Department 19, The Rising, and Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  “It might be wise for you to remember that you are a guest in this facility,” said Turner, his voice low. “And that I do not have infinite patience.”

  “Then destroy me, by all means,” said Valentin, spreading his arms wide and pushing his chest forward. “Then go and explain to dear old Mr Holmwood that you did it because the nasty vampire was rude to you. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  Turner didn’t reply, but a narrow smile emerged on his face, and his gaze didn’t leave Valentin’s.

  If the time ever comes when we don’t need him any more, thought Kate, Valentin will regret some of the things he’s said. Paul isn’t going to forget them, I know that much.

  “It didn’t seem like something you would do,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t think you did it.”

  “Explain,” said Valentin.

  “I thought exactly the same thing Major Turner did. If you were here on false pretences, if you were still working for Dracula, I thought you would have probably done something a lot worse than planting two bombs. And…”

  “Go on,” said Valentin, his smile wide and unsettling. “Please.”

  “It didn’t seem like your style,” said Kate. “Booby traps and home-made bombs. I suppose I felt you would consider that sort of thing beneath you.”

  Valentin’s smile broadened into a grin. “Very good, Miss Randall,” he said. “Very good indeed. You are quite the insightful little thing, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kate. “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “Oh, but of course you have,” said Valentin. “Everyone constantly thinks about themselves. We think about what we’re good at, and what we’re bad at, and we compare ourselves endlessly to those around us. You, for example. Do you think of yourself as the great Jamie Carpenter’s faithful sidekick? Of course you don’t, even though that is how the rest of the world sees you. You see yourself as an intelligent, insightful girl, cleverer than most, and you resent the fact that you are forced to live in Mr Carpenter’s shadow. Or am I wrong?”

  “That’s enough,” said Turner. He cast a glance in her direction, a look she instantly understood.

  Don’t give him what he wants.

  “Did I offend you?” asked Valentin, his voice dripping with insincerity. “If so, forgive me. It was not my intention.”

  “Yes, it was,” said Kate. “But that’s OK. And you’re right about some things, Mr Rusmanov. I guess that when you’ve lived a life as long as yours you become pretty good at reading people. But you’re wrong about Jamie. I don’t resent him and I’m proud to be his friend. And I really don’t care whether you believe that or not.”

  “I do believe you,” said Valentin, softly. “And I know he feels the same about you.”

  Kate knew she was doing exactly what she wasn’t supposed to by letting Valentin draw her into a conversation about herself and her friends. He was interested only in pushing her buttons, in eliciting the reactions he was looking for; it was nothing more than a game to him, a cruel entertainment.

  “Did he tell you that?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

  “Indirectly,” replied Valentin. “His mother was kind enough to pass the information on.”

  Kate frowned. “When did you talk to Marie?”

  “Oh, I drop in on her every now and then,” said Valentin. “I am somewhat starved of company downstairs, and it turns out that Mrs Carpenter loves few things more than a pot of tea and a civilised conversation. She and I have become rather close as a result.”

  “If you hurt her,” said Turner, his voice like polar ice, “if you upset her, or scare her, or in any way attempt to manipulate her, I will kill you, and I promise you that Cal Holmwood will not say a word. She is not part of this.”

  “Part of what?” asked Valentin, in a low voice.

  “Of what we do. She’s a civilian. She’s innocent.”

  “Your opinion of me really cannot be rehabilitated, can it?” said Valentin. “Major Turner, you are aware that I made a promise a long time ago not to hurt any member of the Carpenter family, although I feel the need to point out that there is precisely nothing you could do about it if I changed my mind. I enjoy Marie’s company and I know the feeling is mutual. I have done nothing more than attempt to teach her about what she has become and offer her a shoulder to cry on when she is worried about her son. I am still capable of emotion, Major Turner, and of associating with humans without the desire to torture and kill them. I am not the monster you think I am.”

  “No,” said Turner. “You’re worse. You hide your cruelty behind a mask of friendship. A convincing mask, at that. But still just a mask.”

  “I would not presume to try and change your mind, Major Turner,” said Valentin. “You will believe what you believe.”

  “You’re right,” said Turner. “I will.”

  “Very well. In which case, let us leave Major Turner’s beliefs where they are and return to the matter in hand,” said Valentin, smiling broadly at Kate. “I know that Jamie is proud to be your friend because you are a subject which endlessly delights his mother. Marie practically falls over herself to tell me how fond of you she is. She also has a tendency to tell me things she has kept from Jamie, things that—”

  “Don’t,” said Kate.

  “Don’t what?” enquired Valentin.

  “Don’t try to play games with me. I don’t need to know what Marie has told you.”

  “If I was attempting to play games with you,” said Valentin, pleasantly, “I would have told you how much Marie hates your friend Larissa, and how fervently she hopes her son will come to his senses and fall hopelessly in love with you. But I didn’t tell you that, did I?” Then the ancient vampire’s smile disappeared and, for the briefest of moments, a flicker of red flared in the furthest corners of his eyes. “Oh dear,” he said, softly. “Now that was careless of me.”

  A chill ran up Kate’s spine, then spread slowly through her entire body.

