by Will Hill
Jamie Carpenter soared over the battlefield, carrying Frankenstein effortlessly beneath him, marvelling at the scale of the fighting taking place below.
His view of it was fleeting, such was the speed he and the rest of the strike team were travelling, but it was enough to make quite an impression; the battle was already spread out across more than a mile of blasted landscape, the air full of movement and gunfire and screaming, the ground littered with bodies and soaked with vampire remains. Jamie tore his gaze away and focused on the looming shape of the medieval city, its pale stone darkening in the fading light, and, as he rose over the outer walls, his squad mates close behind him, he saw a distant figure floating near the summit of the hill, high above the raging battle.
Dracula, he thought, his heart leaping in his chest. Right where they said he would be.
This is going to be too easy.
Jamie swooped over the walls, rising above the wide cobbled street that led up through the city. He accelerated, the evening air cool as it rushed over his uniformed body, the rooftops passing below him in a blur, and allowed a smile to rise on to his face. As he soared over a wide square, he heard something above him, something that sounded like a flock of birds, and rolled to the side so he could look up and see what it was.
The sky above him was full of vampires.
They dropped silently out of the clouds, a vast dark swarm, and ripped into the strike team like a bolt of lightning, sending them spinning towards the ground. Something connected with the side of his helmet and he saw stars, his vision greying at the edges as his grip on Frankenstein loosened and gave way; the monster slipped from his grasp and fell towards the ancient city. Jamie lunged after him, but was hammered from all sides by heavy blows that drove him back and forth, bellowing with pain. He fought back furiously, but might as well have been trying to punch the wind; there seemed to be vampires all around him, as insubstantial as smoke, apart from when they struck. He ducked under a swinging fist and looked desperately around for his squad mates, but it was like trying to see through a colony of bats that had taken wing at the same time; all around him was darkness and churning movement.
A boot slammed into his stomach. Jamie folded in the air, the breath driven out of him, and sank towards the ground, barely able to even slow his fall. Cobblestones rose up to meet him, and he hit them hard enough to drive his teeth together on his tongue, spilling warm coppery liquid into his mouth. Pain raced through him, before being driven away by the heady taste of his own blood.
He leapt to his feet and scanned the narrow street he had landed in. There was no sign of his squad mates, or the vampires that had attacked them. He looked up, expecting to see them hurtling down towards him, but the sky was clear and empty; it was as though they had never been there at all.
Stupid, he told himself, and felt his eyes blaze with heat. Arrogant. Stupid.
Jamie leapt into the air, determined to locate the rest of the strike team and get their mission back on track.
A hand closed round his ankle and whipped him downwards.
Surprise filled him so completely that he didn’t get his hands up until it was too late; his helmet thudded against the ground, and everything went black.
Everything fell away.
The politics, the bureaucracy, the endless meetings and briefings and red tape, everything that went with being the Director of Blacklight was suddenly gone, leaving Paul Turner with a simple, cold reality: himself, an enemy and the chance to do what he had always been so horribly good at. He could have stayed standing in the jeep, removed from the battle like Dracula and the rest of his fellow Directors, and he knew nobody would have blamed him.
But this was where he belonged.
Turner raised his T-Bone and fired it through the stomach of a vampire leaping towards the back of an NS9 Operator. The woman wasted no time acknowledging the reprieve; she threw herself straight back into the carnage without so much as a glance. Turner ran forward, his T-Bone’s motor winding furiously, plunged his stake into the stricken vampire’s chest, then leapt back and swung his MP7 into his hands. The vampire burst, and Turner fired his submachine gun through the resulting gout of crimson, the bullets spraying the gore in every direction and filling the air with the bitter smell of burning blood.
A chorus of screams rang out as the remains of the vampire splashed to the ground. Turner’s bullets had ripped through a group of Dracula’s followers who had foolishly turned to see what had befallen their comrade; they fell to the ground, screaming, the faces that had not been destroyed by the volley of gunfire twisted with pain and red-eyed confusion.
