Nightfallen (Vol. 1): Books 1-4

by Schvercraft, S. G.

  The three smiled at us, and their fangs glinted impossibly bright in the fog. The smiles did not reach their eyes, which glowed dimly red.

  “You are seeking the Ferravus Glass,” they said in unison.

  “Word travels fast,” Jackson said.

  “Do not give it to the one called Verena. Give it to us,” they said.

  “Why not get it yourselves?” he asked. “If you can turn into fog, should be a cinch.”

  “That which blocks Verena also checks us,” they said. “Obtain it for us, and you will be rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. Refuse, and you will die, your souls Hell-bound.”

  The three Kings began to fade, and just as quickly as the fog had covered us, it drifted away.

  3

  The Lesser Evil

  “How did it go?” I asked later that night. I’d stayed behind on campus when he went to meet with his handler.

  I’d never seen McBride, only heard his voice distantly while once following Jackson into the steam tunnels that honeycombed beneath Ramsgate. He had an older man’s baritone, and I imagined him a CIA agent well practiced in the art of appearing generic. He’d look like any other white, middle-management employee: average height, average build, graying hair, off-the-rack suits from Target.

  His eyes would be the only exception. They wouldn’t be dead, the will to live snuffed out thanks to years of cubicle culture. Nor would they be desperate like your average Obameconomy worker, fearful of whether his number would be up in the next downsizing. No, McBride’s eyes would be hard and uncaring, but also alive and searching, a man who liked the game he played.

  “I asked him if we should even go through with this,” Jackson said, sitting beside me on the darkened steps of the graduate library. “Two vampire races after the same artifact? Seems to me that giving it to any of them might be a bad idea. Told McBride that I wondered if this mirror or whatever would open up some portal, let some demon god loose into our dimension.”

  “What’d he think?”

  “He laughed in my face and said I’d read too many comic books. He was more excited that I’d ID’d two new subspecies. He said to stay in character, steal the glass, and keep getting intel. I don’t know why I’m surprised. You know what he said when I asked if I should try saving Caleb?”

  “Not to worry about collateral damage?”

  “Close. ‘What’s another body in the landfill?’” Jackson’s shoulders slumped, morality’s weight pushing down on him.

  “Disgusting conscience,” my predator mind commented, but this was one display of morality I didn’t mind. His own people forcing him to become a monster as they alienated him? I liked it.

  There was still the issue of self-preservation, however. “Did he have any advice about which class we should give it to?” I asked.

  “He suggested whichever one I thought was less likely to kill us. Or me, more specifically.”

  “Sage advice,” I said.

  “What else do you know about the King class?”

  “They can turn into mist, but not into anything else. In order words, they can’t go animal, unlike Stokers, and I don’t think they can control animals either. Like all Nightfallen, they can’t enter a home uninvited. They have hypnotic power probably closer to mine than Verena’s—they didn’t need to bite that girl to make her give us their message.”

  “Yeah, about that. Why not just come in and ask themselves? It’s not like anyone lived in the coffee shop, so they wouldn’t have to be invited in,” Jackson said.

  “Because they’re not very good at imitating the living. You saw them. Those eyes, those insane rictus smiles, the way they talk. They’re pure predator. To the extent they resemble humans, it’s like a whale’s leg bones—completely vestigial.”

  “Why were they speaking in unison anyway?”

  I shrugged. “They don’t seem to have any individuality. It’s like they merge in mist form. If you think and move as one, why not talk as a single unit too?”

  “Wonder why monsters like that would even want a mirror.”

  “Maybe they just want it to keep it from a Stoker. Covetousness for its own sake.”

  Jackson thought for a moment. “We’re still working for Verena.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You saw how she acted. Regal. That’s her self-concept. She’ll keep her bargain. Those ones that can turn into mist? No self-concept means no honor. They’ll try to murder us whether we give them the glass or not.”

  “Okay. Then what are we going to do about the Kings?” I asked.

  “Kill them, obviously. But first we’ve got a heist to plan.”

  4

  Breaking and Entering

  “I really hope to Hell this works,” I said, as we hurried through the campus’s steam tunnels two nights later.

  The campus drew heat from the antiquated steam system, which fed into each building’s mechanical room. The tunnels themselves had to be over one hundred degrees. Whining pipes ran lengthwise along the tunnel walls, covered with fraying asbestos. There were a few bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, but for the most part, we moved in darkness.

  I focused my eyes toward infrared. The fact that it was hot made it hard to see, washing everything out in gradations of bright yellow and white.

  “We’re almost there,” Jackson said, as he led the way.

  We were moving as fast as we could, not wanting the heat to warm our bodies too much. We turned through several more intersections as the tunnels split off, and Jackson hurriedly compared where we ought to be against a campus map.

  We cleared the main pipes into a cooler pocket, turned the corner into a narrow passageway.

  My vision was flooded with a bright, painful light. “Dammit!” I said, covering my eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked, clearly unaffected by whatever was hurting me.

  “I can’t see—something’s blinding me.” My corneas felt like they were melting.

  “Wait, I see it. Hold on,” he said.

