The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (107 page)

Eph looked for the largest chunk of brick and concrete. He lifted it over his head to finish the job . . . until a sense of gruesome curiosity came over him. He used his boot to roll the
strigoi
onto its back, the creature lying flat and still. It must have heard the rumbling of the loose bricks and looked skyward, because its face was bashed in.

The chunk of bricks grew heavy in his hands, and he lowered it, tossing it aside, letting it crash against the sidewalk just a foot away from the creature’s head. No reaction.

The medical examiner’s building was right across the street. A great risk—but if the creature was indeed blind, as it appeared, then it could not feed the Master its vision. And if it was also brain-damaged . . . then it could not communicate with the Master at all, and its current location could not be traced.

Eph moved quickly, before he could talk himself out of it. He got his hands beneath the creature’s armpits, careful of the sticky mass of blood, and rescue-dragged him off the curb, across the street, and around to the ramp leading to the basement morgue.

Inside, he nudged over a step stool to help him load the vampire onto an autopsy table. He worked quickly, binding the creature’s wrists beneath the table with rubber tubing, then similarly affixing its ankles to the table legs.

Eph looked at the
strigoi
laid out upon the examining table. Yes, he was indeed about to do this. He pulled a pathologist’s full-length smock from the closet, pulling on twin pairs of latex gloves. He taped the wrists to his sleeves and his leg cuffs to the tops of his boots, creating a seal. In a cabinet over one of the sinks, he found a clear plastic splash guard and fit it over his face. Then he wheeled over a tray and arranged upon it a dozen different stainless steel implements, all of them cutting tools.

As he was looking at the vampire, it roused into consciousness, stirring at first, rolling its head this way and that. It sensed the bindings and began to struggle against them, bucking its waist up and down off the table. Eph used another length of tubing around its waist and beneath the table, and then another across its neck, knotting it tightly underneath.

From behind the creature’s head, Eph used a probe to tempt its stinger, allowing for the possibility that it still might be functioning even within its smashed face. He saw the vampire’s throat buck and heard a clicking in its jaw as it tried to activate its stinging mechanism. But the mandible had been damaged internally. His only concern therefore was the blood worms, for which he kept his Luma lamp close at hand.

He drew the scalpel across the being’s throat, opening it around the tube ligature, peeling back the folds. Eph was most careful here, watching the throat column jerk, the jaw attempt to de-hinge. The fleshy protuberance that was the stinger remained retracted and limp. Eph seized its narrow tip with a clamp and pulled, the stinger extending generously. The creature tried to retake control of it, the muscle at the base twitching.

For his own safety, Eph reached for his small silver blade and amputated the appendage.

The being tensed as though shot through with pain and defecated a small amount of discharge, the smell of ripe ammonia stinging Eph’s nose. White blood spilled out around the throat incision, the caustic fluid seeping onto the stretched rubber tube.

Eph carried the writhing organ to the counter, where he lay it next to a digital scale. He examined it under the light of a magnifying lens, and as it twitched like a severed lizard’s tail, he noted the tiny double tip at the end. Eph bisected the organ lengthwise, then peeled back the pink flesh, exposing dilated bifurcated canals. He already knew that one canal introduced, along with the virus-infected parasitic worm, a narcotizing agent and a salivary blend of anticoagulants when a vampire stung its victim. The other canal siphoned the blood meal. The vampire did not suck the blood out of its human victim but instead relied on physics to do the extraction, the second stinger canal forming a vacuum-like connection through which arterial blood was drawn up as easily as water crawls up the stem of a plant. The vampire could speed the capillary action if necessary by working the base of its stinger like a piston. Amazing that this complex biological system arose out of radical endogenous growth.

Human blood is more than 95 percent water. The rest is proteins, sugars, and minerals, but no fat. Tiny bloodsuckers such as mosquitoes, ticks, and other arthropods could survive on blood meals just fine. As efficient as the vampires’ transmuted bodies were, as large sanguivores they had to consume a steady blood diet in order to avoid starvation. And because human blood was mostly water, they expressed waste frequently, including while feeding.

