The Fall

Knickerbocker Loans and Curios, East 118th Street, Spanish Harlem

SETRAKIAN UNLOCKED THE pawnshop door and raised the security gate, and Fet, waiting outside like a customer, imagined the old man repeating this routine every day for the past thirty-five years. The shop-owner came out into the sunlight, and for just a moment everything might have been normal. An old man squinting into the sun on a street in New York City. The moment inspired nostalgia in Fet, rather than encouragement. It did not seem to him that there were many more “normal” moments left.

Setrakian, in a tweed vest without jacket, white shirtsleeves rolled just past his wrists, looked at the large van. The door and side wall read: MANHATTAN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS.

Fet told him, “I borrowed it.”

The old professor appeared pleased and intrigued. “I wonder, can you get another?”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“We cannot remain here any longer.”

Eph sat down on the flat exercise mat inside the odd-angled storage room on the top floor of Setrakian’s home. Zack sat there with one leg bent, his knee as high as his cheek, arms hugging his thigh. Zack looked ragged, like a boy sent off to sleepaway camp who came back changed, and not for the better. Silver-backed mirrors surrounded them, giving Eph the feeling of being watched by many old eyes. The window frame within the iron bars had been hastily boarded over, a bandage uglier than the wound it covered.

Eph studied his son’s face, trying to read it. He was worried about the boy’s sanity, as he was worried about his own. He rubbed his mouth in preparation for talking, and felt roughness around the edges of his lips and chin, realizing he hadn’t shaved in days.

“I checked the parenting handbook earlier,” he began. “Unfortunately there was no chapter about vampires.”

He tried to smile, but wasn’t sure it worked. He wasn’t sure his smile was persuasive anymore. He wasn’t sure anyone should be smiling now.

“Okay, so, this is going to sound twisted—and it is twisted. But let me get it out. You know your mom loved you, Z. More even than you know, as much as a mother can love a son. That’s why she and I went through all we did, what felt to you at times like a tug-of-war—because neither one of us could bear being apart from you. Because you’re it. I know that children sometimes blame themselves for their parents’ breakup. But you were the one thing holding us together. And driving us crazy fighting over you.”

“Dad, you don’t have to—”

“I know, I know. Cut to it, right? But no. This stuff you need to hear, and right now. Maybe I need to hear it too, okay? We need to set each other straight. Put it right out in front of us. A mother’s love is… it’s like a force. It’s beyond simple human affection. It’s soul-deep. A father’s love—my love for you, Z—it’s the strongest thing in my life, absolutely it is. But this thing has made me realize that there’s something about maternal love—it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is.”

He checked to see how this was going with Zack. Couldn’t tell.

“And now this thing, this plague, this awful… it’s taken who she was and burned off all that was good in her. All that was right and true. All that was, as we understand it, human. Your mom… she was beautiful, she was caring, she was… she was also crazy, in the way all devoted mothers are. But you were her great gift to the world. That’s how she saw you. That’s what you are still. That part of her lives on. But now—she is not herself anymore. She is not Kelly Goodweather, not Mom—and this is hard for both of us to accept. All that remains of what she was, as far as I can tell, is her bond with you. Because that bond is sacred, and it never dies. What we call love, in our sappy greeting-card way, is evidently something much deeper than we humans imagined. Her human love for you has… it seems to have shifted, has morphed, into this kind of want, this need. Where she is now, this bad place? She wants you there with her. It’s not bad to her, or evil, or dangerous. She just wants you with her. And what you need to know is that this is all because your mother loved you so completely.”

Zack nodded. He couldn’t or wouldn’t speak.

“Now, that said, we have to keep you safe from her. She looks different now, right? That’s because she is different—fundamentally different—and it’s not easy to face that. I can’t make this right for you except to protect you from her. From what she has become. That’s my new job now, as your parent, as your father. If you think of your mom, as she originally was, and what she would do to save you from any threat to your health, to your safety… well, you tell me. What would she do?”

Zack nodded, answering immediately. “She would hide me.”

“She would take you away. Remove you from the threat, get you to a safe place.” Eph listened to what he was saying. “Just pick you up and… run. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“You’re right,” said Zack.

“Okay, so—being the overprotective mom? That’s my job now.”

Brooklyn

ERIC JACKSON PHOTOGRAPHED the window burn from three different angles. He always carried a small Canon digital camera when he was on duty, along with his gun and his badge.

Acid etching was the thing now. Craft-store etching product usually mixed with shoe polish, marking on glass or Plexiglas. It didn’t show up immediately, burning into the glass in the space of hours. The longer the acid-etched tag remained, the more permanent it became.

He stood back to size up the shape. Six black appendages radiating from a red center mass. He clicked back through his camera memory. Another one, taken yesterday in Bay Ridge, only not as well-defined. And another, in Canarsie, looking more like an oversized asterisk but evincing the same tight lines.

Jackson knew Phade’s work anywhere. True, this wasn’t like his usual throw-ups—this was amateur work compared to that—but the fine arcs and perfect free-hand proportion were unmistakable.

Dude was going all-city, sometimes in one night. How was that possible?

Eric Jackson was a member of the New York Police Department’s Citywide Vandals Taskforce, his job to track and prevent vandalism. He believed in the gospel of the NYPD as it pertained to graffiti. Even the most beautifully colored and detailed graffiti throw-up represented an affront to public order. An invitation to others to consider the urban environment theirs to do with as they pleased. Freedom of expression was always the miscreant’s way out, but littering was an act of expression also, and you still got nicked for it. Order was a fragile thing, with chaos always just a few steps away.

The city was seeing that now, firsthand.

Riots had claimed whole blocks in the South Bronx. Nighttime was the worst. Jackson kept waiting for a call from a captain that would put him back in the old uniform and out on the street. But no word yet. Not a lot of radio chatter at all, whenever he switched it on inside his car. So he kept on doing what he was paid to do.

The governor had resisted calls for the National Guard, but he was just a guy in Albany, weighing his political future. Supposedly, with so many units still in Iraq and Afghanistan, the guard was undermanned and underequipped—but, looking at the black smoke in the distant sky, Jackson would have welcomed any help.

Jackson dealt with vandals in all five boroughs, but nobody bombed as much of the city’s façade as Phade. Dude was everywhere. Must have slept all day, tagged all night. He was fifteen or sixteen now, had been getting up since he was twelve. That was the age most taggers start, toying up at schools, on newspaper boxes, etc. In surveillance photos, Phade’s face was always obscured, usually by a Yankees cap tucked underneath a sweatshirt hood, sometimes even an aerosol mask. He wore typical tagger get-up: cargo pants with many pockets, a backpack for his Krylons, hi-top kicks.

Most vandals work in tagging crews, but not Phade. He was a young legend, moving with apparent impunity throughout diverse neighborhoods. He was said to carry a stolen set of transit keys, including a skeleton that unlocked subway cars. His tags earned respect. The typical profile of a young tagger is low self-esteem, a desire for peer recognition, a distorted view of fame. Phade fit none of these traits. His signature wasn’t a tag—usually a nickname or a repetitive motif—but his style itself. His pieces jumped off walls. Jackson’s own suspicion—long since moved from a hunch to a foregone certainty—was that Phade was likely obsessive-compulsive, perhaps showing symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome or even full-spectrum autism.

Jackson understood this, in part, because he was an obsessive himself. He carried a full book on Phade, quite similar in appearance to the “piece books” taggers carried, featuring their graffiti outlines in a black-cover Cachet sketchbook. As one of five officers assigned to the GHOST unit within the Vandals Taskforce—the Graffiti Habitual Offender Suppression Team—he was responsible for maintaining a graffiti offender databank cross-referencing tags and throw-ups with addresses. People who consider graffiti a kind of “street art” think of brightly colored, Wild Style bubble bombs on building murals and subway cars. They don’t think of tagging crews etching storefronts, competing for high-profile—and often dangerous—“gets.” Or, more often, marking gang territory, establishing name recognition and intimidation.

The other four GHOST cops had stopped showing up for shifts. Some radio reports had NYPD officers deserting the city like the New Orleans cops after Hurricane Katrina, but Jackson couldn’t believe that. Something else was happening—something beyond this sickness spreading throughout the boroughs. You’re sick, you bang in. You get your shift covered so you don’t leave a brother to pick up your slack. These claims of abandonment and cowardice offended him like some incompetent tagger’s clumsy-ass signature over a freshly painted wall. Jackson would believe this crazy vampire shit people were talking before he’d accept that his guys had turned tail and skedaddled to Jersey.

He got inside his unmarked car and drove down the quiet street to Coney Island. He did this three days a week, at least. It was his favorite spot growing up, but his parents didn’t take him there nearly as much as he’d have liked. While he’d abandoned his pledge to go every day when he was a grown-up, he went often enough for lunch to make it okay.

The boardwalk was empty, as he had expected. The autumn day was certainly warm enough, but with the mad flu, amusement was the last thing on people’s minds. He hit Nathan’s Famous and found the place deserted but not locked up. Abandoned. He had worked at this very hot-dog stand after high school, so he went back behind the counter and into the kitchen. He shooed away two rats, then wiped down the cooking surface. The fridge was still cold inside, so he pulled out two beef dogs. He found the buns and a cellophane-covered tin of red onions. He liked onions, especially the way the vandals winced when he got up in their face after lunch.

The dogs cooked fast, and he stepped outside to eat. The Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel were still and quiet, seagulls perched on the uppermost railings. Another seagull flew close, then darted away from the top of the wheel at the last moment. Jackson looked closer and realized that the critters sitting atop the structure weren’t birds at all.

They were rats. Lots of rats, dotting the top edges of the structure. Trying to grab birds. What in the hell?

He continued down the boardwalk, passing Shoot the Freak, one of Coney Island’s landmark attractions. From a railed promontory, he looked down into the alley-like shooting gallery cluttered with fencing, spattered barrels, and assorted mannequin heads and bowling pins set upon rusted racks for target practice. Along the railing were six paintball guns chained to a table. The sign listed the prices, promising a LIVE HUMAN TARGET.

The brick side walls were decorated with graffiti, creating more character. But among the fake white Krylon tags and weak bubble throw-ups, Jackson noticed another of Phade’s designs. Another six-limbed figure, this one in black and orange. And, near it, in the same colors, a design of lines and dots similar to the code he had been seeing all over town.

Then he saw the freak. The freak was dressed in heavy black armor, like riot gear, covering his entire body. A helmet and mask with protective goggles hid his face. The orange-painted shield he normally carried in order to deflect paintball projectiles stood against a low section of chain-link fence.

The freak stood at the far corner of the shooting alley, a can of spray paint in its gloved hand, marking up the wall.

“Hey!” Jackson called down to him.

The freak didn’t acknowledge him. It kept right on tagging.

“Hey!” called Jackson, louder now. “NYPD! I wanna talk to you!”

Still no response or reaction.

Jackson picked up each of the carbine-like paintball guns, hoping for a free shot. He found one with a handful of orange balls still inside its opaque plastic feeder. He shouldered the weapon and fired low, the carbine kicking and the paintball exploding in the dirt at the freak’s boot.

The freak didn’t flinch. It finished its tag and then dropped the empty can and started toward the underside of the railing where Jackson stood.

“Hey, asshole, I said I wanna talk to you.”

The freak did not stop. Jackson unloaded three blasts at its chest, exploding red. Then the freak passed below Jackson’s angle of fire, heading underneath him.

Jackson went to the railing, lifting himself over it and dangling a moment before dropping down. From there, he had a better view of the freak’s handiwork.