  The brightness mercifully ceased, and aside from colorful spots dancing before my eyes, I was able to see again. Jackson was a few yards ahead of me now, standing in front of where the passageway dead-ended at a steel door. He’d used his coat to cover something on it.

  “Was it a cross?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A big one, bolted to the door.”

  “They know vampires are real?”

  “Someone once did. It was rusted, like the rest of the door. Definitely hadn’t been put there recently.”

  “Then it’s not just chance that Dey Hall was built over moving water. The building’s fortified against our kind. Jackson, there may be more traps designed against us inside.”

  “Life is never easy.”

  “I see a wire,” I said. “It’s definitely alarmed.”

  “We expected that. Get over here and take out the lock.”

  My favorite chem professor once taught us a neat trick: how to make sulfuric acid from easily purchased items. All you need is copper sulfate, used as a fungicide and algae killer in farm and lawn stores; a carbon electrode from a carbon-zinc battery; some copper wire; and a car battery. We had lost a day waiting for next-day delivery of our supplies ordered from the Internet, but in the end, I came up with a nice lock corroder.

  We were wearing gloves anyway—wouldn’t go for two dead people’s fingerprints to get found at a crime scene—but mine were rubberized since I was dealing with acid. Using a dropper thin enough that I could also work some acid onto the bolt itself, I filled the old door’s lock with the stuff.

  “How long will it take to eat through?” Jackson asked.

  “Not too long. I made it strong, and the door looks like it’s just iron, not steel.”

  “You sure it will look like the lock just rusted out?”

  “No,” I said, “but it will be less obvious than if we used thermite or just smashed it in.”

  It took a few minutes, but eventually we heard bits of
metal falling inside the lock.

  “That’s it. Ready?” he said.

  I nodded, and he opened the door. No alarm rang out, but we’d figured it would be silent. I went in first, and Jackson grabbed his coat off the cross before swinging the door almost completely shut behind us, being sure to leave it open a half inch.

  “Now we see if we’ve been overheated down there,” he whispered, as we moved through the machine room and into the building.

  In the basement hall, no lights came on as we entered. We were still cool enough that we didn’t trip the light-activating motion detectors. Hopefully the same held true for any alarm motion detectors.

  We took the stairwell up to a second-floor classroom. The labs, in which we figured the glass had to be stored, were on the third floor, but we paused at a classroom overlooking the building’s entrance to see if there was any security response.

  As we waited, I noticed fog hovering across the quad. Even if I couldn’t see its black absence of life, I knew that it was far too cold to be any natural mist. “The Kings are watching the building,” I said.

  “Let them. We’ll get out of here the same way we came in, bypass them.”

  “That’ll only delay the inevitable. They won’t let us go.”

  “One crisis at a time,” Jackson said, as a detachment of four campus cops came racing toward Dey Hall.

  They didn’t look like the campus-cop cliché of overweight retirees from a real police department. These guys were young, wearing high-necked flak vests over their uniforms. They raced to the door, guns drawn.

  We heard steps coming down the nearby stairwell, from the third floor. Then we heard steps coming up the stairwell. My hearing was no better than a human’s, but the building’s tiled walls and stone floors echoed the voices enough for us to make out what was being said.

  “There’s an alarm from the steam tunnels,” a woman’s voice said, obviously belonging to whoever had been on the third floor.

  “We’ve got it,” a man said. “Hudson, stay with Professor Claremont here. The three of us will check it out.”

  Silence followed, as they moved into the stairway and down to the basement. A few moments later, we heard them return.

  “We checked out the machine room,” a man said. “The alarm was at an old door. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like the lock may have just rusted out. We didn’t have any motion-detector alarms, at least not until you came down. Doesn’t look like anyone actually entered. We secured the door with a chain and padlock. Should hold until maintenance can get a locksmith out here tomorrow.”

  I thought that might be the end of it and they’d leave, but the professor spoke up.

  “Sweep the building,” the woman said. “Every room.”

  Even from a floor above, I could hear the men sighing.

  “Okay, you guys heard the lady. We already hit the basement. Start fanning out on this floor, then up.”

  “Any ideas on where best to hide?” I whispered.

  “It won’t matter. They’ll find us, unless we short-circuit their search.”

  Jackson led me from the classroom to the stairs, and we slowly crept to the first floor. Peering from the doorway, we saw the professor, a woman of about fifty, standing by the entrance. As best as we could hear, the campus cops were down the hall.

  Before I could say anything, Jackson pulled his tomahawk from the left side of his belt, its handle silently extending in his hand. He bolted out and grabbed the professor, covering her mouth, and put the hatchet’s sharp blade to her throat.

  “Say a word and I’ll open your neck, then shoot them.”

  I saw as she grabbed something from her lab-coat pocket and pulled it out. As she did, the same radiant light that had blinded me in the steam tunnels struck me again. I covered my eyes, doing everything I could to suppress a scream.

  “Crosses don’t work on me,” Jackson said. “Now give it.”

  The radiance ceased, and I wiped the blood from my eyes.

  Jackson pocketed the cross. He released her, collapsing the tomahawk’s handle and holstering it on his belt.

  “Get the cops out of here. Remember, I’m only going to be twenty feet away.” Then he pulled out his gun.

