Darkest Night

by Will Hill

  The black-burnt remains of a shopping mall loomed in the darkness before him. He had chased a retreating trio of vampires, who had clearly reached the conclusion that their loyalty to Dracula was not infinite, towards the ruined building; they had disappeared inside, and Turner was taking a moment to compose himself before he went in after them. The Director part of his brain was telling him not to do so, that their nerve had clearly failed them and it was better to simply let them escape, but the part of him that would always be an Operator rejected that idea outright; the only way he would know for certain that they were no longer a threat was when they were dead.

  There was a flash of movement, and one of his Department’s vampires dropped out of the sky beside him, flipped their visor up and smiled; it was Dominique Saint-Jacques, one of Turner’s most trusted Operators.

  “Mind if I join you, sir?” he said.

  Turner smiled. “Not at all, Captain,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The two men ran into the half-collapsed building, and immediately saw that the inside was even more badly damaged than the outside; the walls and ceiling were black, the floor tiles scorched and cracked, the shops and stalls annihilated so completely that it was impossible to even guess what they had once sold.

  Dominique growled, then shot into the air like a bullet from a gun and disappeared in the gloom near the creaking, broken roof as Turner drew his stake. There was a heavy thud, then something fell down towards him like a meteor. One of the vampires he had been chasing hit the ground with a bone-cracking crunch, his eyes swivelling, one side of his face already swelling where – he assumed – Dominique had punched him. He darted forward and staked the twitching vampire, leapt out of the way of the ensuing explosion of blood, and moved deeper into the mall, scanning the dark corners for the two remaining vamps and the blackened ceiling for his colleague.

  Another thud, from somewhere high above.

  A second later, a female vampire tumbled limply out of the sky. She landed head first on the cracked tiles, and her neck broke as her skull flattened grotesquely on one side. Turner staked her as her eyes rolled and spun, then looked up in time to see Dominique land beside him.

  “The third one is still here,” growled the French Operator. “I can smell him.”

  “All right,” said Turner. “Let’s find him.”

  They pressed ahead, into a section of the mall that was slightly more intact; the roof was less full of holes, the walls deep brown rather than sooty black. As they approached the exit at the far end of the building, Turner wondered for a moment if the third vampire had somehow slipped past them, or squeezed itself out through a hole and made good its escape. Then a low growl emerged from the corner of the wide space, and he saw what had happened.

  The third vampire had backed himself into a corner from which there was no way out; the walls around him were still standing and the ceiling above was still solid, creating a concrete box that the vampire was pressing itself against the back of, his eyes glowing red, his face a mask of profound panic as he shook his head.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t—”

  Turner raised his T-Bone and shot the vampire through the heart.

  It exploded with a dull whump, spraying the walls and floor with blood that gleamed almost black. He wound the stake back into the T-Bone’s barrel and faced his colleague.

  “Good work,” he said. “Let’s get back out there.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dominique. “How are we doing?”

  Turner shrugged. “Right now, I’d say we have the upper hand. But that’s not going to matter in the slightest if the strike team fails.”

  Atop the medieval city, above the Basilique Saint-Nazaire, Dracula forced himself to ignore the delicious screams of pain and terror echoing from inside the church, and focus on the battle as it moved into its second phase.

  The initial charge had decimated both armies, entirely as planned. Now the fighting was spread out across the wide landscape, as soldiers and vampires stalked and tracked each other through the ruins; he estimated that there were still more than three thousand men and women fighting for their lives below him. His enemies had done well in the early exchanges, as he had known they would, and it could have been argued that, at this moment, they had the advantage.

  Which meant it was time to change the odds.

  He drew his radio from his belt and pressed SEND.

  “Yes, my lord?” said Osvaldo.

  “Now,” said Dracula.

  Captain Guérin was walking through the Field 1 gate when he heard something in the distance.

  He was still disappointed at having been left behind when the Multinational Force moved out; he understood that he was not a member of a supernatural Department, and grudgingly accepted General Allen’s reasoning that somebody had to stay at the camp, but he wished he could have been out there, fighting alongside the Operators who had gathered from every corner of the globe. He had just conducted a patrol of the perimeter and was about to head back into the command centre to get the latest information from the battlefield, but now he paused.

  The noise had been soft, as low and distant as the wind moving through the trees surrounding the sprawling camp, and the rational part of his brain assured him that was all it was. The primal part of his brain disagreed.

  He turned slowly, straining his ears. The camp was quiet; most of its residents were gathered round fires and in tents, huddled over radios and mobile phones, listening for any update on what was taking place less than five miles away. The technical staff and the small security squad that had been left behind were inside the mess hall, silently watching civilian news channels on wall screens. From the far distance, the occasional crackle of gunfire floated into the camp on the evening breeze.

  Guérin listened, suddenly aware that his heart was racing, and scanned the dark horizon until his eyes hurt.

  He could see nothing. He could hear nothing.

  There’s nothing there, he told himself.

  But he was wrong.

  The noise came again, louder this time, and recognition flooded through him; it was the muffled sound of voices.

