empathy that had always been part of him. He had dismissed her tonight as though she were a stranger. And he hadn't even cared enough to be sure she had a light with her!

Magda bit back a sob. She would not cry! But what was there to do? She felt helpless. And worse, she felt betrayed.

The only thing left was to leave the keep. She began her descent, relying on touch alone. She could see nothing, but knew that if she kept her left hand against the wall and took each step slowly and carefully, she could make it to the bottom without falling to her death.

As she completed the first spiral, Magda half expected to hear that odd scraping sound through the opening into the subcellar. But it did not come. Instead, there was a new sound in the dark—louder, closer, heavier. She slowed her progress until her left hand slid off the stone of the wall and met the cool air flowing through the opening. The noise grew as she listened.

It was a scuffling sound, a dragging, fulsome, shambling sound that set her teeth on edge and dried her tongue so it stuck to the roof of her mouth. This could not be rats ... much too big. It seemed to come from the deeper darkness to her left. Off to the right, dim light still seeped down from the cellar above, but it did not reach to the area where the sound was. Just as well. Magda did not want to see what was over there.

She groped wildly across the opening, and for a mind-numbing moment, could not find the far edge. Then her hand contacted cold, wonderfully solid stone and she continued downward, faster than before, dangerously fast, her heart pounding, her breath coming in gulps. If the thing in the subcellar was coming her way, she had to be out of the keep by the time it reached the stairwell.

She kept going down and endlessly down, every so often looking back over her shoulder in an instinctive and utterly fruitless attempt to see in the darkness. A dim rectangle beckoned to her as she reached the bottom and she stumbled toward it, through it and out into the fog. She swung the slab closed and leaned against it, gasping with relief.

After composing herself, Magda realized that she had not escaped the malevolent atmosphere of the keep by merely stepping outside its walls. This morning the vileness that permeated the keep had stopped at the threshold; now it extended beyond the walls. She began to walk, to stumble through the darkness. It was not until she was almost to the stream that she felt she had escaped the aura of evil.

Suddenly from above there came faint shouts, and the fog brightened. The lights in the keep had been turned up to maximum. Someone must have found the two newly dead bodies.

Magda continued to move away from the keep. The extra light was no threat, for none of it reached her. It filtered down like sunshine viewed from the bottom of a murky lake. The light was caught and held by the fog, thickening it, whitening it, concealing her rather than revealing her. She splashed carelessly across the stream this time without pausing to remove her shoes and stockings—she wanted to be away from the keep as quickly as possible. The shadow of the causeway passed overhead and soon she was at the base of the wedge of rubble. After a brief rest to catch her breath, she began to climb until she reached the upper level of the fog. It almost completely filled the gorge now and there was only a short distance to the top. A few seconds of exposure and she would be safe.

Magda pulled herself up over the rim and ran in a half-crouch. As she felt the brush enfold her, her foot caught on a root and she fell headlong, striking her left knee on a stone. She hugged the knee to her chest and began to cry, long, wracking sobs far out of proportion to the pain. It was anguish for Papa, relief at being safely away from the keep, a reaction to all she had seen and heard there, to all that had been done to her, or almost done to her.

"You've been to the keep."

It was Glenn. She could think of no one she wanted more to see at this moment. Hurriedly drying her eyes on her sleeve, she stood up—or tried to. Her injured knee sent a knifing pain up her leg and Glenn put out a hand to keep her from falling.

"Are you hurt?" His voice was gentle.

"Just a bruise."

She tried to take a step but the leg refused to bear her weight. Without a word, Glenn scooped her up in his arms and began carrying her back to the inn.

It was the second time tonight she had been carried so. But this time was different. Glenn's arms were a warm sanctuary, thawing all the cold left by Molasar's touch. As she leaned against him she felt all the fear ooze out of her. But how had he come up behind her without her hearing him? Or had he been standing there all along, waiting for her?

Magda let her head rest on his shoulder, feeling safe, at peace. If only I could feel this way forever.

He carried her effortlessly through the front door of the inn, through the empty foyer, up the stairs, and into her room. After depositing her gently on the edge of the bed, he knelt before her.

"Let's take a look at that knee."

Magda hesitated at first, then drew her skirt up over her left knee, leaving the right one covered and keeping the rest of the heavy fabric tight around her thighs. In the back of her mind was the thought that she should not be sitting here on a bed exposing her leg to a man she hardly knew. But somehow...

Her coarse, dark-blue stocking was torn, revealing a purpling bruise on the kneecap. The flesh was swollen, puffy. Glenn stepped over to the near side of the dresser and dipped a washcloth into the water pitcher, then brought the cloth over and placed it on her knee.

"That ought to help," he said.

"What's gone wrong with the keep?" she asked, staring at his red hair, trying to ignore, and yet reveling in, the tingling warmth that crept steadily up her thigh from where his hand held the cloth against her.

He looked up at her. "You were there tonight. Why don't you tell me?"

"I was there, but I can't explain—or perhaps I can't accept—what's happening. I do know that Molasar's awakening has changed the keep. I used to love that place. Now I fear it. There's a very definite ... wrongness there. You don't have to see it or touch it to be aware of its presence, just as sometimes you don't have to look outside to know there's bad weather coming. It pervades the very air... seeps right into your pores."

"What kind of 'wrongness' do you sense in Molasar?"

"He's evil. I know that's vague, but I mean evil. Inherently evil. A monstrous, ancient evil who thrives on death, who values all that is noxious to the living, who hates and fears everything we cherish." She shrugged, embarrassed by the intensity of her words. "That's what I feel. Does it make any sense to you?"

Glenn watched her closely for a long moment before replying. "You must be extremely sensitive to have felt all that."

"And yet..."

"And yet what?"

"And yet tonight Molasar saved me from the hands of two fellow human beings who should have by all rights been allied with me against him."

The pupils in Glenn's blue eyes dilated. "Molasar saved you?"

"Yes. Killed two German soldiers"—she winced at the memory—"horribly ... but didn't harm me. Strange, isn't it?"

"Very." Leaving the damp cloth in place, Glenn slid his hand off her knee and ran it through the red of his hair. Magda wanted him to put it back where it had been, but he seemed preoccupied. "You escaped him?"

"No. He delivered me to my father." She watched Glenn mull this, then nod as if it made some sort of sense to him. "And there was something else."

"About Molasar?"

"No. Something else in the keep. In the subcellar ... something moving around in there. Maybe it was what had been making the scraping noise earlier."

"Scraping noise," Glenn repeated, his voice low.

"Rasping, scraping ... from far back in the sub-cellar."

Without a word, Glenn rose and went to the window. Motionless, he stood staring out at the keep. "Tell me everything that happened to you tonight—from the moment you stepped into the keep until the moment you left. Spare no detail."

Magda told him everything she could remember up to the time Molasar deposited her in Papa's room. Then her voice choked off.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"How was your father?" Glenn asked. "Was he all right?"

Pain gathered in her throat. "Oh, he was fine." In spite of her brave smile, tears started in her eyes and began to spill onto her cheeks. Try as she might to will them back, they kept coming. "He told me to get out ... to leave him alone with Molasar. Can you imagine that? After what I went through to reach him, he tells me to get out!"

The anguish in her voice must have penetrated Glenn's preoccupied state, for he turned away from the window and stared at her.

"He didn't care that I had been assaulted and almost raped by two Nazi brutes ... didn't even ask if I was hurt! All he cared was that I had shortened his precious time with Molasar. I'm his daughter and he cares more about talking to that... that creature!"

Glenn stepped over to the bed and seated himself beside her. He put his arm around her back and gently pulled her against him.

"Your father's under a terrible strain. You must remember that."

"And he should remember he's my father!"

"Yes," Glenn said softly. "Yes, he should." He swiveled half around and lay back on the bed, then tugged gently on Magda's shoulders. "Here. Lie down beside me and close your eyes. You'll be all right."

With her heart pounding in her throat, Magda allowed herself to be drawn nearer to him. She ignored the pain in her knee as she swung her legs off the floor and turned to face him. They lay stretched out together on the narrow bed, Glenn with his arm under her, Magda with her head in the nook of his shoulder, her body almost touching his, her left hand pressed against the muscles of his chest. Thoughts of Papa and the hurt he had caused her washed away as waves of sensation crashed over and through her. She had never lain beside a man before. It was frightening and wonderful. The aura of his maleness engulfed her, making her mind spin. She tingled wherever they made contact, tiny electric shocks arcing through her clothing ... clothing that was suffocating her.

On impulse, she lifted her head and kissed him on the lips. He responded ardently for a moment, then pulled back.

"Magda—"

She watched his eyes, seeing a mixture of desire, hesitation, and surprise there. He could be no more surprised than she. There had been no thought behind that kiss, only a newly awakened need, burning in its intensity. Her body was acting of its own accord, and she was not trying to stop it. This moment might never come again. It had to be now. She wanted to tell Glenn to make love to her but could not say it.

"Someday, Magda," he said, seeming to read her thoughts. He gently drew her head back down to his shoulder. "Someday. But not now. Not tonight."

He stroked her hair and told her to sleep. Strangely, the promise was enough. The heat seeped out of her, and with it all the trials of the night. Even worries about Papa and what he might be doing ebbed away. Occasional bubbles of concern still broke the surface of her spreading calm, but they became progressively fewer and farther between, their ripples smaller and more widely spaced. Questions about Glenn floated by: who he really was, and the wisdom, let alone the propriety, of allowing herself to be this close to him.

Glenn ... he seemed to know more about the keep and about Molasar than he was admitting. She had found herself talking to him about the keep as if he were as intimately familiar with it as she; and he had not seemed surprised about the stairwell in the watchtower's base, or about the opening from the stairwell into the subcellar, despite her offhand references to them. To her mind there was only one reason for that: He already knew about them.

But these were niggling little qualms. If she had discovered the hidden entrance to the tower years ago, there was no reason why he could not have found it, too. The important thing now was that for the first time tonight she felt completely safe and warm and wanted.

