The Night Eternal

He is telling the truth. Or what he knows to be the truth.

Gus stared at Mr. Quinlan. “Is that the same as being right?”

Fet said, “I think I believe him.” Eph was moved by the nobility of Vasiliy. “I say, back at the blood camp, that sign in the sky was meant for him. There is a reason he had this vision.”

Now Nora looked at Eph as though she barely knew him. Any lingering familiarity she felt she had with him was gone now; he saw that. He was an object now, like the Lumen. “I think we have to listen to him.”

Belvedere Castle

ZACK SAT UPON the big rock inside the snow leopard’s habitat, underneath the branches of a dead tree. He sensed that something was up. Something weird. The castle always seemed to reflect the mood of the Master, in the same way that the weather instruments responded to changes in temperature and air pressure. Something was coming. Zack didn’t know how, but he felt it.

The rifle lay across his lap. He wondered if he would need to use it. He thought of the snow leopard that had once stalked these grounds. He missed his pet, his friend, and yet, in a sense, the leopard was still there with Zack. Inside him.

He saw movement outside the mesh wall. This zoo hadn’t seen another visitor in two years. He used the rifle sight to locate the intruder.

It was Zack’s mother, running his way. Zack had watched her enough to know agitation when he saw it. She slowed as she approached the habitat, seeing Zack inside. A trio of feelers came bounding after her on all fours, like puppies trailing their owner at dinnertime.

These blind vampires were her children now. Not Zack. Now, instead of her having been the one who changed—having turned into a vampire and departed the league of the living—Zack felt that it was he who had passed out of normal existence. That he was the one who had died, in relation to his mother, and lived before her now as a memory she could no longer remember, a ghost in her house. Zack was the strange one. The other.

For a moment, while he had her in his sights, he placed his index finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze. But then he relinquished his grip on the rifle.

He went out through the feeding door, exiting the rear of the habitat, going to her. It was subtle, her agitation. The way her arms hung, her fingers splayed. Zack wondered where she was coming from. And where did she go when the Master sent her out? Zack was her only living Dear One—so whom did she seek? And what now was the sudden emergency?

Her eyes were red and glowing. She turned and started away, commanding the feelers with her eyes, and Zack followed, his rifle at his side. They exited the zoo in time for Zack to see a large group of vampires—a regiment of the legion that ringed the castle of the Master—running through the trees toward the edge of the park.

Something was happening. And the Master had summoned him.

Roosevelt Island

EPH AND NORA waited on the boat, docked on the Queens side of Roosevelt Island, around the northern point of Lighthouse Park. Creem sat watching them from the rear, watching their guns. Across the other side of the East River, Eph saw the lights of a helicopter between buildings, hovering in the vicinity of Central Park.

“What’s going to happen?” Nora asked him, the hood of her jacket keeping out the rain. “Do you know?”

“I don’t,” he said.

“We’re going to make it, right?”

Eph said, “I don’t know that.”

Nora said, “You were supposed to say yes. Fill me with confidence. Make me believe that we can do this.”

“I think we can.”

Nora was soothed by the calm in his voice. “And what do we do about him?” she asked, referring to Creem.

“Creem will cooperate. He will take us to the arsenal.”

Creem huffed at that.

“Because what else does he have?” said Eph.

“What else do we have?” echoed Nora. “Gus’s hideout is blown. So is your place at the ME’s office. Now Fet’s hideaway here, Creem knows about it.”

“We’re out of options,” said Eph. “Though really we’ve only had two options all along.”

“Which were?” said Nora.

“Quit or destroy.”

“Or die trying,” she added.

Eph watched the helicopter take off again, zooming north over Manhattan. The darkness wouldn’t shield them from vampire eyes. The crossing back would be dangerous.

Voices. Gus and Fet. Eph made out Mr. Quinlan with them, cradling something in his arms, like a beer keg wrapped in a tarpaulin.

Gus climbed in first. “They try anything?” he asked Nora.

Nora shook her head. Eph realized then that she had been left there to keep an eye on both of them, as though he and Creem might try to sail away and strand the others on the island. Nora appeared embarrassed that Gus had let Eph learn this.

Mr. Quinlan boarded, the boat dipping down under his weight and the weight of the device. Yet he set it down easily on the deck, a testament to his great strength.

Gus said, “So let’s see this bad boy.”