by Chuck Hogan
They walked up the front steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library, between the twin stone lions, Patience and Fortitude. The beaux arts landmark stood like a great mausoleum. They moved through the portico into the entrance, crossing Astor Hall. The massive reading room had suffered only minor damage: looters, in the brief period of anarchy after the Fall, didn’t care much for books. One of the grand chandeliers had come down onto a reading table below, but the ceiling was so high that it may have just been a random structural failing. Some books remained on the tables, some backpacks and their picked-over contents strewn about the tile floor. Chairs were overturned, and a few of the lamp heads were broken off. The silent emptiness of the immense, public room was chilling.
The arched windows high on either side admitted as much light as was available. The ammoniac smell of vampire waste, so omnipresent Eph barely noticed it anymore, registered with him here. It said something that the accumulated knowledge and art of a civilization could be shat upon so carelessly by a marauding force of nature.
“We have to go down?” asked Gus. “What about one of these books here?” The shelves on either side, on two levels along walls running the length of the room below and above the railed walkways, were filled with colored spines.
Fet said, “We need an ornate, old book to double for the Lumen. We gotta sell this thing, remember. I’ve been in here numerous times. Rats and mice are drawn to decaying paper. The ancient texts they keep down below.”
They took to the stairs, turning on flashlights and readying night-vision devices. The main branch had been constructed on the site of the Croton Reservoir, a man-made lake that provided water for the island, made obsolete by the beginning of the twentieth century. There were seven full floors beneath street level, and a recent renovation beneath the adjacent Bryant Park on the rear, west side of the library had added more miles of book stacks.
Fet led the way into the darkness. The figure awaiting them on the landing at the third floor was Mr. Quinlan. Gus’s flashlight briefly illuminated the Born’s face, an almost phosphorescent white, his eyes like red baubles. He and Gus had an exchange.
Gus drew his sword. “Bloodsuckers in the stacks,” he said. “We got some clearing to do.”
Nora said, “If they pick up on Eph, they’ll bounce it to the Master, and we’ll be trapped underground.”
Mr. Quinlan’s mouthless voice entered their heads.
Dr. Goodweather and I will wait inside. I can baffle any attempts at psychic intrusion.
“Good,” said Nora, readying her Luma lamp.
Gus was already moving down the stairs to the next floor, sword in hand, Joaquin limping down behind him. “Let’s have some fun.”
Nora and Fet paired off, following them, while Mr. Quinlan pushed through the nearest door, entering the third underground floor. Eph reluctantly followed him. Inside were wide storage cabinets of aged periodicals and stacked bins of obsolete audio recordings. Mr. Quinlan opened the door to a listening booth, and Eph was obliged to follow him inside.
Mr. Quinlan closed the soundproof door. Eph pulled off his night-vision scope, leaning against a near counter, standing together with the Born in darkness and in silence. Eph worried that the Born could read him and so turned up the white noise in his head by actively imagining and then naming the items surrounding him.
Eph did not want the hunter to detect his potential deceit. Eph was walking a fine line here, playing the same game with both sides. Telling each he was working to subvert the other. In the end, Eph’s only loyalty was to Zack. He suffered equally at the thought of potentially turning on his friends—or spending eternity in a world of horror.
I had a family once.
The Born’s voice shook a nervous Eph, but he recovered quickly.
The Master turned them all, leaving it to me to destroy them. Something else we share in common.
Eph nodded. “But there was a reason it was after you. A link. The Master and I have no past. No commonality. I fell into its path purely by accident of my profession as an epidemiologist.”
There is a reason. We just don’t know what it is.
Eph had devoted hours to this very thought. “My fear is that it has something to do with my son, Zack.”
The Born was quiet for a moment.
You must be aware of a similarity between myself and your son. I was turned in the womb of my mother. And through that, the Master became my surrogate father, supplanting my own human forebear. By corrupting the mind of your son in his formative years, the Master is seeking to supplant you, your influence upon your son’s maturation.
