Department 19: The Rising

by Will Hill

  STERILE ENVIRONMENT

  NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS BEYOND THIS POINT

  ALL STAFF MUST COMPLETE DECONTAMINATION

  BEFORE ENTERING

  Jamie’s mouth hung open as he looked at the hologram and the men and women working on it. He collected himself, and turned to Talbot, who was watching him with an obvious look of pride on his lined face.

  “What are you doing down here?” Jamie asked, his eyes wide, his voice shot through with wonder.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Talbot, “I thought that would have been obvious. We’re trying to find a cure.”

  33

  IN THE COURT OF THE VAMPIRE KING

  LA FRATERNITÉ DE LA NUIT RUE DE SÉVIGNÉ, PARIS, FRANCE YESTERDAY

  The room Frankenstein entered was so dark that, for a moment, he couldn’t tell whether it was occupied. Then he heard a deep, rattling gasp, and a quavering voice issued forth from the gloom.

  “Can it be?” asked the voice. “After all these years, does it really stand before me?”

  There was motion in the darkness, and then a pair of lamps bloomed into life; what Frankenstein saw before him threatened to eradicate what was left of his damaged mind and send him teetering towards the edge of madness.

  A round dining table stood in the middle of the small room, set for eight. The plates were chipped and dusty, the glasses flecked with dirt. Seven of the chairs that stood haphazardly around the table were empty; the eighth, facing the door, was occupied. The chair was old, and had once obviously been ornate, almost a throne; the carving on the arms and the sides was still clearly fine work, even through the layers of dirt and brown, flaking blood that coated it. In it, squatting like a spider in its hole, was an ancient, wizened vampire.

  The creature’s skin was the grey of funeral ash, its face lined so deeply that all Frankenstein could see of its eyes was the red glow emerging from beneath the drooping, hooded skin of its brow. Its mouth was open in surprise, exposing rows of dark brown teeth, and a tongue the colour of rotten meat. The head was topped by long streams of vividly white hair, emerging from the grey, liver-spotted scalp like tendrils of smoke. The vampire was wearing a tuxedo, but the garments had been tailored for a larger man; they hung as heavily and shapelessly from its limbs as lumps of dead skin, giving the ancient monster the appearance of moulting, of decay being held at bay by the flimsiest of barriers.

  From its sunken chest, something angular protruded, raising the dirty white fabric of its shirt away from the skin in a pyramid. Frankenstein’s eyes were drawn to this anomaly; he had taken a quick glance round the room as the lamps flickered into life, and he believed that unless he focused on something, on one tangible thing, he would collapse, or worse.

  Piled haphazardly around the chair the monster was sitting in were the remains of more men and women than Frankenstein could even allow his reeling mind to estimate.

  Gleaming white bones, picked clean of all their flesh, shone in nauseating lumps from a mass of dead, rotting meat. Long strands of hair, of every colour, tracked through the carnage like veins, light reflecting on their shiny strands. There were arms, and legs, and hands; some of the skin was black with age and decay, some the vivid, mottled white of the newly dead.

  The smell was beyond imagination, a scent of blood and filth so thick it felt as though you could have bitten into it. Faces stared out of the vile mess; skulls with a papery-thin covering of skin, green-black bubbles of what were left of the features of men and women who had long since died in this room, the bright-white faces of the most recently murdered, their expressions of pleading and outrage still visible, even without eyes that had fallen in or been plucked out.

  As Frankenstein stared at the vampire’s chest, his eyes caught the slightest movement at the side of the chair, and although he didn’t want to, he was unable to stop himself from looking. The monster’s ancient grey fingers were absently stroking the long blonde hair of a disembodied head that had clearly been placed within his reach. The dead girl stared out across the room, mercifully bereft of signs of torture or violation; she wore a perfect expression of surprise, and Frankenstein was able to hope, with all his heart, that it was because her suffering had been brief.

