On the street, bleeding from the bullet wound—being dragged away—was Vasily Fet, the rat exterminator.
One Hour Earlier
THEY HAD DESCENDED into the subway at 116th Street a full hour before daylight, in order to give themselves plenty of time. Gus showed them where to wait, near a sidewalk grate through which they could hear the approach of a 1 train, minimizing the amount of time they would have to spend on the platform below.
Eph stood against the nearest building, his eyes closed, asleep on his feet in the pissing rain. And even in those brief intervals he dreamed of light and fire.
Fet and Nora whispered occasionally, while Gus paced and said nothing. Joaquin declined to accompany them, needing to vent his frustration over Bruno’s passing by continuing their program of sabotage. Gus had tried to dissuade him from going out into the city on a bad knee, but Joaquin’s mind was set.
Eph was roused to consciousness by the subterranean shriek of the approaching train, and they bustled down the station steps like the other commuters rushing to get off the streets before the sunlight curfew. They boarded a silver-colored subway car and shook the rain from their coats. The doors closed and a quick glance up and down the length of the car told Eph that there were no vampires on board. He relaxed a bit, closing his eyes as the subway took them fifty-five blocks south beneath the city.
At Fifty-ninth Street and Columbus Circle, they disembarked, rising up the steps to the street. They ducked inside one of the large apartment buildings and found a place to wait behind the lobby, until the dark shroud of night lifted just enough, the sky becoming merely overcast.
When the streets were empty, they emerged into the faded glory of day. The orb of the sun was visible through the dark cloud cover like a flashlight pressed against a charcoal-gray blanket. Street-level windows of certain cafés and shops remained smashed since the initial days of panic and looting, while glass in the upper-story windows largely remained intact. They walked around the southern curve of the immense traffic circle, long since cleared of abandoned cars, the central fountain spewing black water out of every second or third nozzle. The city, during curfew, had a perpetual early-Sunday-morning feel to it, as though most of the residents were sleeping in, the day slow to start. In that sense, it gave Eph a feeling of hope that he tried to savor, even though he knew it to be false.
Then a sizzling sound creased the air overhead.
“What the … ?”
The loud crack
followed, a gunshot report, sound traveling more slowly than the round itself. The delay said the shot had been fired from a distance, seemingly from somewhere inside the trees of Central Park.
“Shooter!” said Fet. They ran across Eighth Avenue, quickly but not panicked. Gunshots at daylight meant humans. There had been a lot more insanity in the months following the takeover. Humans driven crazy by the fall of their kind and the rise of the new order. Violent suicides. Mass murders. After those died out, Eph would still see people out during the meridiem especially, ranting, wandering the streets. Rarely would he see any people out during the curfew now. The crazies had been killed or otherwise dispatched, and the rest behaved.
Three more shots were fired, crack, crack, crack—
Two of the bullets hit a mailbox, but the third one hit Vasiliy Fet squarely in the left shoulder. It made him twirl, leaving behind a ribbon of blood. The bullet traveled clean through his body, tearing muscle and flesh but miraculously missing the lungs and the heart.
Eph and Nora grabbed Fet as he fell and, with the help of Mr. Quinlan, dragged him away.
Nora pulled Fet’s hand back from his shoulder, quickly examining the wound. Not too much blood, no bone fragments.
Fet eased her back. “Let’s keep moving. Too vulnerable here.”
They cut down Fifty-sixth Street, heading for the F-line subway stop. No more gunfire, no one following them. They entered without encountering anyone, and the underground platform was empty. The F line ran north here, the track curving underneath the park as it headed east to Queens. They jumped down onto the rails, waiting again to make sure they were not followed.
It is only a little farther. Can you make it? It will be a better place to provide you with some medical attention.
Vasiliy nodded to Mr. Quinlan. “I’ve had it much worse.” And he had. In the last two years he had been shot three times, twice in Europe and once while in the Upper East Side after curfew.
They walked the rails by night vision. The cars generally stopped running during the meridiem, the vampires shutting down, though the underground protection from the sun allowed them to move trains if necessary. So Eph remained alert and aware.
The tunnel ceiling was angled, rising to the right, the high cement wall serving as a mural for graffiti artists, the shorter wall to their left supporting pipes and a narrow ledge. A form awaited them at the curve ahead. Mr. Quinlan had gone ahead of them, getting underground well in advance of the sunrise.
Wait here, he told them, then jogged quickly back in the direction from which they came, checking for tails. He returned, apparently satisfied, and, without ceremony or prelude, opened a panel inside the frame of a locked access door. A lever inside released the door, which opened inward.
The short corridor inside was notable for its dryness. It led, through one left turn, to another door. But rather than open that door, Mr. Quinlan instead pried open a perfectly invisible hatch in the floor, revealing an angled flight of stairs.
Gus went down first. Eph was the second to last, Mr. Quinlan securing the hatch behind him. The stairs bottomed out into a narrow walkway constructed by different hands than any of the many subway tunnels Eph had seen over the past year of his fugitive existence.
You are safe accessing this complex in my company, but I strongly recommend that you do not attempt to return here on your own. Various safeguards have been in place for centuries, meant to keep anyone from the curious homeless to a vampire hit squad from entering. I have now deactivated the traps, but for the future, consider yourselves warned.
Eph looked around for evidence of booby traps but saw none. Then again, he had not seen the hatch door that led them here.
At the end of the walkway, the wall slid aside under Mr. Quinlan’s pale hand. The room revealed was round and vast, at first glance resembling a circular train garage. But it was apparently a cross between a museum and a house of Congress. The sort of forum Socrates might have thrived in, had he been a vampire condemned to the underworld. Soupy green in Eph’s night vision, the walls were in reality alabaster-white and preternaturally smooth, spaced by generous columns and rising to a high ceiling. The walls were empty, conspicuously so, as though the masterpieces that once hung there had long ago been taken down and stored away. Eph could not see all the way to the opposite end, so large was the room, the range of his night-vision goggles terminating in a cloud of darkness.
They rapidly tended to Fet’s wound. In his backpack he always carried a small emergency kit. The bleeding had almost stopped, consistent with the bullet having missed any major arteries. Both Nora and Eph were able to clean the wound with Betadine and applied antibiotic cream, Telfa pads, and an absorbent layer on top. Fet moved his fingers and arm and, even in great pain, proved himself still able.