“Doctor.” Setrakian was calling to Eph. “Doctor, come. Now!”
Eph went closer to the girl, taking the Luma lamp from Setrakian and handing him the ax—all the while keeping the light trained on the girl.
Setrakian stepped back. He tossed the ax away, sending it clanking along the hard floor. He held his tall walking stick in his gloved hands, gripping it beneath the wolf’s-head handle. With one firm twist of his wrist, he separated the top handle from the rest.
From its wooden sheath, Setrakian withdrew a sword blade fashioned of silver.
“Hurry,” said Eph, watching the girl writhe against the wall, trapped there by the lamp’s killing rays.
The girl saw the old man’s blade, glowing nearly white, and something like fear came into her face. Then the fear went fierce.
“Hurry!” said Eph, wanting it to be over. The girl hissed and he saw the dark shade inside her, beneath her skin, a demon snarling to be let out.
Nora was watching the father, lying on the floor. His body began to stir, his eyes opening. “Professor?” said Nora.
But the old man was locked in on the girl.
Nora watched Gary Gilbarton sit up, then rise to his bare feet, a dead man standing in his pajamas, eyes open.
“Professor?” said Nora again, switching on her lamp.
The lamp crackled. She shook it, smacking the bottom, where the battery went. The purple light fizzled on, then off—then on again.
“Professor!” she yelled.
The fluttering lamplight had gotten Setrakian’s attention. He turned on the revenant man, who looked confused and unsteady on his feet. With skill rather than agility, Setrakian doubled Gilbarton up with jabbing thrusts to the gut and chest, opening white-bleeding wounds in his pajama top.
Eph, alone with the girl now, watching this demon assert itself inside her, and not knowing what was happening behind him, said, “Professor Setrakian!”
Setrakian directed thrusts at the father’s armpits in order to bring his hands down by his sides, then slashed at the tendons behind his knees, collapsing the revenant onto all fours. With Gilbarton’s head up and his neck extended, Setrakian raised his sword and uttered some words in a foreign language—like a solemn pronouncement—and then his blade sang through the man’s neck, separating his head from his trunk, the revenant’s lower quarters collapsing to the floor.
“Professor!” said Eph, pressing the lamplight on the girl, torturing her—a girl about Zack’s age, her wild eyes filling with indigo coloring—bloody tears—while the being inside her raged.
Her mouth opened as though to speak. Almost as though to sing. Her mouth kept opening and the thing emerged, the stinger from the soft palate beneath her tongue. The appendage swelled as the girl’s eyes changed from sad to hungry, almost glowing in anticipation.
The old man returned to her, sword first. “Back, strigoi!” he said.
The girl turned to the old man, her eyes still flaring. Setrakian’s silver blade was now slick with white blood. He intoned the same words as before, his sword poised two-handedly over one shoulder. Eph backed out of the way just as the blade swept through.
She had raised her hand in protest at the last moment, and the blade lifted it from her wrist before separating her head from her neck. The cut was clean and perfectly flat. White blood splattered against the wall—not in an arterial spray, but with more of a sickening splatch—and her body collapsed to the floor, head and hand dropping against it, the head tumbling away.
Setrakian lowered his sword and pulled the lamp from Eph’s hands, holding the fading beam close to the girl’s open neck wound, almost in a gesture of triumph. But triumph it was not: Eph saw things wriggling in the seeping pool of thick white blood.
The parasitic worms. They curled tight and went still when the light hit them. The old man was irradiating the scene.
Eph heard footfalls on the stone steps. Nora, racing out through the bulkhead. He ran after her, nearly tripping over the decapitated body of the girl’s father, surfacing onto the grass and the night air.
Nora was running to the swaying, dark trees. He caught up to her before she reached them, pulling her close, wrapping her up tight. She screamed into his chest, as though afraid to allow her cry to escape into the night, and he held her until Setrakian surfaced onto the yard.