Eph left the flayed stinger upon the counter, returning to the creature. The acidic white vampire blood had eaten through the tubing across its neck, but the vampire’s thrashing had subsided. Eph opened up the creature’s chest, cutting down from sternum to waist in a classic Y. Through the calcified bone of the rib cage, he saw that the interior of the chest had mutated into quadrants, or chambers. He had long ago surmised that the entire digestive tract was transformed by the vampiric disease syndrome, but never, until now, had he viewed the chest cavity in its mature form.

The scientist in him found it truly extraordinary.

The human survivor in him found it absolutely repellent.

He stopped cutting when he heard footsteps on the floor above him. Hard steps—shoes—but some creatures occasionally still wore them, as quality footwear lasted longer than most other articles of clothing. He looked at the vampire’s smashed face and dented head and hoped he hadn’t underestimated the power of the Master’s reach, unwittingly inviting a fight.

Eph took up his long sword and lamp. He stepped back into a recess near the door to the walk-in cooler, giving him a good view of the stairs. No point in hiding; vamps could hear the beating of a human heart, circulating the red blood they craved.

The footsteps descended slowly—until the last few steps, which they ran down and kicked open the door. Eph saw a flash of silver, a long blade like his own, and knew immediately who it was—and relaxed.

Fet saw Eph standing against the wall and narrowed his eyes in that way he did. The exterminator wore wool trousers and a deep-blue anorak, the buckled leather strap of his bag slung across his chest. He pulled his hood back, further revealing his grizzled face, and sheathed his blade.

“Vasiliy?” said Eph. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Fet saw Eph’s pathology smock and gloved hands, then turned toward the still-animate
strigoi
eviscerated upon the table.

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” Fet asked, lowering his sword. “I just arrived today . . .”

Eph stepped away from the wall and returned his own sword to the pack on the floor. “I am examining this vampire.”

Fet came forward to the table, looking at the creature’s crushed face. “Did you do that?”

“No. Not directly. He was struck by a chunk of falling concrete, caused by a hospital I blew up.”

Fet looked at Eph. “I heard it. That was you?”

“They had me cornered. Almost.”

Eph felt relief as soon as he saw Vasiliy—but he also felt a bolt of anger tensing his body. He stood there, frozen. Not knowing what to do. Should he embrace the ratcatcher? Or beat the shit out of him?

Fet turned back to the
strigoi
on the table, wincing at the sight. “And so you decided to bring him down here. To play with him.”

“I saw an opportunity to answer some outstanding questions about our tormentors’ biological system.”

Fet said, “Looks more like torture to me.”

“Well, that is the difference between an exterminator and a scientist.”

“Maybe,” said Fet, circling the table so that he faced Eph across it. “Or maybe you can’t tell the difference. Maybe, since you can’t hurt the Master, you grabbed this thing in its place. You do realize this creature won’t tell you where your boy is.”

Eph didn’t like it when they threw Zack back at him like that. Eph had a stake in this battle that none of the others understood. “In studying its biology, I am looking for weaknesses in the design. Something we can exploit.”

Fet said, standing across the vampire’s opened body from Eph, “We know what they are. Forces of nature who invade us and exploit our bodies. Who feed off us. They are no mystery to us anymore.”

The creature moaned softly and stirred on the table. Its hips thrust forward and its chest heaved as though humping an invisible partner.

“Jesus, Eph. Destroy this fucking thing.” Fet backed away from the table. “Where’s Nora?”

He had tried to make it sound casual and failed.

Eph took a deep breath. “I think something’s happened to her.”

“What do you mean ‘something’? Talk.”

“When I got back here, she was gone. Her mother, too.”

“Gone where?”

“I think they got rousted from here and left. I haven’t heard from her since. If you haven’t either, then something’s happened.”

Fet stared, stunned. “And you figured the best thing to do was stay here and dissect a fucking vamp?”

“To stay here and wait for one of you two to get in touch with me, yes.”

Fet scowled at Eph’s attitude. He felt like slapping the guy—slapping him and telling him what a waste of time he was. Eph had it all and Fet had nothing, and yet Eph repeatedly squandered or overlooked his good fortune. He would have liked to slap the guy a couple of times alright. But instead he sighed heavily and said, “Take me through this.”

Eph walked him upstairs, showed him the overturned chair and Nora’s abandoned lamp, clothes, and weapons bag. He watched Fet’s eyes, saw them burning. Given Fet’s and Nora’s deception, Eph had thought it might feel good to see Fet suffer—but it didn’t. Nothing about this felt good. “It’s bad,” said Eph.

