by Will Hill
“When did you get so fast?” asked Kate, breathlessly.
“Later,” said Larissa. “If there is one.”
There was a thundering noise behind them, audible even above the howl of the general alarm, and then the doors at the rear of the hangar burst open, and black shapes poured into the wide-open space. An intense din of shouted orders and the metallic hammering of loading weapons filled the air, and then Admiral Seward was beside the two girls, staring out at the oncoming vampires, a look of utter horror on his face.
“Report!” he yelled. “Where the hell did they come from?”
“Out of the trees, sir!” shouted Kate. “On the far side of the Loop.”
Paul Turner skidded to a halt beside his Director, a Russian Daybreaker in his hands. “Why didn’t Surveillance pick them up?” he demanded. “How did they get so close without us knowing?”
“They must have come in below the radar,” replied Seward. “Stayed on the ground until they got to the fence.”
“The sensor arrays,” said Turner, his voice as blank as always. “In the woods. There’s no way through them unless—”
“Unless you know the way,” finished Seward, his eyes never leaving the slowly approaching army. “Unless someone gives you the maps.”
There was a moment of silence, as they all considered the implications of Admiral Seward’s words. Then a voice bellowed from behind them, and they turned towards it.
It was Cal Holmwood who had shouted. He was standing to attention, his jaw set, a look of formidable determination on his face. To his left and right, stretching to the very edges of the hangar, stood the entire roster of Department 19: almost two hundred black-clad figures, bristling with as much weaponry as they could carry. Every one of them was staring at their Director, who felt his heart surge with pride as he saw the absence of fear on their faces.
“Weapons free,” Seward barked. “No quarter, no mercy. We fight to the last. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” boomed the Operators, with one voice.
Seward turned back to the open hangar, and watched the vampires slide gently to the ground, two hundred metres away.
Valeri Rusmanov looked at the assembled ranks of Blacklight, and stifled a laugh.
“We outnumber them,” he said, softly. “This will be the work of minutes.”
He felt an incredible sense of nostalgia sweep through him. This was how battles had been fought in his day, before laser-guided cruise missiles, before remote Predator drones and pinhole satellites; two lines of soldiers on the opposite sides of a field, until death or surrender.
It was almost always death.
But because he lacked the sadism of his late brother, or the appetite for chaos of his master, Valeri would at least offer them the alternative.
“Henry Seward!” he shouted, his voice rumbling and echoing across the open space between the two armies. “You know me, and who I stand for. Submit both yourself and my brother to me, willingly, and I will make the deaths of your men quick. This is the only offer I will make.”
Kate gripped her Director’s arm, tightly. Admiral Seward looked down at it, a look of surprise on his face, then smiled at her. He turned back towards the vampires, opened his mouth to reply, but was beaten to it.
“We reject your offer, Valeri!” shouted Paul Turner, his usually expressionless face raging with pure anger. “It is as worthless as you and your master.”
“So be it!” shouted Valeri. “By all means, have it your way.”
“When they come,” said Seward, loudly, “move out to meet them. We’ll engage them in the open.”
“Inside the hangar their speed will not help them as much,” said Turner, in a low voice. “We should let them come.”
Seward looked at his Security Officer. “It will not be enough,” he said, softly. “Our only chance lies out there.”
“With what, sir?” asked Turner.
Seward didn’t respond; instead, he pulled a small metal screen from his belt, and placed his thumb in the middle of a black panel. The panel powered up, and a ten-digit number display appeared. Seward quickly typed in a long series of numbers, and waited; after a long moment, the panel turned red, and the word ARMING appeared in the middle. Beneath it, a counter began to run down from four minutes, the seconds and milliseconds rolling back in a red blur.
Then Valeri’s vampire army burst forward, a pulsating mass of red eyes and violent lust, and the time for talking was over.
“Go,” bellowed Admiral Seward, and the Operators of Department 19 sprinted forward. There was no cheer, no battle cry, just the drumming of boots on concrete, and the flat crackle of gunfire.
