by Will Hill
“No,” said Valentin. “I am not. When did you leave, Anderson?”
“After the fight at Blacklight.”
“Because my brother didn’t treat you well?”
“Yes,” said Anderson, his voice low. “But not just that. Because of the other one too.”
“Dracula?”
Anderson winced. “I don’t like to hear his name. I won’t say it.”
“Why not?”
“Because he scares me. People think I’m stupid, but I know enough. I know what will happen when he’s better and it makes me sad. I like the world as it is.”
Valentin smiled. “So do I, Anderson. So do I.” He gestured towards the empty chair opposite his own. “Why don’t you sit down and join me?”
Anderson hesitated, his big, empty face incapable of pretence, then lowered himself into the chair, its wicker sides creaking appreciably as the waiter instantly appeared beside them. Valentin ordered a second Americano, and, after a long moment’s consideration, Anderson asked for a cup of coffee with an umbrella in it. He looked nervously at Valentin as the waiter scurried away, clearly unsure whether he had done the right thing, and the ancient vampire fought back a smile. Anderson, who had committed countless murders and inflicted innumerable tortures on the orders of the two elder Rusmanovs, possessed a gentle simplicity that felt strangely like innocence, and Valentin wondered whether the misshapen vampire would hurt a fly without someone to tell him to do so.
He doubted it.
“So my brothers and I all smell the same?” he asked.
Anderson flinched, clearly fearing rebuke, his eyes widening, his face twisting with worry. Then he saw the warm smile on Valentin’s face and broke into one of his own, a happy, sunny expression of relief.
“Not now,” he said. “But from a distance, yes. I knew it was one of you, but I couldn’t tell which one. For a moment, I thought … I thought …”
“You thought I might be Alexandru,” said Valentin, gently.
Anderson nodded, and looked down at the table. The waiter reappeared, and there was silence as he unloaded their drinks from his small tray. When he departed, clutching a handful of euros, Anderson raised his head, and Valentin saw tears in the huge vampire’s eyes.
“Do you miss him?” asked Valentin. “Alexandru?”
“I do,” said Anderson, his voice strained and unsteady. “I loved him.”
“So did I,” said Valentin. “For a long time, I loved him very much.”
“He loved you too,” said Anderson. “He didn’t like Valeri, but he talked about you often. He missed you.”
“I felt the same,” said Valentin. “It was hard, though. The vampire who died was not the man I missed.”
“I don’t understand,” said Anderson. “He was your brother.”
“He was,” said Valentin. “But he wasn’t the same, by the end. Do you understand what I mean?”
For a long moment, Anderson’s face went blank, as though the power to it had been cut. Then one of the saddest smiles Valentin had ever seen rose slowly on to it.
“I do,” he said. “He went bad. After Ilyana, he went bad.”
Alexandru went bad long before that, thought Valentin. Decades, maybe centuries even. But you’re right, that was the final straw. That was when the last part of the man he had been died.
“That’s right,” he said. “You stayed with him, though. You were loyal.”
Anderson’s smile broadened, becoming something that was close to beautiful. “I was,” he said. “To the very end. I was there when he died, when the boy killed him.”
“Jamie Carpenter,” said Valentin.
Anderson nodded. “He pulled a cross down on Alexandru, and his friends hurt us. One of them hurt me, but I escaped.”
“And Valeri took you in?”
“Yes. He told me it was what Alexandru wanted. He said they had talked about it.”
You poor creature, thought Valentin. Passed from one master to the next, like a slave.
He took a sip of his Americano. “But you didn’t like being with him?”
Anderson shook his head. “He wasn’t nice to me. Not like Alexandru. Alexandru treated me well.”
Alexandru tortured you and tormented you and made you do awful things in his name, thought Valentin. He was a sadistic, abusive bully, but you loved him, and that’s what you remember.
“You did the right thing, Anderson,” he said. “By leaving, I mean. Valeri is a shadow of the man Alexandru was, and you were right not to let him tell you what to do.”
Anderson nodded. “I know,” he said. “I was so scared, but I did it. I have a farm, south of here, where I live now. I have a cow and two dogs and—”
“And some pigs?” interrupted Valentin, smiling gently at the vampire.
“That’s right,” said Anderson, his face a mask of happiness. “There are seven of them. I could show you, if you wanted? It’s not far.”
“I’d love to see them,” said Valentin. “But I’m afraid I can’t go now. I have to see my brother, as I said.”
Anderson’s face fell, but he nodded. “Maybe some other time?” he said, in a small voice.
“Definitely,” said Valentin. “As soon as I’m done with Valeri. If you tell me where he is, I can go and see him tonight and get it over with.”
Anderson frowned, but this time the block that Valeri had placed in his head failed to hold. “He’s at his château,” he said, slowly. “With his master. That’s where they are.”
“His château?” asked Valentin.
“Château Dauncy,” said Anderson. “That’s what it’s called. It’s north of here, in France. Near Bordeaux.”
“Thank you, Anderson,” said Valentin. “You’ve done the right thing.”
