Page 111 of The Nameless Ones

‘Then what is she?’

‘She is strigoi, maybe, come from below the ground. The French were mining in Bor, digging for copper and gold. They dug too deep. The strigoi was sleeping, and they woke her. If she has returned here, she is sleeping again.’

‘Where?’

‘A dark place where she won’t be disturbed, probably close to where she was first woken.’

‘What if we were to go to Bor and ask there?’

‘You can ask,’ said Johain, ‘but no one will tell you, even if they know.’

‘Why?’

‘In case she hears.’

Louis looked at Željko, who shrugged. ‘I just drive,’ he said.

‘What will you do if you find her?’ said Johain.

‘Kill her,’ said Louis.

‘You can’t kill her.’

‘Well,’ said Angel, ‘that’s just fucking great.’

‘But,’ said Johain, ‘you can destroy her.’

They spent the night at a hotel in Negotin, where they waited for Johain to call. He contacted them shortly after 7 a.m., as the sky filled with light. He asked if they had brought good boots and they told him they had. When they picked him up in Kobišnica, he was holding a hand-drawn map.

‘I think I know where she is,’ he said, as he got into the car and gave Željko directions in Serbian.

‘I thought you told us people were afraid she’d hear,’ said Angel.

‘They whispered.’

‘I hate this place,’ said Angel.

‘Also, if you fail, they believe she’ll probably come after you, not them,’ said Johain. ‘And if you succeed, you’ll have done them a service.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, she’ll come after me, too, which is why I’m going with you to make sure you don’t fail.’

Angel supposed there was a kind of logic to this, but trying to figure out what it might be made his head hurt, so he stopped.

‘I must make an observation,’ said Johain. ‘You are very accepting of all this strangeness.’

Angel and Louis exchanged a glance, and thought of Parker.

‘Man,’ said Angel, ‘you don’t even know from strange.’

They drove to Lazar’s Canyon, six miles from Bor. Lazar’s Canyon, Johain explained, was the deepest, most inhospitable chasm in the country, more than three miles long and carved by the Lazar River from limestone reefs dating from the Jurassic period. It descended to nearly a quarter of a mile at its deepest point, and was twelve feet across at its narrowest, the floor strewn with boulders and sown with rock towers, the steep slopes drenched by waterfalls, marred by rockslides, and pitted with caves and caverns.

‘She sleeps in there,’ said Johain, pointing into the shadows of the canyon, the sunlight seeming almost to shirk from exploring its reaches.

‘Did I say I hate this place?’ said Angel.

‘You did,’ said Johain.

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