It was Phade. No doubt in Jackson’s mind. His pulse quickened and he started for the only door.

Inside was a tiny changing room, the floor spattered with paint. Beyond was a narrow hallway, and along it he saw, discarded, the freak’s helmet, gloves, goggles, body armor overalls, and other gear. Jackson realized then what he had only previously begun to understand: Phade wasn’t just an opportunist using the riots as cover to blanket the city with his tags. No—Phade was linked to the unrest somehow. His markings, his throw-ups: he was part of this.

At the end, he turned into a small office with a counter and a phone, stacks of paintball loads in egg cartons, and broken carbines.

On the swivel chair was an open backpack stuffed with Krylon cans and loose markers. Phade’s gear.

Then a noise behind him and he whipped around. There was the tagger, shorter than Jackson had imagined, wearing a paint-stained hoodie, a silver-on-black Yankees cap, and an aerosol mask.

“Hey,” said Jackson, all he could think to say at first. It had been such a long hunt, he never expected to find his man so abruptly. “I wanna talk to you.”

Phade said nothing, staring, his eyes dark and low beneath the brim of his ball cap. Jackson moved to the side in case Phade was thinking of ditching his backpack and trying to make a run for it.

“You’re a pretty slippery character,” Jackson said. Jackson had his camera in his jacket pocket, ready as ever. “First of all, take off the face mask and hat. I want you to smile for the birdie.”

Phade moved slowly—not at all, at first, but then its paint-spattered hands came up, pulling back its hood, removing its cap, and pulling down its aerosol mask.

The camera remained at Jackson’s eye, but he never pushed the button. What he saw through the lens surprised him at first—then transfixed him.

This wasn’t Phade at all. Couldn’t be. This was a Puerto Rican girl.

She had red paint around her mouth, as though she had been huffing it, getting high. But no: huffed paint leaves an even, thin coat around the mouth. These were thick drops of red, some of it dried below her chin. Her chin dropped then, and the stinger lashed out, the vampire artist leaping onto Jackson’s chest and shoulders and driving him back against the counter, drinking him dry.

The Flatlands

FLATLANDS WAS A neighborhood near the southern shore of Brooklyn between Canarsie and the coastal Marine Park. As with most New York City neighborhoods, it had undergone many significant demographical changes throughout the twentieth century. The library currently offered French-Creole books for Haitian residents and immigrants from other Caribbean nations, as well as reading programs in coordination with local yeshivas for children from Orthodox Jewish families.

Fet’s shop was a small storefront in a strip mall around the corner from Flatlands Avenue. No electricity, but Fet’s old telephone still gave out a dial tone. The front of the store was used mostly for storage, and not designed to service walk-in customers; in fact, the rat sign over the door was specifically meant to discourage window shoppers. His workshop and garage were in back; that was where they loaded in the most essential items from Setrakian’s basement armory—books, weapons, and other wares.

The similarity between Setrakian’s basement armory and Fet’s workshop was not lost on Eph. Fet’s enemies were rodents and insects, and, for that reason, the space was filled with cages, telescoping syringe poles, black-light wands, and miners’ helmets for night hunting. Snake tongs, animal control poles, odor eliminators, dart guns, even throw nets. Powders, trapping gloves, and a lab area over a small sink, with some rudimentary veterinary equipment for taking blood or sampling captured prey.

The only curious feature was a deep stack of Real Estate magazines lying around a gnarly La-Z-Boy recliner. Where others might keep a stash of porn tucked away in their workshop, Fet had these. “I like the pictures,” he said. “The houses with their warm lights on, against the blue dusk. So beautiful. I like to try to imagine the lives of people who might live inside such a place. Happy people.”

Nora entered, taking a break from unloading, drinking from a bottle of water, one hand on her hip. Fet handed Eph a heavy key ring.

“Three locks for the front door, three for the back.” He demonstrated, showing the order of the keys as they were organized along the ring. “These open the cabinets—left to right.”

“Where are you off to?” asked Eph, as Fet headed for the door.

“Old man’s got something for me to do.”

Nora said, “Pick us up some takeout on your way back.”

“Those were the days,” said Fet, moving out to the second van.

Setrakian brought Fet the item he had carried in his lap from Manhattan. A small bundle of rags, with something wrapped inside. He handed it to Fet.

“You will return underground,” said Setrakian. “Find those ducts that connect to the mainland, and close them.”

Fet nodded, the old man’s request as good as an order. “Why alone?”

“You know those tunnels better than anyone else. And Zachary needs time with his father.”

Fet nodded. “How is the kid?”

Setrakian sighed. “For him, there is first the abject horror of the circumstances, the terror of this new reality. And then there is the Unheimlich. The uncanny. I speak here of the mother. The familiar and the foreign together, and the feeling of anxiety it inspires. Drawing him, and yet repulsing him.”

“You might as well be talking about the doc, too.”

“Indeed. Now, about this task—you must be swift.” He pointed to the package. “The timer will give you three minutes. Only three.”

Fet peeked inside the oil-stained rags: three sticks of dynamite and a small mechanical timer. “Jesus—it looks like an egg timer.”

“So it is. 1950s analog. Analog avoids mistakes, you see. Crank it all the way to the right, and then run. The small box underneath will generate the necessary spark to detonate the sticks. Three minutes. A soft-boiled egg. Do you think you can find a place to hide that fast down there?”

Fet nodded. “I don’t see why not. How long ago did you assemble this?”

“Some time ago,” said Setrakian. “It will still work.”

“You had this around—in your basement?”

“Volatile weapons I kept in the back of the cellar. A small vault, sealed, concrete wall and asbestos. Hidden from city inspectors. Or nosy exterminators.”

Fet nodded, carefully wrapping up the explosive and tucking the package underneath his arm. He moved closer to Setrakian, speaking privately. “Level with me here, professor. I mean, what are we doing? Unless I’m missing something—I don’t see any way to stop this. Slow it down, sure. But destroying them one by one—that’s like trying to kill every rat in the city by hand. It’s spreading too fast.”

“That much is true,” said Setrakian. “We need a way to destroy more efficiently. But, by that same token, I do not believe the Master to be satisfied with exponential exposure.”

Fet digested the big words, then nodded. “Because hot diseases burn out. That’s what the doc said. They run out of hosts.”

“Indeed,” Setrakian said, with a tired expression. “There is a greater plan at work. What it is—I hope we never have to find out.”

“Whatever it is,” said Fet, patting the rags beneath his arm, “count on me to be right at your side.”

Setrakian watched Fet climb into the van and drive off. He liked the Russian, even if he suspected that the exterminator enjoyed the killing only too much. There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors.

Fet was one of them. Unlike Ephraim, Fet had no question about his calling or his deeds. Not that he was stupid or uncaring—quite the contrary. He had a sharp, instinctive intelligence and was a natural tactician. And once set on a course, he never faltered, never stopped.

A great ally to have at one’s side for the Master’s final call.

Setrakian returned inside, pulling open a small crate full of yellowing newspaper. From inside he delicately retrieved some chemistry glassware—more alchemist’s kitchen than science lab. Zack was nearby, chewing on the last of their granola bars. He found a silver sword and hefted it, handling the weapon with appropriate care, finding it surprisingly heavy. Then he touched the crumbling hem of a chest plate made of thick animal hide, horsehair, and sap.

“Fourteenth century,” Setrakian told him. “Dating from the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, and the era of the Black Plague. You see the neckpiece?” He pointed out the high front shield rising to the wearer’s chin. “From a hunter in the fourteenth century, his name lost to history. A museum piece, of no modern use to us. But I couldn’t leave it behind.”

“Seven centuries ago?” said Zack, his fingertips running along the brittle shell. “That old? If they’ve been around for so long, and if they have so much power, then why did they stay hidden?”

“Power revealed is power sacrificed,” said Setrakian. “The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.”

Zack examined the side of the chest plate, where a cross had been tanned into the hide. “Are they devils?”

Setrakian did not know how to answer that. “What do you think?”

“I guess it depends.”

“On what?”

“On if you believe in God.”

Setrakian nodded. “I think that is quite correct.”

“Well?” said Zack. “Do you? Believe in God?”

Setrakian winced, then hoped the boy had not seen it. “An old man’s beliefs matter little. I am the past. You, the future. What are your beliefs?”

Zack moved on to a handheld mirror backed in true silver. “My mom said God made us in His image. And He created everything.”

Setrakian nodded, understanding the question implicit in the boy’s response. “It is called a paradox. When two valid premises appear contradictory. Usually it means that one premise is faulty.”

“But why would He make us so that… that we could turn into them?”

“You should ask Him.”

The boy said quietly, “I have.”

Setrakian nodded, patting the boy on the shoulder. “He never answered me either. Sometimes it is up to us to discover the answers for ourselves. And sometimes we never do.”

An awkward situation, and yet Zack appealed to Setrakian. The boy had a bright curiosity and an earnestness that reflected well upon his generation.

“I am told boys your age like knives,” Setrakian said, locating one and presenting it to the boy. A four-inch, folding silver blade with a brown bone grip.

“Wow.” Zack worked the locking mechanism to close it, then opened it again. “I should probably check with my dad, make sure it’s okay.”

“I believe it fits perfectly in your pocket. Why don’t you see?” He watched Zack collapse the blade and slide the grip into his pants pocket. “Good. Every boy should have a knife. Give it a name and it is yours forever.”

“A name?” said Zack.

“One must always name a weapon. You cannot trust that which you cannot call by name.”

Zack patted his pocket, his gaze faraway. “That’s going to take some thinking.”

Eph came over, noticing Zack and Setrakian together and sensing that something personal had passed between them.

Zack’s hand went deep into his knife pocket, but he said nothing.

“There is a paper bag in the front seat of the van,” said Setrakian. “It contains a sandwich. You must keep strong.”

Zack said, “Not bologna again.”

“My apologies,” said Setrakian, “but it was on special the last time I went to market. This is the last of it. I put on some nice mustard. Also there are two good Drake’s Cakes in the bag. You might enjoy one and then bring the other back for me.”

Zack nodded, his father tousling his hair as he went to the rear exit. “Lock the van doors when you get in there, okay?”

“I know…”

Eph watched him go, seeing him climb inside the passenger door of the van parked right outside. To Setrakian, Eph said, “You okay?”

“I am well enough. Here. I have something for you.”

Eph received a lacquered wooden case. He opened the top, revealing a Glock in clean condition save for where the serial number had been filed off. Around it were five magazines of ammunition wedged into gray foam.

Eph said, “This would appear to be highly illegal.”

“And highly useful. Those are silver bullets, mind you. Specially made.”

Eph lifted the weapon out of the box, turning so that there was no chance of Zack seeing him. “I feel like the Lone Ranger.”

“He had the right idea, didn’t he? But what he didn’t have was expanding tips. These bullets will fragment inside the body, burst. One shot anywhere in the trunk of a strigoi should do the trick.”

The presentation had about it a hint of ceremony. Eph said, “Maybe Fet should have one.”

“Vasiliy likes the nail gun. He is more manually inclined.”

“And you like the sword.”

“It is best to stay with what one is accustomed to, in times of trouble such as these.” Nora came over, drawn by the strange sight of the gun. “I have another, medium-length silver dagger I think would suit you perfectly, Dr. Martinez.”

She nodded, both hands in her pockets. “It’s the only kind of jewelry I want just now.”

Eph returned his weapon to the case, closing the top. This question was easier with Nora here. “What do you think happened up on that rooftop?” he asked Setrakian. “With the Master surviving the sun? Does it mean it is different from the rest?”

