by Will Hill
“Hey, Mum,” he said, stepping into the cell. “How’s it going?”
Marie Carpenter was sitting on the sofa, her nose buried in a paperback book. She looked up, the predictable frown of fake surprise creasing her features, then broke into a huge smile and leapt to her feet. She stepped forward to meet him, and mother and son hugged in the middle of the square room.
“Hello, love,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “Are you all right? Have you been out today?”
Despite the uniform he wore and the things he had done, Jamie was still a teenage boy, and never more so than in the presence of his mother. He blushed immediately at the enthusiasm of her embrace, while at the same time a broad grin emerged on his face. This was why he had walked voluntarily into the darkest depths of horror, why he had stood in the middle of an ancient building full of the dead and faced down the most dangerous monster in the world; so that he might be able to hug his mother again, and feel the love that radiated out of her when she was with him, a love that he had only realised he needed when it was taken away.
“I’m all right, Mum,” he replied. “Yourself?”
Marie gave him a final squeeze before releasing her grip, and stepping back to look at her son. She cast her eyes quickly up and down him, taking in the black uniform with a look of immense pride on her face, before she reached the pink patch of scar tissue on his neck, and a grimace flickered across her face.
“I’m fine,” she replied. Her gaze lingered on his neck for a moment, as it always did, before she forced her eyes away and broke into a smile. “How’s Kate?”
Jamie’s own smile faded.
His relationship with his mother had improved immeasurably since they had returned from Lindisfarne. The truth about Julian Carpenter, about the man he had really been and the circumstances surrounding his death, had liberated them; the dark mess of grief and betrayal that had crippled them both in the aftermath of his death, that Jamie had been unable to stop himself from taking out on his mother, had cleared, leaving them free to rebuild. They both still missed him, in their different ways, and Jamie had come to terms with the fact that he probably always would. But the grief now seemed manageable. What had been a yawning, unfillable chasm was now merely a hole, deep, and slippery at the edges, but that he could now avoid falling into, most of the time at least. Sadly, it was no longer the only one; there was now a hole of almost equal size with Frankenstein’s name above it.
It had been slow going at first, the thaw between Jamie and Marie. There were new complications, not least of which was the condition that required Marie to spend her days and nights in the depths of the Loop behind an ultraviolet wall. There was much to say, and over the first couple of weeks, as both of them adjusted to their new lives, it was all eventually said.
Jamie apologised for how he had behaved since his dad had died, cutting off his mother’s attempts to tell him he didn’t need to, plunging ahead until it was all out of him. Marie had listened, tears running down her face, until he was done, then offered an apology of her own, for failing to cope with the death of her husband, for failing to realise that her son still needed her. By the time she was finished, they were both in tears, tears that turned out to be as cathartic as they were painful. There was only one remaining aspect of their rebuilt relationship that caused Jamie to worry.
Marie Carpenter absolutely adored Kate.
And hated Larissa.
He understood why; it was Kate who had put her arm round Marie after the hunger had hit her in the aftermath of Lindisfarne, Kate who had escorted her on to the rescue helicopter, talking to her in the gentle, friendly way that came so naturally to her. Larissa, on the other hand, was a vampire, and as far as Marie was concerned, vampires were all monsters, despite Jamie’s protestations to the contrary.
He knew he was wasting his time; Marie had been kidnapped and tormented by the very worst the vampire world had to offer, and was appalled by the change that had been inflicted on her. But he tried anyway, because he knew that eventually the time would come when he would want to tell his mother about what was happening between him and Larissa, and he didn’t want her first reaction to be revulsion.
“She’s fine, Mum,” he said. “She said to say hello.”
Larissa is fine too. More than fine, actually.
“She’s a good girl,” said Marie, firmly. “I knew it from the moment I met her.”
Jamie didn’t say anything. Instead, he wandered across the cell, and looked at the photos his mother had arranged on top of the chest of drawers. A small picture in a silver frame caught his eye, and he leant in for a closer look.
His mum, heavily pregnant with him, was leaning back on the bonnet of the dark blue BMW he remembered from when he was very young, a wide smile on her face. The sun was shining from outside the frame, illuminating a bright green row of trees beyond the car, casting the dark silhouette of his dad across the bottom of the photo. The shadow’s hand was raised to its face, holding the camera that had recorded the moment.
She looks so happy, Jamie thought, then straightened up and turned back to his mum, as he realised she had said something he hadn’t heard.
“What was that, Mum?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.
“I was saying that Henry came down to see me today,” she said. “Did he tell you?”
“Henry?” replied Jamie. “Who’s Henry?”
“Henry Seward,” answered Marie, the look on her face suggesting that it should have been obvious.
“Admiral Seward?” asked Jamie, incredulous. “My commanding officer? Is that who you mean?”
“Of course that’s who I mean, Jamie,” replied Marie. A look of concern had emerged on her face. “Is something wrong?”
No, nothing wrong. Definitely nothing weird about my boss hanging out with my mum in her cell. Not at all.
