bottom of the curling stairs looked down at him balefully.
He heard it, and felt it: the hum of the Master’s presence.
Setrakian came down next, held from the outside by Fet, helped to the floor by Eph. Setrakian landed and drew his sword. He too felt the Master’s presence, and with it, relief. They were not too late.
“He is here,” said Eph.
Setrakian said, “Then he already knows we are.”
Fet lowered two larger UVC lamps to Eph, then clambered over the transom himself, his boots striking the floor.
“Quickly,” said Setrakian, leading them under the winding stairs, the bottom floor in the midst of renovation. They moved through a long kitchen of still-boxed appliances, looking for a closet. They found it, empty inside, and unfinished.
They pushed open the false door in the back wall, as it had been pictured in Nora’s
Stairs led down. A sheet of plastic behind them flapped, and they turned around fast, but it was only riding the draft rising up the stairs. The wind carried the scent of the subway, and of dirt and spoilage.
This was the way to the tunnels. Eph and Fet began arranging two large UVC lamps so they could fill the closet passageway with hot, killing light, and thereby seal off the underground. And block any other vampires from rising up, and, more imperative, ensure that the only way out of the town house was into direct sunlight.
Eph looked back to see Setrakian leaning against one wall, his fingertips pressing against the vest, over his heart. Eph didn’t like the looks of that, and had started toward him when Fet’s voice turned him back around. “
Fet quieted him. He heard noises below. Footsteps. The odor in the air changed — became ranker, more rotten. Vampires were assembling.
Eph and Fet backed away from the blue-lit closet, their safety valve. When Eph turned back to the old man, he was gone.
Setrakian had moved back into the foyer. His heart felt tight in his chest, overtaxed by stress and anticipation. So long he had waited. So long…
His gnarled hands began to ache. He flexed them, gripping the sword handle beneath the silver wolf’s head. Then he felt something, the faintest breeze in advance of movement…
Moving his drawn sword at the last possible moment saved him from a direct and fatal blow. The impact knocked him back, sending his crumpled body sliding headfirst over the marble floor to slam into the base of the wall. But he kept his grip on his sword. He got back to his feet quickly, swinging his blade back and forth, seeing nothing in the dim foyer.
So fast the Master moved.
He was right here. Somewhere.
The voice crackled inside Setrakian’s head like an electric shock. Setrakian swung his silver sword out wide in front of him. A black form blurred past the statue of the weeping angel at the foot of the curling marble stairs.
The Master would try to distract him. This was his way. Never to challenge directly, face-to-face, but to deceive. To surprise from behind.
Setrakian backed up against the wall beside the front door. Behind him, a narrow, door-framing window of Tiffany glass had been blacked over. Setrakian struck at the lead panes, smashing out the precious glass with his sword.
Daylight knifed into the foyer.
At that moment of breaking glass, Eph and Fet returned to find Setrakian standing with his sword raised, his body bathed in sunlight.
The old man saw the dark blur rising up the stairs. “There he is!” he yelled, starting after him. “Now!”
Eph and Fet charged up the steps after the old man. Two other vampires met them at the top of the stairs. Bolivar’s former security detail, his Big-and-Tall-Store bodyguards now hungry-faced hulks in dirty suits. One swatted at Eph, who stumbled backward and almost lost his balance, grabbing the wall to keep himself from tumbling down the marble stairs. He stuck out his Luma light and the big dummy recoiled and Eph chopped at his thigh with the sword. The vampire let out a gasp and swung at him again. Eph gutted him, running his sword most of the way through his belly before pulling it back, the vampire sinking to the landing like a stuck balloon.
Fet held his at bay with his lamp light, sticking and cutting at the bodyguard’s grabbing hands with his short- bladed dagger. He brought the light up, right into its face, and the vampire flailed and looked around wildly, temporarily blinded. Fet ducked him and got behind his back, stabbing the bodyguard in the back of its thick neck before shoving him hard down the stairs.
Eph’s vampire tried to rise, but Fet dropped him again with a kick to the ribs. The bodyguard’s head lay off the top step, and with a cry of anguish, Eph brought his sword down.
The head bumped down the stairs, gaining speed and rotation at the bottom, hopping the other vampire’s body and rolling all the way to the wall.
White blood oozed out of its opened neck, onto the carmine runner. The blood worms emerged, Fet frying them with his lamp.
The bodyguard at the bottom of the steps was no more than a skin sack of broken bones, but he was still animate. The fall had not severed his neck, and so had not released him. His eyes were open and he stared dumbly up the long staircase, trying to move.
Eph and Fet found Setrakian near the closed elevator grate with his sword out, taking a swipe at a dark, fast-moving blur. “Watch out—!” called Setrakian, but before the words were out of his mouth, the Master struck Fet from behind. He went down hard, nearly smashing his lamp. Eph barely had time to react before the form flew past him — slowing down just long enough for Eph to see the Master’s face again, his wormy flesh and sneering mouth — and he was thrown back against the wall.
Setrakian lunged forward, sweeping his sword two-handedly, driving the fast-moving form into a wide, high- ceilinged, floor-through room. Eph got himself up and followed, as did Fet, a lick of blood dribbling down his temple.
The Master stopped, appearing to them before the massive stone fireplace at the midpoint of the room. The town house had windows only at either long end — leaving no sunlight in the middle to assist them. The Master’s cloak rippled and settled and his horrible eyes looked down on them all, but mainly Fet, no small man himself. The blood trickling down his face. With something like a howling grin, the long-armed Master grabbed up lumber and bales of electrical wire and any other debris within reach and hurled them at the three assassins.
Setrakian flattened against the wall, Eph taking cover around the corner, Fet using a chunk of wallboard as a shield.
When the assault ended and they looked up, the Master was gone again.
“Stay after him,” said Setrakian, pushing ahead. “Like smoke rising up a chimney, we must force him to the roof.”
As they rounded the corner, four more hissing vampires came at them. They looked like former fans of Bolivar’s with their razored hair and piercings.
Fet went after them with the twin lamps, pushing them back. One got through, and Eph played backup, showing her his silver sword. This one looked like a chubby Vampira in a denim skirt and torn fishnet stockings. She had that curious rapacity of the newly turned vampire that Eph had come to recognize. Eph aimed his sword at her from a crouch, the vampire feinting right, then left, hissing at him through white lips.
Eph heard Setrakian yell, “
