The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (80 page)

The ammonia smell of
strigoi
discharge was pungent, prompting him to step carefully, to avoid soiling his boots. He made his way through the passages, listening at every turn, picking signal marks into the walls when the tunnel forked, until, after some time, he found he had doubled back to his original marks.

Reconsidering, he decided to retrace his steps and return to the
entrance beneath the bottomless coffin. He would climb back out, regroup, and lie in wait for the inhabitants to rise after nightfall.

But when he arrived back at the entrance, looking up, he found that the coffin lid had been shut. And his access rope was gone.

Setrakian had hunted enough
strigoi
that his reaction to this turn of events was not fear but anger. He turned immediately, plunging back into the tunnels with the knowledge that his survival depended upon his being predator and not prey.

He took a different route this time, and eventually encountered a family of four peasant villagers. They were
strigoi,
their red eyes lighting up at his presence, reflected blindly in the beam of his flashlight.

But they were all too weak to attack. The mother was the only one to rise from all fours, Setrakian noticing in her face the characteristic caving of an unnourished vampire: a darkening of the flesh, the articulation of the throat stinger mechanism through the taut skin, and a dazed, somnolent appearance.

He released them—with ease, and without mercy.

He soon encountered two other families, one stronger than the other, but neither able to mount much of a challenge. In another chamber, he found a child
strigoi
who had been destroyed in what appeared to be an ill-fated attempt at vampire cannibalism.

But still, no sign of Eichhorst.

Once he had cleared the ancient cave network of vampires, having discovered no other exit, he returned to the chamber beneath the closed coffin and began chipping away at the ancient stone with his dagger. He hacked out one toehold in the wall, setting to work on another a few feet higher in the opposite wall. As he worked for hours—the silver was a poor choice for the job, cracking and warping, the iron handle and grip proving more useful—he wondered about the wasting village
strigoi
down here. Their presence made little sense. Something was amiss, but Setrakian resisted reasoning it all the way through, pushing down his anxiety in order to focus on the job at hand.

Hours—maybe days—later, out of water and low on batteries, he balanced on the two lower toeholds to carve out the third. His
hands were covered with a paste of blood mixed with dust, his tools difficult to hold. Finally, he braced his opposite foot against the sheer wall and reached the lid of the coffin.

With one desperate thrust, he shoved open the top.

He climbed out, emerging paranoid, half-crazed. The pack he had left there was gone, and with it, his extra food and water. Parched, he emerged from the castle into life-saving daylight. The sky was overcast. He had a sense of years having elapsed.

His horse had been slaughtered at the head of the path, gutted, its body cold.

The sky opened over him as he hurried back to the village. A farmer, one he had nodded to on the way up, traded for Setrakian’s broken wristwatch some water and rock-hard biscuits, and Setrakian learned, through intensive pantomiming, that he had been underground for three sunsets and three dawns.

He finally returned to the villa he had rented, but Miriam was not there. No note, no nothing—entirely unlike her. He went next door, then across the street. Finally, a man opened his door to him, just a crack.

No, he hadn’t seen his wife, the man told him in pidgin Greek.

Setrakian saw a woman cowering behind the man. He asked if something was wrong.

The man explained to him that two children had disappeared from the village the night before. A witch was suspected.

Setrakian returned to his rented villa. He sat heavily in a chair, holding his head in his bloodied, broken hands, and waited for nightfall—for the dark hour of his dear wife’s return.

She came to him out of the rain, free of the crutches and braces that had steadied her limbs all her human life. Her hair hung wet, her flesh white and slick, her clothes drenched with mud. She came to him with her head held high, in the manner of a society woman about to welcome a neophyte into her circle of esteem. At her sides stood the two village children she had turned, a boy and a girl still sick with transformation.

Miriam’s legs were straight and very dark. Blood had gathered at the lower portion of her extremities and both her hands and feet were
now almost entirely black. Gone were her infirm, tentative steps: the atrophied gait which Setrakian had tried nightly to alleviate.

