by William Hill
He smiled, the wide, genuine smile of a man who has been keeping a secret for too long and is relieved beyond measure to have finally let it out.
“If you would all excuse me,” he said. “There are some things I need to say to our visitors. I’ll come and say my good-byes before I leave.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the vampires of Valhalla began to file out of the room. Lawrence was the last to go, casting a final look at Grey as he closed the door of the study behind him. The expression on his face was one of profound disappointment.
Grey watched them go, then turned his attention to the Blacklight team standing silently in front of him. Larissa was looking at him with open hatred, a look that Jamie was loyally replicating. Frankenstein and Morris were expressionless, staring at Grey as though they didn’t quite understand what had just played out in front of them.
“Before the Russian Revolution of 1917,” Grey said, “men who were convicted of treason against the czar were offered the choice of death or exile. The majority chose death. It seemed only fair that I allowed my friends to make the decision for me.”
He walked back around his desk and flopped into his chair. “I understand why you came to see me,” he said, looking at Larissa. “But did the rest of you have something you wanted to ask me? Lawrence thought that you might.”
Jamie stepped forward. “There is something,” he said. “We’re looking for Alexandru Rusmanov. We were told you might know where he is.”
Grey looked at Jamie, then burst out laughing.
“My dear boy,” he said, gently. “Did you look around as you made your way up here? We live where we live for a reason; because it is hundreds of miles from the nearest vampire. We have no desire to associate with any of them, especially not someone as violent and unpredictable as Alexandru. I’m afraid you were misinformed.”
Jamie looked at Larissa, who refused to meet his eyes.
“I must confess, I thought you were here about Dracula,” said Grey.
Frankenstein flinched. “Why would we want to ask you about a vampire who’s been dead for four hundred years?” he asked.
Grey looked at him with surprise on his face. “Because you know as well as I do that Dracula was not destroyed,” he said. “His throat was cut, his heart was pierced, and he bled out, but his remains could easily be revived. I thought you were going to ask me how to destroy him permanently.” Jamie’s head was spinning with questions. Thankfully, Morris asked the two most important ones first.
“Why would we need to know that?” he said. “And why would we think you would have the answer?”
“Even all the way up here, we hear rumors,” said Grey. “From the vampires who return here from the outside world, from the wolves making their way north. Even Blacklight must be aware that Valeri has spent the last century trying to revive his master; it is my understanding that he is close to accomplishing his goal.”
Fear shot through Jamie, and he looked at Frankenstein. “That can’t be true,” he said. “Can it? They can’t bring Dracula back, tell me they can’t.”
The monster looked at Jamie. “It’s theoretically possible,” he said, slowly. “With his remains and enough blood, it could be done. But you don’t need to worry. The remains are lost forever. At least three expeditions in the last century have dug over every inch of the mountain where Castle Dracula stood and haven’t found a thing. He’s gone.”
“If you say so,” said Grey, looking at Jamie as he spoke.
He’s not lying. Neither of them are. But one of them is wrong. God, I hope it’s not Frankenstein. Please let it be Grey.
“In which case,” Grey continued. “My information is useless to you. If you’re sure there’s no chance of his return.”
“Stop prevaricating,” growled Frankenstein. “If you are going to tell us what you know, then tell us. If not, then we’ll bid you farewell. It’s up to you. But I am not in the mood for games.”
Grey nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, his tone conversational. “I’ll tell you. In 1971 I spent some time in New York, for reasons that are personal. Over the course of several months, I became friendly with Valentin Rusmanov, the youngest of the three brothers. We frequented some of the same clubs on the Lower East Side, and I attended some of the parties he threw. He was a notoriously generous host; vampires from the length and breadth of the East Coast would come to his building on Central Park West, to take speed and cocaine, and drink from the seemingly endless supply of teenage runaways Valentin was able to supply.”
Grey’s eyes glazed over at the memory, and a shudder of revulsion ran through Jamie.
“There was a particular party, for which I don’t remember the occasion, that became legendary. By the time dawn broke, the inside of Valentin’s house looked like an abattoir. There must have been two hundred vampires there, and God only knows how many boys and girls who never saw the sunlight again. Valentin and I ended up on the roof, watching the light creep across Central Park, waiting until the last possible second to go inside and rest. While we waited, he told me about his family.”
The old vampire looked around his study and smiled, almost shyly. “I was a little bit in awe of him, I must confess. He was beautiful beyond comparison, and he was turned by Dracula himself. In the circles I moved in, he and his brothers were like gods. And they knew it, too. So when he started to tell me how Valeri was just a loyal soldier who had no idea how to think for himself, how Alexandru was little more than an immortal psychopath but was the only creature Valentin had ever been afraid of, I felt like I was being given the key to the inner circle. So I asked him about Dracula, and he told me that the stories failed to do him justice: that he was a greater man than history had ever recorded and a more terrible monster than any legend had ever conveyed. And then he told me that he hoped he never came back, because he liked the world the way it was, and he had no wish to watch Dracula burn it down.”
Everyone in the study stood motionless, hanging on Grey’s every word.
