The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (60 page)

Gus stepped back a few inches. He actually thought he was
starting to understand now. “Somebody’s trying to move in on your block.”

We do not breed in the same random, chaotic manner as your kind. Ours is a process of careful consideration.

“You’re picky eaters.”

We eat what we want. Food is food. We dispose of it when we are satiated.

A laugh rose inside Gus’s chest, nearly choking him. Talking about people like they were three for a dollar at the corner market.

You find that humorous?

“No. The opposite. That’s why I’m laughing.”

When you consume an apple, do you throw away the core? Or do you conserve the seeds for planting more trees?

“I guess I throw it away.”

And a plastic receptacle? When you’ve emptied its contents?

“Fine, I get it. You throw back your pints of blood and then toss away the human bottle. Here’s what I want to know. Why me?”

Because you appear capable.

“How you figure that?”

Your criminal record, for one. You came to our attention through your arrest for murder in Manhattan.

The fat, naked guy rampaging through Times Square. The guy had attacked a family there, and at the time Gus was like, “Not in my city, freak.” Now, of course, he wished he had stayed back like all the rest.

Then you escaped police custody, slaying more uncleans in the process.

Gus frowned. “That ‘unclean’ was my compadre. How you know all this, living down here in this shithole?”

Be assured that we are connected with the human world at its uppermost levels. But, if balance is to be maintained, we cannot afford exposure—precisely what this unclean strain threatens us with now. That is where you come in.

“A gang war. That, I understand. But you left out something super-fucking important. Like—why the fuck should I help you?”

Three reasons.

“I’m counting. They better be good ones.”

The first is, you will leave this room alive.

“I’ll give you that one.”

The second is, your success in this endeavor will enrich you beyond that which you ever thought possible.

“Hmm. I don’t know. I can count pretty high.”

The third … is right behind you.

Gus turned. He saw a hunter first, one of the badass vamps who had grabbed him off the street. Its head was cowled inside a black hoodie, its red eyes glowing.

Next to the hunter was a vampire with that look of distant hunger now familiar to Gus. She was short and heavy, with tangled black hair, wearing a torn housedress, the upper front of her throat bulging with the interior architecture of the vampire stinger.

At the base of the stitched V of her dress collar was a highly stylized, black-and-red crucifix, a tattoo she said she regretted getting in her youth but which must have looked pretty fucking boss at the time, and which, since his youngest days, had always impressed Gusto, no matter what she said.

The vampire was his mother. Her eyes were blindfolded with a dark rag. Gus could see the throbbing of her throat, the want of her stinger.

She senses you. But her eyes must remain covered. Within her resides the will of our enemy. He sees through her. Hears through her. We cannot keep her in this chamber for long.

Gus’s eyes filled with angry tears. The sorrow ached in him, manifested in rage. Since about age eleven, he had done nothing but dishonor her. And now here she was before him: a beast, an undead monster.

Gus turned back to face the others. This fury surged within him, but here he was powerless, and he knew it.

The third is, you get to release her.

Dry sobs came up like sorrowful belches. He was sickened by this situation, appalled by it, and yet …

He turned back around. She was as good as kidnapped. Taken hostage by this “unclean” strain of vampire they kept talking about.

“Mama,” he said. Although she listened, she showed no change of expression.

Slaying his brother, Crispin, had been easy, because of the longstanding bad feelings between them. Because Crispin was an addict and even more of a failure than Gus. Doing Crispin through the neck with that shard of broken glass had been efficiency in action: family therapy and garbage disposal rolled into one. The rage he accumulated through decades had evaporated with every slash.

But delivering his
madre
from this curse, that would be an act of love.

Gus’s mother was removed from the chamber, but the hunter stayed behind. Gus looked back at the three, seeing them better now. Awful in their stillness. They never moved.

We will provide you with anything you need to achieve this task. Capital support is not an issue, as we have amassed vast fortunes of human treasure through time.

Those who received the gift of eternity had paid fortunes over the centuries. Within their vaults, the Ancient Ones held Mesopotamian coils of silver, Byzantine coins, sovereigns, Deutsche marks. The currency mattered nothing to them. Shells to trade with the natives. “So—you want me to fetch for you—is that it?”

