The old man bit into the creme-filled cake on his way to a bedroom to change clothes. Eph looked around the small kitchen, and then at Nora. The place smelled clean despite its cluttered appearance. Nora lifted, from the table with only one chair, a framed black-and-white portrait of a young raven-haired woman in a simple dark dress, posed upon a great rock at an otherwise empty beach, fingers laced over one bare knee, pleasant features arranged in a winning smile. Eph returned to the hallway through which they had entered, looking into the old mirrors hanging from the walls—dozens of them, of all different sizes, time-streaked and imperfect. Old books were stacked along both sides of the floor, narrowing the passageway.
The old man reappeared, having changed into different articles of the same sort of clothing: an old tweed suit with vest, braces, a necktie, and brown leather shoes buffed until thin. He still wore wool tipless gloves over his damaged hands.
“I see you collect mirrors,” Eph said.
“Certain kinds. I find older glass to be most revealing.”
“Are you now ready to tell us what is going on?”
The old man dipped his head gently to one side. “Doctor, this isn’t something one simply tells. It is something that must be revealed.” He moved past Eph to the door through which they had entered. “Please—come with.”
Eph followed him back down the stairs, Nora behind him. They passed the first-floor pawnshop, continuing through another locked door to another curling flight leading down. The old man descended, one angled step at a time, his gnarled hand sliding down the cool iron rail, his voice filling the narrow passageway. “I consider myself a repository of ancient knowledge, of persons dead and books long forgotten. Knowledge accumulated over a life of study.”
Nora said, “When you stopped us outside the morgue, you said a number of things. You indicated that you knew the dead from the airplane were not decomposing normally.”
“Correct.”
“Based upon?”
“My experience.”
Nora was confused. “Experience with other aircraft-related incidents?”
“The fact that they were on an airplane is completely incidental. I have seen this phenomenon before, indeed. In Budapest, in Basra. In Prague and not ten kilometers outside Paris. I have seen it in a tiny fishing village on the banks of the Yellow River. I have seen it at a seven-thousand-feet elevation in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. And yes, I have seen it on this continent as well. Seen its traces. Usually dismissed as a fluke, or explained away as rabies or schizophrenia, insanity, or, most recently, an occasion of serial murder—”
“Hold on, hold on. You yourself have seen corpses slow to decompose?”
“It is the first stage, yes.”
Eph said, “The first stage.”
The landing curled to an end at a locked door. Setrakian produced a key, separate from the rest, hanging from a chain around his neck. The old man’s crooked fingers worked the key into two padlocks, one large, one small. The door opened inward, hot lights coming on automatically, and they followed him inside the humming basement room, bright and deep.
The first thing to catch Eph’s eye was a wall of battle armor, ranging from full knight’s wear to chain mail to Japanese samurai torso and neck plates, and cruder gear made of woven leather for protecting the neck, chest, and groin. Weapons also: mounted swords and knives, their blades fashioned of bright, cold steel. More modern-looking devices were arranged on an old, low table, their battery packs in chargers. He recognized night-vision goggles and modified nail guns. And more mirrors, mostly pocket-size, arranged so that he could see himself staring in bewilderment at this gallery of… of what?
“The shop”—the old man gestured to the floor above them—“gave me a fair living, but I did not come to this line of business because of an affinity for transistor radios and heirloom jewelry.”
He closed the door behind them, the lights around the door frame going dark. The installed fixtures ran the height and length of the door—purple tubes Eph recognized as ultraviolet lamps—arranged around the door like a force field of light.
To prohibit germs from entering the room? Or to keep something else out?
“No,” he continued, “the reason I chose it as my profession was because it afforded me ready access to an underground market of esoteric items, antiquities, and tomes. Illicit, though not usually illegal. Acquired for my personal collection, and my research.”
Eph looked around again. This looked less like a museum collection than a small arsenal. “Your research?”
“Indeed. I was for many years a professor of Eastern European Literature and Folklore at the University of Vienna.”
Eph appraised him again. He sure dressed like a Viennese professor. “And you retired to become a Harlem pawnbroker-slash-curator?”
“I did not retire. I was made to leave. Disgraced. Certain forces aligned against me. And yet, as I look back now, going underground at that time most certainly saved my life. It was in fact the best thing I could have done.” He turned to face them, folding his hands behind his back, professorially. “This scourge we are now witnessing in its earliest stages has existed for centuries. Over millennia. I suspect, though cannot prove, it goes back to the most ancient of times.”
Eph nodded, not understanding the man, only glad to finally be making some progress. “So we are talking about a virus.”
“Yes. Of sorts. A strain of disease that is a corruption of both the flesh and the spirit.” The old man was positioned in such a way that, from Eph’s and Nora’s perspective, the array of swords on the wall fanned out on either side of him like steel-bladed wings. “So, a virus? Yes. But I should also like to introduce you to another
“What’s that?” he said.
“Vampire.”
A word like that, spoken in earnestness, hangs in the air for a while.
“You are thinking,” said Setrakian, the former professor, “of a moody overactor in a black satin cape. Or else a dashing figure of power, with hidden fangs. Or some existential soul burdened with the curse of eternal life. Or— Bela Lugosi meets Abbott and Costello.”
Nora was looking around the room again. “I don’t see any crucifixes or holy water. No strings of garlic.”
“Garlic has certain interesting immunological properties, and can be useful in its own right. So its presence in the mythology is biologically understandable, at any rate. But crucifixes and holy water?” He shrugged. “Products of their time. Products of one Victorian author’s fevered Irish imagination, and the religious climate of the day.”
Setrakian had expected their expressions of doubt.
“They have always been here,” he continued. “Nesting, feeding. In secret and in darkness, because that is their nature. There are seven originals, known as the Ancients. The Masters. Not one per continent. They are not solitary beings as a rule, but clannish. Until very recently—‘recently’ considering their open-ended life span—they were all spread throughout the greatest landmass, what we know today as Europe and Asia, the Russian federation, the Arabian peninsula, and the African continent. Which is to say, the Old World. There was a schism, a clash among their kind. The nature of this disagreement, I do not know. Suffice it to say, this rift preceded the discovery of the New World by centuries. Then the founding of the American colonies opened the door to a new and fertile land. Three remained behind in the Old World, and three went ahead to the New. Both sides respected the other’s domain, and a truce was agreed upon and upheld.
“The problem was that seventh Ancient. He is a rogue who turned his back on both factions. While I cannot prove it at this time, the abrupt nature of this act leads me to believe that he is behind this.”
“This,” said Nora.
“This incursion into the New World. Breaking the solemn truce. This upsetting of the balance of their breed’s existence. An act, essentially, of war.”
Eph said, “A war of vampires.”
Setrakian’s smile was for himself. “You simplify because you cannot believe. You reduce; you diminish. Because you were raised to doubt and debunk. To reduce to a small set of knowns for easy digestion. Because you
