The Night Eternal

Out of respect for Eph, he had resisted this entanglement, denying his own feelings as well as Nora’s. But their mutual attraction was more evident now. On the last day before his departure, Fet had rested his leg against Nora’s. A casual gesture by any measure, except for someone like Fet. He was a large man but incredibly conscious of his personal space, neither seeking nor allowing any violation of it. He kept his distance, ultimately uncomfortable with most human contact—but Nora’s knee was pressed against his, and his heart was racing. Racing with hope as the notion dawned on him: She’s holding. She is not moving away…

She had asked him to be careful, to take care of himself, and in her eyes were tears. Genuine tears as she saw him leave.

No one had ever cried for Fet before.

Manhattan

EPH RODE THE 7 express inbound, clinging fast to the exterior of the subway train. He gripped the rear left corner of the last car, his right boot perched on the rear step, fingertips dug into the window frames, rocking with the motion of the train over the elevated track. The wind and the black rain whipped at the tails of his charcoal-gray raincoat, his hooded face turned in toward the shoulder straps of his weapon pack.

It used to be that the vampires had to ride on the outside of the trains, shuttling around the underground of Manhattan in order to avoid discovery. Through the window, whose dented frame he had pried his fingers under, he saw humans sitting and rocking with the motion of the train. The distant stares, the expressionless faces: a perfectly orderly scene. He did not look for long, for if there were any strigoi riding, their heat-registering night vision would have spotted him, resulting in a very unpleasant welcoming party at the next stop. Eph was still a fugitive, his likeness hanging in post offices and police stations throughout the city, the news stories concerning his successful assassination of Eldritch Palmer—cleverly edited from his unsuccessful attempt—still replayed on television every week or so, keeping his name and face foremost in the minds of the watchful citizenry.

Riding the trains required skills that Eph had developed through time and necessity. The tunnels were invariably wet—smelling of burned ozone and old grease—and Eph’s ragged, smeared clothes acted as perfect camouflage, both visual and olfactory. Hooking up to the rear of the train—that required timing and precision. But Eph had it down. As a kid in San Francisco, he had routinely used the back of streetcars to hitch a ride to school. And you had to board them just in time. Too early and you would be discovered. Too late and you would be dragged and take a bad tumble.

And in the subway, he had taken some tumbles—usually due to drink. Once, as the train took a curve under Tremont Avenue, he had lost his footing as he calculated his landing jump and trailed on the back of the train, legs hopping frantically, bouncing against the tracks until he rolled on his side, cracking two ribs and dislocating his right shoulder—the bone popping softly as it hit the steel rails on the other side of the line. He barely avoided being hit by an oncoming train. Seeking refuge in a maintenance alcove saturated in human urine and old newspapers, he had popped the shoulder back in—but it bothered him every other night. If he rolled on it in his sleep he would wake up in agony.

But now, through practice, he had learned to seek the footholds and the crevices in the rear structure of the train cars. He knew every train, every car—and he had even fashioned two short grappling hooks to grab on to the loose steel panels in a matter of seconds. They were hammered out of the good silver set at the Goodweather household and, now and then, served as a short-range weapon with the strigoi.

The hooks were attached to wooden handles, made from the legs of a mahogany table Kelly’s mother had given them as a wedding present. If she only knew… She had never liked Eph—not good enough for her Kelly—and now she would like him even less.

Eph turned his head, shaking off some of the wetness in order to look out through the black rain to the city blocks on either side of the concrete viaduct high above Queens Boulevard. Some blocks remained ravaged, razed by fires during the takeover, or else looted and long since emptied. Patches of the city appeared as though they had been destroyed in a war—and, indeed, they had.