Department 19: Zero Hour (74 page)

The stake slid into the vampire’s chest like a knife through butter, stopping the man’s fangs centimetres from Holmwood’s face. They snapped together, as blood and spit poured on to Holmwood’s cheeks and chin, and a pair of red eyes glowered at him; he saw the wide black pupils at the centre of the swirling crimson before the stake worked its way into the vampire’s heart, and he exploded across Holmwood’s face and body in a vast, steaming deluge.

Cal stifled a cry of disgust, and pushed himself backwards across the ground, his boot heels digging long trenches in the gravel. He felt something hard against his lower back, and turned to see his MP7 lying on the ground. He grabbed it, clambered to his feet, and looked wildly around the battlefield, looking for Paul Turner, looking for—

Crunch.

Holmwood rocked forward on the balls of his feet, then looked down at his stomach. The tip of a blade, impossibly wide and wickedly sharp, was sticking out of the black fabric of his uniform. He frowned, confused by what he was seeing, and tried to take a breath.

Nothing happened.

His body seemed to be frozen, locked in some limbo state; he couldn’t move, or breathe. Then there was a noise like raw steak being sliced, and the metal tip disappeared. A millisecond later the pain arrived, and he realised what had happened to him.

Cal Holmwood sank to his knees, blood pouring out of a hole in his stomach that seemed almost ridiculous; it was so big, so wide and clean at the edges, that even as his system began to shut down and send him into shock, he wanted to laugh.

Nobody could have a hole that big in their gut and still be alive.

Not for long, at least.

As he pressed his gloved hands to the wound, trying futilely to stem the torrent of steaming blood, he heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel and raised his head. Standing in front of him, with an enormous sword in his hand and an expression on his face that seemed almost benevolent, was Dracula.

“Do not despair,” said the ancient vampire, his voice low and gentle. “Your men fought well. They were a credit to you. But you could never have prevailed.”

Holmwood tried to speak, but his mouth filled instantly with blood. He gagged, choked down some of the horribly warm liquid, and managed to spit the rest of it out on to the gravel.

“You could be turned,” said Dracula, his eyes glowing softly. “Even now there might still be time. But you would not want that, and I would not insult you by insisting. I will give you the dignity of a clean death, one commander of men to another.”

Cal Holmwood looked up at the vampire, searching for mercy, for humanity in the monster’s face, and finding none.

I’m sorry,
he thought.
I tried.

As Dracula swung the sword, he closed his eyes.

To Paul Turner, it seemed to happen in slow motion.

The sword moved through the air as slowly and inevitably as a storm cloud and slid through Cal Holmwood’s neck as though it was as insubstantial as smoke. For a terrible moment, one that Turner would relive over and over in his worst nightmares, nothing happened. Then his friend’s head slid to one side and tumbled to the ground. Blood spurted up from the stump of his neck in a wide arc as the decapitated body toppled over on to the gravel.

A sound rose through Turner’s throat and emerged from his mouth. It contained nothing recognisable as words; it was a primal scream of shock and misery, a howl of abject despair. He raised his T-Bone and fired it at the distant shape of Dracula, but the first vampire was gone before the stake was halfway to its target. It clattered against a standing piece of château wall, and wound itself back in as Turner scanned the battlefield, searching for the vampire they had come to France to kill. He ran forward, his mind reeling, his only clear thought a simple one.

If we don’t destroy him now, we aren’t going to get him. Cal will have died for nothing.

On the far side of the courtyard, he saw his target.

Dracula was at the edge of the battle, working his way back towards the centre, cutting a bloody swathe through the Combined Operational Force. Black figure after black figure fell beneath his sword, the majority of them not even dead; the huge blade sent them to the ground with terrible, savage wounds, where Valeri’s followers fell on them like rabid dogs and finished them off. Turner saw an Operator stand his ground in front of the ancient vampire’s onslaught, saw him raise his MP7 and empty it into the vampire’s body.

Dracula laughed, and hacked the man almost in half.

As the Operator spun to the ground, his visor flew up, and Turner felt his stomach lurch again. It was Patrick Williams, his eyes rolled white, his torso cleaved open, his blood running out of his body in enormous quantities. Mercy, if there was any left to be had, came in the fact that it was clear, even from a distance, that Williams was dead before he reached the ground.