She drifted off to sleep.

TWENTY-TWO

As soon as the stone slab swung shut behind his daughter, Cuza turned to Molasar and found the bottomless black of the creature's pupils already fixed on him from the shadows. All night he had waited to cross-examine Molasar, to penetrate the contradictions that had been pointed out by that odd red-haired stranger this morning. But then Molasar had appeared, holding Magda in his arms.

"Why did you do it?" Cuza asked, looking up from his wheelchair.

Molasar continued to stare at him, saying nothing.

"Why? I should think she'd be no more than another tempting morsel for you!"

"You try my patience, cripple!" Molasar's face grew whiter as he spoke. "I could no more stand by now and watch two Germans rape and defile a woman of my country than I could stand idly by five hundred years ago and watch the Turks do the same. That is why I allied myself with Vlad Tepes! But tonight the Germans went further than any Turk ever dared—they tried to commit the act within the very walls of my home!" Abruptly, he relaxed and smiled. "And I rather enjoyed ending their miserable lives."

"As I am sure you rather enjoyed your alliance with Vlad."

"His penchant for impalement left me with ample opportunities to satisfy my needs without attracting attention. Vlad came to trust me. At the end, I was one of the few boyars he could truly count on."

"I don't understand you."

"You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience."

Cuza tried to clear away the confusion that smudged his thoughts. So many contradictions ... nothing was as it should be. And hanging over it all was the unsettling knowledge that he owed his daughter's safety, and perhaps her life, to one of the undead.

"Nevertheless, I am in your debt."

Molasar made no reply.

Cuza hesitated, then began leading up to the question he most wanted to ask. "Are there more like you?"

"You mean undead? Moroi? There used to be. I don't know about now. Since awakening, I've sensed such reluctance on the part of the living to accept my existence that I must assume we were all killed off over the last five hundred years."

"And were all the others so terrified of the cross?"

Molasar stiffened. "You don't have it with you, do you? I warn you—"

"It's safely away. But I wonder at your fear of it." Cuza gestured to the walls. "You've surrounded yourself with brass-and-nickel crosses, thousands of them, and yet you panicked at the sight of the tiny silver one I had last night."

Molasar stepped to the nearest cross and laid his hand against it. "These are a ruse. See how high the cross-piece is set? So high that it is almost no longer a cross. This configuration has no ill effect on me. I had thousands of them built into the walls of the keep to throw off my pursuers when I went into hiding. They could not conceive of one of my kind dwelling in a structure studded with 'crosses.' And as you will learn if I decide I can trust you, this particular configuration has special meaning for me."

Cuza had desperately hoped to find a flaw in Molasar's fear of the cross; he felt that hope wither and die. A great heaviness settled on him. He had to think! And he had to keep Molasar here—talking! He couldn't let him go. Not yet.

"Who are 'they'? Who was pursuing you?"

"Does the name Glaeken mean anything to you?"

"No."

Molasar stepped closer. "Nothing at all?"

"I assure you I never heard the word before." Why was it so important?

"Then perhaps they are gone," Molasar muttered, more to himself than to Cuza.

"Please explain yourself. Who or what is a Glaeken?"

"The Glaeken were a fanatical sect that started as an arm of the Church in the Dark Ages. Its members enforced orthodoxy and were answerable only to the Pope at first; after a while, however, they became a law unto themselves. They sought to infiltrate all the seats of power, to bring all the royal families under their control in order to place the world under a single power—one religion, one rule."

"Impossible! I am an authority on European history, especially this part of Europe, and there was never any such sect!"

Molasar leaned closer and bared his teeth. "You dare call me a liar within the walls of my home? Fool! What do you know of history? What did you know of me—of my kind—before I revealed myself? What did you know of the history of the keep? Nothing! The Glaeken were a secret brotherhood. The royal families had never heard of them, and if the later Church knew of their continued existence, it never admitted it."

Cuza turned away from the blood-stench of Molasar's breath. "How did you learn of their existence?"

"At one time, there was little afoot in the world that the moroi were not privy to. And when we learned of the Glaeken's plans, we decided to take action." He straightened with obvious pride. "The moroi opposed the Glaeken for centuries. It was clear that the successful culmination of their plans would be inimical to us, and so we repeatedly foiled their schemes by draining the life from anyone in power who came under their thrall."

He began to roam the room.

"At first the Glaeken were not even sure we existed. But once they became convinced, they waged all-out war. One by one my brother moroi went down to true death. When I saw the circle tightening around me, I built the keep and locked myself away, determined to outlast the Glaeken and their plans for world dominion. Now it appears that I have succeeded."

"Very clever," Cuza said. "You surrounded yourself with ersatz crosses and went into hibernation. But I must ask you, and please answer me: Why do you fear the cross?"

"I cannot discuss it."

"You must tell me! The Messiah—was Jesus Christ—?"

"No!" Molasar staggered away and leaned against the wall, gagging.

"What's wrong?"

He glared at Cuza. "If you were not a countryman, I would tear your tongue out here and now!"

Even the sound of Christ's name repels him! Cuza thought. "But I never—"

"Never say it again! If you value whatever aid I can give you, never say that name again!"

"But it's only a word."

"NEVER!" Molasar had regained some of his composure. "You have been warned. Never again or your body will lie beside the Germans below."

Cuza felt as if he were drowning. He had to try something.

"What about these words? Yitgadal veyitkadash shemei raba bealma divera chireutei, veyamlich—"

"What is that meaningless jumble of sounds?" Molasar said. "Some sort of chant? An incantation? Are you trying to drive me off?" He took a step closer. "Have you sided with the Germans?"

"No!" It was all Cuza could say before his voice cracked and broke off. His mind reeled as if from a blow; he gripped the arms of his wheelchair with his crippled hands, waiting for the room to tilt and spill him out. It was a nightmare! This creature of the Dark cringed at the sight of a cross and retched at the mention of the name Jesus Christ. Yet the words of the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead, were just so much meaningless noise. It could not be! And yet it was.

Molasar was speaking, oblivious to the painful maelstrom that swirled within his listener. Cuza tried to follow the words. They might be crucial to Magda's survival, and his own.

"My strength is growing steadily. I can feel it coming back to me. Before long—two nights at most—I shall have the power to rid my keep of all these oulanders."

Cuza tried to assimilate the meaning of the words: strength ... two more nights... rid my keep ... But other words kept rearing up in his consciousness, a persistent undertone ... Yitgadal veyitkadash shemei... blocking their meaning.

And then came the sound of heavy boots running into the watchtower and pounding up the stone steps to the upper levels, the faint sound of human voices raised in anger and fear in the courtyard, the momentary dimming of the single bulb overhead, signaling a sudden draw on the power supply.

Molasar showed his teeth in a wolfish grin. "It seems they have found their two comrades-in-arms."

"And soon they will come here to place the blame on me," Cuza said, alarm pulling him from his torpor.

"You are a man of the mind," Molasar said, stepping to the wall and giving the hinged slab a casual shove. It swung open easily. "Use it."

Cuza watched Molasar blend and disappear into the deeper shadow of the opening, wishing he could follow. As the stone slab swung shut, Cuza wheeled his chair around to the table and leaned over the Al Azif, feigning study; waiting, trembling.

It was not a long wait.

Kaempffer burst into the room.

"Jew!" he shouted, jabbing an accusing finger at Cuza as he assumed a wide-legged stance he no doubt considered at once powerful and threatening. "You've failed, Jew! I should have expected no more!"

Cuza could only sit and stare dumbly at the major. What was he going to say? He had no strength left. He felt miserable, sick at heart as well as in body. Everything hurt him, every bone, every joint, every muscle. His mind was numb from his encounter with Molasar. He couldn't think. His mouth was parched, yet he dared not take any more water, for his bladder longed to empty itself at the very sight of Kaempffer.

He wasn't cut out for such stress. He was a teacher, a scholar, a man of letters. He was not equipped to deal with this strutting popinjay who had the power of life and death over him. He wanted desperately to strike back yet did not have the faintest hope of doing so. Was living through all this really worth the trouble?

How much more could he take?

And yet there was Magda. Somewhere along the line there must be hope for her.

Two nights ... Molasar had said he would have sufficient strength two nights from now. Forty-eight hours. Cuza asked himself: Could he hold out that long? Yes, he would force himself to last until Saturday night. Saturday night... the Sabbath would be over ... what did the Sabbath mean anymore? What did anything mean anymore?

"Did you hear me, Jew?" The major's voice was straining toward a scream.

Another voice spoke: "He doesn't even know what you're talking about."

The captain had entered the room. Cuza sensed a core of decency within Captain Woermann; a flawed nobility. Not a trait he expected to find in a German officer.

"Then he'll learn soon enough!" Two long strides took Kaempffer to Cuza's side. He leaned down and forward until his perfect Aryan face was only inches away.

"What's wrong, Major?" Cuza said, feigning ignorance, but allowing his genuine fear of the man to show on his face. "What have I done?"

"You've done nothing, Jew! And that's the problem. For two nights you've sat here with these moldering books, taking credit for the sudden halt in the deaths. But tonight—"

"I never—" Cuza began, but Kaempffer stopped him by slamming his fist on the table.

"Silence! Tonight two more of my men were found dead in the cellar, their throats torn out like the others!"

Cuza had a fleeting image of the two dead men. After viewing the other cadavers, it was easy to imagine their wounds. He visualized their gory throats with a certain relish. Those two had attempted to defile his daughter and deserved all they had suffered. Deserved worse. Molasar was welcome to their blood.

But it was he who was in danger now. The fury in the major's face made that clear. He must think of something or he would not live to see Saturday night.

"It's now evident that you deserve no credit for the last two nights of peace. There is no connection between your arrival and the two nights without a death—just lucky coincidence for you! But you led us to believe it was your doing. Which proves what we have learned in Germany: Never trust a Jew!"

