"The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (del Toro Guillermo, Hogan Chuck)

Interlude III Setrakian’s Heart

Along with thousands of holocaust survivors, Setrakian had arrived in Vienna in 1947, almost entirely penniless, and settled in the Soviet zone of the city. He was able to find some success buying, repairing, and reselling furniture acquired from unclaimed warehouses and estates in all four zones of the city.

One of his clients became also his mentor: Professor Ernst Zelman, one of the few surviving members of the mythical Weiner Kreis, or the Vienna Circle, a turn-of-the-century philosophical society recently dispersed by the Nazis. Zelman had returned to Vienna from exile after having lost most of his family to the Third Reich. He felt enormous empathy with the young Setrakian, and, in a Vienna full of pain and silence — at a time when speaking about “the past” and discussing Nazism was considered abhorrent — Zelman and Setrakian found great solace in each other’s company. Professor Zelman allowed Abraham to borrow freely from his abundant library, and Setrakian, being a bachelor and an insomniac, devoured the books rapidly and systematically. He first applied for studies in philosophy in 1949, and, a few years later, in a very fragmented, very permeable University of Vienna, Abraham Setrakian became associate professor of philosophy.

After he accepted financing from a group headed by Eldritch Palmer, an American industrial magnate with investments in the American zone of Vienna as well as an intense interest in the occult, Setrakian’s influence and collection of cultural artifacts expanded at a great rate throughout the early 1960s, capped by his most significant prize, the wolf’s-head walking stick of the mysteriously disappeared Jusef Sardu.

But certain developments and revelations out in the field eventually convinced Setrakian that his and Palmer’s interests were not compatible. That Palmer’s ultimate agenda was, in fact, entirely contrary to Setrakian’s intentions to hunt down and expose the vampiric cabal — which led to an ugly rift.

Setrakian knew, beyond doubt, who it was who later spread rumors of his affair with a student, resulting in his removal from the university. The rumors, alas, were entirely true, and Setrakian, freed now by the airing of this secret, swiftly married the lovely Miriam.

Miriam Sacher had survived polio as a child, and walked with arm and leg braces. To Abraham, she was simply the most exquisite little bird who could not fly. Originally a Romance languages expert, she had enrolled in several of Setrakian’s seminars and slowly gained the professor’s attention. It was anathema to date a student, so Miriam convinced her wealthy father to hire Abraham as her private tutor. To reach the Sacher family estate, Setrakian had to walk a good hour after taking two trams out of Vienna. The mansion had no electricity, so Abraham and Miriam read by the light of an oil lamp in the family library. Miriam moved around using a wood-and-wicker wheelchair that Setrakian used to push near the bookshelves as new volumes were required. As he did so, he felt the soft, clean scent of Miriam’s hair. A scent that intoxicated him and that, as a memory, greatly distracted him in the few hours they spent apart. Soon, their mutual intentions were made manifest and discretion gave way to apprehension as they hid in dark, dusty corners to find each other’s breath and saliva.

Disgraced by the university after a prolonged process to remove him from tenure, and facing opposition from Miriam’s family, Setrakian the Jew eloped with the blue-blooded Sacher girl and they married in secret in Mönchhof. Only Professor Zelman and a handful of Miriam’s friends were in attendance.

As the years went by, Miriam emerged as a partner in his expeditions, a comfort during the dark times, and a true believer in his cause. For over a decade, Setrakian was able to make a living by writing small pamphlets and working as a curator for antique houses all over Europe. Miriam made the most of their modest resources, and nights at the Setrakian house were usually uneventful. Every night, Abraham would rub Miriam’s legs with a mixture of alcohol, camphor, and herbs, patiently massaging out the painful knots that cramped muscle and sinew — hiding the fact that, while he did so, his hands hurt as much as her legs. Night after night, the professor told Miriam about ancient knowledge and myth, reciting stories full of hidden meaning and lore. He would end by humming old German lullabies to help her forget her pain and drift into sleep.

In the spring of 1967, Abraham Setrakian picked up Eichhorst’s trail in Bulgaria, and a hunger for vengeance against the Nazi rekindled the fire in his belly. Eichhorst, his commandant at Treblinka, was the man who issued Setrakian his craftsman star. He had also twice promised to execute his favorite woodworker, to do so personally. Such was a Jew’s lot in the extermination camp.

Setrakian tracked Eichhorst to the Balkans. Albania had been a communist regime since the war, and, for whatever reason, strigoi appeared to flourish in similar political and ideological climates. Setrakian had high hopes that his old camp warden — the dark god of that kingdom of industrialized death — might even lead him to the Master.

Because of her physical infirmity, Setrakian left Miriam at a village outside Shkodër, and led a pack horse fifteen kilometers to the ancient town of Drisht. Setrakian pulled the reluctant animal up the steep limestone incline, along old Ottoman paths rising to the hilltop castle.

