Royal drove the Tahoe straight at the food truck, stopping just inches from its grille. Creem released Ambassador and Skill, who went racing over the muddy yard toward the scene. Royal and Malvo jumped out, each bearing a long silver sword and a silver knife. They went right at the bloodsuckers emptying out of the lead vehicle. Royal was especially vicious. He had bolted silver spikes to the toes of his boots. The hijacking looked to be over in less than one minute.
The first thing Creem noticed that was wrong was the food truck. The human operators remained inside the cab, rather than jumping out and running. Ambassador leaped up at the driver’s-side door, his choppers snapping at the closed window, the man inside looking down into the wolf-hound’s angry mouth and bared teeth.
Then the soft canvas sides of the twin army trucks were pulled up like curtains. Instead of food, some twenty or thirty bloodsucker vampires came tearing out, their fury, speed, and intensity matching the wolf-hounds’. Malvo slashed off three of them hard before one got up in his face, knocking him back. Malvo twisted and fell—and they were on him.
Royal backed off, retreating like a kid with a sand pail in his hand facing an incoming tidal wave. He bumped up against his own vehicle, delaying his escape.
Creem could not see what was happening in the rear … but he heard the screams. And if there was one thing he had learned, it was that …
Vampires don’t scream.
Creem ran—as much as a man of his size can run—toward his boy Royal, who was backed up against the front of the Tahoe by a gang of six bloodsuckers. Royal was all but done for, but Creem could not let him go out like that. Creem carried a .44 Magnum on his hip, and the rounds weren’t made of silver, but he liked the weapon anyway. He drew it and capped off two vampires’ heads, blam, blam, the white, acid-like vamp blood spraying into Royal’s face, blinding him.
Creem saw, beyond Royal, Skill with its fangs clamped on the elbow of one of the marauding bloodsuckers. The sucker, oblivious to pain, slashed at Skill’s furry throat with the hardened nail of its talonlike middle finger, opening up the wolf-hound’s neck in a mess of silver-gray fur and rich, red blood.
Creem blasted the bloodsucker, opening up two holes in its throat. The sucker went down right next to the whimpering Skill in a mess of carnage.
Another pair of bloodsuckers had fallen upon Ambassador, their vampire strength overpowering the fierce animal. Creem fired away, taking chunks of head and shoulder and arm, but the silverless bullets failed to stop the suckers from ripping apart the wolf-hound.
What the gunfire did achieve was that it attracted attention to Creem. Royal was gone already, two suckers with their stingers in his neck, feeding on him right there in the middle of the street. The humans remained locked inside the cab of the decoy truck, watching, their eyes wide, with not horror but excitement. Creem got off two rounds in their direction and heard glass breaking but could not slow to see if he had hit them.
He squeezed himself through the open driver’s door of the Tahoe, his bulk pushed up against the steering wheel. He threw the vehicle in reverse, the engine still running, and chewed up some yard mud as he backed away. He slammed on the brakes, tearing up more yard, then twisted the wheel to the left. Two bloodsuckers leaped into his way, and Creem hit the gas hard, the Tahoe bursting forward and running them down, its tires grinding them into the sidewalk. Creem fishtailed into the road, gunning the engine but forgetting that it had been a while since he’d operated an automobile.
He skidded sideways, grinding up against the opposite curb, blowing one of the tires off its rim. He swung the other way, overcorrecting. Creem stomped the pedal flat to the floor, got a burst of speed out of the Tahoe—and then the engine sputtered and quit.
Creem checked the dashboard panel. The gas gauge glowed “E.” His crew had poured in just enough fuel for the job. The getaway van, the one with the half-full tank, was in the rear.
Creem threw open his door. He grabbed the frame and pulled himself from the vehicle, seeing the bloodsuckers running toward him. Dirty-pale, barefoot, naked, bloodthirsty. Creem reloaded his .44 from the only other clip on his belt, blasting holes in the bastards, who, as in nightmares, kept coming. When the gun clicked empty, Creem threw it aside and went at the suckers with his silver-covered fists, his bling punches packing extra force and pain. He yanked off one of his chains and started strangling a bloodsucker with it, swinging the creature’s body around to block the other ghouls’ clutching, battering hands.
