The Fall

“Sardu,” said Setrakian, addressing him by the name of the human form he had taken, the noble giant of legend, Jusef Sardu.

I see you are dressed as a holy man. You once spoke of your God. Do you believe He delivered you from the burning pit?

Setrakian said, “No.”

Do you still wish to destroy me?

Setrakian did not speak. But the answer was yes.

It seemed to read his thought, its voice burbling with what could only be described as pleasure.

You are resilient, Abraham Setrakian. Like the leaf that refuses to fall.

“What is this now? Why are you still here?”

You mean Hauptmann. He was made to facilitate my involvement in the camp. In the end, I turned him. And he then fed upon the young officers he once favored. He had a taste for pure Aryan blood.

“Then—there are others.”

The chief administrator. And the camp doctor.

Eichhorst, thought Setrakian. And Dr. Dreverhaven. Yes indeed. Setrakian remembered them both well.

“And Strebel and his family?”

Strebel interested me not at all, except as a meal. Those bodies we destroy after feeding, before they begin to turn. You see, food here has become scarce. Your war is a nuisance. Why create more mouths to feed?

“Then—what do you want here?”

Hauptmann’s head tilted unnaturally, his full throat clucking once, like a frog’s.

Why don’t we call it nostalgia. I miss the efficiencies of the camp. I have become spoiled by the convenience of a human buffet. And now—I am tired of answering your questions.

“One more then.” Setrakian looked again at the sacks of soil in Hauptmann’s hands. “One month before the uprising, Hauptmann directed me to construct a very large cabinet. He even supplied the wood, a very thick ebony grain, imported. I was given a drawing to copy, carving into the top doors.”

Indeed. You do good work, Jew.

A “special project,” Hauptmann had called it. At the time, Setrakian, having no choice in the matter, feared he was building furniture for an SS officer in Berlin. Perhaps even Hitler himself.

But no. It was much worse.

History told me the camp would not last. None of the great experiments do. I knew that the feast would end, and that I would be moving soon. One of the Allies’ bombs had struck an unintended target: my bed. So I needed a new one. Now I am sure to keep it with me at all times.

Setrakian’s anger, not fear, was the cause of his shaking.

He had built the great vampire’s coffin.

And now, Hauptmann must feed. I am not at all surprised that you returned here, Abraham Setrakian. It seems we are both sentimental about this place.

Hauptmann dropped his bags of dirt. Setrakian stood as the vampire started toward the table, backing up against the wall.

Do not worry, Abraham Setrakian. I will not give you to the animals after. I think you should join us. Your character is strong. Your bones will heal, and your hands will again serve us.

Up close, Setrakian felt Hauptmann’s uncanny heat. The vampire radiated its fever, and stunk of the earth it had been collecting. Its lipless mouth parted and Setrakian could see the tip of the stinger inside, ready to strike at him.

He looked into vampire Hauptmann’s red eyes, and hoped that the Sardu Thing was indeed looking back.

Hauptmann’s dirty hand closed around the bandage covering Setrakian’s neck. The vampire pulled the gauze away, and in doing so uncovered a bright silver throat piece covering the esophagus and major arteries. Hauptmann’s eyes widened as it stumbled backward, repelled by the protective silver plate Setrakian had hired his village smith to fashion.

Hauptmann felt the opposite wall at his back. He groaned, weakened and confused. But Setrakian could see that he was only readying his next attack.

Resilient to the end.

As Hauptmann ran at Setrakian, Setrakian produced, from the folds of his robe, a silver crucifix whose long end had been sharpened to a point, and met him halfway.

The slaying of the Nazi vampire was, in the end, an act of pure release. For Setrakian, it represented an opportunity for revenge upon Treblinka soil, as well as a blow against the great vampire and his mysterious ways. But, more than any of that, it served as confirmation of Setrakian’s sanity.

Yes, he had seen what he had seen in the camp.

Yes, the myth was true.

And yes, the truth was terrible.

The slaying sealed Setrakian’s fate. He thenceforth dedicated his life to educating himself about the strigoi—and hunting them down.

He shed his priestly vestments that night, trading them for the garments of a simple farmer, and burned clean the whitish tip of his crucifixion dagger. On his way out, he overturned the candle onto his robe and some rags, and walked off with the light from the flames of the cursed farmhouse flashing against his back.

COLD WIND BLOWING

Knickerbocker Loans and Curios, East 118th Street, Spanish Harlem

SETRAKIAN UNLOCKED THE pawnshop door and raised the security gate, and Fet, waiting outside like a customer, imagined the old man repeating this routine every day for the past thirty-five years. The shop-owner came out into the sunlight, and for just a moment everything might have been normal. An old man squinting into the sun on a street in New York City. The moment inspired nostalgia in Fet, rather than encouragement. It did not seem to him that there were many more “normal” moments left.

Setrakian, in a tweed vest without jacket, white shirtsleeves rolled just past his wrists, looked at the large van. The door and side wall read: MANHATTAN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS.

Fet told him, “I borrowed it.”

The old professor appeared pleased and intrigued. “I wonder, can you get another?”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“We cannot remain here any longer.”

Eph sat down on the flat exercise mat inside the odd-angled storage room on the top floor of Setrakian’s home. Zack sat there with one leg bent, his knee as high as his cheek, arms hugging his thigh. Zack looked ragged, like a boy sent off to sleepaway camp who came back changed, and not for the better. Silver-backed mirrors surrounded them, giving Eph the feeling of being watched by many old eyes. The window frame within the iron bars had been hastily boarded over, a bandage uglier than the wound it covered.

Eph studied his son’s face, trying to read it. He was worried about the boy’s sanity, as he was worried about his own. He rubbed his mouth in preparation for talking, and felt roughness around the edges of his lips and chin, realizing he hadn’t shaved in days.

“I checked the parenting handbook earlier,” he began. “Unfortunately there was no chapter about vampires.”