Department 19, The Rising, and Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  For this, and for many other things, Valeri felt guilt. His failure to search for and acquire his master’s remains, if for no other reason than to have given them a burial befitting a Prince of Wallachia, was a misjudgement that would haunt him always.

  The epidemic of vampirism that had swept first through Europe and then the world in the early years of the twentieth century, as the direct result of their failure to live up to the one thing their master had expected of them, was another; he knew the time was coming when Dracula would hold him and his brothers to account for what they had done, and in many ways, he relished the prospect. He would admit his failings, and he would take the punishment that was due to him; he would not beg for mercy, or lie to his master.

  “Valeri?” said Dracula. “I asked you for an explanation. Since that seems to be beyond you, why don’t we try a simpler question instead? Do the men who killed me still live?”

  The ancient vampire was staring out of the window of Valeri’s study, across the swaying canopy of the pine forest. The distant rustling of the trees in the cold night air sounded as loud to the two vampires as a round of applause.

  “No, master,” replied Valeri. “They died. Many years ago.”

  “That disappoints me,” replied Dracula, his dark red lips curling into a snarl.

  For a long moment, there was silence in the study. Valeri waited patiently, as his master sank into the deep darkness of his memory.

  Although he had not been destroyed, Vlad had been dead for more than a century. The collapse of his body had been the same, to all intents and purposes, as the death of a mortal human. His systems had ceased to function, his consciousness had disappeared; the only difference between what had been done to him and what befell every human being in the end was the vampire virus that lurked in the cells of his remains, ready to rebuild him if provided with enough blood.

  As a result, the years had passed instantaneously; when his sense of self returned, after Valeri had resurrected him in the pit beneath his family’s chapel, when his memory had returned to him in a moment of exquisite pain, the last thing he remembered was the feel of Jonathan Harker’s kukri knife sliding through his throat like butter, and the last thing he remembered seeing was blood, his own precious blood, spraying out on to the frozen Transylvanian ground.

  He had no idea what had happened to him since, nor of how much time had passed. When his powers of speech returned, nursed back to health by Valeri’s attentive and regular provision of blood, he had asked his most loyal servant. Valeri’s answer, given in a voice that trembled with nerves, had stunned him.

  More than one hundred and twenty years beneath the ground.

  It was inconceivable, beyond his comprehension. He had felt his body begin to fail him as a rage as intense as any he had ever known flooded through him, and he had forced himself to be calm, before he began to collapse back into dust.

  He had delayed the question he wanted the answer to more than any other, delayed it until he was stronger, until he was something closer to what he had been. He had tolerated Valeri’s long-winded, turgid descriptions of the developments and innovations that had taken place while he had been gone for as long as he was able, biding his time. Today, more than three months after his rebirth, he had summoned his oldest friend, and asked him to explain himself.

  Valeri swallowed hard. “Master, you must understand; there was no way for me to know that you could be revived. That didn’t become apparent until many years later, and by then it was too late.”

  “Explain.”

  “Master, the men who pursued you in 1891 returned to London after committing their crimes, and took up their lives where they had left them. But when there began to occur an outbreak of newly-turned vampires the following year—”

  “Do not,” interrupted Dracula, his voice like ice, “make the mistake of thinking that we have finished discussing that subject.”

  Valeri felt a cold shard of fear embed itself in his spine.

  “I understand, master,” he continued, trying not to show his unease. “As I was saying, when new vampires began to appear in European cities, the four men whom you encountered in London were tasked by the British Prime Minister to form an organisation dedicated to the eradication of our kind. They called it the Department of Supernatural Protection, master, although it is now known as Department 19.”

  “Jonathan Harker,” said Dracula, his face twisting with hatred. “John Seward. Albert Holmwood. And Abraham Van Helsing, the most detestable of them all. I remember them all so clearly.”

  “And Quincey Morris, master,” said Valeri. “The American who died at the hands of your servants.”

  “Morris,” snarled Dracula. He remembered the look on the Texan’s square, handsome face as he plunged his bowie knife into Vlad’s heart, a terrible, awful expression of triumph.

  “They remained four men for several years, master,” continued Valeri. “Some time in the late 1890s Van Helsing’s valet, a man named Carpenter, was permitted to join them, and they became five. They destroyed many of our kind, my lord, but they were unable to stem the flow of the newly turned, even with the resources that Holmwood made available to them from the estate of his father. Until after the First World War, when things changed.”

  “A world war,” said Dracula, the hunger in his voice plain to hear. “I would have liked to have seen such a thing.”

  “It was wonderful, master,” breathed Valeri. “It was unlike anything before or since. More than fifteen million humans died in less than five years. The whole world bled, my lord.”

  Dracula gave a low growl of pleasure, and Valeri continued.

  “Quincey Harker, the son of the man with whom you once had dealings, was brought into the Department when he returned to Britain in 1919. He immediately set about evolving them into an organisation run on military lines, and expanded the Department aggressively. They began to attack us in a systematic way, master, rather than merely reacting to our presence in their cities. For a time, there was widespread fear among our kind.”

  “Fear?” sneered Dracula. “Over a handful of mortal men? What vampires were these, to be so easily frightened?”

