Read only on Litres

This book cannot be downloaded as a file but can be read in our app or online on the website.

Read the book: «The Rising»

Name: The Rising
Author: Will Hill
ISBN: 9780007354498

Will Hill

Font::

DEDICATION

For Charlie and Nick, the best partners in crime I could have asked for

EPIGRAPH

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

How much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

Victor Frankenstein

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

MEMORANDUM

12 WEEKS AFTER LINDISFARNE

91 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

ON PATROL

TRIANGLES HAVE SHARP EDGES

THE ART OF COMING CLEAN

GROWING PAINS

REBIRTH

CARPENTER AND SON

VALENTIN RECEIVES A VISITOR

90 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

THE BIG LEAGUES

NO STONE UNTURNED

SLEEPLESS NIGHT

THE BARE BONES

INSIDE THE VOID

HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

ALL FALL DOWN

ALWAYS AND FOREVER

89 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

FAMILY TIES

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE

AT THE CROSSROADS AT MIDNIGHT

MASTER AND COMMANDER

HEROES’ RETURN

TINFOIL HATS

88 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

THE INTERROGATION OF VALENTIN RUSMANOV

THE FOURTH MUSKETEER

THE ILLUMINATED CITY, PART I

FULL DISCLOSURE

THE ILLUMINATED CITY, PART II

THINK BUT THIS AND ALL IS MENDED

87 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

IN CONVERSATION WITH A MONSTER

THERE IS NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR REVENGE

ECHOES OF THE PAST

THE DEPTHS OF KNOWLEDGE

IN THE COURT OF THE VAMPIRE KING

HOW TO STEAL FIRE FROM THE GODS

HOPE IS A DANGEROUS THING

VISION QUEST, PART I

FROM PILLAR TO POST

VISION QUEST, PART II

BACK FROM THE DEAD

VISION QUEST, PART III

AND A TORCH TO LIGHT THE WAY

VISION QUEST, PART IV

THE TIES THAT BIND

BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN

CURTAIN CALL

THE TWIST OF THE KNIFE

NOWHERE TO RUN, NOWHERE TO HIDE

SOME WOUNDS NEVER HEAL

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

REDUCED TO ASH

86 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

A COUNCIL OF WAR

ONLY FORWARD

FIRST EPILOGUE: IN THE FLESH

SECOND EPILOGUE: THREE FATHERS

85 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

MEMORANDUM

From: Office of the Director of the Joint Intelligence Committee
Subject: Revised classifications of the British governmental departments
Security: TOP SECRET
DEPARTMENT 1	Office of the Prime Minister
DEPARTMENT 2	Cabinet Office
DEPARTMENT 3	Home Office
DEPARTMENT 4	Foreign and Commonwealth Office
DEPARTMENT 5	Ministry of Defence
DEPARTMENT 6	British Army
DEPARTMENT 7	Royal Navy
DEPARTMENT 8	Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service
DEPARTMENT 9	Her Majesty’s Treasury
DEPARTMENT 10	Department for Transport
DEPARTMENT 11	Attorney General’s Office
DEPARTMENT 12	Ministry of Justice
DEPARTMENT 13	Military Intelligence, Section 5 (MI5)
DEPARTMENT 14	Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
DEPARTMENT 15	Royal Air Force
DEPARTMENT 16	Northern Ireland Office
DEPARTMENT 17	Scotland Office
DEPARTMENT 18	Wales Office
DEPARTMENT 19	CLASSIFIED
DEPARTMENT 20	Territorial Police Forces
DEPARTMENT 21	Department of Health
DEPARTMENT 22	Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)
DEPARTMENT 23	Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)

12 WEEKS AFTER LINDISFARNE

91 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR

1
ON PATROL

THE PILGRIM HOSPITAL BOSTON, LINCOLNSHIRE

Sergeant Ted Pearson of the Lincolnshire Police stamped his cold feet on the pavement, and checked his watch again. His partner, Constable Dave Fleming, watched him, a nervous look on his face.

Half ten, thought the Sergeant, with a grimace. I should be at home with my feet up. Sharon’s making lasagne tonight, and it’s never as good warmed through.

The 999 call had been made from the hospital’s reception desk at 9.50pm. Sergeant Pearson and his partner had been finishing up the paperwork on an illegal immigration case they were working on one of the farms near Louth, both men looking forward to getting the forms filed and heading home, when they had been told the call was theirs. Grumbling, they had climbed into their car and driven the short distance from the police station to the hospital, blue lights spinning above them, their siren blaring through the freezing January night.

They had reached the hospital in a little over three minutes, and were questioning the nurse who had made the call, a young Nigerian woman with wide, frightened eyes, when Sergeant Pearson’s radio buzzed into life. The message it conveyed was short and to the point.

“Secure access to potential crime scene. Do not investigate, or talk to potential witnesses. Stand guard until relieved.”

Pearson had sworn loudly down his receiver, but the voice on the other end, a voice he didn’t recognise but which was definitely not the usual dispatcher, was already gone. So he had done as he was told: instructed Constable Fleming to cease his questioning of the nurse, and informed all staff that access to the hospital’s blood bank was forbidden without direct permission from him. Then he and his partner had taken up positions outside the side entrance to the hospital, shivering in the cold, waiting to be relieved. By who, or what, they didn’t know.

“What’s going on, Sarge?” asked Constable Fleming, after fifteen minutes had passed. “Why are we standing out here like security guards?”

“We’re doing what we were told to do,” replied Sergeant Pearson.

Fleming nodded, unconvinced. He looked round at the dimly lit road; it was a narrow alley between the hospital and a red-brick factory that was falling rapidly into disrepair. On the wall opposite, in black paint that had dripped all the way to the ground, someone had sprayed two words.

HE RISES

“What’s that mean, Sarge?” asked Constable Fleming, pointing at the graffiti.

“Shut up, Dave,” replied his partner, giving the words a cursory glance. “No more questions, all right?”

The young man was going to make a fine copper, Pearson had no doubt about that, but his enthusiasm, and his relentless inquisitiveness, had a tendency to give the Sergeant a headache. The uncomfortable truth was that Pearson didn’t know what was going on, or why they were guarding the hospital door, or what the graffiti meant. But he was not going to admit that to Fleming, who had been on the force for less than six months. He stamped his feet again, and as he did so, he heard the rumble of an engine approaching in the distance.

Thirty seconds later a black van pulled to a halt in front of the two policemen.

The windows of the vehicle were as dark as the panels of its body, and it sat low to the ground on heavy-duty, run-flat tyres. The noise of its engine was incredibly loud, a deep roar that Pearson and Fleming felt through their boots. For almost thirty seconds, nothing happened; the van stood motionless before them, squat and strangely threatening under the fluorescent light emanating from the hospital’s side entrance behind them. Then, with a loud hiss, the vehicle’s rear door slid open, and three figures emerged.

Fleming stared at them as they approached, his eyes wide. Pearson, who had seen things over the course of his career that the younger man would not have believed, was more adept at hiding his emotions than his partner, and managed to keep his confusion, and rising unease, from his face.

The three figures that stopped in front of them were dressed head to toe in black: their boots, their gloves, their uniforms, belts and military-style webbing. All black. The only splash of colour was the bright purple of the flat visors that covered their faces, visors attached to sleek black helmets that looked like nothing the policemen had seen before. There was not a millimetre of exposed skin to be seen; the newcomers could easily have been robots, such was the anonymity of their appearance. On their belts, two black guns hung in holsters alongside a long cylinder with a handle and a trigger on one side. It was obviously a weapon, but it was not one that either of the policemen recognised.

The tallest of the figures stopped in front of Sergeant Pearson, the shiny material of its visor centimetres away from his face. When the figure spoke, the voice was male, but it had a flat, digital quality that Pearson knew from his time on the Met with SO15 meant the person behind the visor was speaking through several levels of filter, to avoid the possibility of voiceprint identification.

“Have you signed the Official Secrets Act?” the black figure asked, turning its visor-clad face sharply between the two policemen, who nodded, too intimidated to speak. “Good. Then you never saw us, and this never happened.”

“On whose authority?” managed Pearson, his voice shaking heavily.

“The Chief of the General Staff,” replied the figure, then leant forward until its visor was a millimetre from the Sergeant’s nose. “And mine. Understood?”

Pearson nodded again, and the figure drew back. Then it stepped past him and strode into the hospital. The other two dark shapes followed.

“The blood bank is—” began Constable Fleming.

“We know the way,” said the third of the figures in a digitally altered female voice.

Then they were gone.

The two policemen looked at one another. Sergeant Pearson was visibly shaking, and Constable Fleming reached a hand towards his partner’s shoulder. The older man waved it away, but he didn’t look annoyed; he looked old, and frightened.

“Who were they, Sarge?” asked Fleming, his voice unsteady.

“I don’t know, Dave,” replied Pearson. “And I don’t want to know.”

The three black-clad figures strode through the bright corridors of the hospital.

The tall one, the one who had spoken to Sergeant Pearson, led the way. Behind, shorter and slimmer than the leader, came the second of the trio, who appeared to glide across the linoleum floor. The third, shorter again, brought up the rear, its purple visor sweeping slowly left and right for any sign of trouble, or witnesses to their presence. As they passed the double doors that led to the hospital’s operating theatre, the tall figure at the front motioned for them to stop, and pulled a radio from his belt. He keyed in a series of numbers and letters, then activated the handset’s wireless connection to his helmet’s comms network. After a pause of several seconds, he spoke.

“Operational Squad G-17 in position. Alpha reporting in.”

“Beta reporting in,” the second figure said, in a metallic female voice.

“Gamma reporting in,” said the final squad member.

Alpha listened as a voice spoke on the other end of the line, and then replaced the radio on his belt.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the squad moved on into the hospital. After only a matter of seconds, Gamma spoke.

“So who made the 999 call?”

“The nurse at reception,” answered Alpha. “One of the night porters saw a man leading a young girl into the blood bank, said the man had red eyes. He told the nurse he thought it was probably a junkie.”

Beta laughed. “He’s probably right. But not the kind he’s thinking.”

The three shadowy shapes pushed open a door marked RESTRICTED, and moved on.

“Fifth call in three nights,” said Gamma. “Is Seward punishing us for something?”

“It’s not just us,” answered Alpha. “It’s everyone. Every squad is flat out.”

“I know,” replied Beta. “And we know why, don’t we? It’s because of…”

“Don’t,” said Gamma, quickly. “Don’t talk about him. Not now, OK?”

A small noise emerged from behind Beta’s helmet, a noise that could easily have been a laugh, but she let the subject drop.

“You were pretty hard on the police,” said Gamma. “The old Sergeant looked terrified.”

“Good,” replied Alpha. “The more he pretends that tonight never happened, the safer he’ll be. Now no more talk.”

