by Will Hill
“I wasn’t happy,” she spat, and her eyes suddenly blazed red. “I wasn’t happy at that any more than I was when we decided to lie to her. I’m not happy about any of this.”
“But you did it,” said Jamie. “Whether you were happy about it or not, you still did it.”
“You’re right,” she replied. “I did it. Just like I lied to her for months so you could be sure that you wouldn’t upset poor, fragile little Kate. It doesn’t matter how that made me feel, that you were happy to keep whatever the hell this thing between you and me is a secret. It doesn’t matter that it made me feel like you were ashamed of me. As long as Kate was happy and your conscience was clear, then who gave a damn about me, right?”
Jamie opened his mouth, but no words came out. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she was being unfair, to him and to Kate, but he couldn’t do it.
Because he knew, deep down, she was right.
He was about to say that to her, about to apologise for everything, when the consoles on both their belts buzzed into life.
He swore, and grabbed the device from its loop. Larissa made no move towards hers; instead, she stared at him, incredulity on her face. Jamie hit ACCEPT on his console, and a message glowed on the narrow screen.
G-17/OP_EXT_L2/LIVE_BRIEFING/HA/IM
Briefing in the hangar immediately. Brilliant. Great timing.
Jamie stood up out of his chair, and waited for Larissa to do the same. She didn’t move; she merely stared up at him, her face so pale it was almost translucent.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Are you serious?” she asked, her voice so small it almost broke his heart.
“We can finish this later,” he said. “I know you said we need to talk and I agree with you, more than ever now. I don’t like this any more than you. But we’ve got a job to do. So we have to go.”
She stood up from his bed, slowly, and looked at him, her eyes full of sadness and loss. Then she walked across the room, opened the door and disappeared along the corridor without another word. Jamie stood still for a long moment, trying to process what he was feeling, and was surprised at the conclusion he reached; the feeling, even though he knew it couldn’t be true, that he was never going to see her again.
18
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE
“To the ends of the earth,” said Dracula. “That’s what you once told me. To the ends of the earth. Yet when my blood was spilled by the American and his friends, you were nowhere to be seen, and I lay below the ground for more than a century before you revived me. I would hear your explanation for these crimes, Valeri, and I would hear it now.”
Valeri hesitated. The subject of his master’s defeat at the hands of Van Helsing and his friends was not taboo, but Valeri sought to avoid it where possible, for a simple reason.
He had never forgiven himself for failing his master.
When Dracula’s throat had been laid open to the cold Transylvanian air, Valeri had been in Moscow with Ana. Relations between Dracula and himself had been sour for many months, ever since Vlad had informed the three Rusmanov brothers that he intended to leave eastern Europe for London, where he hoped his boredom might be alleviated and where he believed he might, after centuries alone, consider taking a third wife.
Valeri, who believed in tradition, in the old darkness of the forests and savage emptiness of the plains, thought it obscene. He considered it a profound betrayal of Sofia, his master’s beautiful, fiercely loyal first wife, of whom Valeri had been extremely fond. Sofia had thrown herself from the highest peak of Poenari Castle in 1458, believing the Turks were approaching; she had chosen to die rather than be enslaved by them.
When his master had remarried in 1461, it had been an act of naked politics; Ilona Szilágyi was the cousin of King Matthias of Hungary, who at the time was holding Vlad prisoner in the city of Buda. But this idea of embarking upon a life of modernity in London, of seeking a third marriage based on companionship rather than expediency, had struck Valeri as almost blasphemous. He had moderated his response when his master had explained his intentions, although he had made it clear that he did not approve.
Dracula, in an unusual display of self-restraint, had dismissed his oldest friend without reprimand, and the following morning Valeri and his wife had set out for Moscow, where they would summer with a small group of aristocratic acolytes who regarded Valeri as something close to godlike. He had still been there, enjoying the myriad pleasures of the Moscow night, when word had reached him of the death of his master.
Valeri had immediately made plans to return, and sent word to his brothers. Valentin was indulging himself, as always, somewhere in southern France, but promised to depart immediately. Alexandru, as was often the case, had been impossible to find; the darkest, deepest corners of the world were the natural home of the middle Rusmanov brother, and that was doubtless where he was, immersing himself in the very worst of humanity as his master’s life ebbed away on the Borgo Pass.
Valeri and Valentin had stood beneath Castle Dracula, staring out across the Transylvanian mountains, and drunk a toast to the memory of their fallen lord. The details of his death were inconclusive; the gypsies who had been with him at the last knew little beyond the nationalities of the men who had killed him: an American, whom they were eager to repeatedly point out they had killed while trying to defend Dracula’s coffin, and four Englishmen.
The motive for the murder, beyond the mere fact that their master had been a vampire, was unknown. In the shadow of the towering stone building, the two brothers had sworn to continue upholding the rule that Dracula had made clear to them on the day of their turning: that they would create no new vampires, that their gift was to be kept between the three brothers and their wives. They parted on good terms, pledging to remain in contact with one another.
