Duca gripped my coat even tighter and its fists trembled with effort. “I am going to drag out your intestines for this, Captain. I am going to hoist you on a pole and watch the crows eat your eyes out!”
It was half-choking me, and I could barely speak. But I managed to say, “Wrong country, Duca. You’re not in Romania any more. Worse than that — wrong century.”
Duca began to shudder, and its breathing started to become more labored. It looked into my eyes and I could tell now that I had compromised its immortality.
“I have an appointment in America,” it said. “I swore that I would get my revenge, and I shall.”
“Come on, gents,” said the steward, warily. “Get up off the floor and let’s be having you. This is the Queen Elizabeth, not the bloody Isle of Wight ferry.”
Duca grasped my throat and pressed its thumbs into my Adam’s apple. I took hold of its wrists and tried to pull its hands away, but it was still far too strong for me.
“I have an appointment,” it repeated, and now its voice was softer and hoarser. “I have an appointment. in America.”
I tried to cough, but I couldn’t. I could see tiny prickles of light swimming in front of my eyes. I thought with a strange feeling of serenity that I was going to die here, with all of these well-dressed people watching me, and none of them lifting a finger to help me.
But Duca’s hands began to tremble more and more violently, and little by little its grip began to weaken. I managed to take a breath, and then another.
“Come on, mate,” said the steward, and laid his hand on Duca’s shoulder.
Only a few minutes before, Duca would probably have twisted the steward’s arm off, but now it reached out and held on to him for support. Slowly, painfully, it managed to climb on to its feet, and to lurch across to the hand-rail. It stood there for a while, its chest rising and falling as if it had been running a marathon, its face ashy, its bloodred mouth gaping open.
Two men helped me to stand up, too. “What’s the matter with your sparring partner?” said one of them. “Is he ill or something?”
“I’ll call the ship’s doctor,” said the steward.
“There are two police detectives down by the main gangway,” I told him. “I’d like you to call them, too. And please — ” I coughed “ — can we clear all of these people away?”
I took out my identity card and held it up. “Please — MI6. This man is a dangerous suspect.”
The steward said, “Blimey.” Then, “Come on, ladies and gentlemen, if you’d be so kind. Can we give this gentleman a bit of breathing space?”
As the crowds of passengers reluctantly began to disperse, I approached Duca and stood facing it — although I made sure that I didn’t get too close. Duca stared back at me with utter hatred, one hand pressed against its chest, but it didn’t have enough breath to be able to speak.
“What did I tell you?” I said. “This is where you find out what it’s like to be mortal.”
Duca took one step forward, and then another, and slowly shuffled its way toward the cocktail lounge. I followed it, but I still kept my distance. It may have been affected by creeping paralysis, but I didn’t trust it one inch. It turned to me and said, “You are going to die for this, Captain.” Then it opened the door to the cocktail lounge and disappeared inside.
I hurried along the promenade deck and dragged my Kit out from under the bench. Then I shouldered my way into the cocktail lounge, urgently looking left and right to see where Duca had gone.
The lounge wasn’t open yet, and it was deserted, although a syrupy orchestral version of “Diana” was playing over the loudspeaker system. It was decorated in the highly contemporary 1950s style of all of the Queen Elizabeth’s public spaces, with sycamore-paneled walls dyed to the color of lobster shells, inlaid with marquetry pictures of scenes from the circus. Behind the bar stood scores of shining bottles — crème de menthe and Pernod and grenadine, and rows of chromium cocktail-shakers.
I couldn’t see Duca at first, but then I saw a spasmodic movement halfway up the panel that depicted a trapeze artist. Duca was slowly and painfully climbing up the wall, clinging to the paneling like a dying man crawling across a desert. When I came in, it managed to turn its head around, but it didn’t speak. Instead it continued its climb, gasping for breath with every few inches that it managed to ascend.
I set down my Kit on one of the polished wood tables and opened it. I took out my Bible, my holy oil, my hammer and my nails. I felt like a priest, taking out everything he needed for an exorcism. This was the day when the devil got what the devil deserved.
“Duca! Dorin Duca! Are you going to come down from there, or do I have to pull you down?”
Duca had nearly reached the top of the wall now. The polio virus was already stiffening its arms and its legs, because it clawed feebly at the ceiling two or three times before it managed to get a grip, and I thought for a moment that it was going to fall. Eventually, however, it started to creep upside down toward the central light fitting.
I couldn’t understand where Duca thought it was going, or how it was going to escape me. Maybe it was giving me a final demonstration of its supernatural abilities, its superiority, its differentness. I opened my Bible at Revelation and stood directly underneath Duca.
“You feel this, Duca? You feel the power of the Word?”
There was a long silence, punctuated only by Duca’s agonized breathing.
“I will kill you, Captain. You and all your kin.”
“I don’t think so, Duca. There are too many people who want their revenge on you.”
I laid down the Bible and unstoppered the bottle of holy oil. Taking a couple of steps backward, I flicked my wrist in a crisscross pattern so that the oil sprayed all over Duca’s back, and over its hair. Duca’s evil was so intense that the oil actually smoked on contact with it, and it let out a howl of pain.
I sprayed it again and again, and the smoke poured out thicker and faster. It reached around with one hand, trying to tear the oil-soaked shirt from its back, and as it did so it spontaneously burst into flames.
These weren’t the flames that I would have expected from olive oil, no matter who had blessed it. These flames were fierce and bluish-white, like burning naphtha. Duca clung on to the ceiling, screaming hoarsely with its half-paralyzed lungs, while all around it the light gray paint was blackened with twists and whorls of sooty smoke.
Suddenly, Duca dropped to the floor. It rolled over and over, still blazing, and I had to step smartly sideways to avoid it. It rolled up against the cocktail bar and lay there, not moving, while the flames subsided and flickered out. I picked up my hammer and my nails and approached it.
Its face was charred and raw and most of its hair was burned off. Its shirt had been reduced to a few blackened shreds. But when it opened its eyes and looked up at me I wasn’t surprised: a strigoi mort couldn’t be killed by fire, or by bullets, no matter what the bullets had been cast out of; and it couldn’t be killed by polio, either, even if it remained paralyzed for all eternity.
Duca whispered, “I will kill you for this, I promise. You and all of your kin.” Smoke actually leaked out of its mouth.
I knelt down beside it. I detested it, and all of the death and bereavement it had caused, and I only wished that its suffering could have lasted longer. I thought of Ann De Wouters’s children, and all of the other children who had been orphaned by Duca and its disciples. Most of all I thought of my mother.
I lifted one of the nails and held it over Duca’s right eye. It didn’t even blink. Then I raised my hammer.