Turner holstered his MP7 and his T-Bone, raised his stake, and ran towards them, a man doing what he had been born to do.
High above the city, Dracula smiled as his personal guard dropped from the clouds and sent the black-clad figures plummeting into the narrow streets below.
Had his enemies really believed he would float in plain sight without protection? Or that he would not expect them to send an assassination squad in the hopes of ending the battle before it had even really begun? If so, then they were stupider than he had even allowed himself to hope, and deserved no mercy.
I know everything they are going to do before they do it, he thought. I highly doubt the reverse is true.
Valentin ducked a punch, gave the vampire who had thrown it a look of outright contempt, then tore his head off with a sound like ripping cardboard.
Blood spurted from the stump, bright arterial red under the pale street lights of Carcassonne. The decapitated body took a faltering step forward, its hands clenching and unclenching reflexively, before it overbalanced and toppled to the ground. Valentin strode across the cobblestones and stamped his foot through the vampire’s chest; the heart gave way beneath his heel, and the man burst with a wet thud across the cobbled street.
Valentin heard a low growl behind him, and turned slowly towards it. Three vampires, two women and a man, were floating up the street, their eyes glowing, their fangs gleaming. He narrowed his eyes, taken aback by the strength of the emotion coursing through him; it was rare that his opulent and privileged life gave him reason for anger, but he was angrier than he could remember being in decades, angrier even than when he had discovered the desecration of his home in New York and beaten one of the culprits to death with his bare hands.
He was absolutely incandescent with rage.
The three vampires were smiling, and it was their expressions that had triggered his fury; the thought that these nobodies had the nerve to approach him was absolutely outrageous.
It was offensive.
Valentin strode towards them, meeting their smiles with a wide, warm grin. He had lost his helmet in his fall from the sky, but he gave it no thought; he had hated wearing it, and was happy it was gone. One of the women leapt towards him, and he fought back the urge to laugh at her pitiful lack of speed. He slid to his left, a blur in the evening gloom, and grabbed her throat with his gloved hand; her eyes widened with shock as he drew his arm back and hurled her at the stone wall on the opposite side of the road. She hit it with an impact that cracked the stone in a wide spiderweb and a crunch of breaking bones that echoed up and down the street. The vampire slid down the wall and landed in a crumpled heap on the ground; there was a long second of silence, before she began to howl in hoarse, broken agony.
The two remaining vampires took a step backwards, their easy arrogance faltering, but Valentin was upon them before they could flee. His fist shot out like a piston and crashed against the man’s sternum; it broke with a dry snap, and the vampire screeched as he folded to the ground. Valentin leapt over him, and buried his fangs in the female vampire’s face. Blood sprayed down his throat, and he drank deeply as she screamed into his mouth. He released her, and spat out a lump of her flesh as she scrambled backwards, her hands clutching her face, her screams so loud and desperate it was as if the world was ending around her.
Which, in truth, it was.
She stumbled into the
air, seeking escape, but Valentin was much too fast. He grabbed her hair as she babbled apologies and pleas for mercy, hurled her down on to the cobblestones, and plunged his stake into her stomach. She stared at him with an expression of profound surprise as he shoved the metal stake up through her torso and into her heart. She exploded in a thunderclap of steaming blood, but Valentin was already on his way back up the road, the dripping stake in his hand. He didn’t hurry; he wanted the two broken vampires to see him coming, to have time to process what was about to happen to them, and for delicious expressions of terror to rise on to their faces.
He staked the male vampire without slowing, a dismissive crouch and flick of his wrist that put an end to the man’s tortured howling, and advanced on the tangled woman. Her face was bright white, her mouth open. He looked down at her shattered body and felt nothing; no sadness, no pity, no mercy. He crouched down, pressed the tip of the stake against her chest, and paused.
“Look at me,” he said.