"I never took credit for anything! I never even—"

"You're trying to detain me here, aren't you?" Kaempffer said, his eyes narrowing, his voice lowering to a menacing tone as he studied him. "You're doing your best to keep me from my mission at Ploiesti, aren't you?"

Cuza's mind reeled from the major's sudden change of tack. The man was mad ... as mad as Abdul Alhazred must have been after writing the Al Azif ... which lay before them on the table...

He had an idea.

"But Major! I've finally found something in one of the books!"

Captain Woermann stepped forward at this. "Found? What have you found?"

"He's found nothing!" Kaempffer snarled. "Just another Jew lie to let him go on living!"

How right you are, Major.

"Let him speak, for God's sake!" Woermann said. He turned to Cuza. "What does it say? Show me."

Cuza indicated the Al Azif, written in the original Arabic. The book dated from the eighth century and had absolutely nothing to do with the keep, or even Romania for that matter. But he hoped the two Germans would not know that.

Doubt furrowed Woermann's brow as he looked down at the scroll. "I can't read those chicken tracks."

"He's lying!" Kaempffer shouted.

"This book does not lie, Major," Cuza said. He paused an instant, praying that the Germans would not know the difference between Turkish and ancient Arabic, then plunged into his lie. "It was written by a Turk who invaded this region with Mohammed II. He says there was a small castle—his description of all the crosses can only mean he was in this keep—in which one of the old Wallachian lords had dwelt. The shade of the deceased lord would allow natives of the region to sleep unmolested in his keep, but should outlanders or invaders dare to pass through the portals of his former home, he would slay them at the rate of one per night for every night they stayed. Do you understand? The same thing that is happening here now happened to a unit of the Turkish Army half a millennium ago!"

Cuza watched the faces of the two officers as he finished. His own reaction was one of amazement at his facile fabrication from what he knew of Molasar and the region. There were holes in the story, but small ones, and they had a good chance of being overlooked.

Kaempffer sneered. "Utter nonsense!"

"Not necessarily," Woermann said. "Think about it: The Turks were always on the march back then. And count up our corpses—with the two new ones tonight, we have averaged one death a night since I arrived on April 22."

"It's still..." Kaempffer's voice trailed off as his confidence ebbed. He looked uncertainly at Cuza. "Then we're not the first?"

"No. At least not according to this."

It was working! The biggest lie Cuza had ever told in his life, composed on the spot, was working! They didn't know what to believe! He wanted to laugh.

"How did they finally solve the problem?" Woermann asked.

"They left."

Silence followed Cuza's simple reply.

Woermann finally turned to Kaempffer: "I've been telling you that for—"

"We cannot leave!" Kaempffer said, a hint of hysteria in his voice. "Not before Sunday." He turned to Cuza. "And if you do not come up with an answer for this problem by then, Jew, I shall see to it that you and your daughter personally accompany me to Ploiesti!"

"But why?"

"You'll find out when you get there." Kaempffer paused a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. "No, I believe I'll tell you now. Perhaps it will speed your efforts. You've heard of Auschwitz, no doubt? And Buchenwald?"

Cuza's stomach imploded. "Death camps."

"We prefer to call them 'Resettlement' camps. Romania lacks such a facility. It is my mission to correct that deficiency. Your kind, plus Gypsies and Freemasons and other human dross will be processed through the camp I will set up at Ploiesti. If you prove to be of service to me, I will see to it that your entry into the camp is delayed, perhaps even until your natural death. But if you impede me in any way, you and your daughter will have the honor of being our first residents."

Cuza sat helpless in his chair. He could feel his lips and tongue working, but he could not speak. His mind was too shocked, too appalled at what he had just heard. It was impossible! Yet the glee in Kaempffer's eyes told him it was true. Finally, a word escaped him.

"Beast!"

Kaempffer's smile broadened. "Strangely enough, I don't mind the sound of that word on a Jew's lips. It is proof positive that I am successfully discharging my duties." He strode to the door, then turned back. "So look well through your books, Jew. Work hard for me. Find me an answer. It's not just your own well-being that hangs on it, but your daughter's too." He turned and was gone.

Cuza looked at Woermann pleadingly. "Captain...?"

"I can do nothing, Herr Professor," he replied in a low voice full of regret. "I can only suggest that you work at those books. You've found one reference to the keep; that means there's a good chance you can find another. And I might suggest that you tell your daughter to find a safer place of residence than the inn ... perhaps somewhere in the hills."

He could not admit to the captain that he had lied about finding a reference to the keep, that there was no hope of ever finding one. And as for Magda: "My daughter is stubborn. She will stay at the inn."

"I thought as much. But beyond what I have just said, I am powerless. I am no longer in command of the keep." He grimaced. "I wonder if I ever was. Good evening."

"Wait!" Cuza clumsily fished the cross out of his pocket. "Take this. I have no use for it."

Woermann enclosed the cross in his fist and stared at him a moment. Then he, too, was gone.

Cuza sat in his wheelchair, enveloped in the blackest depression he had ever known. There was no way of winning here. If Molasar stopped killing the Germans, Kaempffer would leave for Ploiesti to begin the systematic extermination of Romanian Jewry. If Molasar persisted, Kaempffer would destroy the keep and drag him and Magda to Ploiesti as his first victims. He thought of Magda in their hands and truly understood the old cliché, a fate worse than death.

There had to be a way out. Far more than his own life and Magda's rested on what happened here. Hundreds of thousands—perhaps a million or more—lives were at stake. There had to be a way to stop Kaempffer. He had to be prevented from going off on his mission ... it seemed of utmost importance to him to arrive in Ploiesti on Monday. Would he lose his position if delayed? If so, that might give the doomed a grace period.

What if Kaempffer never left the keep? What if he met with a fatal accident? But how? How to stop him?

He sobbed in his helplessness. He was a crippled Jew amid squads of German soldiers. He needed guidance. He needed an answer. And soon. He folded his stiff fingers and bowed his head.

O God. Help me, your humble servant, find the answer to the trials of your other servants. Help me help them. Help me find a way to preserve them...

The silent prayer trailed off into the oblivion of his despair. What was the use? How many of the countless thousands dying at the hands of the Germans had lifted their hearts and minds and voices in a similar plea? And where were they now? Dead! And where would he be if he waited for an answer to his own supplication? Dead. And worse for Magda.

He sat in quiet desperation...

There was still Molasar.

Woermann stood for a moment outside the professor's door after closing it. He had experienced a strange sensation while the old man was explaining what he had found in that indecipherable book, a feeling that Cuza was telling the truth, and yet lying at the same time. Odd. What was the professor's game?

He strolled out to the bright courtyard, catching the anxious expressions on the faces of the sentries. Ah, well, it had been too good to be true. Two nights without a casualty—too much to hope for three. Now they were all back to square one ... except for the body count which continued to rise. Ten now. One per night for ten nights. A chilling statistic. If only the killer, Cuza's "Wallachian lord," had held off until tomorrow night. Kaempffer would have been gone by then and he could have marched his own men out. But as things looked now, they would all have to stay through the weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights to go. A death potential of three. Maybe more.

Woermann turned right and walked the short distance to the cellar entrance. The interment detail should have the two fresh corpses down in the subcellar by now. He decided to see that they were laid out properly. Even einsatzkommandos should be accorded a modicum of dignity in death.

In the cellar he glanced into the room in which the two bodies had been found; their throats had not only been torn open but their heads had lolled at obscene angles. The killer had broken their necks for some reason. That was a new atrocity. The room was empty now except for pieces of the shattered door. What had happened here? The dead men's weapons had been found unfired. Had they tried to save themselves by locking the door against their attacker? Why had no one heard their shouts? Or hadn't they shouted?

He walked farther down the central corridor to the broached wall and heard voices coming from below. On the way down the stairs he met the interment detail coming up, blowing into their chilled hands. He directed them back down the stairs.

"Let's go see what sort of job you did."

In the subcellar the glow from flashlights and handheld kerosene lamps glimmered dully off the ten white-sheeted figures on the ground.

"We neatened them up a bit, sir," said a private in gray. "Some of the sheets needed straightening."

Woermann surveyed the scene. Everything seemed in order. He was going to have to come to a decision on disposition of the bodies. He would have to ship them out soon. But how?

He clapped his hands together. Of course—Kaempffer! The major was planning to leave Sunday evening no matter what. He could transport the corpses to Ploiesti, and from there they could be flown back to Germany. Perfect... and fitting.

He noticed that the left foot of the third corpse from the end was sticking out from under its sheet. As he stooped to adjust the cover, he saw that the boot was filthy. It almost looked as if the wearer had been dragged to his resting place by the arms. Both boots were caked with dirt.

Woermann felt a surge of anger, then let it slip away. What did it really matter? The dead were dead. Why make a fuss over a muddy pair of boots? Last week it would have seemed important. Now it was no more than a quibble. A trifle. Yet the dirty boots bothered him. He could not say why, exactly. But they did bother him.

"Let's go, men," he said, turning away and letting his breath fog past him as he moved. The men readily complied. It was cold down there.

Woermann paused at the foot of the steps and looked back. The corpses were barely visible in the receding light. Those boots ... he thought of those dirty, muddy boots again. Then he followed the others up to the cellar.

From his quarters at the rear of the keep, Kaempffer stood at his window and looked out over the courtyard. He had watched Woermann go down to the cellar and return. And still he stood. He should have felt relatively safe, at least for the rest of the night. Not because of the guards all around, but because the thing that killed his men at will had done its work for the night and would not strike again.

Instead, his terror was at a peak.

For a particularly horrifying thought had occurred to him. It derived from the fact that so far all the victims had been enlisted men. The officers had remained untouched. Why? It could be due purely to chance since enlisted men outnumbered officers by better than twenty to one in the keep. But deep within Kaempffer was a gnawing suspicion that he and Woermann were being held in reserve for something especially ghastly.