Paul Turner led the charge; he sprinted out on to the black tarmac of the landing area that lay before the hangar, and lifted his Daybreaker to his shoulder. The heavy Russian weapon was not standard issue for Blacklight Operators; it had been deemed by the Chief of the General Staff to be nothing more than a portable war crime, and too unsafe for general use. It was, however, remarkably effective.
Turner rapid-fired the weapon, rolling with the recoil that forced his shoulder back each time he pulled the trigger. The sticky charges whined through the air and attached themselves to six of the oncoming vampires; the Security Officer’s aim was unerring. With a series of revolting crunches, the pneumatic charges on the rounds fired, and the vampires screamed in pain as the explosive cores punched through their flesh and into their bodies. A second later the charges fired, and the six vampires exploded like fireworks, huge sprays of blood thumping into the night sky and falling to the ground like rain.
Turner didn’t even wait to see the results of his shots; he trusted his own abilities completely, and by the time the explosives had detonated he had pulled the T-Bone from his belt and sent its metal stake whistling through the heart of an onrushing vampire woman. She burst with an audible pop, spraying her contents across the tarmac. As the stake wound itself back into the T-Bone’s barrel, Turner drew his MP5 and fired it into the tight mass of vampires, sending blood spilling into the air as he ran to his left, seeking the flank of the vampire army.
Kate Randall paused for a moment, despite herself, and watched the former SAS Sergeant go to work. Paul Turner was a legend in Blacklight, but she had never seen him fight. His role as the Security Officer kept him almost permanently at the Loop, and seeing him unleashed was a sight to behold; he was nothing less than a killing machine, a calm, precise instrument of death. She watched him run to the far end of the landing area, then returned her attention to the battle.
The vampire army cannoned into the Operators like a tsunami, spilling them left and right, splintering their line almost instantly. They descended on them like birds of prey, dropping from the air to rend flesh and spill blood. Kate was suddenly inside the chaos; around her black figures fired weapons, and blurred shapes swooped and dived.
She ducked her head and ran forward, her T-Bone in her hands. Ahead of her, a vampire man in his early twenties hauled an Operator she recognised from the dining hall into the air, then sent him crashing back down to the tarmac. She heard the dry snap of breaking bones, and sprinted forward as the vampire leant over the stricken man, his mouth wide open, his eyes glowing red.
She raised her T-Bone as she ran, and pulled the trigger when she was within range. The stake whistled through the cool evening air, and crunched through the vampire’s armpit. He threw back his head and howled in pain, before the injured Operator raised his remaining working arm and hammered his stake into its heart. It erupted in a column of foul-smelling blood as the metal stake thumped back into the barrel of Kate’s weapon, and she skidded to the floor beside the wounded man.
His right arm and leg were broken, she saw instantly; open fractures had sent jagged splinters of bone through his skin and out through the material of his uniform. She was about to tell him he was going to be all right when he suddenly slid away across the tarmac, screaming in pain as his broken limbs thudded against the ground.
/> Kate jumped to her feet, and saw a vampire woman dragging the Operator away by his ankles. Kate screamed for her to stop, and raised her T-Bone to her shoulder, but before she could pull the trigger, the vampire pirouetted off the ground, holding the screaming Operator like a rag doll, spun in a full circle and hurled the flailing man into the air. He disappeared into the twilight, and out of sight.
Kate fired her weapon, but the vampire skipped out of the way, and grinned at her. She felt for her stake, but the vampire turned and disappeared towards the hangar, leaving her on the edge of the battle. Then she heard a distant thud, and nausea swept through her as she realised what had made it. She swallowed it down, and threw herself back into the fight.
Larissa leapt into the air as soon as the vampires moved, and shot forward to meet them. She felt an anger burning inside her that was stronger than she had ever felt before; she was outraged at the sheer brazenness of Valeri’s attack, and she was beyond furious that he would dare to endanger her friends.
