The Night Eternal

  A nasty little feeler galloped in from the restaurant, followed by another on its heels. Eph held out his silver blade, letting the blind creatures sense it. A form appeared in the dim doorway behind them, barely a silhouette, dark as a panther.

  Kelly.

  She looked horribly decayed, her features barely recognizable even to her former husband. The royal red wattle of her neck swayed limply, under dead eyes black and red.

  She was there for Zack. Eph knew what he had to do. There was only one way to break the spell. Committing to this made Eph’s sword tremble in his hands—but the vibration originated from the sword itself, not his nerves. As he held the blade before him, it seemed to be glowing faintly.

  She walked toward him, flanked by the agitated feelers. Eph showed her his blade. He said, “This is the end, Kelly … and I am so sorry … so goddamn sorry …”

  She had no eyes for Eph, only for Zack standing behind him. Her face was unable to register any emotion, but Eph understood the compulsion to have and to protect. He understood it keenly. His back spasmed and the pain became almost unbearable. But somehow he conquered it and held on.

  Kelly focused on Eph. She made a motion with her hand, a flick forward, and the feelers rushed him like attack dogs. They came in a crisscross motion, and Eph had a split second to choose between them. He struck at one and missed but managed to kick the other one to the side. The one he missed came right back at him, and Eph caught her with his sword, but off balance and only with the flat of the blade against her head. She went rolling back, dazed and slow to rise.

  Kelly leaped onto a table and sprang off it, attempting to jump past Eph to Zack. Eph moved right into her path, however, and they collided, Kelly spinning off to the side and Eph almost falling backward.

  Eph saw the other feeler sizing him up from the side and readied his blade. Then Zack burst past him. Eph just barely caught the boy by the collar of his parka, yanking him back. Zack slipped out of the jacket but stayed put, standing just in front of his father.

  “Stop it!” Zack said. He held one hand out to his mother and the other to Eph. “Don’t!”

  “Zack!” yelled Eph. The boy was near enough to both of them that Eph feared he and Kelly would both grab a hand, resulting in a tug-of-war.

  “Stop it!” yelled Zack. “Please! Please—don’t hurt her! She’s all I have … !”

  And in saying so, it hit Eph. It was he, the absent father, who was the anomaly. He had always been the anomaly. Kelly’s posture relaxed a moment, her arms dropping down at her bare sides.

  Zack said to her, “I’ll go with you. I want to go back.”

  But then another force came into Kelly’s eyes, a monstrous, alien will. She sprang all at once, violently shoving Zack aside. Her jaw dropped and her stinger lashed out at Eph, who barely moved in time, watching the muscular appendage snap out into the space where his neck had just been. He swiped at her stinger, but he was off balance and missed.

  The feelers pounced on Zack, holding him down. The boy was yelling. Kelly’s stinger retracted, the end tip lolling out of her mouth like a thin, bifurcated tongue. She threw herself at Eph, ducking her head and plowing into his midsection, driving him to the floor. He slid backward, coming to rest hard against the bottom of the counter.

  He quickly struggled up to his knees, back in full spasm, his ribs immediately jabbing his chest, a few of them broken and driving into his lungs. This shortened his swing as he brought the sword across, trying to keep her back. Kelly kicked his arm, her bare foot catching him beneath the elbow, his fists slamming against the lower part of the counter. The sword broke free from his grip and clanged to the floor.

  Eph looked up. There was a bright red glare in her eyes as Kelly rushed at him for the kill.

  Eph reached down without looking and somehow the handle of the sword found his fingers. He got the blade up just as her jaw fell and she thrust forward.

  The blade ran straight back through her throat. It came out the back end of her neck, cleaving the root mechanism of her stinger. Eph stared in horror as her stinger went limp, her gaze unbelieving. Her open mouth filled with wormy white blood, her body sagging against the silver sword.

  For a moment—probably imagined by Eph, but he accepted it anyway—he saw the formerly human Kelly behind her eyes, looking at him with an expression of peace.

  Then the creature returned and sagged in release.