“Without doubt, it is different. It is their progenitor.”

Nora said, “Right. Okay. And so we know—painfully well—how subsequent generations of vampires are created. Through stinger infection and such. But who created the first? And how?”

“Right,” said Eph. “How can the chicken come before the egg?”

“Indeed,” said Setrakian, pulling his wolf’s-head-handled walking stick from the wall, leaning on it for support. “I believe the secret to all of this lies in the Master’s making.”

Nora said, “What secret?”

“The key to his undoing.”

They were silent for a moment, absorbing this. Eph said, “Then—you know something.”

Setrakian said, “I have a theory, which has been substantiated, at least in part, by what we witnessed on that rooftop. But I do not wish to be wrong, for it would sidetrack us, and as we all know, time is sand now and the hourglass is no longer being turned by human hands.”

Nora said, “If sunlight didn’t destroy it, then silver probably won’t either.”

“Its host body can be maimed and even killed,” said Setrakian. “Ephraim succeeded in cutting it. But no, you are correct. We cannot assume that silver alone will be enough.”

Eph said, “You’ve spoken of others. Seven Original Ancients, you said. The Master and six others, three Old World, three New World. Where are they in all this?”

“That is something I have been wondering about myself.”

“Do we know, are they with him in this? I assume they are.”

“On the contrary,” said Setrakian. “Against him, wholeheartedly. Of that I am certain.”

“And their creation? These beings came about at the same time, or in the same manner?”

“I can’t imagine some other answer, yes.”

Nora asked, “What does the lore say about the first vampires?”

“Very little, in fact. Some have tried to tie it to Judas, or the story of Lilith, but that is popular revisionist fiction. However… there is one book. One source.”

Eph looked around. “Point me to the box. I’ll get it.”

“This is a book I do not yet possess. One book I have spent a fair portion of my life trying to acquire.”

“Let me guess,” said Eph. “The Vampire Hunter’s Guide to Saving the World.”

“Close. It is called the Occido Lumen. Strictly translated, it means I Kill the Light, or, by extension, The Fallen Light.” Setrakian produced the auction catalog from Sotheby’s, opening it to a folded page.

The book was listed, although in the area where a picture should have run was a graphic reading NO IMAGE AVAILABLE.

“What is it about?” asked Eph.

“It is hard to explain. And even harder to accept. During my tenure in Vienna, I became, by necessity, fluent with many occult systems: Tarot, Qabbalah, Enochian Magick… everything and anything that helped me understand the fundamental questions I faced. They were all difficult subjects to fit in a curriculum but, for reasons I shall not divulge now, the university found abundant patronage for my research. It was during those years that I first heard of the Lumen. A bookseller from Leipzig came to me with a set of black-and-white photographs. Grainy stills of a few of the book’s pages. His demands were outrageous. I had acquired quite a few grimoires from this seller—and for some of them he had commanded a handsome sum—but this… this was ridiculous. I did my research and found that, even among scholars, the book was considered a myth, a scam, a hoax. The literary equivalent of an urban legend. The volume was said to contain the exact nature and origin of all strigoi but, more important, it names all of the Seven Original Ancients… Three weeks later I traveled to the man’s bookshop—a modest store in Nalewski Street. It was closed. I never heard from him again.”

Nora said, “The seven names—they would include Sardou’s?”

“Precisely,” said Setrakian. “And to learn his name—his true name—would give us a hold on him.”

“You’re telling me that all we are looking for is the most expensive White Pages in the world?” said Eph.

Setrakian smiled gently and handed over the catalog to Eph. “I understand your skepticism. I do. To a modern man, a man of science—even one who has seen all that you have—ancient knowledge seems archaic. Creaky. A curiosity. But know this. Names do hold the essence of the thing. And, yes—even names listed in a directory. Names, letters, numbers, when known in depth, possess enormous power. Everything in our universe is ciphered and to know the cipher is to know the thing—and to know the thing is to command it. I once met a man, a very wise man, who could cause instant death by enunciating a six-syllable word. One word, Eph—but very few men know it. Now, imagine what that book contains…”

Nora read the catalog over Eph’s shoulder. “And it’s coming up for auction in two days?”

Setrakian said, “Something of an incredible coincidence, don’t you think?”

Eph looked at him. “I doubt it.”

“Correct. I believe this is all part of a puzzle. This book has a very dark and complicated provenance. When I tell you it is believed to be cursed, I don’t mean that someone fell sick once after reading it. I mean that terrible occurrences surround its very appearance whenever it surfaces. Two auction houses that listed it previously burned to the ground before the bidding began. A third withdrew the item and closed its doors permanently. The item is now valued at between fifteen and twenty-five million dollars.”

“Fifteen and twenty-five…” said Nora, puffing her cheeks. “This is a book we’re talking about?”

“Not just any book.” Setrakian took back the catalog. “We must acquire it. There is no other alternative.”

Nora said, “Do they take personal checks?”

“That is the problem. At this price, there is very little chance we may procure it by legitimate means.”

Eph darkened. “That’s Eldritch Palmer money,” he said.

“Precisely,” said Setrakian, nodding ever so slightly. “And through him, Sardu—the Master.”

Fet’s Blog

BACK AGAIN. STILL trying to sort this thing out.

See, I think people’s problem is, they’re paralyzed by disbelief.

A vamp is some guy in a satin cape. Slicked-back hair, white makeup, funny accent. Two holes in the neck, and he turns into a bat, flies away.

I’ve seen that movie, right? Whatever.

Okay. Now look up Sacculina.

What the hell, you’re already on the Internet anyway.

Go ahead. I did.

You back already? Good.

Now you know that Sacculina is a genus of parasitic barnacles that attack crabs.

And who cares, right? Why am I wasting your time?

What the female Sacculina does after her larva molts is she injects herself into the crab’s body through a vulnerable joint in its armor. She gets in there and begins sprouting these root-like appendages that spread all throughout the crab’s body, even around its eyestalks.

Now, once the crab’s body is enslaved, the female then emerges as a sac. The male Sacculina joins her now, and guess what? Mating time.

Eggs incubate and mature inside the hostage crab, which is forced to devote all its energy to caring for this family of parasites that controls it.

The crab is a host. A drone. Utterly possessed by this different species, and compelled to care for the invader’s eggs as if they were its own.

Who cares, right? Barnacles and crabs?

My point is: there are plenty of examples of this in nature.

Creatures invading bodies of species completely unlike their own and changing their essential function.

It’s proven. It’s known.

And yet we believe we’re above all this. We’re humans, right? Top of the food chain. We eat, we don’t get eaten. We take, not get taken.

It’s said that Copernicus (I can’t be the only one who thought it was Galileo) took Earth out of the center of the universe.

And Darwin took humans out of the center of the living world.

So why do we still insist on believing we are somehow something more than animals?

Look at us. Essentially a collection of cells coordinated by chemical signals.

What if some invading organism seized control of these signals? Started to take us over, one by one. Rewriting our very nature, converting us to their own means?

Impossible, you say?

Why? You think the human race is “too big to fail”?

Okay. Now stop reading this. Stop cruising the Internet for answers and go out and grab yourself some silver and rise up against these things—before it is too late.

The Black Forest Solutions Facility

GABRIEL BOLIVAR, THE only remaining member of the original four “survivors” of Regis Air Flight 753, waited in a dirt-walled hollow deep beneath the drainage floor of Slaughterhouse #3, two stories below the Black Forest Solutions meatpacking facility.

The Master’s oversize coffin lay atop a beam of rock and soil, in the absolute darkness of the underground chamber—and yet its heat signature was strong and distinct, the coffin glowing in Bolivar’s vision, as though lit brightly from within. Enough so that Bolivar could perceive the detail of the carved edging near the double-hinged top doors.

Such was the intensity of the Master’s ambient body temperature, radiating its glory.

Bolivar was well into the second stage of vampiric evolution. The pain of the transformation had all but receded, alleviated in large part by daily feedings, the red blood meal nourishing his body in a manner akin to protein and water building human muscle.

His new circulatory system was complete, his arteries now delivering sustenance to the chambers of his torso. His digestive system had become simplified, waste departing his body through one single hole. His flesh had become entirely hairless and glass-smooth. His extended middle fingers were thickened, talon-like digits with stone-hard nails, while the rest of his fingernails had molted away, as unnecessary to his current state as hair and genitals. His eyes were all pupil, save for a red ring that had eclipsed the human white. He perceived heat in gray scale, and his auditory function—an interior organ, distinct from the useless cartilage clinging to the sides of his smooth head—was greatly enhanced: he could hear the insects squirming in the dirt walls.

He relied more on animal instincts now than his failing human senses. He was intensely aware of the solar cycle, even when far beneath the planet’s surface: he knew that night was arriving above. His body ran about 323 degrees Kelvin, or 50 degrees Celsius—or 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He felt, beneath the earth’s surface, claustrophobia, a kinship with the darkness and the dampness, and an affinity for tight, enclosed spaces. He felt comfortable and safe underground, pulling the cold earth over himself during the day as a human would a warm blanket.

Beyond all that, he experienced a level of fellowship with the Master beyond the normal psychic link enjoyed by all the Master’s children. Bolivar felt himself being groomed for some larger purpose within the growing clan. For instance, he alone knew the location of the Master’s nesting place. He was aware that his consciousness was broader and deeper than the others. This he understood without forming any emotional response or independent opinion on it.

It simply was.

He was called to be at the Master’s side at the time of rising.

The top cabinet doors opened out at either side. Immense hands appeared first, fingers gripping the sides of the open coffin one at a time, with the graceful coordination of spider legs. The Master pulled itself erect at the waist, clumps of old sod falling from its giant upper half back into the soil bed.

Its eyes were open. The Master was already seeing a great many things, far beyond the confines of this darkened subterranean hollow.

The solar exposure, following its encounter with the vampire hunter Setrakian, the doctor Goodweather, and the exterminator Fet, had darkened the Master both physically and mentally. Its formerly pellucid flesh was now coarse and leathery. This skin crinkled when the Master moved, cracking and starting to peel away. It picked chips of flesh off its body like molting black feathers. The Master was missing over forty percent of its flesh now, which gave it the appearance of some horrible thing emerging from a cast of crumbling black plaster. For its flesh was not regenerating but merely the outer epidermis flaking off to reveal a lower, rawer, vascular level of skin: the dermis, and, in spots, the subcutis below, exposing the superficial fascia. In color, it ranged from gory red to a fatty yellow, like a glistening paste of beet and custard. The Master’s capillary worms were more prominent all over, but especially its face, swimming just beneath the surface of its exposed dermis, rippling and racing throughout its giant body.

The Master felt the nearness of its acolyte Bolivar. It swung its massive legs over the side walls of the old cabinet, lowering itself crinklingly to the dirt floor. Some of its bed soil clung to the Master, clumps of dirt and flakes of flesh falling to the floor as it moved. Normally, a smooth-fleshed vampire slips out of soil as cleanly as a human rises from a bath of water.

The Master plucked a few larger chunks of flesh off its torso. It found that it could not move quickly and freely without shedding some of its wretched exterior. This host vehicle would not last. Bolivar, standing ready near the low burrow that was the room’s exit, was an available option and an acceptable short-term physical candidate for this great honor. For Bolivar had no Dear Ones to cling to, which was one prerequisite for hosting. But Bolivar had only just begun the second stage of evolution. He was not fully mature yet.

It could wait. It would wait. The Master had much to do at present.

