The Fall

RAINFALL

THUD-BUMP!

Nora shivered at the first impact. Everyone felt it, but few realized what it was. She didn’t know much herself about the North River Tunnels that connected Manhattan and New Jersey. She guessed that, under normal circumstances—which, let’s face it, didn’t exist anymore—it was maybe a two-to-three-minute trip total, traveling deep below the Hudson River. A one-way trip, no stopping. The only way in or out through the surface entrance and exit. They probably hadn’t even hit the halfway point, the deepest part, yet.

Bam-BAMM-bam-bam-bam.

Another hit, and the sound and vibration of grinding beneath the train’s chassis. The noise traveling from the front, bumping beneath her feet all the way to the back of the train, and gone. Her father, driving her uncle’s Cadillac many years ago, once ran over a big badger driving through the Adirondacks; this noise was almost the same, only bigger.

This was no badger.

Nor, she suspected, was it human.

Dread enveloped her. The thumping roused her mother, and Nora instinctively grabbed her frail hand. In response, she got a vague smile and a vacant stare.

Better that way, thought Nora, with an extra chill. Better not to deal with her questions, her suspicions, her fears. Nora had plenty of her own.

Zack remained under the influence of his earbuds, eyes closed, head bobbing gently over the backpack on his lap—grooving or maybe dozing. Either way, he was unaware of the bumps and the sense of concern growing in their train car. Though not for long…

Bump-CRUNCH.

A gasp went up. Impacts more frequent now, the noises louder. Nora prayed they would get through the tunnel in time. The one thing she had always hated about trains and subways: you can never see out the front windows. You don’t see what the driver sees. All you get is a blur. You never see what’s coming.

More hits. She thought she could distinguish the cracking of bones and—another!—an inhuman squeal, not unlike a pig.

The conductor evidently had had enough. The emergency brakes engaged with a metallic screech, grating like steel fingernails against the chalkboard of Nora’s fear.

Standing passengers grabbed seatbacks and overhead racks. The bumping slowed and became agonizingly more pronounced, the weight of the train crushing bodies beneath them. Zack’s head came up and his eyes opened and he looked at Nora.

The train went into a skid, its wheels screaming—then a great shudder and the interior compartment shook with a violence that threw people to the ground.

The train shrieked to a stop, the car tilted to the right.

They had jumped the track.

Derailed.

Lights inside the train flickered and died. A groan went up, with notes of panic.

Then emergency lights came on, but pale.

Nora pulled Zack to his feet. Time to get moving. She pulled her mother with her, starting toward the front of the car before everyone else on the train had recovered. She wanted to get a look at the tunnel by the train’s headlight. But she saw immediately that way was impassable. Too many people, too much thrown luggage.

Nora tugged on the strap of the weapon bag across her chest and pushed them the other way, toward the exit between cars. She was playing nice, waiting for fellow passengers to get their bags, when she heard the screaming start in the first car.

Every head turned.

Nora said, “Come on!” She pulled on them both, shoving her way through bodies toward the exits. Let the other people look; she had two lives to protect, never mind her own.

At the end of the car, waiting for some guy to pry open the automatic doors, Nora glanced back behind her.

Over the heads of the confused passengers, she saw frenzied movement in the next car… dark figures moving quickly… and then a burst of arterial blood spraying against the glass door separating compartments.

Gus and his crew had been outfitted by the hunters with armor-plated Hummers, black with chrome accents. Most of the chrome was gone now, due to the fact that, in order to get across bridges and up city streets, you had to do some contact driving.

Gus was heading the wrong way across 59th Street, his headlamps the only lights on the road. Fet sat up front, because of his size. The weapon bag was at his feet. Angel and the others were in another vehicle.

The radio was on, the sports talk host having racked some music in order to give his voice or maybe his bladder a break. Fet realized, as Gus cut hard up onto the sidewalk in order to avoid a knot of abandoned vehicles, that the song was Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”

He snapped off the radio, saying, “That’s not funny.”

They pulled up fast, at the foot of a building overlooking Central Park, exactly the sort of place where Fet always imagined a vampire would reside. Seen from the sidewalk below, it was outlined against the smoky sky like a gothic tower.

Fet entered the front door with Setrakian at his side, both men carrying their swords. Angel trailed them, Gus whistling a tune next to him.

The lobby of rich brown wallpaper was dimly lit and empty. Gus had a key that operated the passenger elevator, a small cage of green iron, its lift cables visible, Victorian styling inside and out.

The top-floor hallway was under construction, or at least left to appear that way. Gus laid his weapons down atop a table-like length of scaffolding. “Everybody disarm here,” he said.

Fet looked at Setrakian. Setrakian made no move to relinquish his staff, so Fet kept a tight hold on his sword.

“Fine, have it your way,” said Gus.

Angel remained behind as Gus led them inside the only door, up three steps into a dark anteroom. There was the usual light tincture of ammonia and earth, and a sensation of heat not artificially manufactured. Gus parted a heavy curtain, revealing a wide room with three windows overlooking the park.

Silhouetted before each window were three beings, hairless, unclothed, standing as still as the building itself, arranged like statues standing guard over the canyon of Central Park.

Fet raised his silver sword, the blade angling upward like the needle of a gauge measuring the presence of evil. All at once, he felt his hand struck, the sword handle springing loose from his grip. His other arm, the one gripping the weapon bag, jumped at the shoulder, suddenly lighter.

The bag handles had been cut. He turned his head in time to see his blade enter the side wall, piercing it deeply, quivering, the bag of weapons dangling from it.

He then felt a knife at the side of his throat. Not a silver blade, but instead the point of a long iron spike.

A face, next to him—so pale, it glowed. Its eyes bore the deep red of vampiric possession, its mouth curled into a toothless scowl. Its swollen throat pulsed, not with blood flow but anticipation.

“Hey…” said Fet, his voice disappearing into nothingness.

He was done for. The speed with which these ones moved was incredible. So much faster than the animals outside.

But the three beings at the windows—they had not moved.

Setrakian.

The voice, appearing within his mind, was accompanied by a numbing sensation that had the effect of clouding his thoughts.

Fet tried to look over at the old professor. He still held his staff, the interior blade sheathed. Another hunter stood at his side, holding a similar spike to his temple.

Gus walked past them. He said, “They’re with me.”

They are silver-armed. A hunter’s voice—not as debilitating as the other.

Setrakian said, “I come not to destroy you. Not this time.”

You would never get so close.

“But I have been close in the past, and you know it. Let us not rehash old battles. I wish to set all that aside for the time being. I have placed myself at your mercy for a reason. I want to deal.”

To deal? What could you possibly have to offer?

“The book. And the Master.”

Fet felt the vampire goon ease off his neck just a few millimeters, the point of the spike still in contact with his flesh but no longer poking at his throat.

The beings at the windows never moved, the commanding voice in his head unwavering.

And what is it you want in return?

Setrakian said, “The world.”

Nora spotted the dark figures siphoning passengers in the aft car. She kicked at the back of the knee of the man in front of her, pulling her mother and Zack past him, shouldering aside a woman in a business suit and sneakers in order to exit the derailed train.

Somehow, she got her mother down the long step without dropping her. Nora looked forward to where the front car had left the track, angled tight against the tunnel wall, and realized she had to go the other way.

She had departed the claustrophobia of the stuck train for the claustrophobia of an under-river tunnel.

Nora unzipped the side compartment on her travel duffel and pulled out her Luma lamp. She powered it on, the battery humming to life, the UVC bulb crackling indigo, burning hot.

The tracks lit up before her. Vampire discharge was everywhere, fluorescent guano, covering the floor and sprayed on the walls. Evidently, they had been crossing this way to the mainland for days, and by the thousands. It was the perfect environment for them: dark, dirty, and concealed from surface eyes.

Others disembarked behind them, a few using mobile phone screens to light their way. “Oh, my God!” one shrieked.

Nora turned and saw, by the light of the passengers’ phones, the train wheels goopy with white vampire blood. Gobs of pale skin and the black gristle of crushed bones hung from the undercarriage. Nora wondered if they were run down accidentally—or had they thrown themselves in the path of the charging train?

Thrown themselves seemed most likely. And if so—then what for?

Nora thought she knew. With the image of Kelly still bright in her mind, Nora threw one arm around Zack, taking her mother by the hand and running for the rear of the train.

New Jersey was a long walk away, and they were not alone here.

They heard screaming aboard the train now. Passengers being mauled by pale creatures marauding through the cars. Nora tried to keep Zack from looking up and seeing the faces pressed against the windows, regurgitating saliva and blood.

Nora got to the end of the train, rounding it—stepping over crushed vampire corpses on the tracks, using her UV light to kill any lurking blood worms—and starting up the other side, where there was a clear path toward the front car.

Tunnels carry and distort noises. Nora wasn’t sure what she was hearing, but its presence put an extra scare into her. She exhorted the people following them to stop a moment and be quiet and still.

She heard a noise like scuttling, only many times repeated and magnified through the tunnel. Coming behind them, in the same direction the train had been traveling. A horde of footsteps.

The light from the cell phone screens and Nora’s UV lamp had very little range. Something was coming at them out of the dark void, and Nora corralled Zack and her mother and started running the other way.

The hunter pulled back from Fet’s side, his spike still poised at Fet’s neck. Setrakian had started to tell the Ancients about Eldritch Palmer’s association with the Master.

We know already. He came to us some time ago, petitioning us for immortality.

“And you refused him. So he went across the street.”

He did not meet our criteria. Eternity is a beautiful gift, entrance into an immortal aristocracy. We are rigorously selective.

The voice reverberating inside Fet’s head sounded like a scolding parent’s multiplied a thousandfold. He looked at the hunter next to him and wondered: some long-dead European king? Alexander the Great? Howard Hughes?

No—not these hunters. Fet guessed he was an elite soldier in his former life. Plucked off a battlefield, perhaps during a special-ops mission. Drafted by the ultimate selective service. But who knew which army? What era? Vietnam? Normandy? Thermopylae?

Setrakian said—confirming for himself lifelong theories as he stated these facts—“The Ancients are connected to the human world at its uppermost levels. They assume the initiate’s wealth, which helps them insulate themselves and assert their influence across the globe.”

Were it a simple business transaction, his wealth is substantial enough. But we require more than riches. What we seek is power, access, and obedience. He lacked the last.

“Palmer grew angry when the gift was refused him. So he sought out the rogue Master, the young one—”

You seek to know all, Setrakian. Greedy until the end. Let us agree that you are half correct in everything. Palmer may have sought out the Seventh, yes. But be assured—it was the Seventh who found him.

“Do you know what it is he wants?”

We do know.

“You must know then that you are in trouble. The Master is creating minions by the thousands, too many for your hunters to cut down. His strain is spreading. These are beings you cannot control, not through power or influence.”

You spoke of the Silver Codex.

The power of their voices made Fet squint.

Setrakian stepped forward. “What I want from you is unlimited financial support. I require it immediately.”

The auction. Don’t you think we have considered this before?

“But bidding on it yourselves, employing a human representative, risked exposure. Impossible to guarantee the motives. Better to scuttle each potential sale throughout the years. But that will not be possible this time. I am certain that the timing of this widespread attack, the occultation of the Earth, and the reappearance of the book are no coincidence. It is all aligned. Do you deny this cosmic symmetry?”

We do not. But then again, the outcome will follow the design no matter what we do.

“Doing nothing seems to me like a flawed plan.”

And what would you want in return?

“A brief glimpse at its contents. Handcrafted in silver, this book is the one human creation you cannot possess. I have seen the Silver Codex, as you refer to it. It holds many revelations, I can guarantee you that. You would be wise to see what mankind knows of your origin.”

Half-truths and speculation.

“Is it? Can you take that chance? Mal’akh Elohim?”

A pause. Fet felt his head relax a moment. He could have sworn he saw the Ancient purse its lips in disgust.

Unlikely alliances are often the most productive.

“Let me be quite clear here. I offer you no alliance. This is nothing more than a wartime truce. The enemy of my enemy is in this instance neither my friend nor yours. I promise nothing other than a viewing of the book, and through it, a chance to defeat the rogue Master before he destroys you. But once this agreement is consummated, I promise you only that the fight will continue. I will come after you again. And you after me…”

Once you view the book, Setrakian, we cannot allow you to live. You must know that. This holds for any human.

Fet swallowed and said, “I’m not much of a reader anyway…”

Setrakian said, “I accept. And now that we understand each other, there is one other thing I need. Not from you, but from your man here. From Gus.”

Gus stepped in front of the old man and Fet. “Just so long as it involves killing.”

There was no ribbon-cutting ceremony. No giant pair of prop scissors, no dignitaries or politicians. No fanfare at all.

The Locust Valley Nuclear Power Plant went online at 5:23 A.M. Resident Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors oversaw the procedures from the control room of the $17 billion facility.

Locust Valley was a nuclear fission facility, operating twin thermal, light-water-moderated Generation III reactors. All site and safety reviews had been completed before the Uranium-235 bundles and the control rods were introduced into the water inside the pressurized core.

The principle of controlled fission is likened to a nuclear bomb exploding at a slow, steady rate, rather than a millisecond. The heat produced generates electricity, which is then harnessed and delivered in a manner similar to that of conventional coal-burning power plants.

Palmer understood the concept of fission only in the sense that it was similar to cell division in biology. The energy was produced in the splitting: that was the value and the magic of nuclear fuel.

Outside, the twin cooling towers gave off steam like giant beakers of concrete.

Palmer marveled. Here was the final piece of the puzzle. The last tumbler falling into place.

This was the moment of the bolt sliding free, just before the great vault door is opened.

As he watched steam clouds drift off into the ominous sky like ghosts rising from great boiling cauldrons, he remembered Chernobyl. The black village of Pripyat, where he had first encountered the Master. The reactor accident was, like the concentration camps in World War II, a lesson for the Master. The human race had shown the Master the way. They had provided the very tools for their own demise.

All of it underwritten by Eldritch Palmer.

He’s been out there turning folks for free.

Ah, Dr. Goodweather. But the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. That was how it was supposed to work, according to the Bible.

But this wasn’t the Bible. This was America.

The first should be first.

At once, Palmer knew how his business partners felt after dealing with him. Like they’d been punched in the gut with the same hand they just shook.

You think you’re working with somebody, until you realize: you’re working for them.

Why make you wait in line?

Indeed.

Zack pulled away from Nora’s hand when his iPod fell to the tunnel floor. It was stupid, it was a reflex, but his mom had bought it for him, even paying for tunes she didn’t care for very much, and sometimes hated. When he held the magical little device in his hand and lost himself in the music, he was losing himself in her as well.

“Zachary!”

Weird for Nora to use his full name, but it worked, straightening him up fast. She looked frantic, holding on to her mother near the front of the train. Zack felt something extra for Nora now, something they had in common, seeing her mother so sick: both of their mothers were lost to them, and yet still partly there.

Zack grabbed the music player and shoved it into his jeans pocket, leaving his tangled earphones behind. The derailed train rocked faintly with howling violence and Nora tried to block it from his view. But he knew. He had seen the windows running red. He had seen the faces. He was half in shock, moving through a terrible dream.

Nora had stopped, staring in horror at something behind him.

Out of the tunnel darkness came small figures moving at great speed. With inhuman agility, these recent human children, none of them older than their early teens, sprang toward them along the tracks.

They were led by a phalanx of blind vampire children, eyes black and burned out. The blind ones moved more strangely, the sighted children overtaking them once they reached the train, emitting horrible little squeals of inhuman joy.

They immediately set upon the passengers fleeing the carnage on the train. Others raced up the tunnel walls and swarmed over the roof of the train like baby spiders crawling out of an egg sac.

