“Nobody is staking anyone tonight,” said Jamie Carpenter. “You know the new SOP. Pass me two restrainers, Kate. Lazarus can have these two. I don’t think they’re dangerous.”
The man began to cry along with his daughter.
“We were hungry,” he said. “I’m sorry. My name is Patrick Connors, and this is my daughter, Maggie. We were just so hungry. We didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
“It’s all right,” Jamie replied, taking the two restrainers from Kate’s hands and tossing them to the man and his daughter. “Put these on, under your armpits. Pull them tight.”
The restrainers were thick belts that looped over the shoulders and crossed in the middle; where they met was an explosive charge that sat over the heart of the person wearing it. Patrick and Maggie shrugged the belts over their shoulders, and tightened them as they had been told. When they were securely in place, Jamie pulled a black tube from his belt with a small dial on one side and a red trigger on the other; he twisted the dial two notches clockwise, and red lights on the explosive charges flickered into life.
Jamie looked at his squad.
“Larissa, you’re going to lead us out of here,” he said. “Sir, you’re going to follow her, then Kate, then you, little one, and I’ll go last. We walk straight out the way we came, we don’t stop, and we don’t talk to anyone. Oh – and normal eyes, please.”
He grinned as Larissa and Maggie’s eyes reverted to their usual colours. Larissa led them out of the blood bank, and strode along the corridor towards the exit, and the waiting van. The rest of Squad G-17 and their prisoners followed in the order that Jamie had instructed, and less than a minute later they marched past Sergeant Pearson and Constable Fleming, who averted their eyes as they passed, and slid the van’s rear door shut behind them.
The inside of the vehicle was silver metal and black plastic; four seats ran along each side of the wide space, between which were fixed a series of moulded stands, with half a dozen unusual spaces in them. A wide LCD screen lay flush against the ceiling, and a series of slots in the floor lay before each seat. Jamie told the man and his daughter to take the two seats closest to the front and strap themselves in. They did so silently; when they were in position, Kate pressed a button set into the wall. A barrier of ultraviolet light appeared from a wide bulb in the floor, cutting them off from the three black-clad teenagers, and both Patrick and Maggie cried out.
“Don’t worry,” said Jamie. “You’re perfectly safe.”
He began to unclip the weapons and devices from his belt, and slide them into the slots on the stand beside one of the seats. The brand-new T-21 pneumatic launcher, the Glock 17, the Heckler & Koch MP5, the torch and the short beam gun that Larissa had used inside the blood bank – all were placed into purpose-built compartments and clicked into place. The detonator he kept in his
hand, resting it on his knee as he took his seat and announced that they were ready to go. Instantly, the powerful engine of the vehicle, which was in reality less a van and more a combination of a mobile command centre and an armoured personnel carrier, surged into life, and sped them away from the hospital, leaving Sergeant Pearson and Constable Fleming shivering on the pavement.
“What do we do—”
“Nothing,” interrupted Pearson, before his partner had a chance to finish his question. “We do nothing, and we say nothing, because nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Clear?”
Fleming looked at the older man for a long moment, taking in the pale colour of his face, the lines of worry around his eyes and the firm set of his jaw.
“Crystal, sir,” he replied. “Let’s go home.”
An hour later the black van sped through deepening forest, heading towards a place that didn’t exist. Its official designation was Classified Military Installation 303-F, but it had long been referred to by the men and women who knew of its existence by a simpler, shorter name.
“Welcome to the Loop,” said Jamie, as the van drew to a halt. Patrick Connors and his daughter regarded him with polite incomprehension, and said nothing.
Outside the van there was a low rumble, a metallic sound like a gate being rolled back. Then they were moving again, creeping slowly forward.
“Place your vehicle in neutral.”
The voice was artificial, and it appeared to be coming from all sides at once. The driver of the van, an invisible figure to the men and women in the rear of the vehicle, did as he was ordered. A
conveyor belt whirred into life beneath the van, and moved it forward, until the artificial voice spoke again.
“Please state the names and designations of all passengers.”
“Carpenter, Jamie. NS303, 67-J.”
“Kinley, Larissa. NS303, 77-J.”
“Randall, Kate. NS303, 78-J.”
There was a long pause.
“Supernatural life forms have been detected on board this vehicle,” said the voice. “Please state clearance code.”
“Lazarus 914-73,” said Jamie, quickly.
Another pause.
“Clearance granted,” announced the artificial voice. “Proceed.”
The van began to roll forward again, picking up speed. Less than two minutes later it stopped, and Jamie stood up from his seat and slid the rear door open. Kate pressed a button in the wall and the ultraviolet barrier imprisoning Patrick and Maggie disappeared.
“This way,” said Jamie, motioning towards the open door. The man led his daughter slowly down the steps, into a world he had heard rumours about, but could never have possibly imagined.
