“He’s all I want.”
Creem stepped back, acting impressed but—Eph could tell—thinking Eph a fool. “You know, I got to thinking, when I found out about you. Why two plans? What’s the Master thinking? Is it going to do both deals?”
“Probably neither,” said Eph.
Creem didn’t like the sound of that. “Anyway, it occurred to me—one of us is the backup plan. ’Cause, you do the deal first, what’s he need me for? I get fucked over, and you get the glory.”
“The glory of betraying my friends.”
Creem nodded. Eph should have paid more attention to Creem’s reaction, but he was too agitated now. Too torn. He saw himself reflected in this bloodless mercenary.
“I think the Master was trying to punk me. I think having the second deal is the same as having no deal. That’s why I told the others about the armory location. ’Cause they’re never gonna make it there. ’Cause Creem’s gotta make his move now.”
Eph became aware of the gangbanger’s closeness then. He checked the man’s hands, and they were empty—but balled into fists.
“Wait,” said Eph, sensing what Creem was about to do. “Hold on. Hear me out. I… I’m not going to do it. It was madness to even consider it. I’m not turning on these people—and you shouldn’t either. You know where a detonator is. We get that, hook it up to Fet’s bomb, and we go after the Master’s Black Site. That way we all get what we want. I get my boy back. You can have your chunk of real estate. And we nail that fucker once and for all.”
Creem nodded, appearing to weigh the offer. “Funny,” he said. “That’s exactly what I would say if the tables were turned and you were about to double-cross me.
Creem grasped Eph by his front collar, and there was no time to defend himself. The man’s fat fist and silvered knuckles came hurtling at the side of Eph’s head, and he didn’t feel the blow at first, only noticing the sudden twisting of the room, and then chairs scattering beneath the weight of his falling body. His skull smacked the floor and the room went white and then very, very dark.
The Vision
AS USUAL, OUT of the fire came the figures of light. Eph stood there, immobile—overwhelmed as they approached him. His solar plexus was hit by the energy of one of them as it struck him full-on. Eph resisted, wrestled for what seemed an eternity. The second figure joined the match—but Ephraim Goodweather didn’t give up. He fought bravely, desperately, until he saw Zack’s face again, amid the glow.
“
But this time Eph did not wake up. The image gave way to a new landscape of verdant green grass under a warm yellow sun, rippling in an unobtrusive breeze.
A field. Part of a farm.
Clear, blue sky. Scudding clouds. Lush trees.
Eph raised his hand to block the direct sun from his eyes so he could see better.
A simple farmhouse. Small, constructed of bright red bricks with a roof of black shingles. The house was a good fifty yards away—but he reached it in just three steps.
Smoke curled out of the pipe chimney in perfect, repeating formation. The breeze shifted, leveling out the smoke stream, and the exhaust formed into alphabet letters written as though in a neat hand.
… L E Y R Z O L E Y R Z O L E Y R Z O L E Y R Z O…
The smoky letters dissipated, becoming a light ash drifting to the grass. He bent over at the waist in a full jackknife and swiped the blades with his fingers, and found his pads sliced open, red blood oozing out.
A lone, four-paned window in the wall. Eph put his face to it, and when he breathed onto the glass, his breath cleared the opaque window.
A woman sat at the old table in the kitchen. Bright yellow hair, writing in a thick book with a quill made from a beautiful, oversized, brilliant silver feather, dipped in an inkwell filled with red blood.
Kelly turned her head, not all the way toward the window, just enough so that Eph knew that she felt him there. The glass fogged again, and when he breathed it clear, Kelly was gone.
Eph circled the farmhouse, looking for another window or a door. But the house was solid brick, and after one full rotation, he could not even find the wall with the original window. The bricks had darkened to black, and as he backed off from the structure, it became a castle. The ash had turned the grass black at his feet, further sharpening the blades so that every step slashed at his bare feet.
A shadow passed across the sun. It was winged, like a great bird of prey, banking fleetly before sailing away, the shadow fading into the darkening grass.
Atop the castle, a factory-sized smokestack chugged black ash into the sky, turning fair day into ominous night. Kelly appeared on one of the ramparts, and Eph yelled up to her.
“She can’t hear you,” Fet told him.
Fet wore his exterminator’s jumpsuit and smoked a corona, but his head was a rat’s head, his eyes small and red.
Eph looked up to the castle again, and Kelly’s blond hair blew away like smoke. Now she was bald Nora, disappearing inside the upper reaches of the castle.
“We have to split up,” said Fet, pulling the cigar from his mouth with a human hand, blowing silver-gray smoke that curled past his fine, black whiskers. “We don’t have much time.”
Fet the rat ran to the castle and squeezed himself headfirst into a crack in the foundation, somehow wriggling his big body in between two black stones.
Up top, a man now stood in the turret wearing a work shirt bearing the Sears insignia. It was Matt, Kelly’s live-in boyfriend, Eph’s first replacement as a father figure and the first vampire Eph had slain. As Eph looked at him, Matt suffered a seizure, his hands clawing at his throat. He convulsed, doubling over, hiding his face, contorting… until his hands came away from his head. His middle fingers stretched into thick talons, and the creature straightened, now a good six inches taller. The Master.
The black sky opened up then, rain pouring down from above, but the drops, when they landed, instead of the usual slapping patter noise, made a noise that sounded like “Dad.”
Eph stumbled away, turning and running. He tried to outpace the rain through the slashing grass, but drops pelted him at every step, shouting in his ears, “Dad! Dad! Dad!”
Until everything cleared. The rain stopped, the sky turning into a shell of crimson. The grass was gone and the dirt ground reflected the redness of the sky just as the ocean does.
In the distance, a figure approached. It appeared not too far away, but closer, Eph was able to better judge its size. It looked like a human male, but at least three times the height of Eph himself. It stopped some distance away, though its dimensions made it seem nearer.
It was indeed a giant, but its proportions were exactly correct. It was dressed, or bathed, in a glowing nimbus of light.
Eph tried to speak. He felt no direct fear of this creature. He only felt overwhelmed.
Something rustled behind the giant’s back. At once, two broad silver wings fanned open, their diameter longer even than the giant’s height. The gust from this action blew Eph back a step. Arms at its sides, the archangel—the only thing it could be—beat its wings two more times, whipping at the air and taking flight.
The archangel soared, its great wings doing all the work, arms and legs relaxed as it flew toward Eph with preternatural grace and ease. It landed in front of him, dwarfing Eph three times over. A few silver feathers slipped from its plumage, falling quill-first and sticking into the red earth. One floated toward Eph, and he caught it in his hand. The quill became an ivory handle, the feather a silver sword.
The massive archangel bent down toward Eph. Its face was still obscured by the nimbus of light it exuded. The light felt strangely cool, almost misty.
The archangel fixed its gaze on something behind Eph, and Eph—reluctantly—turned.
At a small dinner table poised on the edge of a cliff, Eldritch Palmer, once the head of the Stoneheart Group, sat dressed in his trademark dark suit with a red swastika armband around his right sleeve, using a fork and knife to eat a dead rat laid out on a china plate. A blur approached from the right, a large white wolf, charging toward the table. Palmer never looked up. The white wolf leaped at Palmer’s throat, knocking him from the chair, tearing at his neck.
The white wolf stopped and looked up at Eph—and came racing toward him.
