Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  * * *

  When he came to, he was lying on the ground. He struggled to open his eyes, but the lids felt as though they were made of lead, and his head was roaring with pain. He bore down, using what felt like all of his strength to force them open. The warehouse swam slowly back into focus, and he found himself looking at the four men that Greg Browning had tied up. Two of them were staring at him with wide eyes, but the others were crawling furiously toward the door that led to the reception.

  There was no sign of Kevin McKenna.

  Pete sat up and pressed his hand against the side of his head. It came away covered in blood and he felt his stomach lurch. His head swam, and he fought to clear it. He forced himself up onto unsteady legs and staggered toward the door. The crawling men froze, staring up at him, their eyes wide with looks of complete powerlessness. Pete ignored them. He lurched through the door into the reception and saw Kevin McKenna standing behind the desk, a phone clamped to the side of his head.

  “The Globe printing press,” said the journalist, his eyes wide and staring. “No, I don’t know the bloody address. Somewhere near Reading. Albert Harker is holding me and two other men hostage, Pete Randall and Greg Browning. He’s an escapee from Broadmoor. For God’s sake, just get here as—”

  Pete staggered toward him, trying to call Kevin’s name, but his mouth wouldn’t work—all that emerged was a low croak. McKenna saw him coming and circled around behind the desk, putting it between the two men.

  “Stay back,” he shouted. “Stay back, Pete. I’m doing this for you.”

  He lurched onward. The journalist backed away, the phone still pressed to his ear. Then his eyes flew open wide, and the last of the color drained from his face. Pete tried to turn his head; he knew he had not caused McKenna’s reaction. But before he got the chance, a black blur rocketed past him.

  It solidified into the roaring, demonic form of Albert Harker. He grabbed McKenna by the lapels of his jacket and jerked him into the air, screaming incoherently into the journalist’s face. The phone tumbled from McKenna’s hand as he fought futilely against the supernatural strength of the vampire.

  “You traitor!” roared Harker, his eyes blazing, his mouth wide and foaming with spit. “You gutless backstabber!”

  He threw McKenna against the glass wall of the reception; it cracked from top to bottom, but didn’t break. The journalist slid to the floor, his mouth hanging open, his eyes staring blankly up at the monstrous thing he had somehow found himself on the same side as.

  Harker reached down and lifted him to his feet. Pete watched helplessly, screaming at himself to intervene, to say something, do something, but could not; his body was not obeying his commands, and all he could do was watch. For a long moment, McKenna thrashed in Albert Harker’s grasp. Then the vampire sank the fingers of his other hand into the soft flesh beneath McKenna’s chin and tore out his throat. It gave way with a terrible ripping noise. Blood sprayed into the air, shockingly bright, and splashed across the glass windows and the bare concrete floor.

  Harker dipped his face into the crimson geyser erupting from McKenna’s neck and drank deeply, his eyes closed in ecstasy. Then he dropped the corpse of the man he had called his friend, lifted the phone, and smashed it against the desk, sending shards of plastic and coils of wire flying through air that stank of blood.

  51

  . . . IT POURS

  We’ve got him,” said Paul Turner, his eyes flashing fiercely. “Lamberton. Not Valentin. We’ve got the bastard.”

  “Careful,” said Kate. “Valentin could still be part of this. I don’t think Lamberton does anything without permission from his master, and he lives in the cell next door. Wouldn’t he have heard the same things Marie heard?”

  The two operators were sitting in the ISAT lounge, trying to process the bombshell that Marie Carpenter had inadvertently dropped on them. Jamie’s mother had been unhooked from the monitoring equipment and given a Security Division escort back down to her cell. Before she left, Turner had impressed upon her the necessity that Lamberton must not realize that anything was wrong; she was to return to her cell and act exactly as she normally did.

  “For how long?” she had asked. “I’m afraid I’m not a very good liar.”

  “Not long,” Turner had replied. “We’ll be down there before you know it.”

  Marie had nodded and followed her escorts out of ISAT. They had watched her go, still incredulous that the key piece of information had come from her, even if she hadn’t known it was important.

  “Maybe Valentin knew,” said Turner, “but even he has to sleep. How would he have got his hands on a console? Why would he bother? No, this is between Lamberton and whoever has been sending him messages.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Kate. “I’m just asking you to be careful.”

  Turner looked at her and saw the concern on her face. “Don’t worry,” he said, and smiled. “I will be.”

  Kate smiled back. “So what happens now?”

  “I have to tell Cal what we know,” said Turner. “Then it’s up to him.”

  Kate was about to reply when her boss’s console buzzed. Turner swore, grabbed it, and thumbed the screen into life. He read the lines of text and groaned. “Echelon intercept,” he said. “Zero Hour classification. Excuse me for a second.”

  The security officer set his console down and lifted his radio from its loop on his belt. He keyed a number into the pad on the front of the handset, then held it to his ear. “NS303, 36-A, coding in for Echelon intercept assessment. Proceed.”

