The Complete Strain Trilogy

  Creem nodded, appearing to weigh the offer. “Funny,” he said. “That’s exactly what I would say if the tables were turned and you were about to double-cross me. Adios, doc.”

  Creem grasped Eph by his front collar, and there was no time to defend himself. The man’s fat fist and silvered knuckles came hurtling at the side of Eph’s head, and he didn’t feel the blow at first, only noticing the sudden twisting of the room, and then chairs scattering beneath the weight of his falling body. His skull smacked the floor and the room went white and then very, very dark.

  The Vision

  AS USUAL, OUT of the fire came the figures of light. Eph stood there, immobile—overwhelmed as they approached him. His solar plexus was hit by the energy of one of them as it struck him full-on. Eph resisted, wrestled for what seemed an eternity. The second figure joined the match—but Ephraim Goodweather didn’t give up. He fought bravely, desperately, until he saw Zack’s face again, amid the glow.

  “Dad—” Zack said, and then the flashpoint occurred again.

  But this time Eph did not wake up. The image gave way to a new landscape of verdant green grass under a warm yellow sun, rippling in an unobtrusive breeze.

  A field. Part of a farm.

  Clear, blue sky. Scudding clouds. Lush trees.

  Eph raised his hand to block the direct sun from his eyes so he could see better.

  A simple farmhouse. Small, constructed of bright red bricks with a roof of black shingles. The house was a good fifty yards away—but he reached it in just three steps.

  Smoke curled out of the pipe chimney in perfect, repeating formation. The breeze shifted, leveling out the smoke stream, and the exhaust formed into alphabet letters written as though in a neat hand.

  . . . L E Y R Z O L E Y R Z O L E Y R Z O L E Y R Z O . . .

  The smoky letters dissipated, becoming a light ash drifting to the grass. He bent over at the waist in a full jackknife and swiped the blades with his fingers, and found his pads sliced open, red blood oozing out.

  A lone, four-paned window in the wall. Eph put his face to it, and when he breathed onto the glass, his breath cleared the opaque window.

  A woman sat at the old table in the kitchen. Bright yellow hair, writing in a thick book with a quill made from a beautiful, oversized, brilliant silver feather, dipped in an inkwell filled with red blood.

  Kelly turned her head, not all the way toward the window, just enough so that Eph knew that she felt him there. The glass fogged again, and when he breathed it clear, Kelly was gone.

  Eph circled the farmhouse, looking for another window or a door. But the house was solid brick, and after one full rotation, he could not even find the wall with the original window. The bricks had darkened to black, and as he backed off from the structure, it became a castle. The ash had turned the grass black at his feet, further sharpening the blades so that every step slashed at his bare feet.

  A shadow passed across the sun. It was winged, like a great bird of prey, banking fleetly before sailing away, the shadow fading into the darkening grass.

  Atop the castle, a factory-sized smokestack chugged black ash into the sky, turning fair day into ominous night. Kelly appeared on one of the ramparts, and Eph yelled up to her.

  “She can’t hear you,” Fet told him.

  Fet wore his exterminator’s jumpsuit and smoked a corona, but his head was a rat’s head, his eyes small and red.

  Eph looked up to the castle again, and Kelly’s blond hair blew away like smoke. Now she was bald Nora, disappearing inside the upper reaches of the castle.

  “We have to split up,” said Fet, pulling the cigar from his mouth with a human hand, blowing silver-gray smoke that curled past his fine, black whiskers. “We don’t have much time.”

  Fet the rat ran to the castle and squeezed himself headfirst into a crack in the foundation, somehow wriggling his big body in between two black stones.

  Up top, a man now stood in the turret wearing a work shirt bearing the Sears insignia. It was Matt, Kelly’s live-in boyfriend, Eph’s first replacement as a father figure and the first vampire Eph had slain. As Eph looked at him, Matt suffered a seizure, his hands clawing at his throat. He convulsed, doubling over, hiding his face, contorting . . . until his hands came away from his head. His middle fingers stretched into thick talons, and the creature straightened, now a good six inches taller. The Master.

