The Fall (39 page)

“You won’t turn me. The Master himself couldn’t turn me.”

Eichhorst moved laterally, not yet attempting to close the distance between them.

Your wife struggled but she never cried out. I thought that strange. Not even a whimper. Only a single word. “Abraham.”

Setrakian allowed himself to be goaded, wanting the vampire closer. “She saw the end. She found solace in the moment, knowing that I would someday avenge her.”

She called your name and you were not there. I wonder if you will sing out at the end.

Setrakian sank almost to one knee before lowering his blade, using the point against the floor as a kind of crutch, to keep himself from falling.

Put aside your weapon, Jew.

Setrakian lifted his sword, switching to an overhand grip of the handle in order to examine the line of the old silver blade. He looked at the wolf’s head pommel, feeling its counterbalancing weight.

Accept your fate.

“Ah,” said Setrakian, looking at Eichhorst standing just a few feet away. “But I already have.”

Setrakian put everything he had into the throw. The sword crossed the space between them and penetrated Eichhorst just below the breastplate, dead-center in his torso, between the buttons of his vest. The vampire fell back against the console with his bent arms back as though in a gesture of balance. The killing silver was in his body and he could not touch it to pull out the blade. He began to twitch as the silver’s toxic virucidal properties spread outward like a burning cancer. White blood appeared around the blade with the first of the escaping worms.

Setrakian pulled himself to his feet and stood, wavering, before Eichhorst. He did so with no sense of triumph, and little satisfaction. He made certain that the vampire’s eyes were focused on him—and, by extension, the Master’s eyes—and said, “Through him you took love away from me. Now you will have to turn me yourself.” Then he grasped the sword handle and slowly pulled it from Eichhorst’s chest.

The vampire settled back against the console, its hands still grasping at nothing. It began to slide to the right, falling stiffly, and Setrakian, in his weakened state, anticipated Eichhorst’s trajectory and set the point of his sword against the floor. The blade rested at about a forty-degree angle, the angle of the guillotine blade.

Eichhorst’s falling body pulled its neck across the edge of the blade, and the Nazi was destroyed.

Setrakian swiped both sides of his silver blade over the vampire’s coat sleeve, cleaning them, then backed away from the blood worms fleeing Eichhorst’s open neck. His chest seized up like a knot. He reached for his pillbox and, in trying to open it with his twisted hands, spilled the contents onto the control-room floor.

Gus emerged from the nuke plant ahead of Angel, into the dim, overcast last day. Between the persistent alarm blasts, he heard a deathly silence, the generators no longer working. He sensed a low-voltage snap in the air, like static electricity, but it might just have been him knowing what was to come.

Then, a familiar noise cutting into the air. A helicopter. Gus found the lights, seeing the chopper circle behind the steaming towers. He knew it wasn’t help on the way. He realized that this had to be the Master’s ride out of here, so it didn’t cook with the rest of Long Island.

Gus went into the back of the National Guard truck. He had seen the Stinger missile the first time, but stuck with the small arms. All he needed was a reason.

He brought it out and double-checked to make sure he had it facing the right way. It balanced nicely on his shoulder and was surprisingly light for an antiaircraft weapon, maybe thirty-five pounds. He ran past the limping Angel to the side of the building. The chopper was coming in lower, making to land in a wide clearing.

The trigger was easy to find, as was the scope. He looked through it, and once the missile detected the heat of the helicopter’s exhaust, it emitted a high, whistle-like tone. Gus squeezed the trigger and the launch rocket shot the missile out of the tube. The launch engine fell away and the main solid rocket engine lit up and the Stinger flew off like a plume of smoke traveling along a string.

The helicopter never saw it coming. The missile struck it a few hundred yards above the ground and the flying machine burst upon impact, the explosion upending it and sending it pinwheeling into nearby trees.

Gus threw off the empty launcher. The fire was good. It would light his way to the water. Long Island Sound was the fastest and safest way back home.

He said as much to Angel, but he could tell, as the distant light of the flames played across the old brawler’s face, that something had changed.

“I’m staying,” said Angel.

Gus tried to explain that which he only vaguely understood himself. “This whole place is going to go up. This is nukes.”

