The smell alarmed him at first, until he realized it was the Chinese food left in the trash, from when Zack was over—which seemed like years ago. He entered the kitchen to see if the milk in the refrigerator was still good…and then stopped.

He stared. It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at.

Two uniformed cops lay on his kitchen floor, against the wall.

A droning started inside the apartment. Quickly rising to something like a scream, like a chorus of agony.

His apartment door slammed shut. Eph whipped around to the closed door.

Two men stood there. Two beings. Two vampires.

Eph saw this at once. Their posture, their pallor.

One of them he did not know. The other one he recognized as the survivor Bolivar. Looking very dead, and very dangerous, and very hungry.

Then Eph sensed an even greater danger in the room. For these two revenants were not the source of the drone. Turning his head back toward the main room took an eternity and it took only one second.

A huge being wearing a long, dark cloak. Its height taking up all of the apartment, to the ceiling and more, its neck bent so that it was looking down at Eph.

Its face…

Eph grew dizzy as the being’s superhuman height made the room seem small, made him feel small. The sight weakened his legs, even as he turned to race toward the door to the hallway.

Now the being was in front of him, between him and the door, blocking the only exit. As though Eph hadn’t actually turned but the floor itself had rotated. The other two normal, man-size vampires flanked him on either side.

The being was closer now. Looming over Eph. Looking down.

Eph dropped to his knees. Simply being in the presence of this giant creature was paralyzing, no different than if Eph had been physically struck down.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Eph felt this. The way you feel live music in your chest. A hum rumbling in his brain. He averted his eyes, to the floor. He was crippled by fear. He did not want to see its face again.

Look at me.

At first Eph believed that this thing was strangling him with its mind. But his breathlessness was the result of pure terror, a panic of his very soul.

He raised his eyes just a bit. Trembling, he saw the hem of the Master’s robe, up to the hands at the end of the sleeves. They were revoltingly colorless and nail-less, and inhumanly large. The fingers were of uniform length, all oversize except for the middle finger, which was even longer and thicker than the rest—and hooked at the end like a talon.

The Master. Here for him. To turn him.

Look at me, pig.

Eph did, raising his head as though a hand gripped his chin.