This was no badger.
Nor, she suspected, was it human.
Dread enveloped her. The thumping roused her mother, and Nora instinctively grabbed her frail hand. In response, she got a vague smile and a vacant stare.
Better that way, thought Nora, with an extra chill. Better not to deal with her questions, her suspicions, her fears. Nora had plenty of her own.
Zack remained under the influence of his earbuds, eyes closed, head bobbing gently over the backpack on his lap—grooving or maybe dozing. Either way, he was unaware of the bumps and the sense of concern growing in their train car. Though not for long …
Bump-CRUNCH.
A gasp went up. Impacts more frequent now, the noises louder. Nora prayed they would get through the tunnel in time. The one thing she had always hated about trains and subways: you can never see out the front windows. You don’t see what the driver sees. All you get is a blur. You never see what’s coming.
More hits. She thought she could distinguish the cracking of bones and—another!—an inhuman squeal, not unlike a pig.
The conductor evidently had had enough. The emergency brakes engaged with a metallic screech, grating like steel fingernails against the chalkboard of Nora’s fear.
Standing passengers grabbed seatbacks and overhead racks. The bumping slowed and became agonizingly more pronounced, the weight of the train crushing bodies beneath them. Zack’s head came up and his eyes opened and he looked at Nora.
The train went into a skid, its wheels screaming—then a great shudder and the interior compartment shook with a violence that threw people to the ground.
The train shrieked to a stop, the car tilted to the right.
They had jumped the track.
Derailed.
Lights inside the train flickered and died. A groan went up, with notes of panic.
Then emergency lights came on, but pale.
Nora pulled Zack to his feet. Time to get moving. She pulled her mother with her, starting toward the front of the car before everyone else on the train had recovered. She wanted to get a look at the tunnel by the train’s headlight. But she saw immediately that way was impassable. Too many people, too much thrown luggage.
Nora tugged on the strap of the weapon bag across her chest and pushed them the other way, toward the exit between cars. She was playing nice, waiting for fellow passengers to get their bags, when she heard the screaming start in the first car.
Every head turned.
Nora said, “Come on!” She pulled on them both, shoving her way through bodies toward the exits. Let the other people look; she had two lives to protect, never mind her own.
At the end of the car, waiting for some guy to pry open the automatic doors, Nora glanced back behind her.
Over the heads of the confused passengers, she saw frenzied movement in the next car … dark figures moving quickly … and then a burst of arterial blood spraying against the glass door separating compartments.
Gus and his crew had been outfitted by the hunters with armor-plated Hummers, black with chrome accents. Most of the chrome was gone now, due to the fact that, in order to get across bridges and up city streets, you had to do some contact driving.
Gus was heading the wrong way across 59th Street, his headlamps the only lights on the road. Fet sat up front, because of his size. The weapon bag was at his feet. Angel and the others were in another vehicle.
The radio was on, the sports talk host having racked some music in order to give his voice or maybe his bladder a break. Fet realized, as Gus cut hard up onto the sidewalk in order to avoid a knot of abandoned vehicles, that the song was Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”
He snapped off the radio, saying, “That’s not funny.”
They pulled up fast, at the foot of a building overlooking Central Park, exactly the sort of place where Fet always imagined a vampire would reside. Seen from the sidewalk below, it was outlined against the smoky sky like a gothic tower.
Fet entered the front door with Setrakian at his side, both men carrying their swords. Angel trailed them, Gus whistling a tune next to him.
The lobby of rich brown wallpaper was dimly lit and empty. Gus had a key that operated the passenger elevator, a small cage of green iron, its lift cables visible, Victorian styling inside and out.
The top-floor hallway was under construction, or at least left to appear that way. Gus laid his weapons down atop a table-like length of scaffolding. “Everybody disarm here,” he said.
Fet looked at Setrakian. Setrakian made no move to relinquish his staff, so Fet kept a tight hold on his sword.
“Fine, have it your way,” said Gus.
Angel remained behind as Gus led them inside the only door, up three steps into a dark anteroom. There was the usual light tincture of ammonia and earth, and a sensation of heat not artificially manufactured. Gus parted a heavy curtain, revealing a wide room with three windows overlooking the park.
Silhouetted before each window were three beings, hairless, unclothed, standing as still as the building itself, arranged like statues standing guard over the canyon of Central Park.
Fet raised his silver sword, the blade angling upward like the needle of a gauge measuring the presence of evil. All at once, he felt his hand struck, the sword handle springing loose from his grip. His other arm, the one gripping the weapon bag, jumped at the shoulder, suddenly lighter.
The bag handles had been cut. He turned his head in time to see his blade enter the side wall, piercing it deeply, quivering, the bag of weapons dangling from it.
He then felt a knife at the side of his throat. Not a silver blade, but instead the point of a long iron spike.
A face, next to him—so pale, it glowed. Its eyes bore the deep red of vampiric possession, its mouth curled into a toothless scowl. Its swollen throat pulsed, not with blood flow but anticipation.
