The Night Eternal

The Night Eternal
Chuck Hogan

Guillermo Del Toro

The nail-biting vampire thriller from the world-famous director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy.The night belongs to them, and it will be a night eternal…After the blasts, it was all over. Nuclear Winter has settled upon the earth. Except for one hour of sunlight a day, the whole world is plunged into darkness. It is a near-perfect environment for vampires. They have won. It is their time.Almost every single man, woman and child has been enslaved in vast camps across the globe. Like animals, they are farmed, harvested for the sick pleasure of the Master Race.Almost, but not all. Somewhere out there, hiding for their lives, is a desperate network of free humans, continue the seemingly hopeless resistance. Everyday people, with no other options – among them Dr Ephraim Goodweather, his son Zack, the veteran exterminator Vassily, and former gangbanger Gus.To be free, they need a miracle, they need divine intervention. But Salvation can be a twisted game – one in which they may be played like pawns in a battle of Good and Evil. And at what cost…?

THE NIGHT ETERNAL

Book III

of

The Strain Trilogy

Guillermo Del Toro

and

Chuck Hogan

Dedication (#ulink_dc2890da-8231-595c-93b0-8b23f0fe8d4f)

To my parents.

Now I know how hard a job you had . . .

—GDT

For Charlotte, eternally.

—CH

Contents

Title Page (#u47eb5a37-34f7-5119-b9fa-fa7326181951)

Dedication

RAIN OF ASHES

Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Kelton Street, Woodside, Queens

INTERLUDE I - MR. QUINLAN’S STORY

Camp Liberty

Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Beneath Columbia University

INTERLUDE II - OCCIDO LUMEN: THE MASTER’S TALE

Low Memorial Library, Columbia University

JACOB AND THE ANGEL

Saint Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University

INTERLUDE III - OCCIDO LUMEN: SADUM AND AMURAH

Columbia University

Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather

Columbia University

AWAKENING TO FIRE

Columbia University

Epilogue

Acknowledgement

Also by the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

RAIN OF ASHES (#ulink_2a800cad-e259-5eb3-afa9-7384f7b94a74)

Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather (#ulink_d8de806f-fc6f-5378-8d2b-1f135d8c6aac)

On the second day of darkness they rounded them up. The best and the brightest: all those in power, the wealthy, the influential.

Lawmakers and CEOs, tycoons and intellectuals, rebels and figures of great popular esteem. None were turned; all were slain, destroyed. Their execution was swift, public, and brutal.

Save for a few experts from each discipline, all leaders were eliminated. Out they marched, the damned, from the River House, the Dakota, the Beresford, and their ilk. They were all apprehended and herded into major metropolitan gathering places worldwide, such as the National Mall in Washington, DC, Nanjing Road in Shanghai, Moscow’s Red Square, Cape Town Stadium, and Central Park in New York City. There, in a horrific pageant of carnage, they were disposed of.

It was said that over one thousand strigoi rampaged down Lexington and raided every building surrounding Gramercy Park. Offerings of money or favor fell on deaf ears. Soft, manicured hands implored and begged. Their bodies twitched—hanging from lampposts all along Madison Avenue. In Times Square, twenty-foot-high funeral pyres burned tanned, pampered flesh. Smelling much like barbecue, the elite of Manhattan illuminated the empty streets, closed shops—EVERYTHING MUST GO—and silent LED megascreens.

The Master had apparently calculated the right number, the exact balance, of vampires needed to establish dominance without overburdening the blood supply; its approach was methodological and indeed mathematical. The elderly and infirm were also collected and eliminated. It was a purge and a putsch. Roughly one-third of the human population was exterminated over that seventy-two-hour period, which had since become known as, collectively, “Night Zero.”

The hordes took control of the streets. Riot police, SWAT, the U.S. Army—the tide of monsters overtook them all. Those who submitted, those who surrendered themselves, remained as guards and keepers.

The Master’s plan was a resounding success. In brutally Darwinian fashion, the Master had selected the survivors for compliance and malleability. Its growing strength was nothing short of terrifying. With the Ancients destroyed, its control over the horde—and through them, the world—had broadened and become ever more sophisticated. The strigoi no longer roamed the streets like raving zombies, raiding and feeding at will. Their movements were coordinated. Like bees in a hive or ants in a hill, they apparently each had clearly defined roles and responsibilities. They were the Master’s eyes on the street.