by Will Hill
Smith stared at the man sitting opposite him, and saw nothing but honesty on the open, handsome face. He took a deep breath.
“I’ve been following a legend,” he said. “The legend of a vampire that was cured, supposedly the only vampire that has ever been cured. They call him Adam. Apparently, he was an American, apparently, he lived in the second half of the twentieth century and apparently, once he was cured, he disappeared. I’ve been following the story for over a year, and that’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows. I don’t know whether he’s alive, or dead, or whether he even existed at all. But I need to find out.”
Papa Lafayette looked at him, and Smith saw a flicker of admiration in the stranger’s eyes. “I know you do,” he said. “I can see the need shining out of you, from every cell in your being. I’m not going to ask you why you need to find this creature, but I believe that you do. And it seems like there’s something out here in the inner that wants to help you along.”
“What do you mean?” asked Smith. “Help me how?”
Papa Lafayette smiled. “Take a look behind you.”
Smith turned his head, slowly. He didn’t fear the man sitting before him, even though he had watched him transform from a snake, but it went against all his instincts to voluntarily turn his back on anyone. Behind him lay the dark rising expanse of the mesa; he could see smoke drifting into the night sky from somewhere beyond the upper ridge, and could hear distant snatches of music as they floated on the soft wind.
He stared for a long moment, and was about to turn back, to ask Papa Lafayette what he was supposed to be seeing, when the air before him shimmered, and then slowly parted, as though a window was being opened in the fabric of reality.
Through the widening hole Smith could see more desert, but it was immediately apparent that it was somewhere else; the sand was fine and yellow and the sun was beating down on it, turning it a glaring, blinding white. As he watched, the window expanded, and he saw first a strip of grey tarmac, shimmering and pulsing in the heat, and then the scuffed, battered metal pole of a road sign at its edge. As the blurry, shifting edges of the window moved outwards, he saw the sign itself, plain white text against a green background.
CALIENTE 12
CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT
Smith was reading the short message for a third time, committing it to memory, when a tall, slender man, wearing a dusty checked shirt, blue jeans and a battered cowboy hat, strolled casually up to the signpost, and leant against it. Then he stared directly at Smith, smiled, reached up and tipped the front of his hat to him. Smith stared, incredulous; he had the overwhelming urge to say hello to this vision, but his tongue would not form the word. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the shimmering window began to contract, and less than a second later it was gone.
Smith immediately turned back, his mind racing with questions for Papa Lafayette, but the handsome, genial man was also gone. There was a scuffed patch of sand where he had been sitting, but apart from that, there was no sign of him, nothing to suggest that he had been there at all.
37
FROM PILLAR TO POST
If anyone had asked, Jamie Carpenter would have been unable to describe exactly what he was feeling as he stood in front of Admiral Seward’s desk. The slow, almost reluctant nod of the Director’s head had turned the world around him to nothing and the ground beneath his feet to quicksand. He felt as though his body was about to dissolve and drift away, such was the ferocity of the hope that had ignited in his chest; it threatened to engulf him and everything around him.
“It’s no more than a possibility,” said Admiral Seward, his voice thick and distant, as though it was coming from underwater. “A remote one at that. But I didn’t feel right, keeping it from you.”
Jamie fought for equilibrium, like a swimmer who has found himself too far out and realises that unless he kicks for shore now, he might not be able to make it back.
Focus, he told himself. Focus, for God’s sake. You can’t help him if you’re catatonic.
“We have to find him,” he heard himself say. “We have to start looking now.”
“We are,” replied Seward. “I’ve scrambled a Field Investigation Team to depart for Bamburgh this afternoon. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it.”
“I want to go with them, sir,” said Jamie, firmly.
“Out of the question,” said Seward, instantly. Jamie opened his mouth to protest, but the Director didn’t give him the chance. “The interrogation of Valentin Rusmanov is still ongoing, Jamie, and the presence of all Zero Hour Task Force members remains mandatory. No exceptions.”
“Sir, this is far more important,” protested Jamie.
“It is to you, Jamie,” replied Seward. “For personal reasons, which I assure you I do understand, and sympathise with. But from my perspective, there is nothing more important right now than the work of the Zero Hour Task Force, of which you are a member, whether you like it or not. I’m devoting every appropriate resource to investigate the possibility that Colonel Frankenstein is still alive, but I’m afraid that does not include letting you tag along. I’m sorry, Jamie.”
Anger surged through Jamie’s body, and he fought his hardest to keep it at bay, to stop it erupting in Admiral Seward’s direction. Because the equation was simple: the one man in the world who had never failed him, never betrayed him or let him down, who had readily offered up his life in exchange for Jamie’s, might be out there somewhere, and he wasn’t being allowed to help bring him home.
Admiral Seward saw colour rising in the teenager’s face, and moved to extinguish it. “I told you because I believed you could handle it, Jamie,” he said. “Don’t make me regret that decision. There is more at stake here than even you understand.”
With a Herculean effort, Jamie forced himself towards calm.
“I can handle it, sir,” he said, slowly. “But I think I could be useful to the Field Team, sir.”