“Hey …” said Fet, his voice disappearing into nothingness.
He was done for. The speed with which these ones moved was incredible. So much faster than the animals outside.
But the three beings at the windows—they had not moved.
Setrakian.
The voice, appearing within his mind, was accompanied by a numbing sensation that had the effect of clouding his thoughts.
Fet tried to look over at the old professor. He still held his staff, the interior blade sheathed. Another hunter stood at his side, holding a similar spike to his temple.
Gus walked past them. He said, “They’re with me.”
They are silver-armed. A hunter’s voice—not as debilitating as the other.
Setrakian said, “I come not to destroy you. Not this time.”
You would never get so close.
“But I have been close in the past, and you know it. Let us not rehash old battles. I wish to set all that aside for the time being. I have placed myself at your mercy for a reason. I want to deal.”
To deal? What could you possibly have to offer?
“The book. And the Master.”
Fet felt the vampire goon ease off his neck just a few millimeters, the point of the spike still in contact with his flesh but no longer poking at his throat.
The beings at the windows never moved, the commanding voice in his head unwavering.
And what is it you want in return?
Setrakian said, “The world.”
Nora spotted the dark figures siphoning passengers in the aft car. She kicked at the back of the knee of the man in front of her, pulling her mother and Zack past him, shouldering aside a woman in a business suit and sneakers in order to exit the derailed train.
Somehow, she got her mother down the long step without dropping her. Nora looked forward to where the front car had left the track, angled tight against the tunnel wall, and realized she had to go the other way.
She had departed the claustrophobia of the stuck train for the claustrophobia of an under-river tunnel.
Nora unzipped the side compartment on he
r travel duffel and pulled out her Luma lamp. She powered it on, the battery humming to life, the UVC bulb crackling indigo, burning hot.
The tracks lit up before her. Vampire discharge was everywhere, fluorescent guano, covering the floor and sprayed on the walls. Evidently, they had been crossing this way to the mainland for days, and by the thousands. It was the perfect environment for them: dark, dirty, and concealed from surface eyes.
Others disembarked behind them, a few using mobile phone screens to light their way. “Oh, my God!” one shrieked.
Nora turned and saw, by the light of the passengers’ phones, the train wheels goopy with white vampire blood. Gobs of pale skin and the black gristle of crushed bones hung from the undercarriage. Nora wondered if they were run down accidentally—or had they thrown themselves in the path of the charging train?
Thrown themselves seemed most likely. And if so—then what for?
Nora thought she knew. With the image of Kelly still bright in her mind, Nora threw one arm around Zack, taking her mother by the hand and running for the rear of the train.
New Jersey was a long walk away, and they were not alone here.
They heard screaming aboard the train now. Passengers being mauled by pale creatures marauding through the cars. Nora tried to keep Zack from looking up and seeing the faces pressed against the windows, regurgitating saliva and blood.
Nora got to the end of the train, rounding it—stepping over crushed vampire corpses on the tracks, using her UV light to kill any lurking blood worms—and starting up the other side, where there was a clear path toward the front car.
Tunnels carry and distort noises. Nora wasn’t sure what she was hearing, but its presence put an extra scare into her. She exhorted the people following them to stop a moment and be quiet and still.
She heard a noise like scuttling, only many times repeated and magnified through the tunnel. Coming behind them, in the same direction the train had been traveling. A horde of footsteps.
The light from the cell phone screens and Nora’s UV lamp had very little range. Something was coming at them out of the dark void, and Nora corralled Zack and her mother and started running the other way.
The hunter pulled back from Fet’s side, his spike still poised at Fet’s neck. Setrakian had started to tell the Ancients about Eldritch Palmer’s association with the Master.
We know already. He came to us some time ago, petitioning us for immortality.
“And you refused him. So he went across the street.”
He did not meet our criteria. Eternity is a beautiful gift, entrance into an immortal aristocracy. We are rigorously selective.
The voice reverberating inside Fet’s head sounded like a scolding parent’s multiplied a thousandfold. He looked at the hunter next to him and wondered: some long-dead European king? Alexander the Great? Howard Hughes?
No—not these hunters. Fet guessed he was an elite soldier in his former life. Plucked off a battlefield, perhaps during a special-ops mission. Drafted by the ultimate selective service. But who knew which army? What era? Vietnam? Normandy? Thermopylae?
Setrakian said—confirming for himself lifelong theories as he stated these facts—“The Ancients are connected to the human world at its uppermost levels. They assume the initiate’s wealth, which helps them insulate themselves and assert their influence across the globe.”
Were it a simple business transaction, his wealth is substantial enough. But we require more than riches. What we seek is power, access, and obedience. He lacked the last.
“Palmer grew angry when the gift was refused him. So he sought out the rogue Master, the young one—”
You seek to know all, Setrakian. Greedy until the end. Let us agree that you are half-correct in everything. Palmer may have sought out the Seventh, yes. But be assured—it was the Seventh who found him.