And among them—one adult figure moved with evil purpose. A feminine form, shadowed by the dim tunnel light, seemingly directing the onslaught. A possessed mother leading an army of demon children.

A hand gripped the hood of his jacket—it was Nora—yanking Zack away. He stumbled, turning to run with her, taking Nora’s mother’s arm under his shoulder and half-dragging the old woman from the train wreck flooding over with mad vampire children.

Nora’s indigo light barely illuminated their path along the tracks, brightening the kaleidoscope of colorful and sickly psychedelic vampire excrement. No other passengers followed them.

“Look!” Zack said.

His young eyes spotted a pair of steps leading to a door in the left-hand wall. Nora steered them that way, running up to try the handle. It was stuck, or locked, so she stepped back and kicked at it with the heel of her shoe again and again until the handle came down and the door popped open.

Through the other side was an identical platform and two steps leading down into another tunnel. More train tracks, this the southern tube of the tunnel, heading eastbound from New Jersey to Manhattan.

Nora slammed the door, shutting it as hard as she could, then hustled them down onto the tracks.

“Hurry,” she said. “Keep moving. We can’t fight them all.”

They pushed farther into the dark tunnel. Zack helped Nora, supporting her mother, but it was clear they could not walk like this forever.

They never heard anything behind them—never heard the door bang open—and still they moved as though the vampires were right on their heels. Every second felt like borrowed time.

Nora’s mother had lost both her shoes, her nylons torn, her feet cut and bleeding. She said over and over, her voice rising, “I need to rest. I want to go home.”

Finally, it was too much. Nora slowed, Zack slowing with her. Nora clamped her hand over her mother’s mouth, needing to silence her.

Zack saw Nora’s face by the purple light of her lamp. He read the stricken expression on her face as she struggled to carry and silence her mother at the same time.

He realized then that she had to make a terrible decision.

Her mother was trying to peel Nora’s hand off her mouth. Nora shrugged down her duffel bag. “Open this,” she told him. “I want you to take a knife.”

“I already have one.” Zack dug into his pocket, pulling out the brown bone handle, unfolding the four-inch silver blade.

“Where did you get that?”

“Professor Setrakian gave it to me.”

“Good. Zack. Please listen. Do you trust me?”

Such a strange question. “Yes,” he said.

“Listen to me. I need you to hide. To get down and crawl underneath this overhang.” The track sides were buttressed about two feet from the ground, the angle beneath them cloaked in shadow. “Lie down under there and hold that knife close to your chest. Stay in the shadow. I know it’s dangerous. I won’t be… I won’t be long, I promise. Anyone comes by and stops near you, anyone who isn’t me—anyone—you cut them with that. Do you understand?”

“I…” He had seen the faces of the passengers on the train, pressed against the windows. “I understand.”

“The throat, the neck—anywhere you can. Keep cutting and stabbing until they fall. Then run ahead and hide again. Understand?”

He nodded, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Promise me.”

Zack nodded again.

“I will be right back. If I am gone too long, you will know it. And then I want you to start running.” She pointed toward New Jersey. “That way. All the way. Stopping for nothing. Not even me. All right?”

“What are you going to do?”

But Zack knew. He was certain he knew. And so was Nora.

Nora’s mother was biting her hand, forcing Nora to remove it from her mouth. She gripped him in a half-hug, mashing his face into her side. He felt her kiss the crown of his head. Then her mother resumed yelling, and Nora had to cover her mouth again. “Be brave,” she told him. “Go.”

Zack got down onto his back and wriggled in underneath the overhang, not even thinking about the usual things like rats or mice. He gripped the bone handle tightly, holding the knife to his chest like a crucifix, and listened as Nora struggled to lead her mother away.

Fet sat in the idling DPW van, waiting. He wore a reflector vest over his usual coveralls, and a hard hat. He was going over the sewer map by the dashboard light.

The old man’s makeshift silver chemical weapons were in back, buffeted with rolled towels to prevent them from sliding around. He was worried about this plan. Too many moving parts. He checked the rear door of his shop, waiting for the old man to appear.

Inside, Setrakian adjusted the collar on his cleanest shirt, his gnarled fingers tightening the loops of his bow tie. He pulled out one of his small, silver-backed mirrors in order to check the fit. He was dressed in his best suit.

He put down the mirror and did one last check. His pills! He found the tin and shook the contents gently for luck, cursing himself for almost forgetting it, sliding it inside his jacket pocket. There. Done.

On his way to the door, he looked one last time at the specimen jar that held the remains of his wife’s vivisected heart. He had irradiated it with black light, finally killing the blood worm once and for all. The organ, so long in the grip of the parasitic virus, was now blackening with decay.

Setrakian looked upon it as one’s gaze falls upon a beloved’s gravestone. He meant it to be the last thing he saw of this place. For he was certain he was never coming back.

Eph sat alone on a long, wooden bench against the wall of the squad room.

The FBI agent’s name was Lesh, and his chair and desk were set about three feet beyond Eph’s reach. Eph’s left wrist was manacled to a low steel rail running along the wall just above the bench, like the safety rails in handicapped bathrooms. Eph had to slouch a bit as he sat, keeping his right leg straight out in order to accommodate the knife still hidden in his waistband. No one had frisked him upon his return from Palmer’s.

Agent Lesh had a facial tic, an occasional winking of his left eye that made his cheek dance but did not impair his speech. Pictures of school-age children stood in inexpensive frames upon his cubicle desk.

“So,” said the agent. “This thing. I don’t get it. Is it a virus, or is it a parasite?”

“It’s both,” said Eph, trying to be reasonable, still hoping to somehow talk his way free. “The virus is delivered by a parasite, in the form of a blood worm. This parasite is exchanged upon infection, through the throat stinger.”

Agent Lesh winked involuntarily and scribbled this down on his pad.

So the FBI was starting to figure things out finally—only much too late. Good cops like Agent Lesh operated at the broad bottom end of the pyramid, having no idea that things had long since been decided by those at the very top.

Eph said, “Where are those other two agents?”

“Who’s this?”

“The ones who took me into the city on the helicopter.”

Agent Lesh stood, getting a better view over the squad-room cubicles. A few dedicated agents remained at work. “Hey, anybody here take Dr. Goodweather up on a bird into the city?”

Grunts and denials. Eph realized he hadn’t seen the two men since his return. “I’d say they’re gone for good.”

“Can’t be,” said Agent Lesh. “Our orders are to stand by here until further notice.”

That didn’t sound good at all. Eph looked again at the pictures on Lesh’s desk. “You get your family out of the city?”

“We don’t live in the city. Too expensive. I drive in from Jersey every day. But yeah, they’re out. School got canceled, so my wife took them up to a friend’s on Kinnelon Lake.”

Not far enough, thought Eph. “Mine are out, too,” he said. He leaned forward, as far as his handcuffs—and the table knife against his hip—would allow. “Look, Agent Lesh,” said Eph, trying to take him into his confidence. “All this that’s happening… I know it seems like chaos, like absolute disorder? It’s not. Okay? It is not. This is a carefully planned, coordinated attack. And today… today it is all coming to a head. I still don’t know exactly how, or what. But it is today. And we—you and me both—need to get out of here.”

Agent Lesh winked twice. “You’re under arrest, doctor. You shot at a man in broad daylight with dozens of witnesses around you, and you would be on your way to a federal arraignment if things weren’t so crazy right now and most government offices weren’t closed. So you’re not going anywhere, and because of you, neither am I. Now—what can you tell me about these?”

Agent Lesh showed him some printouts. Photographs of markings etched on buildings featuring the six-legged, bug-like graffiti rendering.

“Boston,” Agent Lesh said. He shuffled them from the front of the pile to the back. “This one from Pittsburgh. Outside Cleveland. Atlanta. Portland, Oregon, three thousand miles away.”

Eph said, “I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s some sort of code. They don’t communicate through speech. They need a system of language. They’re marking territory, marking progress… something like that.”

“And this bug design?”

“I know. It’s almost like… have you heard of automatic writing? The subconscious mind? See, they are all connected on a psychic level. I don’t understand it—only that it exists. And like any great intelligence, I think there’s a subconscious segment, with this stuff spilling out… almost artistically. Expressing itself. You’re seeing the same basic designs scrawled on buildings all across the country. It’s probably halfway around the world by now.”

Agent Lesh dropped the images back onto his desk. He grabbed the back of his neck, massaging it. “And silver, you say? Ultraviolet light? The sun?”

“Check the gun I had. It’s here somewhere, right? Check the bullets. Pure silver. Not because Palmer is a vampire. He’s not—not yet. But it was given to me…”

“Yeah? Go on? By whom? I’d like to know how it is you know all these things—”

The lights went out. The heat vents went silent, and everyone in the squad room groaned.

“Not again,” said Agent Lesh, getting to his feet.

Emergency lights flickered on, the EXIT signs over the doors and every fifth or sixth ceiling panel light all coming on at half—or a quarter—power.

“Beautiful,” said Agent Lesh, pulling a flashlight down off a hook on the top of his cubicle partition.

Then the fire alarm went off, whooping through overhead speakers.

“Ah!” shouted Agent Lesh. “Better and better!”

Eph heard a scream from somewhere in the building.

“Hey,” yelled Eph. He tugged on the handcuff bar. “Uncuff me. They’re coming for us.”

“Huh?” Agent Lesh remained where he was, listening for more screams. “Coming for us?”

A crash, and a noise like a door breaking.

“For me!” said Eph. “My gun. You have to get it!”

Agent Lesh focused on listening. He went ahead and unsnapped his own holster.

“No! That won’t work! The silver in my gun! Don’t you understand? Go get it—!”

Gunshots. Just one floor beneath them.

“Shit!” Agent Lesh started away, drawing his sidearm.

Eph swore and turned his attention to the bar and his handcuffs. He yanked on the rail with both hands—no give whatsoever. He slid the handcuff down first to one end, then the other, hoping to exploit some weak spot, but the bolts were thick, the bar set deeply into the wall. He kicked at it, but couldn’t get through.

Eph heard a scream—closer now—and more gunshots. He tried to stand, only able to get three-quarters of the way erect. He tried to pull the wall down.

Shots in the room now. The cubicle walls blocked his view. All he had to go on was the flashes of flame from the agents’ weapons—and the agents’ screaming.

Eph dug into his pants for the silver table knife. It felt a lot smaller in his hand here than it had inside Palmer’s penthouse. He jammed the dull edge in behind the bench at an angle and pulled back on it, hard and fast. The tip snapped off, producing a short but sharp blade like a jailhouse shiv.

A thing came vaulting onto the top of the cubicle wall. It crouched there, balanced on all four limbs. It appeared small in the dim lighting of the squad room, turning its head in a weird, searching manner, scanning without sight, sniffing without a sense of smell.

Its face turned toward Eph, and he knew it was locked in.

It came off the top of the partition walls with feline agility, and Eph saw that the child vampire’s eyes were blackened like the hot end of a burned-out lightbulb. Its face was turned slightly away from him, its unseeing eyes not trained on his body—and yet somehow it saw him, of that he was certain.

Its physicality was terrifying to Eph, like facing a jaguar in a cage—and being chained to the cage. Eph stood sideways, in the vain hope of protecting his throat, his silver blade out toward the feeler, who sensed the weapon. Eph moved laterally as the handcuff rail would allow, the creature tracking him to the left, and then back toward the right, its head snakelike upon its swollen neck.

Then it struck, its stinger whipping out, shorter than an adult vampire’s, Eph just reacting in time to swipe at it with his blade. Whether he cut it or not, he had made impact, fending off the approach, the feeler skittering backward like a kicked dog.

“GET OUTTA HERE!” yelled Eph, trying to command it as he would an animal, but the feeler only looked at him with its unseeing eyes. When two more vampires—regular monsters, red human blood staining their shirtfronts—turned the corner around the partitions, Eph understood that the feeler had summoned backup.

Eph waved his little silver knife, making like a madman. Trying to scare them more than they were scaring him.

It didn’t work.

The creatures split up, pouncing from both sides, Eph slashing at one’s arm, then the other’s. The silver hurt them, enough to open their limbs and let some whiteness flow.

Then one gripped his knife arm. The other got him by his opposite shoulder, holding his head by the hair.

They didn’t take him right away. They were waiting for the feeler. Eph struggled as much as he could, but he was overmatched and chained to the wall. The fever heat of these atrocities, and the stench of their deadness, nauseated him. He tried to throw his knife, flipping the blade at one of them, but it simply slipped from his grip.

The feeler came up on him slowly, a predator savoring its kill. Eph fought to keep his chin down, but the hand in his hair hauled his head back, exposing his throat to the small creature.

Eph howled in defiance in his last moment—when the back part of the feeler’s head exploded into a white mist. Its body dropped straight down, twitching, and Eph felt the vampires on either side of him release their grip.

Eph shoved one away, kicking the other off the bench.

Humans rounded the corner then, a couple of Latinos armed to the teeth with tools to fuck up a vampire’s night. One vamp got the silver skewer as he tried to scramble up and over the partitions, away from a UVC lamp. The other made a stand, trying to fight—receiving a kick to the knee that dropped him, followed by a silver bolt into his skull.

Then came a third guy, a hulking Mexican man, probably in his sixties but, old as he appeared, the behemoth was incredibly effective at dispatching vampires left and right.

Eph pulled his legs up onto the bench in order to avoid the spray of white blood on the floor, the worms looking for a new body to host them.

The leader stepped forward, a Mexican kid, leather-gloved, bright-eyed, a bandolier of silver bolts crisscrossing his chest. His black boots, Eph saw, were fronted with toe-plates of white-spattered silver.

“You Dr. Goodweather?” he said.

Eph nodded.

“My name is Augustin Elizalde,” the kid said. “The pawnbroker sent us to get you.”

Alongside Fet, Setrakian entered the lobby of Sotheby’s headquarters at 77th Street and York, asking to be shown to the registration room. He presented a bank check, drawn on a Swiss account, which, after a landline telephone call, cleared instantly.

“Welcome to Sotheby’s, Mr. Setrakian.”

He was assigned paddle #23 and an attendant showed him to the elevator to the tenth floor. They stopped him outside the door to the auction floor, asking that he check his coat and his wolf-handled staff. Setrakian did so reluctantly, accepting a plastic ticket in return and slipping it inside the watch pocket of his vest. Fet was admitted inside the auction gallery, but only those with paddles were allowed into the seated bidding area. Fet remained behind, standing in back with a view of the entire room, thinking it was perhaps better this way.

The auction was held under intense security. Setrakian took a seat in the fourth row. Not too close, not far away either. He sat on the aisle with his numbered paddle resting on his leg. The stage in front of him was lit, a white-gloved steward pouring water into a glass for the auctioneer, then disappearing into a concealed service entrance. The viewing area was stage left, a brass easel awaiting the first few catalog items. An overhead video screen showed the Sotheby’s name.

The first ten or fifteen rows were nearly full, with intermittent empty chairs in back. And yet some of the participants were clearly seat-fillers, employees hired to fill out the bidding audience, their eyes lacking the steely attentiveness of a true buyer. Both sides of the room between the row ends and the moveable walls—set far back for maximum occupancy—were packed, as was the rear. Many of the spectators wore masks and gloves.

An auction is as much theater as marketplace, and the entire affair had a distinctly fin-de-siècle feel: a final burst of flamboyant spending, a last-gasp display of capitalism in the face of overwhelming economic doom. Most of the attendees were gathered simply for the show. Like well-dressed mourners at a funeral service.

Excitement mounted as the auctioneer appeared. Anticipation rippled throughout the room while he ran through his opening remarks and the ground rules for bidders. And then he gaveled the auction underway.