But he was weak from malnutrition, and, big as he was, he tired easily. They overtook him, but rather than go right at his throat, they locked his big arms in their own and with preternatural strength dragged the sweat-drenched gang leader off the street. They hauled him up two steps into a looted convenience store, bracing him there in a seated position on the floor. Gassed, Creem unleashed a string of curses until heavy breathing dizzied him, and he started to black out. As the store spun in his vision, he wondered what the hell they were waiting for. He wanted them to choke on his blood. He had no worries about being turned into a vampire; that was one of the distinct advantages to having a mouth full of repellent silver.
Two humans stepped inside, Stoneheart employees in neat black suits like the undertakers they were. Creem thought they had arrived to strip him of his silver, and he rallied, fighting with all he had left. The bloodsuckers kneeled into his arms, twisting them in pain. But the Stonehearts merely watched over him as he slumped on the floor, gasping for air.
Then the atmosphere inside the store changed. The only way to describe it is the way things get so still outside right before a storm. Creem’s hair stood up on the back of his neck. Something was about to happen. This was like the moment when two hands go rushing toward each other, the instant before the clap.
A humming entered Creem’s brain like the rumble of a dentist’s drill, only without the vibration. Like the roar of an approaching helicopter without the wind. Like the droning chant of a thousand monks—only without the song.
The bloodsuckers stiffened up like soldiers awaiting inspection. The two Stonehearts stepped to the side, against an empty aisle rack. The suckers on either side of Creem relinquished their grip on him, pulling away, leaving him sitting alone in the middle of the dirty linoleum …
… as a dark figure entered the store.
Camp Liberty
THE TRANSPORT JEEP was a repurposed military vehicle with an expanded cargo bed and no roof. Mr. Quinlan drove at breakneck speed through the lashing rain and inky darkness; his vampire vision required no headlights. Eph and the others bumped along in the back, getting soaked as they hurtled blindly through the night. Eph closed his eyes against the rain and the rocking, feeling like a small boat caught in a typhoon, battered but determined to ride it out.
They stopped finally, and Eph lifted his head and looked up at the immense gate, dark against the dark sky. No light was necessary. Mr. Quinlan cut the Jeep’s engine, and there were no sounds or voices, other than the rain and the mechanical rumble of a distant generator somewhere inside.
The camp was enormous and all around it a featureless concrete wall was being erected. At least twenty feet high, it had crews working on it day and night, raising rebar, pouring concrete by stadium quartz lights. It would be ready very soon, but for the time being, a gate constructed of chain link backed by wooden planks gave access to the camp.
For some reason, Eph had imagined he would hear children crying, adults screaming, or some other form of audible anguish, being near so much human suffering. The darkly quiet exterior of the camp spoke to an oppressive efficiency that was almost as shocking.
No doubt they were being watched by unseen strigoi. Mr. Quinlan’s body registered bright and hot in the vampires’ heat-sensitive vision, with the five other beings in the back of the Jeep reading as cooler humans.
Mr. Quinlan lifted a baseball equipment bag from the passenger seat and lay it across his shoulder as he exited the Jeep. Eph stood dutifully, his wrists
, waist, and ankles bound by nylon rope. The five of them were knotted together with only a few feet of slack between them, like members of a chain gang. Eph was in the middle, Gus in front of him, Fet in back. First and last were Bruno and Joaquin. One by one they hopped down from the back of the vehicle, landing in the mud.
Eph could smell the strigoi, their feverlike earthiness and their ammoniac waste. Mr. Quinlan walked alongside Eph, accompanying his prisoners into the camp.
Eph felt as though he were walking into the mouth of the whale and feared being swallowed. He knew going in that the odds were no better than even that he would ever emerge from this slaughterhouse again.
