Guillermo del Toro - The Fall

The Master’s head rotated a few degrees on its great, broad neck, turning slightly toward the entrance, giving Bolivar its attention. No need for Bolivar to report what the Master already knew, what the Master had already-through Bolivar-seen: the arrival of the human hunters at the pawnshop, evidently in hopes of contacting old Setrakian, and the disastrous battle that ensued.

Behind Bolivar, feelers skittered about on all four limbs, like blind crabs. They “saw” something that unsettled them, as Bolivar was learning to infer from their behavior.

Someone was coming. The feelers’ disquiet was offset by the Master’s distinct lack of concern about the interloper.

The Master said: The Ancient Ones have employed mercenaries for day hunting. A further sign of their desperation. And the old professor?

Bolivar said: He slipped away in advance of our attack. Inside his domicile, the feelers sensed that he is still alive.

Hiding. Plotting. Scheming.

With the same desperation as the Ancients.

Humans only become dangerous when they have nothing to lose.

The whir of a motorized wheelchair, and the sound of its nubby tires rolling over the dirt floor, announced that the visitor was Eldritch Palmer. His bodyguard nurse trailed him, holding blue glow sticks to illuminate the passage for their human vision.

Feelers skittered away at the wheelchair’s advance, crawling halfway up the wall, remaining outside the glow radius of the chemical luminescence, hissing.

“More creatures,” said Palmer under his breath, unable to hide his distaste upon seeing the blind vampire children and their black-eyed stares. The billionaire was furious. “Why this hole?”

It pleases me.

Palmer saw, for the first time, by the light of the soft blue glow, the Master’s flesh peeling. Chunks of it littered the ground at his feet like shorn hair beneath a barber’s chair. Palmer was troubled by the sight of the raw flesh revealed beneath the Master’s cracked exterior, and got to talking quickly, in order that the Master not read his mind like a soothsayer divining through a crystal ball.

“Look here. I have waited and I have done everything you’ve asked and I have received nothing in return. Now an attempt has been made on my life! I want my reward now! My patience has reached its end. You will give me what I am promised, or I will bankroll you no longer-do you understand? This is the end of it!”

The Master’s skin crinkled as its ceiling-scraping head leaned forward. The monster was indeed intimidating, but Palmer would not back down.

“My premature death, should it come, would render this entire plan moot. You will have no more leverage upon my will-nor claim upon my resources.”

Eichhorst, the perverse Nazi commandant, summoned to the chamber by the Master, entered behind Palmer into the haze of blue light. You would do well to hold your human tongue in the presence of Der Meister.

The Master, with a wave of his great hand, silenced Eichhorst. His red eyes appeared purple in the blue light, fixing wide on Palmer. So it is done. I will grant your wish for immortality. In one day’s time.

Palmer stammered, taken aback. First, because of his surprise at the Master’s sudden capitulation-after all these years of effort. And then, in recognition of the great leap Palmer was poised to take. To dive into the abyss that is death, and surface on the other side…

The businessman inside of him wanted more of a guarantee. But the schemer inside of him held his tongue.

You do not place provisions on a monster such as the Master. You bid for its favor, and then accept its largesse with gratitude.

One more mortal day. Palmer thought he might even enjoy it.

All plans are fully in motion. My Brood is marching across the mainland. We have exposure in every critical destination, our circle widening in cities and provinces around the globe.

Palmer swallowed his anticipation, saying, “And even as the circle grows, it simultaneously tightens.” His old hands described the scenario, fingers interlocking, palms squeezing together in a pantomime of strangling.

Indeed. One last task that remains before the start of The Devouring.

Eichhorst, looking like half a man beside the giant Master, said: The book.

“Of course,” said Palmer. “It will be yours. But, I must ask you… if you already know the contents…”

It is not critical that I be in possession of the book. It is critical that others are not.

“So-why not just blow up the auction house? Explode the entire block?”

Crude solutions have been attempted in the past, and have failed. This book has had too many lives. I must be absolutely certain of its fate. So that I may watch it burn.

The Master then straightened to its full height, becoming distracted in such a way that only the Master could.

It was seeing something. The Master was physically in the cave with them, but psychically it was seeing through another’s eyes-one of the Brood.

Into Palmer’s head, the Master uttered two words:

The boy.

Palmer waited for an explanation, which never came. The Master had returned to the present, the now. He had returned to them with a new certainty, as if he had glimpsed the future.

Tomorrow the world burns and the boy and the book will be mine.

I HAVE KILLED.

I have slain.

With the hands typing this now.

I have stabbed, sliced, beat, crushed, dismembered, beheaded.

I have worn their white blood on my clothes and my boots.

I have destroyed. And I have rejoiced at the destruction.

You may say, as an exterminator by trade, I’ve been training for this all my life.

I understand the argument. I just can’t support it.

Because it is one thing to have a rat race up your arm in blind fear.

Yet quite another to face a fellow human form and cut it down.

They look like people. They are very much like you and me.

I am no longer an exterminator. I am a vampire hunter.

And here is the other thing.

Something I will only say here, because I don’t dare tell anyone else.

Because I know what they will think.

I know what they will feel.

I know what they will see when they look into my eyes.

But-all this killing?

I kind of like it.

And I’m good at it.

I might even be great at it.

The city is falling and probably the world. Apocalypse is a big word, a heavy word, when you realize you are actually facing it.

I can’t be the only one. There must be others out there like me. People who have lived their whole lives feeling half-complete. Who never truly fit anywhere in the world. Who never understood why they were here, or what they were meant for. Who never answered the call, because they never heard it. Because nothing ever spoke to them.

Until now.

NORA LOOKED AWAY for what seemed like only a moment. As she stared at the big board, waiting for their track number to be announced, her gaze deepened and, utterly exhausted, she zoned out.

For the first time in days, she thought of nothing. No vampires, no fears, no plans. She relaxed her focus, and her mind dipped into sleep mode while her eyes remained open.

When she blinked back to awareness, it was like waking up from a dream about falling. A shudder, a startle. A small gasp.

She turned and saw Zack next to her, listening to his iPod.

But her mother was gone.

Nora looked around, didn’t see her. She tugged down Zack’s earbuds, asking him, and he joined her in looking.

“Wait here,” said Nora, pointing to their bags. “Do not move!”