The Night Eternal

“Military-grade detonator?” said Creem. “There’s a place in northern Jersey I got my eye on. Military installation. I’m not saying much more than that right now. But you gotta come clean.”

Gus looked at Nora, not for her okay but to frown at being put in this position. “Pretty simple,” he said. “It’s a nuke.”

Creem smiled wide. “Where’d you get it?”

“Corner store. Book of coupons.”

Creem checked on Nora. “How big?”

“Big enough to do a half-mile of destruction. Shock wave, bent steel—you name it.”

Creem was enjoying this. “But you wound up with the floor model. Sold as-is.”

“Yes. We need a detonator.”

“’Cause I don’t know how stupid you think I am, but I am not in the habit of arming my next-door neighbor with a live nuclear bomb without laying down some fucking ground rules.”

“Really,” said Gus. “Such as?”

“Just that I don’t want you fucking up my prize.”

“What’s that?”

“I do for you, you do for me. So first, I need assurances that this thing is going off at least a few miles away from me. Not in Jersey or Manhattan, bottom line.”

“You’ll be warned beforehand.”

“Not good enough. ’Cause I think I know what the hell you’re looking to use this bad boy on. Only one thing worth blowing up in this world. And when the Master goes, that’s gonna free up some serious real estate. Which is my price.”

“Real estate?” said Gus.

“This city. I own Manhattan outright, after all is said and done. Take it or leave it, Mex.”

Gus shook hands with Creem. “Can I interest you in a bridge?”

New York Public Library Main Branch

ANOTHER ROTATION OF Earth, and they were back together again, the five humans, Fet, Nora, Gus, Joaquin, and Eph, with Mr. Quinlan having traveled ahead under cover of darkness. They came out of Grand Central Station and followed Forty-second Street to Fifth Avenue. There was no rain but an exceptional wind, strong enough to dislodge trash accumulated in doorways. Fast food wrappers, plastic bags, and other pieces of legacy refuse blew down the street like spirits dancing through a graveyard.

They walked up the front steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library, between the twin stone lions, Patience and Fortitude. The beaux arts landmark stood like a great mausoleum. They moved through the portico into the entrance, crossing Astor Hall. The massive reading room had suffered only minor damage: looters, in the brief period of anarchy after the Fall, didn’t care much for books. One of the grand chandeliers had come down onto a reading table below, but the ceiling was so high that it may have just been a random structural failing. Some books remained on the tables, some backpacks and their picked-over contents strewn about the tile floor. Chairs were overturned, and a few of the lamp heads were broken off. The silent emptiness of the immense, public room was chilling.

The arched windows high on either side admitted as much light as was available. The ammoniac smell of vampire waste, so omnipresent Eph barely noticed it anymore, registered with him here. It said something that the accumulated knowledge and art of a civilization could be shat upon so carelessly by a marauding force of nature.

“We have to go down?” asked Gus. “What about one of these books here?” The shelves on either side, on two levels along walls running the length of the room below and above the railed walkways, were filled with colored spines.

Fet said, “We need an ornate, old book to double for the Lumen. We gotta sell this thing, remember. I’ve been in here numerous times. Rats and mice are drawn to decaying paper. The ancient texts they keep down below.”

They took to the stairs, turning on flashlights and readying night-vision devices. The main branch had been constructed on the site of the Croton Reservoir, a man-made lake that provided water for the island, made obsolete by the beginning of the twentieth century. There were seven full floors beneath street level, and a recent renovation beneath the adjacent Bryant Park on the rear, west side of the library had added more miles of book stacks.

Fet led the way into the darkness. The figure awaiting them on the landing at the third floor was Mr. Quinlan. Gus’s flashlight briefly illuminated the Born’s face, an almost phosphorescent white, his eyes like red baubles. He and Gus had an exchange.

Gus drew his sword. “Bloodsuckers in the stacks,” he said. “We got some clearing to do.”

Nora said, “If they pick up on Eph, they’ll bounce it to the Master, and we’ll be trapped underground.”

Mr. Quinlan’s mouthless voice entered their heads.

Dr. Goodweather and I will wait inside. I can baffle any attempts at psychic intrusion.

“Good,” said Nora, readying her Luma lamp.

Gus was already moving down the stairs to the next floor, sword in hand, Joaquin limping down behind him. “Let’s have some fun.”

Nora and Fet paired off, following them, while Mr. Quinlan pushed through the nearest door, entering the third underground floor. Eph reluctantly followed him. Inside were wide storage cabinets of aged periodicals and stacked bins of obsolete audio recordings. Mr. Quinlan opened the door to a listening booth, and Eph was obliged to follow him inside.

Mr. Quinlan closed the soundproof door. Eph pulled off his night-vision scope, leaning against a near counter, standing together with the Born in darkness and in silence. Eph worried that the Born could read him and so turned up the white noise in his head by actively imagining and then naming the items surrounding him.

Eph did not want the hunter to detect his potential deceit. Eph was walking a fine line here, playing the same game with both sides. Telling each he was working to subvert the other. In the end, Eph’s only loyalty was to Zack. He suffered equally at the thought of potentially turning on his friends—or spending eternity in a world of horror.

I had a family once.

The Born’s voice shook a nervous Eph, but he recovered quickly.

The Master turned them all, leaving it to me to destroy them. Something else we share in common.

Eph nodded. “But there was a reason it was after you. A link. The Master and I have no past. No commonality. I fell into its path purely by accident of my profession as an epidemiologist.”

There is a reason. We just don’t know what it is.

Eph had devoted hours to this very thought. “My fear is that it has something to do with my son, Zack.”

The Born was quiet for a moment.

You must be aware of a similarity between myself and your son. I was turned in the womb of my mother. And through that, the Master became my surrogate father, supplanting my own human forebear. By corrupting the mind of your son in his formative years, the Master is seeking to supplant you, your influence upon your son’s maturation.

“You mean, this is a pattern with the Master.” Eph should have been discouraged, but instead he found reason to cheer. “Then there’s hope,” he said. “You turned against the Master. You rejected it. And it had much greater influence over you.” Eph stood off the counter, lifted by this theory. “Maybe Zack will too. If I can get to him in time, the way the Ancients got to you. Maybe it’s not too late. He is a good kid—I know it…”

So long as he remains unturned biologically, there is a chance.

“I have to get him away from the Master. Or, more accurately, get the Master away from him. Can we really destroy it? I mean, if God failed to do it so long ago.”

God succeeded. Ozryel was destroyed. It was the blood that rose.