by William Hill
Suddenly, the estate was filled with purple as the UV spotlights burst into life, covering the doors and windows. Jamie heard the bang from a hundred yards away as one of the operators kicked the front door of the house in, then a millisecond later saw it happen on one of the monitors on the vehicle’s control console. A moment later, he heard the first shouts and screams as he watched the Blacklight squads pour into the house.
I want to see this for myself.
Jamie leapt down from the vehicle and streaked through the trees toward the house. The noise rose as he ran across the wide lawn in front of the building, and then he was through the front door, directly disobeying the only order Frankenstein had given him. The noise was coming from behind a huge carved wooden door at the rear of the lobby, and he hauled it open, his heart pounding, his mind racing with what he was going to say to his mother when he was reunited with her.
It was a large dining hall, set for a dinner that was never going to be served. A huge open fire roared in a fireplace at the back of the room, sending orange light reflecting off an ornate chandelier that hung above the long table. Standing in front of the fire were maybe twenty men and women in tuxedos and cocktail dresses. The Blacklight strike team surrounded them, their T-Bones set against their shoulders and pointing at the protesting crowd.
Jamie’s heart sank.
His mother wasn’t there.
Neither was Alexandru.
As he stared into the room, Frankenstein pulled the beam gun from his belt and raked purple UV light across the group. Several of the women shrieked, and most of the men bellowed angrily, but there were no screams of pain, and no smoke rose from the exposed skin. Frankenstein turned away from them, his face as dark as thunder, and Jamie saw him speak into his radio.
“I demand to know the meaning of this outrage!” shouted one of the men by the fire, a large, portly man in a tuxedo that was straining at the seams. His round face was bright red with indignation, a glistening black mustache quivering on his upper lip. “This is private property! I demand an explanation, this instant!”
A Blacklight operator stepped forward and jabbed the tip of his T-Bone into the man’s chest, hard. Several of the women cried out; the man backed away in a hurry, shouting as he did so, until a striking woman in a figure-hugging black dress placed a hand on his shoulder, and he was quiet.
Frankenstein strode back through the operators and addressed the small crowd.
“Where is Alexandru Rusmanov?” he growled.
“Never heard of him,” snapped a woman at the front of the group.
Frankenstein strode to a table set against one off the long walls of the hall. On it were glasses, plates, and a silver tray containing glass vials of a dark red powder. He picked one of the vials up and held it out toward the woman.
“I suppose you don’t know what this is either?” he snarled. “Or do you always keep a supply of Bliss on hand for whenever you throw a party?”
“I’ve never seen that before in my life,” the woman replied, a maddening smile on her face. “I don’t know what it is, or why it’s here, and I challenge you to prove otherwise. Now, why don’t you get the hell out of my house?”
Frankenstein threw the vial to the floor. It smashed, and Bliss flew into the air in a small red cloud. He saw a number of the guests eye the spilled powder with naked desire and felt himself teeter on the edge of control of his temper. He took a half step toward her, but the woman didn’t back down an inch. She stared up at the monster, her eyes narrow, her face calm. She was standing steadily, her hands on her narrow hips, wearing a dark red cocktail dress and a white shawl around her shoulders.
“Tell me where Alexandru is, and we’ll go,” replied Frankenstein, his voice low and dangerous.
They faced each other for a long moment, until a voice called from the back of the group. “You’ll never find him, you filthy monster!”
The crowd parted, revealing the woman who had quieted the blustering man. She was incredibly beautiful, her limbs long and slender, her narrow face framed by jet-black hair that fell across her shoulders. She smiled at Frankenstein as he walked slowly toward her.
He leaned in until his enormous face was only inches from hers. “What did you say?” he asked. His voice sounded like tectonic plates shifting.
“I said you’ll never find him, you filthy monster,” she replied, calmly. “He floats above the earth like a god, while you crawl on your stomach like a beetle. You could never hope to understand him, or find him, or stop him.”
A smile broke slowly across Frankenstein’s face, and hers faltered in response. “When I pierce Alexandru’s heart, and his warm blood sprays across my face,” he said, softly, “I will think of you.” He stood up, abruptly, and the woman recoiled, as if anticipating a blow. Instead the monster turned his back on her and strode across the dining hall to the door where Jamie was standing. “Everybody moving,” he bellowed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Who are they?” whispered Jamie as the monster passed him.
“Vampire lovers,” spit Frankenstein. “Acolytes. They follow vampires around like doting children, give them money, places to stay, hoping to be turned. They’re the worst kind of scum.”
The Blacklight team returned to the helicopters as silently as they had advanced. Admiral Seward had called the four officers into his vehicle, his voice tight and strained, as though he was almost too angry to speak. Jamie was riding in the third of the four armored cars, sandwiched on a bench between two operators he didn’t know. As they crawled along the country road toward the drop point, the inquest began.
“Just bloody groupies. Someone tipped Alexandru off,” said the operator to Jamie’s right.
“You think so?” said another. “What was your first clue? When he wasn’t there?”
“Go to hell,” said the first operator.
They rode in silence for several minutes, until the same man spoke again.
“The director didn’t look happy,” he said.
