[Dept. 19 Files 03] The New Blood: 1919 (3 page)

He nodded to Albert Holmwood and walked across the room towards a door set in the rear wall, which Quincey noticed for the first time had two keyholes. He stepped forward for a closer look, aware that the rest of the men in the room were gathering behind him. As he watched, his father and Arthur Holmwood’s son placed keys in the two holes and turned them simultaneously to the left. There was a heavy clunk; Jonathan Harker pushed the door open, held it wide, and nodded at him. Quincey walked slowly forward and felt the breath freeze in his chest.

The room beyond the door was long and wide, and looked like nothing less than the headquarters of an army. A series of shelves on one wall were full of pistols and rifles, black metal helmets, and row upon row of sharp wooden stakes. A large map of London hung beside them, covered in coloured pins and tiny handwritten notes. The opposite wall held a pair of bookcases full of old volumes and collections of files and folders and notebooks. In the centre of the room stood a long wooden table surrounded by a dozen chairs, and at the rear a pair of benches, much like the ones that had filled the classrooms where Quincey had been taught the sciences at Eton, were covered in towering, twisting sculptures of glass tubing and beakers of powders and liquids.

Against the wall behind them, a small wooden stand contained a number of weapons that Quincey didn’t recognise: long pistols with glass balls of liquid affixed to their tops.

“My God,” he whispered, staring round the room with wide eyes. “What is all this?”

“This,” said John Seward, “is the heart of the DSI. What you see around you is the result of almost three decades of toil and research, the majority of it conducted by Professor Van Helsing. This is where we work against the vampire menace.”

Ellis would kill to be allowed in here
, thought Harker.
This is his idea of heaven.

“So how does it work?” he heard himself ask. “Do you patrol the streets, looking for men and women who float above the ground?”

David Morris laughed. “Not exactly, Quincey. We have arrangements with a number of policemen in stations around the city. They inform us of any incidents that appear to fall under our jurisdiction.”

“And how often do such incidents occur?”

“It varies,” said Morris. “Sometimes as often as twice a week.”

Quincey nodded, deep in thought. Then something struck him. “Why are you here, David?” he asked. “Or you, Albert, for that matter?”

“I joined the Department in 1913,” said Morris. “When I turned twenty-one.”

“I joined a year later,” said Albert.

“When you were twenty-one,” said Quincey, softly. “Am I right?”

“That’s right.”

“And you never told me,” he said, fixing his gaze on his friends. “Neither of you said a word.”

Colour rose on Albert’s and David’s faces.

“They couldn’t, Quincey,” said Henry Carpenter. “Our most fundamental rule is one of secrecy. Members of the Department cannot tell anyone, regardless of how close they are to the people in question.”

“That’s correct,” said Jonathan Harker. “There were four of us when the Department was founded, which became five when Henry joined us. We were reduced again to four when Abraham passed away, and it became clear that we needed a way to ensure that the Department would live on beyond us. As a result, all descendants of the founders are offered the opportunity to join when they turn twenty-one.”

“I turned twenty-one four years ago,” said Quincey, staring at his father.

“The decision was made to postpone your invitation until the end of the war,” said Jonathan. “David is our liaison with the General Staff, and he was told repeatedly that the work of your Special Reconnaissance Unit was too important to interrupt.”

Quincey frowned. “You know about my unit?”

“Yes,” said Jonathan. “We’re all very proud of the work you did, son. I’m sorry we couldn’t speak about it until now.”

Quincey’s mind was racing with questions, but he managed to focus on one, the single most important. “So are you asking me to join now?”

“We are,” said Arthur Holmwood. “And we would be honoured if you would. I’m confident that I speak for us all when I tell you we have been looking forward to this day for a long time.”

A single unexpected thought rose to the front of Quincey’s mind.

I’m home. This is home.

“I accept,” he said. “On two conditions.”

Arthur Holmwood smiled, as though he had expected nothing less. “And what might they be?”

“Two incidents each week,” Quincey said, slowly. “That’s what you said. Do you have any reason to believe that number will go down?”