Turner sprinted forward. He had no idea how to stop the tsunami of death that Dracula had unleashed, or if he even could; he only knew that he had to try, that he had to do something, no matter how futile it might be. He shouldered a vampire out of the way, ducked as the hissing woman swung her razor-sharp nails in his direction, straightened up, and found himself face to face with the first vampire that had ever lived.

Dracula smiled at him, his head cocked to one side, his glowing eyes slightly narrowed, as though he was examining a potentially interesting species of insect. Turner took a deep breath, and was about to raise his T-Bone when a deafening howl filled the air of the courtyard. Dracula had just enough time to frown before the huge grey-green wolf thundered into him from the side, sending them both crashing to the bloodstained gravel.

Jamie staggered backwards, panic surging through him as blood pumped out of his neck in a high-pressure jet. There was no pain, but, as he raised his hands to defend himself against the thrashing, clawing vampire, he noted with horror how heavy they felt; he could already feel himself starting to weaken.

The vampire’s whirling fists thudded into his shoulders and face, driving him backwards as his blood gushed against her face and her open, screeching mouth. He reeled, his vision greying at the edges, his legs feeling like they were made of lead, until he heard Angela Darcy say a single word.

“Duck.”

Jamie tipped himself back and allowed his weight to pull him to the ground. He hit the stone floor hard; he saw stars, then a metallic blur above him, trailing wire. There was a wet crunch, a howl of pain, then a bang as air rushed into previously occupied space. Blood exploded in the narrow passage, splashing the walls and falling on to him in a thick, sticky rain.

A millisecond later Angela was kneeling at his side.

“Jamie?” she said, her voice low and urgent. “Talk to me, Jamie. What do you need?”

“Blood,” he gargled. The word was barely recognisable, but Angela nodded and disappeared. He heard running footsteps, and focused all his attention on the ceiling above him, trying to stay calm, to not go into shock.

Easy,
he told himself.
Larissa has survived worse than this, more than once. Take it easy.

He tried. But the sensation of his own blood spilling warmly out over his neck and jaw was so awful that he felt nausea rise up from his stomach, carrying with it the sweet darkness of unconsciousness.

Crack.

Angela Darcy’s gloved hand connected with his cheek with a sound like a gunshot and his eyes flew open. She was kneeling over him, clutching the vampire who had been lying beneath the collapsed wall, back near the staircase. The man’s body had come apart at the waist, so she was technically only holding the upper half of him, but the skin at his neck was still pink, still packed with blood. Angela lowered the man down over Jamie, then took her stake and stabbed a hole in the side of his throat. Blood spilled out – not the hosepipe spray that had erupted from his own severed jugular, more of a thick river – and cascaded into his mouth.

Instantly, Jamie felt his strength return. His eyes flooded red, and a deep growl rose in his throat as he swallowed the still-warm blood. Then he felt something few people on the planet had ever known, a sensation that was almost indescribable.

He felt the gaping wound in his neck repair itself.

It was as though someone had set his spine on fire then soaked his skin in acid; the pain burned and scoured, so vast that all he could do was hang on and hope to ride it out. In the back of his mind, a voice told him to keep drinking, that it would be over soon, so he did.

And it was.

A minute later Jamie sat up and cautiously pressed a gloved finger to his neck. The skin was tender; it felt tight, as though it needed stretching, but the wound was gone. He climbed to his feet and looked at Angela Darcy.

“Thank you,” he said.

She smiled. “No problem. You’d do the same for me.”

He grinned, then turned back to the room at the end of the corridor. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get him out of here.”

She nodded and walked into the cell; he followed close behind her.

“Angela?” said Henry Seward, his voice little more than a croak. “Are you real?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “I’m real, we both are. We’re here to get you.”

Jamie stared at the Director, his heart racing in his chest, miserable anger flooding him. There could never be enough payback for this, no revenge enough for what Valeri and Dracula had done to one of the finest men he had known.

“Who’s that with you?” asked Seward, his voice sounding slightly stronger. “Jamie Carpenter?”

The sound of his name broke Jamie’s paralysis. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Can you move, sir?”

“I can’t walk,” said Seward. “My legs won’t hold me.”

