The Night Eternal

She saw the light setting down. “That must be the highway.”

Gus said, “I don’t think they saw us at all.”

She continued to roll down the road, judging its margins by the black treetop branches framed against the less-black sky. Trying to decide what to do.

“Should we take off?” she said. “Risk it?”

Gus was trying to see through the windshield up to the highway. “You know what?” he said. “I don’t think they were looking for us after all.”

Nora kept her eyes on the road. “What is it, then?”

“You got me. Question is—do we dare to find out?”

Nora had spent enough time with Gus to know that this was not actually a question. “No,” she said quickly. “We need to go. To keep going.”

“It could be something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Why we have to look. I haven’t seen any roadside bloodsuckers for a few miles anyway. I think we’re good for a quick look.”

“A quick look,” said Nora, as though she could hold him to that.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re curious too. Besides—they were using their light, right? That means humans.”

She pulled over to the left side of the road and turned off the engine. They got out of the car, forgetting that the interior lights came on once the doors were opened. They closed them quickly without slamming them and stood and listened.

The rotors were still spinning but slowing down. The engine had just been turned off. Gus held his machine gun away from himself as he scrambled up the weedy, rocky embankment, with Nora just behind and to the left of him.

They slowed at the top, their faces rising beneath the guardrail. The chopper was another one hundred yards or so down the highway. There were no cars in sight. The rotors stopped rotating, though the helicopter light remained illuminated, shining off to the opposite side of the road. Nora made out four silhouettes, one of them shorter than the others. And she could not be sure, but she believed that the pilot—probably a human, judging by the light—was still inside the cockpit, waiting. For what? Taking off again soon?

They ducked back down. “A rendezvous?” said Nora.

“Something like that. You don’t think it’s the Master, do you?”

“Can’t tell,” she said.

“One of them was small. Looked like a kid.”

“Yeah,” said Nora, nodding… and then she stopped nodding. Her head shot up again, and this time she looked over the top of the guardrail. Gus pulled her back down by her belt, but not before she had convinced herself of the identity of the ragged-haired boy. “Oh my God.”

“What?” said Gus. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

She drew her sword. “We have to get over there.”

“Well, sure, now you’re talking. But what’s the—”

“Shoot the adults but not the kid. Just don’t let them get away.”

Nora was up and over the guardrail before Gus could get to his feet. She was running straight at them, Gus having to hustle to keep up. She watched the larger two figures turn her way before she had made any real noise. The vampires saw her heat impression, sensing the silver in her sword. They stopped and turned back to the humans. One grabbed the boy and tried to lift him inside the helicopter. They were going to take off again. The engine turned over, the rotors starting their hydraulic whine.

Gus opened up his weapon, picking at the long tail of the helicopter at first, then stitching up the side toward the passenger compartment. That was enough to drive the vampire carrying the boy away from the chopper. Nora was more than halfway to them now. Gus fanned out wide to her left, picking at the cockpit glass. The glass did not shatter, the rounds punching clean through until a spray of red went out over the opposite end.

The pilot’s body slumped forward. The rotors continued to speed up but the chopper did not move.

One vampire left the man he was guarding and ran at Nora. She saw the dark, decorative ink on its neck and immediately placed the vamp as one of the prison bodyguards—one of Barnes’s bodyguards. The thought of Barnes erased all fear, and Nora came at the vampire with her sword high and her voice at full yell. The big vampire went low at the last moment, surprising her, but she sidestepped him like a matador, bringing down her sword on his back. He skidded across the blacktop on his front side, burning off flesh, then hopped back up to his feet. Pale skin hung from his thighs, chest, and one cheek. That didn’t slow him down. The silver wound to his back did.

Gus’s gun rattled and the big vampire twitched. The shots stunned him but did not put him down. Nora did not give the powerful strigoi time to mount another attack. She treated his neck tattoos like targets and took off his head.

She turned back toward the helicopter, squinting into its rotor wash. The other tattooed vampire was away from the humans, circling Gus. It understood and respected the power of silver—but not the power of a machine gun. Gus walked up on the hissing strigoi, right up inside its stinging radius, and fired a cluster of head shots. The vamp went down backward and Gus advanced and shot up its neck, releasing the creature.

The man was down on one knee, bracing himself on the open door of the helicopter. The boy watched both vampires go down. He turned and ran toward the roadside, in the direction the helicopter light was shining. Nora saw something in his hands, which he held in front of him as he ran.

Nora yelled, “Gus, get him!” because Gus was closest. Gus took off after the kid. The skinny kid was fast enough but unsteady. He jumped over the guardrail and landed all right, but in the shadowy ground beyond he misjudged a step or two and got tangled up in his own feet.

Nora was standing near Barnes beneath the whirling rotor umbrella of the helicopter. He was still airsick and on his knee. Yet when he looked up and recognized Nora’s face, he paled even more.

Nora raised her sword and was ready to strike when she heard four sharp cracks, dulled beneath the sound of the helicopter. It was a small rifle, the boy firing at them in a panic. Nora wasn’t hit but the bullets exploded awfully near. She moved away from Barnes and entered the underbrush. She saw Gus lunge for the boy and tackle him before he could fire again. He picked the kid up by his shirt, turning him toward the light, Gus making sure he wasn’t dealing with a vampire. Gus pulled the empty rifle out of his hand and threw it into the trees. The kid bucked, so Gus gave him a good shake, just violent enough to let him know what could happen to him if he tried to fight. Still, the kid squinted in the light, trying to pull away, genuinely afraid of Gus.

“Easy, kid. Jesus.”

He dragged the squirming boy back over the guardrail.

Nora said, “You okay, Gus?”

Gus wrestled with the kid. “He’s a lousy shot, so yeah.”

Nora looked back at the chopper. Barnes had vanished. She squinted past the helicopter light, searching for him, but to no avail. Nora cursed softly.

Gus took another look at the kid’s face there and noticed something about him, his eyes, the structure of his face. He looked familiar. Too familiar.

Gus looked at Nora. “Oh, come on,” said Gus.

The kid kicked at Gus with the heel of his sneaker. Gus kicked him back, only harder.

“Christ—just like your father,” Gus said.

That slowed the kid down. He looked at Gus, though still trying to pull away. “What do you know?” he said.

When Nora looked at Zack, she both recognized him at once and not at all: the boy’s eyes were nothing like she had remembered. His features had matured as any boy’s would have over a two-year period—but his eyes lacked the light they had once had. If the curiosity was still there, it was darker now, it was deeper. It was as though his personality had retreated into his mind, wanting to read but not to be read. Or maybe he was just in shock. He was only thirteen, after all.

He is hollow. He is not there.

“Zachary,” she said, not knowing what to do.