  Eph remained holding her up until her white blood ran almost down to his sword handle. Then, overcoming his shock, he pivoted and removed the blade, and Kelly’s body lay upon the floor.

  Zack was screaming now. He rose up in a fit of strength and rage, throwing off the feelers. The blind vampire children went wild themselves and ran at Eph. He swung his slickened blade diagonally upward, easily slaying the first one. That made the second jump back. Eph watched as it retreated, loping out of the room with its head turned almost fully over its shoulder, watching Eph until it was gone.

  Eph lowered his sword. Zack stood over the remains of his vampire mother, crying and gasping. Zack looked at his father with a look of anguished disgust.

  “You killed her,” said Zack.

  “I killed the vampire that had taken her away from us. Away from you.”

  “I hate you! I fucking hate you!”

  In his fury, Zack found a long-handled flashlight on the countertop and grabbed it, going after his father. Eph blocked the strike to his head, but the boy’s forward momentum carried him into Eph and he fell on top of him, pressing against Eph’s broken ribs. The boy was surprisingly strong, and Eph was in agony. Zack hammered away at Eph, Eph blocking the blows with his forearm. The boy lost the flashlight but kept fighting, his fists striking Eph’s chest, hands reaching inside Eph’s coat. Finally Eph dropped his sword in order to grip the boy’s wrists and hold him off.

  Eph saw, crumpled in the boy’s left fist, a piece of paper. Zack saw that Eph had noticed and fought his father’s attempts to pry open his fingers.

  Eph pulled out the crumpled paper map. Zack had tried to take it from him. He stared into his son’s eyes and saw the presence. He saw the Master seeing through Zack.

  “No,” said Eph. “No—please. No!”

  Eph pushed the boy away. He was sickened. He looked at the map, then slipped it back into his pocket. Zack stood, backpedaling. Eph saw that the boy was about to take a run at the nuke. At the detonator.

  The Born was there, Mr. Quinlan intercepting the boy and swallowing him up in a bear hug, spinning him away. The Born had a diagonal scrape across his face, from his left eye to his right cheek. Eph got to his feet, the ripping pain in his chest nothing compared to the loss of Zack.

  Eph picked up his sword and went to Zack, still held by the Born. Zack was grimacing and nodding his head rhythmically. Eph held the silver blade near his son, watching for a response.

  The silver did not repel him. The Master was in his mind but not his body.

  “This isn’t you,” said Eph, speaking to Zack and also convincing himself. “You’re going to be okay. I have to get you out of here.”

  We must hurry.

  Eph grabbed Zack from him. “Let’s go to the boats.”

  The Born lifted his leather pack to his shoulder, then gripped the straps of the bomb, pulling it off the counter. Eph grabbed the pack at his feet and pushed Zack toward the door.

  Dr. Everett Barnes hid behind the trash shed located twenty feet from the restaurant, on the edge of the dirt parking lot. He sucked air through his broken teeth and felt the pleasurable sting of pain that produced.

  If there truly was a nuclear bomb in play—which, judging by Ephraim’s apparent obsession with vengeance, there was—then Barnes needed to get as far away from this place as possible, but not before he shot that bitch. He had a gun. A nine-millimeter, with a full clip. He was supposed to use it against Ephraim, but the way he saw it, Nora would be a bonus. The cherry on top.

  He tried to catch his breath in order to slow hi
s heart rate. Placing his fingers to his chest, he felt a strange arrhythmia. He barely knew where he was, obeying blindly the GPS that connected him to the Master and that read the positioning of Zack with a unit hidden in the teenager’s shoe. In spite of the Master’s assurances, Barnes was nervous; with these vampires wilding all around the property, there was no guarantee they would be able to know a friend from an enemy. Just in case, Barnes was determined to get to some sort of vehicle if he had any chance to escape before this camp went up in a mushroom cloud.

  He spotted Nora about a hundred feet away. He aimed at her as best he could and opened fire. Five rounds cracked out of the gun in rapid succession, and at least one of them connected with Nora, who fell down behind a line of trees … leaving a faint mist of blood floating in the air.

  “I got you—you fucking cunt!” said Barnes triumphantly.