“I reminded him that the accepted wisdom held Dracula to be dead, and he laughed. He told me that there was only one way to kill Dracula, and slitting his throat with an American cowboy’s knife was not it. I almost didn’t dare ask, but I knew the chance was never going to come again, so I swallowed hard, and I asked him how to kill the first vampire that ever existed. He didn’t even flinch; he told me that only Dracula’s first victim could destroy him. So I laughed, and said that he was pretty safe, as Valeri would never let himself be used against his master. And Valentin went very still and looked at me in a way that made me think I’d pushed my luck. I remember thinking very clearly that he was going to kill me. I don’t think he wanted to, but I thought I’d given him no other choice. But then he laughed and said that Valeri was not as important as Valeri thought he was. When I asked him what he meant, he shook his head, and refused to say anything more. Then the sun crept onto the roof of the building, and we went inside. I haven’t seen him since, although I’m led to believe little has changed in Valentin’s world.”
“What did he mean when he said that Valeri isn’t as important as he likes to think?” asked Jamie. “What did he mean by that?”
Grey looked at the teenager. “I can’t pretend to know for certain,” he replied. “I’ve come to believe that the accepted story-that Valeri was the first human turned by Dracula-is just that, a story. I believe that’s what Valentin meant.”
“If Valeri wasn’t Dracula’s first victim, who was?” asked Morris.
“I don’t know,” replied Grey. “I’ve thought about that night from time to time, but I’ve never taken it any further. I busied myself with Valhalla, and the outside world became less and less interesting.”
“Apart from when it came to the blood of teenage girls,” said Larissa, sharply.
“Indeed,” said Grey, and had the decency to look embarrassed as he did so.
“Well, that was fascinating,” said Frankenstein, sarcasm thick in his voice. “But it amounts to n
othing more than half a solution for a problem that isn’t going to arise. So forgive me if I fail to see why we should waste any more time here.”
“Why are you looking for Alexandru?” Grey asked Jamie, ignoring the monster. “Most men would do everything in their power to avoid him.”
“He has my mother,” said Jamie.
For a long moment, no one said anything, then Grey spoke again. “I wish I could help you,” he said, looking directly at Jamie. “If I could, I would; you may believe that or not. I won’t hold it against you, either way. But I will do something that I should have done a long time ago, something that I believe will help you in the long run, no matter what your friend may think. I will go and find the person that I believe Valentin was referring to, the first victim, and I will bring him to you. Consider it penance for past crimes.”
“Thank you,” said Jamie.
“Let’s go,” said Frankenstein, abruptly. “There is nothing of value for us here.” He headed for the study door, and Morris followed.
Jamie gripped Larissa’s shoulder; the vampire girl was staring at Grey, and showed no sign of leaving. “Come on,” he said, softly. “Let’s go.”
She resisted for a second, then the muscles in her shoulders relaxed, and she allowed Jamie to lead her toward the door. They were about to leave when Grey called her name, and she turned back.
“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” he said, softly. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s the truth.”
“You’re right,” Larissa replied. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
32
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Larissa opened her mouth to say something but never got the chance. Jamie pulled the metal stake from his belt, gripped her by the neck, and slammed her backward into the black metal side of the helicopter. Her head bounced against it, and she was momentarily dazed. Her eyes reddened involuntarily, and a low snarl emerged from her throat.
“Take us to the last place you were with Alexandru,” said Jamie. His voice was almost unrecognizable, it was so thick with anger. “You got what you wanted, so take us there. Right now.”
Larissa was impressed. Fury radiated from Jamie’s pores, rising from him like a dark cloud, but his face was pale and the hand holding the stake was steady. She knew she could kill him without breaking a sweat if she had to, but for a split second when he grabbed her throat, she had been afraid. She hadn’t felt fear for a long time, and it was invigorating.
He’s exhausted. But he’s still determined. Still full of courage. “Put the stake down,” she said. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
He pressed the sharp metal point forward, against the pale skin of her throat. “I don’t want to,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t.”
Their eyes met, a moment that seemed to last forever; his pale blue, the color of ice, hers the raging, flickering red of a wildfire.
He’s close to breaking point, she thought. He might actually try it.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll take you.”
Silence reigned in the helicopter as they flew southeast, toward the destination Larissa had given the pilot. They were heading for a farm in Lincolnshire, a remote spot in the flat East Anglian countryside. There, Larissa promised, was the house in which she, Alexandru, and the rest of his followers had spent the days before the attack on Jamie and his mother. Frankenstein’s eyes hardly left the vampire during the hour-long flight. He gazed at her with open loathing and open distrust. Jamie stared at the floor, shame filling his mind.
I thought there was something between us. I believed in her. Stupid.
The realization of why Larissa had led them north and the surge of adrenaline that had seen him press the stake against her throat had exhausted him. He felt tired, and useless. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and caught Thomas Morris looking at him.
“What?” he snapped. “What is it, Tom?” Morris didn’t look away, as Jamie had been expecting him to do. Instead he held the teenager’s gaze for a long moment, then shook his head, grunted something inaudible, and averted his eyes.
Tom told me this was a bad idea. Even he could see she was playing me.