Drisht Castle (Kalaja e Drishtit) dated to the twelfth century, erected as part of a mountaintop chain of Byzantine fortifications. The castle came under Montenegrin and then, briefly, Venetian rule, before the region fell to the Turks in 1478. Now, nearly five hundred years later, the fortress ruins contained a small Muslim village, a small mosque, and the neglected castle, its walls falling prey to nature.

Setrakian discovered the village empty, with little sign of recent activity. The views from the mountaintop out to the Dinaric Alps to the north, and the Adriatic Sea and the Strait of Otranto to the west were sweeping and majestic.

The crumbling stone castle with its centuries of stillness was a spot-on location for vampire hunting. In retrospect, that should have tipped Setrakian off that things were perhaps not as they seemed.

In the belowground chambers, he discovered the coffin. A simple and modern funerary box, a tapered hexagon constructed of all wood, apparently cypress, containing no metal parts, utilizing wooden pegs instead of nails, and leather hinging.

It was not yet nightfall, but the light in the room was not strong enough that he could rely on it to do the job. So Setrakian prepared his silver sword, making ready to dispatch his former tormentor. Weapon set, he raised the lid with his crooked-fingered hand.

The box, indeed, was empty. Emptier than empty: it was bottomless. Fixed to the floor, it functioned as a trapdoor of sorts. Setrakian strapped on a headlamp from his bag and peered down.

The dirt bottomed some fifteen feet below, then tunneled out.

Setrakian loaded himself up with tools — including an extra flashlight, a pouch of batteries, and his long silver knives (his discovery of the killing properties of ultraviolet light in the C range was yet to come — as was the advent of commercially available UV lamps), leaving behind all of his food and most of his water. He tied a rope to the wall chains and lowered himself into the coffin tunnel.

The ammonia smell of strigoi discharge was pungent, prompting him to step carefully, to avoid soiling his boots. He made his way through the passages, listening at every turn, picking signal marks into the walls when the tunnel forked, until, after some time, he found he had doubled back to his original marks.

Reconsidering, he decided to retrace his steps and return to the entrance beneath the bottomless coffin. He would climb back out, regroup, and lie in wait for the inhabitants to rise after nightfall.

But when he arrived back at the entrance, looking up, he found that the coffin lid had been shut. And his access rope was gone.

Setrakian had hunted enough strigoi that his reaction to this turn of events was not fear but anger. He turned immediately, plunging back into the tunnels with the knowledge that his survival depended upon his being predator and not prey.

He took a different route this time, and eventually encountered a family of four peasant villagers. They were strigoi, their red eyes lighting up at his presence, reflected blindly in the beam of his flashlight.

But they were all too weak to attack. The mother was the only one to rise from all fours, Setrakian noticing in her face the characteristic caving of an unnourished vampire: a darkening of the flesh, the articulation of the throat stinger mechanism through the taut skin, and a dazed, somnolent appearance.

He released them — with ease, and without mercy.

He soon encountered two other families, one stronger than the other, but neither able to mount much of a challenge. In another chamber, he found a child strigoi who had been destroyed in what appeared to be an ill-fated attempt at vampire cannibalism.

But still, no sign of Eichhorst.

Once he had cleared the ancient cave network of vampires, having discovered no other exit, he returned to the chamber beneath the closed coffin and began chipping away at the ancient stone with his dagger. He hacked out one toehold in the wall, setting to work on another a few feet higher in the opposite wall. As he worked for hours — the silver was a poor choice for the job, cracking and warping, the iron handle and grip proving more useful — he wondered about the wasting village strigoi down here. Their presence made little sense. Something was amiss, but Setrakian resisted reasoning it all the way through, pushing down his anxiety in order to focus on the job at hand.

Hours — maybe days — later, out of water and low on batteries, he balanced on the two lower toeholds to carve out the third. His hands were covered with a paste of blood mixed with dust, his tools difficult to hold. Finally, he braced his opposite foot against the sheer wall and reached the lid of the coffin.

With one desperate thrust, he shoved open the top.

He climbed out, emerging paranoid, half-crazed. The pack he had left there was gone, and with it, his extra food and water. Parched, he emerged from the castle into life-saving daylight. The sky was overcast. He had a sense of years having elapsed.

His horse had been slaughtered at the head of the path, gutted, its body cold.

The sky opened over him as he hurried back to the village. A farmer, one he had nodded to on the way up, traded for Setrakian’s broken wristwatch some water and rock-hard biscuits, and Setrakian learned, through intensive pantomiming, that he had been underground for three sunsets and three dawns.

He finally returned to the villa he had rented, but Miriam was not there. No note, no nothing — entirely unlike her. He went next door, then across the street. Finally, a man opened his door to him, just a crack.

No, he hadn’t seen his wife, the man told him in pidgin Greek.

Setrakian saw a woman cowering behind the man. He asked if something was wrong.

The man explained to him that two children had disappeared from the village the night before. A witch was suspected.

Setrakian returned to his rented villa. He sat heavily in a chair, holding his head in his bloodied, broken hands, and waited for nightfall — for the dark hour of his dear wife’s return.

