The Night Eternal (Strain Trilogy 3)

by Chuck Hogan

  The Master. She kept swinging, fighting the smoke and everything in it.

  Gus, keeping his bad arm behind him, rushed blindly sideways through the choking violet cloud, keeping to the shore. The sailboats were tied to a dock unconnected to land, anchored some forty or fifty feet out in the water.

  Gus’s left side was throbbing, his arm swollen. He felt feverish as he broke from the edge of the violet cloud, before the river-facing windows of the restaurant, expecting a column of hungry vampires. But he was alone on the beach.

  Not so in the air. He saw the black helicopters, six of them directly overhead, with another six or so coming up behind. They hovered low, swarming like giant mechanized bees, whipping sand into Gus’s face. One of them moved out over the river, scattering the surface water, whipping moisture with the force of shards of glass.

  Gus heard the rifle cracks and knew they were shooting at the skiffs. Trying to scuttle them. Thumps at his feet told him they were shooting at him too, but he was more concerned about the choppers starting off over the lake—searching for Goodweather, for the nuke.

  “Que chingados esperas?” he cursed in Spanish. “What are you waiting for?”

  Gus fired at those choppers, trying to bring them down. A scorching stab in his calf dropped him to one knee, and he knew he had been shot. He kept firing at the helicopters heading out over the river, seeing sparks fly off the tail.

  Another rifle round pierced his side with the force of an arrow. “Do it, Eph! Do it!” he yelled, falling to his elbow and still firing.

  One helicopter wobbled, and a human figure fell from it into the water. The chopper failed to right itself, its rear tail spinning frontward until it collided with another chopper, and both aircraft rolled and crashed down into the river.

  Gus was out of ammo. He lay back on the beach, just a few yards from the water, watching the death birds hover over him. In an instant, his body was covered with laser sights projecting out of the colored fog.

  “Goodweather gets fucking angels,” said Gus, laughing, sucking air. “I get laser sights.” He saw the snipers leaning out of their open cabin doors, sighting him. “Light me up, motherfuckers!”

  The sand danced all around him as he was shot through many times. Dozens of bullets rattled his body, severing it, grinding it . . . and Gus’s last thought was, You better not mess up this one too, doc.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Zack stood in the middle of the boat, rocking in the wake. Their puttering motor had faded into the darkness and the purple fog, leaving only the usual humming sensation in Zack’s head. It mixed with the low throb of the helicopters approaching.

  The woman named Ann pushed off from the dock cleat, while William pulled and pulled the rip cord of the coughing outboard motor, streams of violet smoke trailing past them. “To our island downriver.” She looked to William. “Hurry.”

  Zack said, “What do you have there?”

  “We have shelter. Warm beds.”

  “And?”

  “We have chickens. A garden. Chores. It’s an old fort from the American Revolution. There are children your age. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe there.”

  The Master’s voice said, You were safe here.

  Zack nodded, blinking. He lived like a prince, in a real castle in the center of a giant city. He owned a zoo. Everything he wanted.

  Until your father tried to take you away.

  Something told Zack to stay focused on the dock. The motor turned over, sputtering to life, and William turned in the rear seat and worked the tiller, steering them into the current. The helicopters were visible now, their lights and laser sights brightening the purple smoke on the beach. Zack counted off seven sets of seven blinks as the dock began to recede from view.

  A blur of purple smoke burst from the long edge of the dock, flying through the air toward them. Out of it appeared the Master, its cloak flying behind it like wings, arms outstretched, the wolf-headed walking stick in one hand.

  Its two bare feet landed in the aluminum boat with a bang. Ann, kneeling at the front point, barely had time to turn. “Fuck me . . .” She saw the Master before her—recognizing the pallid flesh of Gabriel Bolivar. This was the guy her niece was always yapping about. She wore him on T-shirts, hung his posters on her walls. And now, all that Ann could think of was, I never liked his fucking music . . .

  The Master set down his staff, then reached for her and, in a ripping motion, tore her in half at the waist the way strongmen do very thick phone books—then hurled both halves into the river.

