by William Hill
“It was handed to me by the men who brought Tom’s body out of the monastery,” said Seward, gently. “They wanted to know what to do with it. What do you think I should tell them?”
Jamie turned the knife over in his hands. The blade was stained brown with blood and dirt, and the leather of its sheath was worn and battered.
“It belongs with the dead,” said Jamie. “It should go back there.”
A flicker of a smile flashed across Seward’s face, then he gently lifted the knife from Jamie’s hands.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll have it returned to the Fallen Gallery, where it belongs.” The director placed the knife down and handed Jamie the purple box. “The contents of this box, however, I believe belong right here, with you. Open it.”
Jamie lifted the purple lid, and for a moment, his heart stopped.
Inside the box was a circular medal, cast in gold, and engraved with the Department 19 crest. Beneath the crest, where the three Latin words of the Blacklight motto usually stood, were two simple words of English:FOR GALLANTRY
In the lid lay a square plate of gold on which was inscribed the following:
THE MEDAL OF GALLANTRY, FIRST CLASS
PRESENTED TO
JULIAN CARPENTER
THIS DAY OF OUR LORD
FEBRUARY 19, 2005
“It was found in his quarters after he died,” said Admiral Seward, his voice little more than a whisper. “When an operator dies, there is rarely anyone to pass such things on to. But I held on to it, in case you followed in his footsteps.”
Jamie was still staring at the medal, his throat filled by a lump so large he couldn’t breathe, his face hot, his hands shaking.
“He would have wanted you to have it,” continued Seward. “But more than that, you deserve it for what you did tonight.”
Jamie managed a deep, rattling breath, and felt his composure begin to return. He looked at the director and was shocked to see tears rolling down the old man’s face.
“Your father would have been very proud of you, Jamie,” said Seward. Then he was on his feet, and striding across the dormitory without a backward glance.
Jamie watched him go, watched the door swing shut after him, and lowered himself slowly onto his bunk. He stared at the ceiling above him, his father’s medal gripped tightly in his hands, his mind full of the faces of the lost and the found, and slipped gently into darkness.
FIRST EPILOGUE
Doctor Alan McCall pushed open the door of the Department 19 infirmary, clutching a polystyrene cup of coffee in his hand, and stepped inside. He had been sound asleep in his quarters when the message from the director had beeped across the screen of his handheld console, rousing him.
NEED IMMEDIATE REPORT ON INJURED CIVILIAN MINOR.
McCall had groaned and sat slowly up on the edge of his bed. Matt Browning was still in the coma that he and his staff had induced, a coma from which they were not planning to attempt to wake him from for at least another forty-eight hours. A report would be completely redundant, but the request was from Admiral Seward, and the doctor would do as he was told.
The doctor crossed the infirmary quickly. The beds were all empty; the operator who had been injured in the same recovery that had brought Matt to the Loop had been discharged. They had transfused every drop of blood in his body, flushing out the infected cells before the turn had been able to take hold of his system. It had been touch and go, but the man would make a full recovery; he had been sent to one of the dormitories on the lower levels to rest.
The only patient in the infirmary was the teenage boy. McCall could see the motionless outline of his body behind the frosted glass of the door marked THEATER. He eased open the door and froze, his heart leaping into his throat.
Matt Browning’s eyes were open.
At the sound of the opening door, the teenager slowly turned his pale, waxy face toward the doctor and spoke three words: “Where am I?”
McCall rushed across the room and took Matt’s face gently in his hands. He shone a light into the unprotesting teenager’s eyes, then placed his fingers against the boy’s neck. He felt the steady, rhythmic pulse beneath the skin, and paged the duty nurse to come to the infirmary at once.
“Where am I?” repeated Matt, his voice little more than a whisper.
“You’re safe,” replied McCall, his eyes scanning the screens on the bank of machines that were attached to his patient. “You’re in a safe place.”
The duty nurse hustled into the infirmary, calling Doctor McCall’s name.
“In here,” he shouted, and a moment later, the nurse, a young woman called Cathy who had only been working at the Loop for three months, appeared in the room.
“My God,” she exclaimed, her hand going to her mouth.
“I want blood tests run immediately,” said McCall. “I want you to take it down to the lab yourself and wait there for the results. Understood?”
The nurse was still staring at Matt’s pale, confused face, but her training kicked in.
“Yes doctor,” she replied, and set about her task, pulling a syringe from one of the drawers in the room’s central console, and bending over Matt’s arm.
The boy winced as the needle slid through his skin, but he didn’t shift his gaze from Doctor McCall, who was making rapid notes on his console, his fingers flying across the keys.
“Doctor?” he said, softly, and McCall looked up.
“Yes, Matt?”
“I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what’s happening.” The teenager’s face crumpled, and tears brimmed at the corners of his eyes. McCall shoved the console into his pocket and crouched down beside the teenager’s bed.
“It’s okay,” he said, gently. “You were hurt, badly hurt, and we had to put you to sleep for a little while. But you’re going to be fine.”
“I want to go home. I want my mom.”
“I know you do. One of my colleagues will need to talk to you first, but we’ll get you home as soon as we possibly can.”
The duty nurse withdrew the syringe from Matt’s arm and almost ran out of the room, heading for one of the lifts that would take her down to the laboratory, deep into the bowels of the Loop.
