The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (143 page)

Eph forgot about his chest pain, running for the bomb, pulling out his sword. Then the mist swirled up around it, obscuring the device.

“Dad!”

Eph turned, feeling Zack’s voice right behind him. He whipped back around fast, knowing he had been suckered. His ribs ached. He went into the haze, looking for the bomb. Feeling the ground for the inlaid stones, trying to find his way.

Then before him, rising out of the mist: the Master.

Eph stumbled backward, shocked at the sight of it. Two slashes crossed the monster’s face in a rough X, the result of the Master’s collision and ensuing fight with the Born.

Fool.

Eph still could not right himself or find words. His head roared as though he had just heard an explosion. He saw ripples beneath the Master’s flesh, a blood worm exiting one open scratch mark and crawling over its open eye to reenter the next. The Master did not flinch. It raised its arms from its sides and took in the smoky island of its origin, then looked triumphantly at the dark heavens above.

Eph summoned all his strength and ran at the Master, sword first, aiming for its throat.

The Master backhanded him squarely across the face with enough force to send Eph airborne, cartwheeling, landing on the stone ground some yards away.

Ahsudagu-wah. Black ground.

Eph first thought that the Master had snapped a vertebra in his neck. The breath was knocked out of him when he hit the ground, and he feared a punctured lung. His other sword had fallen out of his pack, landing somewhere on the ground between them.

Onondaga language. The invading Europeans did not care to translate the name correctly, or at all. You see, Goodweather? Cultures die. Life is not circular but ruthlessly straight.

Eph fought to stand, his fractured ribs stabbing him. “Quinlan!” he called out, his voice mostly just breath.

You should have followed through with our deal, Goodweather. I would never have honored my end of the bargain, of course. But you could have at least spared yourself this humiliation. This pain. Surrender is always easier.

Eph was bursting with every emotion. He stood as tall as he could with the pain in his chest pulling at him. He saw, through the mist, just a few arm lengths away, the outline of the nuclear bomb.

Eph said, “Then let me offer you one last chance to surrender.”

He limped to the device, feeling for the detonator. He thought it a stroke of great luck that the Master had thrown him so close to the device . . . and it was this very thought that made him look back at the creature.

Eph saw another form emerge from the ground mist. Zack, approaching the Master’s side, no doubt summoned telepathically. Zack looked almost like a man to Eph, like the loved child you one day can no longer recognize. Zack stood with the Master, and suddenly Eph didn’t care anymore—and, at the same time, he cared more than ever.

It is over, Goodweather. Now the book will be closed forever.

The Master had been counting on this. The Master believed that Eph would not harm his son—that he could not blow up the Master if it meant sacrificing Zack too.

Sons are meant to rebel against their fathers.
The Master lifted its hands toward the sky again.
It has always been that way.

Eph stared at Zack, standing with this monster. With tears in his eyes, Eph smiled at his boy. “I forgive you, Zack, I do . . . ,” he said. “And I hope to hell that you forgive me.”

Eph turned the screw switch from time delay to manual. He worked as fast as he could, and yet still the Master burst ahead, covering the distance between them. Eph released the detonator just in time, or else the blow from the Master would have torn the wires from the device, rendering it inoperable.

Eph landed in a heap. He shook off the impact, trying to stand. He saw the Master coming for him, its eyes flaring red inside the crooked X.

Behind it, the Born came flying. Mr. Quinlan had Eph’s second sword. It impaled the beast before it could turn, the Master arching with pain.

The Born pulled back the blade, and the Master turned, facing him. Mr. Quinlan’s face was broken, his left cheek collapsed, his jaw unhinged, iridescent blood coating his neck. But still he swiped at the Master, slicing at the creature’s hands and arms.

The Master’s psychic fury sent the mist fleeing as, undeterred by the pain, it stalked its own wounded creation, backing the Born away from the bomb. Father and son entangled in the fiercest battle.

Eph saw Zack standing alone behind Mr. Quinlan, watching raptly, something like fire in his eyes. Then Zack turned, as though his attention had been called to something. The Master was directing him. Zack reached down and picked up something long.

Setrakian’s walking stick. The boy knew that a good twist of the handle shed the bottom wooden sheath, baring the silver blade.

Zack held the sword with both hands. He looked at Mr. Quinlan from behind.

Eph was already running toward him. He got in front of Zack, between him and the Born, one arm over his searing chest, the other holding a sword.

Zack stared at his father before him. He did not lower his blade.

Eph lowered his. He wanted Zack to take a chop at him. It would have made what he had to do that much easier.

The boy trembled. Maybe he was fighting himself inside, resisting what the Master was telling him to do.

Eph reached for his wrists and pulled Setrakian’s sword out of his hands. “Okay,” said Eph. “It’s okay.”

Mr. Quinlan overpowered the Master. Eph could not hear what their minds were saying to one another; he only knew that the roar in his own head was deafening. Mr. Quinlan grabbed the neck of the Master and sank his fingers into it, piercing its flesh, trying to shatter it.

Father.

And then the Master shot out its stinger—and like a piston, it embedded itself in the Born’s neck. Such was its force that it shattered the vertebrae. Blood worms invaded Mr. Quinlan’s immaculate body, coursing under his pale skin for the very first—and very last—time.

Eph saw the lights and heard the helicopter rotors approaching the island. They had found them. The spotlights searched the blighted land. It was now or never.

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.