The vampire’s eyes rolled in their sockets and settled unsteadily on him. A wheezing sound was coming from her throat, and Valentin realised she was still trying to scream; either her vocal cords had torn, or something was so badly broken inside her that she could no longer make them work.
He held her gaze, then pushed the stake forward. Her eyes widened as the thick muscle of her heart was pierced, then they burst, along with the rest of her. Blood splashed across Valentin, but he made no effort to avoid it; it was a spoil of war, the only one that really mattered.
Don’t even think about it, Bob Allen told himself. You’re too damn old. Just stay right where you are.
The NS9 Director was still standing in the back of the jeep, although he was now its only occupant; Paul Turner had managed to restrain himself for barely more than thirty seconds before he had leapt to the ground and joined the fight. Allen was theoretically in charge of directing the battle, but the fighting had immediately taken on a life of its own, just as he had known it would, rendering the team colours and squad designations he and his fellow Directors had worked out all but irrelevant; what would carry the day would be the strength and will of the Operators fighting and dying in front of him. His headphones carried a jumble of voices directly into his ear; he could have tuned them out, could have twisted the comms dial on his belt back to the command frequency, but he didn’t. The noise of the battle roused something primal inside him, something that was straining for release.
Don’t even think about it, he repeated to himself.
Allen looked along the line of jeeps parked safely behind the row of Operators who had been tasked with staying back to protect their Directors. His counterparts watched silently, their eyes fixed forward; they looked like the conductors of an orchestra. The need to do something surged relentlessly inside him, and he grimaced behind his visor at the dilemma; if he joined the battle and was killed, the consequences for his Operators could be dire. But if he stood by while they fought for their lives, how would he ever be able to face them again?
Then, in the jeep to his right, Aleksandr Ovechkin moved.
The SPC Director drew his Daybreaker, swung himself down to the ground, and strode towards the chaos, his greatcoat billowing out behind him. Allen watched him for a long moment, then unholstered his T-Bone and went after his friend.
He caught up as Ovechkin cut left round a pile of burnt wood that looked like it had once been a street trader’s stall. The Russian spun round, his eyes flaring, then smiled.
“You too?” he grunted.
“Yeah,” said Allen, and smiled back at him. “Me too.”
They walked forward side by side, their weapons drawn and raised. The battle spread out before them, the noise increasing with each step they took, but Allen was breathing easily. His body and mind were at peace now that he had decided to involve himself, even though that decision had dramatically increased the likelihood that he would not live to see another dawn.
So be it, he thought, as his boots crunched across the black landscape. If this is the end, then so damn well be it.
“Wait!”
The voice came from behind them, and both Directors turned to see who it belonged to. General Tán was running towards them, holding a weapon that Allen didn’t recognise. The PBS6 Director stopped in front of them, and gave them a tight smile.
“Three is better than two,” he said. “Don’t you agree?”
Larissa tumbled towards a narrow alley hung with washing lines and full of rubbish bins, managed to rotate herself in the air as the cobblestones rushed up towards her, and hit the ground on her back with a thud.
The impact sent pain coursing through her; heat exploded into her eyes, and a thick growl rose from her throat as she got to her feet and looked around. The alleyway was tight and winding, one of the hidden arteries that had served the people who had actually lived and worked in the city, as opposed to the tourists they relied on. There was no sign of her squad mates, or of the vampires who had ambushed them from above.
Stupid, she thought. Should have seen that coming.
They had assumed that Dracula would have kept a cadre of vampires within the city to protect him, but they had been expecting them to rise from the streets below, rather than attack them from above. Now they were scattered throughout the city, their mission in tatters; they needed to regroup, and do so very, very quickly.
“Strike team,” she said into her helmet’s microphone. “Come in.”
Silence.
“Come in, strike team. Come in.”
Nothing.
Larissa strode along the alley, preparing to leap back into the air and get a better vantage point from which to search for her squad mates, then stopped. From the other side of a tall stone wall, she could hear noise: footsteps, heavy breathing, low growls.