“You mean, this is a pattern with the Master.” Eph should have been discouraged, but instead he found reason to cheer. “Then there’s hope,” he said. “You turned against the Master. You rejected it. And it had much greater influence over you.” Eph stood off the counter, lifted by this theory. “Maybe Zack will too. If I can get to him in time, the way the Ancients got to you. Maybe it’s not too late. He is a good kid—I know it . . .”
So long as he remains unturned biologically, there is a chance.
“I have to get him away from the Master. Or, more accurately, get the Master away from him. Can we really destroy it? I mean, if God failed to do it so long ago.”
God succeeded. Ozryel was destroyed. It was the blood that rose.
“So, in a sense, we have to fix God’s mistake.”
God makes no mistakes. In the end, all the rivers go to the sea . . .
“No mistakes. You think that fiery mark in the sky appeared on purpose. Sent for me?”
For me, as well. So that I might know to protect you. To safeguard you from corruption. The elements are falling into place. The ashes are gathered. Fet has the weapon. Fire rained from the sky. Signs and portents—the very language of God. They all will rise and fall with the strength of our alliance.
Again, a pause that Eph could not decipher. Was the Born already inside his head? Had he softened Eph’s mind with conversation so that he could read Eph’s true intentions?
Mr. Fet and Ms. Martinez have cleared the sixth floor. Mr. Elizalde and Mr. Soto are still engaged on floor five.
Eph said, “I want to go to six.”
They went down the stairwell, passing one conspicuous puddle of white vampire blood. Passing the door to the fifth floor, Eph could hear Gus cursing loudly, almost joyously.
The sixth floor began with a map room. Through a heavy glass door, Eph passed into a long room that had once been carefully climate controlled. Panels featuring thermostats and humidity barometers dotted the walls, and the ceiling was spaced with vents, their ribbons hanging limp.
The stacks were long here. Mr. Quinlan fell back, and Eph knew he was somewhere deep beneath Bryant Park now. He proceeded quietly, listening for Fet and Nora, not wanting to surprise them or be surprised by them. He heard voices a few stacks over and moved through a break in the shelves.
They were using a flashlight. That allowed Eph to switch off his night-vision scope. He got close enough to see them through one stack of books. They were standing at a glass table with their backs to him. Above the table, inside a cabinet, were what looked to be the library’s most precious acquisitions.
Fet forced the locks and laid the other ancient texts out in front of him. He focused on one book: a Gutenberg Bible. It had the most potential as a fake. Silvering the page edges would not be difficult, and he could lightly paste in some illuminated pages from the other tomes. Defacing literary treasures was a small price to pay for overthrowing the Master and his clan.
“This,” said Fet. “The Gutenberg Bible. There were fewer than fifty in existence . . . Now? This may be the last one.” He examined it further, turning it around. “This is an incomplete copy, printed on paper, not vellum, and the binding is not original.”
Nora looked at him. “You’ve learned a lot about ancient texts.”
Involuntarily, Fet blushed at the compliment. He turned around and reached for an
information card in a hard plastic sleeve and showed her he had been reading this information. She slapped him lightly on the arm.
“I’m taking it with us now, along with a handful of others to dummy up.”
Fet pulled down a few other illuminated texts, stacking them gently into a backpack.
“Wait!” Nora said. “You’re bleeding . . .”
It was true. Fet was bleeding profusely. Nora opened up his shirt and popped open a small bottle of peroxide taken from the kit.
She poured it on the bloodstained fabric. The blood bubbled up and fizzed upon contact. That would destroy the scent for the strigoi.
“You must rest,” Nora said. “I order it as your physician.”
“Oh, my physician,” said Fet. “Is that what you are?”
“I am,” said Nora with a smile. “I need to get you some antibiotics. Eph and I can find them. You go back with Quinlan . . .”
