Department 19: Zero Hour

by Will Hill

  Grey rushed towards him, full of swirling pinpoints of red and white and yellow. Then it gave way to black, and he knew no more.

  Dracula smiled as he watched Henry Seward lose consciousness.

  The Blacklight Director’s eye rolled back in his head as he pitched left and slid to the floor with a heavy crash, sending his chair flying; it clattered against the wall and lay as still as its former occupant. The ancient vampire waited, watching for any sign of a swift recovery, then picked up the silver bell that sat on the table and gave it a sharp ring. Before the peals had faded away, the door to the dining room swung open and one of Valeri’s vampires appeared, a look of barely restrained eagerness on his pale face.

  “My lord,” he said. “How may I assist you?”

  “My guest has taken an unfortunate turn,” said Dracula, motioning in the direction of Henry Seward’s prone form. “Take him back to his quarters and ensure that he is comfortable. Then send Valeri to me. I would speak with him.”

  “At once, my lord,” said the vampire, bowing deeply. He flew down the dining room, lifted the Blacklight Director easily into his arms, and headed back towards the door, carrying his load carefully.

  Pathetic, thought Dracula, as he watched the vampire depart. So desperate to please, so weak and furtive and eager.

  The first vampire finished his final slice of veal, savouring meat so rare it ran with blood. A second vampire, the girl named Ekaterina, cleared the table, including Seward’s foul mess, with silent precision, before returning with a beautifully delicate almond tart and a small bowl of crème fraîche. He was enjoying the last sweet mouthful when a knock on the door echoed through the dining room.

  “Come,” he said, setting his napkin on the table and lifting his wine.

  The door opened and Valeri stepped through it, his heavy footsteps instantly annoying to Dracula’s ears.

  You could fly round the world without stopping for breath, he thought, as his oldest friend approached, yet you cannot spare me your infernal clatter?

  “You sent for me, my lord,” said Valeri.

  “I did,” replied Dracula, and took a long sip of his wine. It was good for Valeri to be made to wait; the years in which his master had lain in the ground had given birth to a streak of independence that he was steadily crushing out of his old General. When he was ready, he put the glass down.

  “Have you acquired the item I asked you for?” he said.

  “I have, my lord,” replied Valeri.

  Dracula frowned. “And you did not think to bring it to me?”

  “It arrived less than an hour ago, my lord. I did not wish to interrupt your dinner.”

  Clever, thought Dracula. I cannot reprimand him when I have instructed him so often not to do so.

  “So be it,” he said. “Get it now.”

  For a long moment, long enough to be dangerously close to insubordinate, Valeri didn’t respond. Then he bowed his head, said, “Of course, my lord,” and exited the dining room.

  Damn Seward and his needling, thought Dracula. There is still a spark in him that has not yet been snuffed out.

  The door opened again and Valeri strode back into the dining room, holding a long wooden crate under one arm. He set it down on the centre of the long table, and stepped respectfully back. Dracula got to his feet, not allowing his excitement to show on his face, and walked round to face the box.

  “The theft has made the news, my lord,” said Valeri, as the first vampire twisted open a pair of heavy padlocks. “But my man was careful. There is nothing to lead anyone here.”

  The final lock fell away. Carefully, almost reverentially, Dracula lifted the lid of the wooden box, and smiled the wide, happy smile of a child.

  Cal Holmwood leant against the wall of the lift as it descended, trying to process the Zero Hour Task Force meeting that had just ended. It had been nothing short of revelatory, even by the standards of the highly classified group.

  He had seen a copy of the Intelligence Division report in advance, but hearing the numbers spoken aloud so bluntly by Kate Randall, and seeing the expressions they elicited on the faces of men and women who were no strangers to death, had been sobering.

  I’m glad Kate spoke first, he thought. At least Grey gave them some semblance of hope.