The old man’s breath steamed into the cool night, chest pumping from exertion. He pressed his fingers to his heart. His white hair was mussed and shiny in the moonlight, making him appear—as did everything to Eph, at that moment—quite mad.
He cleaned his blade on the grass before returning it to the sheath end of the walking stick. He fixed the two pieces together with a firm twist, and the overlong walking stick was as it had been before.
“She is released now,” he said. “The girl and her father are at peace.”
He was checking his shoes and pants cuffs for vampire blood in the moonlight. Nora viewed him through wild eyes. “Who are you?” she said.
“Just a pilgrim,” he answered. “Same as you.”
They walked back to Eph’s Explorer. Eph felt all jittery and exposed out in the front yard. Setrakian opened the passenger door and pulled out a spare battery pack. He swapped batteries with the one in Eph’s lamp, then checked the purple light briefly against the side of the truck.
Setrakian said, “You wait here please.”
“For what?” said Eph.
“You saw the blood on her lips, her chin. She was flushed. She had fed. This is not done yet.”
The old man set off toward the next house. Eph watched him, Nora leaving Eph’s side in order to lean against the truck. She swallowed hard, as though about to be sick. “We just killed two people in the cellar of their own home.”
“This thing is spread by people. By un people.”
“Vampires, my God…”
Eph said, “Rule number one is always—fight the disease, not its victims.”
“Don’t demonize the sick,” said Nora.
“But now…now the sick are demons. Now the infected are active vectors of the disease, and have to be stopped. Killed. Destroyed.”
“What will Director Barnes say about that?”
Eph said, “We can’t wait for him. We’ve already waited too long.”
They fell silent. Soon Setrakian returned carrying his walking stick/vampire sword and the still warm lamp.
“It is done,” he said.
“Done?” Nora said, still appalled by what she had seen. “Now what? You do realize there were some two hundred other passengers aboard that plane.”
“It is much worse than that. The second night is upon us. The second wave of infection is happening now.”
THE SECOND NIGHT
Patricia ran a hand vigorously back through her hair, as though shaking out the lost hours of another day gone by. She found herself actually looking forward to Mark coming home, and not just for the satisfaction of throwing the kids at him and saying, “Here.” She wanted to fill him in on the only real news of the day, the Lusses’ nanny—who Patricia spied through the sheers of the front-facing dining room windows—racing out of the Lusses’ house not five minutes after arriving, children nowhere in sight, the old black woman running as if she was being chased.
Oooh, the Lusses. How neighbors can get under your skin. Whenever she thought of skin-and-bones Joanie tossing off a description of her “European-style pure-soil wine cellar,” Patricia shot an automatic middle finger in the general direction of the Luss house. She was dying to find out what Mark knew about Roger Luss, if he was still overseas. She wanted to compare notes. The only time she and her husband seemed to get on the same page was when they were tearing down friends, family, and neighbors. Maybe because savoring others’ marital problems and family misfortunes somehow made hers and Mark’s seem less troublesome.
Scandal always went better with a glass of pinot, and she finished off her second with a flourish. She checked the kitchen clock, with sincere th
oughts of pacing herself, given Mark’s predictable impatience whenever he arrived home to find her two drinks ahead of him. Screw him, snug in his office in the city all day, doing his lunches, walking about at his leisure, hobnobbing on the late train home. Meanwhile, she was stuck here with the baby and Marcus and the nanny and the gardener…
She poured herself another glass, wondering how long it would be until Marcus, that jealous little demon, went in to wake up his napping sister. The nanny had put Jacqueline down before she left, and the little baby hadn’t woken up yet. Patricia checked the clock again, remarking at this extended period of quiet in the house. Wow—sleeping like a champ. Fortified with another swallow of pinot, and mindful of her impish little four-year-old terrorist, she pushed back the ad-crammed Cookie magazine and started up the back steps.
She looked in on Marcus first, finding him lying facedown on the New York Rangers rug next to his sleigh bed, his portable game-unit thingy still turned on near his outstretched hand. Worn out. Of course, they would pay dearly for this late nap when the whirling dervish wouldn’t settle down at bedtime—but by then it would be Mark’s turn to deal.