How completely and quickly she had changed from the love of his life into this mad, muddied, glaring creature. Now a
strigoi
with a taste for the children she could not bear in life.

Crying softly, Setrakian rose from his chair, half of him desiring to let it be, to go down into hell with her, to give himself over to vampirism in his despair.

But slay her he did, with much love and many tears. The children he cut down as well, with no regard for their corrupted bodies—though with Miriam, he was determined to preserve a part of her for himself.

Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness—cutting the diseased heart out of one’s wife’s chest and preserving it, the corrupted organ beating with the craving of a blood worm, inside a pickling jar.

Life is madness,
thought Setrakian, done with his butchering, looking about the room.
And so is love
.

The Flatlands

A
FTER HAVING A
last moment with his late wife’s heart, Setrakian uttered something that Fet barely heard and did not understand—it was “Forgive me, dearest”—and then went to work.

He sectioned the heart not with a silver blade, which would have been fatal to the worm, but with a knife of stainless steel—trimming the diseased organ back and back and back. The worm did not make its escape until Setrakian held the heart near one of the UV lamps set around the edge of the table. Thicker than a strand of hair, spindly and quick, the pinkish capillary worm shot out, aiming first for the broken fingers that gripped the knife handle. But Setrakian was much too prepared for that, and it slithered into the center of the table. Setrakian chopped it once with his blade, splitting the worm in two. Fet then trapped the separated ends using two large drinking glasses.

The worms regenerated themselves, exploring the inside rim of their new cages.

Setrakian then set about preparing the experiment. Fet sat back on a stool, watching the worms lash about inside the glass, driven by blood hunger. Fet remembered Setrakian’s warning to Eph, about destroying Kelly:

In the act of releasing a loved one … you taste what it is to be turned. To go against everything you are. That act changes one forever.

And Nora, about love being the true victim of this plague, the instrument of our downfall:

The undead returning for their Dear Ones. Human love corrupted into vampiric need.

Fet said, “Why didn’t they kill you in those tunnels? Since it was a trap?”

Setrakian looked up from his contraption. “Believe it or not, they were afraid of me back then. I was still in the prime of life, I was vital, I was strong. They are indeed sadists, but, you must remember, their numbers were quite small back then. Self-preservation was paramount. Unbridled expansion of their species was a taboo. And yet they had to hurt me. And so they did.”

Fet said, “They are still afraid of you.”

“Not me. Only what I represent. What I know. In truth, what can one old man do against a horde of vampires?”

Fet did not believe Setrakian’s humility, not for a moment.

The old man continued, “I think the fact that we don’t give up—this idea that the human spirit keeps going in the face of absolute adversity—puzzles them. They are arrogant. Their origin, if confirmed, will attest to that.”

“What is their origin, then?”

“Once we get the book, once I am completely certain … I will reveal it to you.”

The radio started to fade, and Fet first thought it was his bad ear. He stood and turned the crank, powering the unit, keeping it going. Human voices were largely absent from the airwaves, replaced by heavy interference and occasional high-pitched tones. But one commercial sports radio station still had broadcast power, and though apparently all of its on-air talent were gone, a lone producer remained. He had taken up the microphone, changing the format from Yankees-Mets-Giants-Jets-Rangers-Knicks talk to news updates culled off the Internet and from occasional callers.

“… the national Web site of the FBI now reports that they have Dr. Ephraim Goodweather in federal custody, following an incident in Brooklyn. He is the fugitive former New York City CDC official who released that first video—remember that? The guy in the shed, chained like a dog. Remember when that demon stuff seemed pretty hysterical and far-fetched? Those were good times. Anyway … it
says he’s been arrested on … what’s this? Attempted murder? Jeez. Just when you think we might be able to get some real answers. I mean, this guy was at the center of the whole initial thing, if memory serves. Right? He was there at the plane, at Flight 753. And he was wanted for the murder of one of the other first responders, a guy who worked for him, I think the name was Jim Kent. So, clearly, there’s something going on with this guy. My opinion—I think they’re gonna Oswald him. Two bullets to the gut, and he’s silenced forever. Another piece in this giant puzzle that no one seems to be able to put together. Anybody out there has any thoughts on this, any ideas, any theories, and your phone is still working, hit me up on the sports hotline …”

Setrakian sat with his eyes closed.

