The Night Eternal

The rest paused just a moment to confirm that the other human held no silver and that the scent of blood came from him. Then they ran at him like pound dogs thrown a slab of meat.

Eph dragged Zack with him, following the Born to the shoreline where the dock began. He watched Mr. Quinlan hesitate a moment, the keg-shaped bomb in his arms, before crossing from the sand onto the wood planking of the long dock.

Nora came running to meet them. Fet was alarmed at her wound, rushing to her. “Who did this to you?” he roared.

“Barnes,” she said. “But don’t worry. We won’t be seeing him again.” She then looked at Mr. Quinlan. “You have to go! You know you can’t wait for daylight.”

The Master expects that. So I will stay. This is perhaps the last time we will see the sun.

“We’re going now,” said Eph, Zack pulling at his arm.

“I’m ready,” said Fet, starting toward the dock.

Eph raised his sword, holding the point near Fet’s throat. Fet looked at him, anger rising.

“Just me,” Eph said.

“What the… ?” Fet used his own sword to bat Eph’s away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Eph shook his head. “You stay with Nora.”

Nora looked from Fet to Eph.

“No,” said Fet. “You need me to do this.”

“She needs you,” said Eph, the words stinging as he spoke them. “I have Mr. Quinlan.” He looked back at the dock, needing to go. “Get to a skiff and sail downriver. I’ve gotta give Zack to Ann and William, to get him out of here. I’ll tell them to be looking for you.”

Nora said, “Let Mr. Quinlan set the detonator. You just drop him off.”

“I have to make sure it’s set. Then I’ll be along.”

Nora hugged him hard, then stepped back. She lifted Zack’s chin to look at his face, to try to give him some confidence or consolation. The boy blinked and looked away.

“You’re going to be okay,” she told him.

But the boy’s attention was elsewhere. He was looking skyward, and after a moment Eph heard it too.

Black helicopters. Approaching from the south. Coming in low.

Gus came hobbling down from the beach. Eph saw immediately that his left arm was badly broken—his left hand swelling with blood—though that condition did not in any way cool the gangbanger’s anger toward him. “Choppers!” yelled Gus. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

Eph quickly slipped off his pack. “Take it,” he said to Fet. The Lumen was inside.

“Fuck the manual, man,” Gus said. “This is practice!”

Gus dropped his gun, shaking off his own pack with a painful grunt—first his good arm, and then Nora helped him lift it off his broken one—then rummaged inside for two purple-colored canisters from his pack. He pulled the pins with his teeth, rolling the smoke grenades to the right and to the left.

Violet smoke billowed, lifted by the shore wind, shielding the beach and dock from view and providing some intermediate cover from the approaching helicopters. “Get outta here!” yelled Gus. “You and your boy. Take care of the Master. I’ll cover your ass—but you remember, Goodweather, you and me, we got business to settle after.” Gus gently, though with great pain, pushed the jacket sleeve up from the swollen wrist of his bad arm, showing Eph the scarred word “MADRE,” left there from all of Gus’s bloodletting.

“Eph,” said Nora. “Don’t forget—the Master is still out here somewhere.”

At the far corner of the dock, some thirty yards from shore, Ann and William waited inside two ten-foot aluminum rowboats with outboard motors. Eph ran Zack to the first boat. When the boy would not board willingly, Eph lifted him up bodily and placed him in there. He looked at his son. “We’re going to get through this, okay, Z?”

Zack had no response. He watched the Born loading the bomb onto the other boat, between the rear and middle bench seats, and gently but firmly lift William out, depositing him back on the dock.

Eph remembered the Master was in Zack’s head, seeing this too. Seeing Eph right now.

“It’s just about over,” Eph said.

The violet smoke cover billowed up off the beach, blowing across to the trees, revealing more advancing vampires. “The Master needs a human to take him across water,” said Fet, stepping up with Nora and Gus. “I don’t think there’s anybody left here but us three. We just have to make sure nobody else gets to the skiffs.”

The violet smoke parted strangely, as though folding in on itself. As though something had passed through it at incredible speed.

“Wait—did you see that?” yelled Fet.

Nora heard the thrumming presence of the Master. Impossibly, the wall of smoke changed course completely, curling back from the trees and rolling against the river breeze toward the shore—consuming them. Nora and Fet were immediately separated, vampires rushing at them silently out of the smoke, their bare feet soft on the damp sand.