She came to him out of the rain, free of the crutches and braces that had steadied her limbs all her human life. Her hair hung wet, her flesh white and slick, her clothes drenched with mud. She came to him with her head held high, in the manner of a society woman about to welcome a neophyte into her circle of esteem. At her sides stood the two village children she had turned, a boy and a girl still sick with transformation.

Miriam’s legs were straight and very dark. Blood had gathered at the lower portion of her extremities and both her hands and feet were now almost entirely black. Gone were her infirm, tentative steps: the atrophied gait which Setrakian had tried nightly to alleviate.

How completely and quickly she had changed from the love of his life into this mad, muddied, glaring creature. Now a strigoi with a taste for the children she could not bear in life.

Crying softly, Setrakian rose from his chair, half of him desiring to let it be, to go down into hell with her, to give himself over to vampirism in his despair.

But slay her he did, with much love and many tears. The children he cut down as well, with no regard for their corrupted bodies — though with Miriam, he was determined to preserve a part of her for himself.

Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness — cutting the diseased heart out of one’s wife’s chest and preserving it, the corrupted organ beating with the craving of a blood worm, inside a pickling jar.

Life is madness, thought Setrakian, done with his butchering, looking about the room. And so is love.

After having a last moment with his late wife’s heart, Setrakian uttered something that Fet barely heard and did not understand — it was “Forgive me, dearest”—and then went to work.

He sectioned the heart not with a silver blade, which would have been fatal to the worm, but with a knife of stainless steel — trimming the diseased organ back and back and back. The worm did not make its escape until Setrakian held the heart near one of the UV lamps set around the edge of the table. Thicker than a strand of hair, spindly and quick, the pinkish capillary worm shot out, aiming first for the broken fingers that gripped the knife handle. But Setrakian was much too prepared for that, and it slithered into the center of the table. Setrakian chopped it once with his blade, splitting the worm in two. Fet then trapped the separated ends using two large drinking glasses.

The worms regenerated themselves, exploring the inside rim of their new cages.

Setrakian then set about preparing the experiment. Fet sat back on a stool, watching the worms lash about inside the glass, driven by blood hunger. Fet remembered Setrakian’s warning to Eph, about destroying Kelly:

In the act of releasing a loved one… you taste what it is to be turned. To go against everything you are. That act changes one forever.

And Nora, about love being the true victim of this plague, the instrument of our downfall:

The undead returning for their Dear Ones. Human love corrupted into vampiric need.

Fet said, “Why didn’t they kill you in those tunnels? Since it was a trap?”

Setrakian looked up from his contraption. “Believe it or not, they were afraid of me back then. I was still in the prime of life, I was vital, I was strong. They are indeed sadists, but, you must remember, their numbers were quite small back then. Self-preservation was paramount. Unbridled expansion of their species was a taboo. And yet they had to hurt me. And so they did.”

Fet said, “They are still afraid of you.”

“Not me. Only what I represent. What I know. In truth, what can one old man do against a horde of vampires?”

Fet did not believe Setrakian’s humility, not for a moment.

The old man continued, “I think the fact that we don’t give up — this idea that the human spirit keeps going in the face of absolute adversity — puzzles them. They are arrogant. Their origin, if confirmed, will attest to that.”

“What is their origin, then?”

“Once we get the book, once I am completely certain… I will reveal it to you.”

The radio started to fade, and Fet first thought it was his bad ear. He stood and turned the crank, powering the unit, keeping it going. Human voices were largely absent from the airwaves, replaced by heavy interference and occasional high-pitched tones. But one commercial sports radio station still had broadcast power, and though apparently all of its on-air talent were gone, a lone producer remained. He had taken up the microphone, changing the format from Yankees-Mets-Giants-Jets-Rangers-Knicks talk to news updates culled off the Internet and from occasional callers.

“… the national Web site of the FBI now reports that they have Dr. Ephraim Goodweather in federal custody, following an incident in Brooklyn. He is the fugitive former New York City CDC official who released that first video — remember that? The guy in the shed, chained like a dog. Remember when that demon stuff seemed pretty hysterical and far-fetched? Those were good times. Anyway… it says he’s been arrested on… what’s this? Attempted murder? Jeez. Just when you think we might be able to get some real answers. I mean, this guy was at the center of the whole initial thing, if memory serves. Right? He was there at the plane, at Flight 753. And he was wanted for the murder of one of the other first responders, a guy who worked for him, I think the name was Jim Kent. So, clearly, there’s something going on with this guy. My opinion — I think they’re gonna Oswald him. Two bullets to the gut, and he’s silenced forever. Another piece in this giant puzzle that no one seems to be able to put together. Anybody out there has any thoughts on this, any ideas, any theories, and your phone is still working, hit me up on the sports hotline…”

Setrakian sat with his eyes closed.

Fet said, “Attempted murder?”

“Palmer,” said Setrakian.