“I suppose not,” said Jamie. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t want anything. He just came down to say hello. He normally pops down about once a week.”
“Once a week? Like, every week?”
“I’ve upset you,” said Marie, a look of slight panic on her face. The possibility of her son stopping coming to see her was never far from her mind, and was the thing she was most afraid of. “Can we talk about something else?”
Jamie was still attempting to stretch his head round the concept of his mother and Admiral Seward socialising, but he let it go when he heard the nervousness in his mother’s voice. He took a deep breath.
“Of course we can, Mum,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Marie smiled a broad smile of relief, and floated over on to her bed, apparently so relieved she had avoided a fight with her son that she didn’t even realise she was using her vampire abilities in front of him.
“Tell me where you went this evening,” she said, settling down on the lilac bedding. “I worry about you, out there with all those monsters. Tell me what you were doing.”
Jamie crossed to the rear of the cell, flopped down on to the battered sofa and began to tell his mother about his day.
7
VALENTIN RECEIVES A VISITOR
CENTRAL PARK WEST AND WEST EIGHTY-FIFTH STREET NEW YORK, USA
Valentin Rusmanov stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of his study, on the top floor of the Upper West Side mansion he had lived in since its completion in 1895. His ownership of the grand, stately building was, like most aspects of his life, a closely guarded secret.
Throughout the twentieth century, his long existence had required him to take certain steps to avoid attention, including the formation of a number of shell companies to administer his assets. His name appeared nowhere on any document relating to the building and, from the outside, it seemed little different to the other grand apartment buildings that faced Central Park from the west.
It was most similar in design to the Dakota, thirteen blocks to the south, but whereas that famous landmark had been originally designed as sixty-five individual
residences, Valentin’s building was a single, almost obscenely spacious residence, arranged over seven vast floors, the majority of which were filled with the accumulated spoils of more than four centuries of wealth and influence. The seventh floor contained the suite of rooms in which Valentin slept, to which entrance was expressly forbidden without invitation. The study he was now standing in occupied the north-east corner of the seventh floor, from which the view of the park was nothing short of spectacular.
Valentin looked down at the wide-open space, an oasis of dark corners and shadows amid the blinding lights of Manhattan. The last of the joggers were making their way to the exits, leaving behind them the teenage couples, junkies, muggers and homeless men and women that made up the park’s nocturnal population. He watched them, observing their small lives from high above without objection or condemnation. He had never felt disgust, or anger, when he looked at ordinary humans; he had always left such sentiments to his brothers, and to his former master.
Valentin’s nose twitched, and a second later his face curdled into a grimace of disgust. He turned away from the window, flew swiftly across his study and landed gracefully in the blue leather armchair that sat behind his wide, dark wood desk. He leant back in the chair, staring expectantly at the door on the other side of the room. A moment later there was a polite knock, and the door slid open just wide enough for Valentin’s butler, a skeletal figure in exquisite evening wear, to slip through the gap and into the study.
Lamberton had entered service in the vampire’s house in 1901 and immediately demonstrated both impeccable professional ability, and an admirable willingness to ignore the horrors that routinely took place beneath his master’s roof; he had served Valentin for forty years as a human, and almost seventy more as a vampire.
His turning had been Lamberton’s idea; although Valentin had promised the butler that no harm would come to him while in his employ, a promise the ancient vampire had kept with great dedication, Lamberton had eventually been forced to confront his master with the problem of his advancing years.
After discussing the matter over half a case of 1921 Château Latour, Valentin had reluctantly agreed that no other solution seemed acceptable and, after checking for a final time whether the butler was sure, had bitten Lamberton’s throat with the tenderness of a lover, allowing the barest minimum of blood to escape. He had then flown out into the New York night and found a young nurse from Oklahoma who was about to ship out to the battlefields of Europe. He had brought her home and given her to Lamberton, when the turn was complete and the hunger gripped him for the first time. Once the girl was spent, the butler thanked his master, and returned immediately to his duties, duties he had continued to discharge admirably ever since.
Lamberton was now standing silently by the study door, waiting to be acknowledged before he spoke. When Valentin nodded in his direction, he spoke five words that his master had hoped never to hear.
“Your brother is here, sir.”
Valentin swore in Wallachian, his eyes flashing momentarily red. Then he regarded Lamberton, and sighed deeply.
“Show him in,” he said.
The door was flung wide, and Valeri Rusmanov strode into the study, as Lamberton exited silently. The oldest of the three Rusmanov brothers was wearing simple clothing: a black tunic, heavy woollen trousers and leather boots, and his grey greatcoat. He stopped halfway across the room, and looked around, taking in the opulence of his surroundings with obvious distaste.
Ridiculous old fool, thought Valentin, from behind his desk. He thinks he’s still a general, commanding troops on a battlefield. Pathetic.