“I can’t walk away from a fight.” Angel patted his leg to show that he meant it literally as well as figuratively. “Besides, I’ve been here before.”

“Here?”

“In my movies. I know how it ends. The evil one faces the good one, and all seems lost.”

“Angel,” said Gus, needing to go.

“The day is saved always—in the end.”

Gus had noticed the ex-wrestler acting more and more scattered. The vampire siege was wearing on his mind, his perspective. “Not here. Not against this.”

Angel pulled, from deep in his front pocket, a piece of cloth. He pulled it on over his head, rolling the silver mask down so that only his eyes and his mouth showed. “You go,” he said. “Back to the island, with the doctor. Do as the old man tell you. Me? He have no plan for me. So I stay. I fight.”

Gus smiled at the mad Mexican’s bravery. And he recognized Angel for the very first time. He understood everything—the strength, the courage of this old man. As a child, he had seen all of the wrestler’s films on TV. On weekends, they played on an endless loop. And now he was standing next to his hero. “This world is a motherfucker, isn’t it?”

Angel nodded and said, “But it’s the only one we have.”

Gus felt a surge of love for this fucked-up fellow countryman. For his matinee idol. His eyes welled up as he clapped his hands against the big man’s shoulders. He said,
“Que viva el Angel de Plata, culeros!”

Angel nodded.
“Que viva!”

And with that, the Silver Angel turned back, limping, toward the doomed power plant.

Emergency lights flashed, the exterior alarm muted inside the control room. The wall panel instruments blinked, imploring human hands to take action.

Setrakian knelt on the floor across from Eichhorst’s still body. Eichhorst’s head had rolled almost to the corner. One of Setrakian’s pocket mirrors had cracked, and he was using the silver back to crush the blood worms seeking him out. With his other hand, he was trying to pick up his heart pills, but his gnarled fingers and arthritic knuckles had trouble with the pincer grip.

And then he was aware of a presence, whose sudden arrival changed the atmosphere of the already charged room. No puff of smoke, no crack of thunder. A psychic blow more breathtaking than mere stagecraft. Setrakian didn’t have to look up to know it was the Master—and yet he did look up, from the hem of its dark cloak to its imperious face.

Its flesh had peeled back to the sub-dermis, save for a few patches of sun-cooked skin. A fiery red beast with splotches of black. Its eyes roared with intensity, a bloodier hue of red. The circulating worms rippled beneath the surface like twitching nerves alive with madness.

It is done.

The Master seized the wolf’s-head handle of Setrakian’s sword before the old man could react. The creature held the silver blade for inspection the way a man might handle a glowing-hot poker.

The world is mine.

The Master, his movement no more than a blur, retrieved the wooden sheath from the floor on the other side of Setrakian. He fit the two pieces together, burying the blade inside the cavity of the original walking stick and fixing the joined staff with a sudden wrenching twist of his hands.

Then he returned the foot of the stick to the floor. The overlong walking stick was a perfect fit, of course: it had belonged to the human giant Sardu, in whose body the Master currently resided.

The nuclear fuel inside the reactor core is beginning to overheat and melt. This facility was constructed using modern safeguards, but the automatic containment procedures only delay the inevitable. The meltdown will occur, fouling and destroying this origin site of the sixth and only remaining member of my clan. The buildup of steam will result in a catastrophic reactor explosion that will release a plume of radioactive fallout.

The Master jabbed Setrakian in the ribs with the end of the walking stick, the old man hearing and feeling a crack, curling into a ball on the floor.

As my shadow falls over you, Setrakian, so does it fall over this planet. First I infected your people, now I have infected the globe. Your half dark world was not enough. How long I have looked forward to this permanent, lasting dusk. This warm, blue-green rock shivers at my touch, becoming a cold black stone of rime and rot. The sunset of humankind is the dawn of the blood harvest.

The Master’s head then turned a few degrees, toward the door. He was not alarmed, nor even annoyed, more like curious. Setrakian turned also, a sizzle of hope rising along his back. The door opened and Angel entered limping, wearing a mask of shiny silver nylon with black stitching.

“No,” gasped Setrakian.

