Darkest Night

by Will Hill

  He is important, he thought. Whoever he is. He is in command.

  Qiang checked his surroundings, then bolted from cover. He ran away from the battle in a low crouch, circling up and round the side of the hill, past the half-burnt ruins of a hotel, and down into what had once been Carcassonne’s moat. He crept forward across the grass, keeping to the deep shadows at the base of the towering walls, and looked up at the drawbridge; the vampire commander’s attention was focused entirely on the battle, and, as Qiang got nearer, he spoke to one of the vampires surrounding him in rapid Spanish.

  The Chinese Operator stopped and raised his T-Bone, steadying the vampire’s chest in the centre of its sights.

  He took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.

  Osvaldo was so focused on the battle that when he heard a bang and saw something hurtling towards him out of the corner of his eye, he was almost fatally slow to react.

  His eyes flared as he turned his head away, his hand coming up automatically to protect himself. Something hot and sharp splattered the hand to pieces, sending severed fingers flying into the dark night air, and tore along the side of his head. His right ear was ripped off and spun away in front of him, before a metal stake followed it, trailing a gleaming wire and taking most of his cheek with it. Blood sprayed into the air as his intact hand flailed for the speeding wire and took hold of it. He yanked the wire with all his strength as the pain hit him; he tipped back his head and screamed, his eyes blazing with crimson fire. From down in the moat, a dark shape was jerked into the air, its limbs flailing, and crashed down on to the wooden boards of the drawbridge.

  The soldier’s helmet flew off as he hit the ground, and Osvaldo saw an infuriating lack of fear in the man’s eyes; he saw determination, and something close to resignation, but that was all. Osvaldo’s head was full of fire, and his hand felt like it had been soaked in acid; he raised it to his face, saw the spurting stumps where his fingers had been, and felt bright, savage rage. As his guards, who had been unforgivably slow to respond to the attack, turned towards him with wide eyes, he leapt on the soldier and took hold of his head. The man kicked and fought, until Osvaldo hammered his head down on the wooden planks with a sound like a cracking egg, and the man’s eyes rolled white. He slammed it down again, and again, a howl of pain and fury erupting from his mouth, until all he was holding in his one good hand was blood and limp flesh. He staggered to his feet, his guards staring at him, and licked the blood from his hand; the pain receded, and he looked hungrily down at the mess that was left of the soldier.

  No, he told himself. It would not be proper. Control yourself.

  “Blood,” he growled. “Bring me blood. Now.”

  One of the guards nodded, and raced away into the city. Osvaldo took a deep breath, and turned his gaze back to the raging battle; the blackened ground was now so littered with corpses and soaked with blood that it was rapidly becoming a swamp. He took a deep breath, lifted his radio from his belt, and pressed the SEND button.

  “Now, my lord?” he asked.

  “No,” came Dracula’s voice. “Not yet. I will tell you when it is time.”

  Julian ducked as a vampire soared over his head, reloaded his MP5, and ran forward with the submachine gun set against his shoulder.

  The battle around him was raging chaos, but he felt no fear. His professional instincts, which he had feared lost during his years of inaction, had burst to the fore and taken over; to Julian, it suddenly felt like the time since his false death – the awful, wasted time – had passed in a heartbeat.

  He sighted down the MP5’s barrel and fired into a cluster of vampires descending from the dark sky. They scattered, snarling and hissing, but one wasn’t fast enough; a bullet took him above his left eye and ripped off the top of his head. The glow in the vampire’s eyes disappeared as he fell to the ground, blood and brain oozing from the gaping crater in his skull. Julian drew his stake, and was about to plunge it into the stricken man’s heart when a dark figure raced across the blasted landscape and beat him to it. The vampire burst, and the Operator turned towards him, visor raised, a wild grin on his face, his eyes glowing with red fire.

  Julian stopped dead, panic rushing through him.