The first few items were minor baroque paintings, hors d’oeuvres to whet the bidders’ appetites for the main course.

Why did Setrakian feel so tense? So out of sorts, so paranoid suddenly? The deep pockets of the Ancients were today his deep pockets. It was inevitable that the long-sought book would soon be in his hands.

He felt strangely exposed, sitting where he was. He felt… observed, not passively, but by knowing eyes. Penetrating and familiar.

He located the source of his paranoia behind a pair of smoke-tinted glasses, three rows behind him on the opposite aisle. The eyes belonged to a figure dressed in a suit of dark fabric, wearing black leather gloves.

Thomas Eichhorst.

His face appeared smoothed and stretched, his body overall looking too well-preserved. It was flesh-colored makeup and a wig, certainly… yet there was something else besides. Could it have been surgery? Had some mad doctor been retained to keep his appearance close to that of a human, in order that he might walk and mix with the living? Even though they were hidden behind the Nazi’s glasses, Setrakian felt a chill knowing that Eichhorst’s eyes had connected with his.

Abraham had been merely a teen when he entered the camp—and so it was with young eyes that he looked upon the former commandant of Treblinka now. He experienced that same spike of fear, combined with an unreasonable panic. This evil being—while he was still a mere human—had dictated life and death inside that death factory. Sixty-four years ago… and now the dread came back to Setrakian as though it had been yesterday. This monster, this beast—now multiplied a hundredfold.

Acid burned the old man’s throat, nearly choking him.

Eichhorst nodded to Setrakian, ever so gently. Ever so cordially. He appeared to smile—but indeed, it was not a smile, just a way of opening his mouth enough to give Setrakian a glimpse of the tip of his stinger inside, flickering at his rouged lips.

Setrakian turned back to face the dais. He hid the trembling of his crooked hands, an old man ashamed at his boyhood fright.

Eichhorst had come for the book. He would battle for it in the place of the Master, bankrolled by Eldritch Palmer.

Setrakian went into his pocket for his pillbox. His arthritic fingers worked clumsily and doubly hard, as he did not wish Eichhorst to see and enjoy his distress.

He slipped the nitroglycerin pill discreetly beneath his tongue and waited for the pill to take effect. He pledged to himself that, even if it took his very last breath, he would beat this Nazi.

Your heart is erratic, Jew.

Setrakian did not react outwardly to the voice invading his head. He worked hard to ignore this most unwelcome guest.

In his vision, the auctioneer and the stage disappeared, as did all of Manhattan and the continent of North America. Setrakian saw for the moment only the wire fences of the camp. He saw the dirt muddied with blood and the emaciated faces of his fellow craftsmen.

He saw Eichhorst sitting atop his favorite steed. The horse was the only living thing inside the camp to which he showed any hint of affection, by way of carrots and apples—enjoying feeding the beast right in front of starving prisoners. Eichhorst liked to dig his heels into the horse’s sides, making him whinny and rear up. Eichhorst also enjoyed practicing his marksmanship with a Ruger while sitting atop the riled horse. At each assembly, a worker was executed at random. Three times it was a man standing directly next to Setrakian.

I noticed your bodyguard when you entered.

Did he mean Fet? Setrakian turned and saw Fet among the onlookers standing in back, near a pair of well-tailored bodyguards flanking the exit. In his exterminator’s coveralls, he appeared completely out of place.

Fetorski, is it not? Pureblood Ukrainian is an exceedingly rare vintage. Bitter, salty, but with a strong finish. You should know, I am a connoisseur of human blood, Jew. My nose never lies. I recognized his bouquet when you entered. As well as the line of his jaw. You don’t remember?

The beast’s words unnerved Setrakian. Because he hated their source, and because they had, to Setrakian’s ear, the ring of truth.

In the camp of his mind’s eye, he saw a large man wearing the black uniform of the Ukrainian guards, dutifully gripping the bridle of Eichhorst’s mount with gloves of black leather, handing the commandant his Ruger.

It cannot be a mistake that you should be here with the descendant of one of your tormentors?

Setrakian closed his eyes on Eichhorst’s taunts. He cleared his mind, returning his focus to the task at hand. He thought, in a mind-voice as loud as he could make it, in the hope that the vampire would hear him: You will be even more surprised to learn who else I am partnered with this day.

Nora dug out the night-vision monocular and hung it over the Mets ball cap on her head. Closing one eye turned the North River Tunnel green. “Rat vision,” Fet liked to call it, but was she ever grateful for this invention at that moment.

The tunnel area was clear ahead of her, into the intermediate distance. But she could find no exit. No hiding place. Nothing.

She was alone now with her mother, having put enough space between them and Zack. Nora tried not to look at her, even with the scope. Her mother was breathing hard, barely able to keep pace. Nora had her by her arm, practically carrying her over the stones between the tracks, feeling the vampires at their back.

Nora realized she was looking for the right place to do this. The best place. This thing she was contemplating was a horror. The voices in her head—no one else’s but her own—offered countervailing arguments:

You can’t do this.

You cannot hope to save both your mother and Zack. You have to choose.

How can you choose a boy over your mother?

Choose one or lose both.

She had a good life.

Bullshit. We all have good lives, exactly until the moment they end.

She gave you life.

But if you don’t do this now, you are giving her over to vampires. Cursing her for all eternity.

Alzheimer’s has no cure either. She is getting progressively worse. She has already changed from the woman who was your mother. How is that different from vampirism?

She poses no threat to others.

Only to yourself—and Zack.

You will have to destroy her anyway when she returns for you, her Dear One.

You told Eph he needed to destroy Kelly.

Her dementia is such that she won’t even know.

But you will know.

Bottom line: will you also do yourself in before you are turned?

Yes.

But that is your choice.

And it is never an either/or. Never clear-cut. It happens too fast; they are upon you, and you are gone. You must act in advance of the turning. You have to anticipate it.

And yet there are no guarantees.

You cannot release someone before they are turned. You can only tell yourself that this is what you hope you did. And wonder forever if you were right.

It is still murder.

Will you also turn the knife on Zack if the end is imminent?

Maybe. Yes.

You would hesitate.

Zack has a better chance of surviving an attack.

So you would trade the old for the new.

Maybe. Yes.

Nora’s mother said to her, “When in the hell is your lousy father going to get here?”

Nora came back to the moment. She felt too sick to cry. It was indeed a cruel world.

A howl echoed through the long tunnel, chilling Nora.

She went around behind her mother’s back. She could not look her in the face. She tightened her grip on her knife, raising it in order to bring it down into the back of the old woman’s neck.

But all of this was nothing.

She didn’t have it in her heart, and she knew this.

Love is our downfall.

Vampires had no guilt. That was their great advantage. They never hesitated.

And, as though to prove this point, Nora looked up to find herself being stalked along each side of the tunnel. Two vampires had crept up on her while she was distracted, their eyes glowing white-green in her monocular.

They did not know that she could see them. They did not understand night-vision technology. They assumed that she was like all the rest of the passengers—lost in the darkness, wandering blind.

“You sit here, Mama,” said Nora, nudging her knees out, lowering her to the tracks. Otherwise, she would go wandering off. “Papa’s on his way.”

Nora turned and walked toward the two vampires, moving directly between them without looking at either one. Peripherally, they left the stone walls in their loose-jointed way.

Nora took a deep breath before the kill.

These vampires became the recipients of her homicidal angst. She lunged first at the one on the left, slashing it faster than the creature could leap. The vampire’s bitter cry rang in her ears as she whipped around and faced the other, who was eyeing her sitting mother. The creature turned back toward Nora from its crouch, its mouth open for the stinger strike.

A splash of white filled her scope like the rage flaring in her head. She slaughtered her would-be attacker, chest heaving, eyes stinging with tears.

She looked back the way she came. Had these two passed Zack to get to her? Neither one appeared flush from a meal, though the night vision couldn’t give her an accurate read of their pallor.

Nora grabbed her lamp and turned it on the corpses, frying the blood worms before they had a chance to wriggle over the rocks toward her mother. She irradiated her own knife as well, then switched off the lamp, returning to help her mother to her feet.

“Is your father here?” she said.

“Soon, Mama,” said Nora, hurrying her back toward Zack, tears running down her cheeks. “Soon.”

Setrakian didn’t bother getting in on the bidding for the Occido Lumen until the price crossed the $10 million threshold. The rapid pace of the bidding was fueled not only by the extraordinary rarity of the item but also by the circumstances of the auction—this sense that the city was going to come crumbling down at any moment, that the world was changing forever.

At $15 million, the bidding increments rose to $300,000.

At $20 million, $500,000.

Setrakian did not have to turn around to know whom he was bidding against. Others, attracted by the “cursed” nature of the book, jumped in early but fell away once the pace reached an eight-figure frenzy.

The auctioneer called for a brief break in the action at $25 million, reaching for his water glass—but really only stoking the drama. He took a moment to remind those present of the highest auction price ever paid for a book: $30.8 million for da Vinci’s Codex Leicester in 1994.

Setrakian now felt the eyes of the room upon him. He kept his attention focused on the Lumen, the heavy, silver-covered book brilliantly displayed under glass. It lay open, its facing pages projected upon two large video screens. One was filled with handwritten text, the other showcasing an image of a silver-colored human figure with broad white wings, standing in witness of a distant city being destroyed by a storm of yellow and red flame.

The bidding resumed, rising quickly. Setrakian fell back into a rhythm of raising and lowering his paddle.

The next genuine audience gasp came as they crossed the $30 million threshold.

The auctioneer pointed across the aisle from Setrakian for $30.5 million. Setrakian countered up at $31 million. It was the most expensive book purchase in history now—but what did such landmarks matter to Setrakian? To mankind?

The auctioneer called for $31.5 million, and got it.

Setrakian countered with $32 million before even being prompted.

The auctioneer looked back to Eichhorst, but then, before he had a chance to request the next bid, an attendant appeared, interrupting him. The auctioneer, showing just the right amount of pique, stepped away from the podium to confer with her.

He stiffened at the news, ducked his head, then nodded.

Setrakian wondered what was happening.

The steward then came around off the dais, and began walking up the aisle toward him. Setrakian watched her approach in confusion—then watched as she passed him, going three more rows back, stopping before Eichhorst.

She knelt in the aisle, whispering something to him.

“You may speak to me right here,” said Eichhorst—his lips moving in a pantomime of human speech.

The steward spoke further, attempting to preserve the bidder’s privacy as best she could.

“That is ridiculous. There is some mistake.”

The steward apologized, but remained firm.

“Impossible.” Eichhorst rose to his feet. “You will suspend the auction while I rectify this situation.”

The steward glanced quickly back at the auctioneer, and then up at the Sotheby’s officials watching from behind balcony glass high along the walls, like guests observing a surgery.

The steward turned to Eichhorst and said, “I am afraid, sir, that is just not possible.”

“I must insist.”

“Sir…”

Eichhorst turned to the auctioneer, pointing at him with his paddle. “You will hold your gavel until I am allowed to make contact with my benefactor.”

The auctioneer returned to his microphone. “The rules of auction are quite clear on this point, sir. I am afraid that without a viable line of credit—”

“I indeed do have a viable line of credit.”

“Sir, our information is that it has just been rescinded. I am very sorry. You will have to take up the matter with your bank—”

“My bank! On the contrary, we will complete the bidding here and now, and then I will straighten out this irregularity!”

“I am sorry, sir. The house rules are the same as they have been for decades, and cannot be altered, not for anyone.” The auctioneer looked out over the audience, resuming the bidding. “I have $32 million.”

Eichhorst raised his paddle. “$35 million!”

“Sir, I am sorry. The bid is $32 million. Do I hear $32.5?”

Setrakian sat with his paddle on his leg, ready.

“$32.5?”

Nothing.

“$32 million, going once.”

“$40 million!” said Eichhorst, standing in the aisle now.

“$32 million, going twice.”

“I object! This auction must be canceled. I must be allowed more time—”

“$32 million. Lot 1007 is sold to bidder #23. Congratulations.”

The gavel came down to ratify the sale; the room burst into applause. Hands reached toward Setrakian in congratulations, but the old man got to his feet as quickly as possible and walked to the front of the room, where he was met by another steward.

“I would like to take possession of the book immediately,” he informed her.

“But, sir, we have some paperwork—”

“You may clear the payment, including the house’s commission, but I am taking possession of the book, and I am doing so now.”

Gus’s battered Hummer wove and bashed its way back across the Queensboro Bridge. As they returned to Manhattan, Eph spotted dozens of military vehicles staged at 59th Street and Second Avenue, in front of the entrance to the Roosevelt Island Tramway. The larger, canopied trucks read FORT DRUM in black stencil, and two white buses, as well as some Jeeps, read USMA WEST POINT.

“Shutting down the bridge?” said Gus, his gloved hands tight upon the steering wheel.

“Maybe enforcing the quarantine,” said Eph.

“You think they are with us or against us?”

Eph saw personnel in combat fatigues pulling a tarp down off a large, truck-mounted machine gun—and he felt his heart lift a little. “I’m going to say with us.”

“I hope so,” said Gus, swinging hard toward uptown. “Because if not, this is gonna get even more fucking interesting.”

They arrived at 72nd and York just as the street battle was getting underway. Vamps came streaming out of the brick-tower nursing home across the street from Sotheby’s—the aged residents imbued with new motility and strigoi strength.

Gus killed the engine and popped the trunk. Eph, Angel, and the two Sapphires jumped out and started grabbing silver.

“I guess he won it after all,” said Gus, ripping open a carton, handing Eph two vases of painted glass with narrow necks, gasoline sloshing inside.

“Won what?” said Eph.

Gus wicked a rag into each and then flicked open a silver-plated Zippo, igniting them. He took one vase from Eph and walked out into the street away from the Hummer. “Put your shoulder into it, homes,” said Gus. “On three. One. Two. Yahh!”

They catapulted the economy-sized Molotov cocktails over the heads of the marauding vampires. The vases shattered, igniting immediately, liquid flame opening up and spreading instantly like twin pools of hell. Two Carmelite sisters went up first, their brown-and-white habits taking to the flame like sheets of newspaper. Then went the multitude of vampires in bathrobes and housecoats, squealing. The Sapphires came on next, skewering the engulfed creatures, finishing them off—only to see more come charging down 71st Street, like maniac firefighters answering a psychic five-alarm call.

A couple of burning vampires charged on, flames trailing, and only stopped a foot or so away from Gus after being riddled with silver bullets.

“Where the hell are they already?” yelled Gus, looking to Sotheby’s entrance. The tall, thin sidewalk trees out front burned like hellish sentries outside the auction house.

Eph saw building guards rushing to lock the revolving doors inside the glass lobby. “Come on!” he yelled, and they fought their way past the burning trees. Gus wasted some silver bolts on the doors, puncturing and weakening the glass before Angel charged through.

Setrakian leaned heavily on his oversize walking stick in the elevator going down. The auction had drained him, and yet there was so much more to do. Fet stood at his side, his weapon pack on his back, the $32 million book in bubble wrap under his arm.

To Setrakian’s right, one of the auction house’s security guards waited with hands clasped over his belt buckle.

Chamber music played over the panel speaker. A string quartet, Dvořák.

“Congratulations, sir,” said the security guard, to break the silence.

“Yes,” said Setrakian. He noticed the white wire in the man’s brown ear. “Does your radio work in this elevator, by any chance?”

“No, sir, it does not.”

The elevator stopped abruptly, all three men grabbing for the wall to steady themselves. The car started down again at once, then again stopped. The number on the overhead display read 4.

The guard pressed the DOWN button, then the 4 button, thumbing each one numerous times.

