The Night Eternal (14 page)

“I had forgotten how slippery you were,” she said. “And how ambitious.”

He smiled as though she had offered him a compliment. “Well—camp living can be a fulfilled existence. Not only living for oneself but for others. This basic human biological function—the creation of blood—is an enormous resource to their kind. Do you think that leaves us with no leverage? If one plays things right, that is. If one can demonstrate to them that one has real value.”

“As a jailer.”

“Again—so reductive. Yours is the language of losers, Nora. I believe that the camp exists neither to punish nor oppress. It is simply a facility, constructed for mass production and maximum efficiency. My opinion—though I consider it a simple fact—is that people quickly come to appreciate living a life with clearly defined expectations. With simple, understandable rules for survival. If you provide, you will be provided for. There is real comfort in that. The human population has decreased by almost a third worldwide. A lot is the doing of the Master, but people kill each other pursuing simple things … like the food you have before you. So I assure you, camp life, once you give yourself over to it fully, is remarkably stress-free.”

Nora ignored the croissant prepared by his hands, pouring some lemon water from a pitcher into her glass instead. “I think the scariest thing is that you actually do believe this.”

“The notion that we humans were somehow more than mere animals, mere creatures set upon this earth—that we were instead chosen to be here—is what got us into trouble. Made us settled, made us complacent. Privileged. When I think about the fairy tales we used to tell ourselves and each other about God …”

A servant opened the double doors, entering with a gold-foil-topped bottle balanced upon a brass tray.

“Ah,” said Barnes, sliding his empty glass toward the servant. “The wine.”

Nora watched the servant pour a bit into Barnes’s glass. “What is all this about?” she asked.

“Priorat. Spanish. Palacios, L’Ermita, ’04. You’ll like it. Along with this fine house, I inherited a quite wonderful wine cellar.”

“I mean all this. Me being brought here. Why? What do you want?”

“To offer you something. A great opportunity. One that could improve your lot in this new life considerably, and perhaps forever.”

Nora watched him sample and okay the wine, allowing the servant to fill his glass. She said, “You need another driver? A dishwasher? A wine steward?”

Barnes smiled, with something shy behind the smile. He was looking at Nora’s hands as though he wanted to take them in his own. “You know, Nora, I have always admired your beauty. And
…
to be quite candid, I always thought Ephraim didn’t deserve a woman such as you …”

Nora opened her mouth to speak. No sound came out, only breath, emptying her lungs with a silent exhalation.

“Of course, back then, in an office environment, a government setting, it would have been … unprofessional to make any sort of advance on a subordinate. Termed harassment or some such. Remember those ridiculous and unnatural rules? How fussy civilization got toward the end? Now we have a much more natural order of things. He who wants and can … conquers and takes.”

Nora swallowed finally and found her voice. “Are you saying what I think you are saying, Everett?”

He blushed a little, as though lacking the conviction of his boorishness. “There aren’t many people left from my previous life. Or yours. Mightn’t it be nice every once in a while to reminisce? That could be very pleasant, I think—to share experiences we had together. Work anecdotes … dates and places. Remembering the way things used to be? We have so much in common—our professional backgrounds, our work experience. You could even practice medicine at the camp, if you wish. I seem to recall you have a background in social work. You could tend to the ill, ready them to return to productivity. Or even pursue more serious work, if you desire. You know, I have much influence.”

Nora kept her voice at an even pitch. “And in return?”

“In return? Luxury. Comfort. You would reside here, with me—on a trial basis, at first. Neither of us would want to commit to a bad situation. Over time, I think the arrangement would come together nicely. I am sorry that I didn’t find you before they shaved your lovely hair. But we have wigs—”

He reached for her bare scalp, but Nora straightened fast, pulling back.

“Is this how your driver got her job?” she said.

Barnes slowly drew back his hand; his face showed regret. Not for himself, but for Nora, as though she had rudely crossed a line that could not be uncrossed.

“Well,” he said, “you seemed to fall in with Goodweather, who was your boss at the time, quite easily.”