The vampire smiled, then drank his coffee in one long slug. He put the cup, tiny in his huge hands, like a child’s toy, back on the table and got slowly to his feet.
“I should go home,” he said. “Thank you very much for the drink. If you wanted to come and see me sometime, that would be nice.”
“It would,” said Valentin. “And I will. I promise.”
Anderson looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t think you will,” he said, eventually. “But that’s all right. It was kind of you to say it.”
“I’m a man of my word, Anderson,” said Valentin. “If I say I’ll do something, I do it. You can trust me.”
Anderson nodded, but said nothing.
“All right,” said Valentin. “Goodbye then, Anderson. Look after yourself, and your cow and your dogs and your pigs. If the worst happens, if the one whose name you don’t like to say does rise, you keep your head down. And be careful.”
“I will,” said Anderson. “It was nice to see you, Valentin. You aren’t as scary as I remember.”
Valentin laughed, a warm sound that floated out across the crowded street. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I suspect you are probably right.”
Anderson nodded a final time, then disappeared into the crowd and was gone.
Valentin sipped his drink and lit a Bliss cigarette from the silver case resting on the glass tabletop. A voice was whispering at the back of his mind that what he had just done, manipulated Anderson’s simple, honest emotions by pretending to care about him, made him no better than either of his brothers, but he silenced it. There was too much at stake for such soft thinking, and too little time left. The best thing Anderson could do was get himself as far away as possible from any vampire involved in what was coming, and stay there.
In any case, he rationalised to himself, Anderson said quite plainly that he does not want Dracula to rise, and his distaste for Valeri was all too clear. He and I are on the same side.
Valentin let the effects of the Bliss-infused smoke roll through him, marvelling at the remarkable turn of events that had just taken place. After weeks of bloody, frustrating searching, the information that he had started to believe he would never acquire ha
d fallen into his lap because, on some basic, elemental level, he and his brothers shared a common scent, a smell that had blazed like a beacon to Anderson, and given rise to a fearful curiosity that had got the better of him.
It’s about time we made a breakthrough, he thought, draining the last of his drink. Blacklight has been fighting with everything it has just to stand still. Maybe this is the moment the tide turns.
Valentin ground out his cigarette and looked at the mass of people flowing in every direction in front of his table, men and women laughing and stumbling through their small lives without the slightest idea of the Hell that awaited them if a conflict they could never know was taking place ended with the wrong side victorious. He envied them their lack of vision, their willingness to embrace the small and the mediocre, their ability to be satisfied inside their cages, their endless, unjustifiable optimism.
Their humanity.
Château Dauncy, he thought, getting to his feet and pulling his coat round him. Near Bordeaux. That shouldn’t be too hard to find.
“Well,” said Tim Albertsson, looking round at the members of the DARKWOODS team and trying to force a smile, “I guess the message is pretty clear.”
Jamie Carpenter didn’t respond; his gaze was locked on the wide tree in front of them. Nailed to its trunk was a wolf, its stomach sliced open and pinned back, exposing its insides. Maggots crawled across its organs and gathered in a squirming pile where the animal’s blood had pooled at the base of the tree.
“Right,” said Van Orel, his face pale. “Don’t go any further.”
“Subtle,” said Engel, her voice little more than a whisper.
The six Operators were standing at the very edge of the Teleorman Forest, at the perimeter of their target area. The helicopter that had carried them the short distance from the Schwartzhaus had set down in the same field where Grey had woken up barely three days earlier, confused and hungry and missing forty-eight hours. The desecrated tree stood at the northern edge of the field, to one side of a path that led into the forest, its disembowelled warning strung up for all to see.
Jamie stared at the wolf, his stomach slowly revolving, icy cold creeping through him.
We’re in the right place, he thought. Something knows we’re here. And whatever it is, it doesn’t want to be disturbed.
To the east, the glow of electric lights lit the night sky a pale orange. Before them, the forest stretched out for what seemed like forever, towering rows of trees that quickly became indistinct from each other, such was the darkness between their trunks and the absence of light from above. To the west, a small village sat at the foot of a low hill; pinpricks of electric light shone from windows, and smoke drifted into the air from a handful of chimneys.
“What’s the plan?” said Larissa.
Tim Albertsson tore his gaze away from the wolf and faced his squad. “All right,” he said. “Larissa, I want aerial reconnaissance of the area. Satellite results have been inconclusive, so I want you to tell us what’s in there, OK?”
“OK,” said Larissa, her voice low and cold. “Sir.”
Jamie looked at his girlfriend. There was a narrowness to her eyes and a set to her jaw that he recognised all too well; it meant that someone, usually him, was in trouble. But she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking at their squad leader. Tim Albertsson returned her stare, the faintest hint of a smile on his tanned, handsome face, until Larissa made a noise that could easily have been either a grunt of laughter or a growl of anger, and shot up into the sky, disappearing instantly from view. Albertsson craned his neck in the direction she had disappeared, then smiled at the rest of them.