  Kate watched as Turner listened to the message that had been intercepted by Echelon, the vast monitoring system that constantly scanned electronic communication for words and phrases flagged by the Security Services—evidence of crime, of potential terrorist plots and attacks. But the system also scanned for a long list of words and phrases that would seem strange to anyone outside of the Department: vampire, blood, fangs, red eyes, Blacklight, and dozens of others.

  Paul Turner had become very still, she noticed. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes widening visibly.

  What now? she wondered.

  “Understood,” said Turner. “Forward me the transcript. Out.” He placed the radio back on his belt, then turned to her with a stricken expression on his face.

  Panic leaped into her heart.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Paul, what is it?”

  His console beeped with the same noise he had demonstrated to Marie Carpenter only minutes earlier. He opened the message and held it out toward her. She took it from him with hands that had begun to tremble, and looked at the screen.

  ECHELON INTERCEPT REF. 45110/4F

  SOURCE: Emergency call (landline telephone 0118 974 6535)

  TRANSCRIPT BEGINS. I need the police, right now. My name is Kevin McKenna. My location? The Globe printing press. No, I don’t know the bloody address. Somewhere near Reading. Albert Harker is holding me and two other men hostage, Pete Randall and Greg Browning. He’s an escapee from Broadmoor. For God’s sake, just get here as—. TRANSCRIPT ENDS.

  RISK ASSESSMENT: Priority level 1 (Zero Hour classification)

  Kate stared at the words on the screen. She read them a second time, her brain desperately trying to make sense of them, trying to find a way to tell her that what she was seeing was something other than it was.

  Dad? she thought. Oh, Dad. What have you done? What the hell have you done?

  She looked up at Paul Turner, who was staring at her with a look of utter anguish. The sight of such naked emotion on the glacial security officer’s face brought tears instantly to the corners of her eyes.

  “What is this?” she asked, her voice shaking. “What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Turner, his eyes locked on hers. “I don’t know, Kate. I’ll find out, I promise. Just stay ca
lm.”

  “My dad,” she said. “And Matt’s dad. And Albert Harker. I don’t understand.”

  “Kate . . .”

  “I have to go,” she said, getting up from her chair. “I have to go right now.”

  “Kate, just—”

  “You’re not going to try and stop me?” she asked, staring at him. “Please tell me you wouldn’t do that?”

  “Kate, damnit, will you just stop for a second? I need to think.”

  She could see the cogs and wheels turning inside Turner’s usually cool head, could see the dilemma he was trying to resolve: go to Holmwood with the news about Lamberton, or help her. “I don’t have time for this, Paul,” she said, her voice low.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said. “We’ll go right now.”

  “You can’t,” said Kate. “We both know you can’t. You have to go and deal with Lamberton.”

  “Albert Harker is a priority level 1 target with a Zero Hour classification,” he said. “Everything else can wait.”

  “No,” she said, “it can’t.”

  “Goddamnit, Kate, what the hell do you want me to do?” Turner shouted. “I won’t let you go up against Albert Harker on your own. We don’t have any idea what he’s planning or what your father is doing with him.”

  “I know that,” she said, smiling at his show of emotion. “But I’m going. If you were in danger, Shaun would have come for you. Nothing would have stopped him. You said it yourself, Paul: One of your team gets in trouble, you do your best to get them out of it. That’s all you can do.”

  Turner stared at her. “That’s not fair,” he said. “Bringing him into this. It’s not fair.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry. But you know I’m right. So please don’t try to stop me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Just hold on a minute.” She could see him turning the situation over in his head, looking for an angle, for some way he could help. “I’m not going to stop you,” he said, after a long moment. “And I’m not even going to try to persuade you not to tell Matt. I have to tell Cal what’s happening, but you’ll have a head start over Jack’s squad. Just do one thing for me, okay? Give me ten minutes. Be in the Ops Room in ten minutes. Promise me.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I promise. Ten minutes.”

  * * *

  Matt Browning stood stiffly in front of Cal Holmwood’s desk, his hands clenched tightly behind his back. The interim director was staring at him with an expression of such abject despair that it made him feel guilty just to look at it.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Holmwood, eventually. “You’re saying that every prisoner and patient that was released during the attack on Broadmoor was turned using a vampire virus that had been extracted from an extremely old and powerful vampire? Possibly even Dracula himself? Is that really what you’re standing there telling me?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Matt.

  “Because of the correlation between the age of a vampire and the power of the men and women they turn. Am I understanding correctly?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “I’m assuming that this isn’t in any way your fault?”

  Matt frowned. “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t apologize. You’re the bearer of bad news, not the cause of it.” Holmwood dragged his hands through his hair, then slammed them down on the surface of his desk, causing Matt to flinch. “Goddamnit,” he said. “You’re sure about this? There’s no chance you could be wrong?”

  Matt considered this. He had come straight up to the interim director’s quarters from the Science Division labs, his heart pounding in his chest, his palms clammy with sweat. He had examined his theory from every angle as he made his way up through the Loop, looking for a flaw in his logic, looking for an assumption that couldn’t be supported.

  He had found nothing.

