The Night Eternal (47 page)

Eph ran as fast as his punctured lungs would allow, the barrel-shaped device shaking in his view. He was just a few yards out when a howl came up and a blow caught him on the back of the head.

Both swords slipped from his hands. Eph felt something gripping the side of his chest, the pain excruciating. He clawed at the soft dirt, seeing Setrakian’s sword blade glowing silver-white. He’d just grasped the wolf’s-head handle when the Master hoisted him into the air, spinning him.

The Master’s arms, face, and neck were cut and bleeding white. The creature could of course heal itself but had had no chance to yet. Eph slashed at the Master’s neck with the old man’s silver, but the creature caught Eph’s sword arm, stopping the blow. The pain in Eph’s chest was too great, and the Master’s strength was tremendous. It forced Eph’s hand back, pointing Setrakian’s sword at Eph’s own throat.

A helicopter spotlight hit them. In the haze, Eph looked down into the Master’s glowing, scratched-open face. He saw the blood worms rippling beneath its skin, invigorated by the nearness of human blood and the anticipation of the kill. The thrumming roared in Eph’s head, achieving a voice, its tenor rising to almost a nearly angelic level.

I have a new body ready and waiting. The next time anyone looks at your son’s face—they will be looking at me.

The worms bubbled beneath the flesh of its face, as though in ecstasy.

Good-bye, Goodweather.

But Eph eased his resistance against the Master’s grip just before the Master could finish him off. Eph pricked his own throat, opening a vein. He saw his own red blood spurt out, spraying right into the Master’s face—making the blood worms crazy.

They sprang from the Master’s open wounds. They crawled up from the slices in its arms and the hole in its chest, trying to get at the blood.

The Master groaned and shook, hurling Eph away as it brought its own hands to its face.

Eph landed hard. He twisted, needing all his strength to turn back.

Within the column of helicopter light, the Master stumbled backward, trying to stop its own parasitic worms from feasting on the human blood coating its face, obstructing its vision.

Eph watched all of this through a daze, everything slowed down. Then a thump in the ground at his side brought him back to speed.

The snipers. Another spotlight lit him up, red laser sights dancing on his chest and head … and the nuke, just a few feet away.

Eph dragged himself through the dirt, scratching toward the device as rounds pelted the ground around him. He reached it, pulling himself up on it in order to reach the detonator.

He got it in his hand and found the button, then risked one look back at Zack.

The boy stood near where the Born lay. A few of the blood parasites had reached him, and Eph saw Zack struggling to brush them off … then watched as they burrowed in under his forearm and neck.

Mr. Quinlan’s body arose, a new look in his eyes—a new will. That of the Master, who understood the dark side of human nature completely, but not love.

“
This is love,
” said Eph. “
God, it hurts—but this is love …”

And he, who had been late to most everything in his life, was on time for this, the most important appointment he ever had. He pushed the switch.

And nothing happened. For one agonizing moment, the island was an oasis of stillness to Eph, though the helicopters were hovering overhead.

Eph saw Mr. Quinlan coming at him, one final lunge of the Master’s will.

Then two punches to his chest. Eph was down on the ground, looking at his wounds. Seeing the bloody holes there, just to the right of his heart. His blood seeping into the ground.

Eph looked past Mr. Quinlan at Zack, his face glowing in the helicopter light. His will still present, still not overcome. He saw Zack’s eyes—
his son,
even now,
his son
—he still had the most beautiful eyes …

Eph smiled.

And then the miracle happened.

It was the gentlest of things: no earthquake, no hurricane, no parting of the seas. The sky cleared for a moment and a brilliant column of pure, sterilizing light a million times more powerful than any helicopter spotlight poured down. The dark cloud cover opened and cleansing light emerged.

The Born, now infected by the Master’s blood, hissed and writhed in the brilliant light. Smoke and vapor surged from its body as the Born screamed like a lobster being boiled.

None of this shook Eph’s gaze from the eyes of his son. And as Zack saw his father smile at him there—in the powerful light of glorious day—he recognized him for all that he was, recognized him as—

“
Dad—
” Zack said softly.

And then the nuclear device detonated. Everything around the flashpoint evaporated—bodies, sand, vegetation, helicopters—all gone.

Purged.

F
rom a beach well down the river, close to Lake Ontario, Nora watched this only for a moment. Then Fet pulled her around a rocky outcropping, both of them dropping into a ball on the sand.

The shock wave made the old abandoned fort near them shudder, shaking dust and stone fragments from the walls. Nora was certain the entire structure would collapse into the river. Her ears popped and the water around them heaved in a great gush—and even with her eyes tightly closed and her arms over her head, she still saw bright light.

Rain blew sideways, the ground emitted a howl of pain … and then the light faded, the stone fort settled without collapsing, and everything became quiet and still.

Later, she would realize that she and Fet had been rendered temporarily deaf by the blast, but for the moment the silence was profound and spiritual. Fet uncurled himself from shielding Nora, and together they ventured back out around the rock barrier as the water receded from the beach.

What she saw—the larger miracle in the sky—she did not fully understand until later.

Gabriel, the first archangel—an entity of light so bright that it made the sun and the atomic glow pale—came spiraling down around the shaft of light on glowing silver wings.

Michael, the murdered one, tucked his wings and bolted straight down, leveling out about a mile above the island, gliding down the rest of the way.

Then, rising as though out of the earth itself, came Ozryel, together again, resurrected from the collective ashes. Rock and dirt fell from its great wings as it ascended. A spirit again, flesh no more.

Nora witnessed all these portents in the absolute silence of momentary deafness. And that, perhaps, made it sink even deeper into her psyche. She could not hear the raging rumble that her feet felt, she could not hear the crackling of the blinding light that warmed her face and her soul. A true Old Testament moment witnessed by someone dressed not in linen robes but off-the-shelf Gap. This moment rattled her senses and her faith for the rest of her life. Without even noticing it, Nora cried freely.