  The black sky opened up then, rain pouring down from above, but the drops, when they landed, instead of the usual slapping patter noise, made a noise that sounded like “Dad.”

  Eph stumbled away, turning and running. He tried to outpace the rain through the slashing grass, but drops pelted him at every step, shouting in his ears, “Dad! Dad! Dad!”

  Until everything cleared. The rain stopped, the sky turning into a shell of crimson. The grass was gone and the dirt ground reflected the redness of the sky just as the ocean does.

  In the distance, a figure approached. It appeared not too far away, but closer, Eph was able to better judge its size. It looked like a human male, but at least three times the height of Eph himself. It stopped some distance away, though its dimensions made it seem nearer.

  It was indeed a giant, but its proportions were exactly correct. It was dressed, or bathed, in a glowing nimbus of light.

  Eph tried to speak. He felt no direct fear of this creature. He only felt overwhelmed.

  Something rustled behind the giant’s back. At once, two broad silver wings fanned open, their diameter longer even than the giant’s height. The gust from this action blew Eph back a step. Arms at its sides, the archangel—the only thing it could be—beat its wings two more times, whipping at the air and taking flight.

  The archangel soared, its great wings doing all the work, arms and legs relaxed as it flew toward Eph with preternatural grace and ease. It landed in front of him, dwarfing Eph three times over. A few silver feathers slipped from its plumage, falling quill-first and sticking into the red earth. One floated toward Eph, and he caught it in his hand. The quill became an ivory handle, the feather a silver sword.

  The massive archangel bent down toward Eph. Its face was still obscured by the nimbus of light it exuded. The light felt strangely cool, almost misty.

  The archangel fixed its gaze on something behind Eph, and Eph—reluctantly—turned.

  At a small dinner table poised on the edge of a cliff, Eldritch Palmer, once the head of the Stoneheart Group, sat dressed in his trademark dark suit with a red swastika armband around his right sleeve, using a fork and knife to eat a dead rat laid out on a china plate. A blur approached from the right, a large white wolf, charging toward the table. Palmer never looked up. The white wolf leaped at Palmer’s throat, knocking him from the chair, tearing at his neck.

  The white wolf stopped and looked up at Eph—and came racing toward him.

  Eph did not run or raise his sword. The wolf slowed near him, paws kicking up dirt. Palmer’s blood stained its snowy mouth fur.

  Eph recognized the wolf’s eyes. They belonged to Abraham Setrakian, as did its voice.

  “Ahsudau-wah.”

  Eph shook his head with incomprehension, and then a great hand seized him. He felt the beating of the archangel’s wings as he was lifted away from the red land, the ground below shrinking and changing. They neared a large body of water, then banked right, flying over a dense archipelago. The archangel dipped lower, diving straight for one of the thousand islands.

  They landed on a basin-shaped wasteland of twisted iron and smoking steel. Torn clothes and burned paper were strewn across the charred ruins; the small island was the ground zero of some catastrophe. Eph turned to the archangel, but it was gone—and in its place was a door. A simple door, standing alone in its frame. A sign affixed to it, written in black Magic Marker, illustrated with gravestones and skeletons and crosses, drawn in a young hand, read:

  YOU MAY NOT LIVE BEYOND THIS POINT.

  Eph knew this door. And the handwriting. He reached for the knob and
opened it, stepping through.

  Zack’s bed. Eph’s diary was set upon it, but instead of a tattered cover, the diary was faced in silver, front and back.

  Eph sat down upon the bed, feeling the mattress’s familiar give, hearing it creak. He opened his diary, and its parchment pages were those of the Occido Lumen, handwritten with illuminated illustrations.

  More extraordinary than that was the fact that Eph could read and comprehend the Latin words. He perceived the subtle watermarking that revealed a second layer of text behind the first.

  He understood it. In that moment he understood all.

  “Ahsudagu-wah.”

  As though summoned by the utterance of this very word, the Master stepped through the wall-less door. He threw back the hood shadowing his face, and his clothes fell away; the light of the sun charred his skin, turning it crispy black. Worms wriggled beneath the flesh covering his face.

