Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  Jamie nodded, and led his squad into the dark maw of the tunnel.

  They swept the wide space with their beams, swinging them in slow, overlapping arcs. Water dripped from the ceiling, creating dark puddles topped with an oily film. The cables that powered the lights ran in thick bunches on the ceiling above their heads, black snaking tubes that reflected their light back at them. They moved at a determinedly slow pace: The rails were slippery, the floor unsteady, studded with cracks and holes. It would be very easy to twist an ankle, and a long way back to the surface to deal with it.

  “Question,” whispered Morton.

  “What is it?” asked Jamie.

  “Has anyone actually thought about why Dempsey would be down here?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Ellison.

  “Exactly what I said,” hissed Morton. “It’s not like Dempsey worked for the tube, or was an engineer or a town planner. He didn’t even live in London, for Christ’s sake. So how come he knew about this place?”

  “Why don’t you ask him when we find him?” whispered Jamie. “Enough talk now. Let’s keep moving.”

  They passed several emergency exit doors, as Morton had predicted, but all of them were locked, and none looked like they had been opened in the last hundred years. The squad moved steadily, all three silently aware that they would soon be reaching the end of the tunnel. Jamie could feel tension wriggling into his stomach, where it curled up in a tight little ball. He had expected the confrontation with Alastair Dempsey to have come by now, that the newly turned vampire would have merely been hiding from the sun in the old tunnels, and therefore easy to find.

  He was certain they hadn’t missed him: The tunnel was simply not wide enough. Instead, he was starting to believe that Dempsey had flown back over his footprints and into the east tunnel, hoping that anyone who came looking for him would blindly follow the footprints half a mile in the wrong direction. Jamie didn’t give voice to this awful possibility; doing so would cement it in his mind, would force him to explain why he had led his squad the wrong way. He was trying to force down his anger at himself—arrogant, stupid, useless—when they reached the end of the tunnel and saw what was there.

  The circular passage had been sealed with a concrete plug that filled it to the edges on all sides. The gray wall was speckled black with dust and dirt, stained green by dripping water. Its surface was still smooth, except for one small area near the right-hand wall of the tunnel. There, a dark hole large enough for a grown man to squeeze through absorbed the beams of their flashlights.

  “Okay,” said Ellison, slowly. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

  Jamie didn’t respond. He walked forward, carefully stepping over chunks of fallen concrete, crouched down in front of the hole, and shone his light through it. The white beam illuminated nothing more than a few feet of identical wall, but it picked out a splash of color on the jagged edge of the hole itself. He shuffled forward and touched it with a gloved finger; it came away red.

  “There’s blood here,” he whispered. “This is where he went.”

  “Through there?” asked Morton. “Are you kidding me?”

  Jamie stood up and faced his squad mates. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  “What’s on the other side?” asked Ellison. “Could you see anything?”

  Jamie shook his head. “More tunnel, as far as I could tell.”

  Morton laughed, a strange, high-pitched grunt of a sound. “More tunnel? The whole tube network is on the other side of this thing. He’s gone.”

  “Maybe so,” said Jamie. “But I want to know where this leads.”

  “He’s gone,” repeated Morton. “Why can’t you just accept that?”

  “Why are you fighting us on this?” asked Ellison, fiercely. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” shouted Morton, his voice deafening in the quiet tunnel, his eyes wide with incredulity. “I don’t want to waste our time stumbling around under half of London and there’s something wrong with me? What’s wrong with the two of you? This is RIDICULOUS.”

  Jamie stared at his squad mate. The rookie’s eyes were wide, and his skin was deathly pale. He looked like a ghost in the harsh beam of the flashlight.

  “Operator Morton,” he said, as evenly as he was able, “if you don’t calm down, I’m going to send you back to the surface. Is that what you want?”

  Morton stared at him with resentment shining in his eyes. “Of course not,” he spat. “Sir.”

  Jamie took a step toward him. “Tell me the truth, John. Right now. Can you handle this?”

  “I’m fine,” said Morton. “I just think this a bad idea.”

  You don’t look fine, thought Jamie. You look like you’re hanging by a thread. I nearly left you in the van, and now I really, really wish I had.

  “You’ve made that clear,” he said. “I’m going to do it anyway, so can we count on you? That’s all I’m interested in right now.”

  Morton took a deep breath and glanced over at Ellison. She was staring at him with huge concern on her face.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, looking back at his squad leader. “You can count on me.”

  * * *

  It was tight, but the three operators made it through the hole without tearing their uniforms or breaking any of their equipment.

  The tunnel beyond the concrete wall was structurally identical, but Jamie realized within ten paces that this was a very different space from the one they had just walked through. The walls of this new section of tunnel were covered in paint; graffiti had been sprayed from floor to ceiling, wild patterns of pink and green and white, loops of yellow and gold. Faces stared down from the curved walls, grotesque figures with huge, gaping mouths and staring eyes. Letters emerged from beneath layer upon layer of aged paint, creating words that were not words at all. The three operators scanned their flashlights slowly over the chaotic mural, taking it in.

  “This is crazy,” said Ellison, her voice low. “Who did all this?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It must have taken years.”