  He pushed off from the gate and ran across the open lot toward the outlying trees. If he could follow the dirt road back out to the main street, he could find a car or some other means of transportation.

  He reached the first line of trees, stopping there, shuddering as he discovered a puddle of blood on the ground … but no Nora.

  “Oh, shit!” he said, and instinctively turned and rushed into the woods, tucking the gun in his pants. It burned him. “Shit,” he squealed. He never knew guns got this hot. He bent both arms protectively before his face, the branches ripping at his uniform and stripping medals off his chest. He paused in a clearing and hid in the underbrush, panting, the hot muzzle burning his leg.

  “Looking for me?”

  Barnes turned until he saw Nora Martinez just three trees away. Her forehead bore a gash, a bleeding, open wound the size of a finger. But she was unharmed otherwise.

  He tried to run, but she grabbed the back of his jacket collar, pulling him back.

  “We never had that last date you wanted,” she said, hauling him through the trees to the dirt drive.

  “Please, Nora—”

  She pulled him into the clear and looked him over. Barnes’s heart was racing, his breath short.

  She said, “You don’t run this particular camp, do you?”

  He pulled the gun out but it tangled on his Sansabelt pants. Nora quickly took it away and cocked it in a single expert move. She pressed it against his face.

  He held up his hands. “Please.”

  “Ah. Here they come.”

  Out of the trees came the vampires, ready to converge, hesitant only because of the silver sword in Nora’s hand. They circled the two humans, looking for an opening.

  “I am Dr. Everett Barnes,” Barnes announced.

  “Don’t think they care for titles right now,” she said, holding them at bay. She frisked Barnes and found the GPS receiver. She stomped on it. “And I would say you’ve just about outlived your usefulness right now.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I’m going to release a bunch of these bloodsuckers, of course,” she said. “The question is, what are you going to do?”

  “I … I have no weapon anymore.”

  “That’s too bad. Because, like you, they don’t care much for a fair fight.”

  “You … you wouldn’t,” he said.

  “I am,” she said. “I’ve got bigger problems than you.”

  “Give me a weapon … please … and I will do whatever you want. Whatever you need, I will give you …”

  “You want a weapon?” asked Nora.

  Barnes whimpered something like “Yes.”

  “Then,” Nora said, “have one …”

  Out of her pocket, she produced the butter-knife shank she had painfully crafted and buried it firmly in Barnes’s shoulder, jamming it between the humerus and the collarbone.

  Barnes squealed and, more important, bled.

  With a battle cry, she raced out at the largest vampire, cutting him down, then spinning, drawing more to her.

  The rest paused just a moment to confirm that the other human held no silver and that the scent of blood came from him. Then they ran at him like pound dogs thrown a slab of meat.

  Eph dragged Zack with him, following the Born to the shoreline where the dock began. He watched Mr. Quinlan hesitate a moment, the keg-shaped bomb in his arms, before crossing from the sand onto the wood planking of the long dock.

  Nora came running to meet them. Fet was alarmed at her wound, rushing to her. “Who did this to you?” he roared.

  “Barnes,” she said. “But don’t worry. We won’t be seeing him again.” She then looked at Mr. Quinlan. “You have to go! You know you can’t wait for daylight.”

  The Master expects that. So I will stay. This is perhaps the last time we will see the sun.

  “We’re going now,” said Eph, Zack pulling at his arm.

  “I’m ready,” said Fet, starting toward the dock.

  Eph raised his sword, holding the point near Fet’s throat. Fet looked at him, anger rising.

  “Just me,” Eph said.

  “What the … ?” Fet used his own sword to bat Eph’s away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Eph shook his head. “You stay with Nora.”

  Nora looked from Fet to Eph.

  “No,” said Fet. “You need me to do this.”

  “She needs you,” said Eph, the words stinging as he spoke them. “I have Mr. Quinlan.” He looked back at the dock, needing to go. “Get to a skiff and sail downriver. I’ve gotta give Zack to Ann and William, to get him out of here. I’ll tell them to be looking for you.”

  Nora said, “Let Mr. Quinlan set the detonator. You just drop him off.”

