Guillermo Del Toro , director of Pan ’s Labyrinth and Hellboy , has finished the second novel in the Strain Trilogy , his action - packed urban vampire series . Co - authored with Chuck Hogan , The Fall hits stores Sept. 21 – and we ’ve got an sole excerpt .
Sink your fang into this :
Fet had retreated straightaway after the crash , screw a losing battle when he saw one . The screaming was closely unbearable , yet he had a mission to complete , and that was his focus .
He climbed backward into one of the ducts , find there was barely enough blank to accommodate him . One reward to venerate was that the adrenaline course through him had the effect of lucubrate his pupils , and he found he could see his environs with unnatural clarity .
He reveal the tag end and twisted the timekeeper one full rotation . Three minute . One hundred eighty seconds . A delicate - moil egg .
He excommunicate his luck , now realizing that , with the vampire battle in the tunnel , he would have to go deeper into the ducts used by lamia to transverse the river , but also backward , with his arm badly offend and his peg dripping blood .
Before unblock the timekeeper , he see the bodies of the mol on the ground , writhe as they were consumed by clusters of vampire . They were already infect , already miss - all except for Cray - Z. He stood near a concrete tower , see like a blissful fall guy . And yet he was untouched by these dark things , unmolested as they rampaged past him .
Then Fet saw the gangly figure of Gabriel Bolivar approach Cray - Z. Cray - Z fell to his knees before the singer , the two of them outlined in smoke and dust-covered light , like build in a Bible stamp .
Bolivar lay his hand upon Cray - Z ’s head , and the madman stoop . He then kiss the hand , praying .
Fet had seen enough . He determine the machine down inside a interruption and took his hand off the dial . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . count in time with the tick as he grabbed his duffel pocketbook and back out backward .
Fet kept pushing back , feeling his trunk simplicity after a while , lube by his own flow blood .
. . . forty . . . forty - one . . . forty - two . . .
A cluster of creatures moved toward the duct entering , appeal by the feeling of Fet ’s ambrosia . Fet see their outline in the diminished aperture , and lose all promise .
. . . seventy - three . . . seventy - four . . . seventy - five . . .
He skidded as tight as he could , open his duffel travelling bag and remove his nail gun . He fired the argent nail as he retreated - screaming like a soldier empty a auto gun into the enemy ’s nest .
The nail embedded deeply into the cheekbone and os frontale of the first charging vampire , a nicely suited gentleman in his sixties . Fet fired again , pour down the man ’s eye and muzzle him with flatware , the brad buried in the soft flesh of its throat .
The thing squealed and recoiled . Others scrambled over their fallen associate , snaking quickly through the duct . Fet saw it approach - this one a supple womanhood in jog sweats , her shoulder injure , disclose her clavicle , dispute it against the tube wall .
. . . one hundred fifty . . . one hundred fifty - one . . . one hundred fifty - two . . .
Fet shot at the draw near creature . It kept creeping toward him even as its face was festooned with silver . Its goddamn stinger shoot out of its pincushion face , full gallop , nearly touching Fet , forcing him to scramble harder , slipping on his blood , his next shot missing , the nail rebound past the lead vampire and burying itself in the pharynx of the creature behind it .
How far along was he ? Fifty feet from the blowup ? A hundred feet ?
Not enough .
Three sticks of dynamite and a soft - bloody - boiled bollock later , he would find out .
He think back the photo of the house with their window all lit up inside as he observe shooting and screaming . Houses that never require exterminator . If there was any way he could hold up this , he call himself he would light up all the windows in his apartment and go out on the street just to calculate back .
. . . one - seventy - six . . . one - seventy - seven . . . one - seventy-
As the plosion rose behind the creature , and the blast of hotness hit Vasiliy , he find his torso pushed by the searing piston of displaced air , and a consistence - that of a singed vampire - strike him full on . . . knock him out .
As he faded into a serene vacuum , a word out of the depths of his mind supercede the cadency of the counting in his head :
CRO . . . CRO . . .
CROATOAN
you’re able to pre - order the book upat Amazon , or read more about the Strain Trilogyhere .
BooksGuillermo del ToroThe Strain
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