The Strain. Book I of The Strain Trilogy

Fet yelled back, “Hey, Doc!” He kept pressing forward, pinning the Master up against the edge of the sunlight.

Eph massaged the old man’s chest over his heart. He didn’t start CPR right away because he was worried about the man’s bones, about crushing his rib cage. Then he noticed that Setrakian’s old fingers were no longer poking at his heart, but were reaching for his vest.

Fet turned back in a panic to see what the hell was holding them up. He saw Setrakian laid out on the floor and Eph kneeling over him.

Fet looked for a moment too long. The Master clawed at Fet’s shoulder and pulled him in.

Eph squeezed the pockets of Setrakian’s tweed vest and felt something. He pulled out the little silver pillbox and quickly unscrewed the top. A dozen tiny white tablets tumbled to the floor.

Fet was a big man himself, but he was a child in the Master’s grip. He still had the lamp in his hand, even though his arms were pinned. He turned it on the Master, burning his side — and the blinded beast roared in pain but did not relinquish his grip. The Master’s other hand gripped the top of Fet’s head and wrenched back his neck despite Fet’s resistance. Then Fet found himself staring up into this unspeakable face.

Eph pinched up one of the nitroglycerin tablets and cupped the old man’s head in his hand. He worked open his clenched jaw and slipped the pill in underneath the old man’s cool tongue. He pulled out his fingers and shook Setrakian, yelling at him. And the old man’s eyes opened.

The Master opened his mouth over Fet and extended his stinger, lashing about in the air above Fet’s wide eyes and exposed throat. Fet fought mightily, but the compression of the back of his neck cut off the blood flow to his brain, so the room blackened and his muscles went limp.

Eph yelled, “No!” and ran at the Master with his sword, slashing the blade across the abomination’s broad back. Fet fell to the floor in a heap. The Master’s head whipped around, his stinger searching, his clouded eyes finding Eph.

“My sword sings of silver!” cried Eph, slicing at the Master’s upper chest. The blade did indeed sing, though the Dark One flew backward and avoided it. Eph swung again — and missed again — the Master thrashing backward, out of control. He was in the sunlight now, framed before the twin glass doors, the full and broad daylight of a rooftop patio behind him.

Eph had him. The Master knew he had him. Eph brought his sword up with two hands, ready to stab it up through the Master’s bulging neck. The king vampire stared down at Eph with something like outright disgust, summoned even more height, and raised the hood of his dark cloak over his head.

“Die!” said Eph, running at him.

The Master turned and crashed through the plate-glass doors and out onto the open patio. Glass exploded as the cloaked vampire fell rolling onto the hot clay tiles, in full view of the killing sun.

He came to a rest momentarily, hunched over on one knee.

Eph’s momentum carried him through the shattered door, where he stopped, staring at the cloaked vampire, awaiting the end.

The Master trembled, steam rising from within its dark cloak. Then the king vampire stood to its full height, quivering as though in the grip of a violent seizure, his great claws curled into beastlike fists.

With a roar he threw off his cloak. The ancient garment fell away, smoking, to the tile. The Master’s nude body writhed, his pearlescent flesh darkening, cooking, changing from fair, lily white to a dead black leather.

The slashing wound Eph had made across his back fused into a deep black scar, as though cauterized by the rays of the sun. He turned, still shaking, and faced Eph, and Fet standing in the doorway behind him, and Setrakian risen to one knee. He was ghoulishly lean, with a smooth and sexless crotch. His broiled black flesh writhed with pain-crazed blood worms.

With a most horrible smile — a sneer of intense pain and even triumph — the Master turned his face toward the sun and let loose an openmouthed howl of defiance. A true demonic curse. Then, with dizzying speed, he bolted to the edge of the patio, slid over the low wall at the edge of the roof, and raced down the side of the building to the third-story scaffolding…disappearing into the morning shadows of New York City.

The Clan

Nazareth, Pennsylvania

In a long-abandoned and never-mapped asbestos mine, a nether-world a few hundred feet below the surface of the Pennsylvania woods, three Ancients of the New World conferred in a pitch-black chamber.

Their bodies, over time, had become worn smooth as river stones, their movements slowing nearly to imperceptibility. They had no use for exterior physicality. Their body systems had evolved to maximum efficiency, and their vampire mandibles functioned without flaw. Their night vision was extraordinary.

In the cages built into the deep western tunnels of their dominion, the Ancients had already begun storing food for the long winter. The occasional scream of a human captive ripped through the mine, reverberating like an animal call.

It is the seventh one.

Despite their human appearance, they had no use for animal speech. Their movements, down to the glances of their sated red eyes, were dreadfully slow.

What is this incursion?

It is a violation.

He thinks us old and weak.

Someone else is a party to this transgression. Someone had to assist him in his ocean crossing.

One of the others?

One of the New World Ancients reached out with his mind, across the sea to the Old World.

I do not feel that.

Then the seventh one has aligned with a human.

With a human, against all other humans.

And against us.

Is it not evident now that he alone was responsible for the Bulgarian massacre?

Yes. He has proven his willingness to kill his own kind if crossed.

He was indeed spoiled by the world war.

He supped too long in the trenches. Feasted in the camps.

And now he has broken the truce. He has set foot on our soil. He wants the entire world for himself.

What he wants is another war.

The tallest one’s talon twitched — an extraordinary physical action for a being so steeped in deliberation, in elemental stillness. Their bodies were simple shells and could be replaced. Perhaps they had become complacent. Too comfortable.

Then we will oblige him. We must remain invisible no more.

The headhunter entered the chamber of the Ancients and waited to be acknowledged.

You have found him.

Yes. He tried to return home, as do all creatures.

He will suffice?

He will be our sun hunter. He has no other choice.

In a locked cage in the western tunnel, on a floor of cold dirt, Gus Elizalde lay unconscious, dreaming of his mother — unaware of the peril awaiting him.