The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (85 page)

Eph waved his little silver knife, making like a madman. Trying to scare them more than they were scaring him.

It didn’t work.

The creatures split up, pouncing from both sides, Eph slashing at one’s arm, then the other’s. The silver hurt them, enough to open their limbs and let some whiteness flow.

Then one gripped his knife arm. The other got him by his opposite shoulder, holding his head by the hair.

They didn’t take him right away. They were waiting for the feeler. Eph struggled as much as he could, but he was overmatched and chained to the wall. The fever heat of these atrocities, and the stench of their deadness, nauseated him. He tried to throw his knife, flipping the blade at one of them, but it simply slipped from his grip.

The feeler came up on him slowly, a predator savoring its kill. Eph fought to keep his chin down, but the hand in his hair hauled his head back, exposing his throat to the small creature.

Eph howled in defiance in his last moment—when the back part of the feeler’s head exploded into a white mist. Its body dropped straight down, twitching, and Eph felt the vampires on either side of him release their grip.

Eph shoved one away, kicking the other off the bench.

Humans rounded the corner then, a couple of Latinos armed to the teeth with tools to fuck up a vampire’s night. One vamp got the silver skewer as he tried to scramble up and over the partitions, away from a UVC lamp. The other made a stand, trying to fight—receiving a kick to the knee that dropped him, followed by a silver bolt into his skull.

Then came a third guy, a hulking Mexican man, probably in his sixties but, old as he appeared, the behemoth was incredibly effective at dispatching vampires left and right.

Eph pulled his legs up onto the bench in order to avoid the spray of white blood on the floor, the worms looking for a new body to host them.

The leader stepped forward, a Mexican kid, leather-gloved, bright-eyed, a bandolier of silver bolts crisscrossing his chest. His black boots, Eph saw, were fronted with toe-plates of white-spattered silver.

“You Dr. Goodweather?” he said.

Eph nodded.

“My name is Augustin Elizalde,” the kid said. “The pawnbroker sent us to get you.”

A
longside Fet, Setrakian entered the lobby of Sotheby’s headquarters at 77th Street and York, asking to be shown to the registration room. He presented a bank check, drawn on a Swiss account, which, after a landline telephone call, cleared instantly.

“Welcome to Sotheby’s, Mr. Setrakian.”

He was assigned paddle #23 and an attendant showed him to the elevator to the tenth floor. They stopped him outside the door to the auction floor, asking that he check his coat and his wolf-handled staff. Setrakian did so reluctantly, accepting a plastic ticket in return and slipping it inside the watch pocket of his vest. Fet was admitted inside the auction gallery, but only those with paddles were allowed into the seated bidding area. Fet remained behind, standing in back with a view of the entire room, thinking it was perhaps better this way.

The auction was held under intense security. Setrakian took a seat in the fourth row. Not too close, not far away either. He sat on the aisle with his numbered paddle resting on his leg. The stage in front of him was lit, a white-gloved steward pouring water into a glass for the auctioneer, then disappearing into a concealed service entrance. The viewing area was stage left, a brass easel awaiting the first few catalog items. An overhead video screen showed the Sotheby’s name.

The first ten or fifteen rows were nearly full, with intermittent empty chairs in back. And yet some of the participants were clearly seat-fillers, employees hired to fill out the bidding audience, their eyes lacking the steely attentiveness of a true buyer. Both sides of the room between the row ends and the moveable walls—set far back for maximum occupancy—were packed, as was the rear. Many of the spectators wore masks and gloves.

An auction is as much theater as marketplace, and the entire affair had a distinctly fin-de-siècle feel: a final burst of flamboyant spending, a last-gasp display of capitalism in the face of overwhelming economic doom. Most of the attendees were gathered simply for the show. Like well-dressed mourners at a funeral service.

Excitement mounted as the auctioneer appeared. Anticipation rippled throughout the room while he ran through his opening remarks and the ground rules for bidders. And then he gaveled the auction underway.