“Good,” he said. “Jamie, Kristian, I want you in that village. Find out what they know about the forest, and don’t let them say nothing. They live twenty metres away from it. Arkady, Greta, the three of us are going to set up camp. We’re going in at first light tomorrow, so tonight is likely to be the last rest any of us gets for a while. Is that all clear?”
Jamie frowned. “How is Larissa going to come with us if we go in at dawn, sir?”
“Carefully,” said Albertsson, and smiled. “There’s going to be heavy shade beneath the trees and she’ll be fine as long as her skin is covered. She went out during the day in Nevada plenty of times.”
Did she? wondered Jamie.
“Did you work with her when she was there?” he asked.
Albertsson’s smile widened. “Very closely,” he said.
“Really?” said Jamie. “She’s never mentioned you.”
Albertsson shrugged. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Jamie didn’t respond; he stared at the American, his gaze steady.
“Any other questions, Lieutenant?” asked Albertsson. “You have orders in hand.”
Jamie let him wait for a long second or two. “No, sir,” he said, eventually, and turned to Van Orel. “You ready?”
The South African wore a slight frown on his face, but he nodded. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Jamie unclipped his MP7 and T-Bone, and set the weapons down on a tarpaulin sheet Engel had spread over the snow-covered ground. He flipped the visor of his helmet down, then checked his Glock as Van Orel followed his lead.
I don’t want to scare anyone, he thought. And I don’t think there are going to be any vamps in this village. But I’m not going anywhere unarmed. Not tonight.
Jamie marched off across the field with Van Orel beside him and his mind racing with suspicion. If anyone had asked him whether he trusted Larissa, he would have instantly told them that he did, and would have been telling the truth. But there were things that nagged at him, that caught in the back of his mind and stayed there.
The elephant in the room, the one they’d agreed to never discuss again, was the wild goose chase she had led him and Frankenstein on when his mother was being held captive by Alexandru Rusmanov: a desperate, headlong trip to Valhalla that Larissa had claimed would help them find Marie Carpenter, but which had in reality been solely about settling a personal score with Grey, the vampire who had turned her.
It had been selfish, and duplicitous, and could easily have put Jamie’s mother in harm’s way; that it hadn’t had been due only to a combination of luck and deduction. Larissa had apologised for it, time and time again, and he had accepted her explanation; that she had been scared for her life and desperately trying to prove herself useful so she didn’t receive a T-Bone stake to the heart. He knew it was an unending source of guilt for his girlfriend, and he had forgiven her, genuinely so, a long time ago.
Jamie had no doubt that she was still keeping things from him, despite the promise that the two of them and Kate and Matt had made to each other in the aftermath of the death of Alexandru and the loss of Dracula’s ashes, when they had become so inundated by lies and secrets that it had started to feel as though they might drown. They had pulled themselves clear before it was too late, and sworn to tell each other the truth, no matter what.
No more secrets, he remembered. That’s what we told each other.
But keeping their pact had proved harder than even Jamie, who had a cynical streak a mile wide, had expected; secrets piled up so quickly inside Blacklight, a complex web of things that you were allowed to tell certain people but not others, that it was completely impossible to maintain absolute transparency.
He had known for a while that Larissa hadn’t told him everything about the time she had spent at NS9. There were clear holes in her account of the trip she had taken to Las Vegas, about her interaction with Chloe, the vampire girl she met beside a nightclub pool, and about what she had done in the desert; she had definitely not told him that she was able to go out during daylight if her skin was fully covered. But the one aspect of her time in Nevada he had been sure that his girlfriend had been straight with him about was her friends. Her face lit up whenever she talked about them, which was often, and he felt like he already knew Kara, Danny, Kelly and Aaron, despite never having met them.
But in the
many hours Larissa had spent talking about NS9, she had never mentioned Tim Albertsson, not even once.
Jamie was certain of it.
An almost-full moon hung above his head as they reached the edge of the field, its silver light illuminating little, such was the darkness at the edge of the forest. Even with the night-vision filters of his helmet turned up to full, Jamie found the murkiness that surrounded him and Van Orel unsettling. But as they reached the low stone wall that enclosed the field, it was immediately clear that there were creatures that lived at the edges of the Teleorman Forest who appeared not to mind it.
Standing in the centre of the small, neat village were almost a dozen men and women, shotguns and axes in their hands, expressions of obvious distrust on their faces.
“I have to say,” said Van Orel, over the comms connection that linked the two Operators, “this place is not going to win any awards for friendliness.”
Jamie smiled behind his visor. “No kidding,” he said. “Do you want to take the lead on this?”
“No thanks,” said Van Orel. “I’m very happy to play backup.”
“Kind of you,” said Jamie, and winced as the South African laughed directly into his ear.
All right then, he thought. Let’s get this over with.
He stepped up and over the wall, his boots thudding on to the ground on the other side. Van Orel followed him as Jamie raised his visor, felt a momentary surge of panic as he remembered his carelessness in the graveyard, and flipped it back down.
“Watch them closely,” he said into his microphone. “Cameras, phones. We don’t need to end up on the news.”
