by William Hill
Morris smiled at Jamie, a wicked grin that turned the teenager’s stomach.“You should read your Juvenal, boy. ‘ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ’? I’m the security officer. I can access the entire Blacklight network, including the security protocols; I can add, amend, and delete anything I want, as I did the log of my accessing the frequency database. When your father, your arrogant, superior father, destroyed Ilyana, I reached out to Alexandru, and we came to an understanding. He would give me two things I wanted, and I would hand him Department 19; your family in particular. I sent him the maps that let him bring down the Mina, just like I hacked the personnel files and found him your address. You should have died the same night as your father. But someone interfered and warned your father they were coming. So when he ran home to protect you, I faked the e-mail from your father to Alexandru and framed him as the traitor. Alexandru could have you and your mother, and I would get him access to Julian later. But your father died, and you were hidden away. So I wrote the document that implicated Julian, making sure no one would suspect anyone else was involved, and spent years tracking down your whereabouts. Once I had it, I passed it on, and we moved against you and your mother.”
He glared at Larissa. “But she failed to kill you, and the goddamn monster rescued you. I’ve been working to get you into the open, away from him, ever since. And now here we are. Blacklight are in Russia on a rescue mission that is far, far too late to do any good. There’s no one to help you this time.”
Jamie stared at Morris, his whole body numb. His mother was looking at him with panic in her eyes, Larissa was snarling beside him, but he felt nothing. It was too much for him to bear, one last betrayal too many, and he was on the very edge of collapse.
“What did you get?” he asked. “What did you get for helping to kill my family?”
“Eternal life,” replied Morris, simply. “And the righting of the greatest wrong in Blacklight history: the death of my great-great-grandfather Quincey Morris. He died on a mountainside in the middle of nowhere, while lesser men survived. But the Russians found his remains in 1902, when they recovered Dracula’s ashes. Alexandru is going to bring him back to me.”
“You’re wrong,” said Jamie. “Dracula’s remains were never found.”
“You really shouldn’t believe everything the Department tells you,” replied Morris. “It’s a shame Seward isn’t here; if he were, you could ask him about vault thirty-one. But he isn’t, so you’re just going to have to trust me. Dracula’s remains were recovered, along with my great-great-grandfather’s. And soon they will both walk the earth again.”
Grey was right, thought Jamie. We should have listened to him.
Then he looked at Morris, saw the desperation lurking an inch beneath the surface of his face, and felt savage satisfaction flood through him.
“You idiot,” he said. “Quincey Morris wasn’t turned. He just died. They can’t bring him back. They’re just using you to get to Dracula’s ashes.”
Morris’s smile remained in place, but the light in his eyes faded. He looked at Alexandru, who was watching the exchange with obvious relish. “That isn’t true,” he said. “You promised.”
Alexandru grinned; an expression of pure malice, of utter sadism. “It seems that even the valet’s great-grandson is cleverer than you,” he said.
Far, far too late, Thomas Morris saw how simply and completely used he had been. His face fell, as the realization of what he had done sank into him, and he staggered on the raised platform.
You fool, thought Jamie. You poor, desperate fool. You’ve given away everything for nothing. For absolutely nothing.
Morris let out a strangled cry and fumbled the bowie knife from his belt. He lunged at Alexandru, who laughed delightedly, and slid liquidly to his feet. He reached out a hand and snapped Morris’s wrist, the sharp crack echoing around the chapel hall. Morris screamed, until Alexandru plucked the bowie knife from his fingers and slid it easily into his throat, silencing him.
Marie Carpenter screamed as blood sprayed across the pale stone platform. Morris took a single halting step and then pitched forward, crashing to the floor of the hall. He lay there, blood pumping from the hole in his throat, his mouth working silently, his wide eyes fixed on Jamie.
“Oh God,” whispered Kate. “Oh God, this is too much. That poor man.”
Larissa flashed her a look of anger, but Jamie reached out and touched her arm. She looked at him, and he shook his head slowly. Her expression softened, and she returned her gaze to the platform, her red eyes gleaming.