“That,” said the operator opposite Jamie, “is the understatement of the year.”
They arrived back at the Loop at midnight.
The exhausted men were dismissed and fled for the elevators, while Jamie, Frankenstein, and Morris waited in the Ops Room for Admiral Seward to finish his phone call to the chief of the general staff.
When the director appeared ten minutes later, he was white with anger, the veins standing out on his neck and the backs of his hands like ropes. He walked slowly to the front of the room and took a deep breath, as if to steady himself.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you,” he said, his voice that of a man trying his hardest to keep his temper, “that tonight was nothing less than a catastrophic embarrassment for this Department. Do I need to tell you that?”
“No sir,” they said.
“Good. That’s good. The only silver lining is that the men and women we apprehended were clearly already aware of our existence, so the PR damage is minimal. The damage to your careers, on the other hand, and to mine, is likely to be significantly more severe.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, several times. “I’m going to leave it to you to ascertain exactly how this disaster was perpetrated, although I’m sure we all know the answer. I want a full report on how this came to happen on my desk in the morning, or I will have your resignations. Is that clear?”
They told him it was, and he nodded, stiffly.
“I suggest you start your investigation in the cellblock. Beyond that, I have nothing to say to any of you. Good night, gentlemen.”
Seward walked slowly across the room, opened the door, and left without looking back. Jamie, Frankenstein and Morris waited until they were certain he was gone, and then began to talk.
“How did this happen?” asked Morris.
Frankenstein grunted. “As if we all don’t know,” he said, looking steadily at Jamie.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the teenager.
“
It means your girlfriend tipped off Alexandru,” Frankenstein replied, his voice maddeningly calm. “It means she went to him when she escaped, then told him to wait two hours after she left so she could come back here and save the day. It means she played you-again.”
“You’re wrong,” said Jamie, and the venom in his own voice shocked even him.
“It makes sense, Jamie,” said Morris. “Who else could have done it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jamie, fighting hard to control his temper. “But it wasn’t her. That I do know.”
Frankenstein began to say something, but then the radio on Jamie’s belt buzzed, a thick whirring noise that made all three jump. He pulled the handset from his belt, thumbed the RECEIVE button and held the handset to his ear. When he heard the voice on the other end, he nearly dropped it onto the table in front of him.
“Good evening, Jamie,” said Alexandru Rusmanov. His voice was slick like castor oil. “How are you?”
The color drained from the teenager’s face, and Frankenstein and Morris leaned toward him, concern on their faces.
“Who is it?” asked Morris.
Jamie composed himself. Think of your mother. Think of your mother.
Think of your mother.
“I’m fine, Alexandru,” he said slowly, causing Morris to gasp and Frankenstein’s eyes to open wide. “How are you?”
“I’m a little bit annoyed, to tell you the truth,” the vampire replied, his tone friendly and cheerful. “I was in the middle of a party, thrown by some of my most loyal subjects, when all of a sudden I was told I had to leave. And all because some child who should already be dead has decided to take it upon himself to hunt me down. Can you imagine?”
“I think I-”
“No, you can’t!” roared Alexandru, his pleasant demeanor gone, replaced by the screeching voice of a madman. “You can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve done this night! Your tiny little human brain is incapable of even attempting to grasp the repercussions of your actions!”
Jamie closed his eyes. He had never been so scared in all his life.
“But you will,” continued Alexandru, and now he was friendly again, his voice warm and charming. “You will understand. I’ll make you understand, starting now. I’ve just killed a lot of people, and every single one of them has you to thank for their deaths.”
There was a click, and the line went dead.
Jamie was about to tell his friends what Alexandru had said, was about to try and articulate the way the madness in the vampire’s voice had made him feel, the basic wrongness of it, the terrible, unspeakable horror he had heard, when an alarm exploded through the base, and the giant wall screen burst into life. ALERT STATUS 1 IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE REQUIRED ALL DEPARTMENTS RESPOND
Morris ran to a console in the middle of the room. He read the screen, then looked up at Jamie and Frankenstein.
“It’s coming from Russia,” he said.
35
YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW
Carpathian Mountains, Transylvania
June 17, 1902
The fine layer of dirt and rock shifted beneath Abraham Van Helsing’s feet, and the old man’s center of balance hurtled backward. He spun his arms, his silver-topped walking stick clattering to the ground, and he pitched toward the hard ground. Then a hand appeared, as if from nowhere, gripped him around his upper arm, and steadied him. The professor, blooming red with embarrassment, spun around to see the identity of his rescuer and stared directly into the cool, steady face of Henry Carpenter, his valet.
“Thank you, boy,” he grunted. “Unnecessary of you, though. I was in no danger.”
“Of course not, sir,” replied the valet, and released his master’s arm.
You stupid old fool, Van Helsing told himself. You’re nothing more than a liability. You should have trusted this to Henry, Lord knows he’s proven himself more than capable. You proud old fool.
“Everything is fine?” called a voice from down the trail, and master and valet turned to regard the source of the question.
