by Chuck Hogan
So the search continued on two fronts: for the Lumen, containing the secret of the Black Site in its silver-bound pages, and for Ephraim Goodweather.
It occurred to the Master, many times, that he might claim both prizes at the same time.
The Master was convinced the Black Site was near at hand. All the clues indicated this was so—the very clues that had led it here. The prophecy that had forced it to cross the ocean. And yet, in an abundance of caution, its slaves continued their excavations in far-flung parts of the world to see if they could find it elsewhere.
The Black Cliffs of Negril. The Black Hills mountain range in South Dakota. The oil fields at Pointe-Noire, on the western coast of the Republic of the Congo.
In the meantime, the Master had nearly achieved complete worldwide nuclear disarmament. Having taken immediate control of the military forces of the world through the directed spread of vampirism among infantry and command officers, it now had access to much of the world’s stockpiles. Rounding up and dismantling rogue nations’ weaponry, as well as so-called loose nukes, would take some more time, but the end was close.
The Master looked at every corner of its Earth farm and was pleased.
The Master reached for Setrakian’s wolf-headed staff, the one the vampire hunter had carried. The walking stick had once belonged to Sardu and had been refitted to include a silver blade when twisted open. It was nothing more than a trophy now, a symbol of the Master’s victory. The token amount of silver in its silver handle did not bother the Master, though it took great care not to touch the ornamental wolf’s head.
The Master carried it into the castle turret, the highest point in the park, and stepped outside into the oily rain. Beyond the spindly upper branches of the denuded treetops, through the thick haze of fog and pollution-heavy air, stood the dirty gray buildings, the East Side and the West Side. In the glowing register of his heat-sensitive vision, thousands upon thousands of empty windows stared down like the cold, dead eyes of fallen witnesses. The dark sky roiled above, voiding filth on the defeated city.
Below the Master, forming an arc around the base of the raised rock foundation, stood the guardians of the castle, twenty deep. Beyond them, in answer to the Master’s psychic call, a sea of vampires had assembled on the fifty-five-acre Great Lawn, each staring up with black-moon eyes.
No cheer. No salute. No exultation. A still and quiet congregation; a silent army, awaiting its orders.
Kelly Goodweather appeared at the Master’s side, and, next to her, the Goodweather boy. Kelly Goodweather had been summoned; the boy had wandered over out of pure curiosity.
The Master’s command went out to every vampire’s mind.
Goodweather.
There was no answer to the Master’s call. The only response would be action. In due time, he would kill Goodweather—first his soul, and then his body. Unbearable suffering would be endured.
He would make sure of that.
Roosevelt Island
PRIOR TO ITS late-twentieth-century reinvention as a planned community, Roosevelt Island was home to the city’s penitentiary, its lunatic asylum, and its smallpox hospital, and was previously known as Welfare Island.
Roosevelt Island had always been a home for New York City’s castaways. Fet was that now.
He had decided that he would rather live in isolation on this narrow, two-mile-long island in the middle of the East River than reside in the vampire-ruin city or its infested boroughs. He could not bear to live inside an occupied New York. Apparently, the river-phobic strigoi could find no use for this small satellite island of Manhattan, and so, soon after the takeover, they cleared the island of all residents and set it afire. The cables to the tram at Fifty-ninth Street had been cut and the Roosevelt Island Bridge destroyed at its terminus in Queens. The F line subway still ran through the island beneath the river, but the Roosevelt Island Station stop had been permanently walled up.
But Fet knew a different way in from the underwater tunnel up to the geographic center of the island. An access tunnel built to service the island community’s unusual pneumatic tube system of refuse collection and disposal. The vast majority of the island, including its once-towering apartment buildings offering magnificent Manhattan views, was in ruins. But Fet had found a few mostly undamaged belowground units in the luxury apartment complex constructed around the Octagon, formerly the main building of the old lunatic asylum. There, well concealed among the destruction, he had sealed off the burned top floors and joined four bottom-floor units. The water and electricity pipes under the river had not been disturbed, so once the borough grids were repaired Fet had power and potable water.