  It was Jack Williams, one of the many men and women who had joined Blacklight during the period in which Julian had been one of the Department’s senior Operators, and one of the relatively small number of combatants who would undoubtedly recognise him. His gloved hand rose involuntarily to his visor, checking that his face was still hidden, and touched smooth plastic.

  “Good shooting!” shouted Jack. “Come on.”

  Julian nodded, and followed his former colleague down into a broken concrete trench. They scrambled up a pile of rubble at the other end of the valley, and emerged behind a trio of vampires backing away from an advancing line of Operators. Jack’s stake was still in his hand, and Julian drew his own.

  In the moment before they leapt forward and plunged their stakes into the backs of the retreating vampires, his mind turned to his son, who was even younger than Jack, and even more inexperienced, despite the astonishing things he had done in his brief Blacklight career.

  Please let him be OK, thought Julian. That’s all I ask. Just let him be OK.

  Jamie’s eyes opened as a boot stamped down towards his chest.

  His head was spinning and his limbs felt like lead, but he managed to bring a hand up and deflect the foot; it crunched against his shoulder, sending a bolt of agony through his body. The pain galvanised him, and as the vampire stumbled, his balance momentarily compromised, Jamie rolled to the side and pushed the man’s leg as hard as he could. The vampire toppled to the ground as Jamie got to his feet, a low growl rumbling from his throat. The vampire stood up and stared at him, his glowing eyes flicking to the weapons on his belt. Jamie took a step forward, letting his hand go to the grip of his T-Bone, hoping that the threat appeared convincing; his legs felt unsteady beneath him, and he thought he might be about to throw up.

  The vampire hissed, and took a step backwards. The road they were standing in was narrow, and Jamie moved to one side, trying to show his enemy an escape route: a crossroads barely ten metres behind him, wreathed in deep shadow. The vampire backed further away, his eyes smouldering. Jamie took another step, willing the man to retreat; after a long, still moment, the man took his chance and raced away along the road. Jamie waited until he disappeared round the corner before he let out the breath he had been holding; he felt dizzy and shaky, and was genuinely unsure what would have happened if the vampire had attacked him.

  A thick grunt echoed against the high stone walls that surrounded him. Jamie drew his T-Bone, and pointed it unsteadily in the direction the vampire had fled, where the sound had come from. For several long seconds, nothing happened. Then something came flying out of the shadows at the crossroads, something that bounced and rolled across the cobblestones and came to rest at his feet. Jamie looked down, and felt his stomach revolve.

  It was the vampire’s head.

  The man’s eyes rolled as his mouth worked furiously, as though he was still trying to speak. Jamie stared, then took a staggering step backwards, his T-Bone raised, his eyes flaring red behind his visor.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted. “Show yourself!”

  A figure walked round the shadowy corner, dragging something behind it. Jamie’s finger tightened on the trigger as the shape moved into the light, then relaxed as he breathed out with relief.

  “Don’t shoot,” said Valentin, a broad smile on his pale face, and threw the decapitated body of the vampire to the ground beside its head.

  Jamie lowered the T-Bone. “Jesus,” he said. “Are you all right? Have you seen any of the others?”

  “I’m fine,” said Valentin. “And no, I haven’t. You?”

  “No,” said Jamie. He twisted the comms dial on his belt. “Strike team, come in. Larissa? Angela? Is anyone there?”

  “I’m here,” replied Larissa, and Jamie felt re
lief spread through his chest. “I’m with Colonel Frankenstein. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m with Valentin and we’re both OK. Have you seen Angela?”

  “No.”

  “Shit,” he said. “All right. Fly straight up.”

  “Why?” asked Larissa.

  “So I can see where you are,” he said, and glanced at Valentin. “Stay here.”

  The ancient vampire nodded. Jamie rose slowly into the air, scanning the sky for the vampires that had ambushed them. He saw no movement until Larissa appeared in the distance, maybe two hundred metres away across the rooftops.

  “Got you,” he said. “Stay there. We’ll come to you.”

  “OK,” replied Larissa.

  “Valentin,” said Jamie, looking down to the street below him. “Get up here.”

