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“I can’t walk away from a fight.” Angel patted his leg to show that he meant it literally as well as figuratively. “Besides, I’ve been here before.”
“Here?”
“In my movies. I know how it ends. The evil one faces the good one, and all seems lost.”
“Angel,” said Gus, needing to go.
“The day is saved always—in the end.”
Gus had noticed the ex-wrestler acting more and more scattered. The vampire siege was wearing on his mind, his perspective. “Not here. Not against this.”
Angel pulled, from deep in his front pocket, a piece of cloth. He pulled it on over his head, rolling the silver mask down so that only his eyes and his mouth showed. “You go,” he said. “Back to the island, with the doctor. Do as the old man tell you. Me? He have no plan for me. So I stay. I fight.”
Gus smiled at the mad Mexican’s bravery. And he recognized Angel for the very first time. He understood everything—the strength, the courage of this old man. As a child, he had seen all of the wrestler’s films on TV. On weekends, they played on an endless loop. And now he was standing next to his hero. “This world is a motherfucker, isn’t it?”
Angel nodded and said, “But it’s the only one we have.”
Gus felt a surge of love for this fucked-up fellow countryman. For his matinee idol. His eyes welled up as he clapped his hands against the big man’s shoulders. He said, “Que viva el Angel de Plata, culeros!”
Angel nodded. “Que viva!”
And with that, the Silver Angel turned back, limping, toward the doomed power plant.
Emergency lights flashed, the exterior alarm muted inside the control room. The wall panel instruments blinked, imploring human hands to take action.
Setrakian knelt on the floor across from Eichhorst’s still body. Eichhorst’s head had rolled almost to the corner. One of Setrakian’s pocket mirrors had cracked, and he was using the silver back to crush the blood worms seeking him out. With his other hand, he was trying to pick up his heart pills, but his gnarled fingers and arthritic knuckles had trouble with the pincer grip.
And then he was aware of a presence, whose sudden arrival changed the atmosphere of the already charged room. No puff of smoke, no crack of thunder. A psychic blow more breathtaking than mere stagecraft. Setrakian didn’t have to look up to know it was the Master—and yet he did look up, from the hem of its dark cloak to its imperious face.
Its flesh had peeled back to the sub-dermis, save for a few patches of sun-cooked skin. A fiery red beast with splotches of black. Its eyes roared with intensity, a bloodier hue of red. The circulating worms rippled beneath the surface like twitching nerves alive with madness.
It is done.
The Master seized the wolf’s-head handle of Setrakian’s sword before the old man could react. The creature held the silver blade for inspection the way a man might handle a glowing-hot poker.
The world is mine.
The Master, his movement no more than a blur, retrieved the wooden sheath from the floor on the other side of Setrakian. He fit the two pieces together, burying the blade inside the cavity of the original walking stick and fixing the joined staff with a sudden wrenching twist of his hands.
Then he returned the foot of the stick to the floor. The overlong walking stick was a perfect fit, of course: it had belonged to the human giant Sardu, in whose body the Master currently resided.
The nuclear fuel inside the reactor core is beginning to overheat and melt. This facility was constructed using modern safeguards, but the automatic containment procedures only delay the inevitable. The meltdown will occur, fouling and destroying this origin site of the sixth and only remaining member of my clan. The buildup of steam will result in a catastrophic reactor explosion that will release a plume of radioactive fallout.
The Master jabbed Setrakian in the ribs with the end of the walking stick, the old man hearing and feeling a crack, curling into a ball on the floor.
As my shadow falls over you, Setrakian, so does it fall over this planet. First I infected your people, now I have infected the globe. Your half dark world was not enough. How long I have looked forward to this permanent, lasting dusk. This warm, blue-green rock shivers at my touch, becoming a cold black stone of rime and rot. The sunset of humankind is the dawn of the blood harvest.
The Master’s head then turned a few degrees, toward the door. He was not alarmed, nor even annoyed, more like curious. Setrakian turned also, a sizzle of hope rising along his back. The door opened and Angel entered limping, wearing a mask of shiny silver nylon with black stitching.
“No,” gasped Setrakian.
Angel carried an automatic weapon, and, seeing the eight-foot-tall cloaked creature towering over Setrakian, opened up on the king vampire.
The creature stood there for a moment, gazing at its patently ridiculous opponent. But as the bullets flew, the Master became, instinctively, a blur—the rounds carrying across the room into the sensitive equipment lining the walls. The Master paused on one side of the room, visible for just the briefest moment, though by the time Angel turned and fired, the vampire was moving again. The rounds ripped into a control panel, sparks shooting out of the wall.
Setrakian returned his attention to the floor, frantically picking at the tiny pills.
The Master slowed again, with the effect of materializing before Angel. The masked wrestler dropped the big gun with a clatter and lunged at the creature.