She was less offended than incredulous. “So that’s it,” she said. “You didn’t like that. You were my boss’s boss. You thought you were the one who should … First-night rights, is that it?”

“I am merely reminding you that this is apparently not your first time around this particular block.” He sat back, crossing his legs and arms, in the manner of a debater with supreme confidence in his side of the argument. “This is not an unusual situation for you to find yourself in.”

“Wow,” said Nora. “You really are the imbecilic bigot I always thought you would be …”

Barnes smiled, unfazed. “I think your choice is an easy one. Life in the camp or—potentially, if you play your cards right—life here. It is a choice no sane person would deliberate over very long.”

Nora felt herself smiling in disbelief, her face twisted uncomfortably. “You dirty fuck,” she said. “You are worse than a vampire, you know that? It’s not need for you, just opportunity. A power trip. Real rape would be too messy for you. You’d rather tie me up with ‘luxuries.’ You want me grateful and compliant. Appreciative for your exploitation of me. You’re a monster. I can see why you fit so well into their plans. But there are not enough plums in this house, or on this ruined planet, that would make me—”

“Perhaps a few days in a harsher environment will change your mind.” Barnes’s eyes had hardened while she was dressing him down. Now suddenly he appeared even more interested in her, as though feeding off this power disparity. “And if you do indeed choose to remain there, isolated and in the dark—which is of course your right—let me remind you of what you have to look forward to. Your blood type happens to be B positive, which, for whatever reason—taste? some vitamin-like benefit?—is most desirable to the vampire class. This means that you will be bred. Since you have entered the camp without a mate, one will be selected for you. He will also be B positive, in order to increase the chances for birthing more B-
positive
offspring. Someone such as myself. That can easily be arranged. Then, for the rest of your fertility life cycle, you will be either pregnant or nursing. Which has its advantages, as you may have seen. Better housing, better rations, two fruit and vegetable servings per day. Of course, if you should have any trouble conceiving, then after a reasonable amount of time, allowing for numerous attempts using a variety of fertility drugs, you will be relegated to camp labor and five-day bloodletting. After a while, if I may be completely candid, you will die.” Barnes wore a tight smile on his face. “In addition, having taken the liberty of reviewing your intake forms, ‘Ms. Rodriguez,’ I believe you were admitted to the camp with your mother.”

Nora felt the skin on the back of her neck—where she once had hair—tingling.

“You were apprehended on the subway while trying to hide her. I wonder where you two were going.”

“Where is she?” said Nora.

“Still alive, in fact. But, as you might know, due to her age and obvious infirmity, she is scheduled to be bled and then permanently retired.”

These words clouded Nora’s vision.

“Now,” said Barnes, unfolding his arms in order to select a white-chocolate truffle, “it is entirely possible she could be spared. Perhaps … this is just coming to me now, but perhaps even brought here, in a sort of semi-retirement. Given her own room, possibly a nurse. She could be well cared for.”

Nora’s hands trembled.

“So … you wanna fuck me
and
you wanna play house?”

Barnes bit into his treat, delighted to find sweet cream inside. “You know, this could have gone much more congenially. I tried the soft sell. I am a gentleman, Nora.”

“You are a son of a bitch. That’s what you are.”

“Ha.” He nodded in enjoyment. “Your Spanish temper, right? Feisty. Good.”

“You goddamn monster.”

“You said that, yes. Now, there is one more thing that I want you to consider. You should know that what I should have done the instant I saw you there in the detention house was identify you and turn you over to the Master. The Master would be only too pleased to learn more about Dr. Goodweather and the rest of your band of rebels. Such as their current whereabouts and the extent of their resources. Even simply where you and your mother were headed on that Manhattan subway car—or where you were coming from.” Barnes smiled and nodded. “The Master would be extremely motivated to learn such information. I can say in total confidence that I believe the Master would enjoy your company even more than I would. And it would use your mother to get to you. No question about that. If you go back to the camp without me you will eventually be discovered. I can assure you of that, too.” Barnes stood, smoothing out the creases in his admiral’s uniform, brushing away the crumbs. “So—now you understand that you have a third option as well. A date with the Master, with eternity as a vampire.”