Delicately, she cleaned Fet’s wound and poured peroxide on it again. The liquid ran down the hairs on his massive chest. “You want to make me a blond, eh?” Vasiliy joked. And as terrible as his joke was, Nora laughed at it, rewarding the intent.
Vasiliy pulled off her cap. “Hey, give me that!” she said, and fought Vasiliy’s good arm for possession of the cap. Vasiliy gave her the cap but trapped her in an embrace.
“You’re still bleeding.”
He ran his hand over her bare scalp. “I’m so glad I have you back . . .”
And then, for the first time, Fet told her, in his own way, how he felt about her. “I don’t know where I’d be right now without you.”
In other circumstances, the burly exterminator’s confession would have been ambiguous and insufficient. Nora would have waited for a bit more. But now—here and now—this was enough. She kissed him softly on the lips and felt his massive arms surround her back, engulfing her, pulling her to his chest. And they both felt fear evaporate and time freeze. They were there, now. In fact it felt like they’d always been there. No memory of pain or loss.
As they embraced, the beam from the flashlight in Nora’s hand glided by the stacks, briefly illuminating Eph hiding there, before he faded back into the book stacks.
Belvedere Castle, Central Park
THIS TIME, DR. Everett Barnes was able to wait until he was out of the helicopter before vomiting. When he was through disgorging his breakfast, he swiped at his mouth and chin with a handkerchief and looked around rather sheepishly. But the vampires showed no reaction to his becoming violently sick. Their expressions, or lack thereof, remained fixed and uncaring. Barnes could have laid a giant egg there in the muddy walkway near the Shakespeare Garden on the Seventy-ninth Street Transverse or had a third arm burst forth from his chest and not suffered any embarrassment in these drones’ eyes. His appearance was terrible, his face bloated and purple, his lips engorged with coagulated blood, and his injured hand bandaged and immobilized. But they paid no attention to any of this.
Barnes caught his breath and straightened a few yards free of the whirling helicopter rotors, ready to move along. The chopper lifted off, whipping rain at his back, and once it was away he opened his broad, black umbrella. His sexless undead guards took as little notice of the rain as they had his nausea, moving along at his side like pale, plastic automatons.
The bare heads of dead trees parted, and Belvedere Castle came into view, set high atop Vista Rock, framed against the contaminated sky.
Below, in a thick ring around the base of the stone, stood a legion of vampires. Their stillness was unnerving, their statuelike presence resembling some bizarre and stupefyingly ambitious art installation. And then, as Barnes and his two guards approached the outer edge of the vampire ring, the creatures parted—unbreathing, expressionless—for them, allowing their approach. Barnes stopped about ten rows in, approximately halfway through, looking at this respectful ring of vampires. He trembled a little, the umbrella vibrating such that dirty rain shook off the tips of the ribs. Here he experienced most deeply a sense of the uncanny: being in the middle of all these human predators, who by all rights should have drunk him or torn him to shreds—but instead stood idly as he passed, if not with respect then with enforced indifference. It was as though he had entered the zoo and gone walking past the lions, tigers, and bears without any reaction or interest. This was completely against their nature. Such was the depth of their enslavement to the Master.
Barnes encountered the former Kelly Goodweather at the door to the castle. She stood outside the door, her eyes meeting his, unlike the rest of the drones. He slowed, almost tempted to say something, like “Hello,” a courtesy left over from the old world. Instead, he simply passed, and her eyes followed him inside.
The clan lord appeared in his dark cloak, blood worms rippling beneath the skin covering his face as he regarded Barnes.
Goodweather has accepted.
“Yes,” Barnes said, thinking, If you knew that, then why did I have to get in a helicopter to come to this drafty castle to see you?
Barnes tried to explain the double-cross but became tangled up in the details himself. The Master did not appear particularly interested.
“He’s double-crossing his partners,” said Barnes, summing up. “He seemed sincere. I don’t know that I would trust him, though.”
I trust his pitiable need for his son.
“Yes. I see your point. And he trusts your need for the book.”