The Master led the way, stooping and claw-wriggling out of the chamber, swiftly clambering along the low, winding tunnels, Bolivar following right behind. It emerged into a larger chamber, nearer to the surface, the wide floor a soft bed of damp soil like that of a perfect, empty garden. Here, the ceiling was high enough even for the Master to stand erect.

As the unseen sun set above, darkness beginning its nightly rule, the soil around the Master began to stir. Limbs appeared, a small hand here, a thin leg there, like shoots of vegetation growing out of the ground. Young heads, still topped with hair, rising slowly. Some of them blank-faced, others twisted with the pain of their night rebirth.

These were the blind bus children, hatching sightless and hungry like newborn grubs. Doubly cursed by the sun—at first blinded by its occulted rays, now banished by its fatal ultraviolet spectrum—they were to become “feelers” in the Master’s expanding militia: beings blessed with perception more advanced than the rest of the clan. Their special acuity would make them indispensable both as hunters and assassins.

See this.

So the Master commanded Bolivar, putting into Bolivar’s mind Kelly Goodweather’s point of view as she faced the old professor on the rooftop in Spanish Harlem, in the recent past.

The old man’s heat signature glowed gray and cool, while the sword in his hand shone so brightly that Bolivar’s nictitating eyelid lowered in a defensive squint.

Kelly escaped across the rooftops, Bolivar sharing her perspective as she leaped and ran—until she started down the side of a building.

The Master then put into Bolivar’s head an animal-like perception of the building’s location within the clan’s ever-expanding atlas of subterranean transit.

The old man. He is yours.

IRT South Ferry Inner Loop Station

FET REACHED THE homeless encampment before nightfall. He carried the egg-timer explosive and his nail gun in a duffel bag. He ducked down below at the Bowling Green station, picking his way along the tracks toward the South Ferry encampment.

There, he struggled to locate Cray-Z’s pad. Only a few items remained: a few wood shards from his pallets, and the smiling face of Mayor Koch. But it was enough to give Fet a marker. He turned and set out in the general direction of the ducts.

He heard a commotion echoing back through the tunnel. Loud metallic banging, and a rumor of distant voices.

He pulled out his nail gun and made his way toward the loop. There he found Cray-Z, now stripped down to his dirty underwear, brown skin glistening with tunnel seepage and sweat, his ragged braid swinging behind him as he worked to pull up his ratty sofa.

Here was his dismantled home shack, the debris piled up along with the detritus of the other abandoned shacks, forming an obstruction across the tracks. The mound of refuse crested five foot high at its tallest, where he had added some broken track ties for good measure.

“Hey, brother!” called Fet. “What the hell are you doing?”

Cray-Z turned around, standing atop his junk pile like an artist in the throes of madness. He wielded a section of steel pipe in his hand. “It’s time!” he yelled, as though from the summit of a mountain. “Somebody had to do something!”

Fet was a moment finding his voice. “You’re gonna derail the goddamn train!”

“Now you’re down with the plan!” Cray-Z responded.

Now some of the other remaining moles ambled over, witnessing Cray-Z’s creation. “What have you done?” said one. His name was Caver Carl, a former trackman himself who found he could not leave the familiarity of the tunnels upon his retirement, and so returned to them like a sailor retiring to the seas. Carl wore a headlamp, the beam moving with the shaking of his head.

Cray-Z, bothered by the light beam, let out a battle cry from the top of his barricade. “I am God’s fool, but they won’t take me this soon!”

Caver Carl and some others moved forward, attempting to tear down the pile. “One of the trains crash, they’ll drive us out of here for good!”

In an instant, Cray-Z leaped down from his pile, landing next to Fet. Fet went to him with arms outstretched, trying to calm the situation, hoping to put these folks to work for him. “Hold on everyone—”

Cray-Z wasn’t in the mood for talking. He swung his steel pipe at Fet, who instinctively blocked the blow with his left forearm. The pipe cracked the bone.

Fet howled, and then, using the heavy nail gun as a club, struck Cray-Z hard across the temple. It staggered the madman, but he kept coming. Fet cracked Cray-Z in the ribs, then kicked at the calf of his right leg, dislocating his leg at the knee, finally bringing him down.

“Listen!” yelled Caver Carl.

Fet stopped and did so.

The telltale rumble. He turned and saw, down the length of the track, a dusting of light against the curve in the tunnel wall.

The 5 train was approaching its U-turn.

The other moles continued to pull at the pieces of the pile, but it was no use. Cray-Z used his pipe to get up onto his one good leg, hopping up and down.

“Fucking sinners!” he howled. “You moles are all blind! Here they come! Now you have no choice but to fight them. Fight for your lives!”

The train bore down on them, and Fet saw that there was no time. He backed off from the impending catastrophe, the brightening train light illuminating Cray-Z’s dance: a mad jig on his bent leg.

As the train blew past him, Fet caught a glimpse of the driver’s face. She stared straight ahead, without expression. She had to have seen the debris. And yet she never applied the brake, she never did anything.

She had the thousand-yard-stare of a newly turned vampire.

WHAM, the train impacted the obstruction, wheels spinning, churning. The front car punched into the debris, exploding it, chewing and carrying the larger objects for some thirty feet before jumping the track. The cars lurched to the right, striking the edge of the platform at the head of the loop, still skidding, trailing a comet of sparks. The engine car of the train then wobbled the other way, the cars behind it ribboning along—the train jackknifing in the narrow track space.

The grating, metallic screech was nearly human in its outrage and its pain. Given the tunnels and their throat-like propensity for echoes, the cars stopped long before the awful sound did.

This train had many more bodies riding its exterior. Some were killed instantly—ground against and smeared along the edge of the platform. The rest rode the spectacular crash until the end. Once the cars came to a stop, they separated from the train like leeches detaching from flesh, dropping to the ground, getting their bearings.

Slowly, they turned toward the moles still standing there, staring in disbelief.

The riders walked out of the dust and smoke of the calamity, unfazed but for an odd, slinking gait. Their joints emitted a soft popping noise as they advanced.

Fet quickly went into his duffel bag, retrieving Setrakian’s improvised time bomb. He felt an intense burning in the right calf and looked down. A long, thin, needle-sharp piece of debris had somehow pierced his leg, all the way through. If he pulled it loose, the bleeding would be savage—and right now, blood was the last thing he wanted to smell of. He left it painfully lodged in his muscle mass.

Closer to the tracks, Cray-Z looked on in amazement. How could so many have survived?

Then, as the riders moved closer, even Cray-Z noticed that something was missing from these people. He detected traces of humanity in their faces, but it was only that: traces. Like the glimmer of greedy humanoid intelligence one sees inside the eyes of a hungry dog.

He recognized some of them, women and men from underground. Fellow moles—except for one figure. A lanky creature, pale and bare-chested, sculpted like an ivory figurine. A few strands of hair framed an angular, handsome, yet wholly possessed face.

It was Gabriel Bolivar. His music had not permeated the under-city demographic, and yet every eye fell upon him. He stood out from the rest that much, the showman he was in life carrying over into un-death. He wore black leather pants and cowboy boots, with no shirt. Every vein, muscle, and sinew in his torso was visible beneath his delicate, translucent skin.

Flanking him were two broken females. One’s arm was sliced open, a deep cut, slashing through flesh, muscle, and bone, nearly severing the limb. The cut did not bleed, but rather oozed—and not red blood, but a white substance more viscous than milk yet thinner in consistency than cream.

Caver Carl began to pray. His softly sobbing voice was so high, so full of fear, that Fet at first thought it belonged to a boy.

Bolivar pointed at the staring moles—and at once the riders were upon them.

The woman-thing ran straight at Caver Carl, knocking him back off his feet, landing on his chest, and pinning him to the ground. She smelled of moldy orange peels and spoiled meat. He tried to fend her off, but she gripped his arm and twisted it in the socket, snapping it instantly.

Her hot hand pushed at his chin with enormous strength. Carl’s head was forced back to the breaking point, his neck extended and fully exposed. From his upside-down perspective, by the light of his miner’s helmet, all he could see were legs and unlaced shoes and bare feet running past. A horde of creatures—reinforcements—came at them from the tunnels, a full-on invasion trampling through camp, beings clustered over twitching bodies.

A second creature joined the woman on him, tearing away his shirt in a frenzy. He felt a hard bite at his neck. Not a hinged bite—not teeth—but a puncture, followed immediately by a suction-like latching. The other clawed at the inseam of his trousers, shredding them below his groin and clamping onto the inside of his thigh.

Pain at first, a sharp burning. Then, within moments… numbness. The sensation was like that of a piston thumping against his muscle and flesh.

He was being drained. Carl attempted to scream, his open mouth finding no voice but only four long, hot fingers. The creature grabbed hold of his cheek from the inside, its talon-like nail slicing his gum all the way to the jawbone. Its flesh tasted salty, tangy—until it was overwhelmed by the coppery flavor of his own blood.

Fet had retreated immediately after the crash, knowing a losing battle when he saw one. The screaming was nearly unbearable, yet he had a mission to complete, and that was his focus.

He climbed backward into one of the ducts, finding there was barely enough space to accommodate him. One advantage to fear was that the adrenaline coursing through him had the effect of dilating his pupils, and he found he could see his environs with unnatural clarity.

He unwrapped the rags and twisted the timer one full rotation. Three minutes. One hundred eighty seconds. A soft-boiled egg.

He cursed his luck, now realizing that, with the vampire battle in the tunnel, he would have to travel deeper into the ducts used by vampires to transverse the river, but also backward, with his arm badly bruised and his leg dripping blood.

Before releasing the timer, he saw the bodies of the moles on the ground, squirming as they were consumed by clusters of vampires. They were already infected, already lost—all except for Cray-Z. He stood near a concrete pillar, watching like a blissful fool. And yet he was untouched by these dark things, unmolested as they rampaged past him.

Then Fet saw the lanky figure of Gabriel Bolivar approach Cray-Z. Cray-Z fell to his knees before the singer, the two of them outlined in smoke and dusty light, like figures in a Bible stamp.

Bolivar lay his hand upon Cray-Z’s head, and the madman bowed. He then kissed the hand, praying.

Fet had seen enough. He set the device down inside a gap and took his hand off the dial… one… two… three… counting in time with the ticking as he grabbed his duffel bag and retreated backward.

Fet kept pushing back, feeling his body ease after a while, lubricated by his own flowing blood.

…forty… forty-one… forty-two…

A cluster of creatures moved toward the duct entrance, attracted by the smell of Fet’s ambrosia. Fet saw their outline in the small aperture, and lost all hope.

…seventy-three… seventy-four… seventy-five…

He skidded as fast as he could, opening his duffel bag and removing his nail gun. He fired the silver nails as he retreated—screaming like a soldier emptying a machine gun into the enemy’s nest.

The nails embedded deep into the cheekbone and forehead of the first charging vampire, a nicely suited man in his sixties. Fet fired again, popping the man’s eye and gagging him with silver, the brad buried in the soft flesh of its throat.

The thing squealed and recoiled. Others scrambled over their fallen comrade, snaking quickly through the duct. Fet saw it approach—this one a slender woman in jogging sweats, her shoulder wounded, exposing her collarbone, scraping it against the tube walls.

… one hundred fifty… one hundred fifty-one… one hundred fifty-two…

Fet shot at the approaching creature. It kept creeping toward him even as its face was festooned with silver. Its goddamn stinger shot out of its pincushion face, fully extended, nearly touching Fet, forcing him to scramble harder, slipping on his blood, his next shot missing, the nail ricocheting past the lead vampire and burying itself in the throat of the creature behind it.