  William was transfixed by the sight of the Master, who lifted him by his armpit and flat-handed his face with such tremendous force that William’s neck snapped and his head flopped back off his shoulders like a removed coat hood. It dumped him into the river water as well, then retrieved its walking stick and looked down at the boy.

  Take me there, my son.

  Zack moved to the tiller and changed course, the Master standing astride the middle bench, its cloak swirling in the wind, as they followed the first boat’s disappearing wake.

  The smoke began to thin out, and Nora’s calls to Fet were answered. They found each other and then found their way back to the restaurant, outrunning the rounds from the helicopter snipers overhead.

  Inside, they found the rest of Gus’s weapons. Fet grabbed Nora’s hand and they ran to the riverside windows, opening one onto the deck. Nora had picked up the Lumen and had it with her.

  They saw the boats bobbing offshore. “Where’s Gus?” asked Nora.

  “We’ll have to swim for it,” said Fet. His injured arm was now covered in blood, the wound reopened. “But first—”

  Fet fired at the chopper spotlights, shattering the first one he aimed at.

  “They can’t shoot what they can’t see!” he yelled.

  Nora did the same, the weapon chugging in her grip. She got one too. The remaining lights swept the shoreline for the source of the automatic gunfire.

  That was when Nora saw Gus’s body laid out in the sand, river water lapping at his side.

  Her shock and sorrow only paralyzed her a moment. Immediately, Gus’s fighting spirit came over her, as well as Fet. Don’t mourn—fight. They moved out aggressively onto the beach, firing away at the Master’s helicopters.

  The farther they got away from shore, the harder the boat rocked. The Born held tight to the nuke’s belt straps while Eph steered, trying to keep them from pitching over into the river. Thick, green-black water sloshed over the sides, spraying the bomb’s casing and the oak urns, a thin puddle forming underneath. It was spraying rain again, and they were sailing into the wind.

  Mr. Quinlan lifted the urns off the wet floor of the boat, moved them away from the water. Eph did not know what it meant, but the act of bringing the remains of the Ancients to the origin site of the last of their number reminded Eph that it was all about to end. The shock of seeing Zack that way had thrown him off.

  He motored past the second island, a long, rocky beach backed by bare, dying trees. Eph checked the map, the paper in his hand growing damp, the ink starting to run and spread.

  Eph yelled over the motor and the wind, the pain in his ribs constricting his voice. “How, without turning him, did the Master create this . . . symbiotic relationship with my boy?”

  I don’t know. The key is that he is away from the Master now.

  “The Master’s influence will disappear once we do away with it, like all of its vampires?”

  Everything that the Master was will cease.

  Eph was cheered. He felt real hope. He believed that they could be father and son again. “It’ll be a little like cult deprogramming, I suppose. No such thing as therapy anymore. I just want to get him back to his old bedroom. Start there.”

  Survival is the only therapy. I did not want to tell you before, for fear of your losing focus. But I believe the Master was grooming your son for its future self.

  Eph swallowed. “I feared it myself. I coul
dn’t think of any other reason to keep him and not turn him. But—why? Why Zack?”

  It may have little to do with your son.

  “You mean, it’s because of me?”

  I can’t know. All I know is that the Master is a perverse being. It loves to take root in pain. To subvert and corrupt. Perhaps in you it saw a challenge. You were the first one to board the aircraft on which it traveled to New York. You aligned yourself with Abraham Setrakian, its sworn enemy. Achieving the subjugation of an entire race of beings is a feat, but an impersonal one. The Master is one that needs to inflict pain personally. It needs to feel another’s suffering. It needs to experience it firsthand. “Sadism” is your closest modern term for it. And here it has been its undoing.

  Exhausted, Eph watched the third dark island pass. After the fourth island, he banked the boat. Difficult to tell the shape of the landmass from the river—and in the darkness impossible to see all six outcroppings without circling it first—but somehow Eph knew that the map was true and this was the Black Site. The bare, black trees on this uninhabited island resembled many-fingered giants burned stiff, arms raised to the heavens in mid-cry.