To the back of the van, an enormous semi-circular hangar stood open to the night sky. The huge space was mostly empty; a line of black SUVs and vans were parked along one wall, and a small number of black-clad figures moved across the tarmac floor. Standing before them, patient looks on their faces, were a man in the same black uniform that Jamie and his squad were wearing and a young Asian man in a white lab coat.
Patrick looked around, and gasped. He had a moment to take in the enormity, and the incredible strangeness, of what he was seeing: the vast curved fence beyond the runway, the labyrinth of
red lasers, the ultraviolet no-man’s-land, and the vast holographic canopy of trees that hung across the sky above his head. Then there was a hand on his lower back, and he was being ushered forward, towards the waiting men. His daughter grabbed for his hand, and he gripped it, firmly, as Jamie stepped round him and handed his detonator to the man in the white coat, who thanked him, then addressed the two disoriented, frightened vampires.
“Sir,” he said, his voice low and gentle. “My name is Dr Yen. Please will you follow me?”
Patrick glanced at Jamie, fear blooming on his face.
“It’s OK,” said Jamie. “You’ll be safe with him.”
Patrick glanced down at Maggie, and found her looking back up at him with a determined expression on her face. She nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“We will,” he replied, as steadily as he was able. “We’ll follow you.”
The doctor nodded, then turned and walked briskly across the hangar. After a moment’s pause, the man and his daughter followed him across the cavernous room, and through a wide set of double doors.
Jamie watched them go, then smiled at Larissa and Kate. Behind them, an Operator from the Security Division climbed into the van and began unloading their equipment from the moulded stands. It would be checked, cleaned and returned to their quarters within an hour, as it always was. Jamie nodded to the Operator, before turning to the Duty Officer who had been waiting to greet them.
“Cold out here tonight,” he said, watching his breath cloud in front of his face.
“Yes, sir. Bloody cold, sir.”
“How’s my mother?”
“She’s fine, sir,” replied the young Operator. “Asking for you.”
Jamie nodded, and started to walk into the hangar. He was suddenly exhausted, and his small quarters on Level B were calling to him.
“Admiral Seward requested a debrief, sir,” called the Operator, before he had got more than a couple of steps. He sounded apologetic, and Jamie sighed.
“Personally?”
“Personally, sir.”
Jamie swore. “Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, then marched towards one of the doors at the rear of the hangar, Larissa and Kate following closely behind him.
The three members of Squad G-17 slumped against the walls of the lift as it descended into the lower levels of the Loop.
On Level B, Jamie said goodnight to the two girls, and almost ran to the shower block marked MEN that stood halfway down the corridor. He stood in the shower for a long time, his head under the searing water, trying to prevent the aches and pains that were the accumulation of active service as a Department 19 Operator from returning with a vengeance, as they usually did once the adrenaline of a mission had worn off.
Eventually, with great reluctance, he twisted the shower off, and dressed in a T-shirt and combat trousers. He could almost feel his narrow bunk beneath him, could perfectly visualise the moment when his head would touch the pillow and his eyes would close. He picked up his uniform, opened the door to the corridor and stopped. Larissa was standing in the doorway, her eyes red, her hair wet, her body wrapped in a green towel, a wicked smile on her face.
“Where’s Kate?” asked Jamie.
“Gone to her quarters,” replied Larissa. “She said to tell you she’ll see you in the morning.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but Larissa closed it with her own, her lips on his, and Jamie discovered that he wasn’t nearly as tired as he had thought.
Larissa Kinley flexed a muscle that the vast majority of the population didn’t possess, and felt her fangs slide silently down from her gums, fitting perfectly over her incisors, the white points emerging below her upper lip. She ran her tongue across the tips of her fangs, pressing until the slightest increase in pressure would have broken the skin, her eyes never leaving her reflection in the mirror in her quarters.
She hated her fangs with every fibre of her being.
They disgusted her, filled her with a revulsion she could not fully articulate to anyone, not even Jamie. She knew he would listen to her, sympathise with her, and at least try to say all the right things. But the simple fact was that he didn’t know what it felt like to be a vampire, and how it felt was impossible to explain.
She would have torn the fangs from her mouth with a pair of pliers if she didn’t know full well that they would regrow the next time she fed; she would have smashed them out with the butt of
her Glock pistol, filed them down to nothing with sandpaper, or simply pulled them out with her bare hands, if she had believed that anything would have rid her of them.
But she knew nothing would. Her fangs were part of her, and there was nothing she could do about them.
I’m stuck with them. I’m going to be looking at them forever.
Anger trickled through Larissa’s body, and her eyes began to turn red. She leant in close to the mirror, and watched as crimson spilled slowly in from the corners, obscuring the natural dark brown. The dark red swirled and pulsed, until it filled her eyes to their edges. The black holes of her pupils expanded until she thought she would fall into them, and she took a step backwards, away from herself. A low snarl burst from her throat, and she reared back, her muscles vibrating with fury.