She went down the hall—puzzled by and frowning at a few clumps of dark soil on the runner (that little demon)—to the closed door with the SH-SH-SH!—ANGEL SLEEPING heart-shaped silk pillow hanging from the doorknob on a frilly lace ribbon. She eased it open on the dim, warm nursery, and was startled to see an adult sitting in the rocking chair next to the crib, swaying back and forth. A woman, holding a little bundle in her arms.
The stranger was cradling baby Jacqueline. But in the quiet warmth of the room, under the softness of the recessed lighting, and feeling the high pile of the rug underfoot, everything still seemed okay.
“Who…?” As Patricia ventured in farther, something in the rocking woman’s posture clicked. “Joan? Joan—is that you?” Patricia stepped closer. “What are you…? Did you come in through the garage?”
Joan—it was her—stopped her slow rocking and stood up from the chair. With the pink-shaded lamp behind her, Patricia barely made out the odd expression on Joan’s face—in particular, the strange twist of her mouth. She smelled dirty, and Patricia’s mind went immediately to her own sister, and that horrible, horrible Thanksgiving last year. Was Joan having a similar breakdown?
And why was she here now, holding baby Jacqueline?
Joan extended her arms to hand the infant back to Patricia. Patricia cradled her baby, and in a moment knew that something wasn’t right. Her daughter’s stillness went beyond the limpness of infant sleep.
With two anxious fingers, Patricia pinched back the blanket covering Jackie’s face.
The baby’s rosebud lips were parted. Her little eyes were dark and fixed and staring. The blanket was wet around her little neck. Patricia’s two fingers came away sticky with blood.
The scream that rose in Patricia’s throat never reached its destination.
Ann-Marie Barbour was literally at her wits’ end. Standing in her kitchen, whispering prayers and gripping the edge of the sink as though the house she had lived in all her married life were a small boat caught in a swirling black sea. Praying endlessly for guidance, for relief. For a glimmer of hope. She knew that her Ansel was not evil. He was not what he seemed. He was just very, very sick. (But he killed the dogs.) Whatever illness he had would pass like a bad fever and everything would return to normal.
She looked out at the locked shed in the dark backyard. It was quiet now.
The doubts returned, as they had when she saw the news report about the dead people from Flight 753 who had disappeared from the morgues. Something was happening, something awful (He Killed the Dogs)—and her overwhelming sensation of dread was alleviated only by repeated trips to the mirrors and her sink. Washing and touching, worrying and praying.
Why did Ansel bury himself under the dirt during the day? (He killed the dogs.) Why did he look at her with such craving? (He killed them.) Why wouldn’t he say anything, but only grunt and yowl (like the dogs he killed)?
Night had again taken the sky—the thing she had dreaded all day.
Why was he so quiet out there now?
Before she could think about what she was doing, before she could lose her reserve, she went out the door and down the porch stairs. Not looking at the dogs’ graves in the corner of the yard—not giving in to that madness. She had to be the strong one now. For just a little while longer…
The shed doors. The lock and the chain. She stood there, listening, her fist pressed hard against her mouth until her front teeth started to hurt.
What would Ansel do? Would he open the door if it were she inside? Would he force himself to face her?
Yes. He would.
Ann-Marie undid the lock with the key from around her neck. She threaded out the thick chain, and this time stepped back to where she knew he could not reach her—past the length of the runner leash fixed to the dog pole—as the doors fell open.
An awful stink. A godless fetor. The stench alone brought tears to her eyes. That was her Ansel in there.
She saw nothing. She listened. She would not be drawn inside.
“Ansel?”
Barely a whisper on her part. Nothing came in return.
“Ansel.”
A rustling. Movement in the dirt. Oh, why hadn’t she brought a flashlight?
She reached forward just enough to nudge one door open more widely. Enough to let in a little more of the moonlight.
