Manitou Blood by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror, Vampires
ISBN: 9781428517745
Publisher: Leisure Books
Published: 2005-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

14

BLOOD OF DRACULEA

Jenica poured us two glasses of sweet white Romanian wine, and offered me a plate of almond biscuits that tasted like very fine sand. She sat next to me on the velvet-upholstered couch, close enough for our knees to keep touching.

“My father telephoned me from Bucharest as soon as he heard what was happening in New York. His very first word was, strigoi.”

I coughed on my biscuit. “Singing Rock specifically warned me not to say that name out loud. You know, in case they heard me saying it, and came after me. He said they would tear me to pieces.”

“No, no,” Jenica reassured me. “The word strigoi alone is not enough to alert them. Strigoi is just general name for vampires, not any special vampire. Your spirit-guide was warning you, yes, but he must have told you another name, too. A special name.”

I shook my head. “If he did, I didn’t pick up on it.”

“Well, if he has not told you yet, he will very soon,” Jenica assured me. “If so many strigoi are suddenly loose in New York, they must have come from a nest.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“A nest is many strigoi who are hiding together, or perhaps sealed up by vampire-hunters. Sometimes they remain concealed for centuries, waiting to escape. My father studied strigoi when he was in Romania, at the university in Babes-Bolyai. He was always convinced right from beginning that there was a nest hidden someplace in New York. He has searched for it for many years, ever since he first came to America. He has visited many libraries and studied many old maps and diaries, but he could never locate them.

Jenica took hold of my hand and began to emphasize what she meant by tracing patterns on my palm—a sensation that was strangely erotic. “A nest of strigoi will always be guided and controlled by a very powerful vampire spirit, one of the svarcolaci. In English I suppose you would translate one of the svarcolaci as a dead vampire. He does not inhabit his physical body any more, like one of the strigoi, who are the undead. He is what you would call a ghost, or a wandering soul.”

“Svarcolaci? I never heard of svarcolaci. Mind you, I never heard of strigoi, either, before today.”

“In Romanian folk stories, another name for one of the svarcolaci is Vampire Gatherer. Once the strigoi from the nest have infected people, the Vampire Gatherer goes out searching for them, and leads them back to the nest. There he teaches them the ways of the night, so that they become strigoi, too.

“I am sure that it was one of the svarcolaci that your spirit guide was warning you about, because a Vampire Gatherer can hear his name called, at any distance, even in a whisper . . . even if you say it in your dreams. Sometimes you only have to think his name, and he will prick up his ears and come after you.”

“So—uh—what are they like, these Vampire Gatherers?”

“They take many different shapes, Mr.

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