  “Newly-turned, master. Their powers were barely under their control, and they had no understanding of their strengths or their weaknesses. Hundreds were destroyed, not just by the men of Blacklight. By this time, there were equivalent organisations in a number of other countries.”

  “Working together?” asked Dracula.

  “Not in the beginning, master. But Harker’s son reached out to them, and tentative alliances were formed, most notably with the Russians. They also began to expand, my lord, rapidly. We had no equivalent, no hierarchy or means of communication. We were routed, master. By the beginning of the Second World War, our numbers had been reduced to mere hundreds; mercifully, we were able to rise again, under the cover of the bombs. Since then, we have increased steadily, master.”

  Dracula narrowed his eyes, peering at Valeri. “How is it that you possess so much information regarding these organisations?” he asked.

  “My lord, I flatter myself that I know more about them than they do themselves,” said Valeri, forcefully. “If nothing else, I know far more than they could ever imagine I know. Department 19, the American NS9, the Russian SPC, the German FTB and the Chinese PBS6, Brazil, India, South Africa and the rest.”

  “There are so many?” asked Dracula, incredulous.

  “Yes, master; the whole planet has been carved up in such a way that every square foot is under the jurisdiction of one of the Departments.”

  Dracula was silent; he appeared to be deep in contemplation. After a long moment, he instructed Valeri to continue.

  “The first Department 19 man I ever captured provided me with the history I have just relayed to you, master. But after a certain amount of persuasion he was able to unwittingly deliver information to me that was of much greater significance; it was he who informed me that there might be a chance to resu
rrect you, my lord. He had been given access to the journals of Van Helsing, in which the Professor described the results of experiments he had conducted on men and women of our kind; cruel, immoral experiments, master, little more than torture under the pretence of science.

  “One of these so-called experiments had involved the regeneration of a vampire who had been burned to no more than ashes, but who was revived with a sufficiently large quantity of blood.

  “Upon receiving this information, I immediately returned to our homeland to search for your remains, master. But they were gone, as was the body of Quincey Morris; this was why I knew they had been removed, rather than lost to the elements. I instructed my spy to discover their whereabouts, but he was unable to do so. As were all the men who came after him, in all the Departments of the world; the whereabouts of the remains was the most closely guarded secret on earth. Until Thomas Morris, that is.”

  “Was he a spy?” asked Dracula. “Was he loyal to you?”

  Valeri smiled. “No, master, he belonged to my late brother; he was nothing to do with my quest to resurrect you, at least not initially. His job was to deliver to Alexandru the whereabouts of the family of the man who killed Ilyana, the descendant of Van Helsing’s valet Carpenter. But Morris was the first descendant that any of us had ever managed to reach, and his position within Blacklight was at the highest level. So Alexandru asked him to search for information I had been hunting for more than eighty years. He delivered it within twenty-four hours.”

  “Delivered what?” asked Dracula. There was a note of excitement in his voice, and he craned his weak frame in Valeri’s direction. “What was he able to find?”

  “A section of Van Helsing’s journal,” Valeri replied. “Kept separate from the main archive, in which he described his journey to recover your remains from where they had been buried on the Borgo Pass. The journey, the recovery and his betrayal at the hands of an envoy to the Russian Tsar, a man named Bukharin, who transported the remains to Moscow. The journal marks the last time they are mentioned in any context, anywhere in the world, as far as I have been able to discover, but it proved more than sufficient. Once I knew the Russians were the keepers of the remains, there was only one place they could be hiding them. The place from where I took them, master, the night before you were reborn.”

  Valeri beamed with pride at the memory of the attack he had led into the SPC base at Polyarny, but if he was looking for approval, or gratitude from his master, he was to be disappointed. Dracula’s attention was elsewhere; he had returned his gaze to the window, and was deep in thought. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak, but the sudden ringing of Valeri’s mobile phone interrupted him. Valeri pulled it free, saw the name on the screen, laughed and looked over at his master. Dracula nodded his permission, and Valeri answered the phone.

  He opened his mouth, but the voice on the other end of the line spoke first, and Valeri froze; his open mouth widened, and his eyes flooded a red so intense it seemed as though the eyeballs themselves must surely burst into flames. He listened, for almost a minute, then slowly lowered the phone from his ear. There was a moment of silence, before Valeri let out a deafening roar of anger that shook the foundations of the house, and hurled the phone against the wall, where it exploded into a thousand tiny fragments of metal and plastic.

  “Speak to me, Valeri,” commanded Dracula. “What news, that would anger you so?”

  Valeri turned to face his master, his face twisted with hate, his eyes blazing in their sockets.

  “Master,” he said, his voice so full of fury that the word was barely more than a grunt. “I have to tell you something that is going to be difficult for you to hear.”

  19

  AT THE CROSSROADS AT MIDNIGHT

  NINETY MINUTES EARLIER

  “What did the briefing say?” asked Jamie Carpenter.

  Operational Squad G-17 sat in the back of one of the Department’s vans as it rolled across the grounds of the Loop, towards the wide gate that led out into the world beyond.