  “My Lord Dante,” said Latour, softly. He had bowed his head as he followed Frankenstein into the room, and it was still lowered as he spoke. “After almost ninety years, I have brought the monster back to you. I have brought you revenge, Your Majesty.”

  “Latour,” said Lord Dante, his voice like nails on a blackboard. “My favourite. Still you honour me where others have forsaken me. You shall be rewarded for this work, rewarded with anything you desire. Name it, and it shall be yours.”

  “My lord,” said Latour. “My reward comes from seeing justice served, finally. But if Your Majesty insists, then there is a small prize I have coveted.”

  The vampire king laughed, an awful rattling sound, like a last breath.

  “I know what you speak of,” he replied.

  Lord Dante reached out a trembling hand, picked up a small golden bell that stood on the table and rang it sharply. Almost instantly, a door that Frankenstein had not noticed slid open, and a butler appeared. The man was dressed immaculately, and as he approached his master, Frankenstein saw his nose wrinkle momentarily with disgust.

  “Your Majesty,” said the butler, bowing his head. “How may I be of assistance?”

  “Bring Sophie here,” said Lord Dante, a revolting smile twisting its way through the wrinkles of his face. “She belongs to Latour now.”

  Behind him, Frankenstein heard a low, guttural growl of excitement emerge from Latour’s throat, and his stomach churned.

  “At once, Your Majesty,” said the butler, backing smoothly away from the table and disappearing through the door. Lord Dante watched him leave, then turned his attention back to Frankenstein.

  “I never believed I would see you again, monster,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I had come to accept that I would never have my vengeance. Yet here you are, standing before me; how amusing the way the world works. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I have nothing to say,” said Frankenstein, as firmly as he was able. “I don’t know what bad blood exists between you and I, and I have no memory of us ever having met. So I have nothing to say to you.”

  Lord Dante slowly turned his neck, the creaking of the sinews and bones audible in the small room, and looked incredulously at Latour.

  “What madness has befallen your friend, Latour?” he asked. “Does he speak the truth?”

  “He does, Your Majesty,” replied Latour. “His mind is gone, for reasons I have not been able to ascertain. He remembers nothing, beyond the last few months.”

  The vampire king tapped his chest, slowly, his fingers drumming against the angular bulge in his shirt.

  “And this?” Lord Dante asked. “He does not remember this? He has forgotten what he did to me?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” replied Latour. “There is nothing left of the man that he used to be. I have tried to coax that man back to life, so that your vengeance might be all the sweeter, but it appears there is nothing to be done.”

  Frankenstein listened to the two vampires talk about him as though he wasn’t there, and wondered at their words. It was clear that the monster in the chair, the creature that Latour referred to as Lord Dante, had been waiting many years to make him answer for some long-past crime, although he had no idea what that crime might have been. But it appeared that whatever he had done had caused the ancient vampire considerable distress, and he felt a savage surge of satisfaction at the thought.

  “You remember nothing,” said Lord Dante. “That is your claim, monster?”

  “Don’t call me that,” growled Frankenstein.

  “I apologise, Mr Frankenstein,” said Lord Dante, a smile emerging on his face. “But that is your position? That your memories are lost to you?”

  “It is not a position,” replied Frankenstein,
his voice low. “It is simple fact.”

  “You do not remember the many nights you spent in this room, in my company?”

  “No. I do not.”

  “You do not remember the meals we shared, the happy hours we idled away?” Lord Dante’s voice was rising, the tremble in it becoming more pronounced.

  “No.”

  “The tortures we revelled in, the blood we drank, the lives we brought to their end?”

  “No!” bellowed Frankenstein, his voice booming through the small room, deafeningly loud. “I do not remember, and I’m glad that I don’t!”

  “What about this?” roared Lord Dante, rising from his chair and tearing open his shirt. “Do you remember this, you foul, disloyal monster?”