While the guard was so engaged, Fet drew a sword from his pack and faced the elevator door. Setrakian twisted the grip of his walking stick, exposing the silver shaft of his hidden blade.

The first bang against the door shook the guard, making him jump back.

The second blow produced a serving bowl-size dent.

The guard reached out his hand to feel the convexity. He began to say, “What the—”

The door slid open, and pale hands reached inside, pulling him out.

Fet barreled out after him with the book clutched under his arm, lowering his shoulder and driving forward like a running back taking the pigskin through an entire defensive line. He plowed the vampires straight back against the wall, Setrakian exiting behind him, his silver sword flashing, killing a path toward the main floor.

Fet slashed and chopped, fighting at close quarters with the creatures, feeling their inhuman warmth, their acidic white blood spurting onto his coat. He reached for the security guard with the fingers of his sword hand, but found he could do nothing for him, the guard disappearing to the floor beneath a huddle of hungry vampires.

With wide, sweeping slices, Setrakian cleared the way to the front railing overlooking the interior four-story drop. Outside, he saw bodies burning in the street, trees on fire, a melee at the building entrance. Inside, looking straight down, he saw the gangbanger Gus alongside his older Mexican friend. It was the limping ex-wrestler who looked up, pointing out Setrakian.

“Here!” Setrakian called back to Fet. Fet extricated himself from the pile-up, checking his clothes for blood worms as he came running. Setrakian pointed out the wrestler.

“You sure?” said Fet.

Setrakian nodded, and Fet, with a great scowl, held the Occido Lumen out over the railing, giving the wrestler a moment to limp over beneath him. Gus slashed a demon in the wrestler’s way, and Setrakian saw someone else—yes, it was Ephraim—warding others away with a lamp of ultraviolet light.

Fet released the precious book, watching it slowly turn as it fell.

Four stories below them, Angel caught it in his arms like a baby thrown from a burning building.

Fet turned, now able to fight two-handedly, sliding a dagger from the bottom of his pack and leading Setrakian to the escalators. The motorized staircases ran crisscross, side-by-side. Vampires on their way up—summoned to battle by the will of the Master—jumped tracks where the stairways crossed. Fet dispatched them with the tread of his boot and the tip of his sword, sending them sprawling down the moving stairs.

On the bottom flight, Setrakian looked back up through the gap. He saw Eichhorst high above on one of the upper floors, looking down.

The others had done most of the work for them in the lobby. Released vampire corpses lay twisted on the floor, faces and clawed hands frozen in a tableau of white-splattered agony. More vampire drones were pounding on the glass entrance, with still others on the way.

Gus led them back out through the smashed doors onto the sidewalk. Vampires came swarming from 71st and 72nd to the west, and York Avenue north and south. They came up out of the streets, rising through displaced manholes in the intersections. Fighting them off was like trying to bail out of a sinking ship, two vampires arriving for every one destroyed.

A pair of black Hummers rounded the corner hard, headlights angry, front grilles bumping down vampires, rugged tires squashing their bodies. A team of hunters stepped out, hooded and armed with crossbows, and immediately made their presence known. Vampire killing vampire, the drones getting mowed down by the elite guard.

Setrakian knew they had arrived either to escort him and the book directly to the Ancients, or to take possession of the Silver Codex outright. Neither option suited him. He remained close to the wrestler, who carried the book under his arm; his lumbering pace suited Setrakian’s slow legs. Upon learning the wrestler’s moniker, “The Silver Angel,” Setrakian had to smile.

Fet led the way to the corner of 72nd and York. The manhole he wanted had already been popped open, and he grabbed Creem and sent him down first, to clear the hole of vampires. He let Angel and Setrakian down next, the wrestler barely fitting inside the hole. Then Eph, without any questions, climbing right down the iron ladder rungs. Gus and the rest of the Sapphires hung back in order to allow the vampires to close in on them, then went down themselves, Fet disappearing below just as the ring of mayhem collapsed on him.

“Other way!” he yelled down to them. “Other way!”

They had started west along the sewer tunnel, toward the heart of the island underground, but Fet dropped down and led them east, underneath one long block that dead-ended over FDR Drive. The trough of the tunnel carried a measly trickle of water; lack of human activity in surface Manhattan meant fewer showers, fewer flushes.

“All the way to the end!” said Fet, his voice booming inside the stone tube.

Eph came up alongside Setrakian. The old man was slowing, the nub of his walking stick splashing in the water stream. “Can you make it?” said Eph.

“Have to,” said Setrakian.

“I saw Palmer. Today is the day. The last day.”

Setrakian said, “I know it.”

Eph patted Angel’s arm, the one that held the bubble-wrapped book. “Here.” Eph took the bundle from him, and the hobbling Mexican giant took Setrakian’s arm, helping the old man along.

Eph looked at the wrestler as they rushed, filled with questions he knew not how to ask.

“Here they come!” said Fet.

Eph looked back. Mere shapes in the dark tunnel, to his eyes, coming at them like a dark rush of drowning water.

Two of the Sapphires turned back to fight. “No!” cried Fet. “Don’t bother! Just get through here!”

Fet slowed between two long wooden cases strapped to pipes along the tunnel walls. They looked like speaker bars, set vertically, angled in toward the tunnel. To each, he had rigged a simple switch wire, both of which he gathered in his hands now.

“Down the side!” he yelled to the others behind him. “Through the panel.”

But none of them turned the corner. The sight of the onrushing vampires and Fet standing alone in the tunnel holding the triggers to Setrakian’s contraption was too compelling.

Out of the darkness came the first faces, red-eyed, mouths open. Tumbling over one another in an all-out race to be the first to attack the humans, strigoi surged toward them without any regard for their fellow vampires or themselves. A stampede of sickness and depravity, the fury of the overturned hive.

Fet waited, and waited, and waited, until they were nearly upon him. His voice rose in a yell that started in his throat, but by the end seemed to come straight from his mind, a howl of human perseverance into the gale force of a hurricane.

Their hands reached out, the tide of vampires about to overwhelm him—as he flicked both switches.

The effect was something like the ignition of a giant camera flashbulb. The twin devices went off simultaneously in a single explosion of silver. An expulsion of chemical matter that eviscerated the vampires in a wave of devastation. Those in the rear went as quickly as those at the vanguard, because there was no shadow to hide in, the silver particulate burning through them like radiation, smashing their viral DNA.

The silver tinge lingered in the moments after the great purge, like a shiny snowfall, Fet’s howl fading into the emptied tunnel as the shredded matter that was the once-human vampires settled to the tunnel floor.

Gone. As though he had teleported them somewhere else. Like taking a picture, only once the flash faded, no one was there.

No one complete, at least.

Fet released the triggers and turned back at Setrakian.

Setrakian said, “Indeed.”

They followed another ladder, leading down to a walkway with a railing. At the end was a door that opened onto an under-sidewalk grate, the surface visible above them. Fet climbed up the boxes he had set as steps, and popped the loosened grate free with his shoulder.

They emerged at the 73rd Street ramp entrance onto FDR Drive. A few strays blundered into them as they rushed across the six-lane parkway over the dividing concrete barriers, moving around abandoned cars toward the East River.

Eph looked back, seeing vampires dropping down off the high balcony that was the courtyard at the end of 72nd Street. They came swarming out of 73rd along the parkway. Eph worried that they were backing themselves up against the river, with blood-hungry revenants closing on all sides.

But on the other side of a low iron fence was a landing, a municipal dock of sorts, though it was too dark for Eph to see what it was for. Fet went over first, moving with surly confidence, and so Eph followed with all the others.

Fet ran to the end of the landing, and Eph saw it now: a tugboat, large tires tied all the way around its sides, acting as fenders. They climbed onto the main deck, Fet running up into the wheel-house. The engine started with a cough and a roar, and Eph untied the aft end. The boat lurched at first, Fet pushing it too hard, then launched away from the island.

Out on the West Channel, floating a few dozen yards off the edge of Manhattan, Eph watched the horde of vampires clamor to the edge of FDR Drive. They bunched there, trailing the boat along its slow southern path, unable to venture out over moving water.

The river was a safe zone. A no-vamp’s-land.

Beyond the plunderers, Eph looked up at the looming buildings of the darkened city. Behind him, above Roosevelt Island, in the middle of the East River, were pockets of daylight—not pure sunlight, for it was evidently an overcast day, but clarity—between the smoke-veiled landmasses of Manhattan and Queens.

They approached the Queensboro Bridge, gliding underneath the high cantilever span. A bright flash streaked across the Manhattan skyline, turning Eph’s head. Then another went up, like a modest firework. Then a third.

Illumination flares, in orange and white.

A vehicle came tearing up FDR Drive toward the throng of vampires following the boat. It was a Jeep, soldiers in camouflage standing out of the back, firing automatic weapons into the crowd.

“The Army!” said Eph. He felt something he hadn’t felt in some time: hope. He looked around for Setrakian, and, not seeing him, headed into the main cabin.

Nora finally found a door, leading not to any sort of exit from the tunnel but into a deep storage closet. There was no lock—the planners never anticipated pedestrians one hundred feet below the Hudson—and inside she found safety equipment, such as replacement bulbs for signal lights, orange flags and vests, and an old cardboard box of flares. Flashlights also, but the batteries were all corroded.

She evened out a pile of sandbags in the corner to fashion a seat for her mother, then grabbed a handful of flares, throwing them into her bag.

“Mama. Please, please, be quiet. Stay here. I am coming back. I am.”

Nora’s mother sat on the cold throne of sandbags with a curious look about the closet. “Where did you put the cookies?”

“All gone, Mama. You sleep now. Rest.”

“Here? In the pantry?”

“Please. It’s a surprise—for Papa.” Nora was backing out through the door. “Don’t move until he comes for you.”

She closed the door quickly, scanning the tunnel for vampires with her scope, then dumping two sandbags in front of the door to hold it shut. She then went racing back toward Zack, simultaneously leading her own scent away from her mother.

She had taken the coward’s way out, she supposed—stuffing her poor mother inside a closet—but at least this way there was hope.

She continued back along the eastbound side of the tunnel, looking for the place where Zack had hidden. Things looked different through the soupy green light of the monocular. Her marker had been a stripe of white paint along the low side of the tunnel—but she could not locate it now. She thought again of those two vampires who had come up on her, and was leaping with anxiety.

“Zack!” A yelled whisper. Foolhardy, but concern trumped reason. She had to be near where she had left him. “Zack—it’s Nora! Where are…?”

What she saw before her chased the voice from her throat. Illuminated in her monocular, illustrated on the broad side of the tunnel, was a vast graffiti mural rendered with exceptional technique. It depicted a great, faceless humanlike creature with two arms, two legs, and two magnificent wings.

She realized intuitively that this was the final iteration of the six-petal tags they had been finding all around town. The earlier flowers, or bugs: those were icons, analogs, abstractions. Cartoons of this fearsome being.

The image of this broad-winged creature, and the manner in which it was rendered—at once both naturalistic and extraordinarily evocative—terrified her in a way she could not begin to understand. How eerie was this ambitious work of street art appearing in this dark tunnel so deep beneath the surface of the earth. A brilliant tattoo of extraordinary beauty and menace written upon this bowel of civilization.

An image, she realized at once, intended to be viewed only by vampiric eyes.

A sibilation spun Nora around. In her nightscope, she saw Kelly Goodweather, her face twisted into an expression of want that nearly resembled pain. Her mouth was an open slit, the tip of her stinger flicking like a lizard’s tongue, her parted lips bared in a hiss.

Her torn clothes were still soaked from the surface rain, hanging heavily from her thin body, her hair flattened, smears of dirt streaking her flesh. Her eyes, which appeared screaming white in the greenness of Nora’s scope, were wide with want.

Nora fumbled out her UVC lamp. She needed to put some hot space between herself and her lover’s undead ex-wife—but Kelly came at her with incredible speed, smacking the lamp from her hand before Nora could turn on the switch.

The Luma lamp smashed against the wall and fell to the ground.

Only Nora’s silver blade kept Kelly off her, the vampire leaping up and backward onto the low tunnel shelf. She then hurdled over Nora to the other side, Nora tracking her with her long knife. Kelly feigned an attack, then again bounded overhead. This time Nora swiped at her as she passed, dizzied from having to view the agile creature through her scope.

Kelly landed on the other side of the tunnel, a slash of white appearing on the side of her neck. A surface wound only, but enough to get Kelly’s attention. The vampire viewed its own white blood on its long hand, then flicked it at Nora, her face turning wicked and fierce.

Nora backed off, reaching into her bag for one of the flares. She heard limbs scrabbling over track stones, and did not need to take her eyes off Kelly to see them.

Three little vampire children, two boys and a girl, summoned by Kelly to assist in taking Nora down.

“Okay,” said Nora, twisting the plastic cap off the flare. “You want to do it this way?” She scratched the top of the cap against the red stick and the flare ignited, red flame searing into the darkness. Nora tipped back her scope, able to see with her own eyes now, the flame illuminating their section of the tunnel from ceiling to floor in a nimbus of angry red.

The children loped backward, repelled by the bright light. Nora waved the flare at Kelly, who lowered her chin but did not retreat.

One of the boys came at Nora from the side, emitting a shrill squeal, and Nora stepped into the child with her knife—burying the silver blade deep into its chest, right to the hilt. The child sagged and staggered back—Nora pulling back the blade fast—weakened and dazed. The child spread its lips, attempting a last-ditch sting—and Nora jammed the hot end of the flare into its mouth.

The creature bucked wildly, Nora hacking at it with her knife, screaming all the while.

The child vampire fell, and Nora pulled out the flare, still lit. She whipped around, anticipating Kelly’s rear attack.

But Kelly was gone. Nowhere to be found.

Nora brandished the flare, the two remaining vampire children crouching near their fallen playmate. She made sure that Kelly wasn’t on the ceiling or underneath the ledge.

Uncertainty was worse. The children split up, circling around her on either side, and Nora backed up to the wall beneath the giant mural, ready to do battle, determined not to be ambushed.

Eldritch Palmer watched the illumination flares streaking over rooftops uptown. Puny fireworks. Match-strikes in a world of darkness. The helicopter approached him from the north, slowing above. He awaited his visitors on the seventy-eighth floor of the Stoneheart Building.

Eichhorst was first. A vampire wearing a tweed suit was like a pit bull wearing a knit sweater. He held the door open, the Master ducking as it entered, striding, cloaked, across the floor.

Palmer watched all this through the reflection in the windows.

Explain.

The voice sepulchral, edged with fury.

Palmer, having summoned the strength to stand, turned on his weak legs. “I cut off your funding. I closed the line of credit. Simple.”

Eichhorst stood to the side, watching with his gloved hands crossed. The Master looked down at Palmer, its raw-red skin inflamed, its eyes crimson and penetrating.

Palmer went on, “It was a demonstration. Of how critical my participation is to your success. It became evident to me that you needed to be reminded of my worth.”

They won the book.

This from Eichhorst, whose contempt for Palmer had always been certain, and returned in kind. But Palmer addressed the Master.

“What does it matter at this late moment? Turn me and I will be only too happy to finish off Professor Setrakian myself.”

You understand so little. But then, you have never viewed me as anything other than a means to an end. Your end.

“And shouldn’t I say the same of you! You, who has withheld your gift from me for so many years. I have given you everything and withheld nothing. Until this moment!”

This book is no mere trophy. It is a chalice of information. It is the last, lingering hope of the pig humans. The final gasp of your race. This, you cannot conceive. Your human perspective is so small.

“Then allow me to see.” Palmer stepped toward him, standing only halfway up the Master’s cloaked chest. “It is time. Deliver to me what is rightfully mine, and everything you need shall be yours.”

