Manx- Adults Limit

  Maggie exhaled slowly, her nostrils flaring. “I’m not fooling, Vic. The Wraith is s-s-someone you need to stay away from. Not everyone who can do the things we can do is nice. I don’t know much about the Wraith except he’s an old man with an old car. And the car is his knife. Only he uses his knife to cut throats. He takes children for rides in his car, and it does something to them. He uses them up—like a vampire—to stay alive. He drives them into his own inscape, a bad place he dreamed up, and he leaves them there. When they get out of the car, they aren’t children anymore. They aren’t even human. They’re creatures that could only live in the cold s-s-space of the Wraith’s imagination.”
...

  “Right. A limo driver went to her hotel to pick her up, but someone knocked him out and grabbed Marta Gregorski and her mother. That was him. That was the Wraith. He drained the Gregorski girl and then dumped her with all the other children he’s used up, in some fantasy world of his own. An inscape no one would ever want to visit. Like your bridge, only bigger. Much bigger.”

  “What about the mother? Did he drain her, too?”

  “I don’t think he can feed off adults. Only children. He’s got s-ss-someone who works with him, like a Renfield, who helps him with the kidnappings and takes the grown-ups off his hands. You know Renfield?”

  “Dracula’s henchman or something?”

  “Close enough. I know that the Wraith is very old and he’s had a bunch of Renfields. He tells them lies, fills them up with illusions, maybe persuades them they’re heroes, not kidnappers. In the end he always s-suh-sacrifices them. That’s how they’re of the most use to him. When his crimes are uncovered, he can shift the blame onto one of his handpicked dumb-asses. He’s been taking children for a long time, and he’s good at hiding in the shadows. I’ve put together all kinds of details about the Wraith, but I haven’t been able to learn anything about him that would really help me identify him.”

- The Librarian: The Library