  There was much that was unreliable about Grey and the information that he had provided, and under circumstances, Holmwood would never have sanctioned an operation based on such flimsy intelligence. But these were not normal circumstances, and a vampire that was almost as old as Dracula himself could be immensely useful. If he could be persuaded to join them, it would go a long way towards levelling the playing field.

  Valeri. Valentin. Dracula. The first victim.

  Two on their side, two on ours.

  Holmwood had relayed Grey’s information to the other Directors in a conference video call that had started after midnight and lasted well into the early hours of the morning. By the end of the call, after a refreshingly minor amount of bickering and squabbling, they had agreed to send a small, multinational team into the Teleorman Forest to search for the first victim, if he existed. Holmwood had insisted that at least one Blacklight Operator take part in the mission, given that his Department had provided the intelligence. This had been agreed, as had Bob Allen’s suggestion that Larissa Kinley be placed on the team, regardless of her affiliation; she was, they all knew, the only Operator from any Department who had even the slightest chance of being able to stand up to a vampire as powerful as Grey had described.

  That accounted for two spots on a squad that it had been decided should number six. After a debate that approached, but never quite reached, the status of heated, it was agreed that the other four places would be occupied by Operators from Germany, Russia, America and South Africa.

  All that remained was the question of who would lead the mission.

  Russia and Germany argued at length over exactly whose jurisdiction Romania fell under, until Bob Allen suggested that one of his Operators act as squad leader, a suggestion clearly designed to circumnavigate the infighting among the European Departments, that was agreed to before either the SPC or the FTB were able to form the first syllables of their objections. Allen left the call to go and brief the Operator he had in mind for squad leader, and each of the affected Directors promised that they would make their selections by 2200 GMT.

  Which was in about fifteen hours.

  The doors slid open on Level H and Cal made his way quickly round to the human detention block he had visited so often in recent weeks. He had come to hate it; the uniform grey walls and floors and ceilings, the rows of heavy cell doors, and, above all, the bitter, selfish creature that had replaced one of the men he had loved most in the world, whom he was on his way to see for what would likely be the final time.

  Holmwood paused for a moment outside the door of the cell, preparing himself for a conversation he would never have chosen to have, but would not shy away from now that his hand had been forced. He reached out, keyed his override code into the panel on the wall, waited for the heavy locks to disengage, then pushed the door open.

  Julian Carpenter looked up from his usual position, seated on the bed with his back to the wall, his arms wrapped round knees that were drawn up to his chest. His expression momentarily weakened Holmwood’s resolve; there was misery there, possibly even despair, but also clear and obvious affection.

  “Cal,” said Julian. “Time for the last rites?”

  “Julian,” said Holmwood, pulling the door closed behind him. “You know it doesn’t have to be like this.”

  Julian shrugged, and looked down at the bed.

  “I gave you forty-eight hours,” said Cal, fighting to keep his voice calm and steady. “Time’s up. This is your last chance to do what’s right, Julian, and I’m begging you to take it. Because after this I wash my hands of you.”

  Julian looked up, his eyes flashing. “I can’t, Cal,” he said, his voice suddenly thick with emotion. “You kn
ow I can’t. It will leave me with nothing. I want to see my wife and son.”

  “You already have nothing,” said Cal. “You’re in no position to bargain. Why can’t I make you see that?”

  Julian stared into his eyes, and said nothing. Anger burst through Holmwood, furious frustration at his old friend’s refusal to see sense, to spare him this horrible duty.

  “Your son,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “The one you claim to care about so much, just volunteered to take part in a mission to look for the second most dangerous vampire in the world. And he didn’t do it for himself, for glory, or ego. He did it because it may be the only way of stopping Dracula for good, and he didn’t even hesitate. That’s what he’s like, Julian. He’s brave, and he’s impetuous, and he makes stupid mistakes and sometimes he makes me so angry I want to strangle him, but he genuinely cares about other people more than himself, rather than just saying he does. You would be so proud of him, but you’re never going to get the chance to be, because the same stubbornness that got you in this mess in the first place is going to stop you doing what you know is right. What you know could help save lives, but you don’t care about that, do you? You only care about yourself, about getting what you want. Your son wouldn’t even recognise the man you’ve become, Julian. He’d be ashamed of you.”