Under cover of daylight, the smugglers dropped off Fet and the Russian nuke at the northern end of the island. He retrieved a wheeled hardware-store pallet cart he kept stashed in a hospital utility shed near the rocky shoreline and towed the weapon and his rucksack and a small Styrofoam cooler through the rain to his hideout.
He was excited to see Nora and even feeling a bit giddy. Return journeys will do that. Also, she was the only one who knew he was meeting with the Russians, and so he arrived with his great prize in tow like a boy with a school trophy. His sense of accomplishment was amplified by the excitement and enthusiasm he knew she would show him.
However, when he arrived at the charred door that led inside to his concealed subterranean chamber, he found it open a few inches. This was not a mistake Dr. Nora Martinez would ever make. Fet quickly removed his sword from his bag. He had to tow the cart inside in order to get it out of the rain. He left it in the fire-damaged hallway and walked down the partially melted flight of stairs.
He entered his unlocked door. His hideaway did not require much security, because it was so well hidden and because, other than the rare maritime smuggler risking a journey along the Manhattan interior, almost no one else ever set foot on the island anymore.
The spare kitchen was unoccupied. Fet lived largely on snack food pilfered and stockpiled after the first few months of the siege, crackers and granola bars and Little Debbie cakes and Twinkies that were now reaching or, in some cases, already surpassing their “sell by” dates. Contrary to popular belief, they did become inedible. He had tried his hand at fishing, but the sooty river water was so rife with blight he was worried that no flame could get hot enough to safely cook out the pollution.
He moved through the bedroom after a quick check of the closets. The mattress on the floor had been just fine with him until the prospect of Nora perhaps staying overnight made him hunt for a proper bed frame. The spare bathroom, where Fet kept the rat-hunting equipment he had salvaged from his old storefront shop in the Flatlands, a few instruments from his former vocation that he had been unable to part with, was otherwise empty.
Fet ducked through the hole he had sledgehammered open, into the next unit, which he used as a study. The room was stocked with bookshelves and stacked cartons of Setrakian’s library and writings, centered around a leather sofa under a low-hanging reading lamp.
At about two o’clock in the circularly arranged room stood a hooded figure, well over six feet tall, strongly built. His face receded into the black cotton hood, but the eyes were apparent, piercing and red. In his pale hands was a notebook filled with Setrakian’s fine handwriting.
He was a strigoi. But he was clothed. He wore pants and boots in addition to the hooded sweatshirt.
He eyed the rest of the room, thinking ambush.
I am alone.
The strigoi put his voice directly into Fet’s head. Fet looked again at the notebook in his hands. This was a sanctuary to Fet. This vampire had invaded it. He could easily have destroyed it. The loss would have been catastrophic.
“Where is Nora?” Fet asked, and then moved on the strigoi, unsheathing his sword as fast as a man of Fet’s size can move. But the vampire at once eluded him and pushed him down to the ground. Fet roared in anger and tried to wrestle his opponent, but no matter what he did, the strigoi would retaliate with a
block and a crippling move, immobilizing Fet—hurting him just enough.
I have been here alone. Do you, by chance, remember who I am, Mr. Fet?
Fet did, vaguely. He remembered that this one had once held an iron spike at his neck, inside an old apartment high above Central Park.
“You were one of those hunters. The Ancients’ personal bodyguards.”
Correct.
“But you didn’t vaporize with the rest.”
Obviously not.
“Q something.”
Quinlan.
Fet freed his right arm and tried to connect with the creature’s cheek but the wrist was clamped and twisted in the blink of an eye. This time it hurt. A lot.
Now, I can dislocate this arm or I can break it. Your choice. But think about it. If I wanted you dead, you would be by now. Over the centuries I have served many masters, fought many wars. I have served emperors and queens and mercenaries. I have killed thousands of your kind and hundreds of rogue vampires. All I need from you is a moment. I need you to listen. If you attack me again, I will kill you instantly. Do we understand each other?