  I didn’t want to know that. I really didn’t.

  “Mr Rusmanov,” growled Paul Turner. “This interview is over. Thank you very much for your time.”

  “So soon?” sighed Valentin. “I was just starting to enjoy myself.”

  “You don’t know Jamie,” spat Kate. “You don’t know anything about him, or me, or Larissa. You don’t know anything.”

  “Lieutenant Randall,” said Turner, fixing her with an ominous stare.

  “You don’t care about anything,” she continued. “You’re only here because you don’t like the idea of having to do what Dracula tells you, but you’re too scared to face him on your own. You’re just a coward.”

  “Kate—”

  “You’re clever, and you’ve been around forever, and you think it’s fun to screw with people, to tell them things and see what happens. But it’s not fun. It’s pathetic. Jamie goes out there every day trying to stop the darkness from taking over and what do you do? You sit in your cell and you think up little schemes and tricks and pat yourself on the back for being so clever. You’re nothing. I know it, you know it, and Jamie knows it.”

  Valentin frowned for a moment, before his eyes widened and he burst out laughing, a high, feminine sound that raised the hairs on the back of Kate’s neck. “Oh dear,” he said. “I honestly believed you knew. But you don’t, do you? Neither of you do.”

  “Know what?” asked Paul Turner.

  “Mr Carpenter has made rather a habit of spending time with me in my cell,” said Valentin. “I assumed he was doing so with permission, but now I see that I was wrong. How awkward.”

  Kate stared at the ancient vampire. “You’re lying,” she said.

  “I’m sure you think so,” said Valentin. “But I’m equally sure that a clever girl like you can see that there’s a very easy way for you to check. Ask him yourself, the next time you see him. Ask the friend that you clearly know so, so very well. But don’t be surprised if you don’t like what he tells you.”

  Major Tur
ner stood up, his chair scraping across the floor with a noise like nails down a blackboard.

  “For the last time,” he said, his voice low and full of fury, “this interview is over. Operators, take Mr Rusmanov back to his cell. If he speaks, or so much as breathes in a way that you don’t like, you have my direct permission to destroy him where he stands. Now get him out of my sight.”

  40

  PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

  Pete Randall read Kevin McKenna’s post, read it again, then read it a third time. His heart pounded in his chest as his brain screamed for him to be careful, to think it through, to not walk blindly into a trap.

  He googled McKenna and immediately breathed a sigh of relief. The man was clearly real; the range of articles by and about him was too voluminous to have been faked. But there was also nothing to suggest that he would write such a post; he was not an investigative journalist, the kind who seeks to trap corrupt politicians and financial fraudsters, and he appeared to have done nothing of note for many years.

  He knows, though. Somehow, he knows. And he’s saying so, in public.

  Pete sat with his laptop on his knees, paralysed by the thought of what to do next. What he wanted to do was click on the comments box at the bottom of McKenna’s post and start spilling his broken heart out on to the screen.

  But he didn’t.

  South will know. I’ll ask him what to do.

  He started typing a text message, then paused as the man’s number glowed on the screen. He stared at it, then gently pressed the tip of his finger against it.

  The phone rang and rang, and Pete’s heart sank.

  Of course he won’t answer. He’s not that stupid. I bet he doesn’t even have voicemail.

  “North?”

  Pete almost dropped the phone. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s me.”

  “What are you playing at, mate?” asked South. He sounded angry. “We didn’t agree to this. Mobiles are the easiest thing in the world to trace, you know that.”

  “I know,” said Pete. “I’m sorry, I just… I can’t believe that post. I don’t know what to do about it and I needed to talk to someone.”

  There was a pause.

  “It’s OK,” said South, his tone of voice fractionally warmer. “Don’t worry about it. So you read it?”

  “Yeah,” replied Pete. “I can’t quite believe it. Do you think it’s legit?”

  “I think so,” said South. “I’m not sure, but I think so. I’ve been turning it over and over, and I can’t see why the government would do this. I’m assuming that they’ve got us, and anyone else like us, under surveillance, so what would be the point? To try and trick us into talking about what we know? To get us out into the open? Why bother? If they’ve decided we’re a potential problem, why not just make us disappear?”

  A chill rattled up Pete’s spine. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

  “If it is real,” said South, “then the balls on this guy…”

  There was silence for a long moment.

  “So what do we do?” asked Pete, eventually. “I mean, my first instinct is to tell him what happened to me and my daughter. What are you thinking?”

  “The same,” said South. “I was just checking through what I wrote for the other site. I’m going to post it as soon as I’m done.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Pete. “That it’s the right thing to do?”

  “I don’t know,” replied South, the heat returning to his voice. “And to be honest with you, mate, I don’t give a shit. If I post it and they catch me and throw me in some cell somewhere, or put a bullet in the back of my head, then so be it. There’s nothing left they can take from me. So, if this guy is going to try and do something, then I want to at least try and help him. Don’t you?”

  Two hours later, a long way from Lindisfarne, Kevin McKenna sipped a can of lager while Albert Harker read over his shoulder, his fangs visible beneath a top lip that was curled into a wide grin of pleasure.