“You’re useful right here,” replied Seward. “You have a rapport with Valentin that no one else has. Right now, and for as long as we continue to question him, I need you here.”
“Will you let me see the reports from the Field Team?” asked Jamie.
“I will,” replied Seward. “And I would let you go with them if it was any other time than now. I hope you understand that.”
“I do, sir,” replied Jamie, honestly. “I just hope they find something in Northumberland.”
“So do I, son,” replied Admiral Seward. “So do I.”
Jamie walked down the corridor, away from the Director’s quarters, his mind racing.
If he’s alive, then where has he been for the last months? If he survived the fall, if he made it back to land, why hasn’t he come home? Or contacted anyone?
His mind kept drifting towards the likeliest answer to its own questions, that even though it appeared the fall over the cliffs had not been the end of Frankenstein, it was overwhelmingly likely he had not made it to safety, that he had died in the cold waters of the North Sea. Jamie pushed such thoughts firmly away; he would not entertain such a conclusion, not when he had just been given the tiniest shred of hope to cling to.
If he’s alive, they’ll find him. That’s what Admiral Seward said, and I believe him. I have to believe him.
Jamie was sufficiently engrossed in his own thoughts that when the lift doors slid open, he stepped forward without thinking, and almost walked straight into Shaun Turner, who skipped out of the way of the impending collision. The movement brought Jamie back from his daze, and he looked at the Operator he now knew was Kate’s boyfriend, and blushed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was miles away.”
“It’s all right,” Shaun replied. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was a moment of silence that, if not exactly comfortable, was not uncomfortable either, in which Jamie saw the chance to build some bridges, for Kate’s sake if not for his own.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Busy,” said Shaun. “We went out three times last night. I’m shattered, to be honest with you.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Routine 999 intercepts,” said Shaun. “A home invasion in North London, a really messed-up ritual thing in a cemetery in Winchester and two vamps living under a railway arch in Stevenage. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the ‘he rises’ graffiti. Found it at all three places.”
“It was in the home where Valentin found us yesterday too,” said Jamie. “There’s more of it every time we go out.”
“The vamps know what’s happening,” said Shaun. “It’s why they’ve been so brazen these last few months; they know that Dracula is rising.”
“Until we stop him,” said Jamie, and Shaun smiled.
The two men looked at each other, and both felt the tiniest shoots of a potential friendship between them. Although neither of them knew it, they had both been ordered by Kate to be nice to the other, for her sake, but what they were feeling now was the camaraderie of shared experience, and shared purpose.
“So I’ve been meaning to come and speak to you,” said Shaun. “About Wallsend, and what happened to Kate. I’m sorry for how I behaved.”
“It’s cool,” said Jamie, quickly. “You were just being loyal to Jack, and then you were scared for Kate. I get why now.”
Shaun paused. “She told you?”
“I worked it out,” said Jamie. “That night. I asked her, and she told me.”
“She told Larissa,” said Shaun. “I know that much. I didn’t know you knew, to be honest, but it’s probably for the best.”
“I think it’s great,” said Jamie. “She seems really happy.”
Shaun grinned, a wide smile that lit up his handsome features.
“That’s good,” he said. “I’m crazy about her, between you and me. I think she’s amazing.”
“I do too,” said Jamie. “I’m pleased for you both. And the thing in Wallsend, just forget about it, OK? It was messed up sending two squads without a clear chain of command. And you and Angela were right, Jack was the senior Operator. It’s all forgotten, honestly.”
“Cool,” said Shaun, the smile still wide on his face.
“OK. See you later then?”
“All right,” said Shaun. He stepped out of the lift, and Jamie moved round him and into it. The two men nodded at each other as the doors shut, separating them. Jamie found himself smiling as he pressed the button that would take him down to Level B, where Matt would be waiting for him.
That’s my good deed for today, he thought. Kate should be pleased.
He was still smiling when he opened the door to the quarters next to his, took one look and then burst out laughing.
Matt was sitting cross-legged in the middle of his mattress, surrounded on all sides by towering mountains of box files and lever-arch folders. The trolley that had been used to transport the vast reams of information up to him from the Lazarus Project labs stood off to one side. Matt had one of the box files open in front of him and was absorbed in a thick sheaf of documents; he had not moved when Jamie opened the door, but his pale, earnest face shot up when he heard his friend begin to laugh.
“Hey, Jamie,” he said, then frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” replied Jamie, walking across the room towards him. “Just glad to see they’re letting you settle in before they throw you in at the deep end.”
Matt grinned at him, and put the documents back in the file.
“The stuff they’re working on is unbelievable,” he said, excitedly. “I’m trying to catch up as quickly as I can, there’s a whole new biological system I have to understand before I can even think about being any use to them. Look at this.” He scrabbled through the avalanche of paper, and held out a series of photocopies for Jamie to look at. He took them and leafed quickly through them; they were copies of small handwritten pages, full of diagrams and formulas.
“Cool,” said Jamie. “What is it?”