“Palmer!” said Fet. “You mean — it’s not some bogus charge?” Fet’s shock quickly turned to appreciation. “Gunning down Palmer. Christ. Good ol’ doc. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I am very glad you did not.”

Fet ran his fingers through the hair on the top of his head, as though waking himself up. “And then there were two, huh?” He stepped back, looking out through the half-open door to the storefront. Dusk was falling through the windows beyond. “So you knew about this?”

“I suspected.”

“You didn’t want to stop him?”

“I could see — there was no stopping. A man has to act on his own impulses sometimes. Understand — he is a medical scientist caught up in a pandemic, the source of which defies everything he thought he knew. Add to that the personal conflict involving his wife. He took the course he thought was right.”

“Bold move. Would it have meant anything? If he had succeeded?”

“Oh, I think so.” Setrakian went back to his tinkering.

Fet smiled. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“I’m sure he didn’t either.”

Fet thought he saw a shadow pass before the front windows then. He had been half-turned away, the image in his periphery. It had struck him as a large being.

“I think we’ve got a customer,” said Fet, hurrying to the back door.

Setrakian stood, reaching quickly for his wolf’s-head staff, twisting the top and exposing a few inches of steel.

“Stay,” said Fet. “Be ready.” He took his loaded nail gun and a sword, and slipped out the back door, fearing the arrival of the Master.

Out on the back curb, as soon as he closed the door, Fet saw the big man. Thick-browed, a hulking man in his sixties, as big as Fet. He stood with a slight crouch, favoring one leg. His open hands were out, resembling a wrestler’s stance.

Not the Master. Not even a vampire. The man’s eyes confirmed it. Even newly turned vampires move strangely, less like a human and more like an animal, or a bug.

Two others stepped from behind the DPW van. One was all silvered up with jewelry, short and wide and powerful-looking, snarling like a junkyard dog larded with bling. The other was younger, holding the tip of a long sword out toward Fet, aimed at his throat.

So they knew their silver. “I’m human,” said Fet. “You guys are looking to loot something, I got nothing here but rat poison.”

“We are looking for an old man,” came a voice behind Fet. He turned, keeping all comers in front of him. The new one was Gus, his torn shirt collar partially revealing the phrase SOY COMO SOY tattooed across his clavicle. He carried a long silver knife in his hand.

Three Mexican gangbangers and an old ex-wrestler with hands the size of thick steaks. “It’s getting dark, boys,” said Fet. “You should be moving right along.”

Creem, the silver-knuckled one, said, “Now what?”

Gus said to Fet, “The pawnbroker. Where is he?”

Fet held pat. These punks packed slaying weapons, but he didn’t know them, and what he didn’t know he didn’t like. “Don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Gus wasn’t buying. “I guess we go door to door, then, motherfucker.”

Fet said, “You do, you’re gonna have to go through me.” He pointed with his nail gun. “And just so you know — this baby right here is nasty. The nail just fastens to the bone. Homes right in on it. Vampire or not, damage will be done. I’ll hear you squeal when you try to pry a couple of silvery inches out of your fucking eye socket, cholo.”

“Vasiliy,” said Setrakian, exiting out the back door, staff in hand.

Gus saw him, saw the old man’s hands. All busted up, just as he remembered. The pawnbroker looked even older now, smaller. It had been years since they’d met about one week ago. He straightened, uncertain if the old man would recognize him.

Setrakian looked him over. “From the jail.”

Fet said, “Jail?”

Setrakian reached out and patted Gus’s arm familiarly. “You listened. You learned. And you survived.”

“A guevo. I survived. And you — you got out.”

“I had a stroke of good fortune,” said Setrakian. He looked at the others. “But what of your friend? The sick one. You did what you had to do?”

Gus winced, remembering. “Si. I did what I had to do. And I’ve been fucking doing it ever since.”

Angel dug into a knapsack on his shoulder, and Fet readied his nail gun. “Easy, big bear,” he said.

Angel pulled out the silver case recovered from the pawnshop. Gus went and took it from him, opening it, removing the card inside, and handing it to the pawnbroker.

It contained Fet’s address.

Setrakian noticed that the case was dented and blackened, one corner warped from heat.

Gus told him, “They sent a crew for you. Used smoke cover to attack in daytime. They were all over your shop when we got there.” Gus nodded to the others. “We had to blow up your place to get out of there with our blood still red.”

Setrakian showed only a flicker of regret, passing quickly. “So — you have joined the fight.”

“Who, me?” said Gus, brandishing his silver blade. “I am the fight. Been flushing ’em out these past few days — way too many to count.”

Setrakian looked more closely at Gus’s weapon, showing concern. “Where, may I ask, did you get such well-made arms?”

“From the fucking source,” said Gus. “They came for me when I was still in handcuffs, running from the law. Pulled me right off the street.”

Setrakian’s expression turned dark. “Who are ‘they?’”

“Them. The old ones.”

Setrakian said, “The Ancients.”

“Holy Jesus,” said Fet.

Setrakian motioned to him to be patient. “Please,” he said to Gus. “Explain.”