The Master said nothing into Palmer’s head. He did not move.

But Palmer was fearless. “We have a deal.”

Did you stop anything else? Have you disrupted any of the other plans we set in motion?

“None. Everything stands. Now—do we have a deal?”

We do.

The suddenness with which the Master leaned down to him shocked Palmer, made his fragile heart jump. Its face, up close, the blood worms coasting the veins and capillaries just beneath the florid beetroot that was its skin. Palmer’s brain released long-forgotten hormones, the moment of conversion upon him. Mentally, he had long ago packed his bags, and yet there was still a burst of trepidation at the first step of the ultimate one-way voyage. He had no quarrel with the improvements the turning would have upon his body; he wondered only what it would do to his long-held consolation and fiercest weapon, his mind.

The Master’s hand pressed onto Palmer’s bony shoulder like a vulture’s talons onto a twig. Its other hand gripped the crown of Palmer’s head, turning it to one side, fully extending the old man’s neck and throat.

Palmer looked at the ceiling, his eyes losing focus. He heard choir voices in his head. He had never been held by anyone—anything—in their arms like this in his life. He allowed himself to go limp.

He was ready. His breath came in short, excited bursts as the hardened nail of the Master’s long, thick middle finger pricked at the flesh sagging over his stretched neck.

The Master saw the sick man’s pulse beating through his neck, the man’s heart throbbing in anticipation, and the Master felt the call deep within its stinger. He wanted blood.

But it ignored its nature and, with one firm crack, it ripped Eldritch Palmer’s head from his torso. It released the head and gripped the spurting body and tore Palmer in half, the body splitting apart easily where the bones of the hips narrowed to the waist. It tossed the bloody pieces of meat to the far wall, where they struck the framed masterworks of human abstract art and fell to the floor.

The Master turned fast, sensing another blood source ticking on the premises. Palmer’s manservant, Mr. Fitzwilliam, stood in the doorway. A broad-shouldered human wearing a suit tailored to accommodate weapons of self-defense.

Palmer had wanted this man’s body for his turning. He coveted his bodyguard’s strength, his physical stature, desiring the man’s form for all eternity.

Mr. Fitzwilliam was one of a package with Palmer.

The Master looked into his mind, and showed him this, before flying at him in a blur. Mr. Fitzwilliam first saw the Master all the way across the room, red blood dripping from his enormous hands—and then the Master was bent over him, a stinging, draining sensation like a rod of fire in his throat.

The pain faded after a time. So did Mr. Fitzwilliam’s view of the ceiling.

The Master let the man fall where he had drunk him.

Animals.

Eichhorst remained across the wide room, patient as a lawyer.

The Master said:

Let us commence the Night Eternal.

The tugboat drifted down the East River without lights, toward the United Nations. Fet guided the boat along the besieged island, staying only a few hundred yards off the coast. He was no boat captain, but the throttle was easy enough to operate, and, as he had learned in docking the tug at 72nd Street, the thick tire fenders were quite forgiving.

Behind him, at the navigation table, Setrakian sat before the Occido Lumen. A single strong lamp made the silver-leaf illustrations glow off the page. Setrakian was absorbed in the work, studying it in a near-trance. He kept a small notebook next to him. A ruled composition school notebook almost half-full with the old man’s notes.

The writing in the Lumen was densely yet beautifully hand-scribed, as many as one hundred lines to a page. His old, long-ago-broken fingers turned each corner with delicacy and speed.

He analyzed every page, backlighting them, scanning for watermarks and quickly sketching them as they were discovered. He annotated their exact position and disposition on the page, as these were vital elements in decoding the text laid on them.

Eph stood at his shoulder, alternately looking at the phantasmagoric illustrations and checking the burning island out the wheelhouse window. He noticed a radio near Fet and switched it on, keeping it low so as not to distract Setrakian. It was satellite radio, and Eph searched the news channels until he came across a voice.

A tired female voice, a broadcaster holed up in the Sirius XM headquarters, was operating off some sort of failsafe backup generator. She was working off multiple, fractured sources—Internet, phone, and e-mail—collating reports from around the country and the world, while repeatedly clarifying that she had no way of verifying this information was accurate.

She spoke candidly about vampirism as a virus spreading person-to-person. She detailed a crumbling domestic infrastructure: accidents, some catastrophic, disabling, or otherwise cutting off traffic along key bridges in Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Washington state, and California. Power outages further isolated certain regions, most prevalent along the coasts. Gas lines in the Midwest. The National Guard and various Army regiments had been ordered into peacekeeping duty in many major metropolitan centers, with reports of military activity in New York and Washington, DC. Fighting had broken out along the border between North and South Korea. Burning mosques in Iraq had triggered rioting, compounded by U.S. peacekeeping efforts there. A series of unexplained explosions in the catacombs beneath Paris had crippled the city. And an eerie series of reports detailed suicide clusters occurring at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Iguazu Falls on the border between Brazil and Argentina, and Niagara Falls in New York.

Eph shook his head at all of this—bewildering, a nightmare, War of the Worlds come true—until he heard the report of an Amtrak derailment inside the North River Tunnel, further cutting off the island of Manhattan. The broadcaster moved on to a report of rioting in Mexico City, leaving Eph staring at the radio.

“Derailment,” he said.

The radio couldn’t answer him.

Fet said, “She didn’t say when. Maybe they got through.”

Fear spiked in Eph’s chest. He felt sick. “They didn’t,” he said. He knew it. No ESP, no psychic knowledge: he simply knew it. Their escape now struck him as being too good to be true. All his relief, his clear-headedness—gone. A dark pall fell over his mind.

“I have to go there.” He turned toward Fet, unable to see anything but the mental image of a derailment and vampire attack. “Bring us in. You have to let me off. I’m going after Zack and Nora.”

Fet did not argue, fooling with the steering controls. “Let me find someplace to crash-land.”

Eph looked for weapons. Former gang rivals Gus and Creem were eating junk food out of a convenience-store bag. Gus used his boot to slide their weapon bag toward Eph.

A change in the broadcaster’s tone returned their attention to the radio. A nuclear plant accident had been reported on the eastern coast of China. Nothing out of Chinese news agencies, but there were eyewitness accounts of a mushroom cloud visible from Taiwan, as well as seismometer readings near Guangdong indicating an Earth tremor in the neighborhood of a quake registering 6.6 on the Richter scale. The lack of reporting from Hong Kong was said to indicate the possibility of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, which would turn electrical cables into lightning rods or antennas and have the effect of frying any connected solid-state devices.

Gus said, “Vampires nuking us now? Fuck us.” Then he translated for Angel, who was repairing a homemade splint around his knee.

“Madre de Dios,” said Angel, crossing himself.

Fet said, “Wait a minute. A nuclear plant accident? That’s a meltdown, not a bomb. Maybe a steam explosion on the site—like Chernobyl—but not a detonation. They’re designed so that those aren’t possible.”

“Designed by whom?” Setrakian said this, never looking up from the book.

Fet sputtered. “I don’t know—what do you mean?”

“Constructed by whom?”

“Stoneheart,” said Eph. “Eldritch Palmer.”

“What?” said Fet. “But—nuclear explosions? Why do that when he’s so close to winning the world?”

“There will be more,” said Setrakian. His voice came without breath, disembodied, intoned.

Fet said, “What do you mean, more?”

Setrakian said, “Four more. The Ancients were born from the light. The Fallen Light, Occido Lumen—and they can only be consumed by it…”

Gus got up and went to stand over the old man. The book was open to a two-page spread. A complex mandala in silver, black, and red. On top of it, on tracing paper, Setrakian had laid out the outline of the six-winged angel. Gus said, “It says that?”

Setrakian closed the silver book and got to his feet. “We must return to the Ancients. At once.”

Gus said, “Okay,” though he was befuddled by this sudden change in course. “To give them the book?”

“No,” said Setrakian, finding his pillbox inside his vest pocket, pulling it open with trembling fingers. “The book arrives too late for them.”

Gus squinted. “Too late?”

Setrakian struggled to pluck a nitroglycerin pill out of the box. Fet steadied the old man’s shaking hand, pinching a nitroglycerin pill and laying it into his wrinkled palm. “You do realize, professor,” said Fet, “that Palmer just opened a new nuclear plant on Long Island.”

The old man’s eyes grew distant and unfocused, as though still dazed by the concentric geometry of the mandala. Then Setrakian placed the pill beneath his tongue and closed his eyes, waiting for its effects to steady his heart.

Zack, after Nora had gone off with her mother, lay in filth beneath the short ledge running the length of the southern tube of the North River Tunnels, hugging the silver blade to his chest. She was coming right back, and he had to listen for her. Not easy over the sound of his wheezing. He realized this only now, and felt around in his pockets, finding his inhaler.

He brought it to his mouth and took two puffs, and felt immediate relief. He thought of the breath in his lungs like a guy trapped inside a net. When Zack got anxious, it was like the guy was fighting the net, pulling at it, winding himself up worse and making everything tight. The puff from Zack’s inhaler was like a blast of knockout gas, the guy weakening, going limp, the net relaxing over him.

He put away the inhaler and reaffirmed his grip on the knife. Give it a name and it’s yours forever. That is what the professor had told him. Zack feverishly raced through his thoughts in search of a name. Trying to focus on anything but the tunnel.

Cars get girl names. Guns get guy names. What do knives get?

He thought of the professor, the man’s old, broken fingers, presenting him with the weapon.

Abraham.

That was his first name.

That was the name of the knife.

“Help!”

A man’s voice. Someone running through the tunnel—coming nearer. His voice echoing.

“Help me! Anybody there?”

Zack did not move. He didn’t even turn his head, only his eyes. He heard the man stumble and fall, and that was when Zack heard the other footsteps. Someone pursuing him. The man got up again, then fell. Or else was thrown down. Zack hadn’t realized how close the man was to him. The man kicked and howled out some gibberish like a madman, crawling along one of the rails. Zack saw him then, a form in the darkness, clawing forward while kicking back at his pursuers. He was so near that Zack could feel the man’s terror. So near that Zack readied Abraham in his hand, blade pointing out.

One of them landed on the man’s back. His yowling was cut short, one of their hands reaching around and entering his open mouth, pulling at his cheek. More hands set upon him—overlarge fingers grabbing at his flesh and his clothes, and dragging him away.

Zack felt the man’s madness spread into him. He lay there shivering so hard he thought he was going to give himself away. The man got off another anguished groan, and it was enough to know that they—the children’s hands—were pulling him back the other way.

Zack had to run. He had to run off after Nora. He remembered one time playing hide-and-seek in his old neighborhood, and he had burrowed in behind some bushes, listening to the seeker’s slow count. He was found last, or almost last, once he realized that one kid was still missing, a younger boy who had joined the game late. And they looked for him a little bit, calling his name, and then lost interest, figuring he had gone back home. But Zack didn’t think so. He had seen the glimmer in the young boy’s eye when they ran off to hide, the almost-evil anticipation of the hunted wanting to outwit the hunter. Beyond the thrill of the chase: the knowledge of a really clever hiding place.

Clever to a five-year-old’s mind. And then Zack knew. He went all the way down the street to the house owned by the old man who yelled at them when kids cut through his backyard. Zack went to the refrigerator lying on its side, still at the bottom of their driveway on the day after trash day. The door had been removed, but now it lay on top of the squash-yellow appliance. Zack pulled it open, breaking the seal, and there was the boy, starting to turn blue. Somehow, with near Hulk-like hide-and-seek strength, the five-year-old had pulled the door of the fridge over him. The boy was fine, except for puking onto the lawn after Zack helped him out, and the old man coming to his door and yelling at them to beat it.

Beat it.

Zack slid out on his back, half-coated in tunnel soot, and started running. He turned on his busted iPod, the cracked screen lighting the floor in front of him in a four-foot nimbus of soft, blue light. He couldn’t hear anything, even his own footfalls, so loud was the panic in his head. He assumed he was being chased—could feel hands reaching for the back of his neck—and whether true or not, he ran as though it were.

He wanted to call out Nora’s name, but did not, knowing it would give away his position. Abraham’s blade scraped the wall of the tunnel, telling him he was veering too far to the right.

Zack saw a burning red flame up ahead. Not a torch, but an angry light, like a flare. It scared him. He was supposed to be running away from trouble, not toward it. He slowed, not wanting to go forward, unable to go back.

He thought about the boy hiding inside the refrigerator. No light, no sound, no air.

The door, dark against the dividing wall, had a sign on it Zack did not bother to read. The handle turned and he went through it, back into the original northbound tunnel. He could smell the smoke the friction of the derailed train caused, along with the noxious stench of ammonia. This was a mistake—he should wait for Nora, she would be looking for him—but on he ran.

Ahead, a figure. At first, he believed that it was Nora. This person also wore a backpack, and Nora had been carrying a bag.

But such optimism was just a trick of his preteen mind.

The hissing sound scared him initially. But Zack saw enough in the faint outer reaches of his light source to tell that this person was involved in an endeavor that did not involve violence. He watched the graceful movements of the person’s arm and realized he was spraying paint onto the tunnel wall.

Zack went another step forward. The person was not much taller than he, a sweatshirt hood over his head. There was paint spatter on his elbows and the hem of his black hoodie, his camouflage pants and Converse hi-tops. He was doing up the wall, though Zack could see only a small corner of the mural, which was silver and ruffled in appearance. Under it, the vandal was finishing his tag. PHADE, it read.

All this happened in moments—which was why it did not seem unusual to Zack that someone should have been painting in absolute darkness.

Phade lowered his arm, having finished his signature, then turned toward Zack.

Zack said, “Hey, I don’t know what you know, but you gotta get out of this…”

Phade slid back the hood covering his face—and it was not a he. Phade was a girl, or had once been a girl, no older than her teens. Phade’s face was now inert, unnaturally immobile, like a mask of dead flesh wrapping the malignant biology festering within. Its skin, by Zack’s iPod light, had the pallor of pickled flesh, like the color of a fetal pig inside a specimen jar. Zack saw a spill of red down the front of its chin, neck, and sweatshirt. The red stain was not paint.

Zack heard squealing behind him. He turned for a moment—and then whipped around, realizing he had just turned his back on a vampire. As he turned back to Phade, he put out his hand with the knife in it, not knowing that Phade had darted straight at him.

Abraham’s blade ran right into Phade’s throat. Zack pulled back his hand fast, as though having committed a tragic accident, and white fluid came burbling out of Phade’s neck. Phade’s eyes rolled wide with a surge of menace, and before Zack knew what he was doing, he had stabbed the vampire four more times in the throat. The can of spray paint sssssed against Phade’s leg before falling to the ground.

The vampire collapsed.

Zack stood there with the murder weapon in his hand, holding Abraham like something he had broken and didn’t know how to set down.

The patter of advancing vampires woke him up, unseen but bearing down on him out of the darkness. Zack dropped his iPod light, reaching down for the can of silver paint. He got it into his hand and the spray trigger under his finger just as two spiderlike vampire children came screaming out of the dark, stingers flicking in and out of their mouths. The way in which they moved was indescribably wrong, so swift, exploiting the flexibility of youth into dislocated arms and knees, moving impossibly low and tight along the floor.

Zack took aim at the stingers. He sprayed both creatures full in the face—mouth and nose and eyes—before they could get to him. They had a sort of film over their eyes already, and the paint adhered to it, shutting down their vision. They reeled back, trying to clear their eyes with their oversized—for their bodies—hands and having no luck.

This was Zack’s chance to pounce and kill—but, knowing more vampires were on the way, he instead picked up his iPod light and ran before the painted vampires perceived him through other senses.