How far along was he? Fifty feet from the explosion? A hundred feet?

Not enough.

Three sticks of dynamite and a soft-fucking-boiled egg later, he would find out.

He remembered the photos of the houses with their windows all lit up inside as he kept shooting and screaming. Houses that never needed exterminators. If there was any way he could survive this, he promised himself he would light up all the windows in his apartment and go out on the street just to look back.

…one-seventy-six… one-seventy-seven… one-seventy—

As the explosion rose behind the creature, and the blast of heat hit Vasiliy, he felt his body pushed by the searing piston of displaced air, and a body—that of a singed vampire—hit him full-on… knocking him out.

As he faded into a serene void, a word out of the depths of his mind replaced the cadence of the counting in his head:

CRO… CRO…

CROATOAN

Arlington Park, Jersey City

TEN THIRTY AT NIGHT.

Alfonso Creem had been at the park an hour already, selecting a strategic spot.

He was picky that way.

The only thing he didn’t like about the location was the security light above, shining down in orange. So he had his lieutenant Royal—just Royal—bust the lock on the base and pop out the plate and jam a tire iron inside. Problem solved. The light flickered out above, and Creem nodded his approval.

He took his place under the shadows. His muscular arms hung out from his sides, too big to cross over his chest. His midsection was broad and nearly square. The head of the Jersey Sapphires was a black Colombian, the son of a Brit father and a Colombian mother. The Jersey Sapphires ran every block surrounding Arlington Park. They could have the park too, if they wanted it, but it wasn’t worth the trouble. The park was a criminal bazaar at night, and cleaning it out was a job for the cops and good citizens, not the Sapphires. Indeed, it was to Creem’s advantage to have this dead zone here in the middle of Jersey City: a public toilet that drew the scumbags away from his blocks.

Creem had won every street corner by sheer force. He rolled in like a Sherman tank and battered the opposing force into submission. Every time he earned another corner, he celebrated by having one of his teeth capped in silver. Creem had a brilliant and intimidating smile. Silver bling dressed his fingers as well. He had chains, too, but tonight he had left his neckwear back at his crib; it’s the first thing desperate people grab when they know they’re about to be murdered.

Royal stood near Creem, sweating inside a fur-lined parka, an ace of spades sewn into the front of his black knit cap. “He didn’t say to meet alone?”

Creem said, “Just that he wanted to parlay.”

“Huh. So what’s the plan?”

“His plan? No fucking idea. My plan? A nice puto scar.” Creem used his thick thumb to mime a straight razor cutting deep across Royal’s face. “I fucking hate most Mexicans, but this one ’specially.”

“I wondered why the park.”

Murders in the park didn’t get solved. Because there was no outcry. If you were brave enough to enter A Park after dark, then you were dumb enough to die. Just in case, Creem had coated his fingertips with Crazy Glue to obscure his fingerprints, and had readied a flat razor’s handle with Vaseline and bleach—just like he would with a gun handle—to avoid leaving any DNA traces.

A long, black car pulled down the street. Not quite a limousine, but something swankier than a tricked-out Cadillac. It slowed at the curb, stopped. Tinted windows stayed up. The driver didn’t get out.

Royal looked at Creem. Creem looked at Royal.

The back door opened to the curb. The occupant got out, wearing sunglasses. Also a checked shirt unbuttoned over a white tank, baggy pants, new black boots. He removed his pinch-front hat, revealing a tight red do-rag beneath, and tossed the hat back onto the seat of the car.

Royal said, under his breath, “What the fuck is this?”

The puto crossed the sidewalk, entering through the opening in the fence. His white tank shirt glowed with what was bright in the night as he strolled over grass and dirt.

Creem didn’t believe his own eyes until the dude was near enough that his collarbone tat showed plain.

SOY COMO SOY. I am what I am.

Creem said, “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

Gus Elizalde of Spanish Harlem’s La Mugre gang smiled but said nothing.

The car remained idling at the curb.

Creem said, “What? You come all the way here to tell me you won the fucking lottery?”

“Sort of like that.”

Creem dismissed him with a look up and down.

Gus said, “Fact, I’m here to offer you a percentage of the winning ticket.”

Creem snarled, trying to figure out the Mexican’s play. “What you thinking, homes? Riding that thing into my territory?”

“Everything is a dis with you, Creem,” said Gus. “Why you stuck forever in Jersey City.”

“You talking to the king of JC. Now who else you got with you in that sled?”

“Funny you should ask.” Gus looked back with a chin nod, and the driver’s door opened. Instead of a chauffeur with a cap, a large man stood out wearing a hoodie, his face obscured in shadow. He came around and stood before the front wheel, head down, waiting.

Creem said, “So you boosted a ride in from the airport. Big man.”

“The old ways are over, Creem. I’ve seen it, man. I’ve seen the fucking end. Turf battles? This block-by-block shit is so two-thousand-late. Means nothing. The only turf battle that matters now is all or nothing. Us or them.”

“Them who?”

“You gotta know something’s going down. And not just in the big island across the river.”

“Big island? That’s your problem.”

“Look at this park. Where your junkies at? Crack whores? Where’s the action? Dead in here. ’Cause they take the night people first.”

Creem snarled. He didn’t like Gus making sense. “I do know that business is down.”

“Business is set to vanish, homes. There’s a new drug hot on the street. Check it out. It’s called human fucking blood. And it’s free for the taking if you got the taste.”

Royal said, “You’re one of those vampire nuts. Loco.”

“They got my madre and my brother, yo. You remember Crispin?”

Gus’s junkie brother. Creem said, “I remember.”

“Well, you won’t be seeing him around this park much anymore. But I don’t grudge, Creem. Not no more. This here is a new day. I gotta set personal feelings aside. Because right now I am pulling together the best team of motherfucking hard-asses I can find.”

“If you’re here to talk up some shit-ass scheme to take down a bank or some shit, capitalizing on all this chaos, that’s already been—”

“Looting’s for amateurs. Them’s day wages. I got real work, for real pay, lined up. Call in your boys, so they can hear this.”

“What boys?”

“Creem. The ones set to dust me tonight, get them in here.”

Creem flat-eyed Gus for a few moments. Then he whistled. Creem was a champion whistler. The silver on his teeth made for a shrill signal.

Three other Sapphires came out of the trees, hands in pockets. Gus kept his hands out and open where they could see him.

“Okay,” said Creem. “Talk fast, Mex.”

“I’ll talk slow. You listen good.”

He laid it out for them. The turf battle between the Ancients and the rogue Master.

“You been smoking,” said Creem.

But Gus saw the fire in his eyes. He saw the fuse of excitement already burning. “What I am offering you is more money than you could ever clear in the powder trade. The opportunity to kill and maim at will—and never see jail for it. I am offering you a once-in-a-lifetime chance to kick unlimited ass in five boroughs. And—do the job right, we’re all set for life.”

“And if we don’t do the job right?”

“Then I don’t see how money’s gonna mean shit anyway. But at least you’ll have gotten your fucking rocks off, ’cause, if nothing else, this is about going out with a bang, know what I mean?”

Creem said, “Fuck, you’re a little too good to be true. I need to see some green first.”

Gus chuckled. “Tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna show you three colors, Creem. Silver, green, and white.”

He raised his hand in signal to the hooded driver. The driver went to the trunk, popped it open, and retrieved two bags. He ported them through the fence opening to the meeting place, and set them down.

One was a large black duffel bag, the other a moderately sized, two-handled leather clutch.

“Who your homie?” said Creem. The driver was big, wearing heavy Doc Martens, blue jeans, and the large hoodie. Creem couldn’t see the driver’s face under the hood, but it was obvious this close that this guy was all wrong.

“They call him Mr. Quinlan,” said Gus.

A scream arose from the other end of the park—a man’s scream, more terrible to the ears than a woman’s scream. The others turned.

Gus said, “Let’s hurry. First—the silver.”

He knelt and drew the zipper across the duffel. There wasn’t much light. Gus pulled out the long gun and felt the Sapphires reach for theirs. Gus flipped the switch on the barrel-mounted lamp, thinking it was a normal incandescent bulb, but it was ultraviolet. Of course.

He used the inky-purple light to show the rest of the weapons. A crossbow, its bolt load tipped with a silver impact charge. A flat, fan-shaped silver blade with a curved wooden handle. A sword fashioned like a wide-bladed scimitar with a generous curve and a rugged, leather-bound handle.

Gus said, “You like silver, Creem, don’t you?”

The exotic-looking weaponry piqued Creem’s interest. But he was still wary of the driver, Quinlan. “All right. What about the green?

Quinlan opened the handles of the leather bag. Filled with bundles of cash, anti-counterfeiting threads glowing under the indigo eye of Gus’s UV light.

Creem started to reach into the bag—then stopped. He noticed Quinlan’s hands gripping the bag handles. Most of his fingernails were gone, his flesh entirely smooth. But the fucked-up thing was his middle fingers. Twice as long as the rest of the digits, and crooked at the end—so much so that the tip curled around his palm to the side of his hand.

Another scream split the night, followed by a kind of growl. Quinlan closed the bag, looking forward into the trees. He handed the money bag to Gus, trading him for the long gun. Then, with unbelievable power and speed, he went sprinting into the trees.

Creem said, “What the…?”

If there was a path, this Quinlan ignored it. The gangsters heard branches cracking.

Gus slung the weapons bag onto his shoulder. “Come on. You don’t want to miss this.”

He was easy to follow, because Quinlan had cleared a path of downed branches, pointing the way straight ahead, weaving only for tree trunks. They hustled along, coming upon Quinlan in a clearing on the other side, finding him standing quietly with the gun cradled against his chest.

His hood had fallen back. Creem, huffing, saw the driver’s smooth bald head from behind. In the darkness, it looked like the guy had no ears. Creem came around to see his face better—and the human tank shivered like a little flower in a storm.

The thing called Quinlan had no ears and barely any nose left. A thick throat. Translucent skin, nearly iridescent. And blood-red eyes—the brightest eyes Creem had ever seen—set deep within his pale, smooth head.

Just then a figure broke from the upper branches, dropping to the ground with ease and loping across the clearing. Quinlan sprinted out to intercept it like a cougar tracking a gazelle. They collided, Quinlan dropping his shoulder for an open-field hit.

The figure went down sprawling with a squeal, rolling hard—before popping right back up.

In an instant, Quinlan turned the barrel light on the figure. The figure hissed and flailed back, the torture in its face evident even from that distance. Then Quinlan pulled the trigger. An exploding cone of bright silver buckshot obliterated the figure’s head.

Only—the figure didn’t die like a man dies. A white substance geysered out from its neck trunk and it tucked in its arms and collapsed to the ground.

Quinlan turned his head fast—even before the next figure darted from the trees. A female this time, racing away from Quinlan, toward the others. At the others. Gus pulled the scimitar from the bag. The female—dressed in tatters like the filthiest crack whore you’ve ever seen, except that she was nimble and her eyes shone red—reeled back from the sight of the weapon, but too late. With a single, clean move, Gus connected with the tops of her shoulders and her neck, her head falling one way, her body the other. When it all settled to the ground, a pasty-white liquid oozed out of her wounds.

“And there’s the white,” Gus said.

Quinlan returned to them, pumping the long gun and raising his thick cotton hood back over his head.

“Okay, yeah,” said Creem, dancing from side to side like a kid who had to go to the bathroom on Christmas morning. “Yeah, I’d say we’re fucking in.”

