The Fall

Barnes looked at Fet in the front. “And who is this one with you now? I expected to see you with Dr. Martinez.”

Something about the way Barnes said Nora’s name struck Eph as odd. But he could not pursue it. Fet came back quickly from the front windows.

“Here they come,” said Fet.

Eph ventured near enough to see vans pulling up, closing off the street in either direction. Fet passed him, grabbing Barnes by the shoulder and walking him to a table in back, sitting him in the corner. Eph slung his baseball bag over his shoulder and ported Fet’s case to him.

“Please,” said Barnes. “I implore you. Both of you. I can protect you.

“Listen,” said Fet. “You just officially became a hostage, so shut the fuck up.” To Eph, he said: “Now what? How do we hold them off? UVC light doesn’t work on the FBI.”

Eph looked around the old ale house for answers. The pictures and ephemera of a century and a half, hanging on the walls and cluttering the shelves behind the bar. Portraits of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and a bust of JFK-all assassinated presidents. Nearby, among such curios as a musket, a shaving-cream mug, and framed obituaries, hung a small silver dagger.

Near it, a sign: WE WERE HERE BEFORE YOU WERE BORN.

Eph rushed behind the bar. He kicked aside the sawdust over the bull-nose ring latch embedded in the worn wooden floor.

Fet, appearing at his side, helped him raise the trapdoor.

The odor told them everything they needed to know. Ammonia. Pungent and recent.

Director Barnes, still in his seat in the corner, said, “They’ll only come in after you.”

“Judging by the smell-I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Fet, starting down first.

“Everett,” said Eph, switching on his Luma lamp before going down. “In case there is any lingering ambiguity, let me be perfectly clear now. I quit.”

Eph followed Fet to the bottom, his lamp illuminating the supply area beneath the bar in ethereal indigo. Fet reached up to close the door overhead.

“Leave it,” muttered Eph. “If he’s as dirty as I think he is, he’s running for the door already.”

Fet did, the hatch remaining open.

The ceiling was low, and the detritus of many decades-old kegs and barrels, a few broken chairs, stacks of empty glass racks, and an old industrial dishwasher-narrowed the passageway. Fet adjusted thick rubber bands around his ankles and jacket cuffs-a trick from his days baiting roach-infested apartments, learned the hard way. He handed some to Eph. “For worms,” he said, zipping his jacket tight.

Eph crossed the stone floor, pushing open a side door leading to an old, warm ice room. It was empty.

Next came a wooden door with an old, oval knob. The floor dust before it was disturbed in the shape of a fan. Fet nodded to him, and Eph yanked it open.

You don’t hesitate. You don’t think. Eph had learned that. You never give them time to group up and anticipate, because it is in their makeup that one of them will sacrifice itself in order that the others might have a chance at you. Facing stingers that can reach five or six feet, and their extraordinary night vision, you never, ever stop moving until every last monster is destroyed.

The neck was their vulnerable point-same as their prey’s throat was to them. Sever the spinal column and you destroy the body and the being that inhabits it. A significant amount of white-blood loss achieves the same end, though bloodletting is much more dangerous, as the capillary worms that escape live on outside the body, seeking new human bodies to invade. Why Fet liked to band up his cuffs.

Eph destroyed the first two in the manner that had proved most effective: using the UVC lamp like a torch to repel the beast, isolating and trapping them against a wall, then closing in with the sword for the coup de gr$aCce. Weapons made of silver do wound them, and cause whatever constitutes the vampire equivalent of human pain-and ultraviolet light burns through their DNA like flame.

Fet used the nail gun, pumping silver brads into their faces to blind or otherwise disorient them, then running through their distended throats. Loosened worms slithered across the wet floor. Eph killed some of the worms with his UVC light, while others met their fate beneath the hard treads of Fet’s boots. Fet, after stomping a few of them, scooped them into a small jar from his case. “For the old man,” he said, before continuing on with his slaying.

They heard a multitude of footsteps and voices in the bar above them as they pressed on into the next room.

One came at Eph from the side-still wearing a bartending apron-its eyes wide and hungry. Eph slashed at it backhandedly, driving the creature back with the lamp light. Eph was learning to ignore his physician’s inclination toward mercy. The vampire gnashed pitifully in a corner as Eph closed in, finishing it off.

Two others, maybe three, had taken off through the next door as soon as they saw the indigo light coming. A handful remained, crouched beneath broken shelves, ready to attack.