Vampires.
She drew her stake from her belt and floated silently up the face of the wall. She hovered as she reached the top, forcing the glowing red out of her eyes, and peered down into the cobbled street on the other side. Two vampires were approaching the doorway of a toyshop, in which was lying the unconscious form of Frankenstein; their eyes were blazing, and the smiles on their faces were hungry.
She settled herself silently on top of the wall, drew her T-Bone, sighted down its long barrel, and pulled the trigger. The bang of exploding gas was deafeningly loud in the quiet streets; the vampires jumped, and whirled towards her. As a result, the stake that would have pierced the rightmost vampire’s heart ripped through his stomach, punching a hole the size of a grapefruit and spilling the man’s guts on to the cobblestones. For a second he only stared at her, his eyes bulging in their sockets, then he threw back his head and screamed.
Larissa was already moving, dropping the T-Bone and swooping down from the wall. She drove the second vampire against the wall, drew her stake, and brought it up in a short, hard jab. She leapt back as the man burst, spraying the wall with dripping crimson, and darted across to the disembowelled vampire; he was standing motionless in the middle of the street, staring down at a steaming pile of his own innards. She shoved the stake through his back, and the look on his face as he exploded suggested that ending him had been a kindness. The T-Bone’s metal wire fell to the bloody ground as she crossed to the unconscious figure in the shop doorway and crouched beside him.
“Colonel,” she said, raising her voice as far as she dared. “Colonel.”
Frankenstein stirred, but didn’t open his eyes. Larissa checked him, searching for severe injury, and found none; there was a lump the size of an egg above his left eye, but his chest was rising and falling steadily, and his limbs were straight and unbroken, at least as far as she could tell.
“Colonel Frankenstein,” she hissed. “Wake up, sir.”
No response.
She swore under her breath, and looked through the window of the toyshop. Inside the door stood a fridge full of bottles of water and cans of Coke; the power was off, but that made no difference for what she had in m
ind.
Larissa stood up and pushed open the door; it was locked, but it took only a fraction of her supernatural strength to pop it out of its frame. She grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge, unscrewed the first, and splashed half of it into Frankenstein’s face. His eyes flew open and he sat up, coughing and spluttering and wiping water from his skin.
“What the hell are you playing at?” he growled.
“Saving your life,” said Larissa, and gestured at the two smears of blood that had been living, breathing vampires thirty seconds earlier. “You’re welcome.”
Amid the charred ruins of Carcassonne, at the heart of the raging battle, Qiang wound his T-Bone back in and ran for cover.
The battle was completely unprecedented, both in its scale and ferocity. Thousands and thousands of Operators and vampires were raging across a space more than a mile wide and half a mile deep as a constant rattle of gunfire and a pall of grey smoke filled the air.
The Chinese Operator was not a vampire – PROMETHEUS had been suspended before his name had been called – but he was causing as much damage to Dracula’s army as any of his turned colleagues; he had destroyed nine in the first five minutes, his T-Bone and MP7 working in perfect harmony, his situational awareness almost supernatural in itself. A vampire loomed in front of him, and he shot him in the heart with his T-Bone without so much as a second thought; the man exploded with a confused look on his face, and as the stake wound back in again, Qiang checked his position and considered his options.
They could keep killing vampires one at a time, but there were no guarantees they could outlast Dracula’s followers. The ultimate result of the battle lay in the hands of Jamie and Angela and the rest of the strike team, but that didn’t mean there was nothing that could be done on the ground to help tip the odds in their favour. The vampire army was a seething mass, seemingly obeying no set plan or implementing any identifiable strategy, but as Qiang surveyed the battlefield, it was clear that there was a hierarchy at work; behind the hacking and slashing lines of men and women, above the drawbridge that controlled ground access to the walled city, a small group of vampires surrounded a single man.