“No,” whimpered Barnes. “No more … please …”
“So this is what absolute corruption looks like,” said Eph. He hit Barnes a few times more. “Commandant Barnes! You’re a goddamn piece of shit, sir—you know that? How could you turn on your own kind like this? You were a doctor—you were the fucking head of the CDC for Christ’s sake. You have no compassion?”
“No, please.” Barnes sat up a little, bleeding all over the floor, trying to ease this conversation into something productive and positive. But his PR skills were hampered by the growing inflammation of his mouth and the teeth that were missing. “This is a new world, Ephraim. Look what it’s done to you.”
“You let that admiral’s uniform go right to your fucking head.” Eph reached out and gripped Barnes’s thinning thatch of hair, yanking his face upward, baring his throat. Barnes smelled the decay of Eph’s body. “I should murder you right here,” he said. “Right now.” Eph drew out his sword and showed it to Barnes.
“You … you’re not a murderer,” gasped Barnes.
“Oh, but I am. I have become that. And unlike you, I don’t do it by pushing a button or signing an order. I do it like this. Up close. Personal.”
The silver blade touched Barnes’s throat over his windpipe. Barnes arched his neck farther.
“But,” said Eph, pulling the sword back a few inches, “luckily for you, you are still useful to me. I need you to do something for me, and you’re going to do it. Nod yes.”
Eph nodded Barnes’s head for him.
“Good. Listen closely. There are people outside waiting for me. Do you understand? Are you sober enough to remember this, brandy Alexander boy?”
Barnes nodded, this time under his own power. Of course, at that moment he would have agreed to anything.
“My reason for coming here is to make you an offer. It will actually make you look good. I am here to tell you to go to the Master and tell it I have agreed to trade the Occido Lumen for my son. Prove to me you understand this.”
“Double-crossing is something I understand, Eph,” said Barnes.
“You can even be the hero of this story. You can tell him that I came here to murder you, but now I am double-crossing my own people by offering you this deal. You can tell him you convinced me to take his offer and volunteered to take it back to the Master.”
“Do the others know about this … ?”
Emotions surged. Tears welled in Eph’s eyes. “They believe I am with them, and I am … but this is about my boy.”
Emotions swelled in Ephraim Goodweather’s heart. He was dizzy, lost …
“All you need to do is tell the Master that I accept. That this is no bluff.”
“You are going to deliver this book.”
“For my son …”
“Yes—yes … of course. Perfectly understandable …”
Eph grabbed Barnes by the hair and punched again. Twice in the mouth. Another tooth cracked.
“I don’t want your fucking sympathy, you monster. Just deliver my message. You got it? I am somehow going to get the real Lumen and get word to the Master, maybe through you again, when I am ready to deliver.”
Eph’s grip on Barnes’s hair had relaxed. Barnes realized he was not to be killed or even harmed any further. “I … I heard that the Master had a boy with him … a human boy. But I didn’t know why …”
Eph’s eyes blazed. “His name is Zachary. He was kidnapped two years ago.”
“By Kelly, your wife?” said Barnes. “I saw her. With the Master. She is … well, she is no longer herself. But I suppose none of us are.”
Eph said, “Some of us even became vampires without ever getting stung by anything …” Eph’s eyes grew glassy and damp. “You are a capitulator and a coward, and for me to join your ranks tears at my insides like a fatal disease, but I see no other way out, and I have to save my son. I have to.” His grip tightened on Barnes again. “This is the right choice, it is the only choice. For a father. My boy has been kidnapped and the ransom is my soul and the fate of the world, and I will pay it. I will pay it. Goddamn the Master, and goddamn you.”
Even Barnes, whose loyalty fell on the side of the vampires, wondered to himself how wise it would be to enter into any sort of agreement with the Master, a being marshaled by no morality or code. A virus, and a ravenous one at that.
But of course Barnes said nothing of the kind to Eph. The man holding a sword near Barnes’s throat was a creature worn down almost to the nub, like a pencil eraser with just enough pink rubber left to make one final correction.
“You will do this,” said Eph, not asking.