The Strain (The Strain Trilogy 1)

Snap-chunk. Snap-chunk. Snap-chunk.

Eph fired three silver needles from his nail gun, the long-barreled tool bucking with recoil. The projectiles ripped into the vampire, burning into his diseased muscle, bringing forth a hoarse howl of pain that tipped him forward.

Eph kept recording.

"Enough," said Setrakian. "Let us remain merciful."

The beast's neck extended as he strained from the pain. Setrakian repeated his refrain about his singing sword-and then swung right through the vampire's neck. The body collapsed, arms and legs shivering. The head rolled to a stop, eyes blinking a few times, the stinger flailing like a cut snake, then going still. Hot white effluent bled out of the trunk of the neck, steaming faintly into the cool night air. The capillary worms slithered into the dirt, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, looking for a new vessel.

Nora caught whatever sort of cry was rising in her throat with a hand clamped fast over her open mouth.

Eph stared, revolted, forgetting to look through the viewfinder.

Setrakian stepped back, sword pointed down, white spatter steaming off the silver blade, dripping to the grass. "In the back there. Under the wall."

Eph saw a hole dug beneath the rear of the shed.

"Something else was in here with him," said the old man. "Something crawled out, escaped."

Houses lined the street on either side. It could be in any one of them. "But no sign of the Master."

Setrakian shook his head. "Not here. Maybe the next."

Eph looked deep into the shed, trying to make out the blood worms in the light of Nora's lamps. "Should I go in and irradiate them?"

"There is a safer way. That red can on the back shelf?"

Eph looked. "The gasoline can?"

Setrakian nodded, and at once Eph understood. He cleared his throat and brought the nail gun up again, aiming it, squeezing the trigger twice.

The weaponized tool was accurate from that distance. Fuel glugged out of the punctured canister, spilling down off the wooden shelf to the dirt below.

Setrakian swept open his light topcoat and fished a small box of matches from a pocket in the lining. With a very crooked finger he picked out one wooden match and struck it against the strip on the box, bringing it flaring orange into the night.

"Mr. Barbour is released," he said.

Then he threw in the lit match and the woodshed roared.

Rego Park Center, Queens

MATT GOT THROUGH an entire rack of juniors' separates, and then holstered his bar code collection unit-the inventory gun-and set off downstairs for a snack. After-hours inventory actually wasn't all that bad. As the Sears store manager, he was comped the overtime, applicable toward his regular weekday hours. And the rest of the mall was closed and locked, the security grates down, meaning no customers, no crowds. And he didn't have to wear a necktie.

He took the escalator to the merchandise pickup bay, where the best vending machines were. He was coming back through the first-floor jewelry counters eating jelly Chuckles (in ascending order of preference: licorice, lemon, lime, orange, cherry) when he heard something out in the mall proper. He went to the wide steel gate and saw one of the security guards crawling on the floor, three stores down.

The guard was holding his hand to his throat, as though choking, or badly hurt.

"Hey!" called Matt.

The guard saw him and reached out, not a wave but a plea for help. Matt dug out his key ring and turned the longest one in the wall slot, raising the gate just four feet, high enough to duck under, and ran down to the man.

The security guard gripped his arm and Matt got him up onto a nearby bench next to the wishing fountain. The man was gasping. Matt saw blood on his neck between his fingers, but not enough to indicate a stabbing. There were bloodstains on his uniform shirt also, and the guy's lap was damp where he had peed himself.

Matt knew the guy by sight only, recognizing him as kind of a douche. A big-armed guy who patrolled the mall with his thumbs in his belt like some southern sheriff. With his hat off now, Matt saw the guy's receding hairline, black strands straggly and greasy, over his pate like oil. The guy was rubber limbed and clinging to Matt's arm, painfully and not very manfully.

Matt kept asking what had happened, but the guard was hyperventilating and looking all around. Matt heard a voice and realized it was the guard's hip radio. Matt lifted the receiver off his belt. "Hello? This is Matt Sayles, manager of Sears. Hey, one of your guys here, on the first level-he's hurt. He's bleeding from the neck, and he's all gray."

The voice on the other end said, "This is his supervisor. What's happening there?"

The guard was fighting to spit something out but only air wheezed from his ravaged throat.

Matt relayed, "He was attacked. He's got bruises on the sides of his neck, and wounds...he's pretty scared. But I don't see anybody else..."

"I'm coming down the utility stairs now," said the supervisor. Matt could hear his footfalls over the radio broadcast. "Where did you say you-"

He cut out there. Matt waited for him to come back on, then pressed the call button. "Where did we say we what?"

Finger off, he listened. Nothing again.

"Hello?"

A burst of transmission came through, less than one second long. A voice yelling, muffled: "GARGAHRAH-"

The guard pitched forward off the bench, crawling away on all fours, dragging himself toward Sears. Matt got to his feet, radio in hand, turning toward the restrooms sign next to which was the door to the utility stairs.

He heard thumping, like kicking coming down.

Then a familiar whirring. He turned back toward his store and saw the steel security gate lowering to the floor. He had left his keys hanging in the control.

The terrified guard was locking himself in.

"Hey-hey!" yelled Matt.

But before he could run there, Matt felt a presence behind him. He saw the guard back off, big-eyed, knocking over a rack of dresses and crawling away. Matt turned and saw two kids in baggy jeans and oversize cashmere hoodies coming out of the corridor to the restrooms. They looked drugged out, their brown skin yellowed, their hands empty.

Junkies. Matt's fear spiked, thinking they might have hit the guard with a dirty syringe. He pulled out his wallet, tossing it to one of them. The kid didn't move to catch it, the wallet smacking him in the gut and falling to the floor.

Matt backed up against the store grate as the two guys closed in.

Vestry Street, Tribeca

EPH PULLED UP across the street from Bolivar's residence, a pair of conjoined town houses fronted by three stories of scaffolding. They crossed to the door and found it boarded up. Not haphazardly or tem porarily, but covered with thick planking bolted over the door frame. Sealed.