The high-pitched whine lasted no longer than ten seconds, the brilliant plane of cleansing blue light riding from floor to ceiling before the battery burned out. The chamber went mostly dark again—and when the only sound left was a residual sizzling, Eph lowered his arm, opening his eyes.

The nauseating stench of roasted disease rose in smoky steam from the charred creatures laid out over the floor. It was impossible to move without disturbing these rotted demons, their bodies crumbling like artificial logs hollowed out by fire. Only those vampires lucky enough to have been partially behind a beam remained animate, Eph and Fet moving quickly to release these crippled, half-destroyed creatures.

Fet then walked over to the mine, which had caught fire. He surveyed the damage.

“Well,” he said, “that fucking worked.”

“Look,” said Setrakian.

At the far end of the steaming chamber, set on top of a yard-high mound of dirt and refuse, was a long, black box.

As Eph and the others approached it—with the dread of bomb-squad agents approaching a suspicious device without wearing blast suits—the situation felt terribly familiar, and it was only a moment before he placed it: he had felt exactly the same walking toward the darkened airplane on the taxiway, at the start of this whole thing.

This sense of approaching something dead and not dead. Some delivery from another world.

He got close enough to confirm that it was indeed the long, black cabinet from the cargo hold of Flight 753. Its top doors exquisitely carved with human figures swirling as though burning in flames, and elongated faces screaming in agony.

The Master’s oversize coffin, set here on an altar of rubble and rubbish beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center.

“This is it,” Eph said.

Setrakian reached out to the side of the box, almost touching the carvings, then pulling back his twisted fingers. “A long time I have searched for this,” he said.

Eph shuddered, not wanting to meet this thing again, with its devouring size and ruthless strength. He remained on the near side, expecting the top doors to burst open at any moment. Fet went around to the facing side. There were no handles on the top doors. One had to slip one’s fingers in beneath the lip of the middle seam and pull up. It would be awkward, and difficult to do quickly.

Setrakian stood at the presumed head of the cabinet, his long sword ready in his hand. But his expression was grim. Eph saw the reason for this in the old man’s eyes, and it deflated him.

Too easy.

Eph and Fet wriggled their fingers in beneath the double doors, and on a nod of three, pulled them back. Setrakian leaned forward with his lamp and his sword…and discovered a box full of soil. He probed it with his blade, the silver tip scraping the bottom of the great box. Nothing.