Once I have Goodweather, I have his partners. Once I have the book, I have all the answers.
“What I don’t understand is how he was able to overwhelm security at my house. Why others of your clan weren’t notified.”
It is the Born. He is created by me but not of my blood.
“So he’s not on the same wavelength?”
I do not have control over him as I do my others.
“And he’s with Goodweather now? Like a double agent? A defector?” The Master did not answer. “Such a being could be very dangerous.”
For you? Very. For myself? Not dangerous. Only elusive. The Born has allied himself with the gang member whom the Ancients recruited for day hunting and the rest of the scum that runs with him. I know where to find some information about them . . .
“If Goodweather surrenders himself to you . . . then you would have all the information to find him. The Born.”
Yes. Two fathers reuniting with two sons. There’s always symmetry in God’s plans. If he gives himself to me . . .
A ruckus behind Barnes then made him turn, startled. A teenager, with ragged hair falling over his eyes, stumbling down the spiral staircase. A human, holding one hand to his throat. The boy shook back some of his hair, just enough so that Barnes recognized Ephraim Goodweather in the boy’s face. Those same eyes, that same very serious expression—though now showing fear.
Zachary Goodweather. He was in obvious respiratory distress, wheezing and turning grayish blue.
Barnes stood, starting toward him instinctively. Later it would occur to Barnes that it had been a great while since he had acted on medical instinct. He intercepted the boy, holding him by his shoulder. “I am a doctor,” said Barnes.
The boy pushed Barnes away, pinwheeling his arm, going straight to the Master. Barnes rocked back a few steps, more shocked than anything. The floppy-haired boy fell to his knees before the Master, who looked down at his suffering face. The Master let the boy struggle a few moments longer, then raised its arm, the loose sleeve of its cloak sliding back. His thumb and elongated middle finger snapped together in a blur, pricking the skin. The Master held its thumb over the boy’s face, a single droplet of blood poised on the tip. Slowly, the bead elongated, dripping free, landing in the back of Zack’s open mouth.
Barnes himself swallowed dryly, sickened. He had already thrown up once that morning.
The boy closed his mouth as though having just ingested an eyedropper’s worth of medicine. He grimaced—either at the taste or at the pain of the swallow—and within a few moments his hand came away
from his throat. His head hung low as he regained normal respiration, his airway opening, his lungs clearing miraculously. Almost instantly, his pallor returned to normal—the new normal, that is, meaning sallow and sun-hungry.
The boy blinked and looked around, seeing the room for the first time since entering in respiratory distress. His mother—or what remained of her—had entered from the doorway, perhaps summoned by her Dear One’s distress. Yet her blank face showed neither concern nor relief. Barnes wondered how often this healing ritual was performed. Once every week? Once every day?
The boy looked at Barnes as though for the first time, the white-goateed man he had shoved away just moments before.
“Why is there another human here?” asked Zack Goodweather.
The boy’s supercilious manner surprised Barnes, who remembered Goodweather’s son as a thoughtful, curious, well-mannered child. Barnes ran his fingers through his own hair, summoning some dignity.
“Zachary, do you remember me?”
The boy’s lips curled as though he resented being asked to study Barnes’s face. “Vaguely,” he said, his tone harsh, his manner haughty.
Barnes remained patient, upbeat. “I was your father’s boss. In the old world.”
Again, Barnes saw the father in the son—but less so now. Just as the Eph who visited him had changed, so had the boy. His young eyes were distant, distrusting. He had the attitude of a boy-prince.
Zachary Goodweather said, “My father is dead.”
Barnes started to speak, then wisely held back his words. He glanced at the Master, and there was no change of expression in the creature’s rippling face—but Barnes knew somehow not to contradict. For an instant, as he perceived the big picture and saw everyone’s play and position in this particular drama, he felt bad for Eph. His own son . . . But, Barnes being Barnes, the feeling didn’t last long and he began to think of a way to profit from this.