“It’s Abraham Van Helsing’s journal,” said Matt, his voice full of wonder. “I mean, not the original, obviously, but that’s his actual handwriting. Professor Talbot wanted me to start at the beginning, you know, so I could get a sense of how the study of vampires has progressed. A lot of his theories turned out to be flawed, or just wrong in some cases, but the work he did was still remarkable. It’s the foundation of everything anyone knows about vampires.”
“He was an amazing man,” said Jamie.
“Yeah. I just can’t get my head round the fact that he was real.”
“He really was,” said Jamie, pride filling his chest. “My great-grandfather worked for him.”
“Are you serious?” asked Matt. “That’s incredible.”
“I know,” said Jamie. “It’s why my family are part of this place. He was Van Helsing’s valet when the Department was founded in 1892, and he was the first person the founders allowed to join them, a couple of years later.”
“That’s crazy,” said Matt, softly.
“I know,” said Jamie, smiling at his friend. “What’s this stuff?” he asked, pointing to heaps of what looked like academic papers.
“Professor Talbot’s research on the DNA differences between humans and vampires,” Matt replied. “The work he’s doing is completely fascinating.”
Jamie stared at the papers. There were hundreds and hundreds of sheets, not counting the multiple volumes of Van Helsing’s journals. “And you’re seriously expected to read all this stuff?” he asked, awed.
“Oh,” said Matt. “I’ve already read them.”
38
VISION QUEST, PART II
CALIENTE, CALIFORNIA, USA YESTERDAY
The man who was calling himself Robert Smith pressed the brake pedal of the jeep, bringing the vehicle to a halt at the side of the highway, churning up a thick cloud of orange dust as it did so. Smith waited for the dust to clear, then looked up at the road sign standing in front of his jeep.
CALIENTE 12
CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT
The green sign looked exactly as it had during his vision in the sweat lodge: the chipped paint around the edges, the dents and scratches where stones had been thrown against it by passing cars, and the shallow indentations made by small-calibre bullets, presumably fired from cars as they roared along this desolate desert highway.
I found it, he thought. It’s real, and I found it.
Smith was coated in dust, his skin as rough as sandpaper where sand had glued itself to the sweat of his body. He had not showered for two days, had barely even slowed the jeep’s progress west. He had taken food when he stopped to fill its tank with petrol, and slept, for three fitful hours, when the lines on the highway had started to blur before his exhausted eyes, sometime around dawn of the second day.
Just after the sign lay the entrance to a dirt road, rutted by the repeated passage of wide, heavy-treaded tyres. It headed straight into the desert. Smith shaded his eyes with his hand and followed the track through the sand until it disappeared, apparently at the horizon. The desert shimmered with rising heat as he put the jeep into drive, and turned on to the road.
The jeep’s suspension howled in protest as the little vehicle bounced and rolled along the track. Smith kept it slow; he did not want to break an axle or puncture a tyre out here in the middle of nowhere; he had not carried a mobile phone for over a year, knowing that it could be used to locate him even if it was turned off in his pocket, and he guessed he was at least a two-hour walk from Caliente, two hours across uneven, unfamiliar terrain beneath the relentless desert sun.
After ten minutes, the road dipped and turned, following the contours of a wide valley with the long-dry bed of a river snaking along its shallow floor. On one side, built on a small plateau, was a small cabin – a square building with wooden walls and a stone chimney, from which a gentle, winding column of white smoke was drifting up into the morning sky, and a white roof that cast a thick band of shadow around the w
alls of the cabin.
Leaning casually against one of the wooden walls, as if he had been waiting for the vehicle to appear over the crest of the valley side, was a man in dusty jeans and a red and white checked shirt. He had an easy smile on his face, and as Smith nosed the jeep down the slope towards him, he checked his watch theatrically, then grinned at the approaching vehicle.
Smith rolled the jeep to a halt, and stepped cautiously out of the car. There was nothing overtly suspicious about the man; yet Smith’s instincts had kept him alive thus far, and he listened to them even when he could see nothing wrong.
“Hello,” said the man, pushing himself away from the wall and extending a hand. “I’m Andy. I knew you were coming. It’s good to see you.”
Smith paused momentarily, but then stepped forward. He had trusted whatever force was guiding him so far, and he knew he had to do so again. So he shook the man’s hand, and told him his name, and accepted when he was invited into the cabin.
Andy’s home was small and neat; a main room that doubled as a living room and a kitchen, with a wood-burning stove, a sink, a sofa and a chest of drawers, the top of which was crowded with photos in frames that looked old. Andy – if that is his name, you don’t know that for certain, not yet – filled a coffee pot from the sink and placed it on the stove. As he did so, Smith asked him how he knew.
“I’m sorry?” asked Andy.
“You knew I was coming,” said Smith. “How did you know that? I didn’t know I was coming until eighteen hours ago.”
Andy grinned at Smith, as he took two mugs down from a shelf and placed them on the chipped coffee table that sat in front of the sofa. “The spirits told me,” he replied.
“Figures,” said Smith.
“Spirits said you were a searcher. Told me I should help you.”
“I’m looking for information.”
“Guessed that much. About anything in particular?”
