by Will Hill
This weekend, though, was sacred.
It was the anniversary of the strange, surreal day in 1997 when they had sold five per cent of their shares in the search engine they had helped found to a private investment group in San Francisco, and realised with genuine bemusement that they had both become millionaires. They had celebrated by taking Donny’s old van out to Joshua Tree, where they drank whisky and smoked grass and reminisced, and it was now traditional for them to head into the desert for two days every year.
Donny wolfed his burger down in three bites. Walt ate slowly, savouring each mouthful, and was still finishing his first as his friend was attacking his third. They ate in companionable silence, their eyes fixed on the skies to the west, above the low hills that shielded Area 51 from unwelcome eyes. Their little clockwork radio sat on the desert floor between them; they had found a Las Vegas classic rock station at the edge of the dial and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman’ was crackling softly out of the speakers.
Donny finished the last of his burgers, felt his stomach rumble appreciatively, and settled himself in his chair. The two friends would stay like this until they fell asleep. Eventually, one of them would wake up and rouse the other, and they would stumble into their tent to see out the rest of the rapidly cooling night. It was a familiar routine, and one they enjoyed immensely.
“What’s that?” asked Walt.
Donny grinned. The first time they had come up here, almost a decade earlier, they had spent most of their first night claiming to see something in the distance, trying to make each other jump. But they had never seen anything in the famous Area 51 skies apart from regular military jets and helicopters, and Donny had no intention of falling for this old routine.
“Nothing,” he said, without even turning his head. “Just like it was nothing last year, like it’s always been nothing. Don’t even try it, Walt.”
“I’m serious.”
Something in Walt’s voice made Donny look round. It wasn’t fear, or even unease; it sounded more like incredulity. He turned his head slowly and saw Walt pointing towards the northern horizon. He followed his friend’s finger and looked.
In the distance, a tiny red light was moving smoothly through the night sky. It was perhaps half a mile away, little more than a pinprick in the darkness, but it was darting quickly through the air, seeming to change direction rapidly. Then Donny realised something else.
It was moving in their direction.
“What the hell is that?” he said.
“No idea,” replied Walt, his gaze fixed on the approaching light. “It’s small, whatever it is.”
“No sound either,” said Donny. “No engine. Listen.”
The two friends fell silent. Out on the highway, a car rumbled quickly past. But from the north, the direction the glowing dot was coming from, there was no sound of any kind.
The light swirled and swooped through the sky with dizzying speed. It accelerated in one direction for a second or two, appeared to stop dead and hover, then zoomed away in another direction entirely. It flickered, as though it was rapidly turning on and off, then shot towards the ground, so low that it seemed to scrape the desert floor, before rocketing back into the sky. And it was getting closer, second by second, to the two watching men.
“Can’t be a plane,” said Donny. “Too quiet. Too quick.”
“Maybe a drone?” said Walt. “Some new model?”
“Maybe,” replied Donny, but he didn’t think so. The speed and the angles of the light’s movement were too fast, too sudden, for even the smallest remote aircraft. He stared at the dancing light, fascinated, then felt the breath catch in his throat as it accelerated directly towards them. It swooped low, and now, for the first time, Donny could hear something: the rattling of desert sand as whatever it was passed above it at incredible speed. He opened his mouth to say something to Walt, but didn’t get the chance.
The glowing red light hurtled through their campsite, barely two metres above their heads. Their barbecue thudded to the ground and their tent fluttered heavily in the rushing air, its canvas sides rattling out a suddenly deafening drumbeat. Plates and cups and empty beer cans leapt into the air and Donny raised a protective arm across his eyes, feeling his weight shift as he did so. His gaze was still fixed on the patch of sky through which the light had passed at incredible, unbelievable speed, and he overbalanced, hearing the plastic of his chair rip as he thudded to the ground. Walt was beside him immediately, dragging him to his feet, then shushing him before he uttered a single word. The two men stood in the middle of their scattered campsite, listening intently, scanning the skies for the red light.
There was no sign of it in any direction.
It was gone.
“What. The. Hell. Was. That?” asked Donny.
“I don’t know,” replied Walt, his eyes shining with excitement. “I’ve never seen anything move like that. Never. And I…” He trailed off, still staring up into the sky.
“You what?” asked Donny. He was beginning to smile at the incredible weirdness of the moment, glad that he had shared it with his friend.
“I thought I… heard something,” said Walt. “When it passed through, just for a second. Something crazy.”
“What was it?”
“Laughter,” said Walt, a smile of embarrassment rising on his face. “It sounded like a girl, laughing.”
Fifty metres above their heads, Larissa Kinley floated in the cool air, a smile of unbridled pleasure on her pale, beautiful face.
It had been reckless to swoop through the little campsite, and it was almost certainly a breach of regulations, but she didn’t care; she knew full well that neither of the men had been able to see her at the speed she had been moving, just as she knew they wouldn’t be able to see her now, even if they happened to look directly at her. The matt-black material of her Blacklight uniform disappeared completely into the darkness of the desert sky. And neither man was looking, in any case; they were chatting excitedly to each other, their words perfectly audible to her supernatural ears. She savoured their conversation for a few moments, then spun elegantly in the air and flew slowly back towards the wide white expanse of the dry bed of Groom Lake.