Fet nodded. Mr. Quinlan released him.
“You didn’t die with the Ancients. Then you must be one of the Master’s breed . . .”
Yes. And no.
“Uh-huh. That’s convenient. Mind me asking how you got here?”
Your friend Gus. The Ancients had me recruit him for sun hunting.
“I remember. Too little, too late, as it turned out.”
Fet remained guarded. This didn’t add up. The Master’s wily ways made him paranoid, but it was precisely this paranoia that had kept Fet alive and unturned over the past two years.
I am interested in viewing the Occido Lumen. Gus told me that you might be able to point me in the right direction.
“Fuck you,” said Fet. “You’ll have to go through me to get it.”
Mr. Quinlan appeared to smile.
We seek the same goal. And I have a little more of an edge when it comes to deciphering the book and Setrakian’s notes.
The strigoi had closed Setrakian’s notebook—one that Fet had reread many times. “Good reading?”
Indeed. And impressively accurate. Professor Setrakian was as learned as he was cunning.
“He was the real deal, all right.”
He and I almost met once before. About twenty miles north of Kotka, in Finland. He had somehow tracked me there. At the time I was wary of his intentions, as you might imagine. In retrospect, he would have made for an interesting dinner companion.
“As opposed to a meal himself,” said Fet. He thought that perhaps a quick test was in order. He pointed at the text in Q’s hands. “Ozryel, right? Is that the name of the Master?” he said. Fet had brought along with him on his voyage some copied pages of the Lumen to study whenever possible—including an image Setrakian had first focused on upon opening the Lumen. The archangel whom Setrakian referred to as Ozryel. The old professor had lined up this illuminated page with the alchemical symbol of three crescent moons combined to form a rudimentary biohazard sign, in such a way that the twinned images achieved a kind of geometric symmetry. “The old man called Ozy ‘the angel of death.’ ”
It’s “Ozy” now, is it?
“Sorry, yeah. Nickname. So—it was Ozy who became the Master?”
Partially correct.
“Partially?”
Fet had lowered his sword by now and leaned on it like a cane, the silver point making another notch in the floor.
“See, Setrakian would have had one thousand questions for you. Me, I don’t even know where to start.”
You already started.
“I guess I did. Shit, where were you two years ago?”
I’ve had work to do. Preparations.
“Preparations for what?”
Ashes.
“Right,” Fet said. “Something about the Ancients, collecting their remains. There were three Old World Ancients.”
You know more than you think you do.
“But still not enough. See, I just returned from a journey myself. Trying to track down the provenance of the Lumen. A dead end . . . but something else broke my way. Something that could be big.”
Fet thought of the nuke, which made him remember his excitement at returning home, which made him remember Nora. He moved to a laptop computer, waking it from a weeklong sleep. He checked the encrypted message board. No postings from Nora since two days ago.
“I have to go,” he told Mr. Quinlan. “I have many questions, but there might be something wrong, and I have to go meet someone. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll wait here for me?”
None. I must have access to the Lumen. Like the sky, it is written in a language beyond your comprehension. If you produce it for me . . . next time we meet I can promise you a plan of action . . .
Fet felt an overwhelming urge to hurry, a sudden sense of dread. “I’ll have to talk to the others first. This is not a decision I can make alone.”
Mr. Quinlan remained still in the half-light.
You may find me through Gus. Just know there is precious little time. If ever a situation called for decisive action, this is it.
INTERLUDE I
MR. QUINLAN’S STORY
THE YEAR 40 AD, THE LAST FULL YEAR OF THE REIGN OF Gaius Caligula, emperor of Rome, was marked by extraordinary displays of hubris, cruelty, and insanity. The emperor began appearing in public dressed as a god, and various public documents of the time refer to him as “Jupiter.” He had the heads removed from statues of gods and replaced with images of his own head. He forced senators to worship him as a physical living god. One of these Roman senators was his horse, Incitatus.
