The Fall by Chuck Hogan, Guillermo Del Toro Page A

straight. Put it right out in front of us. A mother’s love is… it’s like a force. It’s beyond simple human affection. It’s soul-deep. A father’s love—my love for you, Z—it’s the strongest thing in my life, absolutely it is. But this thing has made me realize that there’s something about maternal love—it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is.”
    He checked to see how this was going with Zack. Couldn’t tell.
    “And now this thing, this plague, this awful… it’s taken who she was and burned off all that was good in her. All that was right and true. All that was, as we understand it, human. Your mom… she was beautiful, she was caring, she was… she was also crazy, in the way all devoted mothers are. But you were her great gift to the world. That’s how she saw you. That’s what you are still. That part of her lives on. But now—she is not herself anymore. She is not Kelly Goodweather, not Mom—and this is hard for both of us to accept. All that remains of what she was, as far as I can tell, is her bond with you. Because that bond is sacred, and it never dies. What we call love, in our sappy greeting-card way, is evidently something much deeper than we humans imagined. Her human love for you has… it seems to have shifted, has morphed, into this kind of want, this need. Where she is now, this bad place? She wants you there with her. It’s not bad to her, or evil, or dangerous. She just wants you with her. And what you need to know is that this is all because your mother loved you so completely.”
    Zack nodded. He couldn’t or wouldn’t speak.
    “Now, that said, we have to keep you safe from her. She looks different now, right? That’s because she is different—fundamentally different—and it’s not easy to face that. I can’t make this right for you except to protect you from her. From what she has become. That’s my new job now, as your parent, as your father. If you think of your mom, as she originally was, and what she would do to save you from any threat to your health, to your safety… well, you tell me. What would she do?”
    Zack nodded, answering immediately. “She would hide me.”
    “She would take you away. Remove you from the threat, get you to a safe place.” Eph listened to what he was saying. “Just pick you up and… run. I’m right, aren’t I?”
    “You’re right,” said Zack.
    “Okay, so—being the overprotective mom? That’s my job now.”

Brooklyn
    ERIC JACKSON PHOTOGRAPHED the window burn from three different angles. He always carried a small Canon digital camera when he was on duty, along with his gun and his badge.
    Acid etching was the thing now. Craft-store etching product usually mixed with shoe polish, marking on glass or Plexiglas. It didn’t show up immediately, burning into the glass in the space of hours. The longer the acid-etched tag remained, the more permanent it became.
    He stood back to size up the shape. Six black appendages radiating from a red center mass. He clicked back through his camera memory. Another one, taken yesterday in Bay Ridge, only not as well-defined. And another, in Canarsie, looking more like an oversized asterisk but evincing the same tight lines.
    Jackson knew Phade’s work anywhere. True, this wasn’t like his usual throw-ups—this was amateur work compared to that—but the fine arcs and perfect free-hand proportion were unmistakable.
    Dude was going all-city, sometimes in one night. How was that possible?
    Eric Jackson was a member of the New York Police Department’s Citywide Vandals Taskforce, his job to track and prevent vandalism. He believed in the gospel of the NYPD as it pertained to graffiti. Even the most beautifully colored and detailed graffiti throw-up represented an affront to public order. An invitation to others to consider the urban environment theirs to do with as they pleased. Freedom of expression was always the miscreant’s way out, but littering was an act of