They had reached the hospital’s blood bank, the door of which was standing open. Alpha stepped slowly into the dark room, and flicked the light switch on the wall.

Nothing happened.

He pulled a torch from his belt, and shone it up at the light fitting. The bulb was smashed, leaving a ring of jagged glass surrounding the filament. A slow sweep of the torch revealed carnage; the metal shelves of the blood bank had been ransacked. Blood and shattered plastic dotted the surfaces, and pooled and piled up on the floor.

“Don’t come any closer.”

The voice came from the corner of the room, and Alpha instantly swung his torch towards it. Two more shafts of white light joined its beam, as Beta and Gamma stepped into the room and followed their squad leader’s example.

The beams illuminated the trembling figure of a middle-aged man, crouching in the corner of the room. At his feet lay a sports bag full of plastic sachets of blood. In his arms was a girl, no more than six years old, with an expression of pure terror on her face. The man had a razor-sharp fingernail to her throat, and was looking at the three black figures with an expression of desperate panic.

Alpha reached up, turned a dial on the side of his helmet and watched his view of the room change. The helmet contained a cryocooled infrared detector, which showed the heat variance of every object within the visor’s field of vision. The cold walls and floor of the blood bank were a wash of pale greens and blues, while the little girl was darker, studded with patches of yellow and orange. The man bloomed bright red and purple like a roman candle, distorting Alpha’s vision.

“I’ll kill her if you come any closer,” the man said, shifting nervously against the wall. He tightened his grip on the girl’s throat, and she moaned.

Alpha twisted the visor’s setting back to normal.

“Stay calm,” he said, evenly. “Just let the girl go, and we can talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” yelled the man, and jerked the girl off her feet. She cried out, her eyes wide with terror, and Alpha took a half-step forward.

“Let the girl go,” he repeated.

“This isn’t right,” said Beta, in a low voice.

Alpha flicked his head towards her.

“Don’t make a move without my go,” he warned.

Beta snorted with laughter. “Please,” she said, then pulled a short black tube from her waist, pointed it into the corner of the room and pressed a button.

A thick beam of ultraviolet light burst across the blood bank. It hit the man’s arm and the girl’s face dead on, and both instantly erupted into flames. Screams and the nauseating smell of burning skin filled the air, as Gamma gasped behind her visor.

The little girl wrenched herself free of the arm that had been holding her, beating furiously at her face until the flames were extinguished. She dropped to her knees, tore open one of the plastic pouches of blood, then drank hungrily, slurping the crimson liquid into her mouth.

The man watched her, a helpless look on his face, then suddenly seemed to notice that his arm was burning. He began to leap around the corner of the room, beating at the limb with his good hand. When the flames were out, he pulled a blood bag from one of the shelves, and devoured its contents. As Squad G-17 watched, the girl’s face and the man’s arm began to heal before their eyes, the muscle and tissue regrowing, the skin turning pink and knitting back together. When the injuries were healed, so completely that there was no evidence that they had been there at all, a process that took only a matter of seconds, the girl looked up at the man, and wailed.

“Daddy!” she cried, her mouth a wide oval of disappointment. “You said this would work! You promised!”

The man looked down at her with an expression of great sadness.

“I’m sorry, love,” he replied. “I thought it would.” He looked over at the three dark figures, which hadn’t moved. “How did you know she was turned? The poor thing sat in a bath of ice for an hour so she wouldn’t look hot to those helmets of yours. Her teeth only just stopped chattering.”

Beta reached up and lifted her helmet from her head. The face beneath it was a teenage girl’s: beautiful, pale and narrow, framed by dark hair that brushed her neck. She wore a wide smile, and her eyes glowed red under the bright lights of the blood bank.

“I can smell her,” Larissa Kinley replied.

The little girl hissed, her eyes flooding the same red as Larissa’s.

“So it’s true,” said her father. “Department 19 has a pet traitor. How can you hunt your own people? Don’t you have any shame?”

Larissa took half a step towards him, her smile fading.

“You are not my people,” she said, in a voice like ice. Alpha gently laid a hand on her arm, and she stepped back, without taking her eyes from the man in the corner of the room.

Gamma removed her helmet, and shook her head. Short blonde hair flew back and forth above a pretty, heart-shaped face, from which blue eyes stared out above a mouth that was set in a firm line.

“Was it you two who hit Lincoln General last month?” asked Kate Randall.

The man nodded, his eyes still nervously fixed on Larissa.

“And Nottingham Trent the month before that?”

He shook his head.

“Are you lying to me?” Kate asked.

“Why would I lie?” the man replied. He appeared to be on the verge of tears. “You’re going to stake us both anyway, so what would be the point?”

“That’s right,” said Larissa, a wicked smile on her face.

The little girl began to cry. The man placed his hands on her shoulders and whispered soothingly to her.

Alpha looked over at Larissa, who rolled her eyes. Then he reached up, and removed his helmet.

The boy beneath it was no more than sixteen or seventeen, but his face looked older, as though he had seen, and most likely done, things that had taken their toll. A jagged patch of pink scar tissue peeped above the collar of his uniform and climbed across the right side of his neck, stopping before it reached his jaw. His face was handsome, and possessed of a stillness more befitting an older man. His blue eyes were piercing, but he trained them tenderly on Larissa.

“Nobody is staking anyone tonight,” said Jamie Carpenter. “You know the new SOP. Pass me two restrainers, Kate. Lazarus can have these two. I don’t think they’re dangerous.”

The man began to cry along with his daughter.

“We were hungry,” he said. “I’m sorry. My name is Patrick Connors, and this is my daughter, Maggie. We were just so hungry. We didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

“It’s all right,” Jamie replied, taking the two restrainers from Kate’s hands and tossing them to the man and his daughter. “Put these on, under your armpits. Pull them tight.”

The restrainers were thick belts that looped over the shoulders and crossed in the middle; where they met was an explosive charge that sat over the heart of the person wearing it. Patrick and Maggie shrugged the belts over their shoulders, and tightened them as they had been told. When they were securely in place, Jamie pulled a black tube from his belt with a small dial on one side and a red trigger on the other; he twisted the dial two notches clockwise, and red lights on the explosive charges flickered into life.

Jamie looked at his squad.

“Larissa, you’re going to lead us out of here,” he said. “Sir, you’re going to follow her, then Kate, then you, little one, and I’ll go last. We walk straight out the way we came, we don’t stop, and we don’t talk to anyone. Oh – and normal eyes, please.”

He grinned as Larissa and Maggie’s eyes reverted to their usual colours. Larissa led them out of the blood bank, and strode along the corridor towards the exit, and the waiting van. The rest of Squad G-17 and their prisoners followed in the order that Jamie had instructed, and less than a minute later they marched past Sergeant Pearson and Constable Fleming, who averted their eyes as they passed, and slid the van’s rear door shut behind them.

The inside of the vehicle was silver metal and black plastic; four seats ran along each side of the wide space, between which were fixed a series of moulded stands, with half a dozen unusual spaces in them. A wide LCD screen lay flush against the ceiling, and a series of slots in the floor lay before each seat. Jamie told the man and his daughter to take the two seats closest to the front and strap themselves in. They did so silently; when they were in position, Kate pressed a button set into the wall. A barrier of ultraviolet light appeared from a wide bulb in the floor, cutting them off from the three black-clad teenagers, and both Patrick and Maggie cried out.

“Don’t worry,” said Jamie. “You’re perfectly safe.”

He began to unclip the weapons and devices from his belt, and slide them into the slots on the stand beside one of the seats. The brand-new T-21 pneumatic launcher, the Glock 17, the Heckler & Koch MP5, the torch and the short beam gun that Larissa had used inside the blood bank – all were placed into purpose-built compartments and clicked into place. The detonator he kept in his hand, resting it on his knee as he took his seat and announced that they were ready to go. Instantly, the powerful engine of the vehicle, which was in reality less a van and more a combination of a mobile command centre and an armoured personnel carrier, surged into life, and sped them away from the hospital, leaving Sergeant Pearson and Constable Fleming shivering on the pavement.

“What do we do—”

“Nothing,” interrupted Pearson, before his partner had a chance to finish his question. “We do nothing, and we say nothing, because nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Clear?”

Fleming looked at the older man for a long moment, taking in the pale colour of his face, the lines of worry around his eyes and the firm set of his jaw.

“Crystal, sir,” he replied. “Let’s go home.”

An hour later the black van sped through deepening forest, heading towards a place that didn’t exist. Its official designation was Classified Military Installation 303-F, but it had long been referred to by the men and women who knew of its existence by a simpler, shorter name.

“Welcome to the Loop,” said Jamie, as the van drew to a halt. Patrick Connors and his daughter regarded him with polite incomprehension, and said nothing.

Outside the van there was a low rumble, a metallic sound like a gate being rolled back. Then they were moving again, creeping slowly forward.

“Place your vehicle in neutral.”

The voice was artificial, and it appeared to be coming from all sides at once. The driver of the van, an invisible figure to the men and women in the rear of the vehicle, did as he was ordered. A conveyor belt whirred into life beneath the van, and moved it forward, until the artificial voice spoke again.

“Please state the names and designations of all passengers.”

“Carpenter, Jamie. NS303, 67-J.”

“Kinley, Larissa. NS303, 77-J.”

“Randall, Kate. NS303, 78-J.”

There was a long pause.

“Supernatural life forms have been detected on board this vehicle,” said the voice. “Please state clearance code.”

“Lazarus 914-73,” said Jamie, quickly.

Another pause.

“Clearance granted,” announced the artificial voice. “Proceed.”

The van began to roll forward again, picking up speed. Less than two minutes later it stopped, and Jamie stood up from his seat and slid the rear door open. Kate pressed a button in the wall and the ultraviolet barrier imprisoning Patrick and Maggie disappeared.

“This way,” said Jamie, motioning towards the open door. The man led his daughter slowly down the steps, into a world he had heard rumours about, but could never have possibly imagined.

To the back of the van, an enormous semi-circular hangar stood open to the night sky. The huge space was mostly empty; a line of black SUVs and vans were parked along one wall, and a small number of black-clad figures moved across the tarmac floor. Standing before them, patient looks on their faces, were a man in the same black uniform that Jamie and his squad were wearing and a young Asian man in a white lab coat.

Patrick looked around, and gasped. He had a moment to take in the enormity, and the incredible strangeness, of what he was seeing: the vast curved fence beyond the runway, the labyrinth of red lasers, the ultraviolet no-man’s-land, and the vast holographic canopy of trees that hung across the sky above his head. Then there was a hand on his lower back, and he was being ushered forward, towards the waiting men. His daughter grabbed for his hand, and he gripped it, firmly, as Jamie stepped round him and handed his detonator to the man in the white coat, who thanked him, then addressed the two disoriented, frightened vampires.

