The Fall

Lights inside the train flickered and died. A groan went up, with notes of panic.

Then emergency lights came on, but pale.

Nora pulled Zack to his feet. Time to get moving. She pulled her mother with her, starting toward the front of the car before everyone else on the train had recovered. She wanted to get a look at the tunnel by the train’s headlight. But she saw immediately that way was impassable. Too many people, too much thrown luggage.

Nora tugged on the strap of the weapon bag across her chest and pushed them the other way, toward the exit between cars. She was playing nice, waiting for fellow passengers to get their bags, when she heard the screaming start in the first car.

Every head turned.

Nora said, “Come on!” She pulled on them both, shoving her way through bodies toward the exits. Let the other people look; she had two lives to protect, never mind her own.

At the end of the car, waiting for some guy to pry open the automatic doors, Nora glanced back behind her.

Over the heads of the confused passengers, she saw frenzied movement in the next car… dark figures moving quickly… and then a burst of arterial blood spraying against the glass door separating compartments.

Gus and his crew had been outfitted by the hunters with armor-plated Hummers, black with chrome accents. Most of the chrome was gone now, due to the fact that, in order to get across bridges and up city streets, you had to do some contact driving.

Gus was heading the wrong way across 59th Street, his headlamps the only lights on the road. Fet sat up front, because of his size. The weapon bag was at his feet. Angel and the others were in another vehicle.

The radio was on, the sports talk host having racked some music in order to give his voice or maybe his bladder a break. Fet realized, as Gus cut hard up onto the sidewalk in order to avoid a knot of abandoned vehicles, that the song was Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”

He snapped off the radio, saying, “That’s not funny.”

They pulled up fast, at the foot of a building overlooking Central Park, exactly the sort of place where Fet always imagined a vampire would reside. Seen from the sidewalk below, it was outlined against the smoky sky like a gothic tower.

Fet entered the front door with Setrakian at his side, both men carrying their swords. Angel trailed them, Gus whistling a tune next to him.

The lobby of rich brown wallpaper was dimly lit and empty. Gus had a key that operated the passenger elevator, a small cage of green iron, its lift cables visible, Victorian styling inside and out.

The top-floor hallway was under construction, or at least left to appear that way. Gus laid his weapons down atop a table-like length of scaffolding. “Everybody disarm here,” he said.

Fet looked at Setrakian. Setrakian made no move to relinquish his staff, so Fet kept a tight hold on his sword.

“Fine, have it your way,” said Gus.

Angel remained behind as Gus led them inside the only door, up three steps into a dark anteroom. There was the usual light tincture of ammonia and earth, and a sensation of heat not artificially manufactured. Gus parted a heavy curtain, revealing a wide room with three windows overlooking the park.

Silhouetted before each window were three beings, hairless, unclothed, standing as still as the building itself, arranged like statues standing guard over the canyon of Central Park.

Fet raised his silver sword, the blade angling upward like the needle of a gauge measuring the presence of evil. All at once, he felt his hand struck, the sword handle springing loose from his grip. His other arm, the one gripping the weapon bag, jumped at the shoulder, suddenly lighter.

The bag handles had been cut. He turned his head in time to see his blade enter the side wall, piercing it deeply, quivering, the bag of weapons dangling from it.

He then felt a knife at the side of his throat. Not a silver blade, but instead the point of a long iron spike.

A face, next to him-so pale, it glowed. Its eyes bore the deep red of vampiric possession, its mouth curled into a toothless scowl. Its swollen throat pulsed, not with blood flow but anticipation.

“Hey…” said Fet, his voice disappearing into nothingness.

He was done for. The speed with which these ones moved was incredible. So much faster than the animals outside.

But the three beings at the windows-they had not moved.

Setrakian.

The voice, appearing within his mind, was accompanied by a numbing sensation that had the effect of clouding his thoughts.

Fet tried to look over at the old professor. He still held his staff, the interior blade sheathed. Another hunter stood at his side, holding a similar spike to his temple.

Gus walked past them. He said, “They’re with me.”

They are silver-armed. A hunter’s voice-not as debilitating as the other.

Setrakian said, “I come not to destroy you. Not this time.”

You would never get so close.