  “Gentlemen,” the professor called to the cops, her voice remarkably composed despite the gun pointed at her. “On second thought, I don’t mean to waste your time. I’ll reset the alarm once I get back to my office. You needn’t worry.”

  “Are you sure, ma’am?” the lead cop said when he rejoined her at the entrance. “I mean, we’re already here.”

  She’s going to alert them, my predator mind whispered. Strike while you have the advantage.

  Tempting advice, but I remained still.

  “No, officer, everything is fine. I really must get back to my work.”

  After they left Dey Hall, the professor locked the door behind him.

  “Good job,” Jackson said to her.

  Coming into the stairwell, she eyed me for the first time. “What do you want?” she asked flatly.

  “The Ferravus Glass. Where is it?” he said.

  “I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about,” the professor said, but couldn’t quite pull off the lie.

  “Look, lady, you clearly believe in vampires, since you pulled a cross on me,” Jackson said. “And it was a vampire that told us about the glass and that it’s somewhere in here. So I’m guessing you actually do know what we’re talking about.”

  “You’re too nice, trying to reason with her,” I said to Jackson before grabbing her by the back of the neck, squeezing hard enough that she shouted out in pain. “Now, where is it?”

  “Why are you idiots helping them?” the professor said through gritted teeth. “Do you have any idea what those things are? How they hurt people?”

  Since the cross didn’t work on Jackson, I guess she thought we were human. “We have a vague idea,” I said.

  As I gripped the pressure point even harder, she eventually gave in. “It’s accessed through the third floor—I’ll take you there, just stop!”

  I let her go and shoved her. “Lead on,” I said.

  The third-floor lab was a wide expanse of white worktables surrounded by glass-walled offices. Surprisingly modern for a building so old, the interior looked like a combination of aquarium and Apple store. The tables had lamps and microscopes. On some of them, grad students had left whatever they were studying: some pieces of pottery here, the rusted hilt of an ancient sword there.

  “I’ll need the key to take you into the vault,” she said, walking confidently toward one of the glass-enclosed offices. On the door were the words Professor Carolyn Claremont.

  Inside, her office was Spartan, the few pictures on her desk angled so guests couldn’t see them. A large bay window overlooked the campus’s lower quad. Her Louis Vuitton was on her desk. Claremont went to it, explaining that the vault key was inside.

  “No, we’ll check the purse. Make sure she doesn’t have a panic switch in there,” Jackson said to me.

  I walked toward Claremont, while Jackson stood in the office’s doorway. She lunged for her purse, her hand diving in it.

  I grabbed her by the arm that was in the purse, tight enough to cut off the blood. “Whatever you’re going for, you’d better let it go,” I said.

  “Of course,” Claremont said.

  Suddenly there were two thunderclaps, and the side of the purse exploded with a flash. It felt like a sledgehammer hitting my chest, the force knocking me over her desk, everything on it—picture frames and all—following me down to the floor.

  I looked at my now-ruined leather coat. Two smoking bullet holes were in it, blood boiling up from them. Worse, I could feel that the rounds had exited my back and took chunks of me with them. I screamed as the pain rushed over me like water from a collapsing dam, washing away my reason. The predator part of me instantly stepped in, and my canine teeth extended automatically.

  I stood up, about to go full-auto b
ride of Dracula on her, but Jackson yelled at me.

  “Don’t!” He pushed me back from her.

  It was enough for my consciousness to reassert itself. “Why not?” I shouted. “She’s not going to help us, and I’ll need blood to heal anyway. May as well be hers.”

  Claremont backed away from me, toward the far wall, tossing aside the ruined purse, but holding in her hand the small revolver she’d shot me with. “So you are vampires,” she said.

  “Hey, you’re really smart. Do you teach at Ramsgate?” I asked.

  Jackson had his gun on her. “Nice snub nose there. Looks like a GP101, probably in .357, given the size of the holes it blew into my partner. You’ve only got three shots left. Shooting us isn’t going to get you out of this. Actually, it’ll only make us angrier. Why not drop the gun and cooperate? It’ll give my friend less incentive to drain you.”

  “I don’t need bullets now that I know what you are.”

  Against the wall were what looked like two fire alarms, one traditional red, the other black. She put her hand over the black one, while her gun moved back and forth between me and Jackson.

  “Please don’t do it,” Jackson said. “You’ll be dead long before the fire engines show.”

  “This isn’t for fires. The water in our sprinkler system is blessed.”

  I’d never been sprinkled with holy water, but I’d heard stories. Unlike crosses, which simply hurt by blinding us, this would burn us like napalm. Assuming I survived, the scars would never heal.

  I stood still, uncertain whether fight or flight was the better survival strategy. Claremont was closer than the window facing onto lower quad. I could reach her first, but I might not be able to kill her before she pulled the alarm. If I tried to get outside by the window, she’d have more time to pull the alarm, and I might get at least partially soaked.

  “You saw that crosses don’t work on me,” Jackson said. “Holy water won’t either.”

  “Maybe you’re a human just working with them. In which case, my revolver can handle you while your partner becomes a stain on my carpet,” Claremont said.