The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (89 page)

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.”

T
hey 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.