Gus did so, recounting the Ancients’ offer, that they were holding his mother, and how he had recruited the Sapphires out of Jersey City to work at his side as day hunters.

“Mercenaries,” said Setrakian.

Gus took that as a compliment. “We’re mopping the floor with milk blood. A tight hit squad, good vampire killers. Vampire shitkickers, more like it.”

Angel nodded. He liked this kid.

“The Ancients,” Gus said. “They feel that this is all a concerted attack. Breaking their breeding rules, risking exposure. Shock and Awe, I guess…”

Fet coughed out a laugh. “You guess? You’re joking. No? You fucking dropout assassins have no idea what’s going down here. You don’t even know whose side you’re really on.”

“Hold, please.” Setrakian silenced Fet with a hand, thinking. “Do they know that you have come to me?”

“No,” said Gus.

“They will soon. And they will not be pleased.” Setrakian put up his hands, reassuring the confused Gus. “Fret not. It is all a big mess, a bad situation for anyone with red blood in their veins. I am very glad you sought me out again.”

Fet had learned to like the brightness that came into the old man’s eyes when he was getting an idea. It helped Fet relax a little.

Setrakian said to Gus, “I think perhaps there is something you can do for me.”

Gus shot a cutting look at Fet, as though saying, Take that. “Name it,” he said to Setrakian. “I owe you plenty.”

“You will take my friend and me to the Ancients.”

Eph sat alone in the debriefing room, his elbows on a scratched table, calmly rubbing at his hands. The room smelled of old coffee, though there was none present. The ceiling-lamp light fell on the one-way mirror, illuminating a single human handprint, the ghostly remnant of a recent interrogation.

Strange knowing you are being watched, even studied. It affected what you do, down to your very posture, the way you licked your lips, how you looked at or didn’t look at yourself in the mirror, behind which lurked your captors. If lab rats knew their behavior was being scrutinized, then every maze-and-cheese experiment would take on an extra dimension.

Eph looked forward to their questions, perhaps more than the FBI was looking forward to his answers. He hoped that their inquiries would give him a sense of the investigation at hand, and, in doing so, let him know to what extent the vampire invasion was currently understood by law enforcement and the powers that be.

He had once read that falling asleep while awaiting questioning is a leading indicator of a suspect’s culpability. The reason was something about how the lack of a physical outlet for one’s anxiety exhausted the guilty mind — that, coupled with an unconscious need to hide or escape.

Eph was plenty tired, and sore, but more than that, he felt relief. He was done. Under arrest, in federal custody. No more fight, no more struggle. He was of little use to Setrakian and Fet anyway. With Zack and Nora now safely out of the hot zone, speeding south to Harrisburg, it seemed to him that sitting here in the penalty box was preferable to warming the bench.

Two agents entered without introduction. They handcuffed his wrists, Eph thinking that strange. They cuffed them not behind his back but in front of him, then pulled him out of the chair and walked him from the room.

They led him past the mostly empty bullpen to a key-access elevator. No one said anything on the ride up. The door opened on an unadorned access hallway, which they followed to a short flight of stairs, leading to a door to the roof.

A helicopter was parked there, its rotors already speeding up, chopping into the night air. Too noisy to ask questions, so Eph crouch-walked with the other two into the belly of the bird, and sat while they seat-belted him in.

The chopper lifted off, rising over Kew Gardens and greater Brooklyn. Eph saw the blocks burning, the helicopter weaving between great plumes of thick, black smoke. All this devastation raging below him. Surreal didn’t begin to describe it.

He realized they were crossing the East River, and then really wondered where they were taking him. He saw the police and fire lights spinning on the Brooklyn Bridge, but no moving cars, no people. Lower Manhattan came up fast around them, the helicopter dipping lower, the tallest buildings limiting his view.

Eph knew that the FBI headquarters were in Federal Plaza, a few blocks north of City Hall. But no, they remained close to the Financial District.

The chopper climbed again, zeroing in on the only lit rooftop for blocks around: a red ring of safety lights demarking a helipad. The bird touched down gently, and the agents unbuckled Eph’s seat belt. They got him up out of his seat without getting up themselves, essentially kicking him to the rooftop.

He remained in a standing crouch, air whipping at his clothes as the bird lifted off again, turning in the air and whirring away, back toward Brooklyn. Leaving him alone — and still handcuffed.

Eph smelled burning and ocean salt, the troposphere over Manhattan clogged with smoke. He remembered how the dust trail of the World Trade Center — white-gray, that — rose and flattened once it reached a certain elevation, then spread out over the skyline in a cloud of despair.

This cloud was black, blocking out the stars, making a dark night even darker.

He turned in a circle, bewildered. He walked beyond the ring of red landing lights, and, around one of the giant air-conditioning units, saw an open door, faint light emanating from within. He walked to it, stopping there with his cuffed hands outstretched, debating whether or not to go inside, then realizing that he had no choice. It was either sprout wings or see this thing through.