There he was. Lying half in a bed of soil, his face raised to the doors, eyes sunken and fraught with pain. She saw at once that he was dying. Her Ansel was dying. She thought again of the dogs who used to sleep here, Pap and Gertie, the dear Saint Bernards she had loved more than mere pets, whom he had killed and whose place he had willingly taken…yes…in order to save Ann-Marie and the children.
And then she knew. He needed to hurt someone else in order to revive himself. In order to live.
She shivered in the moonlight, facing the suffering creature her husband had become.
He wanted her to give herself over to him. She knew that. She could feel it.
Ansel let out a guttural groan, voiceless, as though from deep in the pit of his empty stomach.
She couldn’t do it. Ann-Marie wept as she closed the shed doors on him. She pressed her shoulder to them, shutting him up like a corpse neither quite alive nor yet quite dead. He was too weak to charge the doors now. She heard only another moan of protest.
She was running the first length of chain back through the door handles when she heard a step on the gravel behind her. Ann-Marie froze, picturing that police officer returning. She heard another step, then spun around.
He was an older man, balding, wearing a stiff-collared shirt, open cardigan, and loose corduroys. Their neighbor from across the street, the one who had called the police: the widower, Mr. Otish. The kind of neighbor who rakes his leaves into the street so that they blow into your yard. A man they never saw or heard from unless there was a problem that he suspected them or their children of having caused.
Mr. Otish said, “Your dogs have found increasingly creative ways to keep me awake at night.”
His presence, like a ghostly intrusion upon a nightmare, mystified Ann-Marie. The dogs?
He was talking about Ansel, the noises he made in the night.
“If you have a sick animal, you need to take it to a veterinarian and have it treated or put down.”
She was too stunned even to reply. He walked closer, coming off the driveway and onto the edge of the backyard grass, eyeing the shed with contempt.
A hoarse moan rose from inside.
Mr. Otish’s face shriveled in disgust. “You are going to do something about those curs or else I am going to call the police again, right now.”
“No!” Fear escaped before she could hold it in.
He smiled, surprised by her trepidation, enjoying the sense of control over her that it gave him. “Then what is it you plan to do?”
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Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. “I…I’ll take care of it…I don’t know how.”
He looked at the back porch, curious about the light on in the kitchen. “Is the man of the house available? I would prefer to speak with him.”
She shook her head.
Another pained groan from the shed.
“Well, you had damn well better do something about those sloppy creatures—or else I will. Anybody who grew up on a farm will tell you, Mrs. Barbour, dogs are service animals and don’t need coddling. Far better for them to know the sting of the switch than the pat of a hand. Especially a clumsy breed such as the Saint Bernard.”
Something he’d said got through to her. Something about her dogs…
Sting of the switch.
The whole reason they’d built the chain-and-post contraption in the shed in the first place was because Pap and Gertie had run off a few times…and once, not too long ago…Gertie, the sweetheart of the two, the trusting one, came home with her back and legs all ripped up…
…as though someone had taken a stick to her.
The normally shy and retiring Ann-Marie Barbour forgot all of her fear at that moment. She looked at this man—this nasty little shriveled-up excuse for a man—as though a veil had been lifted from her eyes.
“You,” she said. Her chin trembled, not from timidity anymore but from rage. “You did that. To Gertie. You hurt her…”
His eyes flickered for a moment, unused to being confronted—and simultaneously betraying his guilt.
“If I did,” he said, regaining his usual condescension, “I am sure he had it coming.”
Ann-Marie burst with hatred suddenly. Everything she had been bottling up over these past few days. Sending away her children…burying her dead dogs…worrying about her afflicted husband…
“She,” Ann-Marie said.
“What?”
“She. Gertie. Is a she.”
Another tremulous groan from within the shed.
Ansel’s need. His craving…
She backed up, shaking. Intimidated, not by him, but by these new feelings of rage. “You want to see for yourself?” she heard herself say.
The Strain Page 25