“That was fun,” said Alexandru, settling back on his seat.
“Now. Mr. Carpenter. Why don’t you come up here with your mother and me? There are things we need to talk about, just the three of us.”
Larissa reached out and gripped Jamie’s hand so tightly he felt the bones grind together. With considerable effort, he stopped the pain showing in his face.
“Let my friends go, and I will,” he replied.
“Jamie-” started Larissa, but he cut her off.
“Be quiet, Larissa,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“They’re free to go,” said Alexandru. “You have my word. I couldn’t be less interested in the girl, and Larissa will keep for another day.”
Jamie nodded and started forward. Larissa held on to his hand, pulling him back. He turned to her, a tender expression on his face.
“Let me go,” he said.
She looked at him for a long moment, then released her grip.
Jamie walked toward Alexandru. The ancient vampire was sitting forward, clearly excited by the sight of the approaching teenager. His mother was staring down at him, her eyes full of terror. Behind him he heard Kate start to cry, and Larissa breathing heavily, in and out, in and out.
He was halfway across the chapel hall when the huge wooden door behind him exploded.
46
STAND, AND BE TRUE
Frankenstein strode through the jagged hole where the door had been, followed by two Blacklight operators, their visors down and their weapons drawn. The monster towered over them; he had drawn himself up to his full height, and he stared at Alexandru across the blood-soaked room. He was holding a T-Bone in one of his gray-green hands, an enormous silver shotgun in the other, and he was very, very angry.
“Where is Thomas Morris?” he bellowed, his voice reverberating around the stone walls.
Everybody in the room stopped dead.
Jamie pointed to the floor in font of the stage, his heart overwhelmed by the sight of his friend, his head spinning with gratitude and guilt and anger. Frankenstein saw Morris, his body twisted awkwardly, blood pumping steadily from the wide hole in his throat, the last of his life ebbing away. His eyes widened as the monster slowly approached and knelt down on one knee ten feet away from him.
“Thomas,” said Frankenstein, his voice low.
The dying man moved his eyes, slowly, and looked at him.
“Your great-great-grandfather would be ashamed of you,” the monster said.
Morris stared at him, his face a pale mask of fear and pain.
Then he died.
Sitting on the platform, Alexandru applauded, slowly. The claps echoed around the room, and Frankenstein looked up at him. Then he walked quickly over to Jamie’s side and led the teenager back to Kate and Larissa.
“Such theater,” said Alexandru, a wide smile on his face. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. Now, come up here, boy. Your friends may still leave, even the rather large one, but I ask you not to try my patience further.”
Frankenstein looked at the old vampire, his face curled in a grimace of disgust. “There’s no way that’s going to happen,” he said, firmly.
Alexandru sighed, a look of seemingly genuine disappointment on his face. “Have it your way, monster.” He motioned to the vampires lined up beside him. “Kill them all, apart from the boy. Bring him to me.”
The vampires leapt down from the stone platform and rushed headlong toward t
he remnants of the Blacklight team. Kate cried out as they sped across the stone, their eyes flashing, their fangs bared, their faces twisted with venom, and Frankenstein pushed her firmly back against the wall beside the door, behind Larissa and the operators. He pressed a stake into her hand, and she held it out before her in a trembling fist.
One of the men who had arrived with Frankenstein fired his T-Bone into the snarling line of vampires. The projectile flew high, tearing off the upper half of the head of a vampire man in its twenties. He went down, twitching, his eyes rolled back in his head. But as Jamie stared, the shattered, open skull began to repair itself before his eyes. He circled back against the wall, next to Kate. Larissa fell in next to him, and they pressed their backs to the cold stone as Frankenstein and the operators faced the onrushing vampires.
Frankenstein took half a step back, then hurled himself forward, careening into the vampires, his huge, uneven arms whirling around him like tree trunks in a tornado. Vampires flew through the air, trailing blood behind them, and crashed into the walls. The second operator emptied his MP5 into a cluster of vampires that were trying to surround him, driving them back, before a snarling vampire appeared behind him, and wrenched the helmet from his head. Frankenstein swung a long arm, placed the enormous barrel of the shotgun against the side of the vampire’s head, and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the stone hall, and the vampire’s head disappeared in a cloud of blood.