Communication was handled wordlessly. Mr. Quinlan was not exactly on the other vampires’ wavelength, telepathically, but the existence of his psychic signal was enough to pass first inspection. Physically, he appeared less gaunt than the rank-and-file vampires, his pale flesh more lily-petal smooth than dead and plastic, his eyes a brighter red with an independent spark. They shuffled down a narrow canvas tunnel beneath a roof constructed of chicken fencing. Eph looked up through the wire into the falling rain and the sheer blackness of the starless sky.
They arrived at a quarantine station. A few battery-powered work lamps illuminated the room, as this area was manned by humans. With the low-wattage light casting shadows against the walls, and the relentless rain outside, and the palpable sense of being surrounded by hundreds of malevolent beings, the quarantine station resembled a scared little tent in the middle of a vast jungle.
The staff’s heads were all shaved. Their eyes were dry and tired-looking, and they wore slate-gray prison-grade jumpsuits and perforated rubber clogs.
The five were asked to provide their names, and each man lied. Eph signed a scribble next to his pseudonym with a dull pencil. Mr. Quinlan stood in the background, before a canvas wall thumping with rain, while four strigoi stood golemlike, one pair of sentries at either flap door.
Mr. Quinlan’s story was that he had captured five outliers squatting in a cellar beneath a Korean market on 129th Street. A blow to the head, suffered in the act of subduing his cargo, explained his glitchy telepathy—whereas, in fact, Quinlan was actively blocking the vampires from accessing his true thoughts. He had shed his oversized pack, laying it down on the damp canvas floor near his boots.
The humans first tried to untie the binding knots, in hopes of preserving the rope for reuse. But the wet nylon would not budge and had to be cut. Under the watchful eyes of the vampire guards, Eph remained standing with his eyes down, rubbing his raw wrists. It was impossible for him to look a vampire in the eye without showing hatred. Also, he was concerned about being recognized by the strigoi hive mind.
He was aware of a disturbance brewing inside the tent. The quiet was awkward, the sentries directing their attention at Mr. Quinlan. The strigoi had picked up on something different about him.
Fet noticed this too, because he suddenly started talking, trying to direct attention away from Quinlan. “When do we eat?” he asked.
The human with the clipboard looked up from his note-taking. “Whenever they feed you.”
“Hope it’s not too rich,” he said. “I don’t do well with rich foods.”
They stopped what they were doing, staring at Fet as though he were insane. The lead man said, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Good,” said Fet.
One of the strigoi noticed that Mr. Quinlan’s pack remained on the floor in the corner of the room. The vampire reached for the long, heavy bag.
Fet stiffened near Eph. One of the human personnel grasped Eph’s chin, using a penlight to examine the interior of his mouth. The man had bags beneath his eyes the color of black tea. Eph said, “Were you a doctor?”
“Sort of,” said the man, looking at Eph’s teeth.
“How ‘sort of’?”
“Well, I was a veterinarian,” he said.
Eph closed his mouth. The man flicked the light beam in and out of Eph’s eyes, intrigued by what he saw.
“You’ve been taking some medication?” asked the vet.
Eph didn’t like the vet’s tone. “Sort of,” he answered.
“You’re in pretty bad shape. Kinda tainted,” said the vet. Eph saw the vampire drawing the zipper back on the pack. The nylon shell was lined with lead from the X-ray aprons of a midtown dentist’s office. Once the strigoi felt the disruptive properties of the silver blades, he dropped the pack as though scalded.
Mr. Quinlan rushed for the pack. Eph pushed the veterinarian, knocking the man all the way across the tent. Mr. Quinlan shoved past the strigoi and pulled a sword quickly from the pack, turning, holding it out. The vampires were at first too stunned to move as the surprise presence of silver, in the form of a weapon, held them back. Mr. Quinlan advanced slowly in order to give Fet, Gus, and the others time to grab their weapons. Eph felt a hell of a lot better once he got a sword into his hands. The weapon Mr. Quinlan brandished was actually Eph’s blade, but there was no time to quibble.
The vampires did not react as humans would. None of them ran out the door to escape or warn others. The alarm went out psychically. Their attack, after the initial shock, came swiftly.