The Flatlands

USING A STRAIGHT razor taken from the pawnshop, Eph shaved half his face before losing interest. He zoned out, staring into the mirror over the sink of milky water, his right cheek still covered in foam.

He was thinking of the book—the Occido Lumen—and how everything was going against him. Palmer and his fortune. Blocking every move they could make. What would become of them—of Zack—if he failed?

The edge of the razor drew blood. A thin nick turning red and flowing. He looked at the blade with the smear of blood on the steel, and drifted back eleven years to Zack’s birth.

Following one miscarriage and a stillbirth at twenty-nine weeks, Kelly had been on two months’ bed rest with Zack before going into labor. She had a specific birth plan going in: no epidural or drugs of any kind, no cesarean section. Ten hours later, there was little progression. Her doctor suggested Pitocin in order to speed things up, but Kelly declined, sticking to her plan. Eight hours of labor later, she relented, and the Pitocin drip was begun. Two hours after that, after enduring almost a full day of painful contractions, she finally consented to an epidural. The Pitocin dose was gradually increased until it was as high as the baby’s heart rate would allow.

At the twenty-seventh hour, her doctor offered her the option of a cesarean, but Kelly refused. Having given in on every other point, she held out for natural birth. The fetus’s heart monitor showed that it was doing okay, her cervix had dilated to eight centimeters, and Kelly was intent on pushing her baby out into the world.

But five hours later, despite a vigorous belly-massage from a veteran nurse, the baby remained stubbornly sideways, and Kelly’s cervix was stuck at eight. The pain of the contractions was registering now, despite the successful epidural. Kelly’s doctor rolled a stool over to her bedside, again offered her a cesarean. This time Kelly accepted.

Eph gowned up and accompanied her to the glowing white operating room through the double doors at the end of the hall. The fetal heart monitor reassured him with its swift, metronomic tock-tock-tock. The attending nurse swabbed Kelly’s swollen belly with yellow-brown antiseptic, and then the obstetrician sliced left to right low on her abdomen with confident, broad strokes: the fascia was parted, then the twin vertical belts of the beefy abdominal muscle, and then the thin peritoneum membrane, revealing the thick, plum wall of the uterus. The surgeon switched to bandage scissors so as to minimize any risk of lacerating the fetus, and made the final incision.

Gloved hands reached in and pulled out a brand-new human being—but Zack was not yet born. He was “in the caul,” as they say; that is, still surrounded by the filmy, intact amniotic sac. It ballooned like a bubble, an opaque membrane encircling the fetal infant like a nylon egg. Zack was still, in that moment, feeding off Kelly, still receiving nutrients and oxygen through the umbilical cord. The obstetrician and attending nurses worked to retain their professional poise, but Kelly and Eph both felt their apparent alarm. Only later would Eph learn that caul babies occur in fewer than one in a thousand births, with the number rising into the tens of thousands for babies not born prematurely.

This strange moment lingered, the unborn baby still tethered to his exhausted mother, delivered and yet unborn. Then the membrane spontaneously ruptured, peeling back from Zack’s head to reveal his glistening face. Another moment of suspended time… and then he cried out, and was placed dripping onto Kelly’s chest.

Tension lingered in the operating room, mixed with obvious joy, Kelly pulling at Zack’s feet and hands to count the digits. She searched him thoroughly for signs of deformity, and found only joy. He was eight pounds even, bald as a lump of bread dough and just as pale. His Apgar score was eight after two minutes, nine after five minutes.

Healthy baby.

Kelly, however, experienced a big letdown postpartum. Nothing as deep and debilitating as true depression, but a dark funk nonetheless. The marathon labor was so debilitating that her milk did not come in, which, combined with her abandoned birth plan, left her feeling like a failure. At one point, Kelly told Eph that she felt she had let him down, which mystified him. She felt corrupted inside. Everything in life had come so easily, to both of them, before this.

Once she got better—once she embraced the golden boy who was her newborn son—she never let Zack go. She became, for a time, obsessed with the caul birth, researching its significance. Some sources claimed the oddity was an omen of good luck, even forecasting greatness. Other legends indicated that caul-bearers, as they were known, were clairvoyant, would never drown, and had been marked by angels with shielded souls. She looked for meaning in literature, citing various fictional caul-bearers, such as David Copperfield and the little boy in The Shining. Famous men in real life, such as Sigmund Freud, Lord Byron, and Napoleon Bonaparte. In time, she came to discount all negative associations—in fact, in certain European countries it was said that a child born with a caul might be cursed—countering her own unfortunate feelings of inadequacy with the determination that her boy, this creation of hers, was exceptional.

It was these impulses that, over time, poisoned her relationship with Eph, leading to a divorce he never wanted, and the ensuing custody battle: a battle that had, since her turning, morphed into a life-or-death struggle. Kelly had decided that if she couldn’t be perfect for so exacting a man, then she would be nothing to him. And so it was that Eph’s personal downfall—his drinking—secretly thrilled her at the same time as it terrified her. Kelly’s awful wish had come true. For it showed that even Ephraim Goodweather could not live up to his own exacting standards.

Eph smiled derisively at his half-shaven self in the mirror. He reached for his bottle of apricot schnapps and toasted his fucking perfection, downing two sweetly harsh gulps.

“You don’t need to do that.”

Nora had entered, easing the bathroom door shut behind her. She was barefoot, having changed into fresh jeans and a loose T-shirt, her dark hair clipped up in back of her head.

Eph addressed her mirror reflection. “We’re outmoded, you know. Our time has passed. The twentieth century was viruses. The twenty-first? Vampires.” He drank again, as proof that he was all right with it, and demonstrating that no rational argument could dissuade him. “I don’t get how you don’t drink. This is exactly what booze was made for. The only way to swallow this new reality is by chasing it with some of the good stuff.” Another drink, then looked again at the label. “If only I had some good stuff.”

“I don’t like you like this.”

“I am what experts refer to as a ’high-functioning alcoholic’ Or I could go around hiding it, if you prefer.”

She crossed her arms, leaning sideways against the wall, staring at his back and knowing she was getting nowhere. “It’s only a matter of time, you know. Before Kelly’s blood-yearning leads her back here, to Zack. And that means, through her, the Master. Leading him straight to Setrakian.”

If the bottle had been empty, Eph might have whipped it against the wall. “It’s fucking insanity. But it’s real. I’ve never had a nightmare that’s even come close to this.”

“I’m saying I think you need to get Zack away from here.”

Eph nodded, both hands gripping the edge of the sink. “I know. I’ve been slowly coming around to that determination myself.”

“And I think you need to go with him.”

Eph considered it a moment, he truly did, before turning from the mirror to face her. “Is this like when the first lieutenant informs the captain he’s not fit for duty?”

Nora said, “This is like when someone cares enough for you that they are afraid you will hurt yourself. It’s best for him—and better for you.”

That disarmed him. “I can’t leave you here in my place, Nora. We both know the city is falling. New York City is over. Better it falls on me than on you.”

“That’s bullshit barroom talk.”

“You are right about one thing. With Zack here, I can’t fully commit myself to this fight. He needs to go. I need to know he’s out of here, he’s safe. There is this place, in Vermont—”

“I am not leaving.”

Eph took a breath. “Just listen.”

“I am not leaving, Eph. You think you’re doing the chivalrous thing, when, in fact, you are insulting me. This is my city more than it is yours. Zack is a great kid, you know I think that, but I am not here to do the women’s work and watch the children and lay out your clothes. I am a medical scientist just like you.”

“I know all that, believe me. I was thinking about your mother.”

That stopped her in her tracks. Nora’s lips remained parted, ready to fire back, but his words had stolen the breath from her mouth.

“I know she’s not well,” he went on. “She’s in early-phase dementia, and I know she weighs on your mind constantly, same as Zack does on mine. This is your chance to get her out too. I’m trying to tell you that Kelly’s folks had this place on a mountain in Vermont—”

“I can do more good here.”

“Can you, though? I mean—can I? I don’t even know. What’s most important now? Survival, I’d say. That’s the absolute best we can hope for. At least this way, one of us will be safe. And I know it’s not what you want. And I know it’s a ton to ask of you. You’re right—were this a normal viral pandemic, you and I would be the most essential people in this city. We would be at the crux of this thing—for all the right reasons. As it is now, this strain has leapfrogged our expertise entirely. The world doesn’t need us anymore, Nora. It doesn’t need doctors or scientists. It needs exorcists. It needs Abraham Setrakian.” Eph crossed to her. “I know just enough to be dangerous. And so—dangerous I must be.”

That brought her forward from the wall. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m expendable. Or, at least, as expendable as the next man. Unless the next man in question is an aging pawnbroker with a bad heart. Hell—Fet brings much more to this fight than I do now. He’s more valuable to the old man than I am.”

“I don’t like the way you’re talking.”

He was impatient that she accept the realities as he understood them. That he make her understand. “I want to fight. I want to give it my all. But I can’t, not with Kelly coming after the people I care about most. I need to know that my Dear Ones are safe. That means Zack. And that means you.”

He reached for her hand. Their fingers intertwined. The sensation was profound, and it occurred to Eph: how many days now had it been since he had experienced a simple physical contact with another person?

“What is it you plan to do?” asked Nora.

He knit his fingers more firmly into hers, exploring the fit as he reaffirmed the plan taking form in his mind. Dangerous and desperate, but effective. Maybe a game-changer.

He answered, “Simply to be useful.”

He turned away, trying to reach back for the bottle on the sink edge, but she gripped his arm and pulled him back toward her. “Leave it there,” she said. “Please.” Her tea-brown eyes were so beautiful, so sad—so human. “You don’t need it.”

“But I want it. And it wants me.”

He wanted to turn but she held him fast. “Kelly couldn’t get you to stop?”

Eph thought about that. “You know, I’m not sure she ever really tried.”

Nora reached for his face, her hand touching first his bristly, unshaven cheek, then the smooth side, stroking it gently with the backs of her fingers. The contact melted them both.

“I could make you stop,” she said, very close to his face.

She kissed the rough side first. Then he met her lips and experienced a surge of hope and passion so powerful, it was like a first-time embrace. Everything about their previous two sexual encounters came swarming back to him in a hot, anticipatory rush, and yet it was the fundamental human contact that supercharged the exchange. That which had been missing was now craved.

Exhausted, strung out, and utterly unprepared, they clung to each other as Eph pressed Nora back against the tile wall, his hands wanting only her flesh. In the face of such terror and dehumanization, human passion itself was an act of defiance.

INTERLUDE II Occido Lumen: The Story of The Book

THE BROWN-SKINNED BROKER IN THE BLACK VELVET Nehru jacket twisted a blue opal ring around the base of his pinkie finger as he strolled the canal. “I have never met Mynheer Blaak, mind you. He prefers it that way.”

Setrakian walked alongside the broker. Setrakian was traveling with a Belgian passport, under the name Roald Pirk, his occupation listed as “antique bookseller.” The document was an expert forgery.

The year was 1972. Setrakian was forty-six years old.

“Though I can assure you he is very wealthy,” the broker continued. “Do you like money very much, Monsieur Pirk?”

“I do.”

“Then you will like Mynheer Blaak very much. This volume he seeks, he will pay you quite handsomely. I am authorized to say that he will match your price, which, itself, I would characterize as aggressive. This makes you happy?”

“Yes.”

“As it should. You are fortunate indeed to have acquired such a rare volume. I am sure you are aware of its provenance. You are not a superstitious man?”

“In fact, I am. By trade.”

“Ah. And that is why you have chosen to part with it? Myself, I think of this volume as the book version of ‘The Bottle Imp.’ You are familiar with the tale?”