  The Master wanted the book. Eph stood, the feather in his hand a fine sword of silver once again. But instead of attacking, he reversed his grip on the sword’s handle, holding it pointing down—as the Lumen instructed.

  As the Master rushed at him, Eph drove the silver blade into the black ground.

  The initial shockwave rode out over the earth in a watery ripple. The eruption that followed was of divine strength, a fireball of bright light that obliterated the Master and everything around it—leaving only Eph, staring at his hands, the hands that had done this. Young hands—not his own.

  He reached up and felt his face. He was no longer Eph.

  He was Zack.

  AWAKENING

  TO FIRE

  Columbia University

  AWAKE, GOODWEATHER.

  The Born’s voice called Eph back to consciousness. He opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor, the Born standing over him.

  What happened?

  Leaving the vision for reality was a shock. Moving from sensory overload to sensory deprivation. Being in the dream had felt like being inside one of the Lumen’s illuminated pages. It had seemed more than real.

  He sat up, now aware of the headache. The side of his face, sore. Above him, Mr. Quinlan’s face was its usual starkly pale self.

  Eph blinked a few times, trying to shake off the lingering hypnotic effect of the vision, clinging to him like sticky afterbirth. “I saw it,” he said.

  Saw what?

  Eph heard a percussive beating sound then, growing louder, passing overhead, shaking the building. A helicopter.

  We are under attack.

  Mr. Quinlan helped him to his feet. “Creem,” said Eph. “He told the Master where we are.” Eph held his head. “The Master knows we have the Lumen.”

  Mr. Quinlan turned and faced the door. He stood still, as though listening.

  They have taken Joaquin.

  Eph heard footsteps, soft and distant. Bare feet. Vampires.

  Mr. Quinlan grabbed Eph’s arm and lifted him to his feet. Eph looked into Mr. Quinlan’s red eyes, remembering the dream’s end—then quickly put it out of his mind, focusing on the threat at hand.

  Give me your spare sword.

  Eph did, and after collecting his diary and throwing on his pack, he followed Mr. Quinlan into the corridor. They turned right, finding stairs leading down to the basement, where they entered the underground corridors. Vampires were already in the passages. Noises carried as though conducted on a current. Human yells and sword slashing.

  Eph pulled out his sword, turning on his flashlight. Mr. Quinlan moved with great speed, Eph trying to keep up. In a flash, Mr. Quinlan zoomed ahead, and when Eph rounded the corner his beam of light found two decapitated vampires.

  Behind you.

  Another came out of a side room, Eph spinning and running it through the chest with his blade. The silver weakened it, and Eph withdrew the blade and quickly sliced through its neck.

  Mr. Quinlan moved ahead, rushing into battles, slaying vampires before the creatures had a chance to attack. In this way they proceeded through the passageways of the subterranean asylum. A stairway marked with Gus’s fluorescent paint brought them to a passage that led to another stairway, back up into the basement of a campus building.

  They exited the mathematics building near the center of the campus, behind the library. Their presence immediately attracted the attention of the invading vampires, who came running at them from all sides without regard for the silver weapons they faced. Mr. Quinlan, with his blazing speed and natural immunity to the infectious worms contained in their caustic white blood, cut down three times as many strigoi as Eph.

  An army helicopter approached from the water, swooping overhead, curling hard over the campus buildings. Eph saw the gun mount, though his mind rejected the image at first. He saw the bald vampire head behind the long barrel, then heard the reports, yet still could not process it until he saw the rounds impact the stone walk near his feet—strafing gunfire heading for him and Mr. Quinlan. Eph turned with Mr. Quinlan and ran for cover, getting in under the overhang of the nearest building as the helicopter swung out to come around again.

  They ran to the doorway, ducking out of sight for the moment but not entering the building—too easy to become trapped. Eph fumbled out his night scope and held it to his eye just long enough to see dozens of glowing green vampires entering the amphitheater-style quad, like undead gladiators called into battle.