Valentin opened a beautifully carved wooden box and withdrew a red cigarette from the velvet-lined interior. The cigarette contained Turkish tobacco laced liberally with Bliss, the heady mixture of heroin and blood to which he had become mildly addicted over the last three decades. He applied the flame from a wooden match to the tip of the cigarette, then leant back in his chair as Valeri, who had still not spoken since entering the study, paused in front of a shelf containing a glass tank in which three basketballs were floating in a clear solution.
“What do you call this?” asked Valeri, his tone gruff and unfriendly.
“I don’t call it anything,” replied Valentin, forcing himself to remain polite. “The artist called it Three Ball 50/50 Tank. It’s Jeff Koons.”
“And this is art, is it?”
“I would say so.”
Valeri turned away from the shelf, waving a hand dismissively at its contents. He crossed the study in three long strides and stood before Valentin’s desk, his nose wrinkling at the smell of the smoke from the cigarette in his brother’s hand.
“Is that Bliss?” he asked, spitting out the last word.
“Why, yes it is,” replied Valentin, opening the box again. “Would you care for one?”
Valeri stared coldly at him.
“Do you have no shame whatsoever?” he asked.
Valentin smiled, drew deeply on his cigarette and exhaled. The smoke floated up into the air in a thick cloud, enveloping Valeri’s head as it dispersed.
“Apparently not,” he said, lightly.
The two brothers faced each other for a long moment, until eventually Valeri spoke again.
“Our brother is dead,” he said. There was no emotion in his voice.
“I know,” replied Valentin. “He has been dead for more than three months.”
“You don’t seem upset by the news.”
“Are you?”
Valeri drew himself up, and glared at his brother.
“Alexandru and I differed on a great number of matters,” he said, slowly. “But he was still blood, still our blood. And now he’s gone.”
“That’s right, he’s gone. But we’re still here. Isn’t life marvellous?”
Valeri grunted, a deep, throaty sound that Valentin thought might be what passed for his brother laughing.
“You call this living?” Valeri asked. “Surrounded by lackeys and boot-lickers, in this castle of decadence?”
“Yes,” replied Valentin, and for the first time he failed to keep the steel from his tone. “I do. I also remember the size of your domestic staff in Wallachia, Valeri. There were times when I believe it numbered in the hundreds.”
Valeri stiffened.
“I was a different man in those days,” he replied.
You were actually a man, thought Valentin. That was certainly different.
Valentin got up from behind his desk and walked back to the window that overlooked the park. He motioned for Valeri to join him, and after a long pause, with a look of great reluctance on his lined face, the elder Rusmanov did so. Valeri stood beside his younger brother, and looked out at the towering lights of Manhattan.
“Have you ever been to New York before?” asked Valentin.
“Never,” replied Valeri, grimacing. “Until fifteen minutes ago I had never set foot in this sordid place, and I would have preferred for that to remain the case.”
“Of course you would. Yours are the dark open spaces, the wilderness of our youth. You are a creature of tradition, Valeri. I don’t criticise you for it; I’m merely stating the facts. But mine? Mine are the bright lights, the crowded streets, the noise and the bustle and the life of the city. An American writer once wrote that, ‘One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.’ Well, I’ve been here for more than a century.”
“Why are you telling me this, Valentin?”
The younger vampire sighed, and regarded his brother with a pitying look.
“You always were so literal. Never mind. I assume you have come with word from your master?”
“Our master,” said Valeri, his voice like ice.
“Of course. Our master. I apologise.”
But Valentin didn’t look sorry, not in the slightest. A half-smile played across his lips, causing anger to surge through his older brother. Valeri pushed it down as far as he was able, and f
ocused on the order he had been given.
“He calls you home, Valentin. Your life belongs to him, as it always has, and he calls you home.”
Valentin bared his teeth.
“My life is my own,” he hissed. “Do you hear me?”
Red spilled into the corners of Valeri’s eyes. He took his hands from where they had been crossed behind his back, and let them dangle loosely at his sides.
“I disagree,” he said. “As I am confident our master will too.”
The two brothers stared at each other, violence pregnant in the still air of the study. Then Valeri smiled broadly, raising his hands in mock placation.
“Enough, brother,” he said. “I have no time for posturing, or children’s games. I must leave, with or without you. Will you refuse the call of our master, to whom you owe this gilded cage you call a life? Or will you honour him, as you swore you always would, and do your duty now he has returned to us?”
Valentin looked at his brother, and favoured him with a smile of his own.
“Of course I will,” he replied. “I will need two days to set my affairs in order, then I’ll return home like the dutiful lapdog.”
“Your affairs are trivia,” replied Valeri. “You are to accompany me tonight.”
“In which case, I would remind you of two things,” said Valentin, his smile still in place. “Firstly, that you are a guest in my home. And secondly, that I have not been afraid of you for more than five hundred years now.”
Valeri took half a step forward, a dangerous look on his face.
“Is that a fact, brother?” he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.
“It is,” replied Valentin. “A fact that leaves you with two options. You can allow me to conclude my trivia as I see fit, after which I will return home, as I promised. Or you can try to remove me from this house by force, which will result in one of us explaining to your master why we have destroyed the other. So what’s it going to be, brother?”