This was no time to close her eyes and enjoy the sunlight.
Once past the mountain village of Moroeni the traffic mysteriously dwindled to nothing, the winding road was empty, the air grew cooler, and few of the trees had retained their leaves. Kate asked if she could drive the motorcycle for a while.
“You've done it before?”
“Tom used to let me drive his Yamaha 360,” Kate said confidently. Once. A little distance. Slowly. She was good with machines though, and had been watching O'Rourke closely.
O'Rourke pulled onto the gravel shoulder where the road began its switchback, parked, and stepped off. He left the engine idling. “Watch the clutch,” he said. “It's a mess. No second gear to speak of.” He limped around to the sidecar while Kate stood stretching.
He's hurting, she thought. Driving that thing with the clutch pedal and everything has been an ordeal. She mounted the bank, waited while O'Rourke settled in, grinned at him, and started off with a little too much throttle.
The ancient motorcycle and sidecar tried to do a wheelie, O'Rourke let out a single, very strange sound, Kate compensated a bit too fast by squeezing the brake handle hard enough to send O'Rourke's head into the plastic wind visor and almost toss her off the saddle, she decided to go straight to third gear, missed it a couple of times, got them going again vigorously in first gear, looked up just in time to avoid driving off the cliff edge, took most of the width of the asphalt to recover, then got the machine on the right side, going the right speed, with the right smoothness. Almost.
“I've got it now,” she said, ticking up through gears with her foot and leaning forward into the wind.
O'Rourke nodded and rubbed his head.
The highway crossed a high pass above Sinaia, and by the time Kate reached the summit she had worked things out between her and the machine.
“Stop here!” yelled O'Rourke, pointing to a narrow gravel shoulder on the other side of the road.
Kate nodded, swerved, realized that she hadn't really practiced with the brake yet . . . where was it? . . . but found it and applied it hard enough that their skid did not take them over the edge. Quite. The bike had spun around during their deceleration phase, and when the dust and flying gravel dissipated, they were facing back downhill and O'Rourke and the sidecar were hanging out over treetops and rocks.
He, took his goggles off slowly and rubbed grit out of his eyes. “I just wanted to admire the view,” he said softly over the idling engine.
Kate had to admit that the view was worth stopping for. To the north and west the Bucegi Range of the Carpathians blended into the snowpeaked Faragas Range which curved south just where the horizon became murky. The highest foothills below the snowfields were spotted with sturdy juniper and dwarf firs, the middle regions glowed green with pine and fir, the lower hills were mottled white with birch, and the valleys miles below were dappled with the dying leaf colors of oak, elder, elm, and sumac. Clouds were boiling in from the north and the west, but the sun was still bright enough to send their shadows sliding down limestone ridges to the treefilled valleys below. Except for a glimpse of the briefest stretch of road behind them, there was no sight of man. None. Not smokestack or rooftop or smog or aircraft or microwave antenna for as far as Kate could see to the west and south. In a country contemptuous of all environmental standards, this was the first time she had seen the real beauty of the earth.
“It's beautiful,” she said, hating herself for mouthing the cliché but not knowing what else to say. “What's that bright green plant up high? Near the juniper trees below the snow?”
“I think it's called zimbru,” said O'Rourke. He leaned over the edge of the sidecar and looked down. “Say, could you engage the brake, let the clutch out just a little, and ease us a bit forward . . . toward the road?”
Kate did so. She liked the percolating of the oversized engine and the feel of the motorcycle between her legs. Sunlight glinted off the tarnished chrome of the handlebars.
“Thanks,” said O'Rourke and cleared his throat. He turned and pointed to the southwest. “The Arges River and Vlad's castle is out that way.”
“How far?”
“For a bird, maybe a hundred klicks. Sixty, maybe seventy miles. By road . . .” He chewed his lip. “Probably about eight hours of driving.”
Kate glanced at him. “We're not wrong, Mike. It's Sighisoara tonight.”
He looked at her and then nodded. “What do you say we find a better place to park up on the summit, get the bike away from the road, and eat lunch?”
There had been bread and cheese at the monastery, and enough bottles of wine to make all of Transylvania drunk. O'Rourke had explained that the monks still grew vineyards and bottled wine for the local region. It was a way to help pay expenses. Kate had loaded three bottles under the seat of the sidecar and left fifty American dollars in a kitchen drawer.
The cheese was good, the bread was stale but delicious, and the wine was excellent. They had no glasses but Kate did not mind swigging directly from the bottle. She drank only a bit; she was, after all, driving. The last of the sunlight before the clouds won the aerial battle warmed her skin and brought back sensuous thoughts of the previous day and night.
“Do you have a plan?” said O'Rourke, leaning back against a tree and chewing on a tough strand of crust.
“Hmm? What?” Kate felt like someone had thrown cold water on her.
“A plan,” said O'Rourke. “For when we catch up to the strigoi.”
Kate set her chin. “Get Joshua back,” she said tightly. “Then get out of the country.”
O'Rourke chewed slowly, swallowed, and nodded. “I won't even ask about part two,” he said. “But how do we achieve part one? If the baby is really their new prince or whatever, I don't think they'll want to give him up.”
“I know that,” said Kate. The clouds now obscured the sun. A cold wind blew down from the snowfields above them.
“So . . .” O'Rourke opened his hands.
“I think we can negotiate,” said Kate.
O'Rourke frowned slightly. “With what?”
She nodded toward her travel bag. “I've brought samples of the hemoglobin substitute I was giving Joshua. It should allow the strigoi to break their addiction . to whole human blood and still allow the Jvirus to work on their immune systems. “
“Yes,” said O'Rourke, “but why would they want to go on methadone when they enjoy heroin?”
Kate looked out at the now shadowed valley. “I don't know. Do you have any better suggestions?”
“These are the people who killed Tom and your friend Julie,” said O'Rourke, his voice very low.
“I know that!” Kate did not mean for her voice to be so sharp.
He nodded. “I know you know that. What I mean is, did you come just to get Joshua, or is revenge on your agenda?”
Kate turned her face back to him. “I don't know. I don't think so. The medical research . . . the breakthrough potential of this retrovirus . . .” She looked down and touched her breast where it ached. “I just want Joshua back.”
O'Rourke slid closer and put his arm around her. “We're a strange choice for the dynamic duo,”. he whispered.
She looked up, not understanding.
“Caped crime fighters. Superheroes. Batman and Robin?”
“What do you mean?” The ache in her chest subsided slightly.
“You said that you shot that intruder the first time he entered your home in Colorado,” said O'Rourke. “The strigoi. But you didn't kill him.”
“I tried to,” said Kate. “His body rejuvenated because of“
“I know. I know.” The pressure of O'Rourke's arm was reassuring, not condescending. “What I mean is that you haven't killed anyone yet. But you might have to if we keep going on this quest. Will you do it?”