“Stevenson, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed. Oh, I hope you aren’t thinking that I am testing your knowledge of literature in order to gauge your bona fides. I reference Stevenson only because I recently brokered the sale of an extremely rare edition of The Master of Ballantrae. But in ‘Imp,’ as you evidently remember, the accursed bottle must be sold each time for less than it was purchased. Not so with this volume. No, no. Quite the opposite.”

The broker’s eyes flashed with interest at one of the brightly lit display windows they strolled past. Unlike most of the other showcases along De Wallen, the red-light district of Amsterdam, the occupant of this particular window was a ladyboy, not the usual female prostitute.

The broker smoothed his mustache and redirected his eyes to the brick-paved street. “In any event,” he continued, “the book has a troubling legacy. I myself will not handle it. Mynheer Blaak is an avid collector, a connoisseur of the first rank. His tastes run to the discriminating and the obscure, and his checks always clear. But I feel it is only fair to warn you, there have been a few attempts at fraud.”

“I see.”

“I, of course, can accept no responsibility for what became of these crooked sellers. Though I must say, Mynheer Blaak’s interest in the volume is keen, because he has paid half of my commission on every unsuccessful transaction. In order that I might continue my search and keep potential suitors arriving at his door, so to speak.”

The broker casually pulled out a pair of fine white cotton gloves and fitted them over his manicured hands.

“If you will forgive me,” said Setrakian, “I did not journey to Amsterdam to walk its beautiful canals. I am a superstitious man, as I stated, and I should like to unload myself of the burden of such a valuable book at the earliest convenience. To be frank, I am even more concerned about robbers than curses.”

“I see, yes. You are a practical man.”

“Where and when will Mynheer Blaak be available to conduct this transaction?”

“The book is with you, then?”

Setrakian nodded. “It is here.”

The broker pointed to the twin-handled, twin-buckled portmanteau of stiff, black leather in Setrakian’s hand. “On your person?”

“No, much too risky.” Setrakian moved the suitcase from one hand to the other, hoping to signal otherwise. “But it is here. In Amsterdam. It is near.”

“Please forgive my boldness then. But, if you are indeed in possession of the Lumen then you are familiar with its content. Its raison d’être, yes?”

Setrakian stopped. For the first time he noticed they had wandered off the crowded streets and were now in a narrow alley with no one in sight. The broker folded his arms behind his back as if in casual conversation.

“I do,” said Setrakian. “But it would be foolish for me to divulge much.”

“Indeed,” said the broker. “And we don’t expect you to do so but—could you effectively summarize your impressions of it? A few words if you would.”

Setrakian perceived a metallic flash behind the broker’s back—or was it one of the man’s gloved hands? Either way, Setrakian felt no fear. He had prepared for this.

“Mal’akh Elohim. Messengers of God. Angels. Archangels. In this case, Fallen Ones. And their corrupt lineage on this Earth.”

The broker’s eyes flared a moment, then were still. “Wonderful. Well, Mynheer Blaak is most interested to meet you, and will be in contact very soon.”

The broker offered Setrakian a white-gloved hand. Setrakian wore black gloves, and the broker certainly felt the crooked digits of his hand as they shook—but, aside from an impolite stiffening, did not otherwise react. Setrakian said, “Shall I give you my local address?”

The broker waved his gloved hand brusquely. “I am to know nothing. Monsieur, I wish you every success.” He was starting away, back the way they came.

“But how will he contact me?” asked Setrakian, after him.

“I know only that he will,” the broker responded over a velvet-lined shoulder. “A very good evening to you, Monsieur Pirk.”

Setrakian watched the dapper man walk on, long enough to see him turn in toward the window they had passed and knock pleasantly. Setrakian turned up the collar of his overcoat and walked west, away from the inky water of the canals toward the Dam Platz.

Amsterdam, being a city of canals, was an unusual residence for a strigoi, forbidden by nature to cross over moving water. But all his years spent in pursuit of the Nazi doctor Werner Dreverhaven, the camp physician at Treblinka, had led Setrakian into a network of underground antique booksellers. That, in turn, had put him on the path to the object of Dreverhaven’s obsession, this extraordinarily rare Latin translation of an obscure Mesopotamian text.

De Wallen was known more for its macabre mix of drugs, coffee bars, sex clubs, brothels, and window girls and boys. But the narrow alleys and canals of this port city were also home to a small but highly influential group of antique book merchants who traded manuscripts all over the world.

Setrakian had learned that Dreverhaven—under the guise of a bibliophile named Jan-Piet Blaak—had fled to the Low Countries in the years following the war, traveling throughout Belgium until the early 1950s, crossing into the Netherlands and settling in Amsterdam in 1955. In De Wallen, he could move freely at night, along paths proscribed by the waterways, and burrow undetected during the day. The canals discouraged his staying there, but apparently the lure of the bibliophile trade—and the Occido Lumen in particular—was too seductive. He had established a nest here, and made the city his permanent home.

The middle of the town was island-like, radiating from the Dam Platz, surrounded in part, but not bisected by, the canals. Setrakian walked past three-hundred-year-old gabled buildings, the fragrance of hash smoke wafting out the windows with American folk music. A young woman rushed past, hobbling in one broken heel, late for a night of work, her gartered legs and fishnet stockings showing beneath the hem of a coat of faux mink.

Setrakian came upon two pigeons on the cobblestones, who did not alight at his approach. He slowed and looked to see what had captured their interest.

The pigeons were picking apart a gutter rat.

“I am told you have the Lumen?”

Setrakian stiffened. The presence was very near—in fact, right behind him. But the voice originated inside his head.

Setrakian half-turned, frightened. “Mynheer Blaak?”

He was mistaken. There was no one behind him.

“Monsieur Pirk, I presume?”

Setrakian jerked to his right. In the shadowy entrance to an alleyway stood a portly figure dressed in a long, formal coat and a top hat, supporting himself with a thin, metal-tipped cane.

Setrakian swallowed his adrenaline, his anticipation, his fear. “How did you ever find me, sir?”

“The book. That is all that matters. Is it in your possession, Pirk?”

“I… I have it near.”

“Where is your hotel?”

“I have rented a flat near the station. If you like, I would be happy to conduct our transaction there—”

“I am afraid I cannot travel that far conveniently, for I have a bad case of the gout.”

Setrakian turned more fully toward the shadowed being. There were a few people out in the square, and he dared to take a step toward Dreverhaven, in the manner of an unsuspecting man. He did not smell the usual earthy musk of the strigoi, though the hash smoke acted on the night like a perfume. “What would you suggest, then? I would very much like to conclude this sale this evening.”

“And yet, you would have to return to your flat first.”

“Yes. I guess I would.”

“Hmm.” The figure ventured forward a step, tapping the metal toe of its cane on a cobblestone. Wings fluttered, the pigeons taking flight behind Setrakian. Blaak said, “I wonder why a man traveling in an unfamiliar city would entrust such a valuable article to his flat rather than the security of his own person.”

Setrakian switched his portmanteau from one hand to the other. “Your point?”

“I do not believe a true collector would risk allowing such a precious item out of his sight. Or his grip.”

Setrakian said, “There are thieves about.”

“And thieves within. If indeed you want to relieve yourself of the burden of this cursed artifact for a premium price, you will now follow me, Pirk. My residence is just a few paces this way.”

Dreverhaven turned and started into the alley, using the cane but not reliant upon it. Setrakian steadied himself, licking his lips and feeling the bristles of his disguising beard as he followed the undead war criminal into the stone alleyway.

The only time Setrakian was allowed outside Treblinka’s camouflaged barbwire fences was to work on Dreverhaven’s library. Herr Doktor maintained a house just a few minutes’ drive from the camp, workers transported there one at a time by a three-man squad of armed Ukrainian guards. Setrakian had little contact with Dreverhaven at the house, and, much more fortunately, no contact with him whatsoever inside the camp surgery, where Dreverhaven sought to satisfy his medical and scientific curiosity in the manner of an indulged boy left alone to cut worms in half and burn the wings off flies.

Dreverhaven was a bibliophile even then, using the spoils of war and genocide—gold and diamonds stolen from the walking dead—to spend outrageous sums on rare texts from Poland, France, Great Britain, and Italy, appropriated with dubious provenance during the black market chaos of the war years. Setrakian had been ordered to do finish work on a two-room library of rich oak, complete with a rolling iron ladder and a stained-glass window portraying the rod of Asclepius. Often confused with the caduceus, the Asclepius image of a serpent or long worm coiled about a staff is the symbol for medicine and doctors. But the head of the staff on Dreverhaven’s stained-glass representation depicted a death’s head, the symbol of the Nazi SS.

Dreverhaven personally inspected Setrakian’s craftsmanship once, his blue eyes crystal-cold as his fingers traced the underside of the shelves, seeking out any rough spots. He praised the young Jew with a nod and dismissed him.

They met one more time, when Setrakian faced the “Burning Hole,” the doctor overseeing the slaughter with the same cold blue eyes. They did not recognize Setrakian then: too many faces, all indistinguishable to him. Still, the experimenter was busy, an assistant timing the interlude between the gunshot entering the back of the head and the last agonal twitching of the victim.

Setrakian’s scholarship in the folklore and the occult history of vampires dovetailed with his hunt for the camp Nazis in his search for the ancient text known as Occido Lumen.

Setrakian gave “Blaak” plenty of leeway, trailing him by three paces, just out of stinger range. Dreverhaven walked on with his cane, apparently unconcerned about the vulnerability of having a stranger at his back. Perhaps he laid his trust in the many pedestrians circling the Wallen at night, their presence discouraging any attack. Or perhaps he merely wanted to give the impression of guilelessness.

In other words, perhaps the cat was acting like a mouse.

Between two red-lit window girls, Dreverhaven turned a key in a door lock, and Setrakian followed him up a red-carpeted flight of stairs. Dreverhaven had the top two floors, handsomely decorated if not well-lived-in. The bulb wattage was kept low, downturned lamps shining dimly onto soft rugs. The front windows faced east. They lacked heavy shades. There were no back windows, and, in sizing up the room dimensions, Setrakian determined them to be too narrow. He remembered, at once, harboring this same suspicion at his house near Treblinka—a suspicion informed by camp rumors of a secret examining room at Dreverhaven’s house, a hidden surgery.

Dreverhaven moved to a lit table, upon which he rested his cane. On a porcelain tray, Setrakian recognized the paperwork he had earlier provided the broker: provenance documents establishing a plausible link to the 1911 Marseilles auction, all expensive forgeries.

Dreverhaven removed his hat and placed it on a table, yet still he did not turn around. “May I interest you in an aperitif?”

“Regrettably, no,” answered Setrakian, undoing the twin buckles on his portmanteau while leaving the top clasp closed. “Travel upsets my digestive system.”

“Ah. Mine is ironclad.”

“Please don’t deny yourself on my account.”

Dreverhaven turned around, slowly, in the gloom. “I couldn’t, Monsieur Pirk. It is my practice never to drink alone.”

Instead of the time-worn strigoi Setrakian expected, he was stunned—though he tried to hide it—to find Dreverhaven looking exactly as he had decades before. Those same crystalline eyes. Raven-black hair falling over the back of his neck. Setrakian tasted a pang of acid, but he had little reason to fear: Dreverhaven had not recognized him at the pit, and surely would not recognize him now, more than a quarter century later.

“So,” Dreverhaven said. “Let us consummate our happy transaction then.”

