Children of the Night

by Dan Simmons

  But when the woman showed up, the irony of the situation appealed to me. I supposed dear young Lucian had violated his orders and interceded to save her. I had half expected him to. Sometimes it is best to allow fate to play the last hand.

  I had only met Lucian the two times I brought him to the United States to receive his instructions, but I will not forget him. At first the boy refused to believe that he was one of my sons, but I showed him the photographs of his mother, taken of course before she fled from me to return to her homeland. I showed Lucian the documents that proved that it had been Radu Fortuna who had killed his real mother and placed him in an orphanage. I told him that he was lucky, that most pure-strigoi couples put their “normal” offspring to death.

  Lucian’s zeal served us well. He joined the Order of the Dragon. He never doubted my motives of purifying the Family of its decadent branches. He understood my sincerity in finding a scientific answer to the family disease.

  Which may be another reason that I did not stay for the final act. The morning of the ceremony, I had injected myself with the serum the woman doctor had brought all that way only to lose in Sighişoara. By evening I could feel the change. It was like the Sacrament without the hormonal ragings that had so tired me out over the ages. By the time the absurd woman pulled herself over the parapets of our citadel, I felt centuries younger. My long disgust at what Radu Fortuna and the others of his ilk have done to my Family—not to mention the people of my nation—was burning in my gut like the flames of pure anger I had not felt for many years.

  So, in the end, I decided not to stay for the end.

  The Dobrins whisked me through the crowd to the secret exit in the basement of the main hall. The German elevator I had installed there worked efficiently, as do all things German. I must admit that I thought of the tons of explosives set in the walls we were descending through. I thought of the Czech, Hungarian, and German engineers I had brought in to set those charges over the past two years, and about how their bones were now mixing with the new mortar there. The irony was inescapable, but we were running late and the Dobrins’ obvious anxiety did not allow me to enjoy an old man’s love of irony.

  There were no horses waiting in the cave this time, only the golf cart and the third Dobrin brother. It took less than a minute to race down the paved tunnel to the river exit, but we only had a minute or two.

  The black OH-6 Loach helicopter was where I had directed it to be, the engine warmed, the rotors turning, the fourth Dobrin brother at the controls. We were away in thirty seconds. It was almost not in time. The entire mountain came apart above us as we roared up the canyon toward Sighişoara and home. I must admit, I have always enjoyed fireworks, and this may be the best show I have attended.

  In the weeks and months since that night, I find that the hemoglobin substitute has other effects beyond renewing my capacity to enjoy life. It reduces the amount I dream almost to zero. This is not an unwelcome thing.

  I have thought about the child of mine who was taken that night. At first I considered retrieving him, of raising him the way I raised Vlad and Mihnea. But then I remembered what potential he holds and I have decided to let the woman doctor raise him and learn from him.

  I have been a source of terror to my people and employees many times in my long life, I know now that I would have welcomed being a savior to my people. Perhaps, through this child…just perhaps.

  Meanwhile, I am considering returning to the States, or at least the civilized part of Europe, to be closer to the laboratories making my hemoglobin substitute. It occurred to me recently that Japan is a place I have never lived. It is an intriguing place, filled with the energy and business that is the lifeblood I feed on now.

  In the meantime, I have given up thoughts of dying soon. Such thoughts were the products of illness, age, and bad dreams. I no longer have the bad dreams.

  Perhaps I will live forever.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help in the preparation for this novel:

  In Romania:

  My sincere thanks to the poet Emil Manu, and to his wife and family for their wonderful hospitality. A special thanks to Lucian and Joanne Manu for their friendship, insights, and for a peek into a Bucharest most tourists do not see. Also, a sincere multumesc foarte mult to Marius from ONT and to Ana Manole and her sister in the village of Ciofringeni for their kindness to strangers.

  In the USA:

  I would like to thank Gahan Wilson for the pleasant dinner conversation and the copy of his 1977 Playboy article, “Dracula Country.” It was the single best source for tracking down the real Castle Dracula. My thanks also to Keith Nightenhelser of Depauw University for sharing the research of Robert Cochran and Laszlo Kurti on the “politics of joking” in Romania and Eastern Europe. I would also like to thank Dana Gall for the Romanian instruction and Rodica Varna for keeping me out of a Bucharest hotel which had its walls shot out.

  A special thanks to Byron Preiss and Richard Curtis for making me write about Dracula in the first place. And thank you to Chris Pepe at Putnam’s for her patience and enthusiasm.

  In the USA, Romania, Hungary, and Austria:

  An inadequate but sincere thanks to Claudia Logerquist for her research, linguistic skills, stamina, courage, and spirit of adventure.

  Finally, I would like to acknowledge my debt to Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, authors of Dracula; Prince of Many Faces, In Search of Dracula, and other works. Their writings have almost single-handedly renewed interest in the historical Vlad Dracula, and I recommend their books to the interested reader. (One caveat for the serious Dracula-seeker, however—the caption under the photograph of the only extant bust of Vlad Ţepeş on p. 170 of Dracula: Prince of Many Faces says that the statue is to be found in the village of Copitineni [sic]. In truth, the bust is to be found not in the shadow of Castle Dracula in Căpăţîneni, but across from the old palace grounds in Tîrgovişte some 100 km. away.)

  Thanks to the research of these men and other scholars, I can say that all of the memories I ascribe to Vlad Dracula in this book, with the possible exception of the Sacrament, are true.