Larissa snarled and leapt into the fray, a crimson nightmare of biting teeth and clawing fingernails. She tore the throat out of the vampire woman in the trouser suit, who fell to the floor, clawing at her open jugular; she crawled for a few feet, then slumped to the stone.
Jamie raised his T-Bone and destroyed a vampire girl who was approaching Frankenstein from the rear; the shot thudding into her armpit and tearing through her chest. She exploded, showering the monster with blood, but he didn’t even turn. Jamie waited for the projectile to wind back into the barrel of his weapon, and he hurled himself bellowing into the battle.
They fought for their lives.
They fired T-Bones and guns, they swung stakes and knives, and they punched and kicked at the horde of vampires that spun and circled around them. Blood flew in the air and pooled on the ground. Vampires exploded in fountains of crimson, limbs were blown from snarling bodies, and screams of pain and bellows of fury filled the chapel hall.
But it wasn’t enough.
Two vampires leapt onto the shoulders of one of the operators and dragged him to the ground. He pulled the trigger on his MP5 as he was overwhelmed; the bullets raked across the ceiling of the hall, sending flurries of dust down onto the heads of the humans and vampires below. The operator screamed once as the helmet was pulled from his head and the vampires buried their fangs in his face. Blood gushed from beneath their gnawing mouths, and the operator lay still.
Then a high-pitched scream cut through the noise of the battle, ringing sweetly off the stone walls. Jamie spun toward the source and saw the skeletal male vampire holding Kate, his left hand around her waist. With the forefinger of his other hand, he lightly drew a razor-sharp fingernail across her throat. He smiled at Jamie, a look of revolting excitement on his face as he stroked the teenage girl’s skin.
Something crashed into the back of Jamie’s neck, and he sank to his knees, seeing stars. Gray spilled across his vision, and nausea swirled in his stomach. He pitched forward, and his forehead cracked sharply against the stone floor. He rolled over onto his side and saw the vampires take the rest of his team.
Three of them launched themselves at Frankenstein, who had stopped to look at Kate. They hung from his enormous frame like leeches, clubbing at his face and neck with their fists, and he was driven slowly to his knees. A vampire woman in a black T-shirt and glistening black PVC jeans pulled a short serrated knife from her boot and held it to the monster’s neck. He stiffened, but the vampire didn’t kill him. She held the knife to his neck, and he was still.
The surviving operator was sent spinning by a haymaker punch that he never saw. He was backing away from a pair of snarling vampires, a man and a woman who were almost naked, their clothes hanging from them in ribbons, and he was almost decapitated from behind by the blow. It was thrown by Anderson, who put every last drop of his unnatural strength into it. The operator flew into the stone wall, his helmet shattering under the impact, and he slid to the floor. Anderson walked slowly over to the fallen man and put one of his huge feet on the man’s throat. He increased the pressure, pinning the man against the wall, and looked happily at Alexandru.
Larissa was herded against the wall, snarling and spraying blood from her face and hair with every quick dart of her head. Four of the vampires surrounded her, and she stood still, hissing and twitching, knowing she could not take them all.
Jamie pushed himself dizzily to his feet and saw that he was standing alone in the middle of the chapel hall; the vampires had backed away to the walls, taking his companions with them. His head was ringing, and his gorge had risen. He swayed unsteadily on his feet and turned to face Alexandru.
The ancient vampire was standing on the edge of the platform, staring down at him with delight in his eyes. Behind him stood Marie Carpenter, her arms dangling at her sides, her eyes wide with concern for her son.
“Move an inch, and I’ll gut you,” said Alexandru, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. Marie moaned, but she stood still.
I’m going to kill you, thought Jamie. Even if it costs me my life, I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done to my mother.