Setrakian’s greatest test of will involved masking his amazement at the vampire’s speech. Or, more accurately, his play at speech. The vampire communicated in the usual telepathic manner, “speaking” directly into Setrakian’s head—but it had learned to manipulate its useless lips in a pantomime of human speech. Setrakian now understood how, in this manner, “Jan-Piet Blaak” moved about nocturnal Amsterdam without fear of discovery.

Setrakian scanned the room for another way out. He needed to know the strigoi was trapped before springing on him. He had come too far to allow Dreverhaven to slip free of his grasp.

Setrakian said, “Am I to understand, then, that you have no concerns about the book, given the misfortune that seems to befall those who possess it?”

Dreverhaven stood with his hands behind his back. “I am a man who embraces the accursed, Monsieur Pirk. And besides—it seems no misfortune has befallen you yet.”

“No… not yet,” lied Setrakian. “And why this book, if I may ask?”

“A scholarly interest, if you will. You might think of me as a broker myself. In fact, I have undertaken this global search for another interested party. The book is rare indeed, not having surfaced in more than half a century. Many believe that the sole remaining edition was destroyed. But—according to your papers—perhaps it has survived. Or there is a second edition. You are prepared to produce it now?”

“I am. First, I should like to see payment.”

“Ah. Naturally. In the case on the corner chair behind you.”

Setrakian moved laterally, with a casualness he did not feel, finding the latch with his finger and opening the top. The case was filled with banded guilders.

“Very good,” said Setrakian.

“Trading paper for paper, Monsieur Pirk. Now if you will reciprocate?”

Setrakian left the case open and returned to his portmanteau. He undid the clasp, one eye on Dreverhaven the entire time. “You might know, it has a very unusual binding.”

“I am aware of that, yes.”

“Though I am assured it is only partially responsible for the book’s outrageous price.”

“May I remind you, Monsieur, that you set the price. And do not judge a book by its cover. As with most clichés, that is good advice often ignored.”

Setrakian carried the portmanteau to the table containing the papers of provenance. He pulled open the top under the faint lamp light, then withdrew. “As you will, sir.”

“Please,” said the vampire. “I should like you to remove it. I insist.”

“Very well.”

Setrakian returned to the bag and reached inside with his black-gloved hands. He pulled out the book, which was bound in silver and fronted and backed with smooth silver plates.

He offered it to Dreverhaven. The vampire’s eyes narrowed, glowing.

Setrakian took a step toward him. “You would like to inspect it, of course?”

“Set it down on that table, Monsieur.”

“That table? But the light is so much more favorable over here.”

“You will please set it down on that table.”

Setrakian did not immediately comply. He remained still, the heavy silver book in his hands. “But you must want to examine it.”

Dreverhaven’s eyes rose from the silver cover of the tome to take in Setrakian’s face. “Your beard, Monsieur Pirk. It obscures your face. It gives you a Hebraic mien.”

“Is that right? I take it you don’t like Jews.”

“They don’t like me. Your scent, Pirk—it is familiar.”

“Why don’t you take a closer look at this book.”

“I do not need to. It is a fake.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps, indeed. But the silver—I can assure you that the silver is quite real.”

Setrakian advanced on Dreverhaven, the book held out in front of him. Dreverhaven backed off, then slowed. “Your hands,” he said. “You are crippled.” Dreverhaven’s eyes went back to Setrakian’s face. “The woodworker. So it is you.”

Setrakian swept open his coat, removing from the interior left fold a sword with a silver blade of modest size. “You have become indolent, Herr Doktor.”

Dreverhaven lashed out with his stinger. Not full-length, merely a feint, the bloated vampire leaping backward against the wall, and then quickly down again.

Setrakian anticipated the ploy. Indeed, the doctor was considerably less agile than many others Setrakian had encountered. Setrakian stood fast with his back to the windows, the vampire’s only escape.

“You are too slow, doctor,” Setrakian said. “Your hunting here has been too easy.”

Dreverhaven hissed. Concern showed in the beast’s eyes as the heat of exertion began to melt its facial cosmetics.

Dreverhaven glanced at the door, but Setrakian wasn’t buying. These creatures always built in an emergency exit. Even a bloated tick like Dreverhaven.

Setrakian feigned an attack, keeping the strigoi off-balance, forcing him to react. Dreverhaven snapped out his stinger, another aborted thrust. Setrakian responded with a quick sweep of his blade, which would have lopped it off at full length.

Dreverhaven made his break then, rushing laterally along the back bookcases, but Setrakian was just as fast. He still held the book in one hand, and hurled it at the fat vampire, the creature recoiling from its toxic silver. Then Setrakian was upon him.

He held the point of his silver blade at Dreverhaven’s upper throat. The vampire’s head tipped back, its crown resting against the spines of his precious books along the upper shelf, his eyes staring at Setrakian.

The silver weakened him, keeping his stinger in check. Setrakian went into his deepest coat pocket—it was lead-lined—and removed a band of thick silver baubles wrapped in a mesh of fine steel, strung along a length of cable.

The vampire’s eyes widened, but it was unable to move as Setrakian lay the necklace over its head, resting it upon the creature’s shoulders.

The silver collar weighed on the strigoi like a chain of hundred-pound stones. Setrakian pulled over a chair just in time for Dreverhaven to collapse into it, keeping the vampire from falling to the floor. The creature’s head dipped to one side, its hands shivering helplessly in its lap.

Setrakian picked up the book—it was, in fact, a sixth-edition copy of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, backed and bound in Britannia silver—and dropped it back into his portmanteau. Sword in hand, he returned to the bookcase toward which the desperate Dreverhaven had lunged.

After some careful searching, wary of booby-traps, Setrakian found the trigger volume. He heard a click and felt the shelf unit give, and then shoved open the swinging wall on its rotating axis.

The smell met him first. Dreverhaven’s rear quarters were windowless and unventilated, a nest of discarded books and trash and reeking rags. But this was not the source of the most offensive stench. That came from the top floor, accessible via a blood-spattered staircase.

An operating theater, a stainless-steel table set in black tile seemingly grouted in caked human blood. Decades of grime and gore covered every surface, flies buzzing angrily around a blood-smeared meat refrigerator in the corner.

Setrakian held his breath and opened the fridge, because he had to. It contained only items of perversion, nothing of real interest. No information to further Setrakian’s quest. Setrakian realized he was becoming inured to depravity and butchering.

He returned to the creature suffering in the chair. Dreverhaven’s face had by now melted away, unveiling the strigoi beneath. Setrakian stepped to the windows, dawn just beginning to filter in, soon to trumpet into the apartment, cleaning it of darkness and of vampires.

“How I dreaded each dawn in the camp,” said Setrakian. “The start of another day in the death farm. I did not fear death, but I did not choose it either. I chose survival. And in doing so, I chose dread.”

I am happy to die.

Setrakian looked at Dreverhaven. The strigoi no longer bothered with the ruse of moving his lips.

All my lusts have long since been satisfied. I have gone as far as one can go in this life, man or beast. I hunger for nothing any longer. Repetition only extinguishes pleasure.

“The book,” said Setrakian, daringly close to Dreverhaven. “It no longer exists.”

It does exist. But only a fool would dare to pursue it. Pursuing the Occido Lumen means you are pursuing the Master. You might be able to take a tired acolyte like myself but if you go against him, the odds will certainly be against you. As they were against your dear wife.

So indeed the vampire had a little bit of perversion left in him. He still possessed the capacity, however small and vain, for sick pleasure. The vampire’s gaze never left Setrakian’s.

Morning was upon them now, the sun appearing at an angle through the windows. Setrakian stood and suddenly grasped the back of Dreverhaven’s chair, tipping it onto its hind legs and dragging it through the bookcase to the hidden rear quarters, leaving twin scores in the wood floor.

“Sunlight,” Setrakian declared, “is too good for you, Herr Doktor.”

The strigoi stared at him, eyes full of anticipation. Here, finally for him, was the unexpected. Dreverhaven longed to be part of any perversion, no matter the role he might play.

Setrakian remained in tight control of his rage.

“Immortality is no friend to the perverse, you say?” Setrakian put his shoulder to the bookshelf, sealing out the sun. “Then immortality you shall enjoy.”

That’s it, woodworker. There is your passion, Jew. What have you in mind?

The plan took three days. For seventy-two hours, Setrakian worked nonstop in a vengeful daze. Dismembering the strigoi upon Dreverhaven’s own operating table, severing and cauterizing all four stumps, was the most dangerous part. He then procured lead tulip planters in order to fashion a dirt-less coffin for the silver-necklaced strigoi, in order to cut off the vampire from communication with the Master. Into the sarcophagus he packed the abomination and its severed limbs. Setrakian chartered a small boat and loaded the planter onto it. Then he sailed alone deep into the North Sea. After a struggle, he managed to put the box overboard without sinking the boat in the process—thereby stranding the creature between land masses, safe from the killing sun and yet impotent for all eternity.

Not until the box sank to the ocean floor did Dreverhaven’s taunting voice finally leave Setrakian’s mind, like a madness finding its cure. Setrakian looked at his crooked fingers, bruised and bleeding, stinging with the salt water—and clenched them into tangled fists.

He was indeed going the way of madness. It was time to go underground, he realized, just as the strigoi had. To continue his work in private, and to await his chance.

His chance at the book. At the Master.

It was time to repair to America.

The Master—Part II

THE MASTER WAS, above all things, compulsive in both action and thought. The Master had considered every potential permutation of the plan. It felt vaguely anxious for this all to come to fruition, but one thing the Master did not lack was conviction.

The Ancients would be exterminated all at once, and in a matter of hours.

They would not even see it coming. How could they? After all, hadn’t the Master orchestrated the demise of one of them, along with six serfs, some years ago in the city of Sofia, Bulgaria? The Master itself had shared in the pain of the anguish of death at the very moment it occurred, feeling the maelstrom pull of the darkness—the implacable nothing—and savoring it.

On the 26th of April, 1986, several hundred meters below at the center of the Bulgarian city, a solar flash—a fission approximating the power of the sun—occurred inside a vaulted cellar within fifteen-foot-thick concrete walls. The city above was shaken by a deep rumble and a seismic movement, its epicenter tracked to Pirotska Street—but there were no injuries, and very little damage to property.

The event had been a mere bleep in the news, barely worth mentioning. It was to become completely overshadowed by the meltdown of the reactor at Chernobyl, and yet, in a manner unknown to most, intimately related to it.

Of the original seven, the Master had remained the most ambitious, the hungriest—and, in a sense, the youngest. This was only natural. The Master was the last one to arise, and from whence it was created was the mouth, the throat, the thirst.

Divided by this thirst, the others were scattered and hidden. Concealed, yet connected.

These notions buzzed inside the great consciousness of the Master. Its thoughts wandered to the time the Master first visited Armageddon on this Earth—to cities long forgotten, with pillars of alabaster and floors of polished onyx.

To the first time it had tasted blood.

Quickly, the Master reasserted control over its thoughts. Memories were a dangerous thing. They individuated the Master’s mind, and when that happened, even in this protected environment, the other Ancients could hear too. For in those moments of clarity, their minds became one. As they once had been, and were meant to be forever.

They were all created as one, and, thus, the Master had no name of its own. They all shared the one—Sariel—just as they shared one nature and one purpose. Their emotions and thought were naturally connected, in exactly the way the Master connected with the brood it was fostering, and all that would spring forth after that. The bond between the Ancients could be blocked but could never be broken. Their instincts and thoughts naturally yearned for connection.

In order to succeed, the Master had to subvert such an occurrence.