Darkest Night

by Will Hill

  It’s all right, he told himself. It’s really all right. Just let go.

  A dark shape dropped out of the sky, landed heavily, and staggered backwards down the slope. The figure was wearing a Blacklight uniform, but it spun round as it threw its arms out to keep its balance, and Julian saw red eyes glowing at the centre of a face that was strangely familiar.

  His first thought was that it was Alexandru Rusmanov standing before him, but he knew that wasn’t possible; Alexandru was dead, destroyed on Lindisfarne by Julian’s son. Valeri was dead too, which left only one explanation.

  Valentin, he thought. It has to be Valentin.

  The vampire frowned at him, and took a series of quick steps down the hill.

  “I recognise you,” it said, its voice low. “Why do I recognise you? What’s your name?”

  “My name is Julian Carpenter,” he replied, each word requiring tremendous effort. “We’ve never met, but I recognise you too, Valentin.”

  The vampire smiled. “You are Jamie’s father. The traitor.”

  Julian grimaced. “I betrayed nobody.”

  Valentin narrowed his eyes, then nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “What are you doing here, Mr Carpenter? I don’t believe you are still a member of Blacklight.”

  Julian opened his mouth to answer, but a wave of pain rolled through his body; he gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut until it passed. When it finally did so, he found Valentin looking at him with open curiosity.

  “You’re dying, Mr Carpenter,” said the vampire.

  Julian grunted, and forced a thin smile. “I’m well aware of that.”

  “I could bite you,” said Valentin. “I can tell by looking at you that it won’t help, that you won’t live long enough for the turn to begin. But I will try if you want me to.”

  “Why would you do that for me?”

  “Because I liked your father a great deal, Mr Carpenter,” said Valentin. “And because I am very fond of your son.”

  He frowned. “You know Jamie?”

  “I do.”

  Julian felt his throat fill with liquid, bitter and horribly warm. He spat out blood so dark it was almost black, and looked up at the old vampire.

  “I don’t want you to bite me,” he said, his voice low and thick. “Even if there was time for it to work, I wouldn’t want you to.”

  Valentin nodded. “I understand,” he said. “The chance to choose how you meet your end is not something many men are lucky enough to have.”

  Lucky, thought Julian, and smiled again. Right. I’m really lucky.

  “There is something you can do for me,” he said. He reached a shaking hand inside his uniform and pulled out the envelope he had carried with him from his mother’s cottage; it was now smeared with his blood, and he would just have to hope that the letter inside was still legible. He held it out towards the vampire. “You can give this to my son.”

  Valentin frowned, and took the letter from his fingers.

  “Will you?” asked Julian, his voice urgent. “Will you give it to him? Please?”

  The old vampire stared at the envelope for a long moment, then raised his head and nodded. Julian smiled, despite the pain and cold spreading through him.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Valentin slid the envelope into his uniform. Then he turned and rocketed towards the summit of Carcassonne, so quickly it was as though he had simply disappeared, and Julian let his head sink back to the ground; it was suddenly so heavy that he could barely lift it.

  An image of his wife rose into his mind, her smile wide, her hair fluttering around her beautiful face. He wished he could have seen her again, just one last time, to tell her he loved her and say goodbye, but maybe it was for the best; she and Jamie lived in his memories, where they were perfect, where they would always be happy, where reality had never intruded on their lives. He thought about his son, not the man he had become who was out there somewhere in the darkness, but the boy he had been, his hair messy, his knees scraped, his eyes so bright and full of hope.

  I loved you, he thought. I loved you both so much.

  A peaceful smile rose on to Julian’s face.

  Then his eyes closed, and he died.

  Dracula strode towards the heavy doors of the Basilica, then turned back to address the remnants of his personal guard.

  Barely a dozen had survived the massacre in the square below, a ragtag group of bloodied vampires with glowing eyes and faces full of fear. Their cowardice disgusted him, and the first vampire fought back the urge to kill them himself and be done with it.

  “You will stay out here,” he said. “You will fight with everything you have left, and you will die with honour. If you run, I will personally make you understand the true meaning of pain. Is that clear?”

  The vampires growled in agreement, their eyes locked on their master. He stared at them for a long moment, then turned and swept into the old church, slamming the doors shut behind him.

  He strode down the centre of the nave, his heart pounding with anticipation. In the alcove on the left, the soldier hung limply from the cross, and Dracula smiled; he was sure the assassination team would try to save her when they arrived, a human weakness he had every intention of exploiting. Emery appeared from behind one of the carved pillars and bowed his head deeply.

  “My lord,” he said. “Should I leave you?”

  “No,” said Dracula, without slowing. “Watch her, and stay out of the way.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Emery, and backed towards the crucified soldier, his gaze fixed on the floor.

  The first vampire floated up on to the chancel, and settled into in his chair to wait. He knew the vampires he had left outside would likely do nothing more than slow the approaching assassins, but there was always the slight chance that one of them might strike a lucky blow and injure a member of the squad sent to kill him. Either way, it was now almost time for the meaningful battle to begin; the roaring chaos at the bottom of the hill was ultimately a sideshow, and both sides knew it.

  The real victory would be won inside the church.