  Morton said nothing. He was staring at the graffiti with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open.

  “Come on,” said Jamie. “Let’s keep moving.”

  They pressed on, spaced out across the tunnel. The tracks came to an end about two hundred feet beyond the concrete wall, prompting Ellison to point out that this could not be part of the main tunnel system. Her comment hung ominously in the air; Jamie could not think of a single reassuring response. As they made their way down the tunnel, his flashlight picked out a cylindrical object leaning against the wall, and he stopped to look at it.

  It was a large metal drum, scorched black on the inside by fire. There were lumps of charred wood in the bottom, and the surrounding floor was covered in ash and scraps of newspaper. Jamie reached down, picked up a handful, and let it drift away between his fingers. Ellison and Morton had carried on down the tunnel, their beams glowing beyond them. He watched them, his mind working, then shone his light into the drum. The beam picked out something white, and he leaned down to get a closer look.

  It was a small pile of chicken bones, picked clean of all their meat. Jamie stared for a long moment, then realized what he was looking at. He was looking at the remains of someone’s dinner.

  His eyes widened. Then he took off after his squad mates, his boots thudding across the floor, his flashlight beam jerking up and down as he ran. Ellison and Morton heard him coming and turned to face him, questioning expressions on their faces.

  “Ready One!” yelled Jamie. “There are people down here! Ready One!”

  He skidded to a halt and shone his flashlight past them, down the dark tunnel. And, at the edges of the beam, he saw shapes start to move.

  Lots of shapes.

  36

  SIN C
ITY

  Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

  Larissa had been in Las Vegas for just over eighteen hours.

  After her friends told her the amazing news about their furlough, she raced to her quarters, threw the small collection of civilian clothes she had brought with her across the Atlantic into her gym bag, and arrived in the hangar almost five minutes early. Tim appeared a few moments later, a wide smile on his tanned face, closely followed by the rest of her friends. They piled into one of the black SUVs that lined the wall of the hangar, Tim in the driver’s seat, Kelly beside him, Larissa sandwiched between Kara and Danny in the back.

  “Music,” demanded Kara, before Tim had even turned on the engine.

  “I’m on it,” said Kelly, pulling a wire out of the car’s center console and plugging it into her phone. She hit SHUFFLE, and pounding drums and juddering bass thudded through the car as Tim turned the key in the ignition.

  “Where’s Aaron?” asked Larissa. “Isn’t he coming?”

  “Didn’t get a pass,” said Tim. “I checked with the director, but he said they can’t spare him right now.”

  “Unlike the rest of us,” laughed Kara. “We’re clearly all expendable.”

  “You definitely are,” said Tim, peering around and grinning at her. She aimed a half-hearted punch in his direction, but he dodged it, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the hangar. Fifteen minutes later they passed through the Front Gate. Ten minutes later they were speeding east along Highway 375, the big car steadily eating up the miles that lay between them and Las Vegas.

  Larissa spent the first hour of the journey overcome with a guilt that was almost physical. She had reconciled herself with Tim’s logic, that if General Allen was trying to do something nice for her, she should just be grateful and accept it. But that acceptance had been quickly replaced by worry over what Jamie and Kate and Matt would think about what she was doing. She hoped they would be pleased for her, that they would not resent her taking the opportunity to have some fun, but she couldn’t quite convince herself; they would be working and fighting while she drank and danced and gambled. By the time the Vegas skyline appeared on the horizon, she had pushed her concerns deep down inside herself. They were still there, however, twisting gently, seemingly indestructible.

  They checked into a vast hotel with three towers and its own beach. Kara had called ahead, and Larissa quickly found herself in an express elevator, her bag in one hand, a plastic key card in the other. She emerged on the twenty-seventh floor and followed the long, winding corridor until she found her room. She pushed open the door, reaching for the light switch even though her supernatural eyes could see perfectly well in the gloom, then noticed the view from her window, and stopped.

  Wow, she thought. That’s pretty amazing. Fair enough.

  The Strip stretched away below her, flanked on both sides by ludicrous recreations of landmarks of the world: the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Sphinx of Egypt. Cars cruised along the eight lanes of asphalt, thick beams of multicolored light blazed into the night sky, and everything was bright and loud and full of life.

  Larissa tore her gaze away from the view, which was so uniquely, brilliantly American that it brought a wide grin to her face, and returned her attention to the light switch. She found it on the wall beside the door, spent several minutes wondering why it was refusing to turn the lights on, and was on the verge of smashing it to pieces when she noticed a slot intended to house her room key; she slid it into place and warm yellow light filled the room. She unpacked her bag, hanging her clothes in the vast wardrobe and arranging her toiletries on the huge granite sink in the bathroom, then pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Kara. The helicopter pilot told her they were meeting downstairs in five minutes, outside the sports book. Larissa had no idea what a sports book was, but told her friend she would see them there.

  Since then, it had all been a bit of a blur.