Faint red light inside came from an EXIT sign. A long staircase led down to another propped-open door. Through it was a carpeted hallway with expensive accent lighting. A man dressed in a dark suit stood halfway down, hands folded at his waist. Eph stopped, ready to run.

The man said nothing. He did nothing. Eph could see that he was human, not vampire.

Next to him, built into the wall, was a logo depicting a black orb bisected by a steel-blue line. The corporate symbol for the Stone-heart Group. Eph realized, for the first time, that it resembled the occulted sun winking its eye closed.

His adrenaline kicked in, his body preparing to fight. But the Stoneheart man turned and walked away to the end of the hall, to a door, which he opened and held.

Eph walked toward him, warily, sliding past the man and through the door. The man did not follow, instead closing the door with him remaining on the other side.

Art adorned the walls of the vast room, supersized canvases depicting nightmarish imagery and violent abstraction. Music played faintly, seeming to find his ears in the same measured volume as he moved throughout the room.

Around a corner, at the edge of the building walled in glass, looking north at the suffering island of Manhattan, was a table set for one.

A stream of low light spilled down onto the white linen, making it glow. A butler, or a waiter — a servant of some kind — arrived when Eph did, pulling out the only chair for him. Eph looked at the man — he was old, a domestic for life — the servant watching him without meeting his eye, standing with every expectation that his guest should take the seat offered him.

And so Eph did. The chair was pushed in beneath the table, a napkin opened and laid across his right thigh, and then the servant walked away.

Eph looked at the great windows. The reflection made it appear he was seated outside, at a table hovering some seventy-eight stories over Manhattan, while the city roiled in paroxysms of violence beneath him.

A slight whirring noise undercut the pleasant symphony. A motorized wheelchair appeared out of the gloom, and Eldritch Palmer, his frail hand operating the steering stick, rolled across the polished floor to the opposite side of the table.

Eph began to get to his feet — but then Mr. Fitzwilliam, Palmer’s bodyguard-cum-nurse, appeared in the shadows. The guy was bulging out of his suit, his orange hair cut high and tight, like a small, contained fire atop his boulder of a head.

Eph relented, sitting back down.

Palmer pulled in so that the front of his chair arms lined up with the tabletop. Once he was set, he looked across at Eph. Palmer’s head resembled a triangle: broad-crowned with S-shaped veins evident at both temples, narrowing to a chin that trembled with age.

“You are a terrible shot, Dr. Goodweather,” said Palmer. “Killing me might have impeded our progress somewhat, but only temporarily. However, you caused irreversible liver damage to one of my bodyguards. Not very hero-like, I must say.”

Eph said nothing, still stunned by this sudden change of venue from the FBI in Brooklyn to Palmer’s Wall Street penthouse.

Palmer said, “Setrakian sent you to kill me, did he not?”

Eph said, “He did not. In fact, in his own way, I think he tried to talk me out of it. I went on my own.”

Palmer frowned, disappointed. “I must admit, I wish he was here, rather than you. Someone who could relate to what I have done, at least. The scope of my achievement. Someone who would understand the magnitude of my deeds, even as he condemned them.” Palmer signaled to Mr. Fitzwilliam. “Setrakian is not the man you think he is,” said Palmer.

“No?” said Eph. “Who do I think he is?”

Mr. Fitzwilliam approached, pulling a large piece of medical equipment on casters, a machine with whose function Eph was not familiar.

Palmer said, “You see him as the kindly old man, the white wizard. The humble genius.”

Eph said nothing as Mr. Fitzwilliam pulled up Palmer’s shirt, revealing twin valves implanted in his thin side, the man’s flesh hashed with scars. Mr. Fitzwilliam connected two tubes from the machine to the valves, taping them sealed, then switched on the machine. A feeder of some kind.

Palmer said, “In fact, he is a blunderer. A butcher, a psychopath, and a disgraced scholar. A failure in every respect.”

Palmer’s words made Eph smile. “If he was such a failure, you wouldn’t be talking about him now, wishing I were him.”

Palmer blinked sleepily. He raised his hand again and a distant door opened, a figure emerging. Eph braced himself, wondering what Palmer had in store for him — if this scallywag had a taste for revenge — but it was only the servant again, this time carrying a small tray on his fingertips.

He swept in front of Eph and set a cocktail down before him, rocks of ice floating in amber fluid.

Palmer said, “I am told you are a man who enjoys a stiff drink.”

Eph looked at the drink, then back at Palmer. “What is this?”

“A Manhattan,” said Palmer. “It seemed appropriate.”

“Not the damn drink. Why am I here?”

“You are my guest for dinner. A last meal. Not yours — mine.” He nodded to the machine feeding him.

The servant returned with a plate covered with a stainless-steel dome. He set it in front of Eph and removed the cover. Glazed black cod, baby potatoes, Oriental vegetable medley — all warm and steaming.

Eph didn’t move, looking down at it.

