The Fall

Setrakian anticipated the ploy. Indeed, the doctor was considerably less agile than many others Setrakian had encountered. Setrakian stood fast with his back to the windows, the vampire’s only escape.

“You are too slow, doctor,” Setrakian said. “Your hunting here has been too easy.”

Dreverhaven hissed. Concern showed in the beast’s eyes as the heat of exertion began to melt its facial cosmetics.

Dreverhaven glanced at the door, but Setrakian wasn’t buying. These creatures always built in an emergency exit. Even a bloated tick like Dreverhaven.

Setrakian feigned an attack, keeping the strigoi off-balance, forcing him to react. Dreverhaven snapped out his stinger, another aborted thrust. Setrakian responded with a quick sweep of his blade, which would have lopped it off at full length.

Dreverhaven made his break then, rushing laterally along the back bookcases, but Setrakian was just as fast. He still held the book in one hand, and hurled it at the fat vampire, the creature recoiling from its toxic silver. Then Setrakian was upon him.

He held the point of his silver blade at Dreverhaven’s upper throat. The vampire’s head tipped back, its crown resting against the spines of his precious books along the upper shelf, his eyes staring at Setrakian.

The silver weakened him, keeping his stinger in check. Setrakian went into his deepest coat pocket-it was lead-lined-and removed a band of thick silver baubles wrapped in a mesh of fine steel, strung along a length of cable.

The vampire’s eyes widened, but it was unable to move as Setrakian lay the necklace over its head, resting it upon the creature’s shoulders.

The silver collar weighed on the strigoi like a chain of hundred-pound stones. Setrakian pulled over a chair just in time for Dreverhaven to collapse into it, keeping the vampire from falling to the floor. The creature’s head dipped to one side, its hands shivering helplessly in its lap.

Setrakian picked up the book-it was, in fact, a sixth-edition copy of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, backed and bound in Britannia silver-and dropped it back into his portmanteau. Sword in hand, he returned to the bookcase toward which the desperate Dreverhaven had lunged.

After some careful searching, wary of booby-traps, Setrakian found the trigger volume. He heard a click and felt the shelf unit give, and then shoved open the swinging wall on its rotating axis.

The smell met him first. Dreverhaven’s rear quarters were windowless and unventilated, a nest of discarded books and trash and reeking rags. But this was not the source of the most offensive stench. That came from the top floor, accessible via a blood-spattered staircase.

An operating theater, a stainless-steel table set in black tile seemingly grouted in caked human blood. Decades of grime and gore covered every surface, flies buzzing angrily around a blood-smeared meat refrigerator in the corner.

Setrakian held his breath and opened the fridge, because he had to. It contained only items of perversion, nothing of real interest. No information to further Setrakian’s quest. Setrakian realized he was becoming inured to depravity and butchering.

He returned to the creature suffering in the chair. Dreverhaven’s face had by now melted away, unveiling the strigoi beneath. Setrakian stepped to the windows, dawn just beginning to filter in, soon to trumpet into the apartment, cleaning it of darkness and of vampires.

“How I dreaded each dawn in the camp,” said Setrakian. “The start of another day in the death farm. I did not fear death, but I did not choose it either. I chose survival. And in doing so, I chose dread.”

I am happy to die.

Setrakian looked at Dreverhaven. The strigoi no longer bothered with the ruse of moving his lips.

All my lusts have long since been satisfied. I have gone as far as one can go in this life, man or beast. I hunger for nothing any longer. Repetition only extinguishes pleasure.

“The book,” said Setrakian, daringly close to Dreverhaven. “It no longer exists.”

It does exist. But only a fool would dare to pursue it. Pursuing the Occido Lumen means you are pursuing the Master. You might be able to take a tired acolyte like myself but if you go against him, the odds will certainly be against you. As they were against your dear wife.

So indeed the vampire had a little bit of perversion left in him. He still possessed the capacity, however small and vain, for sick pleasure. The vampire’s gaze never left Setrakian’s.