He didn't know why he felt this way, but he could not escape the dreadful certainty of it. If he could tell someone—anyone—about it, he would at least be partially freed of the burden. Perhaps then he could sleep.

But there was no one.

And so he would stand here at this window until dawn, not daring to close his eyes until the sun filled the sky with light.

TWENTY-THREE

The Keep

Friday, 2 May

0732 hours

Magda waited at the gate, anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Despite the morning sun, she was cold. The soul-chilling sensation of evil that had been confined to the keep before seemed to be leaking out into the pass. Last night it had followed her almost as far as the stream below; this morning it had struck her as soon as she had set foot on the causeway.

The high wooden gates had been swung inward and now rested against the stone sides of the short, tunnellike entry arch. Magda's eyes roamed from the tower entrance from which she expected Papa to emerge, to the dark opening directly across the courtyard that led down to the cellar, to the rear section of the keep. There soldiers were at work, hacking away at the stones. Whereas yesterday their movements had been lackadaisical, today they were frantic. They worked liked madmen—frightened madmen.

Why don't they just leave? She couldn't understand why they remained here night after night waiting for more of their number to die. It didn't make sense.

She had been feverish with concern for Papa. What had they done to him last night after finding the bodies of her two would-be rapists? As he had approached on the causeway, the awful thought that they might have executed him filled her mind. But that fear had been negated by the sentry's quick agreement to her request to see her father. And now that the initial anxiety had been relieved, her thoughts began to drift.

The cheeping of the hungry baby birds outside her window and the dull throb of pain in her left knee had awakened her this morning. She had found herself alone in her bed, fully clothed, under the covers. She had been so terribly vulnerable last night, and Glenn easily could have taken advantage of that. But he hadn't, even when it had been so obvious that she had wanted him.

Magda cringed inside, unable to comprehend what had come over her, shocked by the memory of her own brazenness. Fortunately, Glenn had rejected her... no, that was too strong a word ... demurred was a better way to put it. She wondered at that, glad he had held back, and yet slighted that he had found her so easy to refuse.

Why should she feel slighted? She had never valued herself in terms of her ability to seduce a man. And yet, there was that nasty whisper in a far corner of her mind hinting that she lacked something.

But maybe it had nothing to do with her. It could be he was one of those ... those men who could not love a woman, only another man. But that, she knew, was not the case. She remembered their one kiss—even now it caused a wave of welcome heat to brush over her—and remembered the response she had felt on his part.

Just as well. Just as well he had not accepted her offer. How would she have faced him again if he had? Mortified by her wantonness, she would be forced to avoid him, and that would mean depriving herself of his company. And she so wanted his company.

Last night had been an aberration. A chance combination of circumstances that would not repeat itself. She realized now what had happened: Physical and emotional exhaustion, the near escape from the soldiers, the rescue by Molasar, Papa's rejection of her offer to stay by his side—all had combined to leave her temporarily deranged. That had not been Magda Cuza lying next to Glenn on the bed last night; it had been someone else, someone she did not know. It would not happen again.

She had passed his room this morning, limping from the pain in her knee. She had been tempted to knock on his door to thank him for his aid and to apologize for her behavior. But after listening a minute and hearing no sound, she hadn't wanted to wake him.

She had come directly to the keep, not solely to see that Papa was well, but to tell him how much he had hurt her, how he had no right to treat her in such a manner, and how she had a good mind to heed his advice and leave the Dinu Pass. The last was an empty threat, but she wanted to strike back at him in some way, to make him react, or at least apologize for his callous behavior. She had rehearsed exactly what she was going to say and exactly the tone of voice in which she would say it. She was ready.

Then Papa appeared at the entrance to the tower with a soldier pushing his chair from behind. One look at his ravaged face and all the anger and hurt went out of her. He looked terrible; he seemed to have aged twenty years overnight. She hadn't thought it possible, but he looked more feeble.

How he has suffered! More than any man should. Pitted against his countrymen, his own body, and now the German Army. I can't side against him, too.

The soldier pushing him this morning was more courteous than the one who had wheeled him yesterday. He brought the wheelchair to a halt before Magda, then turned away. Wordlessly, she moved behind and began to push Papa across the causeway. They had not gone a dozen feet when he held up his hand.

"Stop here, Magda."

"What's wrong?" She didn't want to stop. She could still feel the keep here. Papa didn't seem to notice.

"I didn't sleep at all last night."

"Did they keep you up?" she asked, coming around to crouch before him, her fierce protective instincts kindling anger within her. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"

His eyes were rheumy as they looked into hers. "They didn't touch me, but they hurt me."

"How?"

He began speaking in the Gypsy dialect they both knew: "Listen to me, Magda. I've found out why the SS men are here. This is just a stop along their way to Ploiesti where that major is going to set up a death camp—for our people."

Magda felt a wave of nausea. "Oh, no! That's not true! The government would never let Germans come in and—"

"They are already here! You know the Germans have been building fortifications around the Ploiesti refineries; they've been training Romanian soldiers to fight. If they're doing all that, why is it so hard to believe that they intend to start teaching Romanians how to kill Jews? From what I can gather, the major is experienced in killing. He loves his work. He will make a good teacher. I can tell."

It couldn't be! And yet hadn't she also said that Molasar couldn't be? There had been stories in Bucharest about the death camps, whispered tales of the atrocities, of the countless dead; tales which at first no one believed, but as testimony piled upon testimony, even the most skeptical Jew had to accept. The Gentiles did not believe. They were not threatened. It was not in their interest—in fact it could well prove to their detriment—to believe.

"An excellent location," Papa said in a tired voice devoid of emotion. "Easy to get us there. And should one of their enemies try to bomb the oil fields, the resulting inferno would do the Nazis' job for them. And who knows? Perhaps the knowledge of the camp's existence might even cause an enemy to hesitate to bomb the fields, although I doubt it."

He paused, winded. Then: "Kaempffer must be stopped."

Magda shot to her feet, wincing at the pain in her knee. "You don't think you can stop him, do you? You'd be dead a dozen times over before you could even scratch him!"

"I must find a way. It's no longer just your life I worry about. Now it's thousands. And they all hang on Kaempffer."

"But even if something does ... stop him, they'll only send another in his place!"

"Yes. But that will take time, and any delay is in our favor. Perhaps in the interval Russia will attack the Germans, or vice versa. I can't see two mad dogs like Hitler and Stalin keeping away from each other's throats for too long. And in the ensuing conflict perhaps the Ploiesti Camp will be forgotten."

"But how can the major be stopped?" She had to make Papa think, make him see how crazy this was.

"Perhaps Molasar."

Magda was unwilling to believe what she had just heard. "Papa, no!"

He held up a cotton-gloved hand. "Wait, now. Molasar has hinted that he might use me as an ally against the Germans. I don't know how I could be of service to him, but tonight I'll find out. And in return I'll ask that he be sure to put a stop to Major Kaempffer."

"But you can't deal with something like Molasar! You can't trust him not to kill you in the end!"

"I don't care for my own life. I told you, there's more at stake here. And besides, I detect a certain rough honor in Molasar. You judge him too harshly, I think. You react to him as a woman and not as a scholar. He is a product of his times, and they were bloodthirsty times. Yet he has a sense of national pride that has been deeply offended by the very presence of the Germans. I may be able to use that. He thinks of us as fellow Wallachians and is better disposed toward us. Didn't he save you from the two Germans you blundered into last night? He could just as easily have made you a third victim. We must try to use him! There's no alternative."

Magda stood before him and searched for another option. She could not find one. And although she was repelled by it, Papa's scheme did offer a glimmer of hope. Was she being too hard on Molasar? Did he seem so evil because he was so different, so implacably other? Could he be more of an elemental force than something consciously evil? Wasn't Major Kaempffer a better example of a truly evil being? She had no answers. She was groping.

"I don't like it, Papa," was all she could say.

"No one said you should like it. No one promised us an easy solution—or any solution at all, for that matter." He tried to stifle a yawn, but lost the battle. "And now I'd like to go back to my room. I need sleep for tonight's encounter. I'll require all my wits about me if I'm to strike a bargain with Molasar."

"A deal with the devil," Magda said, her voice falling to a quavering whisper. She was more frightened than ever for her father.

"No, my dear. The devil in the keep wears a black uniform with a silver Death's Head on his cap, and calls himself a Sturmbannführer."

Magda reluctantly had returned him to the gate, then had watched until he had been wheeled back into the tower. She hurried back toward the inn in a state of confusion. Everything was moving too quickly for her. Her life until now had been filled with books and research, melodies and black music notes on white paper. She was not cut out for intrigue. Her head still spun with the monstrous implications of what she had been told.

She hoped Papa knew what he was doing. Instinctively, she had opposed his planned liaison with Molasar until she had seen that look on Papa's face. A spark of hope had glimmered there, a shining fragment of the old zest that had once made his company such a pleasure. It was a chance for Papa to do something rather than just sit in his wheelchair and have things done to him. He desperately needed to feel he could be of some use to his people ... to anybody. She could not rob him of that.

As she approached the inn, Magda felt the chill of the keep finally slip away. She strolled around the building in search of Glenn, thinking he might be taking the morning sun at the rear. He was not outside, nor was he in the dining alcove when she passed. She went upstairs and stopped at his door, listening. There was still no sound from within. He hadn't struck her as a late riser; perhaps he was reading.

She raised her hand to knock, then lowered it. Better to run into him around the inn than come looking for him—he might think she was chasing him.

Back in her room she heard the plaintive cheeping of the baby birds and went to the window to look at the nest. She could see their four tiny heads straining up from the nest, but the mother wasn't there. Magda hoped she hurried back—her babies sounded terribly hungry.

She picked up her mandolin but after a few chords put it down again. She was edgy, and the constant noise of the baby birds was making her more so. With a sudden surge of determination, she strode out into the hall.

She rapped twice on the wooden door to Glenn's room. No answer, no sound of movement within. She hesitated, then gave way to impulse and lifted the latch. The door swung open.

