The Night Eternal

The couple had thought they were doing the right thing, following the new laws. Or perhaps they were spiteful; everyone else had to abandon their elders to the master race.

The doors opened and the human transit cops boarded first. Even if she could murder two of her own kind and release the two strigoi and escape from the underground station, she would have to do so alone. There was no way she could do so without sacrificing her mother, either to capture or to death.

One of the cops reached over and pulled back Nora’s mother’s hood, revealing her head. “Ladies,” he said, “you have to come with us.” When Nora did not stand right away, he placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly. “Now.”

Bellevue Hospital

EPH BACKED AWAY from the window and the vampires converging on Bellevue Hospital on the streets below. He had screwed up… Dread burned at the pit of his stomach. It was all lost.

His first instinct was to keep rising, to buy time by heading to the roof—but that was an obvious dead end. The only advantage to being on the roof was that he could throw himself off of it, were the choice death or vampire afterlife.

Going straight down meant fighting his way through them. That would be like running into a swarm of killer bees: he was almost certain to get stung at least once, and once was all it took.

So, running was not an option. Nor was making a suicidal final stand. But he had spent enough time in hospitals to consider this his home turf. The advantage was his; he just had to find it.

He hurried past the patient elevators, then stopped, doubling back, stopping before the gas control panel. An emergency shutoff for the entire floor. He cracked open the plastic shield and made sure the cutoff was open, then stabbed at the fixture until he heard a pronounced hiss.

He ran to the stairwell, charging up one flight, racing to that floor’s gas control panel, and repeating the same damage. Then right back into the stairs—and this time he could hear the bloodsuckers charging up the lower flights. No outcry, because they had no voice. Only the slapping of dead, bare feet as they climbed.

He risked one more floor, making quick work of the access panel there. He pressed the nearby elevator button but did not wait for the car, instead running off in search of the service elevators, the ones the orderlies used to transport supply carts and bedridden patients. He located the bank of elevators and pressed the button, waiting for one to board.

The adrenaline of survival and the chase put a charge into his blood that was as sweet as any artificial stimulant he could find. This, he realized, was the high he sought from pharmaceuticals. Over the course of so many life-or-death battles, he had messed up his pleasure receptors. Too many highs and too many lows.

The elevator door opened and he pressed “B” for basement. Signs admonished him on the importance of patient confidentiality and clean hands. A child smiled at him from a grimy poster. Sucking on a lollipop and giving him a wink and a thumbs-up. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE A-OKAY said the printed moron. On the poster were timetables and dates for a pediatrics fair taking place a million years ago. Eph returned one sword to the bag on his back, watching the floor numbers go down. The elevator jerked once, and the car darkened and stopped between floors—stuck. A nightmare scenario, but then moments later it lurched and continued downward. Like everything else that depended on regular upkeep, these mechanical conveyances were not to be trusted—that is, if you had a choice.

The door dinged and opened finally, Eph exiting into the service wing of the hospital basement. Stretchers with bare mattresses were bunched up against the wall like supermarket carts awaiting customers. A giant canvas laundry cart sat beneath the open end of a wall chute.

In the corner, on a handful of long-handled dollies, stood a dozen or so green-painted oxygen tanks. Eph worked as fast as his fatigued body allowed, hustling the tanks into each of the three elevators, four tanks to a car. He pulled off their metal nose caps and used them to hammer at the feed nozzles until he heard the reassuring hiss of escaping gas. He pressed the buttons for the top floor, and all three doors closed.

He pulled a half-full can of charcoal lighter fluid from inside his pack. His box of all-weather matches was somewhere inside his coat pocket. With trembling hands, he tipped over the canvas laundry cart, emptying the crusty linen in front of the three elevators, then squeezed the lighter fluid can with wicked glee, pissing flammable liquid all over the heap of cotton. He struck a pair of matches and dropped them onto the pile, which ignited with a hot whumph. Eph pressed the call button for all three elevator cars—operated individually from the service basement—and then ran like hell, trying to find a way out.