  Mr. Quinlan was still next to him, more still than usual. He stared straight ahead as though seeing something somewhere else.

  The Master is here.

  “What?” Eph looked around. “It must be here for the book.”

  The Master is here for everything.

  “Where is the book?”

  Fet knows.

  “You don’t?”

  I last saw it in the library. In his hands as he looked for a facsimile to forge . . .

  “Let’s go,” said Eph.

  Mr. Quinlan did not hesitate. The giant, domed library was almost directly ahead of them, at the front of the quad basin. He raced out from the doorway and the overhang, slashing an oncoming vampire as he went. Eph followed fast, seeing the helicopter coming back around, wide to his right. He cut down the steps, then back up, the gun firing semiautomatic now, chips of granite pricking at his shins.

  The helicopter slowed, hovering over the quad, affording the shooter more stability. Eph ducked between two thick pillars holding up the front portico of the library, partially shielding him from the gunfire. Ahead of him, a vampire got close to Mr. Quinlan and had, as its reward, its head manually torn off its torso. Mr. Quinlan held the door open for Eph, who ran inside.

  He stopped halfway through the rotunda. Eph could feel the Master’s presence somewhere within the library. It wasn’t a scent or a vibration; it was the way the air moved in the Master’s wake, curling around itself, creating odd cross-currents.

  Mr. Quinlan ran past him, into the main reading room.

  “Fet!” called Eph, hearing noises like books falling in the distance. “Nora!”

  No reply. He rushed after Mr. Quinlan, but with his sword out, moving it here and there, aware of the Master. He had lost Mr. Quinlan for the moment and so pulled out his flashlight, turning it on.

  After nearly a year of disuse, the library had become profoundly dusty. Eph saw the dust hanging in the air in the bright cone of his beam. As he trained his light down along the stacks to an open area at the other end, he noticed a disruption in the dust, as from something moving faster than the eye could see. This disruption, this breathlike rearrangement of particles, moved straight toward Eph at incredible speed.

  Eph was struck hard from behind and knocked down. He looked up above him just in time to see Mr. Quinlan take a hard swipe at the advancing air. His sword struck nothing, but on his follow-through he positioned his body to deflect the onrushing threat. The impact was tremendous, though Mr. Quinlan had the advantage of balance.

  A stack of bookshelves collapsed next to Eph with tremendous force, the
steel fixture driven into the carpeted floor. The loss of momentum revealed the Master, rolling off the downed shelves. Eph saw the dark lord’s face—a moment, just enough to see the worms scuttling madly beneath the surface of its flesh—staring at it before the creature righted itself.

  A classic rope-a-dope. Mr. Quinlan had ducked out, drawing the Master to an unguarded Eph, only to blindside it as it attacked. The Master realized this at the same time Eph did, unused as it was to being duped.

  BASTARD.

  The Master was angry. It rose up and lashed out at Mr. Quinlan, unable to do any lasting damage because of the sword, but going in low and thrusting the Born into the facing book stack.

  Then it started away, a black blur, back through the rotunda room.

  Mr. Quinlan righted himself quickly and raised up Eph with his free hand. They went running after the Master, through the rotunda room, looking for Fet.

  Eph heard a scream, identified it as belonging to Nora, and raced into a side room. He found her with his flashlight. Other vampires had entered from the opposite end, one of them threatening Nora from its perch at the top of a row of stacks, another pair pelting Fet with books. Mr. Quinlan launched himself from a chair, driving at the vampire atop the stacks, catching its neck in his free hand while running it through with his sword, and falling with it into the next row of stacks. That freed Nora to go after the book-hurling vampires. Eph could feel the Master but failed to find it with his flashlight. The marauders were purposeful distractions, Eph knew, but also legitimate threats. He raced down a lane parallel to Fet and Nora’s and met two more intruders coming through the far door.

  Eph brandished his sword, but they did not stop. They ran at him and he ran straight at them. He slayed them easily—too easily. Their purpose was simply to occupy him. Eph encountered another one entering but, before attacking it, first risked a look back around the end of the row at Fet.