The Night Eternal

“Fuckers!” yelled Bruno.

They were all coming now. Eph wheeled and readied his sword. But there were just too many, and all moving at once. He started backpedaling—

You are here searching for someone, Goodweather.

—and felt stones beneath his feet as he neared the building. Bruno kept hacking and slaying as Eph backed up three steps, feeling for the door handle, opening the latch, the door giving way.

You are mine now, Goodweather.

The voice boomed, disorienting him. Eph pulled on Bruno’s shoulder, motioning to the gangbanger to follow him inside. They ran past makeshift cages on either side of the narrow walkway, containing humans in various stages of distress. A madhouse of sorts. The people howled at Eph and Bruno as they hurried through.

Dead end, Goodweather.

Eph shook his head hard, trying to chase the Master’s voice from his mind. Its presence was addling, like the voice of madness itself. Add to that the people clawing at the cages as he passed, and Eph was caught in a cyclone of confusion and terror.

The first of the pursuing vampires entered the other end. Eph tried one door, leading to an office of sorts, with a dentist-style chair whose headrest, and the floor beneath it, was crusted with dry, red human blood. Another door led outside, Eph jumping down three steps. More vampires awaited him, having gone around the building rather than through it, and Eph swung and chopped, turning just in time to catch one female leaping at him from the roof.

Why did you come here, Goodweather?

Eph leaped back from the slain female. He and Bruno backed away, side by side, heading toward an unlit, windowless structure set against the high perimeter fence. Perhaps the vampires’ quarters? The camp strigoi’s nest?

Eph and Bruno angled themselves, only to find that the fence turned sharply and ended at another unlit structure.

Dead end. I told you.

Eph stood up to the vampires coming toward them in the dark.

“Undead end,” Eph muttered. “You bastard.”

Bruno glanced over at him. “Bastard? You the one who ran us into this trap!”

Once I catch you and turn you, I will know all your secrets.

That turned Eph cold. “Here they come,” he said to Bruno—and got ready for them.

Nora had arrived at Barnes’s office inside the administrative building ready to agree to anything, including giving herself to Barnes, in order to save her mother and get close to him. She despised her former boss even more than the vampire oppressors. His immorality sickened her—but the fact that he believed she was weak enough to simply bend to his will made her nauseous.

Killing him would show him that. If his fantasy was her submission, her plan was to drive the shank into his heart. Death by butter knife: how fitting!

She would do it as he lay in bed or in the middle of his dinner patter, so hideously civilized. He was more evil than the strigoi: his corruption was not a disease, was not something inflicted upon him. His corruption was opportunistic. A choice.

Worst of all was his perception of her as a potential victim. He had fatally misread Nora, and all that was left was for her to show him the error of his ways. In steel.

He made her wait out in the hallway, where there was no chair or bathroom, for three hours. Twice he left his office, resplendent in his crisp, white admiral’s uniform, strolling past Nora carrying some papers but never acknowledging her, passing without a word, disappearing behind another door. And so she waited, stewing, even when the single camp whistle signaled the rations call, one hand across her grumbling stomach—her mind squarely focused on her mother and murder.

Finally, Barnes’s assistant—a young female with clean, shoulder-length auburn hair, wearing a laundered gray jumpsuit—opened the door, admitting Nora without a word. The assistant remained in the doorway as Nora passed through. Perfumed skin and minty breath. Nora returned the assistant’s look of disapproval, imagining just how the woman had secured such a plum position in Barnes’s world.

The assistant sat behind her desk, leaving Nora to try the next door, which was locked. Nora turned and retreated to one of the two hard folding chairs against the wall facing the assistant. The assistant made busy noises in an effort to ignore Nora while simultaneously asserting her superiority. Her telephone buzzed and she lifted the receiver, answering it quietly. The room, save for the unfinished wooden walls and the laptop computer, resembled a low-tech 1940s-era office: corded telephone, a pen and paper set, blotter. On the near corner of the desk, just off the blotter, sat a thick chocolate brownie on a small paper plate. The assistant hung up after a few whispered words and noticed Nora staring at the treat. She reached for the plate, taking just a nibble of the dessert cake, a few stray crumbs sprinkling down into her lap.

Nora heard a click in the doorknob, followed by Barnes’s voice.

“Come in!”

The assistant moved her treat to the other side of her desk, out of Nora’s reach, before waving her through. Nora again walked to the door and turned the knob, which, this time, gave way.

Barnes was standing behind his desk, stuffing files into an open attache case, preparing to leave for the day. “Good morning, Carly. Is the car ready?”

“Yes, sir, Dr. Barnes,” sang the assistant. “They just called up from the gate.”

“Call down and make sure the heat is on in the back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nora?” said Barnes, still stuffing, not looking up. His demeanor was much changed from their previous encounter at his palatial home. “You have something you wish to discuss with me?”

“You win.”

“I win? Wonderful. Now tell me, what is it I have won?”

“Your way. With me.”

He hesitated just a moment before closing the case, snapping the clasps. He looked at her and nodded slightly to himself, as though having trouble remembering his original offer. “Very good,” he said, then went rooting in a drawer for some other nearly forgotten thing.

Nora waited. “So?” she said.

“So,” he said.

“Now what?”

“Now I am in a very great rush. But I will let you know.”

“I thought… I’m not going back to your house now?”

“Soon. Another time. Busy day and all.”

“But—I’m ready now.”

“Yes. I thought you would grow a bit more eager. Camp life doesn’t agree with you? No, I didn’t think so.” He took up the handle of his case. “I’ll soon call for you.”

Nora understood: he was making her wait on purpose. Prolonging her agony as payback for not immediately falling into bed with him that day at his house. A dirty old man on a power trip.

“And please note for future reference that I am not a man to be kept waiting. I trust that is clear to you now. Carly?”

The assistant appeared in the open doorway. “Yes, Dr. Barnes?”

“Carly, I can’t find the ledger. Maybe you can search around and bring it by the house later.”

“Yes, Dr. Barnes.”

“Say, around nine thirty?”

Nora saw in assistant Carly’s face not the satisfied swagger she was anticipating but instead a hint of distaste.

They stepped out into the anteroom, whispering. Ridiculous, as if Nora were Barnes’s wife.

Nora took the opportunity to rush to Barnes’s desk, searching it for anything that might help her cause, any bit of information she was not supposed to see. But he had taken most everything with him. Sliding out the center drawer, she saw a computer-generated map of the camp with each zone color-coded. Beyond the birthing area she