The Night Eternal

Eph went for the Jeep’s door. He watched through the windows as Mr. Quinlan grabbed a female vampire by her legs and whipped her head against a steel column. Fet was in the backseat behind Eph, fighting off vamps trying to get in the door. Eph jumped into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut and turning the key.

The engine started up. Eph saw that Nora was inside the Explorer. Mr. Quinlan was the last, climbing into the backseat of the Jeep with strigoi running up to his window. Eph threw the truck into drive and curled out into the street, mowing down two vampires with the Jeep’s silver grille. He saw Nora zoom the Explorer out to the edge of the road, then stop short. Gus jumped out with his machine gun and bent low, firing laterally across the hardtop at the leading edge of the fuel spill. It ignited and he jumped into the Explorer, and both trucks sped away as the flame slid toward the uncapped ground tank, igniting the fumes above for one brief, beautiful moment of winged flame—then the ground tank erupted, an angry orange-black blast, making the ground shudder, splitting the canopy, and frying the strigoi still there.

“Jesus,” said Fet, watching out the back window, past the tarp-covered nuclear bomb. “And that’s nothing compared to what we’ve got here.”

Eph gunned it past the vehicles in the road, some of the vampires rushing to get behind the wheel. He wasn’t worried about outrunning them. Only the Master.

Late-arriving vampires darted out into the street, practically throwing themselves into the path of the Jeep in an attempt to slow them down. Eph tore through them, seeing hideous faces for an instant in the headlights just at impact. The caustic white blood ate at the Jeep’s rubber wiper blades after a few back-and-forth swipes. A gang had gathered on the entrance ramp leading back onto Interstate 81, but Eph went right by that ramp, heading down the dark town road.

He followed the main road, handing the map back to Fet, watching for the Explorer’s headlights in his rearview mirror. He didn’t see them. He felt for the walkie-talkie, finding it on the seat near his hip. “Nora? You get out? You two okay?”

Her voice came back a moment later, adrenalized. “We’re good! We’re out!”

“I don’t see you.”

“We’re… I don’t know. Probably behind you.”

“Just keep heading north. If we get separated, meet up at Fishers Landing as soon as you can get there. You got that? Fishers Landing.”

“Fishers Landing,” she said. “Okay.” Her voice crackled.

“Run with your headlights off when you can—but only when you can. Nora?”

“We’re going to… up… onward.”

“Nora, I’m losing you.”

“…Eph…”

Eph felt Fet leaning up behind him. “Radio range is only about one mile.”

Eph checked his mirrors. “They must have headed down another road. So long as they stay off the highway…”

Fet took the radio, trying to raise her, but got nothing. “Shit,” he said.

“She got the rendezvous point,” said Eph. “She’s with Gus. She’ll be all right.”

Fet handed back the radio. “They have enough fuel, anyway. Now all we have to do is stay alive until sunrise.”

At the roadside, beneath a blank marquee sign for an old abandoned drive-in movie theater, an expressionless strigoi followed the Jeep with his eyes as it passed him by.

The Master reached out with its mind. Although it seemed counterintuitive, engaging many different perspectives at once served to focus the Master’s thoughts and soothe its temper.

Through the eyes of one of its minions, the Master watched the green vehicle driven by Dr. Ephraim Goodweather barrel through an unlit intersection in rural upstate New York, the oversized Jeep following the central yellow line. Moving ever north.

It viewed the Explorer driven by Dr. Nora Martinez driving past a church in a small town square. The criminal Augustin Elizalde leaned out the front window, and there was a muzzle flash and the Master’s view disappeared. They were also moving north, along the other side of the highway they had started out on—the interstate on which the Master was now traveling at a high rate of speed.

It saw the boy, Zachary Goodweather, seated in the helicopter crossing the state through the air, traveling northwest on a sharp diagonal. The boy looked out the window of the flying machine, ignoring the airsick Dr. Everett Barnes seated next to him, the older man’s face a bluish shade of gray. The boy, and perhaps Barnes, would be instrumental to the Master in distracting or otherwise persuading Goodweather.

The Master also saw through Kelly Goodweather’s perception. Traveling inside a moving vehicle dulled her homing impulse somewhat, but still the Master felt her closeness to Dr. Goodweather, her former human mate. Her sensitivity gave the Master another perspective with which to triangulate his focus on Dr. Goodweather.

Turn off here.

The town car swerved and zoomed down the exit ramp, the gang leader Creem driving with a heavy foot.