The Strain (The Strain Trilogy 1)

But now, as he pulled up outside the Gilbartons' address-a stately looking Georgian on a broad side street of widely spaced properties-Eph realized that, were they wrong, he was about to wake up a man grieving for the end of his family, the loss of his wife and only child.

This was something Eph knew a little bit about.

Setrakian stepped out of the Explorer, fixing his hat on his head, carrying the long walking stick that he did not need for support. The street was quiet at that evening hour, lights glowing inside some of the other houses, but no people out and about, no cars driving past. The windows of the Gilbartons' house were all dark. Setrakian handed them each a battery-powered light with dark bulbs that looked like their Luma lamps, only heavier.

They went to the door and Setrakian rang the doorbell by using the head of the walking stick. He tried the doorknob when no one answered, using the gloved part of his hand only, keeping his bare fingertips off the knob. Not leaving any fingerprints.

Eph realized that the old man had done this sort of thing before.

The front door was firmly locked. "Come," said Setrakian.

They went back down the stairs, and started around the house. The backyard was a wide clearing set on the edge of an old wood. The early moon provided decent light, enough to cast faint shadows of their bodies over the grass.

Setrakian stopped and pointed with his walking stick.

A bulkhead rose out at an angle from the cellar, its doors wide open to the night.

The old man continued to the bulkhead, Eph and Nora following. Stone steps led down into a dark cellar. Setrakian scanned the high trees buffering the backyard.

Eph said, "We can't just go inside."

"This is exceedingly unwise after sundown," Setrakian said. "But we do not have the luxury of waiting."

Eph said, "No, I mean-this is trespassing. We should call the police first."

Setrakian took Eph's lamp from him with a scolding look. "What we have to do here...they would not understand."

He switched on the lamp, two purple bulbs emitting black light. It was similar to the medical-grade wands Eph used, but brighter and hotter, and fitted with bigger batteries.

"Black light?" said Eph.

"Black light is merely long-wave ultraviolet, or UVA. Revealing, but harmless. UVB is medium wave, can cause sunburn or skin cancer. This"-he took care to aim the beam away from them, as well as himself-"is short-wave UVC. Germicidal, used for sterilization. Excites and smashes DNA bonds. Direct exposure is very harmful to human skin. But to a vampire-this is weapons grade."

The old man started down the steps with the lamp, his walking stick in his other hand. The ultraviolet spectrum provides little real illumination, the UVC light adding to the gloom of the situation rather than alleviating it. Over the stone walls on the sides of the stairs, as they passed from the chill of the night into the cool of a cement-foundation cellar, moss glowed a spectral white.

Inside, Eph made out the dark outline of stairs going up to the first floor. A laundry area and an old-fashioned pinball machine.

And a body lying on the floor.

A man laid out in plaid pajamas. Eph started toward him with the impulse of a trained physician-then stopped himself. Nora groped the wall opposite the inside door, flipping the switch there, but no light came on.

Setrakian moved toward the man, thrusting the lamp close to his neck. The weird indigo glow revealed a small, perfectly straight fissure in glowing blue, just left of the center of his throat.

"He is turned," said Setrakian.

The old man pushed the Luma lamp back into Eph's hands. Nora turned on hers and shone it over the man's face, revealing a mad subcutaneous being, a scowling, deathlike mask shifting and writhing, looking indefinably, yet undoubtedly, evil.

Setrakian went and found, leaning against a corner workbench, a new ax with a glossy wooden handle and a shiny red-and-silver steel blade. He returned with it in his gnarled hands.

Chapter 13

"Wait," said Eph.

Setrakian said, "Please stand back, Doctor."

"He's just lying here," said Eph.

"He will soon arise." The old man gestured to the stone steps leading up to the open bulkhead doors, his eyes never leaving the man on the floor. "The girl is out there now. Feeding on others." Setrakian readied the ax. "I don't ask that you condone this, Doctor. All I ask right now is that you step aside."

Eph saw the determination in Setrakian's face and knew the old man would swing whether or not he was in his way. Eph stepped back. The blade was heavy for Setrakian's size and age, the old man bringing both arms up over his head, the flat of the blade almost at the back of his waist.

Then his arms relaxed. His elbows lowered.

His head turned toward the open bulkhead doors, listening.

Eph heard it then too. The crunching of dry grass being flattened.

He imagined it was an animal, at first. But no. The crunching had the simple cadence of a biped.

Footsteps. Human-or once-human. Approaching.

Setrakian lowered the ax. "Stand by the door. Silently. Close it behind her once she enters." He took the lamp back from Eph, pressing the ax into his hands in trade. "She must not escape."

He withdrew to where his walking stick stood against the wall, on the opposite side of the door-then switched off the hot lamp, disappearing into total darkness.

Eph stood beside the open cellar door, his back to the wall, flat up against it. Nora was next to him, both of them shivering in the basement of a stranger's house. The footsteps were closer, light and soft on the ground.

They stopped at the top of the steps. A faint shadow fell over the moonlight on the cellar floor: a head and shoulders.

The footsteps started coming down.

At the bottom, just before the door, they stopped. Eph-not three yards away, the ax hugged to his chest-was transfixed by the girl's profile. Small and short, blond hair falling over the shoulders of a modest, shin-length nightgown. Barefoot, arms hanging straight and loose, standing with a peculiar stillness. Her chest rose and fell, but no steam came out of her mouth into the moonlight.

Later, he would learn much more. That her senses of hearing and smell had become greatly enhanced. That she could hear blood pulsing through his and Nora's and the professor's bodies, and could smell the carbon dioxide emitted by their breath. He would learn that sight was the least acute of her senses. She was now at the stage where she was losing her color vision, and yet her thermal imaging-the ability to "read" heat signatures as monochromatic halos-had not yet fully matured.

She took a few steps forward, moving out of the rectangle of faint moonlight and into the full darkness of the cellar. A ghost had entered the room. Eph should have shut the door, but the girl's very presence here froze him.