  Julian flinched. “My wife—”

  “You want to talk about Marie? When this facility was attacked by Valeri and his bloody army of vamps, your wife fought them with her bare hands. Nobody told her to, she’d received no training whatsoever, and she was beside herself with worry about Jamie. But she put that aside, and she did what needed doing. And you know what? I don’t really think you give a damn about your family, any more than you do about anyone else. So this is it, Julian. This is the end of the road for you and me. I’m done with you.”

  Holmwood marched across the cell and hammered three times on the door. He heard footsteps immediately, as the Security Operator exited the guard post and headed down the corridor.

  “1961,” said Julian, his voice little more than a whisper.

  Cal froze, then turned slowly back to look at his old friend.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  Julian’s eyes were still fixed on the green blanket he was sitting on; they were ringed red, sickly bright against the ghostly pale of his face. “Adam,” he said. “He was turned in 1961.”

  The locks behind Holmwood clunked and whirred. The door swung open to reveal the Security Operator, his hand resting on the butt of his Glock.

  “Everything all right, sir?” he asked.

  “Fine,” said Holmwood, without taking his eyes from the huddled shape on the bed. “Wait out there. Close the door.”

  The Operator nodded, and did as he was told. As the locks re-engaged, Holmwood took a deep breath.

  “Go on,” he said, his voice low. “Go on, Julian.”

  Jamie’s father raised his head. “He told me he was turned in 1961, Cal. He was twenty, so he must have been born in 1940, or maybe ’41. He was raised in California, in Bakersfield, but I don’t know whether that’s where he was born. After he was turned, he moved to New York, and drifted into the same circles as Alexandru and Valentin Rusmanov. He met a girl at one of Valentin’s parties, at his house on the Upper West Side. Emily, her name was. She was twenty and newly turned, so maybe a year younger than him biologically, two at the most. I don’t know where she was from, Adam never told me, but somewhere in the Midwest. Her dad was a Methodist preacher. They left New York and got married, then moved to San Francisco. She disappeared after they’d been together twenty years, so probably 1985, maybe 1986. Adam went bad for a while, fell in with a gang of vamps in the Tenderloin, and got picked up by NS9 in a flophouse he was sharing with them. Then he spent however long in Nevada, being experimented on, until he was cured.”

  Holmwood felt cautious excitement begin to spread through him. “What was his name, Julian?” he asked, his voice almost hoarse. “What was his real name?”

  “I don’t know it, Cal,” said Julian. “I’m sorry, that’s all I know. You have to believe me.”

  And with that, he lowered his head to his folded arms, and began to cry.

  Valentin Rusmanov stared up at the dacha in which he had spent the long summer months of his childhood and tried to work out what exactly he was feeling.

  Behind him, below the barren headland that marked the edge of the estate, the waves crashed against the cliffs, sending up great sprays of salt water that filled his nostrils with their acidic scent. The storm was starting to blow, whipping the water into foaming peaks and sending wind howling through the trees that filled the grounds of the grand summer house. The port of Constanţa, less than three miles across the bay, was barely visible as the roiling thunderclouds closed in.

  Valentin had skirted their edges as he made his final approach, the rain lashing his face and steaming up from the boiling red of his eyes. The clouds appeared to rise endlessly, so high that even his supernatural eyes could not see their end. He was soaked to the skin, his clothes clinging to his cold flesh, but he barely noticed as he looked up at the dacha.

  Despite himself, there was nostalgia. His youth, although dysfunctional and full of horrors that no child should have witnessed, had nonetheless been luxurious to the point of debauched; neither he, nor his brothers, had ever wanted for anything. He could see himself and Alexandru sprinting down the slope towards the promontory where Valeri’s chapel now stood, hands clasped together, hair flying out behind them, their faces pink with exertion and mouths wide with laughter that had still been full of innocence.