“Bad,” said Fet, turning toward the windows looking out at the city. “That’s all you got?”

“What do you want to do?”

“You say that as though we even have a choice. We have to go get her.”

“Ah. Simple.”

“Yes! Simple! You wouldn’t want us to go after you?”

“I wouldn’t expect it.”

“Really?” said Fet, turning to him. “I guess we have fundamentally different ideas about loyalty.”

“Yes, I guess we do,” said Eph with enough edge on his words to make them stick.

Fet didn’t respond, but he didn’t back down either. “So you think she was grabbed. But not turned.”

“Not here. But how can we know for sure? Unlike Zack, she has no Dear One to go after. Right?”

Another jab. Eph couldn’t help himself. The computer containing their intimate correspondence was right there on the desk.

Fet understood now that Eph at least suspected something. Maybe he was daring Eph to come right out and make an open accusation, but Eph would not give him the satisfaction. So, instead of answering Eph’s insinuations, Fet countered as usual, attacking Eph’s vulnerable spot. “I assume you were at Kelly’s house again instead of here to meet Nora at the appointed time? This obsession with your son has warped you, Eph. Yes, he needs you. But we need you too.
She
needs you. This isn’t just about you and your son. Others are relying on you.”

“And what about you?” said Eph. “Your obsession with Setrakian. That’s what your trip to Iceland was. Doing what you think he would have done. Did you figure out all the secrets in the
Lumen
? No? I thought not. You could have been here as well, but you chose to follow in the old man’s shoes, his self-appointed disciple.”

“I took a chance. We have to get lucky sometime.” Fet stopped himself, throwing up his hands. “But—forget all that. Focus on Nora. She’s our only problem right now.”

Eph said, “Best-case scenario, she’s in a heavily guarded blood camp. If we guess right on which one, then all we have to do is get ourselves inside, find her, and get back out again. I can think of easier ways to commit suicide.”

Fet began packing up Nora’s things. “We need her. Pure and simple. We can’t afford to lose anyone. We need all hands on deck if we’re gonna have any chance of digging ourselves out of this mess.”

“Fet. We’ve seen two years of this. The Master’s system has taken root. We are lost.”

“Wrong—just because I might have struck out on the
Lumen
doesn’t mean I came back empty-handed.”

Eph tried to figure out that one. “Food?”

“That too,” said Fet.

Eph was not in the mood for a guessing game. Besides, at the mention of real food, his mouth had begun to water, his belly twisting into a fist. “Where?”

“In a cooler, stashed nearby. You can help me carry it.”

“Carry it where?”

“Uptown,” said Fet. “We need to go get Gus.”

Staatsburg, New York

N
ORA
RODE
IN
the backseat of a town car, speeding through rainy rural New York. The upholstery was dark and clean, but the floor mats were filthy from foot mud. Nora sat all the way over on the right, curled up in the corner, not knowing what was to come next.

She did not know where she was being taken. After her shocking encounter with her former boss Everett Barnes, Nora was led by two hulking vampires to a building with a room full of curtainless showers. The vampires remained near the only door, standing together. She could have made a stand there and refused but felt it was best to go along and see what was to come, perhaps a better chance to escape.

So she disrobed and showered. Self-consciously at first, but when she looked back at the big vampires, their eyes were focused on the far wall with their trademark distant stare, lacking any interest in the human form.

The cool spray—she could not get it hot—felt alien against her bare scalp. Her skin was prickled by needles of cold water, and the runoff spilled unimpeded down the back of her neck and naked back. The water felt good. Nora grabbed a half bar of soap sitting in a recessed tile niche. She lathered her hands and head and bare stomach and found relief in the ritual. She washed her shoulders and neck, pausing to smell the soap right against her nose—rose and lilac—a relic from the past. Someone, somewhere had made this bar of soap. Along with thousands of others, and packaged and shipped it in a normal day with traffic jams and school drops and hurried lunches. Someone had thought the bar of soap with rose and lilac scent would sell well and designed it—its shape and scent and color—to attract the attention of housewives and mothers on the crowded shelves of a Kmart or a Walmart. And now that bar of soap was here—in a processing plant. An archaeological artifact that smelled of roses and lilacs and of times gone by.