They saw each other only three times in the following century.
For this, and for many other things, Valeri felt guilt. His failure to search for and acquire his master’s remains, if for no other reason than to have given them a burial befitting a Prince of Wallachia, was a misjudgement that would haunt him always.
The epidemic of vampirism that had swept first through Europe and then the world in the early years of the twentieth century, as the direct result of their failure to live up to the one thing their master had expected of them, was another; he knew the time was coming when Dracula would hold him and his brothers to account for what they had done, and in many ways, he relished the prospect. He would admit his failings, and he would take the punishment that was due to him; he would not beg for mercy, or lie to his master.
“Valeri?” said Dracula. “I asked you for an explanation. Since that seems to be beyond you, why don’t we try a simpler question instead? Do the men who killed me still live?”
The ancient vampire was staring out of the window of Valeri’s study, across the swaying canopy of the pine forest. The distant rustling of the trees in the cold night air sounded as loud to the two vampires as a round of applause.
“No, master,” replied Valeri. “They died. Many years ago.”
“That disappoints me,” replied Dracula, his dark red lips curling into a snarl.
For a long moment, there was silence in the study. Valeri waited patiently, as his master sank into the deep darkness of his memory.
Although he had not been destroyed, Vlad had been dead for more than a century. The collapse of his body had been the same, to all intents and purposes, as the death of a mortal human. His systems had ceased to function, his consciousness had disappeared; the only difference between what had been done to him and what befell every human being in the end was the vampire virus that lurked in the cells of his remains, ready to rebuild him if provided with enough blood.
As a result, the years had passed instantaneously; when his sense of self returned, after Valeri had resurrected him in the pit beneath his family’s chapel, when his memory had returned to him in a moment of exquisite pain, the last thin
g he remembered was the feel of Jonathan Harker’s kukri knife sliding through his throat like butter, and the last thing he remembered seeing was blood, his own precious blood, spraying out on to the frozen Transylvanian ground.
He had no idea what had happened to him since, nor of how much time had passed. When his powers of speech returned, nursed back to health by Valeri’s attentive and regular provision of blood, he had asked his most loyal servant. Valeri’s answer, given in a voice that trembled with nerves, had stunned him.
More than one hundred and twenty years beneath the ground.
It was inconceivable, beyond his comprehension. He had felt his body begin to fail him as a rage as intense as any he had ever known flooded through him, and he had forced himself to be calm, before he began to collapse back into dust.
He had delayed the question he wanted the answer to more than any other, delayed it until he was stronger, until he was something closer to what he had been. He had tolerated Valeri’s long-winded, turgid descriptions of the developments and innovations that had taken place while he had been gone for as long as he was able, biding his time. Today, more than three months after his rebirth, he had summoned his oldest friend, and asked him to explain himself.
Valeri swallowed hard. “Master, you must understand; there was no way for me to know that you could be revived. That didn’t become apparent until many years later, and by then it was too late.”
“Explain.”
“Master, the men who pursued you in 1891 returned to London after committing their crimes, and took up their lives where they had left them. But when there began to occur an outbreak of newly-turned vampires the following year—”
“Do not,” interrupted Dracula, his voice like ice, “make the mistake of thinking that we have finished discussing that subject.”
Valeri felt a cold shard of fear embed itself in his spine.
“I understand, master,” he continued, trying not to show his unease. “As I was saying, when new vampires began to appear in European cities, the four men whom you encountered in London were tasked by the British Prime Minister to form an organisation dedicated to the eradication of our kind. They called it the Department of Supernatural Protection, master, although it is now known as Department 19.”
“Jonathan Harker,” said Dracula, his face twisting with hatred. “John Seward. Albert Holmwood. And Abraham Van Helsing, the most detestable of them all. I remember them all so clearly.”
“And Quincey Morris, master,” said Valeri. “The American who died at the hands of your servants.”
“Morris,” snarled Dracula. He remembered the look on the Texan’s square, handsome face as he plunged his bowie knife into Vlad’s heart, a terrible, awful expression of triumph.
“They remained four men for several years, master,” continued Valeri. “Some time in the late 1890s Van Helsing’s valet, a man named Carpenter, was permitted to join them, and they became five. They destroyed many of our kind, my lord, but they were unable to stem the flow of the newly turned, even with the resources that Holmwood made available to them from the estate of his father. Until after the First World War, when things changed.”
“A world war,” said Dracula, the hunger in his voice plain to hear. “I would have liked to have seen such a thing.”
“It was wonderful, master,” breathed Valeri. “It was unlike anything before or since. More than fifteen million humans died in less than five years. The whole world bled, my lord.”
Dracula gave a low growl of pleasure, and Valeri continued.
“Quincey Harker, the son of the man with whom you once had dealings, was brought into the Department when he returned to Britain in 1919. He immediately set about evolving them into an organisation run on military lines, and expanded the Department aggressively. They began to attack us in a systematic way, master, rather than merely reacting to our presence in their cities. For a time, there was widespread fear among our kind.”
