Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  In the middle of one of the red sofas, holding a half-empty vodka bottle in one hand and a pretty brunette who looked barely old enough to drink in the other, was Lee Ashworth. The senior airman was chatting happily to one of his friends as the girl kissed his neck, taking the occasional swig from the bottle, completely oblivious to his surroundings.

  An image appeared in Larissa’s mind: a photo of a blonde woman and two smiling children, sitting on the senior airman’s desk.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket, pressed the camera icon, zoomed in on Lee Ashworth, and snapped a quick series of pictures.

  Got you, she thought.

  Larissa turned away and closed the gap on Tim, who was still wrestling his way down toward the dance floor, her mind pulsing with a single thought, one that she knew had not crossed her mind as often as it should have in the last few weeks.

  I miss you, Jamie. I wish you were here.

  37

  BY A THREAD

  Jamie Carpenter skidded to a halt between his two squad mates, pulling his MP5 from his belt and snapping his visor into place as he did so. The two rookies looked at him with wide eyes.

  “What the—” began Morton, but Jamie cut across him.

  “Shut up,” he hissed. “Visors. Weapons. We’re not alone down here.”

  Morton’s eyes widened even further, then training and instinct took over. He lowered his visor, swept his MP5 out of the loop on his belt, raised it to his shoulder, and pressed his flashlight tight against the submachine gun’s barrel. Ellison did the same. The three operators moved in close together, back-to-back in a tight triangle, three piercing beams of light scanning the darkness.

  Jamie swung his flashlight slowly left and right, illuminating nothing but the graffiti-covered wall of the tunnel. Movement seemed to flicker at the edges of the beam, but when he swung his light toward it, whatever had moved was gone.

  “There’s nothing here,” whispered Morton. “You’re seeing things.”

  “I know what I saw,” said Jamie, staring intently into the pitch darkness. “Something moved.”

  “It’s not moving now,” said Morton.

  Jamie ignored him. He had seen something move, he was sure of it—more than one thing, in fact. And they hadn’t been rats, or stray dogs, or urban foxes; they had been far too big for that.

  “What do we do, sir?” whispered Ellison. “We can’t just stand here.”

  Jamie swore heartily. “I know that,” he said. “Just let me think.”

  I did see something, he thought. I know I did.

  From somewhere ahead of them—it was impossible to accurately judge distance in the deep darkness of the tunnel—there came the heavy clang of metal and a low fizzing noise. Then the tunnel’s maintenance lights flickered into life, and Jamie saw that he had been right.

  Surrounding his squad was a crowd of men and women, perhaps thirty in total. Several were carrying weapons—lumps of wood, metal bars, in once case what looked like the skeleton of an umbrella—but they were not what Jamie noticed as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brilliance of the lights. What caught his attention was a simple, undeniable truth: The men and women who had appeared out of the darkness were, by some distance, the strangest-looking collection of humanity he had ever seen.

  Most of them were filthy, their faces and hands black with dust and dirt, their clothing little more than rags, but bright paint shone from their skin and their ragged clothes, loops and swirls that looked as though they had been carefully applied. Their hair, which in most cases was long, had been twisted up into spikes and waves, and accented with flowers and feathers and pieces of foil that looked like candy wrappers. Half a dozen of the crowd were naked, their entire bodies painted. One man, whose face was painted bright red and green, wore a dark blue suit and carried a tan briefcase. His hair was wild and colorful, but his eyes were distant; he looked lost, as though he had gone for lunch one day in 1986 and woken up underground a quarter of a century later.

  “Lower your weapons,” said Jamie, speaking via the comms system that only his squad could hear. “Don’t do anything unless I tell you.” Ellison and Morton made no response, but did as they were ordered, letting their guns hang at their sides, the barrels pointing at the floor.

  A woman stepped forward, holding a wooden stick in her hand. Her face had once been pretty, that much was obvious, even through the layers of grime and flaking paint. She wore a short, floaty dress that might once have been yellow, but was now a deep, dirty gray streaked with brown and black. One of her feet was bare, the other clad in an old sandal. She looked at the three operators with open suspicion.

  “Are you police?” she asked. “Don’t lie, mind. I know liars.”

  “No,” said Jamie, twisting the dial on his belt so his voice was audible. “We’re not police.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Of a sort,” said Jamie.

  “You got a face under there?”

  Jamie hesitated, then reached up and raised his visor. After a second or two, he heard Morton and Ellison do the same.

  “Young,” said the woman. “What you doing down here?”

  “We’re looking for someone,” said Jamie. “He probably came in last night.”

  The woman shrugged. “Lots of people come down here at night.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen this one before. And he’d have probably stood out. Moved faster than most people, maybe had something wrong with his eyes?”

  “Vampire, is he?” asked the woman. “We get them down here, from time to time. They ain’t allowed to stay, though. Can’t be trusted to control themselves.” The look on Jamie’s face made her cackle with laughter. “There’s plenty that knows about the vamps, young soldier man. Live in the shadows long enough, you get to know things.”