He saw steps and a door stamped with caution signs. It was locked but not bolted, no one expecting burglars this far beneath sea level, and Zack slipped the point of Abraham’s blade inside the door crack, working it behind the latch. Inside, the thrum of transformers startled him. He saw no other door, and panicked, thinking he was stuck. But a service duct ran a foot off the floor, out of the wall to the left, before turning and angling into the machinery. Zack chanced a look beneath it and did not see a facing wall. He deliberated a moment, then set his iPod down on the floor, lit-screen up, its light reflecting off the metal bottom of the duct. He then slid it down along beneath the duct like a thin puck gliding over an air hockey table. The up-shining light slid down the floor, turning slightly, but going a long way before stopping, hitting something hard. Zack saw that the light was no longer shining off the reflecting duct.

Zack did not hesitate. He got down on his belly and started beneath the duct before crawling back out again, starting over, realizing he could go faster on his already filthy back. Out he went, headfirst along the narrow crawl space. He slid some fifty feet, the floor at times grabbing his shirt, cutting into his back. At the end, his head popped out into a void, the duct turning and rising high up alongside an embedded ladder.

Zack reclaimed his iPod, shining it up. He could see nothing. But he could hear bumps echoing along the duct: vampire children following his route, moving with preternatural ease.

Zack started up the ladder, his paint can in his hand, Abraham stuck in his belt. He went hand-over-hand up the iron rungs, the echoing duct thumps rising with him. He stopped a moment, hooking his elbow on a rung, pulling the iPod from his pocket to check behind him.

The iPod tumbled from his grip. He grabbed after it, nearly slipping from the ladder, then watched it fall.

As the glowing screen dropped, twisting, it flashed past a form rising up the ladder, illuminating another of his evil playmates.

Zack went back to climbing, faster than he thought he could. But never fast enough. He felt the ladder shaking, and stopped and turned just in time. The child vampire was at his heels when Zack hit it with the paint-can spray, stunning it, blinding it—and then kicking at it with his heel until it fell squealing from the ladder.

He kept climbing, wishing he didn’t have to keep looking back. The iPod light was tiny, the floor below a long way away. The ladder shook—harder now. More bodies climbing up the rungs. Zack heard a dog barking—muffled, an exterior noise—and knew he was near some kind of exit. This gave him a boost of energy and he hurried upward, coming to a flat, round roof.

A manhole. The smooth bottom of it, cold from touching the outside. The surface world was right above. Zack pushed with the heel of his hand. He gave it all he had.

It was no use.

He felt someone near, coming up the ladder, and blindly sprayed the paint below him. He heard a noise like moaning and he kicked downward, but the creature did not fall right away. It was hanging on, swinging. Zack kicked downward with one leg, and a hand grabbed his ankle. A hot hand with a strong grip. A vampire child hanging from him, trying to pull him down. Zack dropped the paint can, needing both hands to grip the ladder. He kicked, trying to ram the creature’s fingers into the ladder rungs, but it would not loosen its grip. Until at once—with a squeal—it did.

Zack heard the body smack the wall on the way down.

Another being came up on him before he had time to react. A vampire, he felt its heat, he smelled its earthiness. A hand grabbed his armpit, hooking him, lifting him to the manhole. With two great shoulder shoves, the creature loosened the manhole, throwing it aside. It climbed into the immediate cool of the open air, hauling Zack up with it.

He pulled at the knife at his waist, nearly slicing off his belt trying to work it free. But the vampire’s hand closed around his, squeezing hard, holding him there. Zack closed his eyes, not wanting to see the creature. But the grip held him fast and did not move. As though it were waiting.

Zack opened his eyes. He looked up slowly, dreading the sight of its malicious face.

Its eyes were burning red, its hair flat and dead around its face. Its swollen throat bucked, its stinger flicking at the insides of its cheeks. The look it gave him was a mix of vampiric desire and creature satisfaction.

Abraham slipped from Zack’s hand.

He said:

“Mom.”

They arrived at the building on Central Park via two stolen hotel courtesy cars, encountering no military interference along the way. Inside, the power was out, the elevator inoperable. Gus and the Sapphires started up the stairs, but Setrakian could not climb to the top. Fet did not offer to carry him; Setrakian was too proud for this to even be contemplated. The obstacle appeared insurmountable, and Setrakian, the silver book in his arms, seemed older than ever before.

Fet noted that the elevator was old, with folding gate doors. On a hunch, he went exploring doors near the stairway, and found an old-fashioned dumbwaiter lined with wallpaper. Without a word of protest, Setrakian handed Fet his walking stick and climbed into the half-sized car, sitting with the book on his knees. Angel worked the pulley and counterweight, hauling him up at a gradual rate of speed.

Setrakian rose up in darkness through the building inside the coffin-like conveyance, with his hands resting on the silver plating of the old tome. He was trying to catch his breath, and to settle his mind, but a roll call of sorts ran unbidden through his head: the face of each and every vampire he had ever slain. All the white blood he had spilled, all the worms he had loosed from cursed bodies. For years he had puzzled over the nature of the origin of these monsters on Earth. The Ancients, where they came from. The original act of evil that created these beings.

Fet reached the empty top floor still under construction, and found the door to the dumbwaiter. He opened it and watched a seemingly dazed Setrakian turn and test the floor with his shoe soles before standing out of it. Fet handed him his staff, and the old man blinked and looked at him with only a trace of recognition.

Up a few steps, the door to the empty top-floor apartment was ajar. Gus led the way inside. Mr. Quinlan and a couple of hunters stood beyond the entrance, and only watched them enter. No search, no accosting. Past them, the Ancients stood as before, still as statues, looking out over the falling city.

In absolute silence, Quinlan took position next to a narrow ebony door at the opposite side of the room, wide left of the Ancients. Fet then realized there were only two Ancients now. Where the third had stood, to the far right, all that remained was what appeared to be a pile of white ash in a small wooden urn.

Setrakian walked farther toward them than the hunters had allowed on his previous visit. He stopped near the middle of the room. An illumination flare streaked over Central Park, lighting the apartment and outlining the two remaining Ancients in magnesium-white.

Setrakian said, “So you know.”

There was no response.

“Other than Sardu—you were Six Ancients, three Old World, three New. Six birth sites.”

Birth is a human act. Six sites of origin.

“One of them was Bulgaria. Then China. But why didn’t you safeguard them?”

Hubris, perhaps. Or something quite like it. By the time we knew we were in danger, it was too late. The Young One deceived us. Chernobyl was a decoy—His site. For a long time he managed to stay silent, feeding on carrion. Now he has moved in first—

“Then you know you are doomed.”

And then the one on the left vaporized into a burst of fine, white light. His form became dust and fell away to the floor amid a searing noise, like a high-pitched sigh. A shock that was partially electric and partially psychic jolted the humans in the room.

Almost instantaneously, two of the hunters were similarly obliterated. They vanished into a mist finer than smoke, leaving neither ashes nor dust—only their clothes, falling in a warm heap on the floor.

With the Ancient went its sacred bloodline.

The Master was eliminating his only rivals for control of the planet. Was that it?

The irony is that this has always been our plan for the world. Allowing the livestock to erect their own pens, to create and proliferate their weapons and reasons to self-destruct. We have been altering the planet’s ecosystem through its master breed. Once the greenhouse effect was irreversible, we were going to reveal ourselves and rise to power.

Setrakian said, “You were making the world over into a vampire nest.”

Nuclear winter is a perfect environment. Longer nights, shorter days. We could exist on the surface, shielded from the sun by the contaminated atmosphere. And we were almost there. But he foresaw that. Foresaw that, once we achieved that end, he would have to share with us this planet and its rich food source. And he does not want that.

“What does he want, then?” Setrakian said.

Pain. The Young One wants all the pain he can get. As fast as he can get it. He cannot stop. This addiction… this hunger for pain lies, in fact, at the root of our very origin…

Setrakian took another step toward the last remaining Ancient. “Quickly. If you are vulnerable through the site of your creation—then so is he.”

Now you know what is in the book— You must learn to interpret it…

“The location of his origin? Is that it?”

You believed us the ultimate evil. A pox on your people. You thought we were the ultimate corrupters of your world, and yet we were the glue holding everything together. Now you will feel the lash of the true overlord.

“Not if you tell us where he is vulnerable—”

We owe you nothing. We are done.

“For revenge, then. He is obliterating you as you stand here!”

As usual, your human perspective is narrow. The battle is lost, but nothing is ever obliterated. In any event, now that he has shown his hand, you may be certain that he has fortified his earthly place of origin.

“You said Chernobyl,” said Setrakian.

Sadum. Amurah.

“What is that? I don’t understand,” said Setrakian, lifting the book. “If it’s here, I am certain. But I need time to decode it. And we don’t have time.”

We were neither born nor created. Sown from an act of barbarity. A transgression against the high order. An atrocity. And what was once sown may be reaped.

“How is he different?”

Only stronger. He is like us; we are him—but he is not us.

In less time than it took to blink, the Ancient had turned toward him. Its head and face were time-smoothed, worn of all features, with sagging red eyes, less a nose than a bump, and a downturned mouth open to toothless blackness.

One thing you must do. Gather every particle of our remains. Deposit them into a reliquary of silver and white oak. This is imperative. For us, but also for you.

“Why? Tell me.”

White oak. Be certain, Setrakian.

Setrakian said, “I will do no such thing unless I know that doing so won’t bring more harm.”

You will do it. There is no such thing now as more harm.

Setrakian saw that the Ancient was right.

Fet spoke up behind Setrakian. “We’ll collect it—and preserve it in a dustbin.”

The Ancient looked past Setrakian for a moment, at the exterminator. With sag-eyed contempt, but also something like pity.

Sadum. Amurah. And his name… our name…

And then it dawned on Setrakian. “Ozryel… The Angel of Death.” And he understood everything, and thought all the right questions.

But it was too late.

A blast of white light and a pulse of energy, and the last remaining New World Ancient vanished into a scattering of snow-like ash.

The last remaining hunters twisted as though in a moment of pain—and then evaporated right out of their clothes.

Setrakian felt a breath of ionized air ripple his clothes and fade away.

He sagged, leaning on his staff. The Ancients were no more. And yet a greater evil remained.

In the atomization of the Ancients, he glimpsed his own fate.

Fet was at his side. “What do we do?”

Setrakian found his voice. “Gather the remains.”

“You’re sure?”

Setrakian nodded. “Use the urn. The reliquary can come later.”

He turned and looked for Gus, finding the vampire killer sifting through a hunter’s clothes with the tip of his silver sword.

Gus was searching the room for Mr. Quinlan—or his remains—but the Ancients’ chief hunter was nowhere to be found.

The narrow door at the left end of the room, however, the ebony door Quinlan had retreated to after they entered, was ajar.

The Ancients’ words came back to Gus, from their first meeting:

He is our best hunter. Efficient and loyal. In many respects, unique.

Had Quinlan somehow been spared? Why hadn’t he disintegrated like the rest?

“What is it?” asked Setrakian, approaching Gus.

Gus said, “One of the hunters, Quinlan… he left no trace… Where did he go?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. You are free of them now,” said Setrakian. “Free of their control.”

Gus looked back at the old man. “Ain’t none of us free for long.”

“You will have the chance to release your mother.”

“If I find her.”

“No,” said Setrakian. “She will find you.”

Gus nodded. “So—nothing’s changed.”

“One thing. They would have made you one of their hunters if they had succeeded in pushing back the Master. You have been spared that.”

“We’re splitting,” said Creem. “If it’s all the same to you. We know the ropes now and it seems to me we can carry on with the good work. But we all have families to gather. Or maybe we don’t. Either way, we have places to secure. But if you ever need the Sapphires, Gus—you just come and find us.”

Creem shook hands with Gus. Angel stood by uncertainly. He sized up one gang leader, and then the other. He nodded at Gus. The big ex-wrestler had chosen to stay.

Gus turned to Setrakian. “I’m one of your hunters now.”

Setrakian said, “You don’t need anything more from me. But I need one more thing from you.”

“Just name it.”

“A ride. A fast one.”

“Fast is my specialty. They got more Hummers in a garage underneath this funhouse. Unless that shit evaporated too.”

Gus went off to claim a vehicle. Fet had located, inside a chest of drawers in an adjoining room, a briefcase full of cash. He dumped out the paper currency so that Angel had something to deposit the Ancients’ ashes in. He had heard the entire conversation with Gus. “I think I know where we are going.”

“No,” said Setrakian, still looking distracted, only half-there. “Just me.” He handed Fet the Occido Lumen and his notebook.

“I don’t want this,” said Fet.

“You must take it. And remember. Sadum, Amurah. Will you remember that, Vasiliy?”

“I don’t need to remember anything—I’m going with you.”

“No. The book is the thing now. It must be kept safe, and out of the Master’s claws. We can’t lose it now.”

“We can’t lose you.”

Setrakian shook that off. “I am very nearly lost as it is.”

“That’s why you need me with you.”

“Sadum. Amurah. Say it,” said Setrakian. “That’s what you can do for me. Let me hear that—let me know that you keep those words…”

“Sadum. Amurah,” said Fet obediently. “I know them.”

Setrakian nodded. “This world is going to become a terribly hard place of little hope. Protect those words—that book—like a flame. Read it. The key to it is in my notes. Their nature, their origin, their name—they were all one…”

“You know I can’t make heads or tails—”

“Then go to Ephraim, together you will. You must go to him now.” His voice broke. “You two need to stay together.”

“Two of us together doesn’t equal one of you. Give this to Gus. Let me take you, please…” Now there were tears in the eyes of the exterminator.

Setrakian’s gnarled hand gripped Fet’s forearm with fading strength. “It is your responsibility now, Vasiliy. I trust you implicitly… Be bold.”

The silver plating was cold to touch. He accepted the book finally, because the old man insisted, like a dying man pressing his diary into the hands of a reluctant heir. “What are you going to do?” asked Fet, knowing now that this was the last time he would see Setrakian. “What can you do?”

Setrakian released Fet’s arm. “One thing only, my son.”

It was that word—“son”—that touched Fet the deepest. He choked back his pain as he watched the old man move along.

The mile Eph ran into the North River Tunnel felt like ten. Guided only by Fet’s night-vision monocular, over a glowing green landscape of unchanging train tracks, Eph’s descent beneath the Hudson River was a true journey into madness. Dizzied and frantic, and gasping for breath, he began to see glowing white stains along the rail ties.

He slowed long enough to pull a Luma lamp from the pack on his back. The ultraviolet light picked up an explosion of color, the biological matter expelled by vampires. The staining was recent, the ammonia odor eye-watering. This much waste indicated a massive feeding.

Eph ran until he saw the rear car of the derailed train. No noise; all was still. Eph started around the right, seeing ahead where the engine or the first passenger car had jumped the track, angled up against the tunnel wall. He entered an open door, boarding the dark train. Through his green vision, he viewed the carnage. Bodies slumped over chairs, over other bodies, on the floor. All budding vampires, due to begin rising as soon as the next sunset. No time to release them all now. Or to go through them, face-by-face.

No. He knew Nora was smarter than that.

He jumped back out, turning the corner around the train, and saw the lurkers. Four of them, two to a side, their eyes reflecting like glass in his monocular. His Luma lamp froze them, hungry faces leering as they backed away, allowing him passage.

Eph knew better. He went between the two pairs, counting to three before reaching back and drawing his sword from his pack, and wheeling around.

He caught them coming, slashing the first two aggressors, then going after the backpedalers and cutting them down without hesitation.

