The Night Eternal (18 page)

“Would you trust Quinlan? With the book?”

“The old man’s book? The
Silver
whatever?”

Fet nodded. “Would you share it with him?”

“I don’t know, man,” said Gus. “I mean, sure—it’s just a book.”

“The Master wants the book for a reason. Setrakian sacrificed his life for it. Whatever is inside must be real. Your friend Quinlan thinks as much …”

“What about you?” asked Gus.

“Me?” Fet said. “I have the book—but I can’t do much with it myself. You know that saying ‘He’s so dumb, he couldn’t find a prayer in the Bible’? Well, I can’t find much. There’s some trick to it, maybe. We should be so close.”

“I’ve seen him, man—Quinlan. Shit, I’ve recorded that
mother
fucker cleaning a nest in a New York minute. Two, three dozen vampires.”

Gus smiled, cherishing his memories. Fet liked Gus even more when he smiled.

“In jail you learn that there are two kinds of guys in this world—and I don’t care if they’re human or bloodsuckers—there’s the ones that take it and the ones that hand it out. And this guy, man—this guy gives it out like fucking candy … He wants the hunt, man. He wants the hunt. And he’s maybe the one other orphan out here who hates the Master as much as we do.”

Fet nodded. In his heart the matter was resolved.

Quinlan would get the book. And Fet would get some answers.

Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Most midlife crises are not this bad. In the past, it used to be that people would watch their youth fade, their marriage break, or their careers grow stagnant. Those were the breaks, usually eased by a new car, a dab of Just for Men, or a big Mont Blanc pen, depending on your budget. But what I have lost cannot be compensated for. My heart races every time I think of it, every time I sense it. It is over. Or it will be over soon enough. Whatever I had, I have squandered—and what I hoped for will never be. Things around me have taken their permanent, horrible final form. All the promise in my life—youngest graduate in my class, the big move east, meeting the perfect girl—all that is gone. The evenings of cold pizza and a movie. Of feeling like a giant in my son’s eyes …

When I was a kid, there was this guy on TV called Mr. Rogers, and he used to sing: “You can never go down / can never go down / can never go down the drain.” What a fucking lie.

Once, I might have gathered my past in order to present it as a CV or a list of accomplishments, but now … now it seems like an inventory of trivialities, of things that could have been but are not. As a young man I felt the world and my place in it was all part of a plan. That success, whatever that is, was something to be gained simply by focusing on my work—on being good at “What I did.” As a workaholic father, I felt that the day-to-day grind was a way to provide, to see us through while life took its final shape. And now … now that the world around me has become an unbearable place, and all I have is the nausea of wrong turns taken and things lost. Now I know this is the real me. The permanent me. The solidified disappointment of that young man’s life—the subtraction of all those achievements of youth—the minus of a plus that was never tallied. This is me: weak, infirm, fading. Not giving up, because I never do … but living without faith in myself or my circumstance.

My heart flutters at the notion of never finding Zack—at the idea that he is gone forever. This I cannot accept. I will not accept.

Not thinking straight. But I will find him, I know I will. I have seen him in my dreams. His eyes looking at me, making of me that giant once again, calling me by the truest name a man can ever aspire to: “Dad.”

I have seen a light surrounding us. Purging us. Absolving me—of the booze and the pills and the blind spots of my heart. I have seen this light. I long for it again in a world this dark.

Beneath Columbia University

E
PH WANDERED AWAY
through the subterranean tunnels of the former insane asylum beneath the former Columbia University. All he wanted to do was walk. Seeing Zack atop Belvedere Castle with Kelly and the Master had shaken Eph to the core. Of all the fates he had dreaded for his son—Zack murdered or starving in a locked cage somewhere—standing at the Master’s side had never occurred to him.

Was it the demon Kelly who had drawn their son into the fold? Or was it the Master who wanted Zack with him, and if so, why?

Perhaps the Master had threatened Kelly, and Zack had no choice but to play along. Eph wanted to cling to this hypothesis. Because the idea that the boy would freely align himself with the Master was unimaginable. The corruption of one’s child is a parent’s worst fear. Eph needed to believe in Zack as a little lost boy, not a wayward son.

But his fear wouldn’t let him slip into this fantasy. Eph had walked away from the video screen feeling like a ghost.

He dug into his coat pocket, finding two white Vicodin tablets. They glowed in his palm, made brilliant by the light of his battery-powered headlamp. He thrust them into his mouth, dry-swallowing them. One of them lodged at the base of his esophagus, and he had to jump up and down a few times in order to force it down.

He is mine.

Eph looked up fast. Kelly’s voice—muffled and distant, but distinctly hers. He turned around twice but found himself quite alone in the underground passage.

He has always been mine.

Eph drew his sword a few inches out of its sheath. He started forward, toward a short flight of stairs heading down. The voice was in his head, but some sixth sense was showing him the way.

He sits at the right hand of the Father.

Eph running now, furious, the light from his headlamp shaking, turning down another dim corridor, turning into …

The dungeon room. Gus’s caged mother.