McCall watched her go, then turned back to Matt.
“Do you remember what happened to you? Anything at all?” he asked.
Matt shook his head. “I remember coming home from school. That’s all. I don’t even know what day that was.” Pain and confusion flickered across his face, and McCall’s heart went out to the teenager.
He must be terrified. He’s doing a good job of not showing it, but he must be.
“I need to go and talk to someone,” the doctor said. “I’ll be back in five minutes. I promise. All right?”
Matt nodded.
“Okay. Five minutes.” Doctor McCall pushed himself up to his feet and headed through the door and out into the infirmary.
Matt Browning watched him go, then let his head roll back onto his pillow, so he was staring up at the white ceiling. His hands were shaking.
He believes you. It’s all right, he believes you.
Matt had been awake for almost an hour. His eyes had drifted open onto this unfamiliar place, and fear and disorientation had flooded through him. Then the memory of what had happened to him had burst into his mind, and he had cried out in the silent room. He could see the broken shape of the girl in the flowerbed, hear the deafening thunder of the helicopter as it lowered itself onto their quiet street, and feel the rising fear that had gripped him as the black-clad men with guns had shoved their way past him and his dad and into his home.
He had lied to the doctor; he remembered everything. But he knew, instinctively, that he couldn’t tell the doctor that, couldn’t tell him that he remembered the girl’s red eyes and the white fangs that had stood out in the bloody ruin of her face. Matt trusted his own mind, and he was sure that pretending to remember nothing was the only way he was ever going to be allowed to leave this
place.
But he knew what he had seen.
“Vampire,” he whispered, and felt goose bumps break out across his skin.
SECOND EPILOGUE
Eighteen hours later
The Black Sea Coast, Romania
The chapel stood on a barren headland on the eastern tip of the Rusmanov estate, overlooking the distant port of Constanţa. A long, gently sloping path led down to it from the sprawling dacha that had housed more than a hundred generations of Valeri’s family. Inside the small stone building, two narrow rows of wooden benches faced a plain stone altar. The entire sea-facing wall was a crude stained-glass window, a bloody representation of a crucifixion now weathered and beaten dull by centuries of salt spray.
Behind the altar, a stone staircase spiraled downward into earthy darkness. Flickering orange light drifted up into the chapel, illuminating a building designed for blasphemy; a house of death, decorated with bones and consecrated with blood.
In the chamber beneath the chapel, Valeri tied the final rope into place. He had forced himself to take his time with the preparations, to make sure that every detail was correct, even though his heart was pounding with anticipation at the culmination of a search that had taken more than a century.
The plastic container marked 31 had been placed carefully by the bottom step of the staircase. Its contents, a thick gray powder, had been poured into a round stone pit in the center of the room, Valeri taking care not to spill a single molecule as he emptied the container.
Above the pit, suspended upside down by thick rope from a series of heavy iron hooks, were five naked women.
Their hands and feet were bound, their mouths wrapped in strips of muslin which muffled their screams. The women had been hung with their backs to the cold, smooth walls of the chamber and their gazes met helplessly, tears flooding down their upturned foreheads, their hair hanging almost to the floor, their pale torsos thrashing and squirming in the still subterranean air.
Valeri walked quietly around the chamber, lighting a series of candles that had been darkened almost black with something unspeakable. He appeared not to even notice the women swinging around his head until the final candle was lit and issued a stream of thick, repugnant smoke. Then he drew a curved filleting knife from his belt and slit the throat of the nearest woman from ear to ear.
Around the chamber the thrashing and muffled screaming intensified. The woman’s eyes snapped open wide, her pale green irises disappearing almost completely beneath the rapidly spreading black of her pupils. Blood sprayed from her neck in a pressurized jet, splattering her face and hair, and pouring in a crimson torrent into the pit below her.
Valeri dropped to a crouch and stared down into the pit. The blood splashed onto the gray powder like winter rain, and for a second, there was movement, a hint of solidity where the blood was pooling fastest. He stood up sharply and stepped toward the second woman, who arched her back away from him in a futile attempt to avoid her fate.
The old vampire slid his knife smoothly across the white flesh of the girl’s neck, then stepped neatly behind her, moving toward the third of his victims, avoiding the arterial blood that gushed down into the pit.
In less than a minute, it was over.
The struggles of the five girls were slowing, their lower legs rapidly turning a pale, mottled blue, as the blood ran from their bodies. Five rivers of blood splashed into the stone pit, soaking the gray powder and mixing with it to form a thick, dark red sludge.
Valeri stepped to the end of the pit and knelt on the cold flagstones of the chamber floor. Below him, the foul liquid began to shift, slow currents starting to move in loose concentric circles. In the center, the blood began to rise in a steep bubble, as if it were being pulled upward by one of the steel hooks set into the walls of the chamber. Valeri looked at the quivering, rising mass of blood, and lowered his forehead to the stone floor of the chamber. The air, already thick with the mingled scents of the sulfuric candles and the coppery, metallic blood, was filled with a terrible sucking noise, like the sound of liquid thickening into clay.
The oldest vampire in the world closed his eyes and smiled. Above him, something wet took the gurgling, rattling breath of a newborn, and Valeri Rusmanov uttered a single word:
“Master.”