“Shut up,” Jamie whispered, and Larissa turned to look at him. She cocked her head, but he looked away; he couldn’t bear to see her, was struggling to tolerate being anywhere near her. She reached over and touched his arm, and when he looked into her pale, beautiful face, she smiled at him, an expression of placation, of apology. He didn’t return it; he just stared into her wide eyes and waited for her to drop her gaze. After a few seconds, she did so, and he returned his eyes to the floor of the helicopter.
“Ninety seconds,” said the pilot, his voice crackling over the intercom.
Frankenstein reached above his seat and pulled his helmet down into his lap. He drew the weapons from his belt and checked them quickly, before replacing them in their loops and holsters. Morris did the same, removing the magazine from his MP5, checking it, and clicking it back into place.
“You won’t need those,” said Larissa. “There won’t be anyone here.”
“This may be a surprise to you,” replied Frankenstein. “But I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.”
Larissa laughed. “You think I care whether you believe me?” she asked.
“No,” replied Frankenstein. “I’m sure you don’t. But I am sure you care what he thinks.” He gestured toward Jamie, who looked up at him. “Am I wrong?”
Larissa looked away.
“That’s what I thought,” said the monster, as the helicopter touched down.
The four passengers leapt down into a dark farmyard. A large metal shed rose in front of them, tractors and other farm machinery looming in the darkness, a round grain store standing silently to their left. To their right sat the farmhouse, a squat building of pale stone behind a neatly kept lawn and two long flowerbeds. There were no lights on in the house and no smoke rose from the chimney.
Morris pressed a button at the rear of the helicopter, and a huge door lowered to the ground with a deafening hiss. He walked up into the hold and out of sight. Frankenstein, Jamie, and Larissa waited in the yard, until they heard an engine fire into life, and a black SUV slowly reversed down onto the tarmac.
“What’s going on?” asked Larissa.
“The helicopter needs to be back at the Loop,” said Frankenstein. “It was checked out for a training flight. It can’t be gone any longer without someone asking questions. We’ll drive home.”
Morris brought the car to a halt and got out. Frankenstein led them forward, his T-Bone outstretched in front of him. He tried the handle on the front door of the farmhouse, and it turned in his hand. He eased it open, reached inside, and flicked a light switch on the wall by the door. The bulb burst into life, bathing a homely, rustic kitchen in warm yellow light. He held the door open, but Jamie paused.
“Give me the detonator, Tom,” he said.
Morris gave him a questioning look, but passed him the cylinder. Jamie wrapped his fingers around it and rested his thumb near the button on the top. “All right,” he said, and walked into the farmhouse, ignoring the look on Larissa’s face as he passed her.
The rest of the team filed silently inside, Morris closing the door behind them.
“Where’s the family?” asked Frankenstein.
Larissa stared at him. “Where do you think?” she asked. “They’re gone.”
“God damn you,” muttered the monster. “You and all the rest of your kind.”
Jamie walked through the kitchen, around a battered wooden dining table, and led them into the rest of the house.
It was empty, as Larissa had promised it would be.
They stood silently in the kitchen. Jamie’s head was lowered, his mind racing with one terrible image of his mother after another. Morris was looking nervously at the door, desire to leave this place and return to the Loop written all over his face. Larissa was watching Ja
mie, an expression of shame on her face, and Frankenstein was staring at the vampire girl so intently he didn’t appear to be blinking.
“Everything about you is a lie, isn’t it?” he said eventually, his voice low.
Larissa returned his gaze, and sneered. “You don’t know anything about me,” she spit. “Nothing.”
Frankenstein’s gaze didn’t so much as flicker. “I think I do,” he said, softly. “I think I know a lot about you. Do you want to hear what I think?”
“I really don’t care,” Larissa snapped. “If you’ve got something to say, get on with it.”
Frankenstein nodded. “I don’t think you’ve ever killed a single thing in your life. I think you’re a scared little girl who was pretty enough for Alexandru not to kill her. I think you were terrified of him, and I think you probably spent every second of every day looking for a way to escape from him. But I think you were too scared to try it. Am I warm?”
Larissa looked away, and the monster continued. “I think you probably lied about the men and women you killed until Alexandru believed you, probably until you even started to believe it a little bit yourself. I think you probably survived on the leftovers of others’ kills and on animals when you could find them. I think you lied, and lied and lied so much that you made Alexandru believe you were almost as bad as him, although if you’d asked the rest of his followers, I bet none of them would remember ever seeing you take a life. I think that’s why you were entrusted with killing Jamie.”
The monster’s voice was rising now, thick fury spilling into it. “I don’t think you spared Jamie; I don’t think you could do it, when it came down to it. I don’t think you could kill him. And while I’m grateful for your weakness, your lies and your bravado and your criminal selfishness have wasted time that could have been spent looking for Marie Carpenter, time we did not have to spare. And if we’re too late to help her because of the time and attention we wasted on you, wasted on a pathetic little vampire girl we would have been better off letting you die in the garden where Alexandru dropped you, then so help me God I will make you pay for it for the rest of your days!”