The first few items were minor baroque paintings, hors d’oeuvres to whet the bidders’ appetites for the main course.

Why did Setrakian feel so tense? So out of sorts, so paranoid suddenly? The deep pockets of the Ancients were today his deep pockets. It was inevitable that the long-sought book would soon be in his hands.

He felt strangely exposed, sitting where he was. He felt … observed, not passively, but by knowing eyes. Penetrating and familiar.

He located the source of his paranoia behind a pair of smoke-tinted glasses, three rows behind him on the opposite aisle. The eyes belonged to a figure dressed in a suit of dark fabric, wearing black leather gloves.

Thomas Eichhorst.

His face appeared smoothed and stretched, his body overall looking too well-preserved. It was flesh-colored makeup and a wig, certainly … yet there was something else besides. Could it have been surgery? Had some mad doctor been retained to keep his appearance close to that of a human, in order that he might walk and mix with the living? Even though they were hidden behind the Nazi’s glasses, Setrakian felt a chill knowing that Eichhorst’s eyes had connected with his.

Abraham had been merely a teen when he entered the camp—and so it was with young eyes that he looked upon the former commandant of Treblinka now. He experienced that same spike of fear, combined with an unreasonable panic. This evil being—while he was still a mere human—had dictated life and death inside that death factory. Sixty-four years ago … and now the dread came back to Setrakian as though it had been yesterday. This monster, this beast—now multiplied a hundredfold.

Acid burned the old man’s throat, nearly choking him.

Eichhorst nodded to Setrakian, ever so gently. Ever so
cordially.
He appeared to smile—but indeed, it was not a smile, just a way of opening his mouth enough to give Setrakian a glimpse of the tip of his stinger inside, flickering at his rouged lips.

Setrakian turned back to face the dais. He hid the trembling of his crooked hands, an old man ashamed at his boyhood fright.

Eichhorst had come for the book. He would battle for it in the place of the Master, bankrolled by Eldritch Palmer.

Setrakian went into his pocket for his pillbox. His arthritic fingers worked clumsily and doubly hard, as he did not wish Eichhorst to see and enjoy his distress.

He slipped the nitroglycerin pill discreetly beneath his tongue and waited for the pill to take effect. He pledged to himself that, even if it took his very last breath, he would beat this Nazi.

Your heart is erratic, Jew.

Setrakian did not react outwardly to the voice invading his head. He worked hard to ignore this most unwelcome guest.

In his vision, the auctioneer and the stage disappeared, as did all of Manhattan and the continent of North America. Setrakian saw for the moment only the wire fences of the camp. He saw the dirt muddied with blood and the emaciated faces of his fellow craftsmen.

He saw Eichhorst sitting atop his favorite steed. The horse was the only living thing inside the camp to which he showed any hint of affection, by way of carrots and apples—enjoying feeding the beast right in front of starving prisoners. Eichhorst liked to dig his heels into the horse’s sides, making him whinny and rear up. Eichhorst also enjoyed practicing his marksmanship with a Ruger while sitting atop the riled horse. At each assembly, a worker was executed at random. Three times it was a man standing directly next to Setrakian.

I noticed your bodyguard when you entered.

Did he mean Fet? Setrakian turned and saw Fet among the onlookers standing in back, near a pair of well-tailored bodyguards flanking the exit. In his exterminator’s coveralls, he appeared completely out of place.

Fetorski, is it not? Pureblood Ukrainian is an exceedingly rare vintage. Bitter, salty, but with a strong finish. You should know, I am a connoisseur of human blood, Jew. My nose never lies. I recognized his bouquet when you entered. As well as the line of his jaw. You don’t remember?

The beast’s words unnerved Setrakian. Because he hated their source, and because they had, to Setrakian’s ear, the ring of truth.

In the camp of his mind’s eye, he saw a large man wearing the
black uniform of the Ukrainian guards, dutifully gripping the bridle of Eichhorst’s mount with gloves of black leather, handing the commandant his Ruger.

It cannot be a mistake that you should be here with the descendant of one of your tormentors?