“No,” said David Morris. “If anything, we are anticipating the opposite.”

“In which case,” said Quincey, “this threat is likely to rapidly become more significant than seven men in a Piccadilly townhouse can deal with. So my conditions are as follows. Firstly, that I am permitted to bring my men into the Department immediately. Secondly, that I receive carte blanche to expand and modernise it along military lines. I cannot dedicate my time to this work unless the ambition is for this organisation to be the very best it can be.”

There was a long pause, in which the six men smiled at each other. Quincey waited for them to respond; he knew his demands had been bold, but his mind was already fizzing with possibility, for how the secret crusade that his father had described could be carried out with greater efficiency and a far wider reach, and he could accept nothing less than being at the forefront.

“I believe we can accommodate those demands,” said Arthur Holmwood, eventually. He stepped forward and held out his hand. “Welcome aboard, Mr Harker.”

Quincey gave the outstretched hand a hearty shake. “Thank you for having me, sir. It’s an honour.” A broad grin lit up his face as his friends surrounded him, shaking his hand and clapping him on the back. His father was the first to embrace him, an expression of huge pride on his face.

Twelve hours later, Quincey Harker walked through the gates to Highgate Cemetery with David Morris and Albert Holmwood on either side of him and the wide smile of a child on his face.

As he strolled through the darkness between his friends, it seemed incredible that such a small amount of time had passed since he had been sitting in his father’s study, idly wondering where the next phase of his life was going to take him. Now he was burning with purpose, with the simple, righteous determination that comes with having a mission to complete.

After the newly expanded Department of Supernatural Investigation exited the secret room at the back of the townhouse’s sitting room, Quincey had despatched a member of Arthur Holmwood’s domestic staff to the telegram office with four urgent, identical messages.

NEW WORK TO BE DONE. STOP. 184 PICCADILLY AT EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. STOP. ARMY NOT A CONSIDERATION. STOP. QUINCEY. STOP.

Harker suspected that all four of them would arrive within two or three days at the very most. He had left the wording ambiguous for two reasons: because it seemed prudent to do so, given the secrecy surrounding the organisation he was now a part of, and because he wanted to arouse their curiosity. He was confident that none of them would be able to resist coming to London to find out what he meant by ’new work’ or why he had described the Army as ’not a consideration’. He had been able to write the latter with confidence, as David Morris had assured him there would be no issues when it came to having his squad mates released from their commitments to the military; the highest echelons of the General Staff were apparently among the tiny number of people who were aware of the existence of the DSI.

The seven of them had been toasting the future when a message arrived from one of their police contacts in Highgate, passing on the fifth complaint in as many days of animals going missing from the streets and gardens around the cemetery. It wasn’t much to go on, and was probably little more than evidence that a particularly hungry fox was roaming north London, but it struck Quincey as an immediate opportunity to demonstrate his competence to Albert Holmwood and David Morris, the two men whose careers in the DSI were likely to run alongside his own. He told them to get some lunch and be ready to leave at dusk. They agreed, and Quincey began the daunting process of getting up to speed with the contents of the secret room as they waited for the sun to set.

The investigations and experiments that had been carried out by Abraham Van Helsing were nothing short of remarkable. Working from the basement of his home in Kensington, he had managed to tentatively list the relative strengths and weaknesses of vampires: on the plus side of the balance sheet, physical power, speed, remarkable recovery from wounds that should be fatal, some ability to hypnotise with their glowing red eyes; on the minus side, a susceptibility to sunlight, likely
all
ultraviolet light, and to the obliteration of the heart.

The professor had also been able to rule out several misconceptions over the course of his long study, most prominently the perceived link between religion and vampires. The pistols with the glass balls atop them had been early attempts at creating weapons armed with holy water, but had apparently proved entirely unsuccessful. Crucifixes were also useless, as were many of the legends that had filtered out of the darkest corners of eastern Europe over the centuries: garlic, running water, silver. Van Helsing’s conclusions were, in fact, straightforward: bullets and blades hurt them, their flesh could be cut and torn like any others, but little short of a direct blow to the heart would kill them. A wooden stake with a wide bore plunged into the chest was the safest and most effective means of destruction.