Larissa loved the desert.
Its vast expanse made her feel tiny; made her feel free. She would obviously have been forbidden from flying during the hours of daylight even if doing so wouldn’t have caused her to burst into flames, but once the sun was down, she was allowed to take to the skies. Such freedom was wonderful after more than three months in Department 19, where her every movement was scrutinised and subject to seemingly dozens of rules and regulations. Part of it was simple geography: the Loop was hidden away in the middle of one of the most densely populated countries in the world, whereas NS9 sat at the centre of several hundred square miles of land that belonged to the US government, land that no member of the public was permitted to enter. Everyone knew Area 51 existed, but no one knew what really happened there, and the military were quite happy to let the UFO conspiracies run and run; they worked as a fantastically efficient red herring.
She had been in the desert for almost three weeks. When Cal Holmwood had told her that she was being sent on secondment to NS9, she had immediately assumed she was being punished for something. It had seemed unthinkably cruel that the Interim Director, who was fully aware of the situation that had developed between herself and Jamie Carpenter, would send her halfway around the world to do a job that any number of Operators could do just as well. But she was beginning to revise her opinion of his motives.
Larissa missed Jamie and Kate and Matt; her friends made her happy, and Jamie made her positively blissful at times. But they were often the only things inside Blacklight that did. She was a vampire member of an organisation whose sole reason for existing was to destroy vampires, and although she had proved herself time and again since being allowed to join, there were plenty of Operators inside the Loop who still looked at her with barely concealed disgust.
Part of it was the fact that she had spent her first days there in a cell on the detention level, part of it was the perception that she had endangered the life of Jamie’s mother to serve her own needs, but mostly it was the mere fact of who, and what, she was. She was surrounded by hostility, and suspicion, with no indication that either was going to end any time soon.
At NS9 she had instantly been given a fresh start, the clean slate she knew she would never be granted at the Loop. She had been made to feel welcome and valued, and had made friends, so quickly and naturally that it had surprised her: men and women whose company she enjoyed, who made her feel normal and gave her energetic self-loathing a rest. As she drifted over Papoose Lake, descending slowly towards the wide-open doors of the NS9 hangar, she saw one of them waiting for her in the long rectangle of yellow light. She slipped easily to the ground and smiled at Tim Albertsson, who grinned back at her with his perfectly straight, perfectly white, all-American teeth.
The tall, broad former Navy SEAL was Larissa’s handler during her secondment in the desert. He was of Scandinavian descent, as his blond hair and blue eyes would readily attest, and a member of NS9’s elite Special Operator programme.
“Nice flight?” he asked.
“Very nice,” she replied. “Beautiful in fact. It felt like I could see all the way to the ocean.”
“With your eyes, you probably could,” said Tim.
Larissa laughed. “Maybe.”
“Dinner?” asked Tim. “I’m meeting everyone in the diner.”
“I can’t right now,” replied Larissa. “I’ve got a meeting with the Director, and I’m going to try to call home in a few hours. But I’ll come round if I get time in between.”
Tim nodded. “Say hello to Jamie for me if you don’t make it,” he said.
“I will,” said Larissa, knowing that she wouldn’t.
“Cool,” he said, and smiled widely. “I might see you later then.”
“Maybe,” she said, and walked into the hangar, her heart thumping in her chest.
*
Larissa waited until the lift began to descend, then leant heavily against the metal wall.
Her heart was refusing to slow down. Part of the reason, she knew, was Tim, with his handsome face and his hair and his casual, easy-going confidence, but it was mostly because of the realisation that had been steadily building inside her for the last week or so. It intensified whenever she was about to speak to Jamie, because it was the one thing she couldn’t tell him; the one thing she knew he wouldn’t want to hear.
She got out of the lift on Level 1 and floated along the corridor. She never thought twice about flying inside the NS9 base, never felt self-conscious or worried that the next person she saw would give her the look of contempt she had become all too used to. Inside the base that everyone called Dreamland, the only emotion her vampire abilities provoked with any regularity was good-natured jealousy from Operators who wished they had her strength and speed.
Larissa knocked on the door of the Director’s quarters and felt it swing slightly open. The door was rarely closed, let alone locked, and she had never seen a single guard stationed outside it; it was just one of the many ways that NS9 differed from Blacklight. She pushed it open, calling General Allen’s name as she did so.
“Come on in,” shouted a voice.
Larissa floated through the door. The room beyond was square with a wide desk standing to one side. On the wall opposite a vast black screen had been hung, reaching almost from floor to ceiling, and at the back of the room stood a wooden table on which was arranged a silver tray full of bottles: whisky, brandy, vodka, gin. Beneath the table was a small grey fridge that Larissa knew was always full. The table stood between two doors that led into the rest of the General’s quarters; above it, the wall was covered with pennants and banners and scarves in the black and gold colours of the West Point football team.