Setrakian closed his eyes on Eichhorst’s taunts. He cleared his mind, returning his focus to the task at hand. He thought, in a mind-voice as loud as he could make it, in the hope that the vampire would hear him:
You will be even more surprised to learn who else I am partnered with this day.

N
ora dug out the night-vision monocular and hung it over the Mets ball cap on her head. Closing one eye turned the North River Tunnel green. “Rat vision,” Fet liked to call it, but was she ever grateful for this invention at that moment.

The tunnel area was clear ahead of her, into the intermediate distance. But she could find no exit. No hiding place. Nothing.

She was alone now with her mother, having put enough space between them and Zack. Nora tried not to look at her, even with the scope. Her mother was breathing hard, barely able to keep pace. Nora had her by her arm, practically carrying her over the stones between the tracks, feeling the vampires at their back.

Nora realized she was looking for the right place to do this. The best place. This thing she was contemplating was a horror. The voices in her head—no one else’s but her own—offered countervailing arguments:

You can’t do this.

You cannot hope to save both your mother and Zack. You have to choose.

How can you choose a boy over your mother?

Choose one or lose both.

She had a good life.

Bullshit. We all have good lives, exactly until the moment they end.

She gave you life.

But if you don’t do this now, you are giving her over to vampires. Cursing her for all eternity.

Alzheimer’s has no cure either. She is getting progressively worse. She has already changed from the woman who was your mother. How is that different from vampirism?

She poses no threat to others.

Only to yourself—and Zack.

You will have to destroy her anyway when she returns for you, her Dear One.

You told Eph he needed to destroy Kelly.

Her dementia is such that she won’t even know.

But you will know.

Bottom line: will you also do yourself in before you are turned?

Yes.

But that is
your
choice.

And it is never an either/or. Never clear-cut. It happens too fast; they are upon you, and you are gone. You must act in advance of the turning. You have to anticipate it.

And yet there are no guarantees.

You cannot release someone before they are turned. You can only tell yourself that this is what you hope you did. And wonder forever if you were right.

It is still murder.

Will you also turn the knife on Zack if the end is imminent?

Maybe. Yes.

You would hesitate.

Zack has a better chance of surviving an attack.

So you would trade the old for the new.

Maybe. Yes.

Nora’s mother said to her, “When in the hell is your lousy father going to get here?”

Nora came back to the moment. She felt too sick to cry. It was indeed a cruel world.

A howl echoed through the long tunnel, chilling Nora.

She went around behind her mother’s back. She could not look her in the face. She tightened her grip on her knife, raising it in order to bring it down into the back of the old woman’s neck.

But all of this was nothing.

She didn’t have it in her heart, and she knew this.

Love is our downfall.

Vampires had no guilt. That was their great advantage. They never hesitated.

And, as though to prove this point, Nora looked up to find herself being stalked along each side of the tunnel. Two vampires had crept up on her while she was distracted, their eyes glowing white-green in her monocular.

They did not know that she could see them. They did not understand night-vision technology. They assumed that she was like all the rest of the passengers—lost in the darkness, wandering blind.

“You sit here, Mama,” said Nora, nudging her knees out, lowering her to the tracks. Otherwise, she would go wandering off. “Papa’s on his way.”

Nora turned and walked toward the two vampires, moving directly between them without looking at either one. Peripherally, they left the stone walls in their loose-jointed way.

Nora took a deep breath before the kill.

These vampires became the recipients of her homicidal angst. She lunged first at the one on the left, slashing it faster than the creature could leap. The vampire’s bitter cry rang in her ears as she whipped around and faced the other, who was eyeing her sitting mother. The creature turned back toward Nora from its crouch, its mouth open for the stinger strike.

A splash of white filled her scope like the rage flaring in her head. She slaughtered her would-be attacker, chest heaving, eyes stinging with tears.

She looked back the way she came. Had these two passed Zack to get to her? Neither one appeared flush from a meal, though the night vision couldn’t give her an accurate read of their pallor.