The worms came spilling out of the Master, hundreds and hundreds of them, seeping out of its reddened flesh. The frenzied worms wove all around them, in and out of their flesh, fusing the two beings in a crimson embroidery.
Then, finally, the Master released the old husk of the long-ago giant, which crumbled and broke away as it hit the floor. And, as he did so, the soul of the boy-hunter also found release. It disappeared from the chorus of voices, the hymn that animated the Master.
Sardu was no more. Gabriel Bolivar was something new.
Bolivar/the Master spit the soil out. It opened its mouth and tested its stinger. The fleshy protuberance rode out with a firm snap, and recoiled.
The Master was reborn.
The body was unfamiliar somehow, the Master having been accustomed to Sardu for so long, but this transitional body was flexible and fresh. The Master would soon put it to the test.
At any rate, this human physicality was of little concern to the Master now. The giant’s body had suited the creature when it lived among the shadows. But size and durability of the host body mattered little now. Not in this new world that it had created in its own image.
The Master sensed human intrusion. A strong heart, a swift pulse. A boy.
Out of the adjoining tunnel, Kelly Goodweather arrived with her son, Zachary, firmly in her grip. The boy stood trembling, crouched over in a posture of self-protection. He saw nothing in the darkness, only sensing presences, heated bodies in the cool underground. He smelled ammonia and dank soil and something rotting.
Kelly approached with the pride of a cat depositing a mouse at its master’s threshold. The Master’s physical appearance, revealed to her night-seeing eyes in the blackness of the underground chamber, did not confound her in the least. She saw his presence within Bolivar and questioned nothing.
The Master scraped some magnesium from the wall, sprinkling it into the basket of a torch. He then chipped into the stone with his long middle nail, a spray of sparks igniting the small torch, bringing an orange glow to the chamber.
Zack saw before him a bony vampire with glowing red eyes and a slack expression. His mind had mostly shut down in panic, but there was still that small part of him that trusted his mother, that found calm so long as she was near.
Then, near the gaunt vampire, Zack saw the empty corpse lying on the floor, its sun-damaged, vinyl-smooth flesh still glistening. The creature’s pelt.
He saw also a walking stick leaning against the cave wall. The wolf’s head caught the flicker of the flame.
Professor Setrakian.
No.
The voice was inside his head. Answering him with the power and authority Zack suspected God might speak to him someday, in answer to his prayers.
But this was not God’s voice. This was the commanding presence of the thin creature before him.
“Dad,” Zack whispered. His father had been with the professor. Tears welled up. “Dad.”
Zack’s mouth moved, but the word had no breath behind it. His lungs were locking up. He felt his pockets for his inhaler. His knees buckling, Zack slumped to the ground.
Kelly watched her suffering son impassively. The Master had been prepared to destroy Kelly. The Master was unaccustomed to defiance, and could think of no reason why Kelly had not turned the boy immediately.
Now the Master saw why. Kelly’s bond with the boy was so strong, the affection so potent, that she had instead brought him to the Master to be turned.
This was an act of devotion. An offering borne out of the human precursor—love—to vampire need, which, in fact, surpassed that need.
And the Master did indeed hunger. And the boy was a fine specimen. He would be honored to receive the Master.
But now… things appeared different in the darkness of a new night.
The Master saw more benefit in waiting.
It sensed the distress in the boy’s chest, his heart first racing, and now starting to slow. The boy lay on the ground, clutching at his throat, the Master standing over him. The Master pricked its thumb with the sharp nail of its prominent middle finger, and, taking care not to let slip any worms, allowed one single white drop to fall into the boy’s open mouth, landing upon his gasping tongue.
The boy groaned suddenly, sucking air. In his mouth, the taste of copper and hot camphor—but in a few moments, he was breathing normally again. Once, on a dare, Zack had licked the ends of a nine-volt battery. That was the jolt he had felt before his lungs opened. He looked up at the Master—this creature, this presence—with the awe of the cured.
EPILOGUE
Extract from the diary of Ephraim Goodweather
Sunday, November 28
With every city and province around the globe—already alarmed by initial reports out of New York City—now afflicted by growing waves of unexplained disappearances…
With rumors and wild tales—of the vanished returning to their homes after dark, possessed of inhuman desires—spreading at speeds more scorching than the pandemic itself…
With terms like “vampirism” and “plague” finally being uttered by those in positions of power and influence…
And with the economy, the media, and transportation systems all failing throughout the globe…
… the world had already teetered over the edge, into fullblown panic.
And then began the nuclear-plant meltdowns. One after the other.
No official sequence of events or proper time line can, nor ever will be, verified, due to the mass destruction and subsequent devastation. What follows is the accepted hypothesis, though admittedly a “best guess” based mainly upon the arrangement of the tiles before the first domino fell.
After China, the reactor failure of a Stoneheart-constructed nuclear plant in Hadera, on the western coast of Israel, led to a second core meltdown. A vapor cloud of radioactivity was released, containing large particles of radioisotopes as well as caesium and tellurium in aerosol form. Warm Mediterranean wind currents scattered the contamination northeast into Syria and Turkey and over the Black Sea into Russia, as well as east over Iraq and northern Iran.
Terrorist sabotage was suspected as the cause, with fingers pointed at Pakistan. Pakistan denied any involvement, while a meeting of the Israeli cabinet followed an emergency meeting of the Knesset, viewed as a war council. Meanwhile, Syria and Cyprus demanded international censure of Israel as well as financial reparations, and Iran declared that the vampire curse was also obviously Jewish in origin.
Pakistan’s president and prime minister, believing that the reactor meltdown was an excuse for Israel to launch an attack, led the parliament to authorize a preemptive nuclear strike of six warheads.
Israel countered with their second strike capability.
Iran bombed Israel and immediately claimed victory. India launched retaliatory fifteen-kiloton warheads against Pakistan and Iran.
North Korea, spurred on by fear of the plague as well as an extended famine, launched against South Korea and sent its troops across the thirty-eighth parallel.