Larissa had spent a number of evenings in this friendly, comfortable room since arriving at NS9. General Allen was a warm, garrulous conversationalist and she enjoyed his company immensely. He regaled her with stories of the men and women she had met during her secondment and the ones she had left behind in England, stories of adventure and daring and blood and death. Last time, he had told tales of Henry Seward and Julian Carpenter, two men for whom the General had enormous affection. She had listened intently as he described the three of them, all young and full of fire, determined to destroy every vampire on the planet; they had fought alongside each other countless times, their paths crossing often enough for the two Englishmen and the American to become friends. They had remained close, even as geography separated them, and it was obvious to Larissa that the loss of Henry Seward had hit General Allen hard, coming as it did less than three years after the death of Julian Carpenter.
Their first conversation had turned into a subtle interrogation of Department 19’s ability to find Admiral Seward and bring him home; Larissa got the distinct impression that only protocol was preventing General Allen from shipping the entire NS9 roster to Europe to aid in the search for his lost friend. She had reminded him that he knew Cal Holmwood and Paul Turner were good men, and reassured him that they were doing everything they could; her presence in Nevada was proof that they were keen to restore Blacklight to full strength as quickly as possible so they might better hunt for their lost Director, and Allen had appeared satisfied, at least outwardly.
Larissa floated to the pair of sofas that dominated the centre of the room. They were angled towards the screen with a long wooden coffee table before them; she took a seat and waited for the Director to appear. She was hopeful that General Allen might continue his tales of Jamie’s father; she loved hearing them, and had taken to writing them down in a small notebook she kept in her quarters. Her plan was to give the notebook to Jamie when she got home; she hoped it might help him to know the real man his father had been.
A minute or so later one of the doors at the back of the living room opened and General Allen emerged. He was a large man, tall and broad through the shoulders, and carried himself with the upright ease of a lifelong soldier. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and combat trousers and was towelling the last remnants of shaving foam from his ears and chin as he strolled into the room. He saw the vampire girl sitting on the sofa and grinned broadly.
“Larissa,” he said. “Good to see you. Drink?”
“Diet Coke, please, sir.”
Allen nodded, and took a can from his fridge. He selected a beer for himself, then handed the can and a glass full of ice to Larissa. She thanked him, and poured her drink as the General twisted the cap off his own. He flopped down on to the sofa opposite her and took a long pull from his bottle.
“Tim says you’re scaring the hell out of the trainees,” he said. “Apparently, a couple of them asked to be transferred back to their units.”
“Oh God,” said Larissa, her face flushing pink. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said the Director, smiling broadly. “They’ve all been turned down. You opened their eyes, that’s all. They’ll get over it. And if they can’t, they’re no use to us.”
Larissa nodded. “I suppose not, sir.”
“Your Operational reports have also been excellent. Uniformly so.”
“That’s good to hear, sir.”
Allen nodded. “Have you talked to Jamie?”
“Not for a couple of days, sir. I’m going to call him tonight.”
“That’s good,” said General Allen. “It still blows my mind to think about what he did to Alexandru Rusmanov. A kid his age? Unbelievable.”
Larissa felt pride explode through her chest. “He doesn’t think it was that big a deal, sir,” she replied. “He thinks he did what he had to do. I’ve tried to tell him he’s wrong, but he won’t hear it.”
“He is wrong,” said General Allen. “Do you know how many Operators have lost their lives to Alexandru over the years? Older, far more exper
ienced men and women than him? Too many to count, Larissa, and every one of them was trying to do what needed doing. Only he actually did it.”
Larissa beamed. She loved the awe with which her boyfriend was regarded on this side of the Atlantic, from rookie Operators all the way up to the Director himself. Jamie was nothing short of a legend: the teenager who had destroyed Alexandru Rusmanov, who had taken a squad of men and women into the lair of the oldest vampire in Paris and rescued Victor Frankenstein, who had earned the trust of Henry Seward and the grudging respect of Paul Turner. She felt no jealousy when people asked her about him, just pride, and love.
“I know, sir,” she said. “You should tell him.”
“I will,” said General Allen. “One day, I definitely will.”
“He’ll appreciate it, sir.”
“Do you miss him?” asked the Director. “Are you looking forward to going home?”
Larissa considered this: two different questions, with two different answers.
“I miss him,” she said.
General Allen nodded. “I’m hearing nothing but great things about you,” he said. “Tim’s just about ready to adopt you. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“That’s nice to hear, sir.”
“We probably could, you know,” said Allen, his grey eyes suddenly fixed on hers. “Arrange a permanent transfer, I mean. What would you think about something like that?”
Larissa felt her stomach churn with desire. She pictured herself flying through the great open spaces surrounding Dreamland, eating and drinking and laughing with her friends in the diner at the edge of the runway, training recruits and helping NS9 on Operations throughout the length and breadth of this vast, unfamiliar country.
“What about Jamie?” she asked. “Could you have him transferred too?”
General Allen laughed. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Larissa, I can assure you of that. But I think the chances of Cal Holmwood letting that happen are somewhere very close to zero.”