  “You live down here?” asked Ellison.

  “Something wrong with that?” asked the woman.

  “No,” said Ellison, quickly. “I was just curious.”

  “Curiosity did something nasty to the cat, young miss. Remember that.”

  “We’re not here to cause trouble,” said Jamie, shooting a sharp glance at Ellison. “The vampire we’re looking for is a convicted criminal. If you take us to him, we’ll be on our way.”

  “I don’t care what he did,” spat the woman. “Most of us that’s down here done things they wish they hadn’t. Why should we let you take this man? If he’s even here, that is.”

  Because the three of us could kill you all without breaking a sweat, Jamie thought. And there isn’t a damn thing you could do to stop us.

  “Because he’s dangerous,” said Jamie. “You don’t want him in your home, believe me. How many women do you have down here?”

  “Some,” she replied, narrowing her eyes. “What of it?”

  Jamie said nothing. He let her put two and two together, and was gratified to see a ripple of unease cross her face as she made the connection.

  “Could be that I can help you,” she said, slowly. “What’s your name, mister soldier?”

  “Jamie.”

  “Jamie what?”

  “Jamie’s going to have to do, I’m afraid.”

  “Aye, I thought as much. Mine’s Aggie. If you was to say I was in charge down here, well, you wouldn’t be right, but you wouldn’t be all wrong neither. Jackie?”

  A girl who looked to be in her late teens or very early twenties stepped forward. She was wearing battered blue jeans and a giant fox fur coat, into which had been twisted hundreds of thin pieces of metal.

  “You seen him that came in early this morning, didn’t you?” said Aggie.

  “I saw,” said Jackie.

  “He still here?”

  “I ain’t seen him leave,” she replied. “He was down with the others, last I saw.”

  “How many of you are down her
e?” asked Jamie.

  “Depends on the day, mister soldier man,” said Aggie. “Some days there might be a hundred, some days five. We don’t take no registers.”

  “You all come in and out through the station?” asked Ellison. “How come no one notices that?”

  Aggie laughed. “Ain’t no one comes in that way. That’s the last way out, in case we get trouble. There’s ways all over the city, more than even I can remember.”

  “Why are you dressed like that?” asked Morton, suddenly. “Does everyone down here have to?”

  “Dressed like what, soldier man?”

  “The paint and the feathers and the bits of foil.”

  Aggie looked down at herself, then laughed. “That black’s your uniform, right? Well, this is ours. We’re the protectors of this place. They call us the Guardians.”

  “The Guardians of what?” asked Jamie.

  “Of whatever needs guarding,” said Aggie. “What else?”

  Jamie fought back the urge to laugh. These people were the strangest thing he had seen since joining Blacklight, which was genuinely saying something. And he was already starting to like Aggie; she was blunt to the point of rudeness, but there was a wicked intelligence beneath her grimy exterior, and he found himself beginning to enjoy it.

  “Will you take us to where he is?” he asked. “Please?”

  Aggie cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, clearly considering his request. Eventually, she nodded. “We’ll take you, soldier man. I don’t know if I believe he’s as bad as you say, but if you’re here for him, he has to answer for that. Anyone brings the law down here puts it on themselves. You walk with me, and tell your friends to keep them guns pointing down. I don’t want no shooting.”

  “Neither do I,” said Jamie.

  * * *

  The procession making its way along the abandoned tunnel beneath the heart of central London would have looked ridiculous to anyone who witnessed it.

  Aggie and Jamie were at the front, walking steadily side by side. Behind them came Ellison and Morton, looking utterly bemused as they followed their squad leader through the darkness. After the two rookie operators came the rest of Aggie’s Guardians: two wide lines of remarkable-looking men and women who strolled easily across the uneven surface, their twists of foil and slivers of metal sparkling as they passed beneath the tunnel’s maintenance lights.

  Jamie kept his eyes peeled as they made their way forward. The mission had turned from what he had expected into something very different, and he was determined to stay focused on what had become an evolving situation. He thought there was very little chance that Alastair Dempsey would go down without a fight, but he hoped that, by arriving with Aggie and her odd band of painted Guardians, they might be able to take him by surprise and destroy him before he had either the chance to flee or to hurt anyone who lived down here.

  He had asked Aggie about the lights, but she had just grunted that a big boy like him ought to know what made lights work, so he had dropped it. He assumed someone had run cable up to an electricity source on the surface, a feat that must have taken a huge amount of daring and a significant amount of technical expertise. He wanted to know about this strange place, but didn’t want to annoy Aggie any more than he already had by bringing his squad into her home.

  I don’t blame her for not wanting to tell me, he thought. She probably already thinks I’m going to bring a hundred Met officers back here and chase them all out.

  If she did think that, however, she was wrong. Jamie had already made up his mind that he would not be including this place in his report. It did not need bringing to anyone’s attention; it wasn’t a haven for vampires, or any other kind of supernatural, and therefore it wasn’t his Department’s concern. It was merely home to a group of people who presumably had nowhere else to go.

