by Will Hill
She had said goodbye to Jamie in the Ops Room almost four hours earlier, and she could still not shake the nagging feeling that their parting had been significant. Partly it was the fact that he had gone to Paris on the most important mission of his life, and decided not to take her with him, but there was more to it than that; he had been on missions without her before, and she without him, and never had she felt the need to so explicitly ask him to come back to her as she had in the Ops Room.
There was no guarantee that Frankenstein was alive, that Jamie and his team would be able to find him if he was, or that there would be any danger attached to doing so; she knew it was extremely likely that he would return home empty-handed, an eventuality she was attempting to prepare herself for. But there was something in the pit of her stomach, something gnawing and clawing, that told her that her boyfriend was in enormous danger.
She would worry about him until he returned; that much she knew. In the meantime, there was someone else who required her attention, someone whom she had seen walking towards the distant perimeter fence half an hour earlier, someone she had been prevented from following by the slow passage of the setting sun. But now the sun was gone.
Larissa soared into the air, feeling with a rush of excitement how effortless it had become for her to do so. She rose slowly towards the hologram that shielded the Loop from view from above, marvelling at the liquid complexity of the image when seen up close.
The field of suspended particles that the image was projected on to was barely a centimetre thick, but the hologrammatic image appeared to rise and fall with the tops of trees and the dark drops of clearings. It was a marvel of technology that Larissa resolved to ask Matt about at some point; she knew he would already have a full understanding of how the effect was achieved, and it would delight him to be able to pass the information on to her.
From her high vantage point, Larissa’s razor-sharp eyes picked out the tiny figure of Kate Randall, sitting alone in the rose garden at the far edge of the base.
She swooped through the air, the open sky around her, the soft wind rippling through her hair; it was a sensation of pure joy, and although she would not wish the curse of vampirism on anyone, this was the one aspect of being turned that she would have loved to share with somebody, even just for a few minutes. She banked and spun and looped as she flew across the wide compound, towards the circular garden; her progress was silent, and Kate didn’t look up until Larissa dropped soundlessly on to the bench beside her, and said hello.
“Jesus!” shouted Kate, leaping to her feet. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry,” replied Larissa, grinning at her friend. “Completely accidental, I promise.”
Kate stared at the vampire girl, trying hard to keep a straight face, and failing miserably. She shook her head in what she hoped was a stern fashion, and smiled back at Larissa.
“So,” said Larissa. “I saw you head out here about an hour ago. I’m guessing it didn’t go well with Shaun?”
Kate looked exaggeratedly around. “Do you see him here?”
“No,” said Larissa.
“Me neither,” said Kate. “That’s how well it went.”
She sat back down on the bench beside her friend and sighed, deeply. “He’s blaming me for what happened with the Paris mission,” she said. “He thinks Jamie would have taken him if he and I weren’t together.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Larissa.
“Is it?” asked Kate. “Jamie said he didn’t take him because he wanted to know there’d be someone to look after me if something happens to him in Paris. Maybe he would have taken Shaun if we weren’t seeing each other.”
“You can’t know that, though,” said Larissa. “Jamie and Shaun haven’t exactly seen eye to eye. He still might have left him behind.”
“Might,” replied Kate. “Might not. Like you say, we don’t know. So I can’t tell Shaun that his being with me didn’t hurt his chances, because I don’t know that’s true.”
“So what’s he going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Kate, softly. “He said he needs time to think about things. One of my two closest friends in the world is out there on some crazy redemption crusade, but he needs time to think about things. Ridiculous.”
She saw the look on Larissa’s face change as she mentioned Jamie’s mission, saw the worry that she was barely managing to conceal burst to the surface, and felt a stab of pain in her chest. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sure Jamie’s fine, Larissa. I’m certain of it. He was born to do this; you know how good an Operator he is.”
“I know,” said Larissa, fiercely. “I’m so proud of him, even though I hate his stupid guts right now for not letting me go with him and look after him. And I know how important Frankenstein was to him; I totally get it. I just wish he’d let me help.”
“They’re just boys,” said Kate. “Him and Shaun both. They don’t know how to let anyone help them, much less ask for it.”
The two girls sat in silence for a moment, looking at the roses in the fading light of the evening. Eventually, Kate spoke again.
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
“Believe who?” replied Larissa.
“Jamie,” said Kate. “Do you think he was really trying to protect us, or do you think he just didn’t want to take us with him?”
“I have to believe that what he told us was the truth,” replied Larissa. “The alternative is just too awful. You know?”
Kate nodded her head.
“Do you believe him?” asked Larissa. “Do you think he meant what he said?”
“I do,” Kate replied, firmly. “I think it was stupid, and arrogant, but I think he meant it.”
“Do you think they’ll find him?” asked Larissa. “Frankenstein, I mean.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to find,” replied Kate. “I would never tell Jamie this, because I know how desperately he wants to believe, but I think he’s dead. I think he’s been dead for three months.”
“Me too,” sighed Larissa. “It means so much to Jamie; he sees it as this miraculous chance to make up for what happened, and I’m scared it’s just going to crush him all over again. But I guess we’ll know when they get back, one way or the other.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Kate, then smiled at Larissa. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Do you want to get something to eat? It might take our minds off all this doom and gloom.”
