The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (77 page)

“As I made clear previously, this would be an interest-free, twenty-year revolving line of credit …”

E
ph dumped the FBI credentials in a wastebasket and continued with Barnes through the Emergency Operations Center that was the heart of the facility. The attention of everyone present was focused on Palmer, pictured on the many monitors overhead.

Eph saw dark-suited Stoneheart men clustered around a side hall leading to a pair of glass doors. The sign with the arrow read:
SECURE CONFERENCE ROOM
.

A chill washed over Eph, as he realized he was almost certain to die here. Certainly if he succeeded. Indeed, his worst fear was that he might be cut down without successfully assassinating Eldritch Palmer.

Eph guessed the direction of the parking lot exit. He turned to Barnes and whispered, “Act sick.”

“What?”

“Act sick. Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for you.”

Eph continued with him past the conference-room hall toward the rear. Another Stoneheart man stood near a pair of doors. Before him hung a glowing sign for the men’s restroom.

“Here it is, sir,” said Eph, opening the door for Barnes. Barnes entered holding his belly, clearing his throat into his wrist. Eph rolled his eyes at the Stoneheart, whose facial expression did not change at all.

Inside the restroom, they were alone. Palmer’s words carried over speakers. Eph pulled out the gun. He walked Barnes into the farthest stall and sat him on the covered toilet.

“Get comfortable,” he said.

“Ephraim,” said Barnes. “They are certain to kill you.”

“I know,” Eph said, pistol-whipping Barnes before closing the door. “That’s what I came here for.”

R
epresentative Frone continued, “Now, there were reports in the media, before all this began, that you and your minions had been undertaking a raid on the world silver market, trying to corner it. Frankly, there have been many wild stories regarding this outbreak. Some of them—true or not—have struck a chord. Plenty of people believe it. Are you, in fact, preying on people’s fears and superstitions? Or is this, as I hope, the lesser of two evils—a simple case of greed?”

Palmer picked up the piece of paper before him. He folded it once lengthwise, then once again across, and carefully slid the page into his inside breast pocket. He did so slowly, his eyes never leaving the camera connecting him to Washington, DC.

“Representative Frone, I believe that this is exactly the kind of pettiness and moral gridlock that has led us to this dark time. It is a matter of record that I have donated the maximum amount allowable by law to your opponent in each of your previous campaigns, and this is how you take—”

Frone yelled over him, “That’s an outrageous charge!”

“Gentlemen,” said Palmer, “you see before you an old man. A frail man, with very little time left on this earth. A man who wants
to give back to the nation that has given him so very much in his life. Now I find myself in a unique position to do just that. Within the boundaries of the law—never above it. No one is above the law. Which is why I wanted to make a full accounting before you today. Please allow a patriot’s final act to be a noble one. That is all. Thank you.”

Mr. Fitzwilliam pulled out his chair, and Palmer got to his feet amid the hubbub and gavel-banging from the chamber on the video wall before him.

Eph stood by the door, listening. Movement outside, but not enough hubbub yet. He was tempted to open the door just a bit, but it opened inward, and he would certainly have been seen.

He tugged on the pistol’s handle, keeping it loose and ready in his waistband.

A man walked past, saying, as though into a radio, “Get the car.”

That was Eph’s cue. He took a deep breath and reached for the door handle, walking out of the restroom and into murder.

Two Stonehearts in dark suits were moving to the far end of the hall, the doors leading outside. Eph turned the other way, seeing two more rounding the corner, advance men, eyeing him immediately.

Eph’s timing had been less than perfect. He stepped to the side, as though deferring to the men, trying to appear uninterested.

Eph saw the small front wheels first. A wheelchair was being rolled around the corner. Two polished shoes were set on the fold-down footrests.

It was Eldritch Palmer, looking exceedingly small and frail. His flour-white hands were folded in his sunken lap, his eyes looking straight ahead, not at Eph.

