The Night Eternal

“Do I look like I give a fuck about your brat?” said Gus. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression —’cause I don’t give a fuck.”

Fet said, “Cool down, everyone. If we blow this chance, it’s over. Nobody would ever get close to the Master again.”

Fet looked to Mr. Quinlan, whose silence and stillness communicated his agreement.

Gus frowned but didn’t argue the point. He respected Fet, and more so, he respected Mr. Quinlan. “You say we can blow a hole in the ground and the Master disappears. I’m down with that, if it works. And if it doesn’t? We just give up?”

He had a point. The others’ silence confirmed it.

“Not me,” said Gus. “No fucking way.”

Eph felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck. He had an idea. He started talking before he could think himself out of it.

“There might be one way,” he said.

“One way to what?” said Fet.

“To get close to the Master. Not by laying siege to his castle. Without endangering Zack. What if instead we draw it to us?”

“What is this shit?” said Gus. “Suddenly you have a plan, hombre?” Gus smiled at the others. “This ought to be good.”

Eph swallowed to keep his voice in check. “The Master is keyed in on me for some reason. It’s got my son. What if I offer it something to trade?”

Fet said, “The Lumen.”

“This is bullshit,” said Gus. “What are you selling?”

Eph put out his hands and patted the air, asking for patience and consideration for what he was about to suggest. “Hear me out. First of all, we dummy up a fake book in its place. I say I stole it from you and want to exchange it. For Zack.”

Nora said, “Isn’t that pretty dangerous? What if something happens to Zack?”

“It’s a huge risk, but I can’t see getting him back by doing nothing. But if we destroy the Master… it’s all over.”

Gus wasn’t buying it. Fet looked concerned, and Mr. Quinlan gave no indication of his opinion.

But Nora was nodding. “I think this could work.”

Fet looked at her. “What? Maybe we should talk alone about this first.”

“Let your lady speak,” said Gus, never missing an opportunity to twist the knife in Eph’s side. “Let’s hear this.”

Nora said, “I think Eph could lure him in. He’s right—there is something about him, something the Master wants or fears. I keep going back to that light in the sky. Something’s going on there.”

Eph felt a burning sensation ride up from his back to his neck.

“It could work,” said Nora. “Eph double-crossing us makes sense. Draw the Master out with Eph and the fake Lumen. Leave it vulnerable to ambush.” She looked at Eph. “If you’re sure you’re up for such a thing.”

“If we have no other choice,” he said.

Nora went on. “It’s crazy dangerous. Because if we blow it, and the Master gets you… then it’s over. It would know everything you know—where we are, how to find us. We would be finished.”

Eph remained still while the others mulled it over. The baritone voice spoke inside his head: The Master is immeasurably more cunning than you are giving it credit for.

“I don’t doubt that the Master is devious,” said Nora, turning to Mr. Quinlan. “But isn’t this kind of an offer it cannot refuse?”

The Born’s quietness signaled his acceptance, if not his full agreement.

Eph felt Mr. Quinlan’s eyes on him. Eph was torn. He felt now that this gave him flexibility: he could potentially carry out this double-cross or stick to the plan if indeed it appeared it would succeed. But there was another question troubling him now.

He searched the face of his former lover, illuminated by night vision. He was looking for some sign of treachery. Was she the traitor? Had they gotten to her during her brief stay inside the blood camp?

Nonsense. They had killed her mother. Her duplicity would make no sense.

In the end, he prayed that they both possessed the integrity he hoped they’d always had.

“I want to do this,” said Eph. “We proceed on both fronts simultaneously.”

They all were aware that a dangerous first step had just been taken. Gus looked doubtful, but even he seemed willing to go along with it. The plan represented direct action, and, at the same time, he was eager to give Eph just enough rope to hang himself with.

The Born began encasing each wooden receptacle inside a protective plastic sleeve and setting them inside a leather sack.

“Wait,” said Fet. “We’re forgetting one very important thing.”

Gus said, “What’s that?”

“How the hell do we make this offer to the Master? How do we get in touch with it at all?”

Nora touched Fet on his unbandaged shoulder and said, “I know of just the way.”

Spanish Harlem

SUPPLY TRUCKS ENTERING Manhattan from Queens traveled the cleared middle inbound lane on the Queensboro Bridge across the East River, turning either south on Second Avenue or north on Third.

Mr. Quinlan stood on the sidewalk outside the George Washington Houses between Ninety-seventh and Ninety-eighth, forty blocks north of the bridge. The Born vampire waited in the spitting rain with his hood covering his head, watching the occasional vehicle pass. Convoys were ignored. Also Stoneheart trucks or vehicles. Mr. Quinlan’s first concern was alerting the Master in any way.

Fet and Eph stood in the shadows of a doorway in the first block of the houses. In the past forty-five minutes, they had seen one vehicle every ten minutes or so. Headlights raised their hopes; Mr. Quinlan’s disinterest dashed them. And so they remained in the darkened doorway, safe from the rain but not from the new awkwardness that was their relationship.

Fet was running their audacious new plan through his head, trying to convince himself that it might work. Success seemed like an incredible long shot—but then again, it wasn’t as though they had dozens of other prospects lined up and ready to go.

Kill the Master. They had tried once, by exposing the creature to the sun, and failed. When the dying Setrakian apparently poisoned its blood, using Fet’s anticoagulant rodent poison, the Master had merely sloughed off its human host, assuming the form of another healthy being. The creature seemed invincible.

And yet, they had hurt it. Both times. No matter what the creature’s original form was, it apparently needed to exist in possession of a human. And humans could be destroyed.

Fet said, “We can’t miss this time. We’ll never get a better chance.”

Eph nodded, looking out into the street. Waiting for Mr. Quinlan’s signal.

He seemed guarded. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the plan, or maybe it was something else. Eph’s unreliability had caused a rift in their relationship—but the Nora situation had driven home a permanent wedge.

Fet’s main concern now was that Eph’s irritation with Fet not negatively impact their efforts.

“Nothing has happened,” Fet said, “between Nora and me.”

“I know,” said Eph. “But everything has happened between her and me. It’s over. And I know it. And there will be a time when you and I will talk about it and maybe even have a fistfight over it. But now it’s not that time. This has to be our focus now. All personal feelings aside… Look, Fet, we are paired. It was you and me or Gus and me. I’d rather take you.”

“Glad we’re all on the same page again,” said Fet.