There was a remarkable conceptual sketch on the benches at the back of the secret room, for a weapon the likes of which Quincey had never seen before: it looked a little like a blunderbuss, but it seemed intended to fire a stake, and had what appeared to be a reel of wire attached to one side. It was one of the first items he intended to draw to Charles Ellis’s attention when he arrived in London.

“Is there a plan of action?” asked David Morris, looking over at him.

Quincey nodded. “We will investigate the west cemetery first,” he replied. “We will confront anyone we find, ask why they are here, and assess the plausibility of their response. If they seem suspicious, we will splash fresh blood on the ground. Van Helsing’s notes suggest that this will force a vampire to reveal itself.”

“And if we find nothing?” asked Albert Holmwood. “What then?”

Quincey smiled. “Then we will explore the east cemetery. If still we find nothing, then you will doubtless have time to stop for a nightcap at your club on the way home.”

The three friends smiled at each other, until Quincey stepped forward again, beckoning them to follow him. He led them at a brisk pace along the wide path that ran in a semi-circular arc through the heart of the west cemetery, passing beneath the heavy stone arches and rows of squat Gothic tombs without pausing. The cemetery was silent, as befitted a place of the dead; no birds called from the trees that crowded in above them, no animals rustled through the underbrush.

Quincey checked his equipment again; beneath his long black overcoat his Army-issue Webley pistol was perched on his hip beside a pair of wooden stakes in loops and a small jar of cattle blood. One hand held a tungsten-filament torch, the other rested on the stock of the rifle that was slung over his shoulder. His hat cast a deep shadow over his face as he made his way deeper into the cemetery, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. David Morris and Albert Holmwood were similarly attired and equipped, and followed close behind.

The pale, watery beam of Quincey’s torch illuminated a narrow strip of the cemetery. It was a moonless night, and the darkness was deep and dense, the kind that seemed almost tangible. He breathed in and out slowly, finding himself in a familiar state of being: the ethereal calm that had always settled over him when it was time to put himself in harm’s way. He allowed it to flow through him as he walked; as a result, when his torch beam picked out a flicker of movement in the space between two of the tombs, he felt no fear, only a rising swell of anticipation.

“Hold,” he whispered, coming to a halt. “Straight ahead, between the third and fourth tombs. There’s something there.”

“I can’t see anything,” said Morris, training his torch beam on the space. “I say! You there! Come out at once!”

For a long moment, the cemetery was utterly still, the silence absolute. Then a dark shape burst out from between the tombs and fled down the path away from them.

Quincey Harker was already swinging his rifle up to his shoulder. He sighted down the barrel and pulled the trigger twice. The reports were deafening, rebounding and echoing against the stone walls that surrounded them, and then a high-pitched scream of pain rang out as the bullets struck the fleeing shape in its lower back.

“Quincey!” bellowed Albert Holmwood. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, man?”

Harker ignored him. He ran down the path, not waiting to see whether his friends were following him, and skidded to a halt beside the screeching, writhing figure. He shone his torch down on it and felt validation explode through him.

Twisting on the ground was a man in a brown overcoat that was more hole than coat, and a pair of ragged grey trousers. His torso and feet were bare, and he was staring up at Quincey Harker with eyes that glowed red with agony. His fangs were clearly visible; his teeth were bared against the pain that was presumably radiating from his lower back. Clutched tightly in one of the man’s hands was the limp body of a black cat; its throat had been ripped out and its wide yellow eyes stared blankly at nothing.

Morris and Holmwood arrived beside him, then trained their torches on the fallen man.

“Vampire,” said David. “You got him, Quincey. Good work.”

“Thank you,” said Harker. He was breathing heavily with excitement.

“Damn good shot,” said Holmwood. “But for heaven’s sake, Quincey, you can’t have known he was a vampire. What if you had just shot some vagrant in the back?”