Department 19: Zero Hour

by Will Hill

  Welcome back, Julian.

  Jamie’s open, honest face was still flushed red from both laughter and the exertion of their sparring session, and Larissa felt her heart quicken. Part of it was love, or something very close to it, but part was a feeling of guilt so hot and caustic that it was very close to shame. She was almost certain that her boyfriend’s father – the father he, and everyone else, thought was dead – was at that moment somewhere inside the Loop, most likely in one of the non-supernatural cells on Level H.

  And she hadn’t told Jamie about it.

  She had lain awake most nights since her return from America, turning it over and over in her mind. The man to whom Cal Holmwood had said those three fateful words had been secretly imprisoned in the depths of the NS9 base in Nevada, and had been hooded and bound for their journey to the Loop, so she could not say with any certainty what he looked or sounded like. But it would be a remarkable coincidence if another man named Julian had received both the treatment he had been subjected to in America and the greeting from the Interim Director she had overheard.

  Back, Cal said. Welcome back.

  If she was right, if the man who had flown across the Atlantic in the Mina II with her really was Julian Carpenter, then the ramifications were almost unthinkable. He was dead, or at least believed to be. What would it do to the Department if he turned up, alive and well?

  What would it do to Jamie?

  And what would it mean for her if he found out she’d known and kept quiet?

  “Do you ever think about it?” he asked, bringing her out of her thoughts and back into the bathroom. He was looking at her evenly, his eyes wide and clear.

  “Think about what?” she asked, although she was sure she knew.

  “What it would be like,” said Jamie, “if we were both turned. We could live forever. Together.”

  Anger flared up inside Larissa. She forced it back down, refusing to give into it, to hate him for even suggesting such a repellent idea.

  “No,” she said, her voice barely more than a growl. “I don’t ever think about that. And you shouldn’t either.”

  “Why not?” asked Jamie.

  “Because it’s never going to happen.”

  “No. I mean, why haven’t you ever thought about it?”

  Larissa narrowed her eyes. “Are you actively trying to make me angry?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m genuinely not. It’s a possibility, given what we do, and, since Zero Hour is only seven days away and we’re no closer to stopping it now than when Dracula was resurrected, it’s only going to become more likely. So why haven’t you thought about it?”

  Stay calm, she told herself. It’s not his fault. Stay calm.

  “If we survive what’s coming,” she said, her voice low and steady, “and if this, whatever it is that’s between us, survives as well, I want to live. And I don’t mean in some eternal freak show, Jamie; I mean a real, normal life. I want to grow up and I want to get old, with you. Why don’t you get that?”

  “I do,” said Jamie. “But I don’t know why you don’t get how much easier it would make things. Your vampire side is the only thing that stops me panicking every time you’re out there.”

  “I can handle myself,” said Larissa, sharply. “I don’t need you to worry about me.”

  “I know you don’t,” said Jamie. “Believe me, I know. I still do, though. Sorry.”

  Larissa looked at him. She knew that he trusted her, that he respected her abilities and her experience, and that his occasionally paternal attitude had everything to do with terror at the thought of losing her; she knew it came from a place of concern, not condescension.

  It still pissed her off.

  “Don’t apologise,” she said. “Just worry about yourself.”

  “I do,” said Jamie. “All I’m saying is—”

  “Jamie,” she interrupted. “You can never ask me to turn you, OK? Never, ever, ever. We’re done if you do. So you have to promise me.”

  He stared at her for a moment that seemed to have no end, in which she tried to decipher his expression. There was affection and an openness to his features that suggested honesty, but there was disappointment too, bright and shining and obvious. The silence was full of unsaid things; it dragged on and out, until simultaneous beeps from their consoles broke the spell.

  “OK,” said Jamie. “I promise.”

  “Thank you,” said Larissa, and lifted her console from her belt. The rectangular screen glowed white as the day’s orders appeared in a single line of black text.

  Close to home, she thought. Good news.

  Larissa had been immediately placed in charge of a new Operational Squad when she returned from America. G-21 was comprised of herself, Jess Nelson, a Security Division Operator who had been moved on to the active roster, and Lieutenant Tom Gregg, one of the NS9 Operators she had brought back to the Loop with her. So far, their Operational performance had been flawless, and she had every intention of keeping it that way; Zero Hour loomed over everything, approaching as slowly and implacably as a tidal wave, but until it arrived, or was stopped, all Larissa and the rest of Blacklight could do was carry on doing their jobs, and doing them well.

  What her screen showed was a routine operation: a section of the country that they would patrol and respond to any Echelon intercepts or Surveillance Division reports. It was the kind of mission that could turn into a series of pitched battles, or could involve six hours sitting bored in the back of a van, two outcomes that were highly appealing to the different sides of Larissa’s increasingly split personality.

  Jamie looked up from his console. “Training,” he said. “Still. You?”

  “Patrol Respond,” she replied. “Nottinghamshire Lincolnshire border.”

  “Nice,” said Jamie, and smiled. “I’ll be in bed before you’re even on your way back.”

  “I might come and wake you up,” said Larissa, returning his smile with one of her own. “What do you think?”