  Eph spotted an inlet and turned toward it, cutting the engine, nosing right onto land. The Born grabbed the nuke and stood, stepping onto the rocky shore.

  Nora was right. Leave me here to finish it. Go back to your boy.

  Eph looked at the hooded vampire, his face slashed, ready to end his existence. Suicide was an unnatural act for mortal humans to commit—but for an immortal? Mr. Quinlan’s martyrdom was a many times more transgressive, unnatural, violent act.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Eph.

  The Born nodded. Then it is time to go.

  With that, the Born started up the rocky rise with the keg-sized bomb in his arms and the remains of the Ancients in his pack. Eph’s only hesitation was a memory of his vision and its haunting images. The Born had not been foreseen as the redeemer. But Eph had not had enough time with the Occido Lumen, and perhaps the prophetic reading was different.

  Eph dipped the propeller back into the water and gripped the zip cord. He was about to pull when he heard a motor, the sound carrying to him on the swirling wind.

  Another boat, approaching. But there had been only one other motorized boat.

  Zack’s boat.

  Eph looked back for the Born, but he had already disappeared over the rise. Eph’s heart pounded as he stared into the dark mist over the river, straining to see the approaching craft. It sounded like it was coming in fast.

  Eph stood and jumped out of the boat onto the rocks, one arm across his broken ribs, the twin handles of his swords wobbling over his shoulders. He charged up the rocky rise as fast as he could, the ground smoking with mist rising into the spitting rain as though the land were heating up in anticipation of the atomic cremation to come.

  Eph topped the rise, unable to spot Mr. Quinlan among the trees. He rushed into the dead woods, calling to him, “Quinlan!” as loudly as his chest would allow, then emerged on the other side into a marshy clearing.

  The mist was high. The Born had set the weapon down in the approximate center of the trefoil-shaped island, in the middle of a ring of inlaid stones resembling rocky black blisters. He was moving around the device and setting up the white oak receptacles containing the Ancients’ ashes.

  Mr. Quinlan heard Eph calling him and turned his way—and just then picked up the Master’s approach.

  “It’s here!” yelled Eph. “It’s—”

  A blast of wind stirred up the mist. Mr. Quinlan just had time to brace himself before impact, grabbing on to the Master as it streaked in from out of nowhere. The momentum of the body strike carried them many yards away, rolling unseen into the mist. Eph saw something twist and fall through the air—and believed it was Setrakian’s old wolf-handled walking stick.

  Eph forgot about his chest pain, running for the bomb, pulling out his sword. Then the mist swirled up around it, obscuring the device.

  “Dad!”

  Eph turned, feeling Zack’s voice right behind him. He whipped back around fast, knowing he had been suckered. His ribs ached. He went into the haze, looking for the bomb. Feeling the ground for the inlaid stones, trying to find his way.

  Then before him, rising out of the mist: the Master.

  Eph stumbled backward, shocked at the sight of it. Two slashes crossed the monster’s face in a rough X, the result of the Master’s collision and ensuing fight with the Born.

  Fool.

  Eph still could not right himself or find words. His head roared as though he had just heard an explosion. He saw ripples beneath the Master’s flesh, a blood worm exiting one open scratch mark and crawling over its open eye to reenter the next. The Master did not flinch. It raised its arms from its sides and took in the smoky island of its origin, then looked triumphantly at the dark heavens above.

  Eph summoned all his strength and ran at the Master, sword first, aiming for its throat.

  The Master backhanded him squarely across the face with enough force to send Eph airborne, cartwheeling, landing on the stone ground some yards away.

  Ahsudagu-wah. Black ground.

  Eph first thought that the Master had snapped a vertebra in his neck. The breath was knocked out of him when he hit the ground, and he feared a punctured lung. His other sword had fallen out of his pack, landing somewhere on the ground between them.

  Onondaga language. The invading Europeans did not care to translate the name correctly, or at all. You see, Goodweather? Cultures die. Life is not circular but ruthlessly straight.

  Eph fought to stand, his fractured ribs stabbing him. “Quinlan!” he called out, his voice mostly just breath.