  “I have to make sure it’s set. Then I’ll be along.”

  Nora hugged him hard, then stepped back. She lifted Zack’s chin to look at his face, to try to give him some confidence or consolation. The boy blinked and looked away.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she told him.

  But the boy’s attention was elsewhere. He was looking skyward, and after a moment Eph heard it too.

  Black helicopters. Approaching from the south. Coming in low.

  Gus came hobbling down from the beach. Eph saw immediately that his left arm was badly broken—his left hand swelling with blood—though that condition did not in any way cool the gangbanger’s anger toward him. “Choppers!” yelled Gus. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  Eph quickly slipped off his pack. “Take it,” he said to Fet. The Lumen was inside.

  “Fuck the manual, man,” Gus said. “This is practice!”

  Gus dropped his gun, shaking off his own pack with a painful grunt—first his good arm, and then Nora helped him lift it off his broken one—then rummaged inside for two purple-colored canisters from his pack. He pulled the pins with his teeth, rolling the smoke grenades to the right and to the left.

  Violet smoke billowed, lifted by the shore wind, shielding the beach and dock from view and providing some intermediate cover from the approaching helicopters. “Get outta here!” yelled Gus. “You and your boy. Take care of the Master. I’ll cover your ass—but you remember, Goodweather, you and me, we got business to settle after.” Gus gently, though with great pain, pushed the jacket sleeve up from the swollen wrist of his bad arm, showing Eph the scarred word “MADRE,” left there from all of Gus’s bloodletting.

  “Eph,” said Nora. “Don’t forget—the Master is still out here somewhere.”

  At the far corner of the dock, some thirty yards from shore, Ann and William waited inside two ten-foot aluminum rowboats with outboard motors. Eph ran Zack to the first boat. When the boy would not board willingly, Eph lifted him up bodily and placed him in there. He looked at his son. “We’re going to get through this, okay, Z?”

  Zack had no response. He watched the Born loading the bomb onto the other boat, between the rear and middle bench seats, and gently but firmly lift William out, depositing him back on the dock.

  Eph remembered the Master was in Zack’s head, seeing this too. Seei
ng Eph right now.

  “It’s just about over,” Eph said.

  The violet smoke cover billowed up off the beach, blowing across to the trees, revealing more advancing vampires. “The Master needs a human to take him across water,” said Fet, stepping up with Nora and Gus. “I don’t think there’s anybody left here but us three. We just have to make sure nobody else gets to the skiffs.”

  The violet smoke parted strangely, as though folding in on itself. As though something had passed through it at incredible speed.

  “Wait—did you see that?” yelled Fet.

  Nora heard the thrumming presence of the Master. Impossibly, the wall of smoke changed course completely, curling back from the trees and rolling against the river breeze toward the shore—consuming them. Nora and Fet were immediately separated, vampires rushing at them silently out of the smoke, their bare feet soft on the damp sand.

  Helicopter rotors chopped at the air overhead. Cracks and thumps made the sand jump at their shoes, rifle fire from above. Snipers shooting blindly into the smoke cover. A vampire took one to the top of its head just as Nora was about to cut it down. The rotors whipped smoke back at her, and she did a full three-sixty with her sword straight out, blindly coughing, choking. Suddenly she was unsure which side was shore and which was water. She saw a swirling in the smoke, like a dust devil, and heard the thrumming loudly again.

  The Master. She kept swinging, fighting the smoke and everything in it.

  Gus, keeping his bad arm behind him, rushed blindly sideways through the choking violet cloud, keeping to the shore. The sailboats were tied to a dock unconnected to land, anchored some forty or fifty feet out in the water.

  Gus’s left side was throbbing, his arm swollen. He felt feverish as he broke from the edge of the violet cloud, before the river-facing windows of the restaurant, expecting a column of hungry vampires. But he was alone on the beach.

  Not so in the air. He saw the black helicopters, six of them directly overhead, with another six or so coming up behind. They hovered low, swarming like giant mechanized bees, whipping sand into Gus’s face. One of them moved out over the river, scattering the surface water, whipping moisture with the force of shards of glass.