There are sixteen blocks between the eastern gate and the cemetery, the length of the Street, the width of the Budayeen. They hurried as fast as they could, but Bill had never been very agile, and Van Helsing was not a young man anymore. They pushed through the crowds of local folk and foreign tourists with growing desperation, but by the time they arrived at their goal, the sun had set. It was night. They would have to face the full fury of the vampire’s power.
“Have no fear,” Van Helsing said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve challenged the Undead on their own territory. You have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Bill said. “You don’t have to worry about the ground opening up in horrible fissures right in front of you.”
Van Helsing paused. “Bill,” he said at last, “the ground isn’t opening up.”
Bill put a finger alongside his nose. “No, you’re right,” he confided, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about it.”
Van Helsing looked up to Heaven, where God was watching. “Come on,” he told Bill. “We mustn’t be too late to save the little girl.”
They arrived at the cemetery. No one else was nearby. Van Helsing saw the flowers and other offerings on the ground near where Mahdi il-Mallah had been laid to rest. The boy’s parents couldn’t afford an above-ground tomb, so he’d been interred in a small, oven-like vault built into one of the cemetery’s red brick walls.
“Oh my God,” Bill cried. He motioned toward the back of the graveyard.
Van Helsing turned and looked where Bill was pointing. He saw Sheba, dressed in a long, filthy black shift. Her hair was wildly disheveled and matted with leaves and twigs. There were streaks of dirt on her face and bare arms. She stared at Van Helsing and snarled. Even from that distance, the Dutchman could see the great, long canine teeth, the mark of the vampire.
“It’s her,” Van Helsing said in a quiet voice.
“You mean, ‘It’s she,’” Bill said.
“Or what remains of her earthly body, now inhabited by something of unspeakable foulness. Take warning: Remember that she has the strength of a dozen or more normal people.” Beneath Van Helsing’s overwhelming presence, Audran realized that the vampire moddy was constructed with an endocrine controller, letting a flood of adrenalin loose in Sheba’s bloodstream. Whoever was correct — Audran or Van Helsing, believer in natural law or in evil magic — it made no difference. The ultimate effect was the same.
“You know,” Bill said thoughtfully, “she wouldn’t be half-bad looking if she’d just fix herself up a little.”
Van Helsing did not deign to reply. He moved toward Sheba, feeling terror, determination, and an odd longing mixed together. Sheba stood before a large whitewashed tomb, its marble front panel removed and cast aside. This was where she’d taken up residence after leaving behind her human dwelling place. There was a vile stench emanating from the tomb. Nevertheless, Van Helsing summoned his courage and stepped nearer.
He heard small rustling noises, and behind Sheba he saw movement. It had to be Musa Ali’s sister, still alive, but bound and made captive by this loathsome creature. “Thanks be to all the angels that we are yet in time,” he said.
Sheba did not cry out or utter any verbal challenges; it was as if she’d lost the power of speech. Instead, she made harsh, guttural, animal noises deep in her throat.
“Unbind the child and let her go free,” Van Helsing demanded.
Once again Sheba bared her perilous fangs and hissed at them, not like a snake, but like a great feral cat. Then she rushed forward more swiftly than even Van Helsing had anticipated and leaped on him, reaching for his unprotected throat with her clawed fingers and savaging him with her demon teeth.
Bill hurried to Van Helsing’s defense. “Not again,” he said. “Not another one.”
“What?” Van Helsing asked.
“Another, what you call, an abomination. Yeah. Bloodthirsty, too. Bad luck always comes in threes, you know. So the third one is going to be a real showstopper.”
Bill attacked first, clouting the hideous thing with all the strength he had. The blow had little effect. Bill lurched backward, shaking his injured hand. His enemy was very tall, towering over him in a confident slouch. Despite his mental and physical handicaps, Bill was a better boxer than his opponent; he had a quicker punch, and his bob-and-weave was deft by comparison. Again and again Bill struck, but for all the pain he was causing himself, and for the complete lack of results he was achieving against his foe, Bill might as well have been beating up the brick wall.
Meanwhile, Van Helsing had as much as he could handle with Sheba. She fought like a cornered beast, ripping and tearing and biting at him. He ordered her again to release the young girl. Then he tried to reason with Sheba. Finally, he resorted to threats. Nothing worked. She was no longer human, no longer susceptible to his powers of persuasion.
He was covered with his own blood when he finally managed to throw Sheba to the ground. He’d put a foot behind one of hers, then shoved her shoulder heavily. She toppled backward, shrieking in incoherent rage. Van Helsing wasted no time congratulating himself. He reached for one of the sharpened stakes and a loose brick.
Sheba glared up at him, her lips drawn back in an animal growl. She was completely in the power of the vampire now, no longer human in any respect, yet there was also a frightened pleading in her eyes — or so Van Helsing chose to believe. Audran saw it, too.
“She’s as moddy-driven as Van Helsing,” Audran thought. “He’s a self-righteous, demented maniac, as murderous as she is. Maybe she deserves some compassion.” With an exhausting effort of will, Audran and Van Helsing reached up and popped the moddy out.
“Jeez,” I muttered, dropping the plastic moddy to the ground. It was a great relief again to be rid of Van Helsing’s monomania. Meanwhile, I had little time to think. I was still trying to control the enraged Sheba, who struggled and bucked in my grasp.
Bill had evidently vanquished his enemy. “That’s right, pal,” he said, reaching for one of the fire-hardened stakes. “You hold her and I’ll ostracize her.”
The first thing I did, while I ignored Bill, was to pop out Sheba’s vampire moddy. The transformation was immediate and dramatic. The knowledge of what she’d done while under its influence flooded in, horrifying her. “I just couldn’t take it out,” she gasped between loud sobs. “Other moddies I can take or leave alone, but this one was different. I couldn’t control myself.”
“Some irresponsible programmer wrote that into the moddy,” I said. I tried to speak in a soothing voice. I no longer feared or hated Sheba; I felt only immense sadness. She just collapsed in tears as if she hadn’t heard me.
“Hey,” Bill said proudly, “you notice that I took care of my guy all right?”
“Bill,” I explained wearily, “you were savagely going ten rounds with a date palm.”
He stared at me. “A date palm? Well, hell, who knows what afrit was inside it when it hit me. Maybe we should get somebody up here to exorcise that tree.”
“It didn’t hit you, Bill. I saw the whole thing from the beginning.”