"Glenn?"

The room was empty. It was identical to her own; in fact she had stayed in this room on the last trip she and Papa had made to the keep. Something was wrong, though. She studied the walls. The mirror—the mirror over the bureau was gone. A rectangle of whiter stucco marked its former spot on the wall. It must have been broken since her last visit and never replaced.

Magda stepped inside and walked in a slow circle. This was where he stayed, and here was the unmade bed where he slept. She felt excited, wondering what she would say if he came back now. How could she explain her presence? She couldn't. She decided she'd better leave.

As she turned to go, she saw that the closet door was ajar. Something glittered from within. It was pressing her luck, but how much could a quick peek hurt? She pulled the door open all the way.

The mirror that was supposed to hang over the bureau lay propped up in the corner of the closet: Why would Glenn take down the mirror? Maybe he hadn't. Maybe it had fallen off the wall and Iuliu had yet to rehang it. There were a few items of clothing in the closet and something else: A long case of some sort, nearly as long as she was tall, stood in the other corner.

Curious, Magda knelt and touched the leather of the case—rough, warped, puckered. It was either very old or poorly cared for. She could not imagine what could be in it. A quick look over her shoulder assured her that the room was still empty, the door still open, and all quiet in the hallway. It would take only a second to release the catches on the case, peek inside, reclose it, then be on her way. She had to know. Feeling the delicious apprehension of a naughty, inquisitive child exploring a forbidden area of the house, she reached for the brass clasps; there were three of them and they grated as she opened them, as if there were sand in their works. The hinges made a similar sound as she swung the cover open.

At first Magda did not know what it was. The color was blue, a deep, dark, steely blue; the object was metal, but what type of metal she could not say. Its shape was that of an elongated wedge—a long, tapering piece of metal, pointed at the top and very sharp along both its beveled edges. Like a sword. That was it! A sword! A broadsword. Only there was no hilt to this sword, only a thick, six-inch spike at its squared-off lower end, which looked like it was designed to fit into the top of a hilt. What a huge, fearsome weapon this would make when attached to its hilt!

Her eyes were drawn to the markings on the blade—it was covered with odd symbols. These were not merely etched into the shiny blue surface of the metal, they were carved into in. She could slip the tip of her little finger along the grooves. The symbols were runes, but not like any runes she had ever seen. She was familiar with Germanic and Scandinavian runes, which went back to the Dark Ages, back as far as the third century. But these were older. Much older. They possessed a quality of eldritch antiquity that disturbed her, seeming to shift and move as she studied them. This broadsword blade was old—so old she wondered who or what had made it.

The door to the room slammed closed.

"Find what you're looking for?"

Magda jumped at the sound, causing the lid of the case to snap closed over the blade. She leaped to her feet and turned around to face Glenn, her heart thumping with surprise—and guilt.

"Glenn, I—"

He looked furious. "I thought I could trust you! What did you hope to find in here?"

"Nothing ...I came looking for you." She did not understand the intensity of his anger. He had a right to be annoyed, but this—

"Did you think you'd find me in the closet?"

"No! I..." Why try to explain it away? It would only sound lame. She had no business being here. She was in the wrong, she knew it, and she felt terribly guilty standing here after being caught in the act. But it wasn't as if she had come here to steal from him. As she felt her own anger begin to grow at the way he was overreacting, she found the will to meet his glare with her own. "I'm curious about you. I came in to talk with you. I—I like to be with you, and yet I know nothing about you." She tossed her head. "It won't happen again."

She moved toward the hall, intending to leave him with his precious privacy, but she never reached the door. As she passed between Glenn and the bureau, he reached out and gripped her shoulders, gently but with a firmness that was not to be denied. He turned her toward him. Their eyes locked.

"Magda..." he began, then he was pulling her to him, pressing his lips against hers, crushing her against him. Magda experienced a fleeting urge to resist, to pound her fists against him and pull away, but this was mere reflex and was gone before she could recognize it, engulfed by the heat of desire that surged over her. She slipped her arms around Glenn's neck and pulled closer to him, losing herself in the glow that enveloped her. His tongue pushed through to hers, shocking her with its audacity—she hadn't known anyone kissed like this—and jolting her with the pleasure it gave. Glenn's hands began to roam her body, caressing her buttocks through the layers of her clothes, moving over her compressed breasts, leaving tingling trails of warmth wherever they went. They rose to her neck, untied her kerchief and hurled it away, then came to rest on the buttons of her sweater and began opening them. She didn't stop him. Her clothes had shrunken on her and the room had grown so hot ... she had to be rid of them.

There was a brief moment then when she could have stopped it, could have pulled back and retreated. With the parting of the front of her sweater a small voice cried out in her mind—Is this me? What's happening to me? This is insane! It was the voice of the old Magda, the Magda who had faced the world since her mother's death. But that voice was swept away by another Magda, a stranger, a Magda who had slowly grown amid the ruins of everything the old Magda had believed in. A new Magda, awakened by the vital force that burned white hot within the man who now held her. The past, tradition, and propriety had lost all meaning; tomorrow was a faraway place she might never see. There was only now. And Glenn.

The sweater slipped from her shoulders, then the white blouse. Magda felt fire where her hair brushed the bare skin of her upper back and shoulders. Glenn pushed the tight bandeau down to her waist, allowing her breasts to spring free. Still holding his lips to hers, he ran his fingertips lightly over each breast, zeroing in on the taut nipples and tracing tiny circles that caused her to moan deep in her throat. His lips finally broke from hers, sliding along her throat to the valley between her breasts, from there to her nipples, each in turn, his tongue making little wet circles over the dry ones his fingers had drawn. With a small cry she clutched the back of his head and arched her breasts against his face, shuddering as waves of ecstasy began to pulsate from deep within her pelvis.

He lifted her and carried her to the bed, removing the rest of her clothes while his lips continued to pleasure her. Then his own clothes were off and he was leaning over her. Magda's hands had taken on a life of their own, running over him as if to be sure that he was real. And then he was on her and slipping into her, and after the first jab of pain he was there and it was wonderful.

Oh, God! she thought as spasms of pleasure shot through her. Is this what it's like? Is this what I've been missing all these years? Can this be the awful act I've heard the married women talking about? It can't be! This is too wonderful! And I haven't been missing anything because it never could be like this with any man but Glenn.

He began to move inside her and she matched his rhythm. The pleasure increased, doubling and redoubling until she was sure her flesh would melt. She felt Glenn's body begin to stiffen as she felt the inevitability within herself, too. It happened. With her back arched, her ankles hooked on either side of the narrow mattress, and her knees wide in the air, Magda Cuza saw the world swell, crack, and come apart in a blazing burst of flame.

And after a while, to the accompaniment of her spent body's labored breathing, she watched it fall together again through the lids of her closed eyes.

They spent the day on that narrow little bed, whispering, laughing, talking, exploring each other. Glenn knew so much, taught her so much, it was as if he were introducing her to her own body. He was gentle and patient and tender, bringing her to peaks of pleasure time and time again. He was her first—she didn't say so; she didn't have to. She was far from his first; that, too, required no comment, and Magda found it didn't matter. Yet she sensed a great release within him, as if he had denied himself for a long time.

His body fascinated her. The male physique was terra incognita to Magda. She wondered if all men's muscles were so hard and so close to the skin. All of Glenn's hair was red, and there were so many scars on his chest and abdomen; old scars, thin and white on his olive skin. When she asked about them, he told her they were from accidents. Then he quieted her questions by making love to her again.

After the sun had dipped behind the western ridge, they dressed and went for a walk, arm in arm, stretching their limbs, stopping every so often to embrace and kiss. When they returned to the inn, Lidia was putting supper on the table. Magda realized she was famished and so they both sat down and helped themselves, Magda trying to do her best to keep her eyes off Glenn and concentrate on the food, feeding one hunger while another grew. A whole new world had been opened to her today and she was eager to explore it further.

They ate hurriedly and excused themselves the instant they were finished, like schoolchildren hurrying out to play before dark. From the table it was a race to the second floor, Magda ahead, laughing, leading Glenn to her room this time. Her bed. As soon as the door closed behind them they were pulling at each other's clothes, throwing them in all directions, then clutching each other in the growing dark.

As she lay in his arms hours later, fully spent, at peace with herself and the world as she had never been before, Magda knew she was in love. Magda Cuza, the spinster bookworm, in love. Never, anywhere, at any time, had there been another man like Glenn. And he wanted her. She loved him. She hadn't said so, and neither had he. She felt she should wait until he said it first. It might not be for a while, but that was all right. She could tell he felt it, too, and that was enough.

She snuggled more closely against him. Today alone was enough for the rest of her life. It was almost gluttonous to look forward to tomorrow. Yet she did. Avidly. Surely no one had ever derived so much pleasure from body and emotions as she had today. No one. Tonight she went to sleep a different Magda Cuza than the one who had awakened in this very bed this morning. It seemed so long ago ... a lifetime ago. And that other Magda seemed like such a stranger now. A sleepwalker, really. The new Magda was wide awake and in love. Everything was going to be all right.

Magda closed her eyes. Faintly, she heard the cheeping of the baby birds outside the window. Their peeps were fainter than this morning and seemed to have taken on a desperate quality. But before she could wonder about what might be wrong, she was asleep.

He looked at Magda's face in the dark. Peaceful and innocent. The face of a sleeping child. He tightened his arms around her, afraid she might slip away.

He should have kept his distance; he had known that all along. But he had been drawn to her. He had let her stir the ashes of feelings he had thought long dead and gone, and she had found live coals beneath. And then this morning, in the heat of his anger at finding her snooping through his closet, the coals had burst into flame.

It was almost like fate. Like kismet. He had seen and experienced far too much to believe that anything was truly ordained to be. There were, however, certain ... inevitabilities. The difference was subtle, yet most important.

