Nonsense. They had killed her mother. Her duplicity would make no sense.
In the end, he prayed that they both possessed the integrity he hoped they’d always had.
“I want to do this,” said Eph. “We proceed on both fronts simultaneously.”
They all were aware that a dangerous first step had just been taken. Gus looked doubtful, but even he seemed willing to go along with it. The plan represented direct action, and, at the same time, he was eager to give Eph just enough rope to hang himself with.
The Born began encasing each wooden receptacle inside a protective plastic sleeve and setting them inside a leather sack.
“Wait,” said Fet. “We’re forgetting one very important thing.”
Gus said, “What’s that?”
“How the hell do we make this offer to the Master? How do we get in touch with it at all?”
Nora touched Fet on his unbandaged shoulder and said, “I know of just the way.”
Spanish Harlem
SUPPLY TRUCKS ENTERING Manhattan from Queens traveled the cleared middle inbound lane on the Queensboro Bridge across the East River, turning either south on Second Avenue or north on Third.
Mr. Quinlan stood on the sidewalk outside the George Washington Houses between Ninety-seventh and Ninety-eighth, forty blocks north of the bridge. The Born vampire waited in the spitting rain with his hood covering his head, watching the occasional vehicle pass. Convoys were ignored. Also Stoneheart trucks or vehicles. Mr. Quinlan’s first concern was alerting the Master in any way.
Fet and Eph stood in the shadows of a doorway in the first block of the houses. In the past forty-five minutes, they had seen one vehicle every ten minutes or so. Headlights raised their hopes; Mr. Quinlan’s disinterest dashed them. And so they remained in the darkened doorway, safe from the rain but not from the new awkwardness that was their relationship.
Fet was running their audacious new plan through his head, trying to convince himself that it might work. Success seemed like an incredible long shot—but then again, it wasn’t as though they had dozens of other prospects lined up and ready to go.
Kill the Master. They had tried once, by exposing the creature to the sun, and failed. When the dying Setrakian apparently poisoned its blood, using Fet’s anticoagulant rodent poison, the Master had merely sloughed off its human host, assuming the form of another healthy being. The creature seemed invincible.
And yet, they had hurt it. Both times. No matter what the creature’s original form was, it apparently needed to exist in possession of a human. And humans could be destroyed.
Fet said, “We can’t miss this time. We’ll never get a better chance.”
Eph nodded, looking out into the street. Waiting for Mr. Quinlan’s signal.
He seemed guarded. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the plan, or maybe it was something else. Eph’s unreliability had caused a rift in their relationship—but the Nora situation had driven home a permanent wedge.
Fet’s main concern now was that Eph’s irritation with Fet not negatively impact their efforts.
“Nothing has happened,” Fet said, “between Nora and me.”
“I know,” said Eph. “But everything has happened between her and me. It’s over. And I know it. And there will be a time when you and I will talk about it and maybe even have a fistfight over it. But now it’s not that time. This has to be our focus now. All personal feelings aside … Look, Fet, we are paired. It was you and me or Gus and me. I’d rather take you.”
“Glad we’re all on the same page again,” said Fet.
Eph was about to respond when headlights appeared once more. This time, Mr. Quinlan moved into the street. The truck was too far away for any human to make out the operator, but Mr. Quinlan knew. He stood right in the truck’s path, headlights brightening him.
One of the rules of the road was that any vampire could commandeer a vehicle operated by a human, in the same manner as a soldier or a cop could a civilian’s in the old United States. Mr. Quinlan raised his hand, his elongated middle finger evident, as were his red eyes. The truck stopped, and its driver, a Stoneheart member wearing a dark suit underneath a warm duster, opened the driver’s-side door with the engine still running.
Mr. Quinlan approached the driver, obscured from Fet’s view by the passenger side of the truck. Fet watched as the driver jerked suddenly inside the cab. Mr. Quinlan leaped up into the doorway. Through the rain-smeared windows, they appeared to be grappling.
“Go,” said Fet, and he and Eph both ran out from their hiding spot, into the rain. They splashed off the curb and across to the driver’s side of the truck. Fet almost ran up into Mr. Quinlan, pulling back only at the last moment when he saw that Mr. Quinlan wasn’t the one struggling. Only the driver was.
Mr. Quinlan’s stinger was engorged, jutting out from the base of his throat at his unhinged jaw, tapering to its tip, which was firmly inserted in the neck of the human driver.
Fet pulled back sharply. Eph came around and saw it too, and there was a moment of bonding between them, of shared disgust. Mr. Quinlan fed quickly, his eyes locked on those of the driver, the driver’s face a mask of paralysis and shock.
For Fet, it served as a reminder of how easily Mr. Quinlan could turn on them—any of them—in an instant.