  Frankenstein stared at the narrow, mottled grey chest of the vampire king of Paris, and felt his eyes widen involuntarily. Emerging from the sagging flesh, directly over the ancient monster’s heart, was a wide, thin piece of metal, extending perhaps two centimetres beyond the surface of the vampire’s skin. Where the metal penetrated the flesh, there was a thick ridge of scar tissue, a crust of pale pink amid the expanse of fading grey.

  “No,” said Frankenstein, distantly. He could not take his eyes from the unnatural sight before him. “I don’t remember that.”

  The fire in Lord Dante’s eyes subsided, and he looked at Frankenstein with an expression that was strangely close to pity.

  “I do remember,” he said. “For almost ninety years, I have been unable to forget what you did to me, for even a single minute. You put this blade in my chest over a common, lying little whore, and left me here for dead. You, whom I considered my friend. Can you imagine how that felt?”

  Frankenstein said nothing; he was sure the vampire was not interested in a reply.

  “Of course you can’t,” continued Lord Dante, after barely a pause. “You can’t imagine what it was like to have your heart almost cleaved in two by someone you would have trusted with your life. You can’t imagine what it’s like to feel your body begin to collapse, only to hold together at the final moment as your heart heals round the blade, condemning you to a life of mortal proportions.”

  “I can’t imagine,” said Frankenstein, simply. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  A thick, vicious growl emerged from Lord Dante’s throat, and the old monster took half a step towards Frankenstein, who suddenly realised how much effort the vampire king was expending on trying to keep his fury under control.

  “This blade, your filthy peasant’s knife, has been in my body for almost a century,” Lord Dante snarled. “The flesh of my heart grew back round it before I expired, saving me from destruction, but removing it would have been the end of me. Worse than that, crueller even than that, is the fact that the blade stops my heart from properly regenerating my cells, no matter how much blood I take.”

  Frankenstein stared at the vampire king, then looked helplessly at Latour; he understood that he stood accused of having stabbed a blade into the monster’s chest, but the rest of the vampire king’s words were meaningless.

  “His Majesty is ageing,” said Latour, softly. “The blade you placed in his heart has robbed him of his immortality.”

  Frankenstein looked back at Lord Dante, his frail body heaving up and down as he fought to control himself. His red eyes stared at Frankenstein, who fought the overwhelming urge to smile.

  It almost doesn’t matter if I never know the rest, he thought. Knowing this will be enough. This is one good thing I can be sure I did.

  The door at the side of the room slid open, and the butler re-emerged, dragging behind him a dark-haired girl who could not possibly have been more than fifteen. She was clutching a beautiful porcelain doll, and wearing a summer dress the colour of daffodils; her eyes were wide with fear as the butler hauled her into the room and pushed her towards Latour. The girl bumped her hip on the edge of the table, cried out and almost fell, but Latour moved invisibly quickly across the room and caught her.

  “Shush,” he said. “Shush, child. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

  The girl looked hopefully up into Latour’s pale, handsome face, then burst into tears and buried herself in his chest. Frankenstein watched crimson rise in his old friend’s eyes as the girl pressed herself against him, and saw an awful expression of lust creep across his mouth.

  The butler silently placed a large, ornate bottle on the table. Frankenstein was not watching as Lord Dante lifted it in his shaking hands and drained it of the dark red liquid it contained; his eyes were fixed with utter revulsion on Latour. If he had been watching, he would have seen the vampire king wipe his mouth with the back of one shaky hand, then throw his head back as his body begin to change.

  Power, old and familiar, flooded through Lord Dante. He required as much blood as any other vampire on earth just to keep his degrading body in one piece, such was the unhealable nature of the injury Frankenstein had inflicted on him. But no amount of blood appeared to delay the passage of time; he was more than one hundred and twenty years old, and his body was failing him.

  But the litres of blood he had just drunk would return to him an approximation of the power he had once had, even though it would be short-lived, and carry with it the most excruciating pain the following day. It would, he knew, take all his remaining strength to hold his body together. But right now, he could not have cared less; he had waited for this day for almost a century, and nothing would deny him his vengeance.