“Sir,” he said, his voice low and gentle. “My name is Dr Yen. Please will you follow me?”

Patrick glanced at Jamie, fear blooming on his face.

“It’s OK,” said Jamie. “You’ll be safe with him.”

Patrick glanced down at Maggie, and found her looking back up at him with a determined expression on her face. She nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“We will,” he replied, as steadily as he was able. “We’ll follow you.”

The doctor nodded, then turned and walked briskly across the hangar. After a moment’s pause, the man and his daughter followed him across the cavernous room, and through a wide set of double doors.

Jamie watched them go, then smiled at Larissa and Kate. Behind them, an Operator from the Security Division climbed into the van and began unloading their equipment from the moulded stands. It would be checked, cleaned and returned to their quarters within an hour, as it always was. Jamie nodded to the Operator, before turning to the Duty Officer who had been waiting to greet them.

“Cold out here tonight,” he said, watching his breath cloud in front of his face.

“Yes, sir. Bloody cold, sir.”

“How’s my mother?”

“She’s fine, sir,” replied the young Operator. “Asking for you.”

Jamie nodded, and started to walk into the hangar. He was suddenly exhausted, and his small quarters on Level B were calling to him.

“Admiral Seward requested a debrief, sir,” called the Operator, before he had got more than a couple of steps. He sounded apologetic, and Jamie sighed.

“Personally?”

“Personally, sir.”

Jamie swore. “Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, then marched towards one of the doors at the rear of the hangar, Larissa and Kate following closely behind him.

The three members of Squad G-17 slumped against the walls of the lift as it descended into the lower levels of the Loop.

On Level B, Jamie said goodnight to the two girls, and almost ran to the shower block marked MEN that stood halfway down the corridor. He stood in the shower for a long time, his head under the searing water, trying to prevent the aches and pains that were the accumulation of active service as a Department 19 Operator from returning with a vengeance, as they usually did once the adrenaline of a mission had worn off.

Eventually, with great reluctance, he twisted the shower off, and dressed in a T-shirt and combat trousers. He could almost feel his narrow bunk beneath him, could perfectly visualise the moment when his head would touch the pillow and his eyes would close. He picked up his uniform, opened the door to the corridor and stopped. Larissa was standing in the doorway, her eyes red, her hair wet, her body wrapped in a green towel, a wicked smile on her face.

“Where’s Kate?” asked Jamie.

“Gone to her quarters,” replied Larissa. “She said to tell you she’ll see you in the morning.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but Larissa closed it with her own, her lips on his, and Jamie discovered that he wasn’t nearly as tired as he had thought.

2
TRIANGLES HAVE SHARP EDGES

ONE HOUR LATER

Larissa Kinley flexed a muscle that the vast majority of the population didn’t possess, and felt her fangs slide silently down from her gums, fitting perfectly over her incisors, the white points emerging below her upper lip. She ran her tongue across the tips of her fangs, pressing until the slightest increase in pressure would have broken the skin, her eyes never leaving her reflection in the mirror in her quarters.

She hated her fangs with every fibre of her being.

They disgusted her, filled her with a revulsion she could not fully articulate to anyone, not even Jamie. She knew he would listen to her, sympathise with her, and at least try to say all the right things. But the simple fact was that he didn’t know what it felt like to be a vampire, and how it felt was impossible to explain.

She would have torn the fangs from her mouth with a pair of pliers if she didn’t know full well that they would regrow the next time she fed; she would have smashed them out with the butt of her Glock pistol, filed them down to nothing with sandpaper, or simply pulled them out with her bare hands, if she had believed that anything would have rid her of them.

But she knew nothing would. Her fangs were part of her, and there was nothing she could do about them.

I’m stuck with them. I’m going to be looking at them forever.

Anger trickled through Larissa’s body, and her eyes began to turn red. She leant in close to the mirror, and watched as crimson spilled slowly in from the corners, obscuring the natural dark brown. The dark red swirled and pulsed, until it filled her eyes to their edges. The black holes of her pupils expanded until she thought she would fall into them, and she took a step backwards, away from herself. A low snarl burst from her throat, and she reared back, her muscles vibrating with fury.

Larissa swung her fist into the mirror, faster than the human eye could have followed, and the polished glass exploded, sending razor-sharp slivers flying through the air. Two shards dug into the pale skin of her neck; she barely noticed them until blood began to flow, and the scent filled her nostrils. She withdrew her trembling hand from the remains of the mirror, and stared at the blood pouring out of the holes in her knuckles. She pulled the glass out of her neck, savouring the pain, and wiped the blood away. Then, with guilt and sorrow in her heart, Larissa shoved her hand into her mouth, and hungrily sucked away the running blood, her head swimming with primal pleasure and self-loathing.

The cuts healed almost immediately, and she let the hand fall to her side. Staring into the mirror, she waited until the crimson in her eyes began to recede, then let the towel she was wearing fall to the floor. Her body had been changed by the endless hours of training since she had instantly accepted Major Paul Turner’s offer for her to join Department 19, grown leaner and more toned. But the thick bands of muscle that had emerged on the bodies of Kate and Jamie were nowhere to be seen; the vast majority of her strength and speed and stamina now came from somewhere else.

Larissa walked across her small quarters to the locker at the end of her bed, pulled a vest and a pair of shorts out of the drawers, dressed quickly and stepped easily into the air. She folded her legs beneath her and floated, two metres above the floor, in outright defiance of the laws of nature; there, she closed her eyes, and focused on remaining completely still.

Her powers were developing with a speed that frightened her.

The acceleration of her abilities was a result, partly, of simple ageing – but more down to the fact that she was using them every day. She could now stay in the air almost indefinitely, and fly huge distances without tiring. The truth was, she didn’t even know how far; it had been a long time since she had attempted a flight that had turned out to be beyond her. And she was strong now too; so strong that the possibility of accidentally hurting someone she cared about was never far from her mind. She opened her eyes, slowly, and looked at the series of dents in the wall beside her door. They were the results of arguments with Jamie, of missions that had gone wrong, of petty fights with Kate, and of the days when simply being herself was too much for her.

All the punches had been pulled. The only time she had lashed out at the wall with all her strength she had smashed a hole clean through the thick concrete, setting off an alarm that woke everyone in the Loop. The following morning, she had been forced to explain herself to Admiral Seward, who had gently informed her that the combination of teenage petulance and superhuman strength was a dangerous one.

Larissa closed her eyes again, and let her mind wander. As it so often did, it made its way back to the months that had followed her turning at the hands of Grey, the oldest British vampire, a man who had committed himself publicly to peace while he fed on teenage girls in private. She had eventually confronted him in Valhalla, the vampire commune he had founded, and from which he had been expelled for what he had done to her, but his banishment had brought her little peace; it had made nothing better.

The almost two years she had spent with Alexandru Rusmanov were her deepest secret, the one thing she refused to discuss with anyone, even Jamie. He had asked her about it for the first time during the bedlam that followed the attack on Lindisfarne, when the two of them were tentatively getting to know each other, were, in essence, meeting each other properly for the first time. The persona she had presented to him during her time as a prisoner of Department 19 had not been far removed from her real self; she had played up certain aspects of her character and played down others as she fought desperately for the chance to survive the madness that was taking place around her. But it was still a persona, an act, one she dropped as soon as Marie Carpenter was rescued and she came to realise that her life was no longer in danger. Jamie had phrased his question innocuously, but there had been a tightness to his voice, a sliver of excitement, that let Larissa know how much he wanted to hear about her past.

She wanted to tell him too.

The attraction between them was tangible, and she knew with absolute certainty that their time spent as merely friends was going to be extremely brief. But more than that, she trusted him; the thought of having someone who she could tell her story to, who would not judge her for the things she had done, would not think less of her or turn their back on her, someone who might help her carry the weight that hung so heavily around her neck, was the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world.

And for that reason, she told him not to ask her about it again. She could not face the possibility of being wrong about him, of being let down and disappointed again. Instead, she clung to the hope that he would ignore her instruction, and ask her again one day; when he did, she would be ready to tell him.

But she wasn’t. Not the second time he asked her, or the third, or the fourth, and eventually he got the message and stopped persevering. Each time, she had tried to tell him, tried to will herself to open this last door to him, and to hell with what lay behind it. But she couldn’t. Her panic at the thought of driving him away before they had even had the chance to become something more than friends had been replaced by an overwhelming terror at the thought of losing him now that they had. She understood now that the chance had passed, that she should have told him at the beginning, and that she was now trapped. The memories of those two terrible years ate away at her, poisoning her sleep and her dreams, and she had rejected the chance to let someone help her, someone who wanted so badly to do so.

He saw me when his dad was killed, she thought, as she floated in the cool air of her quarters. And he knows I was sent by Alexandru to kill him the night his mother was kidnapped. He knows both those things and he’s still with me. Why can’t I tell him the rest?

But she knew the answer to her own question.

Because it’s worse. Oh God, it’s so much worse. Because I don’t know if he or Kate could ever look at me the same way again. And because they’re all I’ve got.

In the quiet of her quarters, her hair almost brushing the ceiling as she floated, Larissa fought back the rage that suddenly spilled through her, making her muscles vibrate and her fangs burst involuntarily into her mouth. She growled, a low rumble full of imminent violence, as she tried to control herself, tried not to swoop down and add a new dent to the collection by the door.

Calm, she shouted at herself. Be calm. Without Alexandru you wouldn’t be here, would never have met Jamie, or Kate, never had the chance to make amends for what you did. Calm down, you stupid girl.

She felt her fangs retract, and she slowly unclenched her fists. It was a source of constant amusement to Larissa, who possessed a jet black sense of humour, that she had come to fall for a boy she would never even have met had she not been the obedient servant of the monster that had tried to destroy his family. But there had been no way for her to know that as she flew with Alexandru and his followers towards the house that the unsuspecting Jamie Carpenter shared with his mother and the ghost of his father.

No way for her to know that her new life, her real life, had been about to begin.

Kate Randall closed her laptop, sat back in her chair and stared at the wall above the small desk in her quarters. She had showered and changed into a T-shirt and shorts, and her blonde hair was wet; she could feel water dripping down her neck and across her shoulders.

It was her turn to write Squad G-17’s post-operation report, but she found herself unable to concentrate on it. She was tired, but that was not unusual; endless interrupted sleep patterns came with the territory of being a Department 19 Operator. What was distracting her, and preventing her from focusing on the report, was something that had become an almost constant source of annoyance to Kate.

Jamie and Larissa.