Gabriel and Michael joined Ozryel and together they soared into the light. The hole in the clouds brightened brilliantly as the three archangels reached it—and then with one last flare of divine illumination, the opening swallowed them up and then closed.

Nora and Fet looked around. The river was still raging, and their skiff had been swept away. Fet checked Nora, making sure she was okay.

We’re alive,
he mouthed—no words audible.

Did you see that?
asked Nora.

Fet shook his head, not as in,
No,
but as in,
I don’t believe it.

The couple looked at the sky, waiting for something else to happen.

Meanwhile, all around them, large sections of sandy beach had turned to opalescent glass.

T
he fort residents came out, a few dozen men and women in tatters, some carrying children. Nora and Fet had warned them to take cover, and now the islanders looked to them for an explanation.

Nora had to yell in order to be heard. “Ann and William?” she said. “They had a boy with them, a thirteen-year-old boy!”

The adults shook their heads.

Nora said, “They left before us!”

One man said, “Maybe on another island?”

Nora nodded—though she didn’t believe it. She and Fet had made it to their fort island in a sailboat. Ann and William should have landed long ago.

Fet rested his hand on Nora’s shoulder. “What about Eph?”

There was no way to confirm it, but she knew he was never coming back.

Epilogue

T
HE ORIGIN BLAST
obliterated the Master’s strain. Every remaining vampire vaporized at the moment of immolation. Vanished.

They confirmed this over the next few days. First by venturing back to the mainland once the waters receded. Then by checking impassioned dispatches over the liberated Internet. Rather than celebrating, people stumbled around in a post-traumatic haze. The atmosphere was still contaminated and the hours of daylight were few. Superstition remained and darkness was, if anything, feared even more than before. Reports of vampires still in existence flared up again and again, every single one eventually attributed to hysteria.

Things did not “go back to normal.” Indeed, the islanders remained in their settlements for months, working to reclaim their mainland properties but reluctant to commit to the old ways just yet. Everything everybody had thought they knew about nature and history and biology had been proved wrong, or at least incomplete. And then for two years, they had come to accept a new reality and a new regime. Old faiths had been shattered; others had been reaffirmed. But everything was open to question. Uncertainty was the new plague.

N
ora counted herself among those who needed time to make sure that this way of life was going to stick. That there weren’t any other nasty surprises waiting for them just around the corner.

Fet said one day, broaching the subject gently, “What are we going to do? We have to return to New York sometime.”

“Do we?” asked Nora. “I don’t know if it’s there for me anymore.” She took his hand. “Do you?”

Fet squeezed her hand and looked out over the river. He would let her take as much time as she needed.

A
s it turned out, Nora and Fet never went back. They took advantage of the Federal Property Reclamation Act proposed by the interim government and moved into a farmhouse in northern Vermont, safely outside the void zone caused by the detonation of the nuclear device in the Saint Lawrence River. They never married—neither of them felt the need—but they had two children of their own, a boy named Ephraim and a girl named Mariela, after Nora’s mother. Fet posted the annotated contents of the
Occido Lumen
on the reinvigorated Internet and attempted to retain his anonymity. But when its veracity was eventually questioned, he embarked upon “the Setrakian Project,” curating and posting the entirety of the old professor’s writings and source materials on the Internet, free for all. Fet’s lifelong project became the tracing of the Ancients’ influence over the course of human history. He wanted to know the mistakes we had collectively made and devoted himself to avoiding their being repeated ever again.

For a time there was unrest and talk of criminal trials to identify and punish those guilty of human rights abuses under the shade of the holocaust. Guards and sympathizers were occasionally spotted and lynched, and revenge murders were widely suspected, but, in the end, more tolerant voices rose to answer to the question of who did this to us. We all did. And—little by little—with all our rancor and ghosts bearing the weight of our past, people learned to coexist once again.

In due time, others claimed to have taken down the
strigoi.
A biologist claimed to have released a vaccine into the water system, a few gang members exhibited assorted trophies claiming to have killed the Master, and, in the strangest twist, a large group of skeptics began to deny that the plague itself ever occurred. They attributed it all to a huge new-world-order plot, calling the entire event a manufactured coup. Disappointed, but never bitter, Fet slowly restarted his exterminating business. The rats had returned, thriving once again, another challenge to be met. He was not one to believe in perfection or happy endings: this was the world they had saved, rats and all. But to a handful of believers, Vasiliy Fet became a cult hero, and though he was uncomfortable with fame of any kind, he settled for this, and counted his blessings.

N
ora, every night she put her baby boy, Ephraim, down to sleep, rubbed his hair and thought of his namesake, and his namesake’s son, and wondered what the end had been like for them. For the first few years of his life, she often speculated about what her life—with Eph—might have resembled had the strain never occurred. Sometimes she cried, and on those occasions, Fet knew better than to ask. This was a part of Nora that he did not share—that he would never share—and he gave her the room to grieve alone. But as the boy grew older and came into his own, becoming so much like his father and nothing at all like his namesake, the reality of the days washed away the possibilities of the past, and time moved on. For Nora, death was no longer one of her fears, because she had vanquished its more malignant alternative.

She carried with her always the mark on her forehead: the scar from Barnes’s gunshot. She regarded this scar as a symbol of how close she had come to a fate worse than death, though, in her later years, it became instead for her a symbol of luck. For now, as Nora gazed into the face of her baby—unmarked and full of peace—a great serenity overcame her, and out of nowhere, she remembered her mother’s words:

Looking back on one’s life, you see that love was the answer to everything.

How right she was.