  “I could be, sir,” he said. “But I don’t think I am. It fits with the evidence we’ve seen of the power of the escapees, and it solidifies the connection between age and power, including from vampire to victim. The accepted wisdom has always been that older vampires just got stronger over time, like a human gets stronger the more they exercise. And I think that is the case. But I now think that the virus in a vampire’s system changes, too. It becomes more powerful.”

  “Meaning that when an old vampire turns someone, that someone will be stronger than if they’d been turned by a younger vampire?”

  “Yes. For instance, Valentin would create very strong vampires.”

  “Like Lamberton.”

  Matt nodded.

  “But how could we not know this before?” asked Holmwood. “With all our research?”

  “I don’t know,” said Matt. “But I have a theory.”

  “Go on.”

  “We never saw the connection because I don’t think old vampires turn people very often. They feed and they kill. Which is logical—anyone they turned would be powerful, a potential threat. Look at Larissa: She’s so strong, even though she’s only been turned for a few years. Which makes sense because she was turned by Grey, who’s supposed to be the oldest vampire in Britain. But according to her, he never meant to turn her. He intended to kill her.”

  “Jesus,” said Holmwood.

  “I hope I’m wrong, sir. Nobody will be more pleased than me if I am.”

  “I will be,” said Holmwood, and forced a smile. “But I’ll also be very surprised. Why do you think it’s Dracula?”

  Matt shrugged. “Theoretically, it could be any old vampire—Valeri, or someone else we don’t know about. But if it’s Dracula, then it fits, doesn’t it? The graffiti we’ve been seeing doesn’t say, ‘He will rise.’ It says, ‘He rises.’ Let’s say we’re right, and Dracula himself has not returned to full power; he can still send his servants out with syringes full of his plasma and infect all these prisoners. It takes up our time when we could be looking for him, and it puts him out there in the world, causing chaos. It just . . . it feels like something he would do.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” said Holmwood, and sighed deeply. “So what do you want me to do about this?”

  “I’ve no idea, sir,” said Matt. “I just thought you should know.”

  “So should the rest of the Departments,” said Holmwood. “Is there any way we can prove your theory? I mean, prove it beyond any doubt?”

  “We could prove that the virus evolves if Larissa was here,” said Matt. “There should be similarities between the virus in her plasma and in that of the escapees.”

  “Larissa’s in Nevada,” said Holmwood.

  “I know, sir.”

  “I could bring her home,” said the interim director, “if it would help?”

  “It would help,” said Matt. “But that’s not my decision, sir.”

  “Okay. What about proving that Dracula was involved in all this?”

  “That’s possible, too, sir,” said Matt. “If we had a sample of his DNA. Even a partial one. I don’t think we’d get a one hundred percent match, because the vampire virus alters the victim’s DNA rather than replacing it. But I would expect to see enough similarities between his DNA and that of the Science Division’s prisoners for us to be pretty sure.”

  “All right,” said Holmwood. “I’ll see what I can do. I’m assuming I don’t need to tell you that this goes no further than this room?”

  “No, sir,” said Matt. “I understand.”

  “Okay. Good work, Mr. Browning. Exceptionally good work. Dismissed.”

  Matt nodded, crossed the interim director’s quarters, and pulled open the heavy door. He stepped through it and was on his way back down to the Lazarus Project when his phone buzzed into life.

  He pulled it out of his pocket and saw Kate Randall’s name on the small screen. If he had been at his desk, he would not have answered it. But fo
r once, her timing was perfect. He pressed the green ANSWER button and held the phone to his ear.

  “Hi, Kate,” he said. “I was just—”

  “Matt, listen to me,” interrupted Kate. “We’ve got trouble. Meet me in the hangar in five minutes.”

  Matt paused. Kate’s tone was even and businesslike, but beneath it he could hear something that sounded horribly close to panic. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Kate, what’s the matter?”

  “My dad,” she said. “And yours, Matt. Your dad. We got an Echelon intercept from someone calling himself Kevin McKenna. He said he was being held hostage by Albert Harker, with Pete Randall and Greg Browning.”

  For a long moment, Matt didn’t respond; terror had struck him completely dumb.

  My dad? With Kate’s dad? And Albert Harker? How can that be possible?

  “Are you sure?” he heard himself say.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” replied Kate. “But I can’t take the chance. I’m going, Matt. I’m going now. Will you come with me?”

  Fear crashed through Matt in a great, freezing wave. This was close to the worst thing he could imagine: his father, the man he had loved and hated in equal measure, in need of help. An opportunity for him to fail his father, to let him down yet again. Yet another chance to be the old, useless Matt he had started to believe he had left behind forever.

  “Kate . . . ,” he said, helplessly.

  “I won’t think any less of you,” she said. “I promise I won’t. But I need to know right now, Matt. Are you coming with me or not?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Wimp. Failure. Disappointment. Mommy’s boy. Coward.

  “I’ll see you in the hangar,” he said.

  * * *

  Cal Holmwood watched Matt Browning pull the door to his quarters shut behind him and sat back in his chair. He had no doubt that the brilliant, nervous teenager’s theory was correct; in less than three months, he had come to trust him completely.