Eph swept the room. It was otherwise empty. Slowly he turned to the helmeted vampire standing still in the center of its cage. Gus’s vampire mother stood very still, Eph’s light casting a grid shadow onto her body.

Kelly’s voice said,
Zack believes you are dead.

Eph drew his sword fully from its sheath. “Shut up,” he said.

He is starting to forget. The old world and all its ways. It’s gone now, a dream of youth.

“Quiet!” Eph said.

He is attentive to the Master. He is respectful. He is learning.

Eph thrust his sword in between two bars. Gus’s mother flinched, repelled by the presence of silver, her pendulous breasts swinging in the half light. “Learning what?” said Eph. “Answer me!”

Kelly’s voice did not.

“You’re brainwashing him,” said Eph. The boy was in isolation, mentally vulnerable. “Are you brainwashing him?”

We are parenting him.

Eph winced as though cut by her words. “No. No … what can you know about that? What can you know about love—about being a father or being a son … ?”

We are the fertile blood. We have birthed many sons … Join us.

“No.”

It is the only way you will be reunited with him.

Eph’s arm lowered a bit. “Fuck you. I will kill you—”

Join us and be with him forever.

Eph froze there a moment, paralyzed by despair. She wanted something from him. The Master wanted something. He made himself pull back. Deny them. Stop talking. Walk away.

Shut the fuck up—!
he thought, his rage louder than his voice. He held tightly to his silver blade at his side. He ran back out of the room and into the passageways, Kelly’s voice staying in his head.

Come to us.

He turned a corner, thrusting open a rusty door.

Come to Zack.

He kept running. With each step, he grew angrier, becoming enraged.

You know you want to.

And then her laughter. Not her human laugh, high and light and infectious, but a taunting laugh, meant to provoke him. Meant to turn him back.

But on he ran. And the laughter melted away, fading with distance.

Eph went on blindly, his sword blade clanging into the legs of discarded chairs and scraping against the floor. The Vikes had kicked in, and he was swimming a bit, his body numb but not his head. In walking away, he had turned a corner in his own mind. Now more than ever he wanted to free Nora from the blood camp. To deliver her from the clutches of the vampires. He wanted to show the Master—show it that even in a fucked-up time such as this, it could be done: a human could be saved. That Zack was not lost to Eph, and that the Master’s hold on him was not as secure as it might think.

Eph stopped to catch his breath. His headlamp was dimming, and he tapped it, the light flickering. He needed to figure out where he was and surface, or else be lost in this dark labyrinth. He was anxious to let the others know that he was ready to go to the camp and fight.

He turned the next corner, and at the end of the long, dark corridor, Eph saw a figure. Something about its stance—low-armed, knees lightly flexed—said “vampire.”

Eph’s sword came up. He went a few steps forward, hoping to light the creature better.

It remained still. The narrow corridor walls drifted a bit in Eph’s vision, wobbling thanks to the Vikes. Maybe he was seeing things—seeing what he wanted to see. He had wanted a fight.

Convinced now that it was a figment of his imagination, Eph grew more emboldened, approaching the ghost.

“Come here,” he said, his rage at Kelly and the Master still brimming. “Come and get it.”

The creature stood its ground, allowing Eph a better look. A sweatshirt hood formed a triangular cotton point over its head, shadowing its face and obscuring its eyes. Boots and jeans. One arm hung low at its side, the other hand just hidden behind its back.

Eph strode toward the figure with angry determination, like that of a man crossing a room to slam a door shut. The figure never moved. Eph planted his back leg and delivered a two-handed baseball swing aimed at the neck.

To Eph’s surprise, his sword clanged and his arms kicked back, the handle almost springing loose from his grip. A burst of sparks briefly lit the corridor.

It took Eph a moment to realize that the vampire had parried his blow with a length of steel.

Eph regripped his sword with his stinging palms and rattled knuckles and reared back to swing again. The vampire wielded his steel bar one-handedly, easily deflecting the attack. A sudden boot thrust into Eph’s chest sent him sprawling, tripping over his own feet as he collapsed to the floor.

Eph stared up at the shadowy figure. Entirely real, but … also different. Not one of the semi-intelligent drones he was used to facing. This vamp had a stillness, a self-composure, that set him apart from the seething masses.

Eph scrambled back up onto his feet. The challenge stoked the fire burning inside him. He didn’t know what this vampire was, and he didn’t care. “Come on!” he shouted, beckoning the vamp. Again, the creature did not move. Eph evened out his blade, showing the vamp the sharp silver point. He feigned a stab, spinning quickly, one of his best moves, slashing with enough force to cut the creature in two. But the vamp foresaw the move, raising his steel to parry, and Eph countered again, dodging, coming back around the other way and going straight for its neck.

