The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy

surface like twitching nerves alive with madness.

It is done.

The Master seized the wolf’s-head handle of Setrakian’s sword before the old man could react. The creature held the silver blade for inspection the way a man might handle a glowing-hot poker.

The world is mine.

The Master, his movement no more than a blur, retrieved the wooden sheath from the floor on the other side of Setrakian. He fit the two pieces together, burying the blade inside the cavity of the original walking stick and fixing the joined staff with a sudden wrenching twist of his hands.

Then he returned the foot of the stick to the floor. The overlong walking stick was a perfect fit, of course: it had belonged to the human giant Sardu, in whose body the Master currently resided.

The nuclear fuel inside the reactor core is beginning to overheat and melt. This facility was constructed using modern safeguards, but the automatic containment procedures only delay the inevitable. The meltdown will occur, fouling and destroying this origin site of the sixth and only remaining member of my clan. The buildup of steam will result in a catastrophic reactor explosion that will release a plume of radioactive fallout.

The Master jabbed Setrakian in the ribs with the end of the walking stick, the old man hearing and feeling a crack, curling into a ball on the floor.

As my shadow falls over you, Setrakian, so does it fall over this planet. First I infected your people, now I have infected the globe. Your half dark world was not enough. How long I have looked forward to this permanent, lasting dusk. This warm, blue-green rock shivers at my touch, becoming a cold black stone of rime and rot. The sunset of humankind is the dawn of the blood harvest.

The Master’s head then turned a few degrees, toward the door. He was not alarmed, nor even annoyed, more like curious. Setrakian turned also, a sizzle of hope rising along his back. The door opened and Angel entered limping, wearing a mask of shiny silver nylon with black stitching.

“No,” gasped Setrakian.

Angel carried an automatic weapon, and, seeing the eight-foot-tall cloaked creature towering over Setrakian, opened up on the king vampire.

The creature stood there for a moment, gazing at its patently ridiculous opponent. But as the bullets flew, the Master became, instinctively, a blur — the rounds carrying across the room into the sensitive equipment lining the walls. The Master paused on one side of the room, visible for just the briefest moment, though by the time Angel turned and fired, the vampire was moving again. The rounds ripped into a control panel, sparks shooting out of the wall.

Setrakian returned his attention to the floor, frantically picking at the tiny pills.

The Master slowed again, with the effect of materializing before Angel. The masked wrestler dropped the big gun with a clatter and lunged at the creature.

The Master noted the big human’s weak knee, but those things could be fixed. The body was aged, yet size- appropriate. Suitable, perhaps, for temporary housing.

The Master eluded Angel. The wrestler swung around, but the Master was already behind him again. While assessing Angel, the Master slapped him on the back of his neck, where the stitched hem of his mask met skin. The wrestler jerked around wildly again.

Angel was being toyed with, and he didn’t like it. He turned fast and came around with his free hand, catching the Master on the chin with an open-palm blow. The “Angel Kiss.”

The creature’s head snapped back. Angel shocked himself with his success in landing the blow. The Master lowered his eyes at the masked avenger, the speed of the worms rippling under his flesh a sign of his rage.

Inside the mask, Angel smiled excitedly.

“You would like me to reveal myself, wouldn’t you?” he said. “The mystery dies with me. My face must remain hidden.”

These words were the catchphrase from every one of the Silver Angel’s movies, dubbed into many languages all over the world — words the wrestler had been waiting for decades to say for real. But the Master was through playing.

It struck Angel full-force with the back of its enormous hand. The jaw and left cheekbone exploded inside the mask and the wrestler’s left eye went with them.

But Angel didn’t give up. Through enormous effort, he stood on his own two feet. Trembling, his knee hurting like a motherfucker, choking on his own blood… yet in his mind he raced back in time, to a younger, happier place.

He felt dizzy and warm and full of juice and remembered he was in a film stage. Of course — he was shooting a movie. The monster in front of him was nothing but some clever special effect — a day player in a suit. Then why did it hurt so much? And his mask: it smelled funny to him. Like unwashed hair and sweat. It smelled like a thing removed to the oblivion of storage. It smelled of him.

An empty bubble of blood rose in his throat and burst there in a liquid whimper. His jaw and left side pulverized, the smelly mask was now the only thing holding the old wrestler’s face together.

Angel grunted and lunged at his opponent. The Master released the stick in order to grip the big human with both hands, and, in an instant, tore him to shreds.

Setrakian stifled a cry. He was stuffing pills in under his tongue — stopping just as the Master returned his attention to him.

The Master grasped Setrakian’s shoulder and lifted the slight old man off the floor. Setrakian dangled in the air before the Master, squeezed by the vampire’s bloody hands. The Master pulled him close, Setrakian staring into its horrible face, the leech’s face swarming with ancient evil.

I believe, in a way, you always wanted this, Professor. I think you have always been curious to know the other side.

Setrakian could not respond with the pills dissolving beneath his tongue. But he did not have to answer the Master verbally. My sword sings of silver, he thought.

He felt woozy, the medicine kicking in, clouding his thoughts — shielding his true intent from the Master’s perception. We learned much from the book. We know Chernobyl was a decoy… He saw the Master’s face. How he longed to see fear in it. Your name. I know your true name. Would you like to hear it… Ozryel?

And then the Master’s mouth fell open and his stinger shot out furiously, snapping and piercing Setrakian’s neck, rupturing his vocal cords and jamming into his carotid artery. As he lost his voice, Setrakian felt no stinging pain, only the body-wide ache of the drinking. The collapse of his circulatory system and the organs it served, leading to shock.

The Master’s eyes were royal-red, staring at its prey’s face as it drank with immense satisfaction. Setrakian held the creature’s gaze, not out of defiance but watching and waiting for some indication of discomfort. He felt the vibration of the blood worms wriggling throughout his body, greedily inspecting and invading his self.

All at once, the Master bucked, as though choking. His head jerked back and his nictitating eyelids fluttered. Still, the seal remained tight, the drinking continued stubbornly until the end. The Master disengaged finally — the entire process having taken less than half a minute — its flushed red stinger retracting. The Master stared at Setrakian, reading the interest in his eyes, then stumbled backward a step. Its face contracted, the blood worms slowing, its thick neck gagging.

It dropped Setrakian to the floor and staggered away, sickened by the old man’s blood meal. A flame-like sensation in the pit of his gut.

Setrakian lay on the floor of the control room in a dim haze bleeding through the puncture wound. He finally relaxed his tongue, feeling that the last of the pills in the basket of his jaw were gone. He had ingested the blood vessel-relaxing nitroglycerin and the blood-thinning Coumadin derivative of Fet’s rat poison in massive overdose levels, and passed them along to the Master.

Fet was, indeed, correct: the creatures had no purging mechanism. Once a substance was ingested, they could not vomit it.

Burning inside, the Master moved through the doors at a blur, racing off into the screaming alarms.

The Johnson Space Center went silent halfway through the station’s dark orbit, as they passed the dark side