Nora’s gaze blurred into the middle distance. She felt lethargic, almost dizzy. She believed that this was something like what it must feel like to be bled.

“But you have a decision to mull over,” said Barnes. “I won’t keep you any longer. I know you want to get right back to the camp—to your mother, while she is still alive.” He went to the double doors, pushing them open out into the grand hallway. “Do think it over, and let me know what you decide. Time is running out …”

Unseen by him, Nora pocketed one of the butter knives at the table.

Beneath Columbia University

C
OLUMBIA
U
NIVERSITY HAD
been, Gus knew, a big-shot school. Lots of old buildings, crazy expensive tuition, mucho security and cameras. He used to see some of the students out trying to mix with the neighborhood, some for community-minded reasons, which he never understood, and others for more illicit reasons, which he understood very well. But as for the university itself, the derelict Morningside Heights campus and all of its facilities, there was nothing much worth his time.

Now it was Gus’s base, his headquarters and his home. The Mexican gangbanger would never be made to leave his turf; indeed, he would blow it all up before allowing that to happen. As his sabotage and hunting activities dwindled in number and became more regimented, Gus started to look for a permanent base. He really needed it. It was hard to be efficient in this mad new world. Sticking it to the man became a 24/7 occupation, and one that was less and less rewarding every time. Police and fire departments, medical services, traffic surveillance—everything had been co-opted. When searching his old Harlem haunts for a place to coop, he’d connected with two of his La Mugre gangbangers and fellow saboteurs, Bruno Ramos and Joaquin Soto.

Bruno was fat—no other way to say it—fed mostly with Cheetos and beer. Joaquin was tight and lean. Groomed, tattooed, and full of ’tude. They were both brothers to Gus and they would die for him. Born ready.

Joaquin had done jail time with Gus. They’d done cell time together. Sixteen months for Gus. They’d watched each other’s back and Joaquin had done solitary for a good stretch after elbowing the teeth out of a guard, a big black guy named Raoul—what a
fucked-up
name for someone with no teeth: Raoul. After the vampires’ arrival—what some called the Fall—Gus had reconnected with Joaquin during the looting of an electronics store. Joaquin and Bruno helped him carry a big plasma TV and a box of video games.

Together they had taken the university and found it to be only slightly infested. Windows and doors were boarded and sealed with steel plates, the interiors razed and desecrated with ammonia waste. The students had all fled early, trying to evacuate the city and get back home. Joaquin guessed they never got very far.

What they found, in prowling around the deserted buildings, was a system of tunnels below the foundation. A book in the display case at the admissions office tipped Joaquin off to the fact that the campus had originally been erected on the grounds of a nineteenth-century insane asylum. The university architects had leveled all the existing hospital buildings except one and then built upon the existing foundations. Many of the linking tunnels were used for utilities, steam pipes generating scalding condensation, miles of electric wiring. Over time, a number of these passages had been boarded up or otherwise sealed in order to prevent injury to thrill-seeking students and urban spelunkers.

Together they had explored and claimed for themselves much of this underground network linking almost all of Columbia’s seventy-one campus buildings located between Broadway and Amsterdam on New York’s Upper West Side. Some more remote sections remained unexplored, simply because there wasn’t enough time in the day or night for hunting vampires, sowing chaos throughout Manhattan, and clearing musty tunnels.

Gus had carved out his own digs, concentrated in one quadrant of the campus’s main plaza. His domain started beneath the only remaining building original to the asylum, Buell Hall; ran beneath the Low Memorial Library and Kent Hall; and terminated at Philosophy Hall, the building outside of which was a bronze statue of a naked dude just sitting there, thinking.

The tunnels made for a cool crib, a real villain’s lair. The failure of the steam system meant he could access areas rarely visited in at least a century—the coarse black fibers sticking out of cracks in the underground walls were actual horsehairs used to strengthen the plaster mix—which had led him into a dank subbasement of iron-barred cells.