One of the advance men veered off toward Eph, as though to block his view of the passing billionaire. Palmer was fewer than five yards away. Eph could not wait any longer.

His heart racing, Eph pulled the gun from his waistband. Everything happened in slow motion and all at once.

Eph raised the gun and darted to the left, in order to clear the Stoneheart man in his way. His hand trembled, but his arm was straight, his aim true.

He aimed for the largest target—the chest of the seated man—and squeezed the trigger. But the lead Stoneheart man threw himself at Eph—sacrificing himself more automatically than any Secret Service agent had ever leaped in front of a U.S. president.

The round struck the man in the chest, thudding off the body armor beneath his suit. Eph reacted just in time, shoving the man to the side before he could be tackled.

Eph fired again, but off-balance, the silver bullet ricocheting off Palmer’s wheelchair armrest.

Eph fired again, but the Stonehearts threw themselves in front of Palmer. The third round went into the wall. An especially large man with a military crew cut—the man pushing Palmer’s chair—started to run, wheeling his benefactor forward so that the Stoneheart men were catapulted onto Eph, and he went down.

He twisted as he fell, his gun arm facing the exit doorway. One more shot. He raised it to fire at the back of the chair, around the large bodyguard—but a shoe stomped down on his forearm, the round firing into the carpet, the weapon leaping from Eph’s grip.

Eph was at the bottom of a growing pile, bodies rushing in from the main room now. Shouts, screams. Hands clawing at Eph, pulling at his limbs. He twisted his head just enough to see, through the arms and legs of his attackers, the wheelchair being pushed out through the double doors, into blazing daylight.

Eph howled in agony. His only chance gone forever. The moment slipping away.

The old man had survived unharmed.

Now the world was nearly his.

The Black Forest Solutions Facility

T
HE
M
ASTER, STANDING
at full height inside the utter blackness of a large chamber deep beneath the meatpacking plant, was electrically alert with meditative focus. It had become more deliberative as its sun-scorched flesh continued to flake off its once-human host body, exposing raw, red dermis beneath.

The Master’s head rotated a few degrees on its great, broad
neck, turning slightly toward the entrance, giving Bolivar its attention. No need for Bolivar to report what the Master already knew, what the Master had already—through Bolivar—seen: the arrival of the human hunters at the pawnshop, evidently in hopes of contacting old Setrakian, and the disastrous battle that ensued.

Behind Bolivar, feelers skittered about on all four limbs, like blind crabs. They “saw” something that unsettled them, as Bolivar was learning to infer from their behavior.

Someone was coming. The feelers’ disquiet was offset by the Master’s distinct lack of concern about the interloper.

The Master said:
The Ancient Ones have employed mercenaries for day hunting. A further sign of their desperation. And the old professor?

Bolivar said:
He slipped away in advance of our attack. Inside his domicile, the feelers sensed that he is still alive.

Hiding. Plotting. Scheming.

With the same desperation as the Ancients.

Humans only become dangerous when they have nothing to lose.

The whir of a motorized wheelchair, and the sound of its nubby tires rolling over the dirt floor, announced that the visitor was Eldritch Palmer. His bodyguard nurse trailed him, holding blue glow sticks to illuminate the passage for their human vision.

Feelers skittered away at the wheelchair’s advance, crawling halfway up the wall, remaining outside the glow radius of the chemical luminescence, hissing.

“More creatures,” said Palmer under his breath, unable to hide his distaste upon seeing the blind vampire children and their black-eyed stares. The billionaire was furious. “Why this hole?”

It pleases me.

Palmer saw, for the first time, by the light of the soft blue glow, the Master’s flesh peeling. Chunks of it littered the ground at his feet like shorn hair beneath a barber’s chair. Palmer was troubled by the sight of the raw flesh revealed beneath the Master’s cracked exterior, and got to talking quickly, in order that the Master not read his mind like a soothsayer divining through a crystal ball.