Kate had known about their relationship, or whatever they called it when they were alone, since the very beginning. The two things that annoyed her, that sometimes made her so frustrated that she wanted to scream “I KNOW!” in both their faces, was the fact that they seemed to genuinely believe she was unaware, and that they felt the need to keep it from her at all.

The former was an insult to her intelligence, and she hated being thought of as stupid almost as much as she hated being patronised. The latter was even worse; she knew, with absolute certainty, that they both believed she had a crush on Jamie.

Kate was a girl with a highly developed sense of self-awareness, and would have admitted, had anyone asked her, that there had been a tiny period of time during which she had possibly, just possibly, thought about Jamie in that way.

During the madness of Lindisfarne and the days that followed it, days in which the shape and course of her life had been altered forever, when she had been faced with decisions that she would spend the rest of her days second-guessing, he had been there, by her side, helping her through it. He had rescued her on Lindisfarne, as the bodies of her friends and neighbours lay discarded on the streets she had grown up in, and saved her life, all their lives, by destroying Alexandru Rusmanov. Then, when it was over, she had seen him with Frankenstein, and with his mum, and for a few short moments, she thought that she had maybe been a little bit in love with him.

Maybe.

But the feeling had passed, and passed quickly; partly because it was obvious to her from the moment they woke up at the Loop on the morning after Lindisfarne that he had fallen for Larissa, and that Larissa felt the same way about him, but also because in the cold light of day, away from the blood and the screams and the horror of the night before, the aura that had glowed around him as he stepped forward to face Alexandru was gone. She loved Jamie; in the months since her home had been attacked he had become one of the two closest friends she had ever had, and she would have done anything for him.

But she was not in love with him.

That was what hurt her most about the deception that he and Larissa were perpetrating; she was genuinely, unreservedly happy for them both. She had waited and waited for them to tell her, convincing herself they were looking for the right moment, until she had been forced into the bitter realisation that there wasn’t going to be a right moment. They weren’t waiting for anything; they had decided to keep her in the dark.

Well, to hell with that, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll tell them I know. No more of this.

After all, it wasn’t as if Kate had been without problems of her own to deal with in the aftermath of Lindisfarne; real problems, unlike the adolescent nonsense occupying her two supposedly best friends.

After they had arrived at the Loop, after the wonderful, heart-stopping moment when the news had been passed to her that her father was among the survivors who had made it to the mainland in John Tremain’s fishing boat, Kate had been escorted down to the secure dormitory on Level B and crashed into a deep, dreamless sleep. She had slept until a female Operator, in the same black uniform that Jamie and his colleagues had been wearing when they arrived on Lindisfarne, shook her awake six hours later and told her that she needed to get dressed and follow her up to the Loop’s Ops Room.

She had done so without complaint, still half-asleep, rubbing her eyes as they made their way into a lift and up to Level 0. The Operator had pushed open the Ops Room door, and held it wide; Kate walked through it, and looked around the large circular room.

There was only one other person in there, a strikingly handsome Latino man in his mid-forties, wearing the now familiar all-black uniform, and sitting casually on the desk at the front of the room.

“Miss Randall?” he asked. His expression was entirely neutral; there was no malice there, no threat, but no warmth either, and for a second, the strangeness of the situation she had found herself in sank into her, and she felt a sharp rush of fear as she nodded.

What if they’re going to lock me up for what I saw? What if I’m never going to get out of here? What will happen to my dad?

“My name is Major Christian Gonzalez,” the man said. “I’m the Interim Security Officer at this facility. Please, take a seat.”

Kate did as she was told, crossing the wide room and sitting in one of the plastic chairs that were ranged round a grid of long tables. She turned it so she was facing Major Gonzalez.

“Did you sleep well? Is there anything you need?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good. Now, Kate – do you mind me calling you Kate?”

She shook her head again, and his lips curled at the edges.

“Thank you,” he said. “So, Kate. We have a problem, you and I. We need to work out what we’re going to do about it.”

“What problem?” she asked, her voice low and nervous.

“That you were never supposed to see the things you’ve seen. The creatures that attacked your home last night, the men who rescued you; as far as the general public is concerned, none of them exist. Neither does the building you’re standing in now. And that’s the way we need it to stay.”

Fear pulsed up Kate’s spine.

They’re going to lock me up. I’m never going to be allowed to go home.

Major Gonzalez saw the look on the teenage girl’s face and smiled.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Kate,” he said, his voice kind. “We’re the good guys. But we do need to protect the security of what we do, and that means you have a decision to make. A big one.”

“What do you mean?” Kate managed. “What decision?”

Major Gonzalez picked a small sheaf of paper from the desk he was sitting on, and showed it to Kate.

“This is the preliminary report into the events of last night,” he said. “It is based on statements from eyewitnesses, including senior members of this organisation. It describes the circumstances leading to the destruction of one of the most powerful vampires in the world at the hands of a teenage boy with nothing more than the most basic training, and the actions of the men and women that helped him. It mentions you, several times. It says that you exhibited remarkable bravery and resolve in leading Mr Carpenter and his colleagues to the monastery where Alexandru Rusmanov had made his base, and that you continued to demonstrate those qualities when confronted with a hall full of hungry vampires, led by one of the most evil creatures ever to walk the earth. It claims you destroyed one of the vampires yourself. Is that true?”

The memory of the previous night burst unbidden into Kate’s mind. She remembered the screams and the crunch of weapons as the small group of men and the vampire girl fought valiantly against monsters that outnumbered them five to one, remembered the spray of blood and the tearing of flesh and bone, remembered with shuddering revulsion the vampire who had held her, and the sensation of his sharpened fingernail tracing a line across her neck. Then she remembered the primal roar that had echoed through her head as she sank her teeth into his arm and tore at it like a mad dog, the warmth of his blood coating her from head to toe after she plunged a metal stake into his heart, and the subsequent sense of overpowering elation that had shaken her to her core.

“That’s true,” she said, quietly. “I destroyed one of them.”

Christian Gonzalez smiled at her again, and this time the smile was wide, and dizzyingly beautiful. She felt his approval wash over her, and thought she might blush.

“Well done,” he said. “Very well done indeed. That you survived as long as you did on an island overrun by vampires, that you were then able to play the part you did in their defeat, is why you now have a decision to make. The first option is as follows: you can return home, with a cover story explaining your whereabouts for the last twenty-four hours, and never tell anyone about the things you saw. You’ll have to sign the Official Secrets Act, you’ll be monitored to make sure you comply with it, and if you don’t, you will be discredited so that no one believes you, to the extent that the likely result will be a period of evaluation in a secure psychiatric hospital. But you’ll be able to resume your life as it was before the events of last night, and you’ll be reunited with your father.”

Tears welled in the corners of Kate’s eyes as she thought about her father, her brilliant, loyal dad, who must be going through hell with his daughter missing and his home recovering from a massacre.

“I should be clear,” continued Major Gonzalez. “This is an offer that is made extremely rarely. Under normal circumstances, once a civilian is exposed to the existence of the supernatural, as you were last night, continuing a normal life ceases to be an option. There are obvious risks in allowing that information to be taken out into the world, and those risks are normally considered sufficient to see the civilian in question placed in classified custody. I’m not trying to scare you, or threaten you, I promise. I’m merely letting you know how this usually works.”

Kate felt both scared and threatened, but she tried not to let it show.

“What’s the second option?” she asked, her voice packed with as much bravery as she could muster.

The smile returned to Christian Gonzalez’s face.

“The other option is that you stay here and help us save the world,” he said. “You become an Operator in this organisation, and you help us stop what happened to Lindisfarne from happening anywhere else.”

“What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that the life you led until yesterday will be over. You will never be able to tell anyone who you are, who you work for, or what you do, and you will never be able to contact anyone from your former life. Including your father.”

Kate felt faint.

The idea that she would never see her dad again was so abhorrent to her that she thought she was going to throw up at the mere thought of it. But what the handsome Major was offering her was a way out of the life that had been stretching inevitably out before her on Lindisfarne: she would inherit her father’s boat, carry on fishing the same small stretch of water for the next forty years, maybe find a local boy to marry, have a kid or two, and live and die on the island where she had been born.

Kate knew she could never have left her father alone, could never have moved to the mainland and abandoned him to an empty house full of the memories of his family. She had come to terms with her lot a long time ago, but now this man was offering her a way to change it all, to do something that mattered, something that would be exciting, and dangerous, where there were no limits to the places she might go and the people and monsters she might meet. But even for all that, there was a price that would be too high for her to pay.

“What will you tell my dad?” she asked, carefully. “I can’t let him think anything happened to me. I need him to know I’m OK.”

“He’ll be told that you are the primary material witness to a major terrorist incident, and that you are being voluntarily detained for questioning. In a few months’ time, when all this has died down, he’ll be asked to sign the Official Secrets Act and told that you have been recruited into the Security Services. He’ll be extremely proud of you, I promise.” This time Major Gonzalez grinned, and Kate blushed, despite herself.

“How long do I have to make the decision?” she asked.

“About an hour,” replied the Major. She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “I’m sorry, I know this must seem very unfair. But I’m afraid there are time factors at work here that controlling the public story depends on. If you decide to go, we need to get you home while there is still confusion on Lindisfarne.”

“And if I decide to stay?”

“Then we need to get started,” he said.

In the end, she had only made Major Gonzalez wait for ten minutes before she told him she would take the second option. He congratulated her, before escorting her along a curving grey corridor to one of the Briefing Rooms where she was reacquainted with Jamie Carpenter and the vampire girl, Larissa Kinley. And even then, as she looked back on the most important day of her life, she had noticed the small glances and half-smiles that passed between the two of them.

Tomorrow, she thought again. I’ll tell them tomorrow.

There was a knock on the door of her quarters, and she padded softly across the cold floor to answer it, smiling as she did so, knowing there was only one person who would be visiting her at this hour. Shaun Turner was standing in the corridor outside, his face breaking into a smile as she opened the door to him. Then he was pushing her backwards, his hands on her waist, his lips on hers, and a thought flashed through her head as they sank on to her narrow bunk.

At least I’m actually good at keeping secrets. Well, from one of them, at least.

Jamie stood outside the door to Admiral Henry Seward’s quarters on Level A, pushing his hair back from his forehead and tucking his T-shirt into his combat trousers. When he was as presentable as he was likely to get, he knocked on the door.

“Come,” called a muffled voice. Jamie pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside.

The Director of Department 19 was sitting behind his desk. Admiral Seward put the papers he had been working on atop the towering pile of his inbox, and regarded Jamie with a warm smile which the teenager returned.