  The journalist and the vampire were huddled round McKenna’s laptop in an anonymous room in a chain hotel in the west London suburbs. They had left his house in Kilburn less than an hour after the blog post went live, Harker in the clothes he was wearing, McKenna with a sports bag full of hastily gathered clothes, notebooks, pens and toiletries. He had no way of knowing whether the vampire was right, that Blacklight would come for him when they saw the blog, but he had found himself unwilling to take the chance.

  “Wonderful,” said the vampire. “Just wonderful. Less than six hours and already we have two highly detailed eyewitness accounts of both vampires and Blacklight. I could not have hoped for better.”

  McKenna nodded as Harker floated across the room and picked up a steaming mug of coffee. He had been astonished to see the stories appear beneath his blog, stories that were full of helicopters and soldiers and death and blood, but were nonetheless horribly, compellingly convincing. He was trying to stay calm, to not get too carried away, but was not completely succeeding.

  If this is all true, he thought, then he’s right. This is the story of the century.

  “So what now?” he asked, carefully. “We’ve got two people who say they saw vampires, and one who saw the men you told me about. It’s a start, but it’s only two people.”

  Harker sipped his coffee. “There’ll be more,” he said. “A lot more, I suspect. As for what now, you need to get to work.”

  “On what?”

  Harker smiled. “Your finest hour, my dear Mr McKenna.”

  41

  UNDERCURRENTS

  “I’m sorry,” said Kate. “I let you down.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Paul Turner. “You were provoked by someone who has been manipulating people for more than four centuries. You stood up to him, and for your friends.”

  “But that’s what he wanted,” said Kate.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Turner. “You should still be proud of yourself.”

  They were sitting in the ISAT lounge, Kate on the sofa and Paul in the plastic desk chair. Kate was so furious with herself for having risen to Valentin’s bait that she was physically shaking; she had tried to drink a glass of water to calm herself down, but had spilled most of it on the carpeted floor. She had been expecting her boss to be every bit as angry with her as she was with herself; as a result, part of her was almost disappointed by his response.

  “You told me not to let him inside my head,” she said. “You said those exact words.”

  “I know what I said,” replied Turner. “And I wish you hadn’t. But I don’t believe he can use anything you said against you, or us. I imagine attempting to upset you amused him.”

  “He succeeded,” said Kate.

  “So I could see,” said Turner. The sight of his colleague shouting at one of the oldest vampires in the world had warmed his heart considerably; it had been all he could do to stop himself grinning like an idiot.

  Kate managed a small smile. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “The things he said about Jamie and Marie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Turner. “Jamie’s Zero Hour cleared, so I don’t think he’s breaking any regulations by visiting Valentin. But if it’s happened more than once, if it’s become some kind of regular thing, then it will have to stop. As for Marie, I don’t really see what I can do about that. We can’t put her anywhere else, and Valentin can go through the UV barriers at will.”

  “You don’t think he’d hurt her, do you?” asked Kate.

  “I don’t know,” said Turner. “I hope not. But there isn’t much I consider beyond Valentin Rusmanov, if the wrong mood were to take him.”

  “Don’t tell Jamie that,” said Kate. “He’s got enough to worry about.”

  “We all have,” said Turner. “But I won’t concern him with something we can’t do anything about.”

  “I can’t believe he’s been going to see Valentin,” she said, in a low voice. “If he needed to talk to someone, why not me or Matt? Or his mum? Or Colon
el Frankenstein, for that matter?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Turner. “Maybe he wanted to know more about his family. Valentin knew his grandfather, maybe that’s what they talk about.”

  “Frankenstein knew John Carpenter,” said Kate. “Why not talk to him?”

  The Security Officer didn’t answer and she found herself suddenly, painfully angry; despite the promise she, Larissa, Matt and Jamie had made to each other months earlier, the world was still riddled with secrets, with lies and hidden motives.

  Paul Turner’s console beeped into life. He pulled the plastic square from his belt and checked it. As Kate watched, his eyes widened momentarily, before his face brightened into a smile.

  “Natalia Lenski is awake,” he said. “No permanent physical damage, no memory loss. Excellent.”

  “Good news,” said Kate, feeling her anger subside as the weight of her guilt over what had happened to the young Russian girl was lifted from her shoulders. “That’s really good.”

  “Agreed,” said Turner, getting up from his chair. “I need to send a Security Division team down to question her. We’ll push the next interview back an hour. Go and get a coffee, forget about Valentin Rusmanov, and come back ready to work. OK?”

  “Paul,” she said. He paused, his hand resting on the door handle, and turned back to look at her.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think you could do me a small favour?”

  Kate and Matt walked quickly along the Level C corridor towards the infirmary.

  Paul Turner had not been thrilled by her request to let Matt see Natalia before she was officially interviewed, but had agreed after only a small amount of pleading; he understood why it was important to her, and why it would be to her friend. She had thanked him and immediately messaged Matt. Ordinarily, she would not have expected a reply: Jamie, Larissa and herself had all become accustomed to Matt being extremely difficult to get hold of. But in this case, she had not been surprised to receive a message from him less than a minute after she pressed SEND, agreeing to meet her at the Level C lift.