“Look here. I have waited and I have done everything you’ve asked and I have received nothing in return. Now an attempt has
been made on my life! I want my reward now! My patience has reached its end. You will give me what I am promised, or I will bankroll you no longer—do you understand? This is the end of it!”

The Master’s skin crinkled as its ceiling-scraping head leaned forward. The monster was indeed intimidating, but Palmer would not back down.

“My premature death, should it come, would render this entire plan moot. You will have no more leverage upon my will—nor claim upon my resources.”

Eichhorst, the perverse Nazi commandant, summoned to the chamber by the Master, entered behind Palmer into the haze of blue light.
You would do well to hold your human tongue in the presence of
Der Meister.

The Master, with a wave of his great hand, silenced Eichhorst. His red eyes appeared purple in the blue light, fixing wide on Palmer.
So it is done. I will grant your wish for immortality. In one day’s time.

Palmer stammered, taken aback. First, because of his surprise at the Master’s sudden capitulation—after all these years of effort. And then, in recognition of the great leap Palmer was poised to take. To dive into the abyss that is death, and surface on the other side …

The businessman inside of him wanted more of a guarantee. But the schemer inside of him held his tongue.

You do not place provisions on a monster such as the Master. You bid for its favor, and then accept its largesse with gratitude.

One more mortal day. Palmer thought he might even enjoy it.

All plans are fully in motion. My Brood is marching across the mainland. We have exposure in every critical destination, our circle widening in cities and provinces around the globe
.

Palmer swallowed his anticipation, saying, “And even as the circle grows, it simultaneously tightens.” His old hands described the scenario, fingers interlocking, palms squeezing together in a pantomime of strangling.

Indeed. One last task that remains before the start of The Devouring.

Eichhorst, looking like half a man beside the giant Master, said:
The book.

“Of course,” said Palmer. “It will be yours. But, I must ask you … if you already know the contents …”

It is not critical that I be in possession of the book. It is critical that others are not.

“So—why not just blow up the auction house? Explode the entire block?”

Crude solutions have been attempted in the past, and have failed. This book has had too many lives. I must be absolutely certain of its fate. So that I may watch it burn.

The Master then straightened to its full height, becoming distracted in such a way that only the Master could.

It was seeing something. The Master was physically in the cave with them, but psychically it was seeing through another’s eyes—one of the Brood.

Into Palmer’s head, the Master uttered two words:

The boy.

Palmer waited for an explanation, which never came. The Master had returned to the present, the now. He had returned to them with a new certainty, as if he had glimpsed the future.

Tomorrow the world burns and the boy and the book will be mine.

Fet’s Blog

I
HAVE KILLED
.

I have slain.

With the hands typing this now.

I have stabbed, sliced, beat, crushed, dismembered, beheaded.

I have worn their white blood on my clothes and my boots.

I have destroyed. And I have rejoiced at the destruction.

You may say, as an exterminator by trade, I’ve been training for this all my life.

I understand the argument. I just can’t support it.

Because it is one thing to have a rat race up your arm in blind fear.

Yet quite another to face a fellow human form and cut it down.

They look like people. They are very much like you and me.

I am no longer an exterminator. I am a vampire hunter.

And here is the other thing.

Something I will only say here, because I don’t dare tell anyone else.

Because I know what they will think.

I know what they will feel.

I know what they will see when they look into my eyes.

But—all this killing?

I kind of like it.

And I’m good at it.

I might even be great at it.

The city is falling and probably the world. Apocalypse is a big word, a heavy word, when you realize you are actually facing it.

I can’t be the only one. There must be others out there like me. People who have lived their whole lives feeling half-complete. Who never truly fit anywhere in the world. Who never understood why they were here, or what they were meant for. Who never answered the call, because they never heard it. Because nothing ever spoke to them.

Until now.

Penn Station

N
ORA LOOKED AWAY
for what seemed like only a moment. As she stared at the big board, waiting for their track number to be announced, her gaze deepened and, utterly exhausted, she zoned out.