Fet said, “Attempted murder?”

“Palmer,” said Setrakian.

“Palmer!” said Fet. “You mean—it’s not some bogus charge?” Fet’s shock quickly turned to appreciation. “Gunning down Palmer. Christ. Good ol’ doc. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I am very glad you did not.”

Fet ran his fingers through the hair on the top of his head, as though waking himself up. “And then there were two, huh?” He stepped back, looking out through the half-open door to the storefront. Dusk was falling through the windows beyond. “So you knew about this?”

“I suspected.”

“You didn’t want to stop him?”

“I could see—there was no stopping. A man has to act on his own impulses sometimes. Understand—he is a medical scientist caught up in a pandemic, the source of which defies everything he thought he knew. Add to that the personal conflict involving his wife. He took the course he thought was right.”

“Bold move. Would it have meant anything? If he had succeeded?”

“Oh, I think so.” Setrakian went back to his tinkering.

Fet smiled. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“I’m sure he didn’t either.”

Fet thought he saw a shadow pass before the front windows then. He had been half-turned away, the image in his periphery. It had struck him as a large being.

“I think we’ve got a customer,” said Fet, hurrying to the back door.

Setrakian stood, reaching quickly for his wolf’s-head staff, twisting the top and exposing a few inches of silver.

“Stay,” said Fet. “Be ready.” He took his loaded nail gun and a sword, and slipped out the back door, fearing the arrival of the Master.

Out on the back curb, as soon as he closed the door, Fet saw the big man. Thick-browed, a hulking man in his sixties, as big as Fet. He stood with a slight crouch, favoring one leg. His open hands were out, resembling a wrestler’s stance.

Not the Master. Not even a vampire. The man’s eyes confirmed it. Even newly turned vampires move strangely, less like a human and more like an animal, or a bug.

Two others stepped from behind the DPW van. One was all silvered up with jewelry, short and wide and powerful-looking, snarling like a junkyard dog larded with bling. The other was younger, holding the tip of a long sword out toward Fet, aimed at his throat.

So they knew their silver. “I’m human,” said Fet. “You guys are looking to loot something, I got nothing here but rat poison.”

“We are looking for an old man,” came a voice behind Fet. He turned, keeping all comers in front of him. The new one was Gus, his torn shirt collar partially revealing the phrase
SOY COMO SOY
tattooed across his clavicle. He carried a long silver knife in his hand.

Three Mexican gangbangers and an old ex-wrestler with hands the size of thick steaks. “It’s getting dark, boys,” said Fet. “You should be moving right along.”

Creem, the silver-knuckled one, said, “Now what?”

Gus said to Fet, “The pawnbroker. Where is he?”

Fet held pat. These punks packed slaying weapons, but he didn’t know them, and what he didn’t know he didn’t like. “Don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Gus wasn’t buying. “I guess we go door to door, then, motherfucker.”

Fet said, “You do, you’re gonna have to go through me.” He pointed with his nail gun. “And just so you know—this baby right here is nasty. The nail just fastens to the bone. Homes right in on it. Vampire or not, damage will be done. I’ll hear you squeal when you try to pry a couple of silvery inches out of your fucking eye socket,
cholo.
”

“Vasiliy,” said Setrakian, exiting out the back door, staff in hand.

Gus saw him, saw the old man’s hands. All busted up, just as he remembered. The pawnbroker looked even older now, smaller. It had been years since they’d met a few weeks ago. He straightened, uncertain if the old man would recognize him.

Setrakian looked him over. “From the jail.”

Fet said, “Jail?”

Setrakian reached out and patted Gus’s arm familiarly. “You listened. You learned. And you survived.”

“
A guevo.
I survived. And you—you got out.”