“Sounds like a plan,” replied Larissa, standing up.
Kate did the same, and the two girls walked slowly down the wooden path that ran through the heart of the memorial garden. As they passed through the gate, Kate did something that surprised herself; she reached out and took Larissa’s hand. She had never done so before; she had held hands with her girlfriends on Lindisfarne all the time, thinking less than nothing of it, but never with Larissa.
The muscles in the vampire girl’s neck and shoulders twitched, and for a second, her hand lay limply in Kate’s grasp. Then she slowly laced her fingers with her friend’s, as they walked towards the low rise of the Loop’s central dome.
They were three-quarters of the way across the wide grass field when Larissa smelt something on the still evening air. It didn’t smell bad, not exactly; it smelt huge, as though she was only able to perceive a small corner of some gigantic whole. Her eyes flickered red, involuntarily; Kate saw them, and stopped.
“What is it?” she asked. There was concern in her voice; she knew that Larissa’s senses were many times more acute than her own, and knew that her life had been saved, on more than one occasion, by taking the vampire’s instincts seriously.
“I don’t know,” said Larissa, pulling free from Kate’s hand. “Something big. It’s coming, though, whatever it is. Coming fast.”
A sound became audible behind them, a fluttering sound like the wings of a thousand birds. As the two girls looked at each other, their eyes widening with fear, a ragged shadow crept across them, pl
unging them into darkness. They turned and looked in the direction it was coming from, and Kate made a small involuntary sound deep in her throat, a tiny gasp of utterly unbridled fear.
“Run,” growled Larissa, her eyes bursting into deep, swirling crimson. “Sound the alarm.”
“What about you?” cried Kate. “I can’t leave you here.”
“There’s no time,” said Larissa. “Run, Kate. Go now!”
Kate turned and sprinted for the open doors of the hangar, shouting at the top of her lungs as she went. The shadow rolled across the grass, keeping pace with her; it was ragged, and shifting, and impossibly wide.
Larissa stood alone in the middle of the grass, her eyes fixed on what was approaching. Her eyes burned in the darkness as she pulled the radio from her belt, typed four numbers on its small keypad and pressed it to her ear.
45
CURTAIN CALL
SPINAL CORD NIGHTCLUB PARIS, FRANCE
With rising snarls of anger, the vampire crowd threw themselves towards the tight huddle of Department 19 Operators. Jamie didn’t move; he stood absolutely still, the grenade resting loosely in his hand, a narrow smile on his face, as his team went to work around him.
Jack Williams raised his T-Bone to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The metal stake erupted from the end of the wide barrel and screamed through the hot, sticky air. It crunched through the chest of an approaching vampire wearing a fluorescent green T-shirt and shot into the mass of vampires who hadn’t moved. It tore the nose off a girl in a pink minidress, who screamed and clasped her hands to her face.
The vampire in the green T-shirt was still moving, his teeth grinding through the Bliss high that was coursing through him, the thick metal wire twanging through the hole in his body. His face was contorted with pain and adrenaline, his eyes blazing; he was less than a metre away from Jack when his body finally realised what had been done to it, and he exploded into a pillar of steaming blood.
Screams echoed through the crowd, and several of the vampires ran to the far corners of the nightclub, desperately searching for a way out. A vampire wearing head-to-toe black leapt for Jamie, her hands twisted into claws, her eyes wide and fixed on the grenade in his hand. Claire Lock stepped sharply forward and plunged her stake into the airborne woman’s heart; she splashed to the concrete floor as a dark smear of blood.
The ring of vampires who had approached the Operators paused. The expressions on their faces, which had been anger mingled with bloodlust, now slid slowly to fear. The communal will to attack left them, and they scuttled back into the crowd, staring at the dark huddle of figures, waiting to see what they would do next.
“It’s very simple, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jamie, smiling at the swaying, trembling crowd. “If one of you tells me where I can find Jean-Luc Latour, then I walk out of here with this grenade in my hand, and you all get to live. If no one tells me what I want to know, then I press the trigger.”
He stood waiting, the UV grenade resting in his hand.
“No takers?” he asked, his voice light and friendly. “Well, that’s disappointing. But I suppose I have to respect your decision.”
Jamie twisted the grenade, and it sprang open, exposing the purple bulb at its core. He raised it into the air, let his thumb rest over its trigger, and was about to press it when a voice emerged from the crowd.
“Don’t,” it said. “I’ll tell you.”
Jamie removed his thumb from the trigger, but did not close the grenade.
“Tell me what?” he asked. “What are you going to tell me?”
“Latour. He’s at his club, not far from here.”
“Tell me where,” said Jamie, sharply.
“On Rue de Sévigné. It’s a building with no windows.”
“Why is he there?” demanded Jamie. “Who lives in the building?”
“The king of Paris lives there.”
“I know where that is,” said Dominique Saint-Jacques. “We can be there in ten minutes. Let’s go.”
“OK,” agreed Jamie. “Destroy them all, and let’s get out of here.”