They had become close in recent months, these two men; united in grief by the loss of Frankenstein, whom Seward missed almost as much as Jamie, and drawn together by the Director’s terrible sense of guilt over the death of Julian Carpenter. Jamie had never blamed Henry Seward for the loss of his father; for that, there was a jet black corner in the darkest, angriest depths of his soul set aside especially for the traitor Thomas Morris, who had died before Jamie got the chance to make him pay for what he had done. But the Admiral’s guilt was real, even if it was misplaced, and it had allowed Jamie the chance to get to know the man his father had really been.

They had spent many evenings in this room, the Director telling tales of Julian Carpenter, Jamie drinking them in hungrily, then passing them on to his mother, often after heavy editing for violence. It had made the Carpenters feel like a family again, had rebuilt the bonds between that had been eroded in the years after Julian had died, when neither mother nor son had known how to fill the void that had been left in the middle of their lives.

Now look at us, thought Jamie, and stifled a grin. I hunt and destroy vampires for a living, she IS a vampire and lives in a cell hundreds of metres below the earth, yet we’ve never got on better.

“Something funny, Jamie?” asked Seward.

He had clearly not stifled the grin as well as he thought, and drew himself up to attention.

“No, sir,” he replied.

Seward smiled at him.

“At ease,” he said. Jamie relaxed into an easy stance, his hands loosely together behind his back. “Give me your report.”

“Nothing notable, sir. Father and daughter vamps robbing a blood bank.”

“Were you able to capture them?”

“Yes, sir. I handed them over to Dr Yen, sir.”

The Director nodded. “Well done. Lazarus needs all the warm vamps it can get its hands on.”

“So I hear, sir.”

“Any signs?”

“Yes, sir. On the wall outside the hospital. The same two words.”

Admiral Seward swore, scribbling a quick note on a piece of paper.

“Sir,” Jamie continued. “Why does the Lazarus Project need so many captive vamps? What are they doing down there?”

The Director put down the pen he had been writing his note with, and looked at the young Operator. “The Lazarus Project is classified, Jamie,” he replied. “You understand what classified means, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me remind you, just in case you’ve forgotten. It means that everyone who needs to know what the Lazarus Project is doing already knows what the Lazarus Project is doing. Is that clear, Operator?”

“It is, sir.”

“Good. There’s a Zero Hour Task Force briefing scheduled for 1100 tomorrow. Mandatory attendance.”

“New information, sir?” asked Jamie, hopefully.

Admiral Seward shook his head. “Just routine, Jamie. Dismissed.”

Jamie nodded, and left the Director’s study. As he walked towards the lift that would finally, mercifully, deliver him to his bed, his mind drifted back to the speech Admiral Seward had given a month earlier, that had brought to light the existence of the Lazarus Project, that had birthed the Zero Hour Task Force, that had altered how every Operator in the Department went about their job.

The speech that had changed everything.

3
THE ART OF COMING CLEAN

TWENTY-NINE DAYS EARLIER

“Do you know what this is about?” asked Larissa.

She and Jamie were walking along the main Level B corridor towards one of the lifts standing near its centre. Larissa had a towel slung round her shoulders, and was dressed in a dark green vest and a pair of shorts. Jamie guessed she had been with Terry in the Playground, the wide, sweat-soaked space in the bowels of the Loop where the veteran Blacklight instructor ruled with an iron fist, and she looked deeply unimpressed about being interrupted.

“I’ve no idea,” replied Jamie, glancing over at her. “I got the same message as you.” He had been asleep when his console had blared into life, and was almost as grumpy as Larissa.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t bite my head off.”

“Sorry,” he replied, casting her a weary smile which she returned.

The two teenagers were tired, more tired than they could ever remember having been in their lives before Department 19. You never really got used to it, not completely, although they had both become skilled at not letting it interfere with either their performance as Operators, or the tiny sliver of each day that could charitably be called their social lives. But there was something looming on the horizon that was fuelling their bad moods, something that all the T-Bones and ultraviolet light in the world couldn’t stop.

In five days’ time, it would be Christmas.

Even inside the Loop, surrounded by men and women utterly committed to the secret mission they had undertaken, it was impossible to avoid the festive season. The Operators who had families, who lived off-base as Jamie’s father had once done, filled the officers’ mess with tales of trees and decorations, of presents that had been bought or still needed buying, while the younger men and women who lived in quarters at the Loop juggled days off and swapped shifts in the hope of seeing their loved ones at some point over the holiday. For Jamie and Larissa, it was nothing more than a continual reminder of the differences between them and everyone else, even Kate.

The two teenagers were unique, in that Blacklight’s Intelligence Division had taken them off the grid; they no longer existed in the outside world, on paper or in the eyes of the law. Although she didn’t know it, had Larissa’s mother walked into any governmental office and attempted to prove that she had ever had a daughter, it would have been impossible for her to do so; there were no longer any official records of her child having been born, or having lived, and her copy of Larissa’s birth certificate would have been dismissed as a forgery.

It was the same situation for Jamie; in his case because he was now the son of a creature that did not officially exist, in Larissa’s because she was a creature that did not officially exist. Kate still had a presence in the world; she was officially listed as missing after the Lindisfarne attack, and her father knew that she was still alive, even though he was sworn to secrecy on the subject.

Jamie and Larissa were voluntary prisoners inside Department 19, unable to live anywhere else, because they did not exist anywhere else. Jamie had asked Admiral Seward about it once, asked him what would happen if the time came that he wanted to get married and have a family, have some semblance of a normal life. Seward had told him that it might, might, be possible to reintroduce him into the world under an assumed identity. As far as Jamie was concerned, he had not sounded very confident about it.

Jamie would readily concede, however, that it was far harder for Larissa than for him. All that remained of his family lived in a cell in the base of the Loop, and there had been a small Christmas tree standing in Marie Carpenter’s cell for over a week. Larissa’s family, and in particular her little brother, were still out there, living their lives without her, making preparations for what had always been her favourite time of the year. They had talked about it several times, both of them trying hard not to make the other feel worse, but it had been clear to them both that they were united in a single wish: for Christmas to be over as soon as possible, so their lives could get back to what they had come to consider normal.

They reached the lift and pressed the button marked 0. The message that had appeared on their consoles had been sent to every single Operator, both the active and inactive lists, summoning them all to a briefing in the Ops Room. Admiral Seward had debriefed Jamie less than three hours earlier, after Squad G-17 had returned from a routine call on a housing estate south of Birmingham, and the Director had not mentioned anything about an imminent meeting. Seward had been so phenomenally busy in the weeks since Lindisfarne that Jamie was not surprised, although he was, privately, slightly hurt; he liked to believe that he had the Director’s ear in a way that the vast majority of rookie Operators did not.

Jamie and Larissa emerged on to Level 0 and made their way to the Ops Room. The wide, oval room was already almost full, and they found standing room against the curved wall at the back of the sea of black-clad figures. Jamie caught Kate’s eye as they made their way through the throng, and he nodded at her. She smiled back at them from her seat near the far wall, before returning her attention to the platform at the front of the room, beneath the giant wall screen that was currently lying dormant.

Admiral Seward was standing on the platform, talking in a low voice to Cal Holmwood, the Deputy Director. The expressions on the two men’s faces were sombre, and Jamie felt a pang of nervousness rise into his chest. Everything had been so chaotic since Lindisfarne, as the Department attempted to adjust to the revelations that had been uncovered by the successful rescue of Jamie’s mother: the unmasking of Thomas Morris as the traitor to the Department, the destruction of Alexandru Rusmanov and the tragic loss of Colonel Frankenstein, which Jamie could still barely bring himself to think about.

“Seward looks serious,” said Larissa, as though she could read Jamie’s mind. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” replied Jamie, softly, as Cal Holmwood stepped down from the platform and took a seat in the front row. “Looks like we’re about to find out.”

Admiral Seward stepped up to the lectern that stood in the middle of the platform, and gripped its edges with his hands. He looked out over the massed ranks of Operators, his expression unreadable. Then he cleared his throat, and began to speak.

“Operators of Department 19,” he began. “The time has come to put our cards on the table. Some of what I’m about to say is going to be hard for you to hear, but I believe it’s necessary that you hear it. I know many of you have had questions regarding the events of October 26th, questions that many of you have brought to me in person. I’m sorry that until now I have been unable to provide you with answers. There have been investigations and inquiries under way, and the full picture has only become clear extremely recently. That picture is what I’m here to describe to you today.”

Seward glanced around at his audience, and appeared to find what he was looking for on the faces of his colleagues. He nodded briefly, before carrying on.

“I’m sure the majority of you are familiar with the events that took place on Lindisfarne during the night in question; for those of you who are not, I have declassified report 6723/F, which provides a comprehensive account. What very few of you know is that despite the fact that the mission on Lindisfarne led to the destruction of Alexandru Rusmanov, to the uncovering of the treachery of Thomas Morris and to the loss of Colonel Frankenstein, the crucial event of that night took place more than two thousand miles away, at the SPC base in Polyarny.”

Standing at the back of the room, Jamie bristled.

And we rescued my mother. But I guess that doesn’t deserve a mention.

“On the lower levels of the SPC base,” continued Seward, taking a deep breath, “there is a vault numbered 31. Until the 26th of October it contained the most highly classified artefact held by any of the supernatural Departments of the world. It contained the remains of Vlad Tepes, the man who became known as Count Dracula.”

The room exploded.

Half the seated Operators leapt to their feet en masse, and the air was suddenly filled with hundreds of voices, many of them shouting and yelling. Admiral Seward raised his hands in a placatory gesture, then bellowed for quiet. The noise subsided, leaving behind it an uneasy, almost hostile atmosphere. The standing Operators retook their seats, but did so slowly, the looks on their faces shot through with fear and confusion, and more than a little anger.

“I know this must come as a shock,” said Seward. “The fact of the matter is that the confrontation with Count Dracula in 1892, the confrontation that led directly to the foundation of this Department, did not end with his destruction. This is a matter of open public record, since the account in Stoker’s novel is accurate. Any one of you could have corroborated his account with the documents in the archive, but it appears that none of you felt inclined to do so.

“Dracula was dangerously weak after his journey across Europe, and the knives wielded by Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris spilled the last of his blood, causing his body to collapse. They, along with John Seward, Arthur Holmwood and Abraham Van Helsing, believed him dead; they were the first men ever to challenge, let alone defeat, a vampire, and they had no reason not to. The realisation that Dracula had been rendered dormant rather than destroyed outright wasn’t made until several years later, when Professor Van Helsing was able to begin his study of the supernatural and discovered that a vampire could be brought back to life by introducing a sufficient quantity of blood to the dormant remains.

“When Professor Van Helsing realised the implication of this work, he returned to Transylvania with an envoy of the Russian Tsar, to recover the remains and see them properly secured. The envoy betrayed him, however, and the remains were taken to Moscow. They remained in Russian hands ever since, until the 26th of October, when they were taken from the SPC base by Valeri Rusmanov.”