Mr. Quinlan will provide you with anything you need. Anything. He is our best hunter. Efficient and loyal. In many respects, unique. Your only restriction is secrecy. Concealment of our existence is paramount. We leave it to you to recruit other hunters such as yourself. Invisible and unknown, yet skilled at killing.

Gus bridled, feeling the pull of his mother behind him. An outlet for his wrath: maybe this was just what he needed.

His lips pursed into an angry smile. He needed manpower. He needed killers.

He knew exactly where to go next.

IRT South Ferry Inner Loop Station

F
ET, WITH ONLY
one false turn, led them to a tunnel that connected to the abandoned South Ferry Loop Station. Dozens of phantom subway stations dot the IRT, the IND, and the BMT systems. You don’t see them on the maps anymore, though they can be
glimpsed through in-service subway car windows on active rails—if you know when and where to look.

The underground climate was more humid here, a dampness in the ground soil, the walls slick and weeping.

The glowing trail of
strigoi
waste became more scarce here. Fet looked around, puzzled. He knew that the route down Broadway was part of the city’s original subway project, South Ferry having opened for commuters in 1905. The underwater tunnel to Brooklyn opened three years later.

The original mosaic tiling featuring the station initials,
SF
, still stood, high on the wall, near an incongruously modern sign—

NO TRAINS STOP HERE

—as if anyone would make that mistake. Eph moved into a small maintenance bay, scanning with his Luma.

Out of the darkness, a voice cackled, “Are you IRT?”

Eph smelled the man before he saw him. The figure emerged from a nearby alcove stuffed with ripped and soiled mattresses—a toothless scarecrow of a man dressed in multiple layers of shirts, coats, and pants. His body scent patiently distilled and aged through all of them.

“No,” said Fet, taking over. “We’re not here rousting anybody.”

The man looked them over, rendering a snap judgment as to their trustworthiness. “Name’s Cray-Z,” he said. “You from up top?”

“Sure,” said Eph.

“What’s it like? I’m one of the last ones here.”

“Last ones?” said Eph. He noticed, for the first time, the shabby outline of a few tents and cardboard housings. After a moment, a few more spectral figures emerged. The “Mole People,” denizens of the urban abyss, the fallen, the disgraced, the disenfranchised, the “broken windows” of the Giuliani era. This was where they eventually found their way to, the city below, where it remained warm 24/7, even in the dead of winter. With luck and experience, one could camp at a site for as many as six months at a time, even more. Away from the busier stations, some resided for years without ever seeing a maintenance crew.

Cray-Z looked at Eph with his head turned to favor his one good eye. The other one was covered in granulated cataracts. “That’s right. Most all the colony is gone—just like the rats. Yeah, man. Vanished, leaving them fine valuables behind.”

He gestured at discarded piles of junk: ragged sleeping bags, muddy shoes, some coats. Fet felt a pang, knowing that these articles represented the sum total of the worldly possessions of the recently departed.

Cray-Z smiled a vacant smile. “Unusual, man. Downright spooky.”

Fet remembered something he had read in
National Geographic,
or maybe watched one night on the History channel: the story of a colony of settlers in the pre-America era—in Roanoke, maybe—who vanished one day. Over a hundred people, gone, leaving behind all of their belongings but no clues to their sudden and mysterious departure, nothing except two cryptic carvings: the word
CROATOAN
written into a post on their fort, and the letters
CRO
whittled into the bark of a nearby tree.

Fet looked again at the mosaic
SF
tiled onto the high wall.

“I know you,” said Eph, keeping a polite distance from the reeking Cray-Z. “I’ve seen you around—I mean, up there.” He pointed toward the surface. “You carry one of those signs,
GOD IS WATCHING YOU
, or something like that.”

Cray-Z smiled a mostly toothless smile and went and pulled out his hand-drawn placard, proud of his celebrity status.
GOD IS WATCHING YOU
!!! in bright red, with three exclamation points for emphasis.

