The Night Eternal Read Online Free PDF

him well—with the patience and the care of an old father. Firm but compassionate, Setrakian never made Fet feel too slow or uninformed; quite to the contrary, he explained every matter with great care and patience and made Fet feel included. He made him belong.
    The emotional void in Fet’s life had been filled by a most unsuspected source. When Eph grew increasingly erratic and obsessive, beginning in the earliest days inside the train tunnel but magnifying once they surfaced, Nora had come to lean more on Fet, to confide in him and to give and to seek comfort. Over time, Fet had learned how to respond. He had come to admire Nora’s tenacity in the face of such overwhelming despair; so many others had succumbed to either hopelessness or insanity, or else, like Eph, had allowed their despair to change them. Nora Martinez evidently saw something in Fet—maybe the same thing the old professor had seen in him—a primal nobility, more akin to a beast of burden than a man, and something Fet himself had been unaware of until recently. And if this quality that he possessed—steadfastness, determination, ruthlessness, whatever it was—made him somehow more attractive to her under these extreme circumstances, then he was the better for it.
    Out of respect for Eph, he had resisted this entanglement, denying his own feelings as well as Nora’s. But their mutual attraction was more evident now. On the last day before his departure, Fet had rested his leg against Nora’s. A casual gesture by any measure, except for someone like Fet. He was a large man but incredibly conscious of his personal space, neither seeking nor allowing any violation of it. He kept his distance, ultimately uncomfortable with most human contact—but Nora’s knee was pressed against his, and his heart was racing. Racing with hope as the notion dawned on him: She’s holding. She is not moving away …
    She had asked him to be careful, to take care of himself, and in her eyes were tears. Genuine tears as she saw him leave.
    No one had ever cried for Fet before.
    Manhattan
     
    E PH RODE THE 7 express inbound, clinging fast to the exterior of the subway train. He gripped the rear left corner of the last car, his right boot perched on the rear step, fingertips dug into the window frames, rocking with the motion of the train over the elevated track. The wind and the black rain whipped at the tails of his charcoal-gray raincoat, his hooded face turned in toward the shoulder straps of his weapon pack.
    It used to be that the vampires had to ride on the outside of the trains, shuttling around the underground of Manhattan in order to avoid discovery. Through the window, whose dented frame he had pried his fingers under, he saw humans sitting and rocking with the motion of the train. The distant stares, the expressionless faces: a perfectly orderly scene. He did not look for long, for if there were any strigoi riding, their heat-registering night vision would have spotted him, resulting in a very unpleasant welcoming party at the next stop. Eph was still a fugitive, his likeness hanging in post offices and police stations throughout the city, the news stories concerning his successful assassination of Eldritch Palmer—cleverly edited from his unsuccessful attempt—still replayed on television every week or so, keeping his name and face foremost in the minds of the watchful citizenry.
    Riding the trains required skills that Eph had developed through time and necessity. The tunnels were invariably wet—smelling of burned ozone and old grease—and Eph’s ragged, smeared clothes acted as perfect camouflage, both visual and olfactory. Hooking up to the rear of the train—that required timing and precision. But Eph had it down. As a kid in San Francisco, he had routinely used the back of streetcars to hitch a ride to school. And you had to board them just in time. Too early and you would be discovered. Too late and you would be dragged and take a bad tumble.
    And