The vamp was ready for him. Its hand grabbed Eph’s forearm, closing on it like a hot clamp. It twisted Eph’s arm with such force that Eph had to arch backward to keep his elbow and shoulder from snapping under pressure. Eph howled in pain, unable to keep his grip on the sword. It popped from his hand and clattered to the floor. With his free hand, Eph went to his belt for his hip dagger, slashing at the vampire’s face.

Surprised, the thing shoved Eph to the floor, reeling back.

Eph crawled away, his elbow burning with pain. Two more figures came running from his end of the hallway, two humans. Fet and Gus.

Just in time. Eph turned toward the outnumbered vamp, expecting it to hiss and charge.

Instead, the creature reached down to the floor, lifting Eph’s sword by its leather-wrapped handle. It turned the silver-bladed weapon this way and that, as though judging its weight and construction.

Eph had never seen a vampire willingly get that close to silver before—much less take a weapon into its hands.

Fet had drawn his sword, but Gus stopped him with a hand, walking past Eph without offering to help him up. The vampire tossed Eph’s sword to Gus, casually, grip first. Gus caught it easily and lowered the blade.

“Of all the things you taught me,” said Gus, “you left out the part about making these great fucking entrances.”

The vampire’s response was telepathic and exclusive to Gus. It pushed back its black hood, revealing a perfectly bald and earless head, preternaturally smooth, almost in the way that thieves appear with nylons stretched over their faces.

Except for its eyes. They glowed fiercely red, like those of a rat.

Eph stood up, rubbing his elbow. This thing was obviously
strigoi,
and yet Gus stood near it. Stood
with
it.

Fet, his hand still on his own sword grip, said, “You again.”

“What the hell is this?” said Eph, apparently the last one to this party.

Gus tossed Eph’s sword back at him, harder than was necessary. “You should remember Mr. Quinlan,” said Gus. “The Ancients’ top hunter. And currently the baddest man in the whole damn town.” Gus then turned back to Mr. Quinlan. “A friend of ours got herself thrown into a blood camp. We want her back.”

Mr. Quinlan regarded Eph with eyes informed by centuries of existence. His voice, when it entered Eph’s mind, was a smooth, measured baritone.

Dr. Goodweather, I presume.

Eph locked eyes with him. Barely nodded. Mr. Quinlan looked at Fet:

I’m here in the hopes that we can reach an arrangement.

Low Memorial Library, Columbia University

I
NSIDE THE
C
OLUMBIA
University library, in a research room off the cavernous rotunda—once, and still, the largest all-granite dome in the country—Mr. Quinlan sat at a reading table across from Fet.

“You help us break into the camp—you get to read the book,” said Fet. “There is no further negotiation …”

I will do that. But you know that you will be vastly outnumbered by both
strigoi
and human guards?

“We know,” said Fet. “Will you help us in? That’s the price.”

I will.

The burly exterminator unzipped a hidden pocket in his backpack and pulled out a large bundle of rags.

You had it on you?
asked the Born, incredulous.

“Can’t think of a safer place,” said Fet, smiling. “Hidden in plain sight. You want the book, you go through me.”

A daunting task, to be sure.

Fet shrugged. “Daunting enough.” He unwrapped a volume lying within the rags. “The
Lumen,
” said Fet.

Quinlan felt a wave of cold travel up his neck. A rare sensation in one so old. He studied the book as Fet turned to face him. The cover was ragged leather and fabric.

“I pulled off the silver cover. Ruined the spine a little bit, but too bad. It looks humble and unimportant, doesn’t it?”

Where’s the silver cover?

“I have it socked away. Easy to retrieve.”

Quinlan looked at him.
You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, exterminator?

Felt shrugged off the compliment.

The old man chose well, Mr. Fet. Your heart is uncomplicated. It knows what it knows and acts accordingly. Greater wisdom is hard to find.

The Born sat with his black cotton hood sloughed off his immaculately smooth, white head. Before him, open to one of the illuminated pages, lay the
Occido Lumen
. Because its silver edging was repellent to his vampiric nature, he carefully turned the pages using the eraser top of a pencil. Now, at once, he touched the interior of the page with his fingertip, almost in the way a blind man would search a loved one’s face.

This document was holy. It contained the creation and history of the world’s vampire race, and as such included several references to Borns. Imagine a human allowed access to a book outlining human creation and answers to most if not all of life’s mysteries. Mr. Quinlan’s deeply red eyes scanned the pages with intense interest.

The reading is slow. The language is dense.

Fet said, “You’re telling me.”

Also, there is much that is hidden. In images and in the watermarks. They appear much clearer to my eyes than yours—but this is going to require some time.

“Which is exactly what we do not have. How much time will it take?”

The Born’s eyes continued scanning back and forth.

Impossible to say.

Fet was aware that his anxiety was a distraction to Mr. Quinlan.

“We are loading the weapons. You have an hour or so—then you’ll come with us. We are getting Nora back …”

Fet turned around and walked away. Three steps later, the
Lumen,
the Master, and the apocalypse evaporated. There was only Nora in his mind.

Mr. Quinlan returned his attention to the pages of the
Lumen
and started to read.