She cut through the first wave of vampires like a knife through butter, her arms wide, her razor-sharp fingernails slicing through flesh and sending blood splashing to the tarmac below. A vampire man in his fifties growled, and changed his course towards her; she waited until he was about to grab for her throat with his gnarled hands, then at the last possible second she flipped up and over him, moving through the air as though she was weightless.
The vampire’s hands grabbed at nothing, and then Larissa was behind him, one hand tearing out his throat in a shocking explosion of scarlet arterial blood, the other punching through his ribs from the rear and destroying his beating heart. The vampire barely had time to realise what had happened before he exploded, splattering to the ground in a splash of crimson.
Larissa easily ducked beneath the outstretched arms of a vampire who had thrown himself towards her from behind, and drew her T-Bone almost lazily. She fired it from her hip, and watched with satisfaction as it thudded through the vampire’s solar plexus, destroying him instantly. She spun in the air, surveying the battle, and then swooped down to join it.
Admiral Henry Seward looked around with rising horror at what was unfolding on the wide landing area which had become a battlefield. His Operators were fighting with all the skill and bravery he expected, but there were simply too many vampires for them to deal with.
The tarmac was strewn with the bodies of his friends and colleagues. He lifted his T-Bone and punctured the chest of a vampire who dropped from the sky in front of him, and felt savage enjoyment at the look of enormous surprise on its face as it burst into a shower of gore. He pulled the small metal panel from his belt, and checked its read-out.
2:36…
2:35…
2:34…
Not fast enough, he thought. Nowhere near fast enough.
He replaced the panel in its pouch on his belt, and ran forward through the chaos, looking for Valeri Rusmanov.
Shaun Turner saw Kate through a momentary gap in the carnage, and ran to her side. He grabbed her arm, and she spun round, raising her metal stake in her hand. He caught it before she had time to plant it in his chest, and pulled her towards the runway.
“This way!” he yelled. “We have to spread out.”
She nodded, then ran with him, ducking and weaving between snarling vampires and black-clad Operators. Around them the battle raged; the rattle of gunfire and the deafening bangs of T-Bones and Daybreakers merged with screams of pain, and roars of guttural lust as the vampires attacked, again and again. Something thudded to the ground to her left, and she glanced at it as they ran. She immediately wished she hadn’t; lying on the tarmac was the ruined torso of an Operator, her arms and legs missing, her face a frozen mask of unutterable pain.
They hit the edge of the runway, and Shaun threw her one of the two Daybreakers he was carrying. She had never fired the heavy weapon before, but that didn’t worry her; what worried her was what was being done to her fellow Operators. At the runway’s edge, removed from the epicentre of the battle, she and Shaun dropped to one knee, and began to fire round after round into the swirling, swooping mass of vampires.
Valeri hung in the air above the carnage his army was inflicting, and waited for his victory.
Although the resistance from the Blacklight men and women had been far fiercer than he had expected, causing him to have already lost a greater number of his soldiers than he had allowed for, it was still only a matter of time. For every vampire the black figures destroyed, they lost at least one of their own number. Already the Blacklight force had been reduced by a quarter, possibly more; within minutes, sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm them, and then Valeri’s mission would be accomplished.
He was floating lazily back and forth above the battle, searching for his prize; he saw no need to involve himself in the fighting, and instead was devoting himself to the capture of Admiral Seward. It was difficult; the plain black uniforms made every Operator look alike, preventing Valeri from getting an accurate lock on his quarry. He rotated slowly, and then stopped; there was still no sign of Admiral Seward, but his sharp eyes picked out something else that interested him. He began to descend, slowly, towards his unsuspecting target.
Larissa sprinted across the tarmac, faster than human eyes could see, and with a single swipe of her hand, tore off the head of a teenage vampire boy who was about to sink his fangs into Cal Holmwood’s neck. She had seen the vampire creep up behind the Colonel, who had just staked an enormously obese vampire woman; she had burst into what seemed like enough blood to fill a swimming pool. He had been distracted, for the briefest of moments, by the eruption of gore in front of him, and the teenage vampire had seen his chance.