“Fear?” sneered Dracula. “Over a handful of mortal men? What vampires were these, to be so easily frightened?”
“Newly-turned, master. Their powers were barely under their control, and they had no understanding of their strengths or their weaknesses. Hundreds were destroyed, not just by the men of Blacklight. By this time, there were equivalent organisations in a number of other countries.”
“Working together?” asked Dracula.
“Not in the beginning, master. But Harker’s son reached out to them, and tentative alliances were formed, most notably with the Russians. They also began to expand, my lord, rapidly. We had no equivalent, no hierarchy or means of communication. We were routed, master. By the beginning of the Second World War, our numbers had been reduced to mere hundreds; mercifully, we were able to rise again, under the cover of the bombs. Since then, we have increased steadily, master.”
Dracula narrowed his eyes, peering at Valeri. “How is it that you possess so much information regarding these organisations?” he asked.
“My lord, I flatter myself that I know more about them than they do themselves,” said Valeri, forcefully. “If nothing else, I know far more than they could ever imagine I know. Department 19, the American NS9, the Russian SPC, the German FTB and the Chinese PBS6, Brazil, India, South Africa and the rest.”
“There are so many?” asked Dracula, incredulous.
“Yes, master; the whole planet has been carved up in such a way that every square foot is under the jurisdiction of one of the Departments.”
Dracula was silent; he appeared to be deep in contemplation. After a long moment, he instructed Valeri to continue.
“The first Department 19 man I ever captured provided me with the history I have just relayed to you, master. But after a certain amount of persuasion he was able to unwittingly deliver information to me that was of much greater significance; it was he who informed me that there might be a chance to resurrect you, my lord. He had been given access to the journals of Van Helsing, in which the Professor described the results of experiments he had conducted on men and women of our kind; cruel, immoral experiments, master, little more than torture under the pretence of science.
“One of these so-called experiments had involved the regeneration of a vampire who had been burned to no more than ashes, but who was revived with a sufficiently large quantity of blood.
“Upon receiving this information, I immediately returned to our homeland to search for your remains, master. But they were gone, as was the body of Quincey Morris; this was why I knew they had been removed, rather than lost to the elements. I instructed my spy to discover their whereabouts, but he was unable to do so. As were all the men who came after him, in all the Departments of the world; the whereabouts of the remains was the most closely guarded secret on earth. Until Thomas Morris, that is.”
“Was he a spy?” asked Dracula. “Was he loyal to you?”
Valeri smiled. “No, master, he belonged to my late brother; he was nothing to do with my quest to resurrect you, at least not initially. His job was to deliver to Alexandru the whereabouts of the family of the man who killed Ilyana, the descendant of Van Helsing’s valet Carpenter. But Morris was the first descendant that any of us had ever managed to reach, and his position within Blacklight was at the highest level. So Alexandru asked him to search for information I had been hunting for more than eighty years. He delivered it within twenty-four hours.”
“Delivered what?” asked Dracula. There was a note of excitement in his voice, and he craned his weak frame in Valeri’s direction. “What was he able to find?”
“A section of Van Helsing’s journal,” Valeri replied. “Kept separate from the main archive, in which he described his journey to recover your remains from where they had been buried on the Borgo Pass. The journey, the recovery and his betrayal at the hands of an envoy to the Russian Tsar, a man named Bukharin, who transported the remains to Moscow. The journal marks the last time they are mentioned in any context, anywhere in the world, as far as I have been able to
discover, but it proved more than sufficient. Once I knew the Russians were the keepers of the remains, there was only one place they could be hiding them. The place from where I took them, master, the night before you were reborn.”
Valeri beamed with pride at the memory of the attack he had led into the SPC base at Polyarny, but if he was looking for approval, or gratitude from his master, he was to be disappointed. Dracula’s attention was elsewhere; he had returned his gaze to the window, and was deep in thought. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak, but the sudden ringing of Valeri’s mobile phone interrupted him. Valeri pulled it free, saw the name on the screen, laughed and looked over at his master. Dracula nodded his permission, and Valeri answered the phone.
He opened his mouth, but the voice on the other end of the line spoke first, and Valeri froze; his open mouth widened, and his eyes flooded a red so intense it seemed as though the eyeballs themselves must surely burst into flames. He listened, for almost a minute, then slowly lowered the phone from his ear. There was a moment of silence, before Valeri let out a deafening roar of anger that shook the foundations of the house, and hurled the phone against the wall, where it exploded into a thousand tiny fragments of metal and plastic.
“Speak to me, Valeri,” commanded Dracula. “What news, that would anger you so?”
Valeri turned to face his master, his face twisted with hate, his eyes blazing in their sockets.
“Master,” he said, his voice so full of fury that the word was barely more than a grunt. “I have to tell you something that is going to be difficult for you to hear.”
19
AT THE CROSSROADS AT MIDNIGHT
NINETY MINUTES EARLIER
“What did the briefing say?” asked Jamie Carpenter.