  Paul Turner stopped fighting as Guérin spoke a single word into his ear.

  “Incoming.”

  The Blacklight Director stood statue-still at the pulsing centre of the battle, his T-Bone in his hands, and scanned the darkening sky, his heart beating steadily in his chest. His greatest fear had always been that he would die because he made a mistake, that his death would be something that could have been avoided; being vaporised by a nuclear explosion did not qualify.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Turner saw his fellow Directors also stop and raise their heads. The moment seemed to stretch out forever, full of awful inevitability, the certainty of utter hopelessness. The battle continued around them, as men and women who had no idea what was about to happen fought on with grim determination, and for a brief moment, Turner envied them. They would never know what hit them; he doubted they would even see the flash before they died.

  “There,” said Tán, and pointed.

  Turner followed the Chinese Director’s finger and saw a faint grey shape dropping out of the sky above the medieval city. It streaked down in front of the pale stone walls and he closed his eyes as it reached the ground.

  An explosion rang out, but he instantly knew it was not the world-ending roar he had been expecting; it sounded like little more than the blast of a rocket-propelled grenade.

  He opened his eyes. On the low slope beneath the wide drawbridge, a shallow crater had been blown in the hill; it was surrounded by twisted hunks of metal, and ringed with small, flickering fires.

  “Holy shit,” whispered Bob Allen, his eyes wide.

  “It didn’t fire,” said Tán.

  “I don’t understand,” said Turner.

  “Neither do I,” said Ovechkin, and hefted his Daybreaker. “But we can worry about it later. There is still work to do.”

  Turner nodded, his heart racing, then raised his T-Bone as the f
our Directors hurled themselves back into the fight.

  “Stand by,” said General Ducroix.

  Central Director Vallens stood motionless, hunched in front of the screen in his empty office. The seconds seemed to stretch out for hours, days, even years; his chest felt as though someone had fastened a belt round it, and his hands were trembling on the surface of his desk.

  “No detonation,” said Ducroix. “I repeat, we have no detonation.”

  For a long moment, Vallens just stared; he was so overwhelmed with relief that for a brief second he was sure he was going to faint.

  “What happened?” he managed. “Did the missile fail?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ducroix. “I’m trying to get hold of—”

  “Order a second launch,” interrupted the President. “Immediately.”

  “No, sir,” said Ducroix. “I will not.”

  “Then you are relieved of duty,” said the President. “I’ll do it myself.”

  “No, you won’t, sir,” said Ducroix, his voice steady. “I’ve cut the line to Mont Verdun. I don’t think you are thinking clearly. Central Director Vallens, Minister Desjardins, do you agree with my assessment?”

  “Yes,” said Vallens, instantly.

  “Yes,” said Desjardins. “I’m sorry, sir. We need to give the Multinational Force more time. While they are still fighting, there is a chance.”

  “There is no chance!” shouted the President. “Do as I say before it is too late for us all!”

  “No,” said Ducroix. “Sir.”

  Silence.

  “Think carefully about what you are doing, gentlemen,” said the President, his voice low and as cold as ice. “This is treason.”

  “Yes,” said General Ducroix. “It is.”

  Ellison raced above the battlefield, Jack Williams beside her.

  There were far fewer Operators fighting than there had been when the battle began, and there still seemed to be so, so many vampires, but in that precise moment, she didn’t care; she would kill every single one of them herself if she had to.

  Four vampires appeared in their path, retreating from the onslaught of bullets fired by a group of Operators as they advanced across the blood-soaked landscape. Ellison leapt forward, a silent shadow in the darkness, and drove her stake through the back of one of the unsuspecting vampires. The man exploded in a crimson cloud as Jack descended on one of the others, spinning her round and staking her in a single smooth motion.

  The remaining two vampires spun round, their mouths open with shock, their eyes boiling red, but Ellison was already moving, far too fast for them to react. She kicked one of them in the stomach, doubling her over and sending her staggering towards Jack, who obliterated her with a quick jab of his stake. The other leapt into the air, presumably intending to flee, but Ellison rose with him and slammed her stake into his chest. His remains pattered to the ground in a thick, steaming rain as Ellison landed, and smiled broadly at Jack.

  “Nice work,” he said, returning her smile with a grin of his own. “Four more down.”

  Ellison nodded. Her mind was suddenly full of Jamie Carpenter; she now understood the reckless abandon he had displayed once he had been turned, and wondered what her squad leader was doing at that exact moment.

  “Do you think the strike team have a chance?” asked Jack, as though he could read her mind.

  “Yes,” she replied, instantly. “I absolutely do.”

  Six miles away, inside the command centre of the displaced persons camp, Captain Guérin lowered his head, his eyes brimming with tears of relief. He had no idea what had happened to the missile, and he genuinely didn’t care; all that mattered was that it had not fired, and they were still there.

  Over the noise surrounding the sealed room, a deafening screech echoed round the metal walls. Guérin leapt to his feet and spun towards it, raising his MP5 to his shoulder. A section of the reinforced wall had been peeled back like the lid of a tin can, and through the jagged hole he saw movement, and glowing red light.