But Larissa, who could now move with a speed that frightened even her, had been too quick for him; his head was still bouncing away along the runway when she plunged her stake into his headless body, destroying him. Colonel Holmwood didn’t even thank her; he just nodded briefly, and ran back into the battle. Larissa watched him go, and then something crashed into the back of her neck so hard that she cracked the tarmac of the runway as she hit it, face down.
For a second, she lay still, unable to move.
The impact felt like someone had dropped a car on the back of her head; she had never felt anything like it, not even during the beating she had suffered at the hands of Alexandru, the beating that had almost killed her. She heard an involuntary groan emerge from her mouth, and she slowly rolled over on to her back.
Standing over her, his face completely expressionless, was Valeri Rusmanov.
The second oldest vampire in the world was huge, almost as broad as he was tall, his enormous frame hidden beneath a thick grey greatcoat. He peered down at her, his face wrinkled with distaste.
“You are the traitor they speak about,” he said. It was not a question. “You are the one they are scared of, the one who helped to kill my brother. And yet you lie before me after a single blow. How disappointing.”
He leant down, and then his fist hammered towards her face, as quick as a lightning bolt. Larissa flung herself to the side, and heard the crunch of rubble as the runway exploded under the impact. She forced herself to her feet, trying not to show him how much the blow to the back of her neck had taken out of her.
“Better,” he grunted. “Dying on your back is for old men; dying on your feet is for soldiers.”
He lunged forward, swinging one of his tree-trunk arms; she ducked underneath it, and circled to her right. He laughed, a loud grunt that sounded more animal than human, and came for her again. She skipped out of his reach, and lunged, thrusting her fingers towards his eyes, hoping to blind him; he moved his head impossibly quickly for a creature of his size, then almost casually curled his hand round her wrist, and snapped it.
A thunderclap of pain shot up Larissa’s arm, and she cried out, her head thrown back. Valeri swung his other fist with the slow inevitability of a wrecking ball, and crunched it into her stomach. Every single molecule of air w
as driven out of her lungs by the punch, and her eyes widened as she realised she couldn’t breathe.
Valeri drew her close, and looked carefully at her, like a scientist examining an interesting specimen. With a gargantuan effort, she forced her screaming lungs to inhale, and pulled sickly sweet air in through her nose and mouth. The pain in her wrist was still huge, bright red and throbbing, and as she struggled weakly in his grip, she watched his fangs slide slowly down from above his upper lip.
He smiled narrowly at her, then suddenly dipped her at the waist, like a ballroom dancer finishing a routine. She hung in his grasp, powerless to resist; as he slowly lowered his huge fangs towards her throat, Larissa turned her face away from the burning coals of the ancient vampire’s eyes, and waited for the inevitable.
“Valeri!”
The single word boomed out across the wide-open space of the Loop, and Larissa jerked her head back around. At the sound of his name, Valeri looked up, and Larissa watched his face contort into the purest depiction of hatred she had ever seen on the face of a living creature; she twisted in his grip, craning her neck towards the source of his venom.
Valentin Rusmanov strode across the tarmac towards them, his face twisted into a smile of pure violence. As he walked, he shrugged his suit jacket from his shoulders, letting it fall to the ground, and rolled his sleeves past his elbows. Around him, the fighting ceased; everyone, human or vampire, stopped to watch the third oldest vampire in the world make his entrance.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own age, brother?” he snarled.
Valeri’s answering growl shook the ground beneath Larissa’s feet, and then he dropped her, as though she was nothing. She hit the ground hard, and scrambled backwards away from him, her wrist flaring with pain every time it touched the cool tarmac of the runway.
Valentin strode towards his brother, four hundred years of hatred burning in his heart. A vampire woman in her twenties ran at him as he walked through the bloody carnage of the battlefield, her teeth bared, her arms outstretched. Without even a glance in her direction, Valentin swung his right arm, so fast that it was nothing more than a blur, and connected with the vampire woman’s head. It disintegrated into a fine spray of blood and bone, leaving the body to take several faltering steps before it crashed to the ground.