The imperial palace on the Palatine was extended to annex a temple erected for Caligula’s worship. Among the emperor’s court was a former slave, a pale, dark-haired boy of fifteen years, summoned by the new sun god at the behest of a soothsayer who was never again seen. The slave was renamed Thrax by the emperor.
Legend held that Thrax had been discovered in an abandoned village in the savage hinterlands of the far East: the frozen regions, inhabited only by the most Barbaric tribes. His reputation was that of a being of great brutality and cunning despite his innocent, fragile appearance. Some claimed he was gifted with the power of prophecy, and Caligula was instantly enthralled by him. Thrax was only seen at night, usually seated at Caligula’s side, where he exerted great influence for one so young—or else alone in the temple under the light of the moon, his pale skin glowing like alabaster. Thrax spoke several Barbaric tongues, and quickly learned Latin and science—his voracious desire for knowledge surpassed only by his appetite for cruelty. He quickly earned a sinister reputation in Rome, at a time when it was considered an achievement to distinguish oneself by cruelty alone. He advised Caligula politically and dispensed or withdrew imperial favor with complete ease. Regardless, he encouraged the emperor’s rise to divinity. They could be seen sitting side by side at the Circus Maximus, fervently supporting the Roman Green stables in the horse races. It was rumored, in fact, that it was Thrax who suggested they poison the rival stables after a loss of their team.
Caligula could not swim, and neither could Thrax, who inspired the emperor to erect his greatest folly: a temporary floating bridge, more than two miles long, using ships as pontoons, connecting the port city of Baiae to the port city of Puteoli. Thrax was not present when Caligula triumphantly rode Incitatus across the Bay of Baiae, attired in Alexander the Great’s original breastplate—but it was said that the former slave later made many night crossings, always in a litter carried by four Nubian slaves, dressed in the finest garments, an unholy sedia gestatoria flanked by a dozen guards.
Habitually, once a week, seven handpicked female slaves were brought to Thrax in his gold and alabaster chamber beneath the temple. He demanded they be virgins, in perfect health, and no older than nineteen. Tiny swabs of their sweat would be used to select them during the course of the week.
At nightfall on the seventh day, the ironwood door would be barred from within.
The first killing took place on a green marble pedestal at the center of the chamber, with sculptural relief depicting a mass of writhing, pleading bodies, raising their supplicant eyes and arms toward the heavens. Twin canals at the base redirected the flowing slave blood into gold cups encrusted with rubies and garnets.
Thrax emerged out of a passage, wearing only his subligar, and quietly ordered the slave to climb upon the pedestal. There he drank her in full view of the seven bronze mirrors hanging from the chamber walls, biting her fiercely as he punctured her throat with his stinger. The suction was so sudden, so swift, that one could actually see the veins collapsing beneath the slave’s skin as the color drained from her flesh within seconds. Thrax’s wiry arms restrained the slave’s torso with great strength and expert control.
When the entertainment of the ensuing panic faded, a second slave was swiftly attacked, feasted on, and brutally killed. There followed a third and a fourth and so on, until one terrorized slave remained. Thrax savored the final kill the most. Satiating.
But one night late in winter, Thrax slowed before finishing the final slave, having detected an extra pulse in the slave’s blood. He felt her belly through her tunic and found it firm and swollen. Confirming her pregnancy, Thrax brutally slapped her down, her blood trailing from his mouth. He went for a gold dagger, kept next to a cornucopia of fresh fruit. He sliced at her, going for the neck—only to have his expert blow deflected by her bare forearm, severing her outer muscles and missing the tendons by mere millimeters. Thrax lunged again but was stopped by the girl. Despite his speed and skill, he remained at a disadvantage due to his underdeveloped, adolescent body. So weak in spite of his time-honed technique.
The Master thereby resolved never again to occupy any vehicle younger than thirteen years of age. The slave girl wept and begged the Master to spare her life and that of her unborn child—all the while bleeding deliciously. She invoked the names of her gods. But her pleas meant nothing to the Master—except as part of the feeding process: the sizzling sound of bacon in the frying pan.
