when the lunch crowd comes. Food makes them happy, but they can get food just about anywhere. It’s infrastructure that rats really crave.” He pointed to the ground. “Underneath, in there, is an abandoned subway station. The old City Hall stop.”
Setrakian said, “It still connects?”
“Everything connects underground, one way or another.”
They watched, and did not wait for long.
“There,” said Setrakian.
Eph saw a bedraggled-looking woman by a streetlight, some thirty yards away. “A homeless woman,” he said.
“No,” said Setrakian, handing his heat scope to Eph.
Eph saw, through the scope, the woman as a fierce blur of red against a cool, dim background.
“Their metabolism,” said Setrakian. “There is another.”
A heavy woman waddling, still getting her sea legs, staying in the shadows along the low iron fence ringing the park.
Then another: a man wearing a newspaper hawker’s change apron, carrying a body on his shoulder. Dropping it over the fence, then clumsily scaling it himself. He fell going over, ripping one leg of his pants, standing back up without any reaction and picking up his victim and continuing into the tree cover.
“Yes,” said Setrakian. “This is it.”
Eph shivered. The presence of these walking pathogens, these humanoid diseases, repulsed him. He felt sick watching them stagger into the park, lower animals obeying some unconscious impulse, withdrawing from the light. He sensed their hurry, like commuters trying to catch that last train home.
They quietly stepped out of the van. Fet wore a protective Tyvek jumpsuit and rubber wading boots. He offered spare sets to the others, Eph and Setrakian choosing only the boots. Setrakian sprayed, without asking, each of them from a bottle of scent-eliminating spray with a picture of a deer in red crosshairs on the label. The spray of course could do nothing about the carbon dioxide emitted by their breath, nor the sound of their pumping hearts and coursing blood.
Fet carried the most. The nail gun was in a bag hung across his chest, complete with three extra loaders of silver brads. He carried various tools on his belt, including his night-vision monocular and his black-light wand, along with one of Setrakian’s silver daggers in a leather sheath. He held a high-powered Luma light in his hand, and bore the UVC mine in a mesh bag over his shoulder.
Setrakian carried his walking stick and a Luma light, the heat scope in his coat pocket. He double-checked the pillbox in his vest, then left his hat behind in the van.
Eph also carried a Luma, as well as, in a sheath strapped across his chest, a silver sword, the twenty-five- inch blade and grip against his back.
Fet said, “I’m not sure this makes sense. Going down to fight a beast on its own turf.”
Setrakian said, “We have no alternative. This is the only time we know where he is.” He looked up at the sky, bluing with the first faint glimmer of day. “The night is ending. Let us go.”
They made their way to the low fence gate, which was kept locked overnight. Eph and Fet scaled it, then reached back to help Setrakian.
The sound of more footsteps on the sidewalk—moving quickly, one heel dragging—made them hustle deep into the park.
The interior was unlit at night, and thick with trees. They heard the park fountain running and automobiles passing outside.
“Where are they?” whispered Eph.
Setrakian brought out his heat scope. He scanned the area, then handed the scope off to Eph. Eph saw bright red shapes moving stealthily through the otherwise cool landscape.
The answer to his question was: they were everywhere. And quickly converging on a point to their north.
Their destination became clear. A kiosk on the Broadway side of the park, a dark structure Eph couldn’t make much more of from that distance. He watched and waited until the numbers of returning vampires declined, and Setrakian’s scope picked up no other significant heat sources.
They ran to the structure. In the burgeoning light, they saw that it was an information kiosk, kept shuttered overnight. They pulled open the door, and found it empty.
They huddled inside the cramped space, the wooden counter taken up by wire racks full of tourist fliers and tour-bus schedules. Fet turned his little Maglite on twin metal doors in the floor. There were thick eye-holes at either end, the padlocks gone. The lettering across the twin doors read, MTA.
Fet pulled open both doors, Eph with his lamp at the ready. Stairs led down into darkness. Setrakian aimed his flashlight at a faded sign on the wall as Fet started down.
“Emergency exit,” Fet reported. “They sealed off the old City Hall station after World War Two. The track turn was too sharp for newer trains, the platform too narrow—though I think the number six local still turns around here.” He looked from side to side. “Must have demolished the old emergency exit, and put this kiosk up on top of it.”
“Fine,” Setrakian said. “Let us go.”
Eph followed, bringing up the rear. He did not bother to close the doors behind him, wanting a straight shot to the surface if they needed it. Grime coated the sides of each step, the middles cleaned by regular foot traffic. Darker than night down there.
Fet said, “Next stop, 1945.”
The flight of stairs ended at an open door leading to a second flight of wider stairs, leading down to what had to be the old mezzanine. A tiled dome with four arched sides, rising to an ornate skylight of modern glass, was just starting to blue. Some ladders and old scaffolding had been laid against the wooden ticket room along one rounded wall. The arched doorways were without turnstiles, the station predating tokens.
The far arch led to another flight of stairs no more than five persons wide, emptying into the narrow platform. They listened at the arched doorway, hearing only the distant screech of subway car brakes, then emerged fully onto the abandoned platform.
It was like a whispering gallery inside a cathedral. Original brass chandeliers containing bare, dark bulbs hung from the arched ceilings, the interlocking tile along the arches looking like giant zippers. Two vault skylights allowed light through amethyst glass, the rest having been leaded over due to air raid concerns after World War II. Farther away, light appeared through some surface grates, still very faint, but enough to give depth to their perception along the gracefully curved track. There was not one right angle in the entire place. The tile work was damaged throughout, including the glazed terra-cotta of the nearest wall sign, done in gold with green borders, around white plates containing blue letters spelling CITY HALL.
A film of steel dust along the curling platform showed the vampires’ footprints, leading into the dark.
They followed the footprints to the end of the platform, jumping down onto the still-live tracks. Everything operated on a leftward curve along the train loop. They switched off their flashlights, Eph’s Luma showing urine splashes everywhere, iridescent and multicolored, ending farther on. Setrakian was reaching for his thermal scope when they heard noises behind them. Latecomers moving off the mezzanine stairs into the platform. Eph switched off his wand and they crossed the three rails to the far wall, standing flat against the recessed stone.
The latecomers came off the platform, feet scratching the dusty stones along the rail beds. Setrakian spied them through his heat scope, two bright orange-red forms, nothing unusual about their shape or posture. The first one disappeared, and it took Setrakian a long moment to realize that it had slipped into a seam in the wall, an opening they had somehow missed. The second form stopped at that same spot, but turned there instead of disappearing, looking their way. Setrakian did not move, knowing the creature’s night vision was advanced but not yet matured. His thermal reading registered the vampire’s throat as its warmest region. A spill of orange down its leg cooled immediately to yellow as it pooled on the ground, the creature emptying its bladder. Its head lifted like an animal scenting prey, looking up the tracks away from their hiding space… then ducked its head and disappeared into the crack in the wall.
Setrakian moved back into the railway, the others following him. The foul smell of fresh, hot vampire piss filled the arched space, the burnt-ammonia scent holding dark associations for Setrakian. The others stepped around the stain on their way to the seam in the wall.