“So,” said Alexandru. “It appears we have reached an impasse. I no longer feel inclined to let your friends go, but I will make their deaths quick if you come up here to me now. If you don’t, you will have the privilege of watching them die, one after the other. It’s entirely up to you.”
Jamie stared up at the vampire, looking for something, anything that might help him. His eyes flicked to the huge window behind the ancient vampire, and then suddenly he saw it.
He put his hands to the belt on his waist. He brought his T-Bone and his MP5 up, and pointed them at Alexandru, his hands shaking.
The ancient vampire laughed.
“Oh, good Lord,” he said, bemusement in his voice. “Take your best shots, Mr. Carpenter. If it will make you feel that you did everything you could, then by all means take them.”
Jamie looked around the room at his friends.
Frankenstein was staring levelly at him, a look of confidence on his face, and it heartened Jamie to see it.
This needs to work. I’m only going to get one chance at this.
Larissa looked at him, her eyes shining red, her chest rising and falling. There was pride on her face and something else, and Jamie felt heat rise in his face. He didn’t care; he let it flood through him and looked at Kate.
Her face was full of fear, but there was a determination there, as well as revolted anger at the touch of the skeletal vampire.
Finally, Jamie Carpenter looked at his mother.
She returned his gaze, favoring him with an expression of unadulterated love. He smiled at her, and she smiled back at her son.
He lifted the MP5, twisted its selector to full auto, aimed it, and pulled the trigger. The bullets streamed past Alexandru’s head, who didn’t even flinch, and thudded into the huge cross that stood behind him. The wood splintered and shattered under the impact, and the great crucifix creaked on its suddenly unstable base.
Alexandru didn’t notice. He looked down at Jamie and opened his palms toward the teenager, as if to say, “What now?”
Jamie threw the gun aside; it clattered to the floor, and slid to a halt in the middle of the room. He raised the T-Bone against his shoulder.
One shot. Just one shot.
He fired, and the projectile screamed across the chapel hall. It sailed over Alexandru’s head, and crashed into the center of the cross with a heavy thud, digging deeply into the dense, ancient wood.
<
br /> “Oh, dear,” said Alexandru, softly. “You missed.”
Jamie set his feet against the uneven stone floor, and held the T-Bone against his chest. The motor whirred as it tried to wind the metal stake back in, and he felt his feet slide momentarily toward the old vampire, who was looking at him with an expression that was close to pity.
Then the bullet-weakened base of the cross creaked, and gave way.
Alexandru Rusmanov, who could move so fast he was a blur to human eyes, who had walked the earth, killing and torturing, for more than five hundred years, never saw it coming. At the last second, a shadow fell across him from behind, and his forehead creased into a frown before the huge cross, which had overlooked forty generations of the faithful, annihilated him.
It landed on his shoulders, shattering his spine and crushing the back of his skull to powder, driving him from the platform and onto the ground. His legs broke, and he crumpled to the stone floor, his pelvis cracking in two and filling instantly with blood. He rolled as he fell, and the right arm of the cross ripped his left arm out at the shoulder, sending it sliding wetly across the floor. The vampire hit the ground, a limp sack of flesh and blood. The cross settled on top of him, tearing his chest open as it slid to a creaking halt.
For a second, there was silence in the chapel hall, as the vampires stared blankly at their fallen leader.
Then the Blacklight team moved.
Frankenstein reached out and crushed the PVC-clad vampire’s hand. Her fingers broke, and she dropped the knife, shrieking in pain, until the monster staked her and she exploded in a pillar of blood. He rose from the floor like an erupting volcano, firing his shotgun and his T-Bone, scattering vampires across the hall.
The operator grabbed Anderson’s ankle and twisted it, sharply. There was a loud crack as the bone broke, and Anderson howled, the high wavering cry of a child. He reeled backward, his infant face clouded with pain and confusion, his eyes flicking from Alexandru’s fallen form to the operator in front of him, who was pushing himself up the wall. Anderson backed away, then turned and leapt into the air. He flew across the hall like a swollen, misshapen bird, smashed through the stained-glass window, and disappeared into the night sky.