The Fall (The Strain Trilogy 2)

They arrived at the building on Central Park via two stolen hotel courtesy cars, encountering no military interference along the way. Inside, the power was out, the elevator inoperable. Gus and the Sapphires started up the stairs, but Setrakian could not climb to the top. Fet did not offer to carry him; Setrakian was too proud for this to even be contemplated. The obstacle appeared insurmountable, and Setrakian, the silver book in his arms, seemed older than ever before.

Fet noted that the elevator was old, with folding gate doors. On a hunch, he went exploring doors near the stairway, and found an old-fashioned dumbwaiter lined with wallpaper. Without a word of protest, Setrakian handed Fet his walking stick and climbed into the half-sized car, sitting with the book on his knees. Angel worked the pulley and counterweight, hauling him up at a gradual rate of speed.

Setrakian rose up in darkness through the building inside the coffin-like conveyance, with his hands resting on the silver plating of the old tome. He was trying to catch his breath, and to settle his mind, but a roll call of sorts ran unbidden through his head: the face of each and every vampire he had ever slain. All the white blood he had spilled, all the worms he had loosed from cursed bodies. For years he had puzzled over the nature of the origin of these monsters on Earth. The Ancients, where they came from. The original act of evil that created these beings.

Fet reached the empty top floor still under construction, and found the door to the dumbwaiter. He opened it and watched a seemingly dazed Setrakian turn and test the floor with his shoe soles before standing out of it. Fet handed him his staff, and the old man blinked and looked at him with only a trace of recognition.

Up a few steps, the door to the empty top-floor apartment was ajar. Gus led the way inside. Mr. Quinlan and a couple of hunters stood beyond the entrance, and only watched them enter. No search, no accosting. Past them, the Ancients stood as before, still as statues, looking out over the falling city.

In absolute silence, Quinlan took position next to a narrow ebony door at the opposite side of the room,

wide left of the Ancients. Fet then realized there were only two Ancients now. Where the third had stood, to the far right, all that remained was what appeared to be a pile of white ash in a small wooden urn.

Setrakian walked farther toward them than the hunters had allowed on his previous visit. He stopped near the middle of the room. An illumination flare streaked over Central Park, lighting the apartment and outlining the two remaining Ancients in magnesium-white.

Setrakian said, “So you know.”

There was no response.

“Other than Sardu—you were Six Ancients, three Old World, three New. Six birth sites.”

Birth is a human act. Six sites of origin.

“One of them was Bulgaria. Then China. But why didn’t you safeguard them?”

Hubris, perhaps. Or something quite like it. By the time we knew we were in danger, it was too late. The Young One deceived us. Chernobyl was a decoy—His site. For a long time he managed to stay silent, feeding on carrion. Now he has moved in first—

“Then you know you are doomed.”

And then the one on the left vaporized into a burst of fine, white light. His form became dust and fell away to the floor amid a searing noise, like a high-pitched sigh. A shock that was partially electric and partially psychic jolted the humans in the room.

Almost instantaneously, two of the hunters were similarly obliterated. They vanished into a mist finer than smoke, leaving neither ashes nor dust—only their clothes, falling in a warm heap on the floor.

With the Ancient went its sacred bloodline.

The Master was eliminating his only rivals for control of the planet. Was that it?

The irony is that this has always been our plan for the world. Allowing the livestock to erect their own pens, to create and proliferate their weapons and reasons to self-destruct. We have been altering the planet’s ecosystem through its master breed. Once the greenhouse effect was irreversible, we were going to reveal ourselves and rise to power.

Setrakian said, “You were making the world over into a vampire nest.”

Nuclear winter is a perfect environment. Longer nights, shorter days. We could exist on the surface, shielded from the sun by the contaminated atmosphere. And we were almost there. But he foresaw that. Foresaw that, once we achieved that end, he would have to share with us this planet and its rich food source. And he does not want that.

“What does he want, then?” Setrakian said.

Pain. The Young One wants all the pain he can get. As fast as he can get it. He cannot stop. This addiction… this hunger for pain lies, in fact, at the root of our very origin…

Setrakian took another step toward the last remaining Ancient. “Quickly. If you are vulnerable through the site of your creation—then so is he.”

Now you know what is in the book—You must learn to interpret it…

“The location of his origin? Is that it?”

You believed us the ultimate evil. A pox on your people. You thought we were the ultimate corrupters of your world, and yet we were the glue holding everything together. Now you will feel the lash of the true overlord.

“Not if you tell us where he is vulnerable—”

We owe you nothing. We are done.