  “Didn’t you read it?” asked Kate.

  Jamie gave her a long, slow look, and eventually she rolled her eyes. “999 call from the Twilight Care Home, Nottingham,” she said. “The duty nurse made it. Said someone was breaking in through the second-floor windows, mentioned red eyes and screeching.”

  “What about the place itself?”

  “Caters for the elderly and the infirm, has a hospice wing and a mental health wing. Most recent records show eighty-four residents and staff rotas suggest a night shift of eight.”

  “Security?” asked Larissa.

  “None,” replied Kate, shaking her head. “Nurses. That’s all.”

  “Let’s get there quickly then,” said Jamie, leaning back in his seat. The two girls exchanged the briefest of glances, and Squad G-17 exited the Loop without saying another word to each other.

  The silence was thick with recrimination and tension, like a tidal rip beneath the surface of the ocean, capable of pulling your legs out from under you without warning; it hung in the back of the van, silent and heavy, until the squad reached their destination, and Jamie Carpenter ordered them to check their kit and weapons.

  “Checked them before we left,” replied Kate. She had been discharged from the infirmary when the operation had appeared on her console, and had met Jamie and Larissa in the hangar. It had been immediately obvious that Larissa’s conversation with Jamie had not gone to plan; the atmosphere between them was arctic, and both of them appeared to be at least as angry with her as they were with each other.

  “Check them again,” said Jamie.

  Kate shot him a glance that was almost pitying, then loudly hauled her weapons from their pouches on her belt, checked them cursorily and slammed them back into place. Jamie watched her, anger simmering inside him, threatening to bubble up to the surface, and turned his attention to Larissa.

  “You too,” he said.

  She stared at him for a long moment that contained a clear question.

  Are you really going to make me do this?

  He stared back, his face unmoving, and she realised that he was.

  “Aren’t you going to check yours, sir?” she said, as she pulled the weapons from her belt and checked them quickly. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you in there, would we?”

  Jamie didn’t look at her, but he knew she had him. He quickly ran through his own weapons checks and, satisfied that his squad was ready, physically at least, stepped to the rear of the van.

  “Come on,” he said, throwing open the double doors. “Let’s get this done.”

  The two girls waited for a moment before following him. It was a barely noticeable pause, but it was there and its meaning was clear.

  We’ll come when we’re ready. Not when you tell us to.

  Jamie bit his tongue, and watched as they disembarked from the van. His head was spinning; the secrets had piled up so quickly, and resentment had followed close behind.

  Larissa had lied to him, about almost everything, about the very person that she was, since the first time he had spoken to her in her cell at the Loop. But had he ever made her feel bad about it, had he ever punished or judged her for the things she had told him, even though they had put his mother’s life in danger? No, he had told her it was all OK, told her that none of it mattered.

  And Kate? Kate was being a total hypocrite if she was angry at him for keeping her in the dark about his relationship with Larissa, when all he’d ever done was try to protect her feelings, try not to make her feel like she was the odd one out. And all the while she had been secretly seeing Shaun Turner, which she had seen fit to tell Larissa about, but keep from him.

  Jesus, what a mess.

  Jamie slammed the van door closed and pulled his visor down over his face, glad that no one would be able to see his face for a while; he didn’t trust it not to betray how angry he was.

  Larissa and Kate did the same. They were standing in an alley that had been closed off
at both ends by blue and white emergency tape. Two policemen were making their way towards them, nervous looks on their faces, and Jamie had time to glance up at the source of the intercepted 999 call. Rising above them was a large angular building, constructed from thousands of red bricks and topped by a dull lead roof. Windows stood in long rows, smeared on the inside with white residue, the result of half-hearted attempts to clean them. In front of Jamie stood a large wooden gate, big enough for cars and vans to pass through it. Beside the gate, bolted to the brick wall, was a tarnished brass plate on which had been stamped five words.

  TWILIGHT CARE HOME

  DELIVERY ENTRANCE

  The two policemen arrived, glancing nervously at the purple visors hiding the Operators’ faces. They were both young, not much older than the black-clad figures they were staring at, although there was no way they could have known that.

  “Er…” said the shorter of the two, a man with hair so blond it was almost white. “Do you…” He trailed off, visibly unsettled by sight of the strange trio standing in front of him.

  “What’s the security status, Constable?” asked Kate, her voice distorted by her helmet’s audio filters. The policeman took half a step backwards, then looked at his partner, a taller man with a closely shaved head and a helpless look on his face.

  “We secured the perimeter,” replied the second policeman. “No one has been in since we were instructed to hold our position.”

  “Thank you,” said Kate. “Stay back, and let us do our job, please.”

  He nodded, and stepped back, followed by his partner; the two men watched as Jamie pushed open the wooden gate. It protested loudly, its metal runners screeching across the tarmac, and then the three Operators stepped through it, and out of sight.

  They found themselves in a small courtyard, surrounded on three sides by the towering walls of the care home. Two large canvas trolleys filled with sheets and pillowcases stood abandoned by the large back door to the building, beside a pallet of tinned fruit. They made their way quickly across the yard, up three concrete steps and inside.