Still, it was wrong to let her care when he didn't even know if he would be walking away from here. Perhaps that was why he had been driven to be with her. If he died here, at least the taste of her would be fresh upon him. He couldn't afford to care now. Caring could distract him, further reducing his chances of surviving the coming battle. And yet if he did manage to survive, would Magda want anything to do with him when she knew the truth about him?

He drew the cover over her bare shoulder. He did not want to lose her. If there were any way to keep her after all this was over, he would do everything he could to find it.

TWENTY-FOUR

The Keep

Friday, 1 May

2137 hours

Captain Woermann sat before his easel. It had been his intention to force himself to blot out that shadow of the hanging corpse. But now, with his palette in his left hand and a tube of pigment in his right, he found himself unwilling to change it. Let the shadow remain. It didn't matter. He would leave the painting behind anyway. He wanted no reminders of this place when he departed. If he departed.

Outside, the keep lights were on full force, the men on guard in pairs, armed to the teeth and ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. Woermann's own weapon lay on his bedroll, holstered and forgotten.

He had developed his own theory about the keep, not one he took seriously, but one that fit most of the facts and explained most of the mysteries. The keep was alive. That would explain why no one had even seen what killed the men, and why no one could track it down, and why no one had been able to find its hiding place despite all the walls they had torn down. It was the keep itself doing the killing.

One fact was left dangling by this explanation, however. A major fact. The keep had not been malevolent when they had entered, at least not in a way one could sense. True, birds seemed to avoid nesting here, but Woermann had felt nothing wrong until that first night when the cellar wall had been broached. The keep had changed then. It had become bloodthirsty.

No one had fully explored the subcellar. There really didn't seem to be any reason to. Men had been on guard in the cellar while a comrade had been murdered above them, and they had seen nothing coming or going through the break in the floor. Maybe they should explore the subcellar. Perhaps the keep's heart lay buried in those caverns. That's where they should search. No ... that could take forever. Those caverns could extend for miles, and frankly, no one really wanted to search them. It was always night down there. And night had become a dread enemy. Only the corpses were willing to stay.

The corpses ... with their dirty boots and smudged shrouds. They still bothered Woermann at the oddest times. Like now. And all day long, ever since he had overseen the placement of the last two dead soldiers, those dirty boots had trudged unbidden into his thoughts, scattering them, smearing them with mud.

Those dirty, muddy boots. They made him uncomfortable in a way he could not pin down.

He continued to sit and stare at the painting.

Kaempffer sat cross-legged on his cot, a Schmeisser across his knees. A shiver rippled over him. He tried to still it but didn't have strength. He had never realized how exhausting constant fear could be.

He had to get out of here!

Blow up the keep tomorrow—that's what he should do! Set the charges and reduce it to gravel after lunch. That way he could spend Saturday night in Ploiesti in a bunk with a real mattress and not worry about every sound, every vagrant current of air. No more would he have to sit and shake and sweat and wonder what might be making its way down the hall to his door.

But tomorrow was too soon. It wouldn't look good on his record. He wasn't due in Ploiesti until Monday and would be expected to use up all the available time until then to solve the problem here. Blowing up the keep was the last resort, to be considered only when all else failed. The High Command had ordered that this pass be watched and had designated the keep as the chosen watchpoint. Destruction had to be the last resort.

He heard the measured treads of a pair of einsatzkommandos pass his locked door. The hallway out there was doubly guarded. He had made sure of that. Not that there was the slightest chance a stream of lead from a Schmeisser could actually stop whatever was behind the killings here—he simply hoped the guards would be taken first, thereby sparing him another night. And those guards had better stay awake and on duty, no matter how tired they were! He had driven the men hard today to dismantle the rear section of the keep, concentrating their efforts on the area around his quarters. They had opened every wall within fifty feet of where he now huddled, and had found nothing. There were no secret passages leading to his room, no hiding places anywhere.

He shivered again.

The cold and the darkness came as they had before, but Cuza was feeling too weak and sick tonight to turn his chair around and face Molasar. He was out of codeine and the pain in his joints was a steady agony.

"How do you enter and leave this room?" he asked for want of anything better to say. He had been facing the hinged slab that opened into the base of the watchtower, assuming Molasar would arrive through there. But Molasar had somehow appeared behind him.

"I have my own means of moving about which does not require doors or secret passages. A method quite beyond your comprehension."

"Along with many other things," Cuza said, unable to keep the despair from his voice.

It had been a bad day. Beyond the unremitting pain was the sick realization that this morning's glimmer of hope for a reprieve for his people had been a chimera, a useless pipe dream. He had planned to bargain with Molasar, to strike a deal. But for what? The end of the major? Magda had been right this morning: Stopping Kaempffer would only delay the inevitable; his death might even make the situation worse. There would most certainly be vicious reprisals on Romanian Jews if an SS officer sent to set up a death camp were brutally murdered. And the SS would merely send another officer to Ploiesti, maybe next week, maybe next month. What did it matter? The Germans had plenty of time. They were winning every battle, overrunning one country after another. There did not seem to be any way of stopping them. And when they finally held the seats of power in all the countries they wanted, they could pursue their insane leader's goals of racial purity at their leisure.

In the long run there was nothing a crippled history professor could do that would make the least bit of difference.

And worsening it all was the insistent knowledge that Molasar feared the cross ...feared the cross!

Molasar glided around into his field of vision and stood there studying him. Strange, Cuza thought. Either I've immersed myself in such a morass of self-pity that I'm insulated from him, or I'm getting used to Molasar. Tonight he did not feel the crawling sensation that always accompanied Molasar's presence. Maybe he just didn't care anymore.

"I think you may die," Molasar said without preamble.

The bluntness of the words jolted Cuza. "At your hands?"

"No. At your own."

Could Molasar read minds? Cuza's thoughts had dwelt on that very subject for most of the afternoon. Ending his life would solve so many problems. It would set Magda free. Without him to hold her back, she could flee into the hills and escape Kaempffer, the Iron Guard, and all the rest. Yes, the idea had occurred to him. But he still lacked the means ... and the resolve.

Cuza averted his gaze. "Perhaps. But if not by my own doing, then soon in Major Kaempffer's death camp."

"Death camp?" Molasar leaned forward into the light, his brow furrowed in curiosity. "A place where people gather to die?"

"No. A place where people are dragged off to be murdered. The major will be setting up one such camp not far south of here."

"To kill Wallachians?" Sudden fury drew Molasar's lips back from his abnormally long teeth. "A German is here to kill my people?"

"They are not your people," Cuza said, unable to shake his despondency. The more he thought about it, the worse he felt. "They are Jews. Not the sort you would concern yourself with."

"I shall decide what concerns me! But Jews? There are no Jews in Wallachia—at least not enough to matter."

"When you built the keep that was true. But in the following century we were driven here from Spain and the rest of western Europe. Most settled in Turkey, but many strayed into Poland and Hungary and Wallachia."

" 'We?' " Molasar looked puzzled. "You are a Jew?"

Cuza nodded, half expecting a blast of anti-Semitism from the ancient boyar. Instead, Molasar said, "But you are a Wallachian, too."

"Wallachia was joined with Moldavia into what is now called Romania."

"Names change. Were you born here? Were these other Jews who are destined for the death camps?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then they are Wallachians!"

Cuza sensed Molasar's patience growing short, yet he had to speak: "But their ancestors were immigrants."

"It matters not! My grandfather came from Hungary. Am I, who was born on this soil, any less a Wallachian for that? "

"No, of course not." This was a senseless conversation. Let it end.

"Then neither are these Jews you speak of. They are Wallachians, and as such they are my countrymen!" Molasar straightened up and threw back his shoulders. "No German may come into my country and kill my countrymen!"

Typical! Cuza thought.I bet he never objected to his fellow boyars' depredations among the Wallachian peasants during his day. And he obviously never objected to Vlad's impalements. It was all right for the Wallachian nobility to decimate the populace, but don't let a foreigner dare!

Molasar had retreated to the shadows outside the bulb's cone of light. "Tell me about these death camps."

"I'd rather not. It's too—"

"Tell me!"

Cuza sighed. "I'll tell you what I know. The first one was set up in Buchenwald, or perhaps Dachau, around eight years ago. There are others: Flossenburg, Ravensbruck, Natzweiler, Auschwitz, and many others I've probably never heard of. Soon there will be one in Romania—Wallachia, as you would have it—and maybe more within a year or two. The camps serve one purpose: the collection of certain types of people, millions of them, for torture, debasement, forced labor, and eventual extermination."

"Millions?"

Cuza could not read Molasar's tone completely, but there was no doubt that he was having trouble believing what he had been told. Molasar was a shadow among the shadows, his movements agitated, almost frantic.

"Millions," Cuza said firmly.

"I will kill this German major!"

"That won't help. There are thousands like him, and they will come one after another. You may kill a few and you may kill many, but eventually they will learn to kill you."

"Who sends them?"

"Their leader is a man named Hitler who—"

"A king? A prince?"

"No..." Cuza fumbled for the word. "I guess voevod would be the closest word you have for it."

"Ah! A warlord! Then I shall kill him and he shall send no more!"

Molasar had spoken so matter-of-factly that the full meaning of his words was slow to penetrate the shroud of gloom over Cuza's mind. When it did:

"What did you say?"

"Lord Hitler—when I've regained my full strength I'll drink his life!"

Cuza felt as if he had spent the whole day struggling upward from the floor of the deepest part of the ocean with no hope of reaching air. With Molasar's words he broke surface and gulped life. Yet it would be easy to sink again.

"But you can't! He's well protected! And he's in Berlin!"

Molasar came forward into the light again. His teeth were bared, this time in a rough approximation of a smile.

"Lord Hitler's protection will be no more effective than all the measures taken by his lackeys here in my keep. No matter how many locked doors and armed men protect him, I shall take him if I wish. And no matter how far away he is, I shall reach him when I have the strength."

Cuza could barely contain his excitement. Here at last was hope—a greater hope than he had ever dreamed possible. "When will that be? When can you go to Berlin?"