“Come now, Dr. Goodweather. You haven’t seen food like this in days. And don’t worry about it having been tampered with, poisoned or drugged. If I wanted you dead, Mr. Fitzwilliam here would see to it promptly and then enjoy your meal himself.”

Eph had actually been looking at the utensils set out for him. He grasped the sterling-silver knife, holding it up so that it caught the light.

“Silver, yes,” said Palmer. “No vampires here tonight.”

Eph took up his fork and, with his eyes on Palmer, and his handcuffs clinking, cut into the fish. Palmer watched as he brought a morsel to his mouth, chewing it, juices exploding on his dry tongue, his belly rumbling with anticipation.

“It has been decades since I ingested food orally,” said Palmer. “I grew accustomed to not eating while recuperating from various surgical procedures. Really, you can lose your taste for food surprisingly easily.”

He watched Eph chew and swallow.

“After a time, the simple act of eating comes to appear quite animalistic. Grotesque, in fact. No different than a cat consuming a dead bird. The mouth-throat-stomach digestive tract is such a crude path to nourishment. So primitive.”

Eph said, “We’re all just animals to you, is that it?”

“‘Customers’ is the accepted term. But certainly. We, the over-class, have taken those basic human drives and advanced our own selves through their exploitation. We have monetized human consumption, manipulated morals and laws to direct the masses by fear or hatred, and, in doing so, have managed to create a system of wealth and remuneration that has concentrated the vast majority of the world’s wealth in the hands of a select few. Over the course of two thousand years, I believe this system worked pretty well. But all good things must end. You saw, with the recent market crash, how we have been building to this impossible end. Money built upon money built upon money. Two choices remain. Either utter collapse, which appeals to no one, or the richest push the pedal to the floor and take it all. And here we are now.”

Eph said, “You brought the Master here. You arranged for him to be on that airplane.”

“Indeed. But, doctor, I have been so consumed with the orchestration of this endeavor for lo these past ten years that to recount it all for you now would truly be a waste of my last hours. If you don’t mind.”

“You are selling out the human race so you can live forever — as a vampire?”

Palmer put his hands together in a gesture of prayer, but only to rub his palms and generate some warmth. “Are you aware that this very island was once home to as many different species as Yellowstone National Park?”

“No, I wasn’t. So we humans had it coming, is that your point?”

Palmer laughed softly. “No, no. No, that is not it. Far too moralistic. Any dominant species would have ravaged the land with equal or grander enthusiasm. My point is that the land doesn’t care. The sky doesn’t care. The planet doesn’t care. The entire system is structured around a long-winded decay and an eventual rebirth. Why are you so precious about humanity? You can already feel it slipping away from you now. You’re falling apart. Is the sensation really all that bad?”

Eph remembered — with a spike of shame now — his apathy in the FBI debriefing room after his arrest. He looked with disgust at the cocktail Palmer expected him to drink.

Palmer continued, “The smart move would have been to cut a deal.”

Eph said, “I had nothing to offer.”

Palmer considered this. “Is that why you still resist?”

“Partly. Why should people like you have all the fun?”

Palmer’s hands returned to his armrests with the certainty of revelation. “It’s the myths, isn’t it? Movies and books and fables. It has become ingrained. The entertainment we sold, that was meant to placate you. To keep you down but still dreaming. Keep you wanting. Hoping. Coveting. Anything to direct your attention away from your sense of the animal, toward the fiction of a greater existence — a higher purpose.” He smiled again. “Something beyond the cycle of birth, reproduction, death.”

Eph pointed at Palmer with his fork. “But isn’t that what you’re doing now? You think you are about to go beyond death. You believe in the same fictions.”

“Me? A victim of the same great myth?” Palmer considered this angle, then discounted it. “I have made a new fate. I am forsaking death for deliverance. My point is — this humanity your heart bleeds for is already subservient, and fully programmed for subjugation.”

Eph looked up. “Subjugation? What do you mean by that?”

Palmer shook his head. “I am not about to detail everything for you. Not because you might do something heroic with this information — you cannot. It is too late. The die is already cast.”

Eph’s mind reeled. He remembered Palmer’s speech from earlier in the day, his testimony. “Why do you want a quarantine now? Sealing off cities? What is the point? Unless… are you trying to herd us together?”

Palmer did not answer.

Eph went on, “They can’t turn everybody, because then there would be no blood meals. You need a reliable food source.” It hit him then, what Palmer had said. “Food delivery. The meatpacking plants. Are you…? No…”

Palmer folded his old hands in his lap.

Eph pressed him. “And then — what about the nuclear power plants? Why do you need them to come on line?”

Palmer answered by saying again, “The die is already cast.”

Eph set down his fork, swiping the knife blade with his napkin before setting it down as well. These revelations had killed his body’s junkie-like urge for protein.

“You’re not insane,” said Eph, actively trying to read him now. “You’re not even evil. You are desperate, and certainly megalomaniacal. Absolutely perverse. Is all this spun out of a rich man’s fear of death? You trying to buy your way out of it? Actually choosing the alternative? But — for what? What have you not already done that you lust after? What will be left for you to lust for?”