There was a chorus of screams and terrified moans from the crowd. Jamie placed his thumb back on the grenade’s trigger and was about to press it when he felt hands grip his shoulders, and then he was spun round towards his team.
The four Operators of his team surrounded him, their visors raised, expressions of hostility on their faces.
“Don’t, Jamie,” said Claire Lock. “I won’t be part of this.”
Jamie stared at her, incredulous. “Part of what?” he barked. “Part of destroying a room full of vampires?”
“That’s not what this is,” said Angela. “This is murder, pure and simple. Trust me, I know the difference.”
“She’s right, Jamie,” said Jack Williams. “This isn’t what we do. And it’s not what Colonel Frankenstein would want.”
Jamie stared at his friend. “Don’t bring him into this, Jack,” he warned. “You didn’t know him. Don’t tell me what he would want.”
“You’re right,” said Jack. “I didn’t know him. None of us did apart from you. But I knew him, Jamie. He was a legend in Blacklight before any of us were even born; my grandfather has been telling me stories about him since the day I turned twenty-one. And I won’t stand by and let you dishonour his name by committing murder in the supposed service of it.”
Jamie felt something give inside him, and lowered the grenade. Shame, hot and sharp, spilled through him, as he pictured the look on the monster’s face if he could see what he had been about to do. Frankenstein detested vampires, he felt they were unnatural, but he believed that they were not inherently evil; he would not have stood idly by and let Jamie murder a roomful of them for no other reason than because he was angry.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice low. “I’m sorry. I just can’t explain to you…” He stopped, and tried again. “I need to get him back,” he said, simply. “I have to. Will you help me?”
“We’re here, aren’t we?” asked Angela, smiling at him.
Jamie smiled back. “Jack,” he said, “I think you should assume command of this mission. I’m too close to this.”
“No way,” replied Jack, instantly. “This is your Operation, Jamie, and I’ve got nothing but faith in you. Just calm down, and stop pushing so hard. We’re nearly there.”
“What about the rest of you?” Jamie asked.
“No, sir,” said Claire. “We’re with you.”
“Agreed,” said Angela.
“Me too,” said Dominique.
Jamie grinned. “Thank you,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Really. Let’s go and find him.”
Frankenstein watched with morbid curiosity as the audience for his death filed into the theatre of the Fraternité de la Nuit.
The pain in his arms and legs had become so constant that he no longer even felt it, which was the smallest of mercies. It had enabled him to raise his head as the first chattering voices became audible through the door at the back of the theatre, and watch as a vampire couple, dressed in beautiful evening wear, had floated through the door and down to a pair of seats in the second row.
Every one of the red velvet seats in the theatre was topped with a small RESERVATION card, with names written on them in flamboyant handwriting; Lord Dante was clearly expecting a full house.
The couple watched him intently, and whispered to each other as they made their way down the central aisle, their red eyes burning with curiosity; their expressions were similar to those of children in a zoo, children who found themselves facing a wild animal and were unable to fully convince themselves that they were safe. He stared back at them, until they took their seats and returned their attention to each other.
Frankenstein no longer felt any fear. He was exhausted, and miserable, and if this was to be his moment to die, then he was ready to embrace it. But he had no intention of dying without a fight, and he had an ace up his sleeve that no one else knew about; he knew
what his body was readying itself to do, could feel his bones creaking, hear his flesh screaming for transformation.
Please, he thought. Please let it come before he kills me.
More vampires filed into the theatre in ones and twos, holding champagne flutes or heavy crystal-bottomed glasses in their pale fingers. All were dressed immaculately, and all peered up at him with expressions of naked surprise on their faces, as though they could not believe what their eyes were seeing. Several shouted greetings at him, and he supposed that these were men and women, like Latour, who he had once socialised with, most likely in this very building. Not for the first time, Frankenstein was glad that he could remember nothing of the life he had lived.
When every seat was taken, when every name card had been removed and stowed away in pockets and purses as keepsakes, the house lights suddenly dimmed, and an expectant hush fell over the audience.
Silently, the door to Lord Dante’s dining room slid open. Frankenstein saw it happen, but the audience’s gaze was focused on the stage, and on him. The vampire king floated silently out of his dining room, and along the rear of the curved theatre; when he reached the back of the central aisle, a spotlight burst into life, illuminating him. Lord Dante was resplendent in a gleaming black tuxedo that all but hid the bulging line of metal on his chest. His skin was lush and vibrant, his hair glossy and slicked back with oil, and his face wore an expression of utter delight, as though he had been waiting his entire life for this moment.
I suppose he has, thought Frankenstein. Almost a century of it anyway.
Lord Dante floated silently down the aisle of the theatre as his audience erupted with applause around him. Several vampire women threw themselves prostrate before him, clawing at his feet. He swept past without so much as a glance in their direction; his eyes, his burning, smouldering, crimson eyes, were locked on Frankenstein.
As he reached the stage, he pirouetted gracefully in the air and faced his audience, raising his arms wide. The applause grew to a standing ovation, a deafening chorus of cheers and shouts of “Bravo” filling the small space. The vampire king basked in his own glory, reborn by the adulation of his subjects, and by the realisation of a quest for revenge that was almost a hundred years old.