Before their bodies settled on the tracks, Eph returned to the wet trail of vampire waste. It led to a passage through the left wall, into the facing, Manhattan-bound track. Eph followed the swirling colors, ignoring his disgust, rushing through the dark tunnel. He passed two hacked corpses—the bright register of their spilled blood under the black light showing them to be strigoi—then heard a ruckus ahead.

He came upon some nine or ten creatures bunched up at a door. They fanned out upon sensing him, Eph sweeping his Luma lamp in order to prevent any from slipping behind him.

The door. Zack was inside, Eph told himself.

He went homicidal, attacking before the vampires could coordinate an assault. Slashing and burning. His animal brutality surpassed theirs. His paternal need overmatched their blood hunger. This was a fight for his son’s life, and for a father pushed to the brink, killing came quick. Killing was easy.

He went to the door, clanging his white-slickened sword blade against it. “Zack! It’s me! Open up!”

The hand holding the door fast from the inside released the knob, Eph ripping open the door. There stood Nora, her wide eyes as bright as the flare burning in her hand. She stared at him a long moment, as though making sure it was him—a human him—then rushed into his arms. Behind her, sitting on a box in her housecoat with her gaze cast sadly into the corner, was Nora’s mother.

Eph closed his arms around Nora as best he could without letting the wet blade touch her. Then, realizing the rest of the storage closet was empty, he pushed back.

“Where’s Zack?” he said.

Gus blew through the open perimeter gate, the dark silhouettes of the cooling towers looming in the distance. Motion-sensitive surveillance cameras sat on high white poles like heads upon pikes, failing to track their Hummer as it passed. The road in was long and winding, and they were unmet.

Setrakian rode in the passenger seat with his hand over his heart. High fences topped with barbwire; towers spewing smoke-like steam. A camp flashback rippled through him like nausea.

“Federates,” said Angel, from the backseat.

National Guard trucks were set up at the entrance to the interior security zone. Gus slowed, awaiting some signal or order that he would then have to figure out a way to disobey.

When no such order came, he rolled right up to the gate and stopped. He exited the Hummer with the engine running, checking the first truck. Empty. The second as well. Empty but for splashes of red blood on the windshield and dashboard, and a dry puddle on the front seat.

Gus went into the back of the truck, lifting the canvas. He waved over Angel, who came limping. Together they looked at the rack of small arms. Angel strung one submachine gun over each of his considerable shoulders, cradling an assault rifle in his arms. Extra ammunition went into his pockets and shirt. Gus carried two Colt submachine guns back to the Hummer.

They pushed around the trucks through to the first buildings. Getting out, Setrakian heard loud engines running and realized the plant was operating on diesel-fueled backup generators. The redundant safety systems were operating automatically, keeping the abandoned reactor from shutting down.

Inside the first buildings, they were met by turned soldiers—vampires in fatigues. With Gus in front and Angel limping behind, they moved through the revenants, shredding bodies without any finesse. The rounds staggered the vampires, but they wouldn’t stay down unless the spinal column was obliterated at the neck.

“Know where you’re going?” said Gus over his shoulder.

“I do not,” said Setrakian.

He followed the security checkpoints, pushing through doors with the most warning signs. Here there were no more soldier vampires, only plant workers turned into guards and sentinels. The more resistance Setrakian met, the closer he knew they were to the control room.

Setrakian.

The old man grabbed the wall.

The Master. Here…

How much more powerful the Master’s “voice” was inside his head than that of the Ancients. Like a hand grasping his brain stem and snapping his spine like a whip.

Angel straightened Setrakian with a meaty hand and called to Gus.

“What is it?” said Gus, fearing a heart attack.

They hadn’t heard it. The Master spoke only to Setrakian.

“He is here now,” said Setrakian. “The Master.”

Gus looked this way and that, hyperalert. “He’s here? Great. Let’s get him.”

“No. You don’t understand. You haven’t faced him yet. He is not like the Ancients. These guns are nothing to him. He will dance around bullets.”

Gus reloaded his smoking weapon and said, “I come too far with this. Nothing scares me now.”

“I know, but you can’t beat him this way. Not here, and not with weapons made for killing men.” Setrakian fixed his vest, straightening. “I know what he wants.”

“Okay. What’s that?”

“Something only I can give him.”

“That damn book?”

“No. Listen to me, Gus. Return to Manhattan. If you leave now, there is hope that you might make it in time. Join Eph and Fet if you can. You will need to be deep underground regardless.”

“This place is going to blow?” Gus looked at Angel, who was breathing hard and gripping his bad leg. “Then come back with us. Let’s go. If you can’t beat him here.”

“I can’t stop this nuclear chain reaction. But—I might be able to affect the chain reaction of vampiric infection.”

An alarm went off—piercing honks spaced about one second apart—startling Angel, who checked both ends of the hallway.

“My guess is the backup generators are failing,” said Setrakian. He grasped Gus’s shirt, talking over the horn blasts. “Do you want to be cooked alive here? Both of you—go!”

Gus remained with Angel as the old man walked on, unsheathing the sword from his walking stick. Gus looked to the other old man in his charge, the broken-down wrestler drenched in sweat, his big eyes uncertain. Waiting to be told what to do.

“We go,” said Gus. “You heard the man.”

Angel’s big arm stopped him. “Just leave him here?”

Gus shook his head hard, knowing there was no good solution. “I’m only alive still because of him. For me, whatever the pawnbroker says, goes. Now let’s get as far away from here as we can, unless you want to see your own skeleton.”

Angel was still looking after Setrakian, and had to be pulled away by Gus.

Setrakian entered the control room and saw a lone creature in an old suit standing before a series of panels, watching gauge dials roll back as systems failed. Red emergency lights flashed from every corner of the room, though the alarm was muted.

Eichhorst turned just its head, red eyes settling on its former camp prisoner. No concern in his face—it wasn’t capable of the subtleties of emotion, and barely registered the larger reactions, such as surprise.

You are just in time, it said, returning to the monitors.

Setrakian, sword at his side, circled behind the creature.

I don’t believe I extended you my congratulations on winning the book. That was a clever bit of work, going around Palmer like that.

“I expected to meet him here.”

You won’t be seeing him again. He never realized his great dream, precisely because he failed to understand that it was not his aspirations that mattered but the Master’s. You creatures and your pathetic hopes.

Setrakian said, “Why you? Why did he keep you?”

The Master learns from humans. That is a key element of his greatness. He watches and he sees. Your kind has shown him the way to your own final solution. I see only packs of animals, but he sees patterns of behavior. He listens to what you are saying when, as I suspect, you have no idea you are saying anything at all.

“You’re saying he learned from you? Learned what?” Setrakian’s grip tightened on the handle of his sword as Eichhorst turned. He looked at the former camp commandant—and suddenly he knew.

It is not easy to establish and operate a well-functioning camp. It took a special kind of human intellect to oversee the systematic destruction of a people at maximum efficiency. He drew upon my singular knowledge.

Setrakian went dry. He felt as though his flesh were crumbling off his bones.

Camps. Human stockyards. Blood farms spread out across the country, the world.

In a sense, Setrakian had always known. Always known but never wanted to believe. He had seen it in the Master’s eyes upon their first meeting in the barracks at Treblinka. Man’s own inhumanity to man had whet the monster’s appetite for havoc. We had, through our atrocities, demonstrated our own doom to the ultimate nemesis, welcoming him as though by prophesy.

The building shuddered as a bank of monitors went dark.

Setrakian cleared his throat to find his voice. “Where is your Master now?”

He is everywhere, don’t you know? Here, now. Watching you. Through me.

Setrakian readied himself, taking a step forward. His course was clear. “He must be pleased with your handiwork. But he has little use for you now. No more than I do.”

You underestimate me, Jew.

Eichhorst vaulted up onto the nearby console with little apparent effort, moving out of Setrakian’s kill range. Setrakian raised his silver blade, its tip pointing at the Nazi’s throat. Eichhorst’s arms were at his sides, elongated fingers rubbing against his palms. It feigned an attack; Setrakian countering but not giving any quarter. The old vampire leaped to another console, shoes trampling on the tender controls of this highly sensitive room. Setrakian swung around, tracking it—until he faltered.

With the hand holding the wooden sheath of his walking stick, Setrakian pressed his crooked knuckles to his chest, over his heart.

Your pulse is most irregular.

Setrakian winced and staggered. He exaggerated his distress, but not for Eichhorst’s sake. His sword arm bent, but he kept the blade high.

Eichhorst hopped down to the floor, watching Setrakian with something like nostalgia.

I no longer know the tether of the heartbeat. The lung breath. The cheap gear-work and slow tick of the human clock.

Setrakian leaned against the console. Waiting for strength to return.

And you would rather perish than continue on in a greater form?

Setrakian said, “Better to die a man than live as a monster.”

Can you fail to see that, to all the lesser beings, you are the monster? It is you who took this planet for your own. And now the worm turns.

Eichhorst’s eyes flickered a moment, their nictitating lids narrowing.

He commands me to turn you. I do not look forward to your blood. Hebraic inbreeding has fortified the bloodline into a vintage as salty and mineral-muddied as the River Jordan.

“You won’t turn me. The Master himself couldn’t turn me.”

Eichhorst moved laterally, not yet attempting to close the distance between them.

Your wife struggled but she never cried out. I thought that strange. Not even a whimper. Only a single word. “Abraham.”

Setrakian allowed himself to be goaded, wanting the vampire closer. “She saw the end. She found solace in the moment, knowing that I would someday avenge her.”

She called your name and you were not there. I wonder if you will sing out at the end.

Setrakian sank almost to one knee before lowering his blade, using the point against the floor as a kind of crutch, to keep himself from falling.

Put aside your weapon, Jew.

Setrakian lifted his sword, switching to an overhand grip of the handle in order to examine the line of the old silver blade. He looked at the wolf’s head pommel, feeling its counterbalancing weight.

Accept your fate.

“Ah,” said Setrakian, looking at Eichhorst standing just a few feet away. “But I already have.”

Setrakian put everything he had into the throw. The sword crossed the space between them and penetrated Eichhorst just below the breastplate, dead-center in his torso, between the buttons of his vest. The vampire fell back against the console with his bent arms back as though in a gesture of balance. The killing silver was in his body and he could not touch it to pull out the blade. He began to twitch as the silver’s toxic virucidal properties spread outward like a burning cancer. White blood appeared around the blade with the first of the escaping worms.

Setrakian pulled himself to his feet and stood, wavering, before Eichhorst. He did so with no sense of triumph, and little satisfaction. He made certain that the vampire’s eyes were focused on him—and, by extension, the Master’s eyes—and said, “Through him you took love away from me. Now you will have to turn me yourself.” Then he grasped the sword handle and slowly pulled it from Eichhorst’s chest.

The vampire settled back against the console, its hands still grasping at nothing. It began to slide to the right, falling stiffly, and Setrakian, in his weakened state, anticipated Eichhorst’s trajectory and set the point of his sword against the floor. The blade rested at about a forty-degree angle, the angle of the guillotine blade.

Eichhorst’s falling body pulled its neck across the edge of the blade, and the Nazi was destroyed.

Setrakian swiped both sides of his silver blade over the vampire’s coat sleeve, cleaning them, then backed away from the blood worms fleeing Eichhorst’s open neck. His chest seized up like a knot. He reached for his pillbox and, in trying to open it with his twisted hands, spilled the contents onto the control-room floor.

Gus emerged from the nuke plant ahead of Angel, into the dim, overcast last day. Between the persistent alarm blasts, he heard a deathly silence, the generators no longer working. He sensed a low-voltage snap in the air, like static electricity, but it might just have been him knowing what was to come.

Then, a familiar noise cutting into the air. A helicopter. Gus found the lights, seeing the chopper circle behind the steaming towers. He knew it wasn’t help on the way. He realized that this had to be the Master’s ride out of here, so it didn’t cook with the rest of Long Island.

Gus went into the back of the National Guard truck. He had seen the Stinger missile the first time, but stuck with the small arms. All he needed was a reason.

He brought it out and double-checked to make sure he had it facing the right way. It balanced nicely on his shoulder and was surprisingly light for an antiaircraft weapon, maybe thirty-five pounds. He ran past the limping Angel to the side of the building. The chopper was coming in lower, making to land in a wide clearing.

The trigger was easy to find, as was the scope. He looked through it, and once the missile detected the heat of the helicopter’s exhaust, it emitted a high, whistle-like tone. Gus squeezed the trigger and the launch rocket shot the missile out of the tube. The launch engine fell away and the main solid rocket engine lit up and the Stinger flew off like a plume of smoke traveling along a string.

The helicopter never saw it coming. The missile struck it a few hundred yards above the ground and the flying machine burst upon impact, the explosion upending it and sending it pinwheeling into nearby trees.

Gus threw off the empty launcher. The fire was good. It would light his way to the water. Long Island Sound was the fastest and safest way back home.

He said as much to Angel, but he could tell, as the distant light of the flames played across the old brawler’s face, that something had changed.

“I’m staying,” said Angel.

Gus tried to explain that which he only vaguely understood himself. “This whole place is going to go up. This is nukes.”

“I can’t walk away from a fight.” Angel patted his leg to show that he meant it literally as well as figuratively. “Besides, I’ve been here before.”

“Here?”

“In my movies. I know how it ends. The evil one faces the good one, and all seems lost.”

“Angel,” said Gus, needing to go.

“The day is saved always—in the end.”

Gus had noticed the ex-wrestler acting more and more scattered. The vampire siege was wearing on his mind, his perspective. “Not here. Not against this.”

Angel pulled, from deep in his front pocket, a piece of cloth. He pulled it on over his head, rolling the silver mask down so that only his eyes and his mouth showed. “You go,” he said. “Back to the island, with the doctor. Do as the old man tell you. Me? He have no plan for me. So I stay. I fight.”

Gus smiled at the mad Mexican’s bravery. And he recognized Angel for the very first time. He understood everything—the strength, the courage of this old man. As a child, he had seen all of the wrestler’s films on TV. On weekends, they played on an endless loop. And now he was standing next to his hero. “This world is a motherfucker, isn’t it?”

Angel nodded and said, “But it’s the only one we have.”

Gus felt a surge of love for this fucked-up fellow countryman. For his matinee idol. His eyes welled up as he clapped his hands against the big man’s shoulders. He said, “Que viva el Angel de Plata, culeros!”

Angel nodded. “Que viva!”

And with that, the Silver Angel turned back, limping, toward the doomed power plant.

Emergency lights flashed, the exterior alarm muted inside the control room. The wall panel instruments blinked, imploring human hands to take action.

Setrakian knelt on the floor across from Eichhorst’s still body. Eichhorst’s head had rolled almost to the corner. One of Setrakian’s pocket mirrors had cracked, and he was using the silver back to crush the blood worms seeking him out. With his other hand, he was trying to pick up his heart pills, but his gnarled fingers and arthritic knuckles had trouble with the pincer grip.

And then he was aware of a presence, whose sudden arrival changed the atmosphere of the already charged room. No puff of smoke, no crack of thunder. A psychic blow more breathtaking than mere stagecraft. Setrakian didn’t have to look up to know it was the Master—and yet he did look up, from the hem of its dark cloak to its imperious face.

Its flesh had peeled back to the sub-dermis, save for a few patches of sun-cooked skin. A fiery red beast with splotches of black. Its eyes roared with intensity, a bloodier hue of red. The circulating worms rippled beneath the surface like twitching nerves alive with madness.

It is done.

The Master seized the wolf’s-head handle of Setrakian’s sword before the old man could react. The creature held the silver blade for inspection the way a man might handle a glowing-hot poker.

The world is mine.

The Master, his movement no more than a blur, retrieved the wooden sheath from the floor on the other side of Setrakian. He fit the two pieces together, burying the blade inside the cavity of the original walking stick and fixing the joined staff with a sudden wrenching twist of his hands.

