“Exactly,” said Eph.
Setrakian eyed the light clipped on the side of Fet’s belt. “Let me ask you this. Your profession uses black light, if I am not mistaken.”
“Sure. To pick up rodent urine traces.”
Setrakian glanced over at Eph and Nora.
Fet took another look at the old man in the vest and suit. “You know about exterminating?”
Setrakian said, “I have had some experience.” He stepped over to the turned property manager, who had crawled or dragged himself away from the sunlight, and was now curled up in the far corner. Setrakian examined him with a silver-backed mirror, and showed Fet the result. The exterminator looked back and forth between the property manager as he appeared to his eyes and the vibrating blur reflected in the glass. “But you strike me as an expert on things that burrow and hide. Creatures who nest. Who feed off the human population. Your job is to drive out these vermin?”
Fet looked at Setrakian and the others like a man standing on an express train, gathering speed out of the station, suddenly realizing he had boarded on the wrong track. “What are you getting me into here?”
“Tell us, then, please. If vampires are vermin — an infestation spreading quickly throughout the city — how would you stop them?”
“I can tell you that, from a pest control point of view, poisoning and trapping are short-term solutions that won’t work in the long run. Picking these babies off one by one gets you nowhere. The only rats you ever see are the weakest ones. The hungry ones. Smart ones know how to survive. Control is what works. Managing their habitat, disrupting their ecosystem. Removing the food supply and starving them out. Then you get to the root of the infestation, and wipe it clean.”
Setrakian nodded slowly, then looked back at Eph. “The Master. The root of this evil. Somewhere in Manhattan right now.” The old man looked again at the unfortunate curled up on the floor, who would animate after nightfall, became a vampire, vermin. “You will step back please,” he said, unsheathing his sword. With his pronouncement and a two-handed stroke, he decapitated the man where he lay. As pale pink blood eked out — the host was not yet fully turned — Setrakian wiped his blade on the man’s shirt and returned it to the walking stick. “If only we had some indication of where the Master might be nesting. The site would have been preapproved and perhaps even selected by him. A lair worthy of his stature. A place of darkness, offering shelter from, yet access to, the human world on the surface.” He turned back to Fet. “Do you have any notion where these rats might be rising from? The epicenter of their displacement?”
Fet nodded immediately, his eyes staring into the distance. “I think I know.”
In the declining light of day, the two epidemiologists, the pawnbroker, and the exterminator all stood on the viewing platform on the upper edge of the World Trade Center construction site, the excavation dug one block wide and seventy feet deep.
Fet’s city credentials and one small lie — Setrakian was not a world-famous rodentologist in from Omaha — got them into the subway tunnel without an escort. Fet led them down to the same out-of-service track he had followed before, playing his flashlight upon the ratless tracks. The old man stepped carefully over the ties, picking his way along the bed stones with his oversize walking stick. Eph and Nora carried Luma lights.
“You are not from Russia,” Setrakian said to Fet.
“Just my parents and my name.”
“In Russia, they are called
“Does that work?”
“As well as any folk remedy. Which is to say, not very well at all.” Setrakian remained far to the right of the electrified third rail. “That steel rod looks handy.”
Fet looked at his length of rebar. “It’s crude. Like me, I suppose. But it gets the job done. Also like me.”
Setrakian lowered his voice to cut down on the tunnel echo. “I have some other instruments you might find at least as effective.”
Fet saw the sump hose the sandhogs had been working on. Farther ahead, the tunnel turned and widened, and Fet recognized the dingy junction at once. “In here,” he said, shining a flashlight beam around, keeping it low.
They stopped and listened to the dripping of water. Fet scoured the ground with his light. “I put down tracking powder last time. See?”
There were human footprints in the powder. Shoes, sneakers, and bare feet.
Fet said, “Who goes barefoot in a subway tunnel?”
Setrakian held up a wool-gloved hand. The tubelike tunnel acoustics brought them distant groans.
Nora said, “Jesus Christ…”
Setrakian whispered, “Your lamps, please. Turn them on.”
Eph and Nora did, their powerful UVC rays illuminating the dark underground, exposing a mad swirl of colors. Innumerable stains splashed wildly against the floor, the walls, the iron stanchions…everywhere.
Fet recoiled in disgust. “This is all…?”
“It is excrement,” said Setrakian. “The creatures will shit while they eat.”
Fet looked around in amazement. “I guess a vampire doesn’t have much need for good hygiene.”
Setrakian was backing away. He had a different grip on his walking stick now, the top half pulled several inches out of the bottom half, baring the bright, sharp blade. “We must leave here. Right now.”
Fet was listening to the noises in the tunnels. “No argument from me.”
Eph’s foot kicked something, and he jumped back, expecting rats. He shone his UVC lamp down and discovered a low mound of objects in the corner.
They were mobile phones. One hundred or more, piled up as though they had been thrown into the corner.
“Huh,” said Fet. “Somebody dumped a load of mobile phones down here.”
Eph reached for some on the top of the pile. The first two he tried were dead. The third had just one blinking bar of battery life. An X icon along the top of the screen indicated that there was no reception.
“That’s why the police can’t find all the missing people by their cell phones,” said Nora. “They’re all underground.”
“Judging by the looks of this,” said Eph, tossing the phones back onto the pile, “most of them are here.”
Eph and Nora stared at the phones, quickening their steps.
“Quickly,” said Setrakian, “before we are detected.” He led the retreat out of the tunnel. “We must prepare.”
Lair
It was early on the fourth night as Ephraim cruised past his building on the way to Setrakian’s to properly arm themselves. He saw no police posted outside his place, so he pulled over. He was taking a chance, but it had been days since he’d changed his clothes, and all he needed was five minutes. He pointed out his third-floor window to them, and said he would lower the blinds once he was inside if there was no trouble.
He made it into the building lobby with no problem, then climbed the stairs. He found his apartment door open a crack, and paused to listen. An open door didn’t seem very coplike.
He pushed inside, calling, “Kelly?” No answer. “Zack?” They were the only ones who had keys.
The smell alarmed him at first, until he realized it was the Chinese food left in the trash, from when Zack was over — which seemed like years ago. He entered the kitchen to see if the milk in the refrigerator was still good…and then stopped.
He stared. It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at.