  Larissa found the sports book, which turned out to be nothing more than a huge version of the betting shops that were found on every English high street, and met up with her friends. They were full of the laughter and happiness that came with being able to temporarily put down the enormous weight of NS9 and with the permission to have fun without feeling guilty about it. Tim led them straight to the nearest bar, and the drinks began to flow. They continued to do so as they set up camp at one end of a craps table, as Kara ushered them first into a cab and then into a restaurant inside a hotel that had been built to resemble Venice’s Grand Canal. More drinks, a brief introduction to the world of blackjack, then another cab back to their hotel and a club that was little more than a large black box. Then dancing.

  So much dancing.

  By this point, Larissa had also made a startling, wonderful discovery: Flexing the muscle that made her fangs descend and her eyes begin to flood red also sobered her up, instantly. Her friends, on the other hand, were not so lucky. Danny was the first to go, staggering away into the night, promising to meet them all for breakfast. Kelly was next; one minute she was sitting on a leather sofa in the corner of the club, chatting away amiably to anyone who would listen, the next her eyes had closed and she was snoring gently.

  “She needs to go to bed,” said Kara.

  “Agreed,” replied Tim, then cast a long look at Larissa.

  This is it, she thought. Kara will take Kelly back to her room, and it’ll just be you and Tim left, and he’ll suggest you get more drinks, and you won’t have a good reason to say no. Then he’ll suggest you dance. And then you know what he’ll try to do. Again.

  She stared at him for a long moment, their eyes locked on each other. Then Tim dropped his gaze and looked at Kara. “I’ll take her back,” he said. “You two have fun. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

  Kara grinned happily and kissed Tim on the cheek as he scooped up the sleepy, protesting Kelly and guided her toward the club’s exit. He nodded at Larissa as he left, an unknowable smile on his handsome face. She watched him go, unsure of exactly what she was feeling: relief, unquestionably, but also a cold sliver of something it took her a second or two to put her finger on.

  It was rejection.

  Maybe he’s not going to try again, she thought. Maybe he doesn’t want me anymore.

  Then Kara handed her a terrifyingly green shot, and Tim Albertsson disappeared from her mind as she tipped the bright liquid down her throat. Moments later she and Kara were back on the dance floor, where they remained until neither of them could stand upright any longer, and they fled for the comfort of their beds.

  * * *

  Eight hours later they regrouped for breakfast in one of the hotel’s many restaurants.

  Four pairs of tired, bloodshot eyes stared enviously at Larissa, who was feeling not the slightest bit worse for wear, and had been informed by all four of her friends that they now hated her with a deep, abiding passion. She merely grinned, and sipped happily at her coffee.

  Larissa was experiencing a contentment that she had not felt in a very long time. The weight that she carried around with her, a crushing combination of loathing of her own vampire self, concern about Jamie and her friends, desperate curiosity about the family that had rejected her, and the constant, lurking presence of Dracula, was gone. She was not stupid enough to believe it had left her forever, but she was incredibly grateful for the respite.

  She ate heartily, watching her friends move their food listlessly around their plates, until they eventually admitted defeat and Tim called for the check.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked, as everyone threw bills into the middle of the table. “What does everyone want to do today?”

  “I want to die,” said Kelly. Her skin was pale, and a light sheen of sweat covered her forehead. “Can you arrange that for me?”

  “Sleep,” said Danny, from behind sunglasses that were shielding his bloodshot eyes.

  �
��Sleep,” echoed Kara. “I want to lie by the pool and sleep until I feel better. I reckon it’ll only take three or four days.”

  Larissa laughed. Kara scowled at her, but couldn’t keep it up. Her face twisted into a broad smile before she groaned again, loudly.

  “What do you want to do?” asked Tim, looking at Larissa.

  “I can’t lie by the pool, I’m afraid,” she said. “I don’t think any of you could handle seeing me burst into flames this morning.”

  “Oh, hey,” said Kara, sitting up and frowning. “I wasn’t thinking. We don’t have to go to the pool, Larissa. We can go somewhere—”

  “Don’t be silly,” she interrupted. “It’s fine. You guys hit the pool. I’ll be totally okay inside.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Danny, lowering his sunglasses and peering at her. “Kara’s right, it’s not a big deal.”

  “I’m sure,” replied Larissa. “Let’s do our own thing for a few hours then meet up for an early dinner. Say six?”

  “Sounds good,” said Kelly. “There’s a chance I might feel human by then.”

  “All right,” said Larissa. “Six o’clock. Let’s stick with the sports book.”

  “Agreed,” said Tim. “We’ll see you later then.”

  “Yep,” she said, getting up from the table. “Have fun. Maybe a cocktail or two?” A chorus of groans rose from her friends, and Larissa smiled to herself as she walked away from the table. She left the restaurant and headed directly down to the casino floor, feeling the temperature of the air drop slightly, smelling the underlying scents of tobacco and sweat that the huge ceiling fans were never able to get rid of entirely. She strolled across the vast gaming area, skipping easily between crowds of frat boys and bachelor parties, around families on holiday, past old men and women feeding the slot machines, and the suited men with the flesh-colored earpieces who watched over them all.

  Larissa found a blackjack table with an empty seat, ordered a coffee from the waitress who instantly appeared beside her, and placed a fifty-dollar bill on the green felt. She had no idea how long she had been playing when Tim Albertsson eased himself into the seat next to hers.