Eph turned. Helicopter footage showed a row of flaming buildings now, and thick black smoke filling the air over Manhattan.
“It’s getting bad,” he said.
As Eph watched, he noticed all of Zack’s school papers on the refrigerator door lift and flutter. A napkin wafted across the counter, drifting to the floor, at Fet’s feet.
Eph turned to Zack, who had stopped typing. “What was that breeze?”
Zack said, “Back slider must be open.”
Eph looked around for Nora. Then the toilet flushed, and she stepped out of the hall bathroom. “What’s up?” she said, finding everyone staring at her.
Eph turned toward the other end of the house, looking at the corner that led around to the sliding glass door and the backyard.
A person turned the corner. Stopping there, her arms hanging limply at her sides.
Eph stared, paralyzed.
Kelly.
“Mom!”
Zack started toward her, and Eph reached out and grabbed him. His grip must have hurt Zack, because the boy pulled away in surprise, looking back at him.
Nora rushed over and wrapped Zack up from behind.
Kelly was just standing there. Looking at them. No expression, no blinking. She looked shell-shocked, as though deafened by some recent explosion.
Eph knew immediately. The pain in his heart was physical.
Kelly Goodweather was turned. A dead thing returned to its home.
Her gazing eyes found Zack. Her Dear One. She had come for him.
“Mom?” said Zack, seeing that something was wrong with her.
Eph felt quick movement from behind. Fet rushed into the hall and grabbed Eph’s sword. He brandished it, showing Kelly the silver of the blade.
Kelly’s face curdled. Her expression collapsed into evil and she bared her teeth.
Eph’s heart dropped through his chest and into his gut.
She was a demon. A vampire.
One of them.
She was gone to him forever.
With a muffled groan, Zack recoiled at the sight of his demonized mother…and then blacked out.
Fet started after her with the sword, but Eph hooked his arm before he could follow through. Kelly recoiled from the silver blade, like a cat with its fur up. She hissed at them. She took one more baleful look at the unconscious boy, her intended…and then turned and fled out the back door.
Eph and Fet rounded the corner just in time to watch Kelly throw herself over the low chain-link fence separating their backyard from the neighbor’s, and run off into the new night.
Fet closed the door and locked it. He drew the blinds over the glass, then turned to Eph.
Eph said nothing but returned to Nora, who was kneeling over Zack, on the floor, her eyes keen with despair.
He saw now how truly insidious this plague was. Pitting family member against family member. Pitting death against life.
The Master had sent her. He had turned her against Eph and Zack. To torment them. To take his revenge.
If the degree of devotion to a Dear One in life bore any correlation to their desire to reunite in death…then Eph knew that Kelly would never give up. She would go on haunting her son forever unless someone put a stop to it.
Their custody battle for Zack was not over.
Eph looked at their faces…and then at the fires raging on television…and then turned to the computer. He pressed the enter key, completing Zack’s task. He dispatched video proof of the raging vampire into the world…and then went into the kitchen, where Kelly kept the scotch. For the first time in a long time, he poured himself a drink.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge and enthusiastically recommend the book Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (Bloomsbury, 2004).
About the Authors
Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, GUILLERMO DEL TORO made his feature directorial debut in 1993 with the film Cronos, and has since gone on to direct Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade II, Hellboy I, Hellboy II, and Pan’s Labyrinth, which garnered enormous critical praise worldwide and won three Academy Awards. He will direct two films based on The Hobbit, to be produced by Peter Jackson.
CHUCK HOGAN is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Standoff and Prince of Thieves, which won the 2005 Hammett Award and was called one of the ten best novels of the year by Stephen King. Prince of Thieves will soon be a major motion picture.
www.thestrainthebook.com
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ALSO BY CHUCK HOGAN
The Killing Moon
Prince of Thieves
The Blood Artists
The Standoff
Credits
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE STRAIN. Copyright © 2009 by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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