  The youngest Rusmanov appeared at his side, and the two vampires flew towards Larissa; as they passed above the maze of streets and yards and alleyways, Jamie kept his gaze fixed downwards, searching for any sign of Angela, but seeing nothing. They reached their squad mate, and followed her down to where Frankenstein was waiting for them, outside a toyshop on a narrow road.

  “Everyone in one piece?” asked Jamie.

  The members of the strike team nodded.

  “What about Angela?” asked Larissa.

  “We’ll find her,” said Jamie. “Until we do, she can look after herself.”

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Frankenstein.

  “Same as it was,” said Jamie, and felt heat rise back into his eyes. “Kill Dracula.”

  Before she opened her eyes, Angela was aware of the pain.

  It filled her, radiating from her hands and feet and coursing through her body, hot and sharp. She grimaced, and as she forced her eyelids open, she tried to move.

  Nothing happened.

  Fear flooded her system with adrenaline. She was suspended above the ground, over a jumbled pile of wooden benches, and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that she was inside a church; carved stone pillars rose up towards an ornate ceiling, with great panels of stained glass between them. There was something hard and flat behind her; she tried to move forward, to push against it, but remained still. She could remember nothing since the vampires had swooped out of the clouds above them; she had no idea how much time had passed since the attack, or what had happened to her in that time.

  Then Angela turned her head, and saw.

  Her arms were stretched straight out against a plank of wood, parallel to the floor below, and nails had been hammered through the palms of her hands. Her eyes widened, her stomach churning; she looked down, straining her neck as far as she was able, and saw metal sticking out of her feet.

  Crucified, she realised, her mind teetering on the edge of shock. I’ve been crucified. Oh God. Oh God.

  The pain intensified, surging through her like a wave of acid. She flexed her muscles, trying to thrash against whatever she was pinned to – a cross, it’s a cross, oh God – but didn’t move a millimetre; she tried to bring the fire into her eyes, to force her vampire side to the surface, but felt nothing but pain and emptiness. She tried to think around the pain, to push it aside, but it was so big, so huge, that she could barely form a rational thought; she had never felt so weak, so drained of energy.

  She looked down again, and saw blood. It was pooled at the base of the cross, running freely down her legs from somewhere inside her uniform, and Angela understood what had been done to her; she had been bled, to make sure she was too weak to resist.

  Panic overcame her, and she screamed in the silent stillness of the church, an animal howl of terror and pain. Her head swam, and she fought against the shock that was threatening to drag her down into unconsciousness, even though she had never felt so tired, so exhausted, so utterly helpless.

  Footsteps.

  She forced her eyes to focus and saw a figure walk slowly down the centre of the nave. It was a man in his forties, with precisely parted hair and neat, ironed clothes; had it not been for the dripping hammer in his hand, he could easily have passed for an accountant, or an estate agent. He stopped below her and looked up into her eyes with an expression so blank and empty that Angela thought for an awful second that she was going to burst into tears.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me how much it hurts.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide and wet, bile churning in her stomach. Then shock and pain finally overwhelmed her, and she sank into welcome oblivion.

  Less than a hundred metres away, on the second floor of the Hôtel de la Cité, Alan Foster felt the knot of nerves in his stomach tighten as the door of the room adjacent to theirs opened.

  He and Cynthia had been imprisoned in Room 31 for almost a week, and although Foster would have been forced to admit that it was unusually luxurious, it was still a cell. They had been wearing the same clothes for six days, washing them each night in the bath and drying them on the radiator, and eating only what their vampire captors thought to bring them; mostly potato crisps and an occasional bag of sweets or chocolate bar.

  Minibar food, thought Foster, as he picked up the result of two hours’ careful work and tested its weight in his hand.