“Do you know what it is he wants?”
We do know.
“You must know then that you are in trouble. The Master is creating minions by the thousands, too many for your hunters to cut down. His strain is spreading. These are beings you cannot control, not through power or influence.”
You spoke of the Silver Codex.
The power of their voices made Fet squint.
Setrakian stepped forward. “What I want from you is unlimited financial support. I require it immediately.”
The auction. Don’t you think we have considered this before?
“But bidding on it yourselves, employing a human representative, risked exposure. Impossible to guarantee the motives. Better to scuttle each potential sale throughout the years. But that will not be possible this time. I am certain that the timing of this widespread attack, the occultation of the Earth, and the reappearance of the book are no coincidence. It is all aligned. Do you deny this cosmic symmetry?”
We do not. But then again, the outcome will follow the design no matter what we do.
“Doing nothing seems to me like a flawed plan.”
And what would you want in return?
“A brief glimpse at its contents. Handcrafted in silver, this book is the one human creation you cannot possess. I have seen the Silver Codex, as you refer to it. It holds many revelations, I can guarantee you that. You would be wise to see what mankind knows of your origin.”
Half-truths and speculation.
“Is it? Can you take that chance? Mal’akh Elohim?”
A pause. Fet felt his head relax a moment. He could have sworn he saw the Ancient purse its lips in disgust.
Unlikely alliances are often the most productive.
“Let me be quite clear here. I offer you no alliance. This is nothing more than a wartime truce. The enemy of my enemy is in this instance neither my friend nor yours. I promise nothing other than a viewing of the book, and through it, a chance to defeat the rogue Master before he destroys you. But once this agreement is consummated, I promise you only that the fight will continue. I will come after you again. And you after me …”
Once you view the book, Setrakian, we cannot allow you to live. You must know that. This holds for any human.
Fet swallowed and said, “I’m not much of a reader anyway …”
Setrakian said, “I accept. And now that we understand each other, there is one other thing I need. Not from you, but from your man here. From Gus.”
Gus stepped in front of the old man and Fet. “Just so long as it involves killing.”
There was no ribbon-cutting ceremony. No giant pair of prop scissors, no dignitaries or politicians. No fanfare at all.
The Locust Valley Nuclear Power Plant went online at 5:23 A.M. Resident Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors oversaw the procedures from the control room of the $17 billion facility.
Locust Valley was a nuclear fission facility, operating twin thermal, light-water-moderated Generation III reactors. All site and safety reviews had been completed before the Uranium-235 bundles and the control rods were introduced into the water inside the pressurized core.
The principle of controlled fission is likened to a nuclear bomb exploding at a slow, steady rate, rather than a millisecond. The heat produced generates electricity, which is then harnessed and delivered in a manner similar to that of conventional coal-burning power plants.
Palmer understood the concept of fission only in the sense that it was similar to cell division in biology. The energy was produced in the splitting: that was the value and the magic of nuclear fuel.
Outside, the twin cooling towers gave off steam like giant beakers of concrete.
Palmer marveled. Here was the final piece of the puzzle. The last tumbler falling into place.
This was the moment of the bolt sliding free, just before the great vault door is opened.
As he watched steam clouds drift off into the ominous sky like ghosts rising from great boiling cauldrons, he remembered Chernobyl. The black village of Pripyat, where he had first encountered the Master. The reactor accident was, like the concentration camps in World War II
, a lesson for the Master. The human race had shown the Master the way. They had provided the very tools for their own demise.
All of it underwritten by Eldritch Palmer.
He’s been out there turning folks for free.
Ah, Dr. Goodweather. But the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. That was how it was supposed to work, according to the Bible.
But this wasn’t the Bible. This was America.
The first should be first.
At once, Palmer knew how his business partners felt after dealing with him. Like they’d been punched in the gut with the same hand they just shook.
You think you’re working with somebody, until you realize: you’re working for them.
Why make you wait in line?
Indeed.
Zack pulled away from Nora’s hand when his iPod fell to the tunnel floor. It was stupid, it was a reflex, but his mom had bought it for him, even paying for tunes she didn’t care for very much, and sometimes hated. When he held the magical little device in his hand and lost himself in the music, he was losing himself in her as well.
“Zachary!”
Weird for Nora to use his full name, but it worked, straightening him up fast. She looked frantic, holding on to her mother near the front of the train. Zack felt something extra for Nora now, something they had in common, seeing her mother so sick: both of their mothers were lost to them, and yet still partly there.
Zack grabbed the music player and shoved it into his jeans pocket, leaving his tangled earphones behind. The derailed train rocked faintly with howling violence and Nora tried to block it from his view. But he knew. He had seen the windows running red. He had seen the faces. He was half in shock, moving through a terrible dream.
Nora had stopped, staring in horror at something behind him.
Out of the tunnel darkness came small figures moving at great speed. With inhuman agility, these recent human children, none of them older than their early teens, sprang toward them along the tracks.