Mr. Quinlan cut one down with a blow to the neck. Gus rushed forward, meeting a charging vampire and running his blade straight through its throat. Decapitation was difficult in close quarters because the broad slashing required to sever the neck risked wounding others, and the blood spray was caustic, laden with infectious worm parasites. Close-quarters combat with strigoi was always a last resort, and so the five of them fought their way out of the quarantine intake room as quickly as possible.
Eph, the last to arm himself, was set upon not by vampires but by humans. The veterinarian and one other. He was so startled, he reacted to the attack as though they were strigoi and stabbed the vet through the base of his neck. Red arterial spray spritzed the wooden supporting pole in the center of the room as both Eph and the veterinarian stared at one another with wide eyes. “What the hell are you doing!” yelled Eph. The veterinarian sank to his knees, and the second man turned his attention to his wounded friend.
Eph backed away slowly from the dying man, pulled on his shoulder by one of the others. He was shaken; he had killed a man.
They stepped out of the tent, emerging into the open air inside the camp. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle. A canvas-roofed path lay before them, but the night prevented Eph from taking in the camp as a whole. No strigoi yet, but they knew that the alarm had gone out. It took their eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness—out of which the vampires came running.
The five of them fanned out in an arc, taking on all comers. Here there was room to swing the blade freely, to plant one’s rear foot and drive the sword with enough force to lift the head from the shoulders. Eph hacked hard, moving and slashing and checking constantly behind him.
In this way, they repelled the initial wave. They continued ahead, though without any intelligence as to the organization of the camp. They looked for some indication of where the general population was located. Another pair of vampires came at them from the left, and Mr. Quinlan, protecting his flank, cut them down, then led the others in that general direction.
Ahead, silhouetted against the darkness, was a tall, narrow structure: a lookout post in the center of a stone circle. More vampires came running at top speed and the five men tightened up, moving as a unit, five silver blades cutting together almost as one wide one.
They needed to kill fast. The strigoi had been known to sacrifice one or more of their number in an attempt at improving their chances of capturing and turning a human aggressor. Their strategy was such that one or three or even ten vampires were worth sacrificing for the elimination of one human slayer.
Eph curled back behind the others, taking the rear, walking backward as they formed a moving oval, a ring of silver to hold the swarming vampires at bay. His eyes becoming more acclimated to the dark, Eph perceived other strigoi sl
owing in the distance, congregating, holding back. Tracking without attacking. Planning some more coordinated assault.
“They’re massing,” he told the others. “I think we’re being pushed this way.”
He heard the wet cut of a sword, then Fet’s voice. “A building up ahead. Our only hope is to go zone by zone.”
We broke out into the camp too early, said Mr. Quinlan.
The sky as yet was showing no sign of brightening. Everything hinged upon that unreliable window of sunlight. The trick now was to last inside enemy territory until the uncertain dawn.
Gus swore and cut down another creature. “Stay tight,” said Fet.
Eph continued his slow walk backward. He could just make out the faces of the first line of vampires pursuing them, staring intently. Staring—it seemed—at him.
Was it just his imagination? Eph slowed, then stopped altogether, allowing the others to progress a few yards without him.
The pursuing vampires stopped as well.
“Ah, shit,” said Eph.
They had recognized him. The equivalent of an all-points bulletin on the vampire psychic network was a hit. The hive was alerted to his presence, which meant only one thing.
The Master knew that Eph was there. Watching this through its drones.
“Hey!” said Fet, doubling back to Eph. “What the hell are you doing stopping … ?” He saw the strigoi, maybe two dozen of them, staring. “Jesus. What are they, starstruck?”
Awaiting orders.
“Christ, let’s just—”
The camp whistle went off—jolting them—a shrill steam scream followed by four more in quick succession. Then silence again.
Eph understood the alarm’s purpose: to alert not just the vampires but also the humans. A call to take shelter, perhaps.
Fet looked to the nearest building. He again checked the sky for light. “If you can lead them away from here, from us—we can get in and out of this place that much more quickly.”
Eph had no desire to be a bouncing red chew toy for this pack of bloodsuckers, but he saw the logic in Fet’s plan. “Just do me a favor,” he said. “Make it fast.”