Cray-Z was indeed a semi-delusional zealot. Down here, he was an outcast among outcasts. He had lived underground as long as anyone—maybe longer. He claimed that he could get anywhere in the city without surfacing—and yet he apparently lacked the ability to urinate without splashing the toes of his shoes.

Cray-Z moved alongside the tracks, motioning for Eph and Fet to follow. He ducked inside a tarp-and-pallet shack, where old, nibbled extension cords wound away up into the roof, wired into some hidden source of electricity on the great city grid.

It had begun to drizzle lightly within the tunnel, weeping
ceiling pipes wetting the dirt, their water splattering onto Cray-Z’s tarp and running down into a waiting Gatorade bottle.

Cray-Z emerged carrying an old promotional cutout of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, flashing his trademark “How’m I Doing?” smile. “Here,” he said, handing the life-sized photo to Eph. “Hold this.”

Cray-Z then walked them to the far tunnel, pointing down its tracks.

“Right into there,” he said. “That’s where they all went.”

“Who? The people?” said Eph, setting Mayor Koch down next to him. “They went into the tunnel?”

Cray-Z laughed. “No. Not just the tunnel, shithead. Down
there.
Where the pipes at the curve go under the East River, across to Governor’s Island, then over to mainland Brooklyn at Red Hook. That’s where they
took
them.”

“Took them?” said Eph, a chill trickling down his spine. “Who—who took them?”

Just then, a track signal lit up nearby. Eph jumped back. “This track still active?”

Fet said, “The 5 train still turns around on the inner loop.”

Cray-Z spat onto the tracks. “Man knows his trains.”

Light grew inside the space as the train approached, brightening the old station, bringing it briefly to life. Mayor Koch shook under Eph’s hand.

“You watch real close, now,” said Cray-Z. “No blinking!” He covered his blind eye and smiled his mostly toothless smile.

The train thundered past them, taking the turn a little faster than usual. The cars were nearly vacant inside, maybe one or two people visible through the windows, here and there a solitary straphanger. Abovegrounders just passing through.

Cray-Z gripped Eph’s forearm as the end of the train approached. “There—
right there
—”

In the flickering light of the passing train, Fet and Eph saw something on the rear exterior of the final car. A cluster of figures—of bodies, people—flat against the outside of the train. Clinging to it like remoras riding a steel shark.

“You see that?” exulted Cray-Z. “You see ’em all? The Other People.”

Eph shook loose of Cray-Z’s grip, taking a few steps forward away from him and Mayor Koch, the train finishing its loop and dwindling into darkness, the light leaving the tunnel like water down a drain.

Cray-Z started hustling back to his shack. “Somebody has to do something, right? You guys just decided it for me. These are the dark angels at the end of time. They’ll snatch us all if we let ’em.”

Fet took a few lumbering steps after the receding train, before stopping and looking back at Eph. “The tunnels. It’s how they get across. They can’t go over moving water, right? Not unassisted.”

Eph was right there with him. “But
under
the water. Nothing stops them from that.”

“Progress,” said Fet. “This is the trouble progress gets us in. What do you call it—when you figure out you can get away with shit that nobody made up a specific rule for?”

“A loophole,” said Eph.

“Exactly. This, right here?” Fet opened his arms, gesturing at their surroundings. “We just discovered one giant gaping loophole.”

The Coach

T
HE LUXURY COACH
bus departed New Jersey’s St. Lucia’s Home for the Blind in the early afternoon, headed for an exclusive academy in Upstate New York.

The driver, with his corny stories and an entire catalog of knock-knock jokes, made the journey fun for his passengers, some sixty nervous children between the ages of seven and twelve. Their cases had been culled from emergency-room reports throughout the tristate area. These children were recently visually impaired—all had been accidentally blinded by the recent lunar occultation—and, for many, this was their first trip without a parent present.

Their scholarships, all offered and provided by the Palmer Foundation, included this orientation-like camp outing, an immersive retreat in adaptive techniques for the newly blind. Their chaperones—nine young adult graduates of St. Lucia’s—were each
legally blind, meaning their central visual acuity rated 20/200 or less, though they had some residual light perception. The children in their care were all clinically NLP, or “no light perception,” meaning totally blind. The driver was the only sighted person on board.