Then he returned the foot of the stick to the floor. The overlong walking stick was a perfect fit, of course: it had belonged to the human giant Sardu, in whose body the Master currently resided.

The nuclear fuel inside the reactor core is beginning to overheat and melt. This facility was constructed using modern safeguards, but the automatic containment procedures only delay the inevitable. The meltdown will occur, fouling and destroying this origin site of the sixth and only remaining member of my clan. The buildup of steam will result in a catastrophic reactor explosion that will release a plume of radioactive fallout.

The Master jabbed Setrakian in the ribs with the end of the walking stick, the old man hearing and feeling a crack, curling into a ball on the floor.

As my shadow falls over you, Setrakian, so does it fall over this planet. First I infected your people, now I have infected the globe. Your half dark world was not enough. How long I have looked forward to this permanent, lasting dusk. This warm, blue-green rock shivers at my touch, becoming a cold black stone of rime and rot. The sunset of humankind is the dawn of the blood harvest.

The Master’s head then turned a few degrees, toward the door. He was not alarmed, nor even annoyed, more like curious. Setrakian turned also, a sizzle of hope rising along his back. The door opened and Angel entered limping, wearing a mask of shiny silver nylon with black stitching.

“No,” gasped Setrakian.

Angel carried an automatic weapon, and, seeing the eight-foot-tall cloaked creature towering over Setrakian, opened up on the king vampire.

The creature stood there for a moment, gazing at its patently ridiculous opponent. But as the bullets flew, the Master became, instinctively, a blur—the rounds carrying across the room into the sensitive equipment lining the walls. The Master paused on one side of the room, visible for just the briefest moment, though by the time Angel turned and fired, the vampire was moving again. The rounds ripped into a control panel, sparks shooting out of the wall.

Setrakian returned his attention to the floor, frantically picking at the tiny pills.

The Master slowed again, with the effect of materializing before Angel. The masked wrestler dropped the big gun with a clatter and lunged at the creature.

The Master noted the big human’s weak knee, but those things could be fixed. The body was aged, yet size-appropriate. Suitable, perhaps, for temporary housing.

The Master eluded Angel. The wrestler swung around, but the Master was already behind him again. While assessing Angel, the Master slapped him on the back of his neck, where the stitched hem of his mask met skin. The wrestler jerked around wildly again.

Angel was being toyed with, and he didn’t like it. He turned fast and came around with his free hand, catching the Master on the chin with an open-palm blow. The “Angel Kiss.”

The creature’s head snapped back. Angel shocked himself with his success in landing the blow. The Master lowered his eyes at the masked avenger, the speed of the worms rippling under his flesh a sign of his rage.

Inside the mask, Angel smiled excitedly.

“You would like me to reveal myself, wouldn’t you?” he said. “The mystery dies with me. My face must remain hidden.”

These words were the catchphrase from every one of the Silver Angel’s movies, dubbed into many languages all over the world—words the wrestler had been waiting for decades to say for real. But the Master was through playing.

It struck Angel full-force with the back of its enormous hand. The jaw and left cheekbone exploded inside the mask and the wrestler’s left eye went with them.

But Angel didn’t give up. Through enormous effort, he stood on his own two feet. Trembling, his knee hurting like a motherfucker, choking on his own blood… yet in his mind he raced back in time, to a younger, happier place.

He felt dizzy and warm and full of juice and remembered he was in a film stage. Of course—he was shooting a movie. The monster in front of him was nothing but some clever special effect—a day player in a suit. Then why did it hurt so much? And his mask: it smelled funny to him. Like unwashed hair and sweat. It smelled like a thing removed to the oblivion of storage. It smelled of him.

An empty bubble of blood rose in his throat and burst there in a liquid whimper. His jaw and left side pulverized, the smelly mask was now the only thing holding the old wrestler’s face together.

Angel grunted and lunged at his opponent. The Master released the stick in order to grip the big human with both hands, and, in an instant, tore him to shreds.

Setrakian stifled a cry. He was stuffing pills in under his tongue—stopping just as the Master returned his attention to him.

The Master grasped Setrakian’s shoulder and lifted the slight old man off the floor. Setrakian dangled in the air before the Master, squeezed by the vampire’s bloody hands. The Master pulled him close, Setrakian staring into its horrible face, the leech’s face swarming with ancient evil.

I believe, in a way, you always wanted this, Professor. I think you have always been curious to know the other side.

Setrakian could not respond with the pills dissolving beneath his tongue. But he did not have to answer the Master verbally. My sword sings of silver, he thought.

He felt woozy, the medicine kicking in, clouding his thoughts—shielding his true intent from the Master’s perception. We learned much from the book. We know Chernobyl was a decoy… He saw the Master’s face. How he longed to see fear in it. Your name. I know your true name. Would you like to hear it… Ozryel?

And then the Master’s mouth fell open and his stinger shot out furiously, snapping and piercing Setrakian’s neck, rupturing his vocal cords and jamming into his carotid artery. As he lost his voice, Setrakian felt no stinging pain, only the body-wide ache of the drinking. The collapse of his circulatory system and the organs it served, leading to shock.

The Master’s eyes were royal-red, staring at its prey’s face as it drank with immense satisfaction. Setrakian held the creature’s gaze, not out of defiance but watching and waiting for some indication of discomfort. He felt the vibration of the blood worms wriggling throughout his body, greedily inspecting and invading his self.

All at once, the Master bucked, as though choking. His head jerked back and his nictitating eyelids fluttered. Still, the seal remained tight, the drinking continued stubbornly until the end. The Master disengaged finally—the entire process having taken less than half a minute—its flushed red stinger retracting. The Master stared at Setrakian, reading the interest in his eyes, then stumbled backward a step. Its face contracted, the blood worms slowing, its thick neck gagging.

It dropped Setrakian to the floor and staggered away, sickened by the old man’s blood meal. A flame-like sensation in the pit of his gut.

Setrakian lay on the floor of the control room in a dim haze bleeding through the puncture wound. He finally relaxed his tongue, feeling that the last of the pills in the basket of his jaw were gone. He had ingested the blood vessel-relaxing nitroglycerin and the blood-thinning Coumadin derivative of Fet’s rat poison in massive overdose levels, and passed them along to the Master.

Fet was, indeed, correct: the creatures had no purging mechanism. Once a substance was ingested, they could not vomit it.

Burning inside, the Master moved through the doors at a blur, racing off into the screaming alarms.

The Johnson Space Center went silent halfway through the station’s dark orbit, as they passed the dark side of the Earth. She’d lost Houston.

Thalia felt the first few bumps shortly after that. It was debris, space junk plunking the station. Nothing very unusual about that—only the frequency of the impacts.

Too many. Too close together.

She floated as still as possible, trying to calm herself, trying to think. Something wasn’t right.

She made her way to the porthole and gazed out upon the Earth. Two very hot points of light were visible here on the night side of the planet. One was on the very edge, right on the ridge of dusk. Another one was nearer to the eastern side.

She had never witnessed anything like it, and nothing in her training or the many manuals she had read prepared her for this sight. The intensity of the light, its evident heat—mere pinpoints on the globe itself, and yet her trained eye knew that these were explosions of enormous magnitude.

The station was rocked by another firm impact. This was not the usual small metal hail of space debris. An emergency indicator went off, yellow lights flashing near the door. Something had perforated the solar panels. It was as though the space station were under fire. Now she would need to suit up and—

BAMMM! Something had struck the hull. She swam over to a computer and saw immediately the warning of an oxygen leak. A rapid one. The tanks had been perforated. She called out to her shipmates, heading for the airlock.

A bigger impact shook the hull. Thalia suited up as fast as she could, but the station itself had been breached. She struggled to fasten her suit helmet, racing the deadly vacuum. With her last ounce of strength, she opened the oxygen valve.

Thalia drifted into darkness, losing consciousness. Her final thought before blackout was not of her husband but of her dog. In the silence of space, she somehow heard him barking.

Soon the International Space Station joined the rest of the flotsam hurtling through space, gradually slipping from its orbit, floating inexorably toward Earth.

Setrakian’s head swam as he lay on the floor of the rumbling Locust Valley Nuclear Power Plant.

He was turning. He could feel it.

A constricting pain in his throat that was only the beginning. His chest a hive of activity. The blood worms had settled and released their payload: the virus breeding quickly inside him, overwhelming his cells. Changing him. Trying to remake him.

His body could not withstand the turning. Even without his now-weakened veins, he was too old, too weak. He was like a thin-stemmed sunflower bending under the weight of its growing head. Or a fetus growing from bad chromosomes.

The voices. He heard them. The buzz of a greater consciousness. A coordination of being. A concert of cacophony.

He felt heat. From his rising body temperature, but also from the trembling floor. The cooling system meant to prevent hot nuclear fuel from melting had failed—failed on purpose. The fuel had melted through the bottom of the reactor core. Once it reached the water table, the ground beneath the plant would erupt in a lethal release of steam.

Setrakian.

The Master’s voice in his head. Phasing in and out with his own. Setrakian had a vision then, of what looked like the rear of a truck—the National Guard trucks he had seen outside the plant’s entrance. The view from the floor, vague and monochromatic, seen through the eyes of a being with night vision enhanced beyond human ability.

Setrakian saw his walking stick—Sardu’s walking stick—rattling around just a few feet away, as though he could reach out and touch it one last time.

Pic—pic—pic…

He was seeing what the Master saw.

Setrakian, you fool.

The floor of the truck rumbled, speeding away. The view rocked back and forth as though seen by a thing writhing in pain.

You thought poisoning your blood could kill me?

Setrakian pulled himself up onto all fours, relying on the temporary strength the turning imbued him with.

Pic—pic…

I have sickened you, strigoi, Setrakian thought. Again I have weakened you.

And he knew the Master could hear him now.

You are turned.

I have finally released Sardu. And soon I will be released myself.

And he said nothing more, the nascent vampire Setrakian dragging himself closer to the endangered core.

Pressure continued to build inside the containment structure. A bubble of toxic hydrogen expanding out of control. The steel-reinforced concrete shield would only make the ultimate explosion worse.

Setrakian pulled himself arm by arm, leg by leg. His body turning inside, his mind aflutter with the sight of a thousand eyes, his head singing with the chorus of a thousand voices.

Zero hour was at hand. They were all heading underground.

Pic…

“Silence, strigoi.”

Then the nuclear fuel reached the groundwater. The earth beneath the plant erupted, and the origin place of the final Ancient was obliterated—as was Setrakian, in the same instant.

No more.

The pressure vessel cracked open and released a radioactive cloud over Long Island Sound.

Gabriel Bolivar, the former rock star and the only remaining member of the original four Regis Air survivors, waited deep beneath the meatpacking plant. It had been called upon especially by the Master, called to be ready.

Gabriel, my child.

The voices hummed, droning as one in perfect fidelity. The old man, Setrakian—his voice had been silenced forever.

Gabriel. The name of an archangel… So appropriate…

Bolivar awaited the dark father, feeling him near. Knowing of his victory on the surface. All that was left now was to wait for the new world to set and cure.

The Master entered the black dirt chamber. The Master stood before Bolivar, its head crooked at the chamber ceiling. Bolivar could feel the Master’s body distress, but its mind—its word—sang as true as ever.

In me, you will live. In my hunger and my voice and my breath—and we will live in you. Our minds will reside in yours and our blood will race together.

The Master threw off its cloak, reaching its long arm into its coffin, scooping out a handful of rich soil. He fed it into Bolivar’s unswallowing mouth.

And you will be my son and I your father and we will rule as I and us, forever.

The Master clutched Bolivar in a great embrace. Bolivar was alarmingly thin, appearing fragile and small against the Master’s colossal frame. Bolivar felt swallowed, possessed. He felt received. For the first time in life or death, Gabriel Bolivar felt at home.

The worms came spilling out of the Master, hundreds and hundreds of them, seeping out of its reddened flesh. The frenzied worms wove all around them, in and out of their flesh, fusing the two beings in a crimson embroidery.

Then, finally, the Master released the old husk of the long-ago giant, which crumbled and broke away as it hit the floor. And, as he did so, the soul of the boy-hunter also found release. It disappeared from the chorus of voices, the hymn that animated the Master.

Sardu was no more. Gabriel Bolivar was something new.

Bolivar/the Master spit the soil out. It opened its mouth and tested its stinger. The fleshy protuberance rode out with a firm snap, and recoiled.

The Master was reborn.

The body was unfamiliar somehow, the Master having been accustomed to Sardu for so long, but this transitional body was flexible and fresh. The Master would soon put it to the test.

At any rate, this human physicality was of little concern to the Master now. The giant’s body had suited the creature when it lived among the shadows. But size and durability of the host body mattered little now. Not in this new world that it had created in its own image.

The Master sensed human intrusion. A strong heart, a swift pulse. A boy.

Out of the adjoining tunnel, Kelly Goodweather arrived with her son, Zachary, firmly in her grip. The boy stood trembling, crouched over in a posture of self-protection. He saw nothing in the darkness, only sensing presences, heated bodies in the cool underground. He smelled ammonia and dank soil and something rotting.

Kelly approached with the pride of a cat depositing a mouse at its master’s threshold. The Master’s physical appearance, revealed to her night-seeing eyes in the blackness of the underground chamber, did not confound her in the least. She saw his presence within Bolivar and questioned nothing.

The Master scraped some magnesium from the wall, sprinkling it into the basket of a torch. He then chipped into the stone with his long middle nail, a spray of sparks igniting the small torch, bringing an orange glow to the chamber.

Zack saw before him a bony vampire with glowing red eyes and a slack expression. His mind had mostly shut down in panic, but there was still that small part of him that trusted his mother, that found calm so long as she was near.

Then, near the gaunt vampire, Zack saw the empty corpse lying on the floor, its sun-damaged, vinyl-smooth flesh still glistening. The creature’s pelt.

He saw also a walking stick leaning against the cave wall. The wolf’s head caught the flicker of the flame.

Professor Setrakian.

No.

Yes.

The voice was inside his head. Answering him with the power and authority Zack suspected God might speak to him someday, in answer to his prayers.

But this was not God’s voice. This was the commanding presence of the thin creature before him.

“Dad,” Zack whispered. His father had been with the professor. Tears welled up. “Dad.”

Zack’s mouth moved, but the word had no breath behind it. His lungs were locking up. He felt his pockets for his inhaler. His knees buckling, Zack slumped to the ground.

Kelly watched her suffering son impassively. The Master had been prepared to destroy Kelly. The Master was unaccustomed to defiance, and could think of no reason why Kelly had not turned the boy immediately.

Now the Master saw why. Kelly’s bond with the boy was so strong, the affection so potent, that she had instead brought him to the Master to be turned.

This was an act of devotion. An offering borne out of the human precursor—love—to vampire need, which, in fact, surpassed that need.

And the Master did indeed hunger. And the boy was a fine specimen. He would be honored to receive the Master.

But now… things appeared different in the darkness of a new night.

The Master saw more benefit in waiting.

It sensed the distress in the boy’s chest, his heart first racing, and now starting to slow. The boy lay on the ground, clutching at his throat, the Master standing over him. The Master pricked its thumb with the sharp nail of its prominent middle finger, and, taking care not to let slip any worms, allowed one single white drop to fall into the boy’s open mouth, landing upon his gasping tongue.

The boy groaned suddenly, sucking air. In his mouth, the taste of copper and hot camphor—but in a few moments, he was breathing normally again. Once, on a dare, Zack had licked the ends of a nine-volt battery. That was the jolt he had felt before his lungs opened. He looked up at the Master—this creature, this presence—with the awe of the cured.