  The window beside the bed only opened a few centimetres at the top. It was barely enough to provide the warm, stuffy room with even the slightest breeze, but more than enough to allow the distant rattle of gunfire – a sound Foster was more than familiar with – into the room. He didn’t know exactly what, but it was clear that something was happening. Their vampire captors had checked on them every three hours since they had first been locked inside the room, but almost twelve had passed since the last visit, leaving Foster sure that the time to make a move had come; he believed this was the best chance he was going to get.

  The club was as ugly a weapon as he had carried in his long military career. For several days, he had been working at the screws that held the metal towel bar to the bathroom wall, chipping away long-dried paint with the corkscrew he had found in their fridge and working at the screws themselves with the back of the safe key. It had been slow work, but Foster was by nature proactive, a man who hated sitting aimlessly around, and he had been pleased to have something tangible to do. That morning, shortly after the last time they had been checked on, the bar had come away from the wall with a small shower of plaster dust and flaked paint. It was almost a metre long, and although it was hollow, and therefore not as heavy as he would have liked, it was solid enough.

  “So you’ve got it,” Cynthia had said. “What now?”

  “I’m going to use it,” he had replied, giving her a tight smile.

  Working quickly, he had wrapped a small hand towel round one end of the bar, looping it over and over and tying it off as tightly as he could. It was not perfect – if he swung it with enough force, the towel might simply fly off – but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. Their luggage was in a hotel bedroom outside the medieval walls, providing it had not been burned to ashes, along with seemingly the rest of modern Carcassonne, but Cynthia had kept hold of her handbag when they were seized by Dracula’s followers, and for that he would be eternally grateful. He wrapped the two water glasses from the bathroom in another towel, stamped on them, and carried the towel over to the desk in the corner. He popped the cap off the can of hairspray his wife always carried in her bag, without fail, and sprayed the towel-covered end of the metal bar. While it was still wet and sticky, he pressed pieces of broken glass into the towel, pointing the sharp edges outwards as much as possible; once the head of the club was coated in glass, he emptied the rest of the hairspray on to it, coating it on all sides. Fifteen minutes later, it had dried as hard as resin.

  The door on the other side of the wall slammed shut, and Foster listened as footsteps stopped outside their room. He moved silently into position behind the door as Cynthia lay on the bed, flicking through channels on the TV with apparent nonchalance. A key turned, and the door swung slowly open. Fos
ter held his breath, and waited. The vampire stepped into the room, barely more than a boy, twenty-one at most, with a bored look on his face and a gun in his hands.

  “Where’s your—”

  Foster brought the club down with all his strength. It hit the vampire behind his right ear, slicing open a wide flap of scalp and driving him down on to one knee. The gun tumbled to the carpet and red bloomed momentarily in the vampire’s eyes until Foster hit him again, and he slid unconscious to the floor.

  Foster kicked the door shut, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. Cynthia was on her feet, staring down at the stricken figure with a look of outright disgust.

  “Get the gun,” he said. “Don’t look. I don’t want you to see this.”

  Cynthia nodded, picked up the gun, and stepped into the bathroom. As soon as she was out of sight, Foster brought the club down again, and again, and again, until all that remained of the vampire’s head was a lumpen smear on the carpet. He knew it wasn’t dead, but it would neither be able to follow them or raise the alarm, and that was good enough for now.

  “OK,” he said.

  Cynthia reappeared, glanced down at the crimson mess, then fixed him with a look of icy determination. She held the gun out towards him, grip first, and in that moment, he had never been more proud of her, had never loved her more.

  He checked the weapon. It was a SIG-Sauer MPX with a full magazine. He nodded appreciatively.

  Could be worse, he thought. Could be a lot worse.

  Across the thundering field of battle, Paul Turner watched Allen, Ovechkin and Tán join the fight and smiled.

  No second chances, he thought. Everything on the line.

  Turner was near the western edge of the battlefield, having fought his way right into the middle, and allowed the flow of the chaos to take him to his left. He wasn’t keeping score of the vampires he had destroyed, but he knew it was already half a dozen, probably more; one or two had escaped the speeding stake of his T-Bone, but there was no time for him to be overly hard on himself.