  No, he thought, as he spun round and froze to the spot. Not voices. It’s laughter.

  The vampires appeared over the trees to the north, a dark cloud rolling towards the camp at impossible speed, so many that Guérin could not even hope to count them; the distant points of glowing red light seemed to number in the hundreds, or even the thousands. They reached the treeline and swooped towards the ground; in another few seconds, they would surge over the fence and into Field 11, one of the resident camping fields.

  Thousands of men and women, entirely unaware of what was coming.

  Unarmed.

  Unprepared.

  The thought broke Guérin’s paralysis. He grabbed his radio as he ran back through the Field 1 gate, bellowing into the handset to anyone who could hear him.

  “Vampires! Run! Run for your lives!”

  Bob Allen fired his T-Bone into the heart of a vampire, then was thrown to the ground as a deafening blast rang out behind him.

  He scrambled across the blood-soaked ash, his heart pounding, and got to his feet in time to see the flaming remains of one of the helicopters that had carried the Multinational Force to the battlefield spin into its neighbour, sending it tumbling out of the sky. It hit the ground and exploded, sending a mushroom cloud of fire blooming into the air and thousands of razor-sharp pieces of metal over the battlefield in a deadly hail. The rest of the helicopter fleet, more than twenty of them, began to rise and bank, pulling themselves up and away from the fire that had suddenly appeared beneath them.

  Allen stared, wondering what the hell had happened behind them as they had been fighting. Then he saw three distant plumes of smoke rise from the blasted suburban landscape, and understood.

  Shoulder-fired rockets slammed into the underbellies of three more helicopters, blowing them to pieces and triggering a terrible, unstoppable
domino effect. The explosions took down four more of the closest helicopters, which spun through the rest, shattering rotor blades and destroying engines. As Allen watched, dumbstruck, the entire fleet sank to the ground in an apocalypse of fire and noise that paused the entire battle. Flames and thick black smoke billowed up into the air as twisted fuselages settled against each other, creating a wall of fire along the northern edge of the battlefield. The NS9 Director desperately searched the sky for parachutes, but saw none.

  Nobody is getting out of that, thought Allen. Nobody.

  Something moved at the centre of the inferno, and for a brief moment Allen hoped he was about to be proved wrong. A dark figure stepped through the flames, followed by another, and another, until a vast group of shadows filled the horizon, all moving forward with red light where their eyes should have been.

  Jesus, thought Allen. Oh Jesus Christ. We’re dead.

  We’re all dead.

  The line of vampires was at least as large as the army that had lined up against them, possibly even larger. It came across the ruined landscape without hurrying, stretching out in both directions as far as Allen could see, and for a long moment he just stared at it; the Multinational Force was now vastly outnumbered and surrounded, its air support was burning in a huge twisted pyre, and he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do.

  Dead. All dead.

  Guérin’s voice burst into his ears. “Vampires!” he shouted. “Run! Run for your lives!”

  Reserves of adrenaline that Allen would not have believed he possessed surged through him, clearing his head. He twisted the comms dial on his belt and shouted directly into the ear of every Operator still alive on the battlefield.

  “Battalion Three, return to camp immediately! Battalions Four through Six! Regroup at rally point, on the double! New hostiles to the north!”

  In his office at the top of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure’s anonymous building in Paris’s seventeenth arrondissement, Central Director Jean Vallens watched a live satellite feed of the helicopters crashing to the ground in flames.

  He stared, incredulous, as fire roared into the sky. He had listened to the NATO briefings inside the displaced persons camp, and had been heartened by the confidence of General Allen and his fellow Directors; their faith in a positive outcome had at least allowed him to hope, if not fully believe. Now, as the fires burned and men and women dropped like flies, he realised their faith had been misplaced.

  Movement filled the screen, as hundreds and hundreds of vampires made their way towards the burning helicopters and the remnants of the Multinational Force beyond. For a second, Vallens thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him; the vampires seemed to be appearing out of thin air. Then he saw a cluster of dark figures emerge from the ruined shell of a suburban house, and realised what he was seeing; the vampires were swarming up out of the cellars and basements of the buildings that had burned down. They must have been hiding in them since the fires had been put out, when the vast cloud of grey smoke had hidden the city from view; the Multinational Force had quite literally driven and flown over their heads.

  Such patience, he thought. To stay underground for three days, just waiting. Such careful planning. Incredible.

  Vallens watched as the second vampire front moved in from the north, cutting off the primary route of retreat and surrounding the surviving Operators.

  “Are you seeing this?” he asked. He was alone in his office, but the speakerphone on his desk was connected to a conference call with Alain Ducroix, the French Army’s Chief of Staff, and Pascal Desjardins, the Minister of Defence; the three men comprised the central brain trust of their country’s domestic and military intelligence. “Are you watching?”

  “I am watching,” said Desjardins. “What do we do, Alain?”

  “I’ll update NATO,” said Ducroix. “Jean, talk to Captain Guérin and get us an update on the grand. Then you’re going to have to brief the President.”

  Four-fifths of the strike team made their way up the medieval city’s main thoroughfare, towards the high towers of the Basilica at the summit.