  “I think you should,” said Jamie, then closed the space between them and pressed his lips to hers. She kissed him back instantly, feeling heat boil into her stomach and the corners of her eyes, then stopped before her vampire side was able to fully assert itself.

  “Go,” she growled. “Time to go to work.”

  “You too,” said Jamie. “Stay alive.”

  “I’ll try,” said Larissa.

  Admiral Henry Seward swallowed a mouthful of lobster and tried not to let how wonderful it tasted show on his ravaged face.

  His surroundings, and his view from the end of the grand dining table, had become so familiar that they had taken on the consistency of a nightmare, an endless purgatory from which there seemed to be no waking. He had lost count of his days spent imprisoned inside the château, and had long abandoned any belief in the possibility of rescue; all that remained, into which he poured the last of his remaining hope, were two things.

  First, that he be strong enough to face his death with dignity when it finally came.

  Second, that he might yet achieve some tiny victories in his last days and weeks. Refusing to acknowledge the splendour of the food and wine served to him each night was one such victory; it infuriated Dracula to see hospitality go unappreciated, although his own belief in appropriate behaviour prevented him from showing it. No matter how choice the delicacy, how ethereal the wine, Seward responded with nothing more than perfunctory thanks. It was pathetic, if he was honest with himself, an act of stubbornness too small to be regarded as anything else. But in the position of impotence in which he found himself trapped, it was something, and something was better than nothing.

  “Good?” enquired Dracula, from the opposite end of the table.

  “Fine,” said Seward, digging his fork into the gleaming white meat.

  “In which case, I shall have the chef’s fingers removed,” said Dracula, his tone light and pleasant. “It is unacceptable for him to produce fare that is merely ‘fine’, and he has done so for se
veral days now. Please accept my sincere apologies.”

  Seward felt a wide blade of despair slice through him.

  How long did you think it would take him to put an end to this? he asked himself. He sees you all too well.

  The chef in question was human, kidnapped from one of the finest restaurants in Paris during the first days of Dracula’s occupation of the château. His disappearance had caused widespread speculation; on the rare occasions that Seward was able to see a television, usually in the vampire quarters in the cellars as he was being dragged back to his room after yet another session of torture, he had seen the man’s face plastered all over the news. Opinion appeared evenly divided between the chef having committed suicide and having run off with one of his waitresses, a pretty Estonian girl who was also missing. The waitress, whose name was Ekaterina, was, in fact, standing beside the door of the dining room, her newly red eyes glowing, her expression one of professional neutrality; the vampire who had been sent to the French capital to acquire the chef had simply not been able to resist her.

  “The food is excellent,” said Seward, his voice low. “As it always is. As well you know.”

  Dracula smiled. “I have dined on delicacies you cannot conceive of, my dear Admiral. Of course I know. Just as I knew that, once your childish pretence had ceased to amuse me, it would not survive a threat to someone you consider innocent. You are so easily predicted, and so weak. So very, very weak.”

  Seward raised his fork to his mouth, chewed the piece of lobster, then spat it wetly on to the surface of the table. A tremor of anger rippled across Dracula’s face, and Seward let a smile full of belligerence rise on to his own.

  “Did you predict that?” he asked, his tone warm and polite, then swept an arm across the table. His plates, wine glass, water glass, and cutlery crashed to the floor in an explosion of noise and flying china. “Or that?”

  Ekaterina’s eyes widened with shock, but she didn’t move; she had clearly learnt quickly that it was unwise to do anything inside the château without the express permission of its lord and master. Dracula half rose out of his chair, then paused; for a terrible moment, his eyes locked with Seward’s, red spilling into their corners. Then the ancient vampire settled back into his seat and reached for his glass of wine.

  “Tantrums are for children,” he said, and took a long sip. “Such behaviour is beneath you, my friend.”

  “You threaten to torture an innocent man to make a point, then lecture me about behaviour?” asked Seward, his voice trembling.

  “I made my threat only when your behaviour was becoming intolerable,” said Dracula. “We can go back and forth on this matter all evening, if you wish?”

  “It would be a waste of time,” said Seward, his body shaking with impotent fury. “You cannot see the hypocrisy in everything you say and do, the vanity and the arrogance, so what the hell would be the point?”

  Dracula’s smile widened. “Perhaps you would prefer a bottle of warm milk to another glass of wine?”

  Seward felt his face flood with reckless, furious heat. “I would prefer—”

  His preference, which was about to include an extraordinarily graphic description of a coupling between Dracula’s mother and a herd of wild horses, was cut off by a heavy knock on the dining-room door, an intervention that was probably for the best, at least as far as Seward’s remaining well-being was concerned.

  “Enter,” said Dracula, setting his wine glass on the table and turning to the door with a look of profound disinterest on his narrow face. The door swung open and the large, instantly identifiable shape of Valeri Rusmanov stepped through it. The old vampire’s eyes were glowing with faint crimson, and his face, as craggy and unforgiving as a mountainside, was set in a tight expression of displeasure.

  “My lord,” he said, glancing briefly in Seward’s direction. “I am sorry to disturb you.”

  “And yet you have done so,” said Dracula. “So be quick about the reason.”