  The memory was over five hundred years old, but it felt like it had happened only yesterday. It went directly to the part of himself he would have never admitted existed, the part that missed his brothers and the lives they had once led; lives that had been plunged into endless darkness at the whim of their former master, when he had first become more than a man.

  Alongside the nostalgia was anger, an emotion that was never far from the surface, despite Valentin’s gleaming, charming façade. Anger at his remaining brother for the violation that had been visited on his home in New York, and for his willingness to unleash Hell on earth for no better reason than blighted, desperate loyalty to a man who had spent more than a century as a pile of buried ash.

  And anger at himself, for not destroying his brother when he had the chance, before Valeri had been able to provide the distraction of tearing out Larissa Kinley’s throat.

  Despite the driving rain, and the electricity that was rapidly gathering in the air around him, Valentin could isolate nine distinct vampire scents emanating from the dacha above him, nine individual combinations of blood and sweat and pheromones. He would have expected them to have been aware of his presence by now, but was happy to discover that their senses were clearly far duller than his own; the element of surprise would make things even easier.

  Far worse than the smell of the vampires, however, was the odour drifting from the chapel behind him: a foul stink of rot and decay, so thick he could almost taste it. He looked up at the house, indulging himself in his memories, then turned his back on it and flew slowly towards the edge of the cliffs.

  The stench intensified as soon as Valentin opened the chapel door, causing his throat to tighten and his stomach to churn. He felt his fangs slide into place and the heat in the corners of his eyes rise; the smell was so bad, so wrong, that his vampire side had leapt forward, asserting control. It was death and pain, agony and fear, helplessness and violated despair.

  The chapel looked as it had since Valeri had built it in the early 1900s, when the two brothers had been on better terms. Two rows of wooden pews faced a plain stone altar and a stained-glass depiction of the crucifixion grotesque in the detail of its violence, but faded by more than a century of wind and salt. Valentin made his way round the altar and down the spiral stone staircase behind it, the smell thickening around him. He knew what he was going to find
beneath the chapel; the only question was just how bad it would be.

  The bottom of the stone pit, in which Valentin assumed his brother’s long-held dream of reviving their former master had been realised, was covered in a thin crust of dried blood. Beside the bottom step of the staircase stood an empty glass tube, the number 31 printed on its side beneath an accumulation of dust. Valentin barely noticed it; his attention was fixed on the dreadful tableau that surrounded the pit.

  Suspended from a series of ropes and pulleys were the corpses of five naked women. Their backs were arched, their wrists and ankles bound, the skin that still remained mottled black and covered with thick patches of sprouting mould. They had been gagged when they died, but the material had long since fallen to the floor, revealing wide screams of eternal agony. Their torsos were misshapen, twisted and swollen as their organs had settled and begun to decompose, and their throats still bore the marks of their murders, wide cuts that ran from ear to ear.

  The smell was eye-watering: old blood and rotten flesh and the remnants of the potent, acrid gases that had escaped the stricken women’s bodies. Their eyes were gone, and they stared at him with empty sockets full of reproach. Beetles shuffled across the green and black skin, and white bone gleamed where their foreheads had been, the skin chewed away by rats that had climbed up the women’s hair.

  Here, thought Valentin. In this place. This is where the end began.

  He stared down into the pit, then growled and spat on the dried blood. Then he turned away from the women whose unwilling sacrifices had birthed a monster back into the world, and flew up the stone staircase without a backward glance. He swept through the chapel, giving momentary thought to tearing it down with his bare hands, and thundered back out into the storm. The rain had worsened, and he accelerated as he flew up the sloping grounds towards the dacha, determined to do what he needed to do and leave this old place behind. He reached out for the ornate brass handle on the front door, then paused as a memory from his childhood rooted him to the spot.