"I shall be ready tomorrow night. I shall be strong enough then, especially after I kill all the invaders."

"Then I'm glad they didn't heed me when I told them the best thing they could do was to evacuate the keep."

"You what?" It was a shout.

Cuza could not take his eyes off Molasar's hands—they clutched at him, ready to tear into him, restrained only by their owner's will.

"I'm sorry!" he said, pressing himself back in his chair. "I thought that's what you wanted!"

"I want their lives!" The hands retreated. "When I want anything else I will tell you what it is, and you will do exactly as I say!"

"Of course! Of course!" Cuza could never fully and truly agree to that, but he was in no position to put on a show of resistance. He reminded himself that he must never forget what sort of a being he was dealing with. Molasar would not tolerate being thwarted in any way; he had no thought other than having his own way. Nothing else was acceptable or even conceivable to him.

"Good. For I have need of mortal aid. It has always been so. Limited as I am to the dark hours, I need someone who can move about in the day to prepare the way for me, to make certain arrangements that can only be made in the day. It was so when I built this keep and arranged for its upkeep, and it is so now. In the past I have made use of human outcasts, men with appetites different from mine but no more acceptable to their fellows. I bought their services by providing them the means to sate those appetites. But you—your price, I feel, will be in accord with my own desires. We share a common cause for now."

Cuza looked down at his twisted hands. "I fear you could have a better agent than I."

"The task I will require of you tomorrow night is a simple one: An object precious to me must be removed from the keep and hidden in a secure place in the hills. With that safe I shall feel free to pursue and destroy those who wish to kill our countrymen."

Cuza experienced a strange floating sensation, a new emotional buoyancy as he imagined Hitler and Himmler cowering before Molasar, and then their torn and lifeless—better yet, headless—bodies strung up for viewing at the entrance to an empty death camp. It would mean an end to the war and the salvation of his people; not merely Romanian Jewry, but his entire race! It promised a tomorrow for Magda. It meant an end to Antonescu and the Iron Guard. It might even mean reinstatement at the university.

But then reality brought him back down from those heights, back down to his wheelchair. How could he carry anything from the keep? How could he hide it in the hills when his strength could barely wheel him through the door?

"You will need a whole man," he said to Molasar in a voice that threatened to break. "A cripple like me is useless to you."

He sensed rather than saw Molasar move around the table to his side. He felt light pressure on his right shoulder—Molasar's hand. He looked up to see Molasar looking down at him. Smiling.

"You have much to learn about the scope of my powers."

TWENTY-FIVE

The Inn

Saturday, 3 May

7020 hours

Joy.

That's what it was. Magda had never imagined how wonderful it could be to awaken in the morning and find herself wrapped in the arms of someone she loved. Such a peaceful feeling, a safe feeling. It made the prospect of the coming day so much brighter to know that there would be Glenn to share it with.

Glenn lay on his side, she on hers, the two of them face to face. He was still asleep, and although Magda did not want to wake him, she found she could not keep her hands off him. Gently, she ran her palm over his shoulder, fingered the scars on his chest, smoothed the red tumble of his hair. She moved her bare leg against his. It was so sensuously warm under covers, skin to skin, pore to pore. Desire began to add its own kind of heat to her skin. She wished he would wake up.

Magda watched his face as she waited for him to stir. So much to learn about this man. Where exactly was he from? What had his childhood been like? What was he doing here? Why did he have that sword blade with him? Why was he so wonderful? She was like a schoolgirl. She was thrilled with herself. She could not remember being happier.

She wanted Papa to know him. The two of them would get along marvelously. But she wondered how Papa would react to their relationship. Glenn was not Jewish ... she didn't know what he was, but he was certainly not Jewish. Not that it made any difference to her, but such matters had always been important to Papa.

Papa...

A sudden wave of guilt doused her burgeoning desire. While she had been snuggling in Glenn's arms, safe and secure between bouts of thrashing ecstasy, Papa had sat cold and alone in a stone room, surrounded by human devils while he awaited an audience with a creature from Hell. She should be ashamed!

And yet, why shouldn't she have stolen a little pleasure for herself? She had not deserted Papa. She was still here at the inn. He had driven her away from the keep the night before and had refused to leave it at all yesterday. And now that she thought of it, if Papa had come back to the inn with her yesterday morning she would not have entered Glenn's room, and they would not be together this morning.

Strange, how things worked.

But yesterday and last night don't really change things, she told herself. I'm changed, but our predicament remains unaltered. This morning Papa and I are at the mercy of the Germans, just as we were yesterday morning and the morning before that. We are still Jews. They are still Nazis.

Magda slipped from Glenn's side and rose to her feet, taking the thin bedspread with her. As she moved to the window she wrapped the fabric around her. Much had changed within her, many inhibitions had fallen away like scale from a buried bronze artifact, but still she could not stand naked at a window in broad daylight.

The keep—she could feel it before she reached the window. The sense of evil within it had stretched to the village during the night ... almost as if Molasar were reaching out for her. Across the gorge it sat, gray stone under a gray, overcast sky, the last remnants of night fog receding around it. Sentries were still visible on its parapets; the front gate was open. And there was someone or something moving along the causeway toward the inn. Magda squinted in the morning light to see what it was.

It was a wheelchair. And in it ... Papa. But no one was pushing him. He was propelling himself. With strong, rapid, rhythmic motions, Papa's hands were gripping the wheel rims and his arms were turning them, speeding him along the causeway.

It was impossible, but she was seeing it. And he was coming to the inn!

Calling to Glenn to wake up, she began to run around the room gathering her strewn-about garments and pulling them on. Glenn was up in an instant, laughing at her awkward movements and helping her find her clothes. Magda did not find the situation even slightly amusing. Frantically, she pulled her clothes on and ran from the room. She wanted to be downstairs when Papa arrived.

Theodor Cuza was finding his own kind of joy in the morning.

He had been cured. His hands were bare and open to the cool morning air as they gripped the wheels of his chair and rolled them along the causeway. All without pain, without stiffness. For the first time in longer than he wished to remember, Cuza had awakened without feeling as if someone had stolen in on him during the night and firmly splinted every one of his joints. His upper arms moved back and forth like well-oiled pistons, his head freely pivoted to either side without pain or protesting creaks. His tongue was moist—there was adequate saliva again to swallow, and it went down easily. His face had thawed so that he could once again smile in a way that did not cause others around him to wince and glance away.

And he was smiling now, grinning idiotically with the joy of mobility, of self-sufficiency, of being able once again to take an active physical role in the world around him.

Tears! There were tears on his cheeks. He had cried often since the disease had firmed its grip upon him, but the tears had long since dried up with the saliva. Now his eyes were wet and his cheeks were slick with them. He was crying, joyfully, unabashedly, as he wheeled himself toward the inn.

Cuza had not known what to expect as Molasar stood over him last night and placed a hand on his shoulder, but he had felt something change within him. He had not known what it was then, but Molasar had told him to go to sleep, that things would be different come morning. He had slept well, without the usual repeated awakenings during the night to grope for the water cup to wet his parched mouth and throat, and had risen later than usual.

Risen ... that was the word for it. He had risen from a living death. On his first try he had been able to sit up, and then stand up without pain, without gripping the wall or the chair for support. He had known then that he would be able to help Molasar, and help him he would. Anything Molasar wanted him to do, he would do.

There had been some rough moments leaving the keep. He could not let anyone know he could walk, so he imitated his former infirmities as he wheeled himself toward the gate. The sentries had looked at him curiously as he rolled by, but they did not stop him—he had always been free to visit his daughter. Fortunately, neither of the officers had been in the courtyard as he had passed through.

And now, with the Germans behind and an unobstructed causeway ahead, Professor Theodor Cuza spun the wheels of his chair as fast as he could. He had to show Magda. She had to see what Molasar had done for him.

The wheelchair bounced off the end of the causeway with a jolt that almost tipped him headfirst out of it, but he kept rolling. It was rougher going in the dirt but he didn't mind. It gave him a chance to stretch his muscles, which felt unnaturally strong despite their years of disuse. He rolled by the front door of the inn, then turned left around its south side. There was only one first floor window there, opening into the dining alcove. He stopped after he passed that and wheeled up close to the stucco wall. He was out of sight here—no one from the inn or the keep could see him, and he simply had to do it once more.

He faced the wall and locked the brakes on his chair. A push against the armrests and there he was: standing on his own two feet, supported by no one and nothing. Alone. Standing. By himself. He was a man again. He could look other men straight in the eyes instead of ever up at them. No more a child's-eye view of existence from down there, where he was always treated as a child. Now he was up here... a man again!

"Papa!"

He turned to see Magda at the corner of the building, gaping at him.

"Lovely morning, isn't it?" he said and opened his arms to her. After a heartbeat's hesitation, she rushed into them.

"Oh, Papa!" she said in a voice that was muffled by the folds of his jacket as he crushed her against him. "You can stand!"

"I can do more than that." He stepped away from her and began to walk around the wheelchair, steadying himself at first with a hand atop the backrest, then releasing it as he realized he didn't need it. His legs felt strong, even stronger than they had felt earlier this morning. He could walk! He felt as if he could run, dance. On impulse, he bent, turned, and spun around in a poor imitation of a step in the Gypsy abulea, almost falling over in the process. But he kept his balance and ended up at Magda's side, laughing at her astonished expression.

"Papa, what's happened? It's a miracle!"

Still gasping from laughter and exertion, he grasped her hands. "Yes, a miracle. A miracle in the truest sense of the word."

"But how—"

"Molasar did it. He cured me. I'm free of scleroderma—completely free of it! It's as if I never had it!"

He looked at Magda and saw how her face shone with happiness for him, how her eyes blinked to hold back tears of joy. She was truly sharing this moment with him. And as he looked more closely, he sensed that she was somehow different. There was another, deeper joy in her that he had never seen before. He felt he should probe for its source but could not be bothered with that now. He felt too good, too alive!