For the briefest moment, Palmer’s eyes showed a hint of fragility, perhaps even fear. In that instant he was revealed to be just what he was: a fragile, sick old man.

“You don’t understand, Dr. Goodweather. I have been sick all my life. All my life. I had no childhood. No adolescence. I have been fighting against my own rot for as long as I can remember. Fear death? I walk with it every day. What I want now is to transcend it. To silence it. For what has being human ever done for me? Every pleasure I have ever experienced has been tainted by the whisper of decay and disease.”

“But — to be a vampire? A… a creature? A bloodsucking thing?”

“Well… arrangements have been made. I will be exalted somewhat. Even at the next stage, there has to be a class system, you know. And I have been promised a seat at the very top.”

“Promised by a vampire. A virus. What about his will? He is going to invade yours as he has all the others — possess it, make yours an extension of his own. What good is that? Merely trading one whisper for another…”

“I have dealt with worse, believe me. But it is kind of you to show such concern for my well-being.” Palmer looked to the great windows, beyond their reflection to the dying city below. “People will prefer any fate to this. They will welcome our alternative. You’ll see. They will accept any system, any order, that promises them the illusion of security.” He looked back. “But you haven’t touched your drink.”

Eph said, “Maybe I’m not so preprogrammed. Maybe people are more unpredictable than you think.”

“I don’t think so. Every model has its individual anomalies. A renowned doctor and scientist becomes an assassin. Amusing. What most people lack is vision — a vision of the truth. The ability to act with deadly certainty. No, as a group — a herd, that is your word — they are easily led, and wonderfully predictable. Capable of selling, turning, killing those that they profess to love in exchange for peace of mind or a scrap of food.” Palmer shrugged, disappointed that Eph was evidently through eating and the meal was over. “You will be going back to the FBI now.”

“Those agents are in on it? How big is this conspiracy?”

“‘Those agents’?” Palmer shook his head. “As with any bureaucratic institution — say, for instance, the CDC — once you seize control of the top, the rest of the organization simply follows orders. The Ancients have operated that way for years. The Master is no exception. Don’t you see that this is why governments were established in the first place? So, no, there is no conspiracy, Dr. Good-weather. This is the very same structure that has existed since the beginning of recorded time.”

Mr. Fitzwilliam unplugged Palmer from his feeding machine. Eph saw that Palmer was already half a vampire; that the jump from intravenous nourishment to a blood meal was not a great one. “Why did you have me here?”

“Not to gloat. I believe that has been made clear. Nor to unburden my soul.” Palmer chuckled before returning to seriousness. “This is my last night as a man. Dinner with my would-be assassin struck me as a meaningful part of the program. Tomorrow, Dr. Goodweather, I will exist in a place beyond death’s reach. And your kind will exist—”

“My kind?” said Eph, interrupting.

“Your kind will exist in a manner beyond all hope. I have delivered to you a new Messiah, and the reckoning is at hand. The mythmakers were right, save for their characterization of the second coming of a Messiah. He will indeed raise the dead. He will preside over the final judgment. God promises eternal life. The Master delivers it. And he will establish his kingdom on earth.”

“And what does that make you? The kingmaker? It sounds to me like you are one more drone doing his bidding.”

Palmer pursed his dry lips in a condescending manner. “I see. Another clumsy attempt to instill doubt in me. Dr. Barnes warned me against your stubbornness. But I suppose you have to try again and again—”

“I’m not trying anything. If you can’t see that he’s been stringing you along, then you deserve to get it in the neck.”

Palmer held his expression steady. What worked behind it — that was another matter. “Tomorrow,” he said, “is the day.”

“And why would he deign to share power with another?” said Eph. He sat up, his hands dropping below the table. He was winging it here, but it felt right. “Think about it. What sort of contract is holding him to this arrangement? What’d you two do, shake hands? You’re not blood brothers — not yet. Best-case scenario, by this time tomorrow you’ll be just another bloodsucker in the hive. Take it from an epidemiologist. Viruses don’t make deals.”

“He would be nowhere without me.”

“Without your money. Without your mundane influence, yes. All of which”—Eph nodded at the anarchy below them—“exist no more.”

Mr. Fitzwilliam stepped forward then, moving to Eph’s side. “The helicopter has returned.”

“And so it is good evening, Dr. Goodweather,” said Palmer, wheeling back from the table. “And good-bye.”

“He’s been out there turning folks for free, left and right. So ask yourself this. If you’re so damn important, Palmer — why make you wait in line?”

Palmer was rolling slowly away. Mr. Fitzwilliam hoisted Eph roughly to his feet. Eph was lucky: the silver knife he had hidden, tucked inside his waistband, only grazed his upper thigh.

“What’s in it for you?” Eph asked Mr. Fitzwilliam. “You’re too healthy to be dreaming of eternal life as a bloodsucker.”

Mr. Fitzwilliam said nothing. The weapon remained tight against Eph’s hip as he was led away, back up to the roof.