The man who had spoken was standing beside the low wooden cart, looking up at them with concern on his face. He was small and uncannily thin, his proportions rendered comical by the enormous fur ushanka that covered his head. His face was thin and pointed, the eyes dark, the hair of his mustache and triangular beard jet black.
“Yes, Bukharov,” snapped Van Helsing. “Everything is fine. Bring your men up to me. We should be able to see the castle once we round this bend.”
Ivan Bukharov nodded, then let loose a galloping string of Russian at the three men who sat astride aged horses before the cart. They dug their heels into the flanks of their mounts, and the wheels of the vehicle creaked into life. Bukharov swung himself nimbly up onto his own horse and clattered along the treacherous path to where Van Helsing and the valet were waiting. The two Englishmen mounted their own animals, one with significantly greater difficulty than the other, and the three men trotted slowly around an enormous outcrop of rock that caused the path to make a wickedly sharp turn to the right. They rounded it with great care and then stopped, transfixed by the sight before them.
The Borgo Pass widened and dropped before them, before rising steeply and disappearing out of sight. Above them, more than a thousand feet from the distant valley floor, perched on the very edge of the mountain like a vast bird of prey, stood Castle Dracula.
The turrets and ramparts of the ancient building were black in the cool morning light, spiked and twisted and fearsome. The central spire of the residence of the world’s first and most terrible vampire rose boldly toward the heavens, a blasphemous challenge to the authority of God, an unholy blade cutting into the pale blue sky.
Behind them came a flurry of movement and muttered Russian. The valet turned, and saw Bukharov’s men crossing themselves frantically, their eyes cast at the ground, unwilling to even look directly at the castle that loomed over them.
“So it real,” breathed Bukharov. “I was thinking legend only. But it real.”
The man’s pidgin English was a source of constant annoyance to Van Helsing, but he barely even noticed it, so lost was he in the memories of the last time he had seen this terrible place.
I was on the other side of this plain, with Mina Harker pressed into a stone crevice behind me. I drew a circle around her, and I waited. There were screams and the thundering of hooves and blood, and a friend of mine was lost.
“It’s real,” he said, composing himself. “But it is merely a building, stone and mortar. It cannot harm us; whatever malevolence it may have possessed is long gone. Now come-our destination is no more than five minutes’ ride from here.” The old man kicked his horse into life, and cantered down the shallow slope of the pass, toward the clearing where the course of his life had been forever altered.
The negotiations that had brought Van Helsing back to Transylvania-eleven years after he had sworn he would never set foot on her cursed soil again-had been long and arduous. In London, his hours were full, fuller than those of a man of his advanced years ought to have allowed, as the fledgling Blacklight began to take shape. The days were spent at the premises on Piccadilly, which Arthur Holmwood, the new Lord Godalming, had secured for them, a noble use of the section of his father’s estate that had been set aside for charitable works, planning and organizing and writing reports for the prime minister, alongside the friends with whom he had undertaken the protection of the Empire from the supernatural. The nights found him in tombs and graveyards and museums and hospitals, battling the growing number of vampires that were infecting London and its surroundings, sending them one after another to their grisly ends.
He spent precious little time in his laboratory, even though he believed that the vampire problem would ultimately be solved by science, rather than at the point of a stake. There was simply no time; it was taking all of Blacklight’s efforts merely to stem the tide of the epidemic that was washing across Europe, an epidemic that had started in the building that wa
s casting its shadow over him as he rode down the pass. It was obvious that the four of them were going to be unable to keep the darkness at bay on their own, and tentative plans had been put in motion to increase their number. The first prospective new member was riding silently alongside the professor now, his eyes keeping a sharp watch on the treacherous terrain around them.
Henry Carpenter will do fine, perhaps even better than fine. He alone will not be enough, as my days on this earth are undoubtedly drawing to a close. But he is a start, and a good one at that.
Despite the endless demands on his attention, Van Helsing had been able to draw two reasonably firm conclusions from his study of the vampire. He was confident that the transmission of the condition occurred when saliva was introduced to the system of the victim, during the act of biting. And he was also sure that a vampire who had been incinerated to nothing more than a pile of ash could, with sufficient quantities of blood, be made whole again. This conclusion had been reached after the professor had conducted a series of experiments in a heavily fortified room beneath the cellar of his town house, experiments he had told no one he was undertaking for fear of rebuke. And it was this conclusion that had led him to the realization that a return trip to Transylvania was imperative-as the count’s remains, buried though they were under the heavy Carpathian soil, were too dangerous to leave unattended. The opportunity to bring Quincey Morris home, to give him the burial he deserved, was merely a bonus.
At Van Helsing’s request, telegrams had been sent to the heads of Russia and Germany, inviting them to send envoys to London on a matter of grave importance to the entire continent. Men from these nations had duly arrived in the summer of 1900, and, after signing declarations of utmost secrecy, had been admitted to the Blacklight headquarters and briefed on the threat that was facing the civilized world. They had been sent home with much to ponder, and in the two years that had passed, encouraging word had reached Van Helsing’s ears of equivalent organizations being birthed in Northern Europe. It had been a gamble and a dangerous political move to show their cards as plainly as they had, but without other nations joining the fight, the battle was sure to be lost.