A movement caught the corner of his eye and he looked up. Magda followed his glance. Her eyes danced when she saw who it was.

"Glenn, look! Isn't it wonderful? Molasar has cured my father!"

The red-haired man with the strange olive skin said nothing as he stood by the corner of the inn. His pale-blue eyes bored into Cuza's own, making him feel as if his very soul were being examined. Magda kept talking excitedly, rushing over to Glenn and pulling him forward by the arm. She seemed almost drunk with happiness.

"It's a miracle! A true miracle! Now we'll be able to get away from here before—"

"What price have you paid?" Glenn said in a low voice that cut through Magda's chatter.

Cuza stiffened and tried to hold Glenn's gaze. He found he could not. There was no happiness for him in the cold blue eyes. Only sadness and disappointment.

"I've paid no price. Molasar did it for a fellow countryman."

"Nothing is free. Ever."

"Well, he did ask me to perform a few services for him, to help make arrangements for him after he leaves the keep since he cannot move about in the day."

"What, specifically?"

Cuza was becoming annoyed with this type of interrogation. Glenn had no right to an answer and he was determined not to give him one. "He didn't say."

"Odd, isn't it, to receive payment for a service you've not yet rendered, nor even agreed to render? You don't even know what will be required of you and yet you have already accepted payment."

"This is not payment," Cuza said with renewed confidence. "This merely enables me to help him. We've made no bargain for there is no need of one. Our bond is the common cause we share—the elimination of Germans from Romanian soil and the elimination of Hitler and Nazism from the world!"

Glenn's eyes widened and Cuza almost laughed at the expression on his face.

"He promised you that?"

"It was not a promise! Molasar was incensed when I told him of Kaempffer's plans for a death camp at Ploiesti. And when he learned that there was a man in Germany named Hitler who was behind it all, he vowed to destroy him as soon as he was strong enough to leave the keep. There was no need of a deal or a bargain or payment—we have a common cause!"

He must have been shouting because he noticed that Magda took a step away from him as he finished, a concerned look on her face. She clutched Glenn's arm and leaned against him. Cuza felt himself go cold. He tried to keep his voice calm as he spoke.

"And what have you been doing with yourself since we parted yesterday morning, child?"

"Oh, I—I've been with Glenn most of the time."

She needed to say no more. He knew. Yes, she had been with Glenn. Cuza looked at his daughter, clinging to the stranger with a wanton familiarity, her head bare, her hair blowing in the wind. She had been with Glenn. It angered him. Out of his sight less than two days and she had given herself to this heathen. He would put a stop to that! But not now. Soon. There were too many other important matters at hand. As soon as he and Molasar had finished their business in Berlin, he would see to it that this Glenn character with the accusing eyes was taken care of, too.

... taken care of...? He didn't even know what he meant by that. He wondered at the scope of his hostility toward Glenn.

"But don't you see what this means?" Magda was saying, obviously trying to soothe him. "We can leave, Papa! We can escape down into the pass and get away from here. You don't have to go back to the keep again! And Glenn will help us, won't you, Glenn?"

"Of course. But I think you'd better ask your father first if he wants to leave."

Damn him! Cuza thought as Magda turned wondering eyes on him. Thinks he knows everything!

"Papa...?" she began, but the look on his face must have told her what the answer would be.

"I must go back," he told her. "Not for myself. I don't matter anymore. It's for our people. Our culture. For the world. Tonight he will be strong enough to put an end to Kaempffer and the rest of the Germans here. After that, I just have to perform a few simple tasks for him and we can walk away from here without worrying about hiding from search parties. And after Molasar kills Hitler—!"

"Can he really do that?" Magda asked, her expression questioning the enormity of the possibility he was describing.

"I asked myself that very question. And then I thought about how he has so terrified these Germans until they are ready to shoot at each other, and has eluded them in that tiny keep for a week and a half, killing them at will." He held up his hands bare to the wind and watched with a renewed sense of awe as the fingers flexed and extended easily, painlessly. "And after what he has done for me, I've come to the conclusion that there is very little he cannot do."

"Can you trust him?" Magda asked.

Cuza stared at her. This Glenn had apparently tainted her with his suspicious nature. He was no good for her.

"Can I afford not to?" he said after a pause. "My child, don't you see that this will mean a return to normalcy for us all? Our friends the Gypsies will no longer be hunted down, sterilized, and put to work as slaves. We Jews will not be driven from our homes and our jobs, our property will no longer be confiscated, and we will no longer face the certain extinction of our race. How can I do anything else but trust Molasar?"

His daughter was silent. There was no rebuttal forthcoming, for no rebuttal existed.

"And for me," he continued, "it will mean a return to the university."

"Yes ... your work." Magda seemed to be in a sort of daze.

"My work was my first thought, yes. But now that I am fit again, I don't see why I should not be made chancellor."

Magda glanced up sharply. "You never wanted to be in administration before."

She was right. He never had. But things were different now.

"That was before. This is now. And if I help rid Romania of the fascists ruining it, don't you think I should deserve some sort of recognition?"

"You will also have set Molasar loose upon the world," Glenn said, breaking his prolonged silence. "That may earn you a kind of recognition you don't want."

Cuza felt his jaw muscles bunch in anger. Why didn't this outsider just go away? "He's already loose! I'll merely be channeling his power. There must be a way we can come to some sort of an ... arrangement with him. We can learn so much from a being such as Molasar, and he can offer so much. Who knows what other supposedly 'incurable' diseases he can remedy? We will owe him an enormous debt for ridding us of Nazism. I would consider it a moral obligation to find some way of coming to terms with him."

"Terms?" Glenn said. "What kind of terms are you prepared to offer him?"

"Something can be arranged."

"What, specifically?"

"I don't know—we can offer him the Nazis who started this war and who run the death camps. That's a good start."

"And after they're gone? Who next? Remember, Molasar will go on and on. You will have to provide sustenance forever. Who next?"

"I will not be interrogated like this!" Cuza shouted as his temper frayed to the breaking point. "Something will be worked out! If an entire nation can accommodate itself to Adolf Hitler, surely we can find a way to coexist with Molasar!"

"There can be no coexistence with monsters," Glenn said, "be they Nazis or Nosferatu. Excuse me."

He turned and strode away. Magda stood still and quiet, staring after him. And Cuza in turn stared at his daughter, knowing that although she had not run after the stranger in body, she had done so in spirit. He had lost his daughter.

The realization should have hurt, should have cut him to the bone and made him bleed. Yet he felt no pain or sense of loss. Only anger. He felt two steps removed from all emotions except rage at the man who had taken his daughter away from him.

Why didn't he hurt?

After watching Glenn until he had rounded the corner of the inn, Magda turned back to her father. She studied his angry face, trying to understand what was going on inside him, trying to sort out her own confused feelings.

Papa had been cured, and that was wonderful. But at what price? He had changed so—not just in body, but in mind, in personality even. There was a note of arrogance in his voice she had never heard before. And his defensiveness about Molasar was totally out of character. It was as if Papa had been fragmented and then put back together with fine wire ... but with some of the pieces missing.

"And you?" Papa asked. "Are you going to walk away from me, too?"

Magda studied him before answering. He was almost a stranger. "Of course not," she said, hoping her voice did not show how much she ached to be with Glenn right now. "But..."

" 'But' what?" His voice cut her like a whip.

"Have you really thought about what dealing with a creature like Molasar means?"

The contortions of Papa's newly mobilized face as he replied shocked her. His lips writhed as he grimaced with fury.

"So! Your lover has managed to turn you against your own father and against your own people, has he?" His words struck like blows. He barked a harsh, bitter laugh. "How easily you are swayed, my child! A pair of blue eyes, some muscles, and you're ready to turn your back on your people as they are about to be slaughtered!"

Magda swayed on her feet as if buffeted by a gale. This could not be Papa talking! He had never been cruel to her or to anyone, and yet now he was utterly vicious! But she refused to let him see how much he had just hurt her.

"My only concern was for you," she said through tight lips that would have quivered had she allowed them to. "You don't know that you can trust Molasar!"

"And you don't know that I can't! You've never spoken with him, never heard him out, never seen the look in his eyes when he talks of the Germans who have invaded his keep and his country."

"I've felt his touch," Magda said, shivering despite the sunlight. "Twice. There was nothing there to convince me that he could care a bit for the Jews—or for any living thing."

"I've felt his touch, too," Papa said, raising his arms and walking in a quick circle around the empty wheelchair. "See for yourself what that touch has done for me! As for Molasar saving our people, I have no delusions. He doesn't care about Jews in other lands; only in his own. Only Romanian Jews. The key word is Romanian! He was a nobleman in this land, and he still considers it his land. Call it nationalism or patriotism or whatever—it doesn't matter. The fact is that he wants all Germans off what he calls 'Wallachian soil' and he intends to do something about it. Our people will benefit. And I intend to do anything I can to help him!"

The words rang true. Magda couldn't help but admit that. They were logical, plausible. And it could be a noble thing Papa was doing. Right now he could run off and save himself and her; instead, he was committing himself to return to the keep to try to save more than two lives. He was risking his own life for a greater goal. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Magda so wanted to believe that.

But she could not. The numbing cold of Molasar's touch had left her with a permanent rime of mistrust. And there was something else, too: the look in Papa's eyes as he spoke to her now. A wild look. Tainted...

"I only want you safe." It was all she could say.

"And I want you safe," he told her.

She noted a softening in his eyes and in his voice. He was more like his old self for a moment.

"I also want you to stay away from that Glenn," he said. "He's no good for you."

Magda looked away, downward to the floor of the pass. She would never agree to give up Glenn. "He's the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Is that so?"

She sensed the hardness creeping back into Papa's tone.

"Yes." Her voice sank to a whisper. "He's made me see that I've never really known the meaning of living until now."

"How touching! How melodramatic!" Papa said, his voice dripping scorn. "But he's not a Jew!"