  The vampire king of Paris felt the loose, old man’s skin that coated his bones begin to pull tight as the blood flowed through him; his eyes rose forth from their sunken depths, and again blazed the unholy red that had once struck fear into every nocturnal creature in northern France. He felt his muscles grow, filling the suit that had once fitted him like an exquisitely tailored glove, and felt strength flood into them. His throat worked soundlessly as he rode the crest of the wave of ecstasy that was rolling through his body, firing his nerves with starbursts of electricity so exquisite it was all he could do not to fall to the surface of the table and weep.

  Eventually, it passed; his vision cleared, his heart slowed back to its usual irregular staccato and Lord Dante looked around the dining room with new eyes. His butler had disappeared through the servants’ door, Latour was kneeling beside his new pet, whispering reassurances that he had absolutely no intention of honouring, while the monster, the hated, cursed monster, watched his old friend with disgust curdling his face. The vampire king stretched his arms above his head until he heard his muscles creak, then stepped silently around the table and approached his nemesis.

  The first Frankenstein knew of Lord Dante’s proximity was when the vampire king’s hand encircled his throat. He would have screamed, but the ancient vampire’s grip was like a vice, constricting his windpipe and leaving him unable to draw breath. Lord Dante lifted him up and back, slamming him into the wall with an impact that shook the entire room, and terror galvanised Frankenstein’s body, and he swung his arms at the smiling, suddenly youthful face of the vampire king.

  The blows landed solidly, hammering roundhouse swings that would have levelled most creatures on earth, but Lord Dante didn’t so much as flinch; if anything, his smile widened. Frankenstein grabbed at the hand that was holding him, trying to prise open the fingers as his lungs screamed for air, as his vision began to grey at the edges.

  As the room grew dark, he tore his gaze away from Lord Dante and threw a desperate, pleading look in the direction of Latour. His old friend wore a sour expression, the look of a man who has belatedly discovered that something has proven to be much less fun than he had expected, but he made no move to help, even as Frankenstein began to suffocate.

  Constellations of white and grey spots whirled across his vision, and he felt his chest begin to contract as the last of the oxygen in his lungs was absorbed, leaving him empty. There was an enormous pressure in his head, as though it was about to burst, but he felt strangely calm; there was no panic, n
o fear, just an unexpectedly easy acceptance of the fate that was about to befall him. He felt sadness at never having regained the memories of his life, but he also felt a gentle wave of relief; it was awful to live in the dark, and he would be glad to be released from it.

  Then, at the last second before he slipped into unconsciousness, the pressure eased. But far from providing relief, it brought with it a screaming wave of agony as his body fought for air. It felt as though every part of him was on fire. He slumped down the wall and rolled lamely on to his back, his chest heaving, his mouth hauling in burning lungfuls of oxygen.

  His vision began to clear, and he stared up from the floor into the face of Lord Dante. The vampire king was looking down at him, his chest heaving as he tried to calm himself, the expression on his face something close to lust.

  “Not so fast,” breathed the ancient vampire. “You don’t get away so easily, not after all these years.”

  Lord Dante looked over at Latour, and gestured towards the prone, gasping monster. “Pick him up,” he said. “I want to introduce him to the rest of our guests.”

  Latour hesitated for a moment, long enough for Lord Dante’s eyes to flare in their sockets, an unequivocal gesture of warning. Latour nodded, then stepped forward and scooped Frankenstein up with one hand by the back of his neck, like a cat picking up one of her kittens. Frankenstein dangled limply as the vampire lifted him into the air and carried him towards the door. His chest rose and fell steadily; his chin slumped against it, his eyes barely open. The monster had realised that he was no longer going to die, and it had broken the last of his spirit.

  Just let it be over quickly, he thought, distantly. That’s all I ask. Whatever is in store for me, let it be quick.