Angel carried an automatic weapon, and, seeing the eight-foot-tall cloaked creature towering over Setrakian, opened up on the king vampire.

The creature stood there for a moment, gazing at its patently ridiculous opponent. But as the bullets flew, the Master became, instinctively, a blur—the rounds carrying across the room into the sensitive equipment lining the walls. The Master paused on one side of the room, visible for just the briefest moment, though by the time Angel turned and fired, the vampire was moving again. The rounds ripped into a control panel, sparks shooting out of the wall.

Setrakian returned his attention to the floor, frantically picking at the tiny pills.

The Master slowed again, with the effect of materializing before Angel. The masked wrestler dropped the big gun with a clatter and lunged at the creature.

The Master noted the big human’s weak knee, but those things could be fixed. The body was aged, yet size-appropriate. Suitable, perhaps, for temporary housing.

The Master eluded Angel. The wrestler swung around, but the Master was already behind him again. While assessing Angel, the Master slapped him on the back of his neck, where the stitched hem of his mask met skin. The wrestler jerked around wildly again.

Angel was being toyed with, and he didn’t like it. He turned fast and came around with his free hand, catching the Master on the chin with an open-palm blow. The “Angel Kiss.”

The creature’s head snapped back. Angel shocked himself with his success in landing the blow. The Master lowered his eyes at the masked avenger, the speed of the worms rippling under his flesh a sign of his rage.

Inside the mask, Angel smiled excitedly.

“You would like me to reveal myself, wouldn’t you?” he said. “The mystery dies with me. My face must remain hidden.”

These words were the catchphrase from every one of the Silver Angel’s movies, dubbed into many languages all over the world—words the wrestler had been waiting for decades to say for real. But the Master was through playing.

It struck Angel full-force with the back of its enormous hand. The jaw and left cheekbone exploded inside the mask and the wrestler’s left eye went with them.

But Angel didn’t give up. Through enormous effort, he stood on his own two feet. Trembling, his knee hurting like a motherfucker, choking on his own blood… yet in his mind he raced back in time, to a younger, happier place.

He felt dizzy and warm and full of juice and remembered he was in a film stage. Of course—he was shooting a movie. The monster in front of him was nothing but some clever special effect—a day player in a suit. Then why did it hurt so much? And his mask: it smelled funny to him. Like unwashed hair and sweat. It smelled like a thing removed to the oblivion of storage. It smelled of him.

An empty bubble of blood rose in his throat and burst there in a liquid whimper. His jaw and left side pulverized, the smelly mask was now the only thing holding the old wrestler’s face together.

Angel grunted and lunged at his opponent. The Master released the stick in order to grip the big human with both hands, and, in an instant, tore him to shreds.

Setrakian stifled a cry. He was stuffing pills in under his tongue—stopping just as the Master returned his attention to him.

The Master grasped Setrakian’s shoulder and lifted the slight old man off the floor. Setrakian dangled in the air before the Master, squeezed by the vampire’s bloody hands. The Master pulled him close, Setrakian staring into its horrible face, the leech’s face swarming with ancient evil.

I believe, in a way, you always wanted this, Professor. I think you have always been curious to know the other side.

Setrakian could not respond with the pills dissolving beneath his tongue. But he did not have to answer the Master verbally.
My sword sings of silver,
he thought.

He felt woozy, the medicine kicking in, clouding his thoughts—shielding his true intent from the Master’s perception.
We learned much from the book.
We
know Chernobyl was a decoy
... He saw the Master’s face. How he longed to see fear in it.
Your name. I know your true name. Would you like to hear it… Ozryel?

And then the Master’s mouth fell open and his stinger shot out furiously, snapping and piercing Setrakian’s neck, rupturing his vocal cords and jamming into his carotid artery. As he lost his voice, Setrakian felt no stinging pain, only the body-wide ache of the drinking. The collapse of his circulatory system and the organs it served, leading to shock.

The Master’s eyes were royal-red, staring at its prey’s face as it drank with immense satisfaction. Setrakian held the creature’s gaze, not out of defiance but watching and waiting for some indication of discomfort. He felt the vibration of the blood worms wriggling throughout his body, greedily inspecting and invading his self.