Seward paused, clearly bracing himself for a second eruption, but none came. A deep shock appeared to have settled over the men and women of Department 19; what they were being told raised a prospect almost too terrifying to contemplate.

“An investigation into the theft by the Intelligence Division has returned some preliminary conclusions. Firstly, it appears that Valeri had been searching for his master’s remains since the early twentieth century, since very shortly after they disappeared into Russia. Secondly, it is clear that he was able to locate and extract them using information provided to him by Thomas Morris, whose treachery appears not to have been limited to assisting Alexandru Rusmanov in settling their mutual grudge against the Carpenter family.”

Jamie felt his face redden as a number of Operators turned slowly in his direction. He stared up at the lectern, refusing to meet their eyes, and silently urged Admiral Seward to carry on.

“The whereabouts of Valeri Rusmanov,” said the Director, “are presently unknown. Surveillance of all Valeri’s known properties and associates has yielded negative results. Interrogation of well-connected vampires has proved equally fruitless. Simply put, we have no idea where he is. In addition, we have—”

“He’s going to try to bring him back, isn’t he?” interrupted an Operator, whose name Jamie didn’t know. “Valeri, I mean. He’s going to try to bring Dracula back.”

“Operator Carlisle,” replied Seward, a grave expression on his face, “I am sorry to say that the Intelligence Division reports an overwhelming probability that he has already done so.”

This time the eruption was punctuated by a series of what seemed to Jamie’s ears to be horribly close to screams. He felt a tight ball of panic close round his heart; he had never seen such a reaction to anything from the men and women of Blacklight, men and women whom he had come to believe could not be shaken by anything, and who were certainly never scared. But the fear in the Ops Room was now palpable, thick and cloying. What the Director was announcing, in his calm, straightforward manner, was something that no one in the room had ever considered, let alone made any preparation for.

It was quite literally the worst thing he could be telling them.

“Enough!” shouted Admiral Seward. “Don’t you think I know how serious this is? I’m telling you because I believe that all of you have the right to know what we are facing. Don’t make me regret that decision!”

There was a gradual shuffling of feet, an embarrassed dropping of eyes and voices, and an extremely uneasy calm settled precariously over the Ops Room. Most of the Operators remained on their feet, and when Seward realised that they had no intention of sitting back down, he carried on.

“Although there is a tiny chance that Valeri has either chosen not to resurrect his master or has failed in attempting to do so, the official position of the Department from this point forward is that Dracula is once more alive on this planet. We have no way of knowing precisely how long this has been the case, but since the resurrection process requires little more than a sufficiently large quantity of fresh blood in which to immerse the remains, we are assuming that it took place within twenty-four hours of the theft of the ashes, some time on or around the 27th of October.”

“Why haven’t we seen him?” asked Operator Carlisle, his voice trembling. “Why hasn’t he come in here and killed us all?”

“He’ll be weak,” Jamie heard himself say, and blinked as the entire room turned to look at him. “After the resurrection. He’ll be weak.”

“That’s correct, Lieutenant Carpenter,” said Seward, and the sea of heads swung back to face the lectern.

“Professor Van Helsing wrote at length about the recovery time of resurrected vampires, in the aftermath of the loss of the remains to the Russians. The Science Division has expanded upon this research in recent days, and has come up with some rough conclusions. There are several factors that affect the recovery time of a vampire, principally the creature’s age before it was rendered dormant, and the period of time since it was reduced to ash. It’s far from an exact science, but we have been able to create a workable timeline, leading towards a point that has been given the code name Zero Hour, the point at which we believe a properly tended Dracula will regain his full strength. That point, Operators, lies one hundred and twenty days from now, on the 19th of April.”

“Christ,” growled Jacob Scott. The grizzled Australian Colonel had not risen from his seat in the second row during any of the outbursts that had taken place around him, and even now his face wore an expression containing significantly more determination than fear. “Four months. If we don’t get him in the next four months, we won’t get him at all. That’s the deal, right?”

Admiral Seward nodded. “That’s our hypothesis, Jacob. Dracula restored to full strength presents a threat that none of our strategic simulations can accurately model. He is the first vampire who ever lived, the oldest and most powerful; we simply cannot predict what will happen if he is allowed to rise. So our strategy from this point onwards is to make sure that doesn’t happen. We have four months to find Valeri and Dracula, and to destroy them both. After that, it may not be possible to do so. As a result, I have three further announcements to make.” A series of dazed-sounding groans emerged from the black-clad ranks, but Seward ignored them.

“Firstly, I will be creating and chairing a task force with the specific remit of devising and deploying the Department’s strategy where Dracula and Valeri are concerned. Those of you who are selected for this group will be notified in due course. Secondly, I’m announcing the formation of a classified sub-department of the Science Division, code-named the Lazarus Project. Access to all information relating to this sub-department will be restricted on a strictly need-to-know basis, but it relates to the third thing I want to make you aware of. Until further notice the Standard Operating Procedure will no longer be to destroy vampires: it will be to contain them wherever possible, return them to the Loop and submit them into the custody of the Lazarus Project.”

There was a half-hearted outburst of objection from the dazed ranks of the Operators, but Seward had reached the end of his patience.

“Shut up!” he bellowed. “Any Operator who feels unable to implement this new procedure, or who feels unable to handle the situation that I have just outlined, should feel absolutely free to place themselves on the inactive roster. The rest of you I will expect to carry out your responsibilities to the same standards as always. If you have questions, come and see me or ask your senior commander. In the meantime, you are all dismissed.”

Seward stepped down from the platform and strode out of the Ops Room, closely followed by Cal Holmwood and Paul Turner. The reeling Operators began to talk among themselves, their voices low, their eyes wide. Larissa looked at Jamie, and gave her head a tiny shake.

“Holy shit,” she said, quietly.

“That’s a bit of an understatement,” replied Jamie.

4
GROWING PAINS

CHÂTEAU DAUNCY AQUITAINE, SOUTH-WESTERN FRANCE

On a chaise longue the colour of blood, in Valeri Rusmanov’s study overlooking the vast Landes Forest, lay the first vampire ever to walk the earth.

Three months after his resurrection, Count Dracula was finally beginning to look like himself; like the man he had briefly been, like the vampire who had lived for more than four hundred years before he had been condemned to a limbo that had lasted for more than a century. A mane of black hair spilled across the vampire’s shoulders, swept back from a forehead that was high and wide. Thick, unruly black eyebrows perched above pale blue eyes which flanked a nose that was sharp and narrow, like the blade of a scalpel. A black moustache covered the entirety of his upper lip, framing a mouth that was thin and cruel. The Count was dressed in a plain black robe, and he stared at the door of the study, waiting for Valeri to return with his supper.

He was weak. Maddeningly, pitifully weak.

Each intake of fresh blood, which Valeri dutifully brought him every evening, saw a tiny fraction of his power return, but he was still little more than a shadow of his former self. For several weeks after his resurrection, he had been unable to move, his body soft and malleable, as though made of wet clay, waiting to be fired. In time it had hardened into solid flesh and dense bone, but the terrible power he had once wielded, power that could lay waste to cities and obliterate men and women with little more than a glance, was still only a memory.

In time, I will be all that I was. In time. And then this world will pay.

But for the time being, the Lord of Darkness, the Impaler, the Cruel Prince, who had been feared from sea to sea by his own people and his enemies alike, was as weak as a sickly child.

Dracula lifted his head, grunting at the effort it took, and stared out of the window of his most loyal subject’s study, past the manicured grounds of the chateau to the dark expanse of the pine forest beyond. His mind throbbed with two ancient, primitive desires: for food, and for revenge on the men who had stolen a century of his life from him, the men who had reduced him to this pathetic state.

After the resurrection, as the ancient vampire began the slow, painful process of recovery, Valeri had started to carefully recount what had happened while Dracula had been lying dormant. The story of the twentieth century, in which humankind had advanced far beyond the imagination of even the most optimistic Victorian futurist, was long, confusing and, as far as Dracula was concerned, almost fatally tedious. It was not in his nature, the nature of either the man he had been or the monster he had become, to spend his time considering the achievements of others; his world view was fundamentally extremely simple.

As far as he was concerned, the rest of the world existed only for his use, and by his permission, and this new world that Valeri was describing to him would be no different.

He didn’t care about the growth of the cities, about the technological developments that Valeri described to him in infuriatingly simple terms, as though teaching a lesson to an infant. Aeroplanes, cars, space travel, television, telephones, the internet – none of these innovations interested him in the slightest. He saw no reason to doubt that his place in the new world being described to him would be whatever he decided he wanted it to be, providing that one thing had remained constant over the decades that had passed without him.

“Do… they… still… bleed?” Dracula had eventually interrupted, his voice barely audible to anyone without Valeri’s superhuman hearing.

“Yes, master,” replied Valeri. “The humans still bleed.”

“Then… I… would… hear… no… more.”

The study door opened, and Valeri entered, dragging the unconscious figure of a teenage girl behind him. Her head was starred with blood and the heels of her bare feet scraped noisily across the wooden floorboards as Valeri approached his master. The scent of the blood seeping from the girl’s head filled Dracula’s nostrils, and his pale blue eyes coloured a terrible dark red, the colour of madness, a colour that no sane person could have looked upon for more than a second or two.

“An offering for you, master,” whispered Valeri, bowing deeply.

“Thank you, Valeri,” replied Count Dracula, his voice like the scratch of a pencil on a sheet of paper.

Valeri lowered the girl towards his master, then slit her throat with one of his fingernails. As the blood began to flow, Dracula clamped his mouth over the wound, sucking hungrily, like a baby at its mother’s breast. Valeri held the girl in place, but turned his head away; it would not be appropriate for him to watch his master feed in such a way. Instead, he let his gaze wander around the study, a room he had not set foot in for almost fifty years until the day after his master had been reborn.

Château Dauncy had been the favourite place of his wife, Ana, her favourite place in the whole world. It had been the only thing, apart from Valeri himself, capable of soothing the madness that roared inside her. When she died, when she was taken from him, he had ordered the old building shuttered and boarded up, hoping to trap the worst of his grief inside the ancient walls. It was painful for him to be inside those walls now, far more painful than he had expected, but it was necessary; it was the one property he owned that no one else was aware of, the one place he was confident would not be under surveillance by Blacklight or one of its accursed counterparts. It was the place he could return his master to health, without interruption.

The girl’s blood gushed into Dracula’s mouth, and he instantly felt strength flood through him. He knew it wouldn’t last, but he also knew that each passing day, each mouthful of warm, running blood, brought him closer to himself, and to his revenge.

Taking advantage of the temporary rush of power, he spoke to Valeri, his voice booming through the study, rich and deep and momentarily full of the authority that had once commanded armies, and sent thousands to their deaths.