  You should have followed through with our deal, Goodweather. I would never have honored my end of the bargain, of course. But you could have at least spared yourself this humiliation. This pain. Surrender is always easier.

  Eph was bursting with every emotion. He stood as tall as he could with the pain in his chest pulling at him. He saw, through the mist, just a few arm lengths away, the outline of the nuclear bomb.

  Eph said, “Then let me offer you one last chance to surrender.”

  He limped to the device, feeling for the detonator. He thought it a stroke of great luck that the Master had thrown him so close to the device . . . and it was this very thought that made him look back at the creature.

  Eph saw another form emerge from the ground mist. Zack, approaching the Master’s side, no doubt summoned telepathically. Zack looked almost like a man to Eph, like the loved child you one day can no longer recognize. Zack stood with the Master, and suddenly Eph didn’t care anymore—and, at the same time, he cared more than ever.

  It is over, Goodweather. Now the book will be closed forever.

  The Master had been counting on this. The Master believed that Eph would not harm his son—that he could not blow up the Master if it meant sacrificing Zack too.

  Sons are meant to rebel against their fathers. The Master lifted its hands toward the sky again. It has always been that way.

  Eph stared at Zack, standing with this monster. With tears in his eyes, Eph smiled at his boy. “I forgive you, Zack, I do . . . ,” he said. “And I hope to hell that you forgive me.”

  Eph turned the screw switch from time delay to manual. He worked as fast as he could, and yet still the Master burst ahead, covering the distance between them. Eph released the detonator just in time, or else the blow from the Master would have torn the wires from the device, rendering it inoperable.

  Eph landed in a heap. He shook off the impact, trying to stand. He saw the Master coming for him, its eyes flaring red inside the crooked X.

  Behind it, the Born came flying. Mr. Quinlan had Eph’s second sword. It impaled the beast before it could turn, the Master arching with pain.

  The Born pulled back the blade, and the Master turned, facing him. Mr. Quinlan’s face was broken, his left cheek collapsed, his jaw unhinged, irid
escent blood coating his neck. But still he swiped at the Master, slicing at the creature’s hands and arms.

  The Master’s psychic fury sent the mist fleeing as, undeterred by the pain, it stalked its own wounded creation, backing the Born away from the bomb. Father and son entangled in the fiercest battle.

  Eph saw Zack standing alone behind Mr. Quinlan, watching raptly, something like fire in his eyes. Then Zack turned, as though his attention had been called to something. The Master was directing him. Zack reached down and picked up something long.

  Setrakian’s walking stick. The boy knew that a good twist of the handle shed the bottom wooden sheath, baring the silver blade.

  Zack held the sword with both hands. He looked at Mr. Quinlan from behind.

  Eph was already running toward him. He got in front of Zack, between him and the Born, one arm over his searing chest, the other holding a sword.

  Zack stared at his father before him. He did not lower his blade.

  Eph lowered his. He wanted Zack to take a chop at him. It would have made what he had to do that much easier.

  The boy trembled. Maybe he was fighting himself inside, resisting what the Master was telling him to do.

  Eph reached for his wrists and pulled Setrakian’s sword out of his hands. “Okay,” said Eph. “It’s okay.”

  Mr. Quinlan overpowered the Master. Eph could not hear what their minds were saying to one another; he only knew that the roar in his own head was deafening. Mr. Quinlan grabbed the neck of the Master and sank his fingers into it, piercing its flesh, trying to shatter it.

  Father.

  And then the Master shot out its stinger—and like a piston, it embedded itself in the Born’s neck. Such was its force that it shattered the vertebrae. Blood worms invaded Mr. Quinlan’s immaculate body, coursing under his pale skin for the very first—and very last—time.

  Eph saw the lights and heard the helicopter rotors approaching the island. They had found them. The spotlights searched the blighted land. It was now or never.

  Eph ran as fast as his punctured lungs would allow, the barrel-shaped device shaking in his view. He was just a few yards out when a howl came up and a blow caught him on the back of the head.