  The low angle hid Dracula from view, but Frankenstein had no doubt the first vampire was still there, floating in the darkness and overseeing the destruction and chaos he had unleashed far below.

  “So quiet,” said Larissa.

  “Spooky, isn’t it?” said Valentin, smiling happily.

  “Don’t you take anything seriously?” asked Larissa. “Are you just incapable? Our friends are dying down there, and one of our squad mates is missing.”

  The ancient vampire’s smile disappeared. “I have taken few things in my life more seriously than this, my dear Lieutenant Kinley. I’m sorry if my small joke was so terribly offensive.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” said Jamie. “We don’t have time for bickering. We need to—”

  The explosion was huge, even across the distance between the northern edge of the battlefield and the old city. Frankenstein turned with his squad mates and saw orange flames light up the landscape as the Multinational Force’s helicopters sank out of the sky in a tangle of metal and smoke and fire.

  “Holy shit,” said Jamie, the glow in his eyes darkening.

  “Do we go back?” asked Larissa.

  “No,” said Valentin, instantly. “Absolutely not. Helicopters don’t matter.”

  “What about the people in them?” asked Jamie.

  “Valentin is right,” said Frankenstein, the words tasting foul in his mouth. “We can’t do anything for them. The only way we can help is by doing what we were sent to do.”

  Silence descended over the strike team.

  They know I’m right, thought the monster. If we fail, burning helicopters and dead pilots and Operators will mean less than nothing.

  “All right,” said Jamie, tearing his gaze away from the fires and looking at his squad mates. “We go on.”

  The young Lieutenant strode up the steep, cobbled road. Frankenstein followed him with Valentin and Larissa at his sides, their footsteps echoing in the warm evening air. They passed empty cafés and looted shops, their stock scattered across the pavements outside broken windows and missing doors; chocolates and wine and tiny plastic reproductions of the city itself lay discarded on the ground.

  The road curved to the right as it rose. Jamie led the strike team round the bend, his T-Bone drawn and raised, then stopped dead in his tracks.

  On the eastern side of the battlefield, fighting resumed with even greater ferocity. Ellison had stopped along with everybody else to watch the destruction of the helicopters, but had quickly realised there was nothing she could do and decided instead to take advantage of the situation; she had staked three distracted vampires before any of them had time to realise what was happening.

  General Allen had bellowed into her ear as the chaos burst back into life, ordering three Battalions towards the new vampires approaching from the north; instantly, hundreds of Operators disengaged from the battle and sprinted back the way they had come. The order didn’t apply to her – she, along with the rest of the vampire Operators, was part of Battalion One – so she watched them go, cursing silently at how easily their force had been split, even though she had been expecting something similar; she had never really believed that Dracula would simply put his entire army front and centre and let the Multinational Force take them on.

  A chorus of low growls rang out, and Ellison grimaced behind her visor; by letting her focus drift for just a split second, she had allowed herself to become surrounded by vampires. There were four of them, three women and a man, all of them soaked with blood and staring at her with hungry crimson eyes. She took a deep breath, formulating what she was going to do in her mind, then moved, a black blur in the deepening gloom.

  She leapt at the closest vampire, taking her by surprise, and plunged her stake into the woman’s heart before she had time to so much as raise her hands in defence. The vampire exploded in Ellison’s face, soaking her
uniform and coating her visor with gore. She kept moving forward, creating separation as she flipped the visor up; there was no time to clear it.

  A hand clawed the air, missing her eyes by millimetres. She leant backwards and jabbed the stake at the trailing arm; it found the inside of an elbow, tore through the skin and split the joint entirely. The arm folded back the wrong way and its owner, a woman with dark hair and bright, burning eyes, screamed in sudden agony. Ellison yanked the stake out and swung it into the side of the woman’s head, sending her sprawling, then turned to face the two remaining vampires.

  The third woman growled, and took a step backwards. Her eyes were blazing with hatred, but Ellison was pleased to see a flicker of fear in them too; the speed and savagery with which her comrades had been despatched had clearly left her uncertain. The male vampire leapt forward, his arms outstretched, his fingers curled into claws, but Ellison easily sidestepped his lunge and punched her stake into his neck as he careered past. Blood sprayed out in a shocking, high-pressure torrent as the man crashed to the ground, clutching at his gushing throat. With two lightning-quick movements, she staked both the man and the unconscious woman; they exploded as she turned back to face the final vampire, a smile on her blood-splattered face.

  The woman stared at her for a long moment, her skin ghostly pale, then leapt into the air and fled. Ellison watched her go, satisfaction coursing through her, then turned back to the battle, her bloody stake in her hand, her visor still up, and saw a vampire with a long knife in its hand swooping towards the back of an Operator. Acting on pure instinct, she drew back her arm and threw the stake as hard as she possibly could.

  It streaked through the air, glinting wickedly in the light of the burning helicopters, and struck the vampire just below its ribcage. The man tumbled screaming to the ground, as the Operator who had been about to receive a knife between the shoulder blades spun round. The dark figure staked the screeching man, then turned towards Ellison and raised its visor.