“Where is your brother?” he asked. “Why is Valentin not here, assisting you? I would not have you shoulder this burden alone, old friend.”

“Valentin is in America, master,” replied Valeri, a grimace of distaste flickering across his face as he spoke his brother’s name. “We do not concern ourselves with each other.”

Dracula’s face twisted into a snarl, and for a moment, Valeri was afraid. The resurrection of his master had been the result of a quest that had taken him more than a hundred years to complete, a quest he had remained doggedly loyal to even as Alexandru had descended into madness and Valentin had turned his back on his family, sinking happily into his life of shameful indulgence in New York. Now that the quest was over and his master had been returned to life, Valeri’s position as Dracula’s favourite would forever be secure; he would follow his master once more, obediently, gladly and proudly. But in the century that had passed, as Dracula lay dormant deep below the Russian snow, Valeri had forgotten what it was to be afraid. He was reminded now, and he shivered in the cool air of his study.

“Go to him,” said Dracula, the snarl vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “Tell him that his master orders him home. Tell him there is work to be done.”

“Of course, master,” replied Valeri. “I will leave at once.”

Dracula grunted with satisfaction.

“Good,” he said, and fixed his eyes upon his subject. “You have always served me with distinction, Valeri. You have never sought to question me. When this world is mine, when I have piled high the bodies of the pathetic creatures that inhabit it and set them alight, when once again my enemies stare out at nothing from the highest poles, the place at my right hand will be yours, as it was before.”

“You honour me, master.”

“Leave me,” replied Dracula, waving a hand towards Valeri, who did as he was ordered, backing quietly out of the study and leaving the Count alone.

Dracula watched him go, then rolled back on to the chaise longue and stared at the ornate, painted ceiling above him. Already he could feel his strength ebbing away, but he refused to let it anger him. Three months had passed since he had woken in the pulsing gore of the pit beneath the Rusmanov chapel, naked and screaming, his body little more than coloured blubber, held together only by the strength of his own will. He had not known himself as he was birthed violently back into the world, had not known himself until Valeri had knelt at the edge of the pit and said a single word.

Master. When he called me master, I knew who I was.

His journey from that blood-soaked beginning had been long, and hard, but it was getting easier, with each passing day. He knew that he could be patient, for a short while at least. And he knew that he could bear whatever pain might come his way. As agonising as his recovery had been so far, it did not even bear comparison to the night his second life had begun, more than five hundred years ago.

5
REBIRTH

TELEORMAN FOREST, NEAR BUCHAREST, WALLACHIA 12TH DECEMBER 1476

Vlad Tepes fled through the darkening forest, the din of the battle and the screams of his men fading behind him. He had torn his royal armour from his body and cast it aside, but he could still hear the shouts and running footsteps of his pursuers, getting closer with every minute that passed.

Five Turkish soldiers at least; maybe six, maybe more. The Prince of Wallachia knew better than anyone the horrors that would await him in the Turkish camp if he was caught, and he redoubled his efforts, the soft forest floor thudding beneath his feet.

I’ll die before I let them take me, he thought. I will bow to no one.

The army that had advanced across his lands had outnumbered his own forces by five to one. Less than a year earlier, Stephen Bathory, the Prince of Transylvania, had helped Vlad to reclaim his throne; they had marched together into Wallachia, their forces combined, and Basarab, the foolish, cowardly old man who had succeeded Vlad’s brother Radu as ruler, had fled without a fight.

But Stephen had refused to stay and help consolidate Vlad’s third reign, and his departure – betrayal, it was a betrayal – had left him vulnerable. He had received word within months that a Turkish army was moving north, and when it had been clear that no help was forthcoming, he had ridden out to meet it on the plains beside Bucharest, accompanied by his elite Moldavian guards and a little over four thousand men.

They fought like they were forty thousand. Fought and died, as men should.

Blood ran down Vlad’s arm from the sword blow that had knocked him from his horse, but he felt no pain. Instead, an ethereal calm had settled over him, bestowing upon him the clarity of a man who is running for his life. Somewhere behind him, either fleeing the battlefield or lying dead upon its blood-soaked earth, were his Generals, the brothers Rusmanov. When it had become clear that the battle was lost, that his brief third reign as the ruler of Wallachia was over, Vlad had fled, without a backward glance. He felt a momentary pang of guilt, but pushed it quickly aside.

I never promised them immortality. They followed me with their eyes open, and took their share of the spoils of victory gladly.

The sun had slipped below the horizon to the west, and darkness was gathering around Vlad as he ran. At the foot of an enormous white oak tree, he stopped and caught his breath, listening intently for the sounds of his pursuers.

The forest was silent.

Not the slightest noise could be heard, in any direction, and Vlad’s savage pleasure at the thought of having lost the Turkish soldiers was replaced with a sudden uneasiness. The trunk of the oak in front of him looked ancient, gnarled and twisted beyond anything he had seen before, and he had hunted and ridden these woods a thousand times since moving his summer palace to the small town of Bucharest. Vlad looked around the small clearing in which he was standing and saw that all the trees were the same, towering structures of mangled wood, their bark splintered and grey. At the base of the enormous trunks sprouted plants that Vlad didn’t recognise, sprays of black flowers and barbed, midnight-blue vines.

What is this place? I have never been here before.

This is the deep, whispered a voice, and Vlad whirled round, reaching instinctively for his sword. But the short blade was long gone, left in the gut of a Turkish soldier who had tried to prevent his escape.

Your sword will not help you here, whispered the same voice. It was light, almost jovial, and seemed to be coming from inside his head, from all sides, and from nowhere.

“Who speaks to me?” bellowed Vlad, striding into the centre of the clearing. “Show yourself!”

There was no answer.

The silence in the forest was absolute as the last of the light faded away. Vlad Tepes felt fear crawl into his stomach, as he looked around the clearing, searching for the way he had come.

There was no sign of it.

He was lost.

There were no broken branches, no flattened patches of grass, nothing to indicate that a man had passed this way within the last hundred years. Vlad stared into the darkness, trying to calm his racing heart. He was trying to decide which direction to set out in when he heard a sound, the first sound, apart from the grotesque, light-hearted voice, that he had heard since he had entered this place.

The noise was a scratching, creeping sound, and it ran up Vlad’s spine like ice. It was the sound of something crawling through the ancient trees, something slow, and old, and patient. Vlad spun round, his fists clenched, searching for the source of the noise in the spaces between the trees and the dark undergrowth. Then he realised what was happening, and terror gripped at his heart.

The trees themselves were moving.

Slowly, two of the ancient white oaks curved out and down, crossing at head height to form a circular passage that led further into – the deep, it’s the deep – the dark forest.

Come to me, whispered the voice. Come to me.

Vlad stared incredulously at the opening before him. This could not be real, he thought; surely his mind had broken at the loss of the battle, the deaths of his Generals and his men, and this was nothing more than the vision of a lunatic?

Do not be foolish, hissed the voice, and Vlad cried out. The lightness of tone was gone; the voice sounded like death, old and deep and dark. Come to me, while I still invite you. There is nowhere else for you to go.

Vlad looked around the clearing, and saw that the voice spoke the truth. The trees on all sides had closed together, forming an impenetrable wooden wall that surrounded him completely.

He was trapped.

Sickly sweet bile churned in his stomach, as he realised he had no choice. Forcing his legs to move, Vlad walked slowly forward, his entire body trembling, and entered the circular opening. The darkness that engulfed him was total; it was the very absence of light. He heard the trees begin to move again, closing the entrance behind him, and took a tentative step forward.

There was nothing beneath his foot.

Vlad overbalanced, his arms grabbing at nothing, then pitched forward, screaming as he did so, and fell into the deep.

He awoke an unknowable amount of time later.

There was grass beneath his back, and as his eyes struggled open, he saw the night sky above him. Constellations of stars spun and swirled, impossibly low, patterns of light that he had never seen before. A group of pale red stars gathered into the shape of a bull’s head, then disappeared as a cluster of iridescent green lights drew the image of a vast, coiled snake across the black sky.

The images turned Vlad’s stomach, and he looked away. He pushed himself up so he was sitting on the grass, fighting to remember where he was, and what had happened to him.

The grass he was sitting on was a green so dark it was almost black, even beneath the spiralling, shifting kaleidoscope of light overhead. It grew in a circle, perhaps twenty feet in diameter. Around its edge, statues of ancient grey stone stood watchfully, without the smallest of gaps between them. The carved figures were grotesque: men and women in contortions of agony, animals in the throes of violence and death, demonic creatures, horned and spiked and scaled, with expressions of lustful pleasure on their faces. Above the statues there appeared to be nothing but the inky-black sky. There was no doorway, or passage, that would explain how he had come to this awful place.

I fell. I think I fell.

Then memory exploded through Vlad’s head, and he cried out as he remembered: the battle, the forest, the ancient moving trees, and the awful, unnatural voice that had spoken to him. He forced himself to his feet, and found himself looking at the only thing in the circle beside himself.

It was an altar.

A large rectangular block, crudely carved from pale grey stone and standing at the edge of the grass, beneath a pair of intertwined statues depicting such violence that Vlad, a man who had visited tortures on his enemies that had been whispered throughout the entire European continent, could not look at them. The stone was carved with letters of a language that he didn’t recognise, and the top was stained dark brown with long-spilled blood.

Fury overwhelmed Vlad, and he ran forward. He beat his hands on the surface of the altar, screaming and bellowing at the alien sky above his head. This was not where he was supposed to have ended his days, alone and scared in this place of old horror; he had commanded armies, lain waste to cities and entire countries, walked with kings and emperors. He raged at the darkness that surrounded him, swearing death to whatever had brought him here, cursing his enemies, promising revenge on everyone who had ever wronged him, offering his soul for the chance to see his betrayers cold in the ground.

Nothing happened.

Above him, the stars spun, blooming into life and winking out, as though millions of years were passing in mere seconds. The statues around him stood silent and impassive, staring down at him with empty eyes. The altar remained nothing more than a lump of stone.

Vlad slumped against it, the fire gone from him as quickly as it had arrived.

Why am I here? If not for some devilment, then why? Perhaps I am mad.

You are not mad, whispered the voice he had heard in the clearing. But you are stupid.

Vlad looked around, but still nothing moved inside the silent circle of statues. The voice was cruel, and mocking, and he tried to think what it could mean, why it was questioning his intelligence. His gaze landed on the brown stains atop the altar, and clarity burst through him. He dug the fingers of his right hand into the wound on his arm, tearing the flesh open. Vlad grunted in pain as blood began to run thickly down his arm, coating his hand; he lifted it high above his head, and paused.

If I am not mad, then only damnation awaits me here.

