The Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

sorry.”
    “You don’t have to kill her!” Zack said, his voice still raw from choking.
    “I do,” said Eph. “I do.”
    He went to Zack, trying again for some contact, but the boy pulled away. He went instead to Nora, who was handy as a female substitute, and cried into her shoulder.
    Nora looked back at Eph with consolation in her eyes, but Eph wouldn’t have it. Fet was at the door behind him.
    “Let’s go,” said Eph, rushing from the room.

The Night Squad
    THEY CONTINUED UP the street toward Marcus Garvey Park, the five off-duty cops on foot, and the sergeant in his personal vehicle.
    No badges. No cruiser cameras. No after-action reports. No inquiries, no community boards, and no Internal Affairs.
    This was about force. About setting things right.
    “Communicable mania,” the feds termed it. “Plague-related dementia.”
    What happened to good, old-fashioned “bad guys”? That term gone out of style?
    The government was talking about deploying the Staties? The National Guard? The Army?
    At least give us blue boys a shot first.
    “Hey—what the… !”
    One of them was holding his arm. A deep cut, right through the sleeve.
    Another projectile landed at their feet.
    “Fucking throwing rocks now?”
    They scanned the rooftops.
    “There!”
    A huge chunk of decorative stone, a fleur-de-lis, came sailing down at their heads, scattering them. The piece shattered onto the curb, rock smacking their shins.
    “In here!”
    They ran for the door, busted inside. The first man in charged up the stairs to the second-floor landing. There, a teenage girl in a long nightshirt stood in the middle of the hallway.
    “Get outta here, honey!” he yelled, pushing right past her, heading for the next flight of stairs. Someone was on the move up there. The cop didn’t have to wait for rules of engagement, or justifiable force. He yelled at him to stop, then opened up on the guy, plugging him four times, putting him down.
    He advanced on the rioter, all charged up. A black guy with four good hits in his chest. The cop smiled down the gap in the stairs.
    “I got one!”
    The black guy sat up. The cop backed away, getting off one more round before the guy sprang on him, clutching him, doing something to his neck.
    The cop spun, his assault rifle pressed flat between them, feeling the railing give against his hip.
    They fell together, landing hard. Another cop turned and saw the suspect on top of the first cop, biting him on the neck or something. Before firing, he looked up to see where they had fallen from—and saw the nightshirt-wearing teen.
    She leaped down at him, knocking him flat, straddling him, and clawing at his face and neck.
    A third cop came back down the stairs and saw her—then saw the guy behind her with a stinger coming out of his mouth, throbbing as it drained the first cop.
    The third cop fired on the teen, knocking her back. He started to go after the other freak when a hand swept down from behind him, a long, talon-like nail slicing open his neck, spinning him into the creature’s arms.
    Kelly Goodweather, her rage of hunger and blood-need triggered by the yearning for her son, dragged the cop one-handedly into the nearest apartment, slamming the door so that she could feed deeply and without interruption.

The Master-Part I
    THE MAN’S LIMBS twitched for the last time, the faint perfume of his final breath escaping his mouth, the death rattle signaling the end of the repast for the Master. The man’s inert, nude body, released by the towering shadow, collapsed next to the other four victims similarly at the feet of Sardu.
    All of them exhibited the same concussive stinger mark in the soft flesh of the inside thigh, right on the femoral artery. The popular image of a vampire drinking from the neck was not incorrect, but powerful vampires favored the femoral artery of the right leg. The pressure and oxygenation were perfect, and the flavor was fuller, almost blunt. The jugular, on the other hand,