“No problem,” said Jamie. He stepped forward, ready to carry the Admiral out of the château and kill any vampire he saw on the way, then stopped; Seward was staring at him with a look of abject horror.

“Oh no,” whispered the Director. “Oh, Jamie. What have they done to you?”

“It’s a bit of a long story, sir,” he said. “Let’s save it for another time.”

He reached down and scooped Seward up, horrified by how light his body was; it felt as though he was carrying nothing more than a sack of bones. “Angela,” he said. “You lead us back the way we came. Anything moves, you shoot first. Got it?”

Angela nodded.

“All right then,” said Jamie. “Let’s go.”

The battle didn’t stop when Cal Holmwood died; that would be the thing that Larissa always remembered.

It felt like there should have been a pause, a moment of respect for the Interim Director, but there was nothing; the fighting raged on around her, increasingly feverish and desperate, at least from the perspective of those on the side of humanity. She watched Holmwood fall to the ground as his head rolled away from his body, and felt her vampire side retreat, just for a moment; it did not feel empathy, and was uncomfortable with the concept of loss. With it went the fire that had been burning joyously since the helicopters touched down, what now felt like hours ago, and in its place rose emotions that had been subsumed by her desire to spill blood: grief for Cal Holmwood; pride at the way her friends and colleagues were fighting so valiantly; and a thick wave of guilt at the realisation that she had let Jamie go looking for Henry Seward with only Angela Darcy for company.

Her crimson eyes widened. She turned towards the building, about to go and help her boyfriend, and found herself face to face with Kelly, the NS9 Operator who had been one of her closest friends in Nevada. Her eyes were wide, and her face was pale and blood-spattered beneath a visor that had been pushed up, but she was grinning nonetheless; Larissa smiled involuntarily, taken aback by the sudden appearance of a familiar face.

“Hey,” shouted Kelly. “This is pretty wild, huh? Are you OK?”

Larissa nodded. But as she opened her mouth to answer, the hulking shape of Valeri Rusmanov rose up behind her friend, smiling cruelly.

“Look out!” she screamed.

Kelly’s face furrowed into a frown. She began to turn, but Valeri’s huge hands closed on the sides of her head and lifted her off the ground. Larissa leapt forward, reaching desperately for her friend, as Kelly pounded at the vampire’s hands, her legs kicking helplessly at nothing. She was barely five metres away when Valeri twisted Kelly’s head sharply; her neck broke with an audible snap that stabbed through Larissa’s heart like a knife.

Valeri threw the dead woman aside as though she was nothing, and settled his glowing eyes on Larissa. She skidded to a halt, risked a glance at her fallen friend, who had landed in a tangle of limbs, then focused her attention on the eldest Rusmanov. He was smiling at her, his hands dangling loosely at his sides. Larissa felt the heat in her eyes become almost unbearable as her vampire side returned with a vengeance, bringing with it a rage so great she thought she must surely burst into flames.

“I was hoping you would be here,” said Valeri, his smile widening. “You and I have unfinished business, and my brother is not here to rescue you this time.”

Larissa’s eyes darkened. “I don’t need Valentin’s help,” she hissed. “I don’t need anybody’s help. I’m going to tear your heart out with my bare hands.”

“Such big words,” said Valeri, “from such a little girl.”

Larissa smiled, her fangs huge beneath her upper lip. “Are you going to bore me to death?” she asked. “Or are we going to do this?”

Valeri growled, his grin twisting into a mask of anger. He took a step forward, his hands curling into fists. Larissa didn’t back down; she stepped off the ground and waited for him to come.

Then a monstrous howl rang out from somewhere across the battlefield, and as Larissa turned towards it, she saw Valeri do the same.

Jamie carried Henry Seward up through the rubble of the château, Angela Darcy at his side, and emerged into a world of chaos.

The smoke from thousands of gunshots hung over the courtyard, and the ground was covered in blood, soaked with it in places. When he had led Angela into the old building, their friends and colleagues had appeared to have the upper hand; now the reverse seemed to be true. Uniformed bodies lay motionless on the ground in appalling numbers, and those still standing seemed on the verge of being routed; vampires swooped and ran and howled with delight as they ripped and tore at the remaining Operators.