  A vampire’s head appeared, eyes full of hunger, fangs gleaming. Guérin shot it in the eye, and it slumped backwards, blood spurting into the air.

  One bullet.

  The stricken vampire was dragged aside, and a second figure leapt through the hole and into the room. It howled, the rising roar of a wild animal, and launched itself at Guérin. He pulled the trigger, but the bullet went wide as the vampire danced to its left. He brought the gun round, crouched down as it reached him, and sent a bullet up through the flesh beneath its jaw, tearing away part of its face and revealing a bloody patch of skull. It crashed to the ground, screaming and clawing at its ruined face. Guerin staked it, and backed up, his gun again at the ready.

  Two.

  Three.

  A pair of vampires leapt through the hole together, their faces twisted with hatred. They raced forward through the narrow room, and Guerin forced himself to stand his ground; there was nowhere for him to go, and he had known it would come to this.

  He fired the MP5, taking one of the vampires in the throat and sending it backwards, blood erupting from its butchered neck. His second bullet caught the other vampire in the shoulder; it spun round like a ballerina, but kept coming. He fired again, and took the man’s head off above his eyebrows in a shower of blood and bone.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Guérin took a deep breath, his gaze locked on the hole. Movement swirled inside it, and for the briefest of seconds, he wondered whether he had successfully made them think twice. Then vampires poured through, dozens of them, their eyes glowing in the dim light of the room as they hissed and growled, and he smiled with resignation.

  He allowed himself a millisecond to say a silent goodbye to his family as the vampires thundered towards him, then raised the gun to his temple.

  Seven.

  Jamie watched the missile explode in a tiny ball of fire and turned to his remaining squad mates, his eyes blazing with heat.

  “He did it,” he said. “I don’t believe it. Valentin did it.”

  “Did what?” asked Larissa.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and shook his head. “Something. It was enough, whatever it was. So let’s go.”

  He led the two Operators and the American Colonel up the steep path towards the church, his T-Bone drawn and raised. They crested the hill, and emerged in front of the grand façade of the Basilica – the stained glass, the carved stone, the huge wooden doors – and the ragged line of vampires standing before them; the space between them and the survivors of the massacre in the square was no more than five metres.

  Jamie stared at the vampires. He saw no fight in their flickering red eyes; all he saw was fear, and something close to despair.

  “Any of you who don’t want to die, leave now,” he said.

  Half instantly fled; they simply leapt into the air and disappeared over the turreted walls of the city without a backward glance. The six that remained growled as they looked at each other with obvious unease, the light in their eyes darkening.

  “Last chance,” said Jamie.

  The volume of the growling increased, but none of the vampires moved.

  Jamie sighed. “Fine. Have it your way.”

  The three remaining members of the strike team fired their T-Bones at the same time. The metal stakes screamed through the air and crunched into the chests of three of the vampires, exploding them. Three huge splashes of blood soaked the surviving vampires, who shrieked and hissed as the stakes wound back into the barrels of the weapons. They stared at each other, drenched in blood from head to toe, the fear on their faces turning into open terror.

  “What about now?” he asked.

  Without a single word, the three bloody vampires rocketed into the sky. Jamie breathed a sigh of relief, lowered his T-Bone, and walked across to the doors of the Basilica. He leant his head against the old wood, and heard three distant heartbeats; one was dangerously slow, one sounded like that of a
regular human, while the other was the loud, steady drumbeat of a vampire.

  A powerful vampire.

  “Is he in there?” asked Larissa.

  Jamie nodded.

  “Then this is it,” said Frankenstein.

  “This is it,” he said, and reached for the ornate door handles.

  “Don’t you dare go in there without me,” said a voice from behind them, and Jamie smiled as he turned towards it.

  Valentin was sitting casually atop the high rampart wall opposite the church; he looked like a tourist posing for a photograph.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Larissa, and smiled. “There really is just no getting rid of you, is there?”

  Angela let her chin rest against her chest and tried not to move as Dracula walked through the nave of the church.

  The man who had done this to her, the man with the empty eyes, bowed at the first vampire as he passed, then backed towards where she had been hung, and looked up at her with an expression so devoid of humanity it made her want to vomit.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please …”

  The man smiled, and took a step towards her. He gently took hold of her chin, the sensation of his skin on hers so intolerable that it took all her resolve not to scream in horror, and lifted her head.

  “What is it?” he whispered. “Does it hurt?”

  Angela muttered something under her breath. The man took another step and tilted his ear towards her.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You can tell me. Does it hurt?”

  Angela smiled as her fangs slid out of her gums and red light exploded into her eyes. The man recoiled, but before he could stagger out of range, she yanked her right hand forward with all her remaining strength; it ripped free of the cross, the nail still sticking through the palm, and she clenched it into a tight fist. She swung it up under the man’s chin, lifting him into the air as the nail pierced his flesh. His eyes flew open, and he gagged as blood gushed into his mouth and down her arm. She bore down, hauling him up and towards her, bringing his throat within range of her fangs.

  “You tell me,” she growled. “Does it?”

  The man stared at Angela, disbelief filling his eyes, until she tore out his throat with her fangs, and drank the blood that spurted into her mouth.