Cindy MacPherson landed from the dream of endless falling on her feet, like a cat. Her boyfriend Raymond was shaking on his knees. They both heard Charla screaming from the phone.

An age ago, Charla had asked them to call for their followers to drive a stake through the hearts of all vampire lovers.

“No,” Cindy said quietly, surprised that she could still talk. Her own voice made her shake her head in wonder as she carefully knelt and picked up the phone. “No,” she said more clearly. The screaming stopped cold. “Charla, the answer to your question is no. If we can’t win this thing and keep our souls, then we’ve lost.” Raymond put a trembling hand on hers.

Before Charla could collect herself to frame a response, the choice was taken out of all their hands. Outside a series of quiet thumps sounded almost like popcorn starting to pop. When they ran to the window, the street was littered with corpses.

Everywhere around the world the vampires died. The crowded streets in cities, towns and villages in all nations were suddenly strewn with bodies.

Charity Claire felt Peter relax underneath her and thought with regret (and a tinge of relief) that they were finally winding down. But then with a grief that nearly killed her, she saw his head roll sightlessly to one side.

“Mommy! I wah my Mommy!” Tommy’s voice called in panic. The thump of his small body hitting her carpeted living room floor seemed unjustly minor. Mein lieber Gott, the old woman’s voice sighed, and then trailed off to a dying hiss.

Amanda Malreaux, on her hillside, felt the ecstasy of the sun fade into ordinary heat. She didn’t die, perhaps because she had been so recently turned that she was still technically alive. Her shoulder throbbed but the bullet was still gone.

But such bitter emptiness! She was dying and all her efforts to live as a good vampire had been worthless and probably sinful. Her sureness that she was with her Beloved was now an empty ghost. She had never felt so alone.

This was her final, greatest struggle. The struggle to stay human the night before was as nothing compared to this. The terror of the endless fall which had only stopped a few minutes ago was a little ditch compared to the gulf which now opened beneath her.

She was as alone as any atheist.

***

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

A hand touched Sally Yan’s shoulder as she knelt in a wilderness of corpses.

“Knock knock?” said a familiar, little-girl voice.

But that was silly. KerriAnne was deader than any of them. And anyway, she had never played “Knock Knock Who’s There.” KerriAnne would have said Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Or Master of all Masters?

Maybe this was the Evil, coming in its next form? For it would return, she knew that.

She was Jiro at his window, long after the “all is well” ending of the story, seeing the first swelling where the sea met the edge of the sky, a slender, hissing line.

The Wave was coming again and she was just a cat goddess fairy, flittering ridiculously on gossamer wings that couldn’t possibly support a cat’s weight. Or a little girl facing a molester in the night with a bowl of sticky rice and yellow paper.

Or a grown woman who had in her pocket a pentagram which she’d always felt had some clue to the final answer.

The wave was nearer now. Tourists on the beach were saying, What a strange wave, get a video. Not realizing they should already be running.

Any mistake she made in the next few minutes amid the ancient crumbling trees in this darkest of places would be final. There was no use in the image of the oncoming wave and she tried to drop it. But she still heard the distant hiss become a deepening roar while the interesting white line swelled, churning. Should we still be standing here? Nobody in authority has said to run yet but…

She felt in her pocket and took out the wooden pentagram. If there was an answer, it lay in this object she’d been “commanded” to bring.

Fingers touching the funny little pictures invisible in the dark, she tried to remember what little she had relearned in the last days about traditional Chinese medicine.

Going clockwise around the points of the pentagram was the “generating” sequence: wood generates fire, then earth, metal, water and back to wood. Was there anything she could use there?

Wood killed vampires. Fire would burn and purify. But fire had also burned innocent women accused of being witches. Earth grew the magnificent old giants in Muir Woods but also these crouching hateful things here. Metal, water, back to wood … there was nothing there and anyway, how the hell did earth generate metal and metal generate water?

Water generating wood, though, that was okay, trees needed water to grow. They also needed sunlight, the very sunlight that sent vampires into ecstasy. Was that an important connection that nobody had seen in five years?

The great wave was loud enough now that people on the beach asked shrill questions, on the edge of becoming a panicked mob.

Going clockwise along the lines of the pentagram was the “controlling” cycle: wood controls earth, which controls water. Water overcomes fire which overcomes metal and back to wood.

Well, sure, water puts out fires and fire melts metal … but chemical fires, gasoline fires, electrical fires, water just made them worse. She’d always hated woo woo mysticism and this was why: you always had to ignore too many rational facts.

It was all nonsense. Part of her heritage, and nonsense. Why had she thought the pentagram had some power?

The wave roared from one end of the horizon to the other. Now the people ran but it was too late…

She put the pentagram back into her pocket, feeling helpless, and stared into the empty night.