The Fall

“But I have been close in the past, and you know it. Let us not rehash old battles. I wish to set all that aside for the time being. I have placed myself at your mercy for a reason. I want to deal.”

To deal? What could you possibly have to offer?

“The book. And the Master.”

Fet felt the vampire goon ease off his neck just a few millimeters, the point of the spike still in contact with his flesh but no longer poking at his throat.

The beings at the windows never moved, the commanding voice in his head unwavering.

And what is it you want in return?

Setrakian said, “The world.”

Nora spotted the dark figures siphoning passengers in the aft car. She kicked at the back of the knee of the man in front of her, pulling her mother and Zack past him, shouldering aside a woman in a business suit and sneakers in order to exit the derailed train.

Somehow, she got her mother down the long step without dropping her. Nora looked forward to where the front car had left the track, angled tight against the tunnel wall, and realized she had to go the other way.

She had departed the claustrophobia of the stuck train for the claustrophobia of an under-river tunnel.

Nora unzipped the side compartment on her travel duffel and pulled out her Luma lamp. She powered it on, the battery humming to life, the UVC bulb crackling indigo, burning hot.

The tracks lit up before her. Vampire discharge was everywhere, fluorescent guano, covering the floor and sprayed on the walls. Evidently, they had been crossing this way to the mainland for days, and by the thousands. It was the perfect environment for them: dark, dirty, and concealed from surface eyes.

Others disembarked behind them, a few using mobile phone screens to light their way. “Oh, my God!” one shrieked.

Nora turned and saw, by the light of the passengers’ phones, the train wheels goopy with white vampire blood. Gobs of pale skin and the black gristle of crushed bones hung from the undercarriage. Nora wondered if they were run down accidentally-or had they thrown themselves in the path of the charging train?

Thrown themselves seemed most likely. And if so-then what for?

Nora thought she knew. With the image of Kelly still bright in her mind, Nora threw one arm around Zack, taking her mother by the hand and running for the rear of the train.

New Jersey was a long walk away, and they were not alone here.

They heard screaming aboard the train now. Passengers being mauled by pale creatures marauding through the cars. Nora tried to keep Zack from looking up and seeing the faces pressed against the windows, regurgitating saliva and blood.

Nora got to the end of the train, rounding it-stepping over crushed vampire corpses on the tracks, using her UV light to kill any lurking blood worms-and starting up the other side, where there was a clear path toward the front car.

Tunnels carry and distort noises. Nora wasn’t sure what she was hearing, but its presence put an extra scare into her. She exhorted the people following them to stop a moment and be quiet and still.

She heard a noise like scuttling, only many times repeated and magnified through the tunnel. Coming behind them, in the same direction the train had been traveling. A horde of footsteps.

The light from the cell phone screens and Nora’s UV lamp had very little range. Something was coming at them out of the dark void, and Nora corralled Zack and her mother and started running the other way.

The hunter pulled back from Fet’s side, his spike still poised at Fet’s neck. Setrakian had started to tell the Ancients about Eldritch Palmer’s association with the Master.

We know already. He came to us some time ago, petitioning us for immortality.

“And you refused him. So he went across the street.”

He did not meet our criteria. Eternity is a beautiful gift, entrance into an immortal aristocracy. We are rigorously selective.

The voice reverberating inside Fet’s head sounded like a scolding parent’s multiplied a thousandfold. He looked at the hunter next to him and wondered: some long-dead European king? Alexander the Great? Howard Hughes?

No-not these hunters. Fet guessed he was an elite soldier in his former life. Plucked off a battlefield, perhaps during a special-ops mission. Drafted by the ultimate selective service. But who knew which army? What era? Vietnam? Normandy? Thermopylae?

Setrakian said-confirming for himself lifelong theories as he stated these facts-“The Ancients are connected to the human world at its uppermost levels. They assume the initiate’s wealth, which helps them insulate themselves and assert their influence across the globe.”