You were damned long ago, hissed the voice, and Vlad knew in his heart that it was right. He flicked his hand, and dark red droplets of his blood pattered across the surface of the altar.

Instantly, the air was full of energy; it crackled round Vlad’s head, lifting his long black hair from his shoulders. He watched the hairs on the backs of his arms stand up, and felt thick, greasy power in his teeth and bones. The statues began to move, rumbling to life on their pedestals, inflicting their tortures on one another in slow, gruesome thrusts, a writhing wall of agonised, abused stone. Before him, the altar began to run with a black liquid that appeared to be bubbling up from the microscopic holes in the stone itself, a thick oil that seemed to absorb light. When the entire surface of the altar was covered, a mouth, impossibly wide, and full of teeth the size and shape of daggers, opened in the liquid, and appeared to smile at him.

“What are you?” asked Vlad, his voice trembling.

You could not hope to understand, replied the mouth. It was the same voice he had been hearing since he had run blindly into what it had referred to as the deep, but now it was smooth, almost friendly. And it does not matter. What matters is that I know what you are.

“What am I?”

A monster. The mouth curled into a wide, awful grin. Capable of cruelty that impresses even one like me. A carrion bird. A parasite. A—

“Enough,” said Vlad, as forcefully as he was able.

The mouth on the altar grinned even wider.

And brave, up to a point. Often to the point of foolishness. Or danger.

“Why did you bring me here?” demanded Vlad.

You brought yourself. Your rage cried out across the deep. I merely lit the way.

“Why?” asked Vlad. “Why, for God’s sake? What do you want from me?”

I want to offer you something. In return for something you haven’t used for a long time.

“What are you talking about?”

Your soul, said the mouth, and bared its teeth. I want your soul. It will amuse me for millennia. And I will pay you handsomely for it.

Vlad stared at the slick surface of the altar. The mouth was still smiling, and he felt his stomach churn.

“What would you offer me?” he asked. “What price could be enough for what you ask?”

I can give you revenge, on everyone who has ever wronged you, or failed you. I can give you life everlasting, that you might hunt your enemies to the end of their days, without ageing, without dying. I can give you the power to lay your world in ruins. All this, I can give you.

“I sense deception,” said Vlad. “Such an offer is surely too good to be true.”

You are correct, replied the mouth. There can be no light without dark, no reward without punishment. But I deceive you not. You had not asked to hear the terms.

“I ask to hear them now.”

Very well. You will never see the sun again; to look upon it will mean your end. You will not take food, or drink, as humans do; only the lifeblood of other creatures will sustain you. You will be safe from mortal hands, and mortal weapons, and you may share your new life with others, as you see fit. But when your time on this plane comes to an end, your soul will belong to me, and Hell will await you. For all eternity.

“I accept.”

The words were out before he even realised he was going to say them. The abomination’s offer would condemn him to a life lived in the shadows, in the presence of death, and blood, but for Vlad this would not feel unfamiliar, and the alternative was not worthy of consideration. The life he had lived was over, he knew it all too well; the Turks would hunt him to the ends of the earth, and he would stand tall in the darkness rather than run and hide in the light.

I never doubted that you would, said the voice. But I wasn’t finished. The grin widened until it began to spill from the edges of the altar, running in thick black trails towards the dark grass.

“What do you mean?” cried Vlad. “What trickery is this?”

No trickery at all. You accepted my offer, without hearing the last of its terms.

“Tell me what you are holding back! Tell me at once!”

The mouth set into a hard, straight line, and when it spoke again, its voice was the sound of freezing blood, of pain and hopelessness.

You have nothing left to barter with. I suggest you refrain from issuing demands.

Vlad began to tremble, with rage and the terrible, creeping feeling that he had been outsmarted. Fear was again spilling into his stomach and up his spine, and he regarded the altar with horror.

“I apologise,” he forced himself to say. “I humbly ask to know the final term of the covenant.”

That’s better, said the mouth, its smile returning. The final term is this: the first blood you take is the sole key to your undoing. Your first victim will carry the only means of ending your second life.

“What kind of deception is this?” cried Vlad. “You promised me everlasting life!”

I promised you nothing. I told you that I could give you everlasting life; whether you achieve it is entirely up to you. If you were incapable of dying, then how would the contract ever be fulfilled? But I have given you more than any human who went before you, and I would see you more grateful for my generosity.

“What gift is this that I receive in return for my soul, full of conditions and caveats?”

I promised no gift, replied the mouth. I offered nothing more than the covenant that has now been agreed.

“Then I withdraw my acceptance!”

Too late, said the mouth, grinning widely. Then it moved, bursting forward from the altar and enveloping Vlad completely in black fluid that felt as cold and wrong as the end of the world. He screamed soundlessly, over and over, but the liquid held him tight, until it was over, and it withdrew.

He fell to his knees, a desiccated thing; his eyes had tumbled in on themselves, blinding him, and his skin was as dry and leathery as parchment. He was not breathing, but he was still alive, still able to feel the indescribable pain of what had been done to him. When he felt that he could bear the agony no longer, when he thought he must die or be driven mad by the pain, the black liquid moved again, coating him for a second time.

But instead of showing mercy, and ending his torment, as Vlad prayed it would, it sank into him, disappearing into his pores, and a sensation of power beyond anything he had ever felt surged through him. His eyes spun back into place, as his skin smoothed and coloured and his heart began to beat anew, and he rose to his feet on legs that felt as strong as tree trunks, clenching fists that felt as though they could shatter mountains. A primal roar burst from his throat, and then he was falling, towards the midnight grass, through it, into blackness, back into the deep.

When he came to, he was lying on the floor of the Teleorman Forest. He opened his eyes and recognised instantly the white oaks that rose above him towards the night sky, the smell of the grass beneath his body and the cold breeze that whispered across his face. For a long, disorienting second, he wondered whether he had dreamt what had occurred, whether his mind, ravaged by exhaustion and the horror of his army’s defeat, had rebelled against him, conjuring impossible terrors from the depths of his nightmares. But then he got slowly to his feet, felt power bubbling beneath his skin, and remembered the deal he had made with the terrible grinning mouth.

It seems you kept your word, devil. And I will do everything in my power not to keep mine.

He grinned in the darkness, and felt something shift in his mouth; new teeth slid down from inside his gums, fitting perfectly over his incisors. The tips of these new teeth were razor-sharp, and they cut through his lower lip as though it was tissue paper. Blood spilled into his mouth and he fell to his knees in the throes of an ecstasy beyond anything he had ever imagined, pleasure so overwhelming that he had no option but to close his eyes and wait for it to pass.

When it eventually did, he rose again, and looked at the patch of forest where he had awoken. In a wide circle around him, partially hidden by overgrown bushes and wild undergrowth, were pieces of stone that looked as though they had once been the bases of statues, and a small mound of rocks that might once have been part of something large and rectangular. But the stones were buried in the earth, covered in moss and dirt, and looked as though they had been undisturbed for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years.

This is the place I went to. But it’s old now. Where I went it was new.

He left the stone ruins behind, and began to walk in the direction of the distant battlefield. The occasional scream still floated through the night air, and in the distance he could see a dull orange glow emanating from the fires he knew the Turks would have built to burn the bodies of the dead. Although he did not know what he was going to do when he reached the site of the battle, he knew he no longer feared the invaders and their weapons, and he was determined that he would discover the fates of his Generals, the three brothers whose loyalty he had rewarded by leaving them behind. As the forest began to thin around him, he heard voices in the darkness, and headed silently towards them.

In a clearing, gathered round a roaring fire, was an encampment of villagers from the plains beyond the forest, who had fled their homes as the Turkish armies approached. There were perhaps fifteen families: men, women and children, warming themselves near the heat of the fire, nursing infants, boiling water in metal cauldrons, holding spitted meat over flames. A number of the women were singing an old working song, and it was their voices that Vlad had heard, the ancient melody carrying sweetly on the cold air. He circled the encampment, slipping silently through the trees, looking for an opportunity. He was hungry, and the smell of the roasting meat was invading his nostrils and making him salivate.

“Stand where you are, sir.”

Vlad turned slowly in the direction of the voice, and found himself face to face with a middle-aged man, standing in the shadow of one of the towering oaks. The man was dressed in the sturdy clothing of a farmer, and was holding a bow and arrow at his shoulder, the metal tip of the bolt aiming steadily at Vlad’s chest. He raised his hands in placation, and took a small step towards the farmer, who backed away immediately.

“No closer,” he said. “And speak, so I would know if you are friend or foe.”

“I’m neither,” replied Vlad, a smile creeping across his face. “I’m something else.”

The man lowered his bow by a couple of degrees.

“You are not Turkish,” he said. “Are you Wallachian? Answer.”

“I was,” replied Vlad. Then the hunger hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he folded to his knees, his head wrenched back in agony.

The hunger roared through Vlad Tepes like a hurricane, opening a huge abyss in his chest and stomach, a clutching pit of emptiness. He grabbed at his breast, tearing at his own skin with his fingernails, trying to pull himself open, trying to find a way to fill the gaping hole that had appeared at the centre of his being. His head thundered with agony, as though drills were being applied to his temples, and his limbs were suddenly as heavy as lead.

The farmer threw aside his bow, and ran to the stricken man. He knelt down and pulled at the stranger’s shoulders; the head came up easily, inches from his own. The farmer looked at the vision of horror before him, the glowing red eyes that stood out in the middle of the twisted face, the gleaming white fangs that extended below the upper lip, and drew in breath to scream. Then the stranger plunged his teeth into his neck, and the scream died in his throat.

Vlad lunged on instinct alone; the pain of the hunger had driven rational thought from his head. His new fangs slid through the farmer’s skin, piercing the jugular vein, sending blood gushing into his mouth and down his throat. And instantly, the pain and the hunger were gone, replaced by a feeling that was almost godlike. He swallowed the blood that sprayed from the man’s torn throat, until he was sated, and withdrew his fangs.

The two figures fell to the cold ground.

Vlad’s chest was thumping up and down, alive with power; the farmer’s was barely moving, as blood seeped steadily out of the ragged hole in his neck. The former Prince of Wallachia leapt to his feet, and found himself floating several inches above the ground. He spun slowly in the air, then laughed, a terrible cackle that echoed between the silent trees and floated across the fire at the centre of the encampment, drawing frowns from the men gathered round it. Several of their wives crossed themselves, and the infants among the group began to cry.

The laughter faded as Vlad resumed his course back towards the battlefield, floating slowly and effortlessly between the trees and over the undergrowth, spinning and swooping in the air, like a child who had been given a marvellous new toy. Where he had been, there was nothing but a patch of spilled blood, and the dark shape of the farmer on the ground, his body cooling as his life ebbed away.

The free sample has ended.