  “How much farther?” he asked. The tunnel seemed endless, the yellow lights illuminating little more than the ten yards directly in front of them.

  “Ain’t far,” grunted Aggie. “Soon enough we’ll be there. Then you can take your vampire man and leave us in peace.”

  I don’t think it’s going to be that simple, thought Jamie. Although I hope I’m wrong. I really do.

  “It might be for the best,” he said, carefully, “if you let the three of us confront him on our own. If you tell us when we’re nearly there, then the rest of you can stay back.”

  “Piss on that,” said Aggie, mildly. “We’re the Guardians of this place, not you and your little friends. You do what we say, not the other way around.”

  Have it your way, he thought. For a little bit longer, at least.

  After a period of time that Jamie could not have accurately estimated, but which he thought had to have been less than fifteen minutes, perhaps no more than ten, the tunnel suddenly expanded to twice its width, and Aggie stopped.

  “This here’s the junction,” she said. “Two lines used to cross here, although both of them are gone now. Straight ahead, where those fires are, that’s where we’ll find your vampire.”

  Jamie stared into the darkness. After a few seconds, his eyes were able to pick out the faintest orange glow, what seemed like miles away.

  Her eyes are incredible, he thought. I doubt even Larissa can see that well.

  “What’s over there?” he asked.

  “It’s a dead end,” said Aggie. “Kind of a circle, although it ain’t really, not anymore. There’s some shelters been built, and other bits and pieces.”

  “How many ways out?”

  “If he runs before we cross the junction, then too many,” she said. “If he don’t, then two. There’s a door on the left-hand wall, leads up to an old power exchange. It’s one of the main ways in and out. Once we cross, the rest’ll all be behind you. If you don’t let him get past, and you don’t let him get out the door, there ain’t going to be nowhere for him to go.”

  A dead end, thought Jamie. Excellent.

  “Did you get all that?” he asked, turning to face his squad mates, who both nodded. “Ellison, I want you to get in front of that door as soon as we’re across. Morton, you stay with me. We finish this down here. Clear?”

  “Clear,” said Ellison. Morton merely nodded, staring directly at Jamie.

  “Okay,” he said. “Aggie, do you want to lead us in? If we mix in with your people, then he’s less likely to see us.”

  “Aye,” said Aggie. “That seems like sense.”

  Jamie nodded and stepped back into the brightly painted crowd. Ellison and Morton did the same, holstering their MP5s and drawing their T-Bones. The three operators kept their weapons low, where they would be less obvious to anyone watching the crowd approach.

  “Let’s do this,” said Jamie. Aggie nodded and led them out across the junction.

  The space was huge. The tracks were long gone, but the places where they had once intersected were still clearly marked by patches of the tunnel floor that were paler than their surroundings. Jamie found himself standing at the nexus, with four tunnel openings surrounding him. To the rear was the one they had just walked down, to the front was their destination, where he hoped Alastair Dempsey was relaxing, unaware of their presence. To the left and right the tunnels disappeared into darkness, their destinations unknown.

  Aggie’s right, thought Jamie. If he gets past us, he’s gone.

  His heart was starting to beat more rapidly in his chest. He made no attempt to slow it, preferring to let its steady thud focus his mind on what was about to happen. If all went according to plan, it would be over in a matter of seconds, but experience had taught him that things rarely did where vampires were concerned, particularly vampires as dangerous as Alastair Dempsey.

  Jamie looked around and saw his squad mates walking steadily among the colorful throng of the Guardians. Both of them appeared calm, their eyes clear, their shoulders low, their
progress quiet and steady.

  Good, he thought. Morton’s got himself under control. About time, too.

  He looked back just in time to see them pass beneath the entrance of the tunnel they were heading into. He could now see the fires clearly; there were two, built on opposite sides of the wide space. Figures huddled around them or wandered between them. He was just starting to be able to make out individuals when a voice echoed through the tunnel.

  “Who’s that?” it shouted. “That you, Aggie?”

  “Aye,” she shouted. “Me and mine.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Nothing,” she shouted. “Looks like someone did come through, but they ain’t there no more.”

  “That ain’t good, Aggie.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  The other voice fell silent.

  “Visors,” Jamie whispered over the comms link, and flipped his down. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that both his squad mates had done as they were told, and turned back as they approached the fires. The flames cast a beautiful orange glow, and his eyes widened as he saw the number of people the dead-end tunnel contained: There had to be a hundred and fifty men and women, maybe more. He was starting to wonder how they were going to go about finding their target without giving themselves away, when he saw the man they were looking for.

  Alastair Dempsey was leaning against the wall on the other side of the fires. He was wearing a dark shirt and a pair of black jeans and was standing on his own, his attention fixed firmly on the approaching group of men and women. There was an expression on his face that Jamie didn’t like.

  This one’s a wild animal, he thought. He can sense something is wrong, even though he doesn’t know what yet.

  He was about to whisper their target’s location to his squad mates when Morton’s voice boomed out, amplified by the microphone in his helmet, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space of the tunnel.