  Valeri’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Seward didn’t think Dracula saw; the first vampire’s treatment of his oldest ally was so casually dismissive that the Blacklight Director didn’t really believe that he thought of him as an actual person, in possession of a mind of his own. But Seward saw it; he saw it very clearly.

  “It is Mellor,” said Valeri. “The vampire who came to us from California. You have seen him, my lord, he is tall, strongly built, with blond—”

  “Must I listen to you describe him like some breathless teenager?” asked Dracula. “Tell me what this man has done.”

  “He took a boy from a village at the edge of the forest, my lord. Less than ten miles from here. The population of the village is barely a hundred, so the boy’s disappearance has caused uproar.”

  Dracula looked down the table and rolled his eyes in a gesture of disarming familiarity.

  Like we’re two old friends listening to how one of our kids screwed up, thought Seward.

  “What has been done?” asked Dracula.

  “I have taken care of it, my lord,” said Valeri. “I arranged the boy’s body in the forest and made it appear as though he was killed by a boar. The villagers are out searching as I speak, and will doubtless find him shortly.”

  “You still have not provided a compelling reason for disturbing my dinner, Valeri,” said Dracula. “I suggest you do so quickly.”

  There was a pause, also noted by Seward, and, when Valeri replied, his voice contained the faintest of tremors, as though he was working hard to keep his temper. “I wanted to know what you would have me do with Mellor, my lord. He knowingly broke one of the rules you set in place.”

  Dracula rolled his eyes again and reached for his wine. “Impale him,” he said. “Place him on a pole in the courtyard as a warning to the others. It disappoints me that I should have to give you such obvious instruction, Valeri. Are you of any actual use to me, or do I keep you here for nothing more than nostalgia?”

  Valeri didn’t respond. Dracula took a long sip of his wine, then regarded his servant with narrowing eyes.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked, his tone making it clear that it would be best for Valeri if there wasn’t.

  “No, my lord,” replied the eldest Rusmanov, and turned towards the door, his face as impassive as ever.

  “Valeri?” said Seward, politely, and felt adrenaline shudder through him as the old vampire turned to face him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dracula set his glass down and lean back in his chair, an expression of curiosity on his face.

  “You have something to say to me?” asked Valeri, his voice low and full of menace.

  “I do,” said Seward. “I was wondering why you let him speak to you like that?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s very simple,” said Seward, smiling thinly. “Your master talks to you like a child, and treats you like the lowest of his servants. I just wondered why you let him.”

  Valeri’s eyes narrowed. He took a half-step towards Seward, then glanced over at his master.

  Like a dog checking whether it’s allowed to chase a ball, thought Seward.

  Dracula was still wearing the curious expression on his face as he met Valeri’s gaze. Then he smiled, and turned to the waitress standing beside the door. “Leave us,” he said, his tone even and pleasant.

  “Yes, my lord,” said Ekaterina, her eyes wide with obvious unease. She dipped a hurried half-curtsy and exited the dining room, closing the door behind her. Once she was gone, Dracula returned his attention to his oldest friend.

  “Answer him, Valeri,” he said. “And speak truthfully when you do.”

  Valeri fixed Seward with a look of utter contempt. “I have lived half a dozen lifetimes, Mr Seward, and in that time I have learnt what is important and what is not. Morality, decency, generosity, selflessness: all are vain and worth nothing. Only two things matter: honour and loyalty. I pledged loyalty to my lord when the world was a different place, pledged it to him for as long as I lived
, and I still live. I would not dishonour myself by changing my mind now, like some fickle schoolgirl.”

  “What about love?” asked Seward. “You were married, Valeri, I know you were.”

  “Love is a lie,” said Valeri, his eyes flaring. “It does nothing but weaken you.”

  “So you do not love your master?”

  Valeri glanced over at Dracula, who was watching the exchange with the faintest hint of a smile on his face, and said nothing.

  “You could kill him,” said Seward, his voice low and urgent. “You could destroy him without breaking a sweat and it could be you who rules the world. Why the hell don’t you?”

  Dracula’s smile disappeared. “Yes, Valeri,” he said. “Why don’t you?”

  The eldest Rusmanov looked at his master, then back at Seward, his usually unreadable face full of a single clear emotion.

  Fury.

  And suddenly Seward understood. Despite his claims, Valeri’s obedience owed nothing to loyalty, or honour. He was afraid of Dracula, still afraid, despite his master’s weakness. And he was furious that Henry was provoking him towards having to admit that fear.

  Long, pregnant seconds ticked by, in which nobody in the dining room moved. Then Valeri turned on his heels, strode through the door, and slammed it shut behind him, hard enough that the wood of the frame cracked along its entire length.

  Seward leant forward and filled a glass from the neighbouring place setting with Château Angelus. He took a long sip, sat back in his chair, and smiled.

  “It seems I touched a nerve,” he said, pleasantly.

  Dracula smiled widely. “Indeed it does, my dear Admiral,” he said, reaching for his own glass. “And in the spirit of honest discourse, it seems only fair to inform you that, when we are finished with dinner, I am going to take out one of your eyes and eat it. I suggest you begin giving some thought to which one you will prefer to be without.”