Larissa swung her fist into the mirror, faster than the human eye could have followed, and the polished glass exploded, sending razor-sharp slivers flying through the air. Two shards dug into the pale skin of her neck; she barely noticed them until blood began to flow, and the scent filled her nostrils. She withdrew her trembling hand from the remains of the mirror, and stared at the blood pouring out of the holes in her knuckles. She pulled the glass out of her neck, savouring the pain, and wiped the blood away. Then, with guilt and sorrow in her heart, Larissa shoved her hand into her mouth, and hungrily sucked away the running blood, her head swimming with primal pleasure and self-loathing.
The cuts healed almost immediately, and she let the hand fall to her side. Staring into the mirror, she waited until the crimson in her eyes began to recede, then let the towel she was wearing fall to the floor. Her body had been changed by the endless hours of training since she had instantly accepted Major Paul Turner’s offer
for her to join Department 19, grown leaner and more toned. But the thick bands of muscle that had emerged on the bodies of Kate and Jamie were nowhere to be seen; the vast majority of her strength and speed and stamina now came from somewhere else.
Larissa walked across her small quarters to the locker at the end of her bed, pulled a vest and a pair of shorts out of the drawers, dressed quickly and stepped easily into the air. She folded her legs beneath her and floated, two metres above the floor, in outright defiance of the laws of nature; there, she closed her eyes, and focused on remaining completely still.
Her powers were developing with a speed that frightened her.
The acceleration of her abilities was a result, partly, of simple ageing – but more down to the fact that she was using them every day. She could now stay in the air almost indefinitely, and fly huge distances without tiring. The truth was, she didn’t even know
how
far; it had been a long time since she had attempted a flight that had turned out to be beyond her. And she was strong now too; so strong that the possibility of accidentally hurting someone she cared about was never far from her mind. She opened her eyes, slowly, and looked at the series of dents in the wall beside her door. They were the results of arguments with Jamie, of missions that had gone wrong, of petty fights with Kate, and of the days when simply being herself was too much for her.
All the punches had been pulled. The only time she had lashed out at the wall with all her strength she had smashed a hole clean through the thick concrete, setting off an alarm that woke everyone in the Loop. The following morning, she had been forced to explain herself to Admiral Seward, who had gently informed her that the combination of teenage petulance and superhuman strength was a dangerous one.
Larissa closed her eyes again, and let her mind wander. As it so often did, it made its way back to the months that had followed her turning at the hands of Grey, the oldest British vampire, a man who had committed himself publicly to peace while he fed on teenage girls in private. She had eventually confronted him in Valhalla, the vampire commune he had founded, and from which he had been expelled for what he had done to her, but his banishment had brought her little peace; it had made nothing better.
The almost two years she had spent with Alexandru Rusmanov were her deepest secret, the one thing she refused to discuss with anyone, even Jamie. He had asked her about it for the first time during the bedlam that followed the attack on Lindisfarne, when the two of them were tentatively getting to know each other, were, in essence, meeting each other properly for the first time. The persona she had presented to him during her time as a prisoner of Department 19 had not been far removed from her real self; she had played up certain aspects of her character and played down others as she fought desperately for the chance to survive the madness that was taking place around her. But it was still a persona, an act, one she dropped as soon as Marie Carpenter was rescued and she came to realise that her life was no longer in danger. Jamie had phrased his question innocuously, but there had been a tightness to his voice, a sliver of excitement, that let Larissa know how much he wanted to hear about her past.
She wanted to tell him too.
The attraction between them was tangible, and she knew with absolute certainty that their time spent as merely friends was going to be extremely brief. But more than that, she trusted him; the thought of having someone who she could tell her story to, who would not judge her for the things she had done, would not think
less of her or turn their back on her, someone who might help her carry the weight that hung so heavily around her neck, was the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world.
And for that reason, she told him not to ask her about it again. She could not face the possibility of being wrong about him, of being let down and disappointed again. Instead, she clung to the hope that he would ignore her instruction, and ask her again one day; when he did, she would be ready to tell him.
But she wasn’t. Not the second time he asked her, or the third, or the fourth, and eventually he got the message and stopped persevering. Each time, she had tried to tell him, tried to will herself to open this last door to him, and to hell with what lay behind it. But she couldn’t. Her panic at the thought of driving him away before they had even had the chance to become something more than friends had been replaced by an overwhelming terror at the thought of losing him now that they had. She understood now that the chance had passed, that she should have told him at the beginning, and that she was now trapped. The memories of those two terrible years ate away at her, poisoning her sleep and her dreams, and she had rejected the chance to let someone help her, someone who wanted so badly to do so.
He saw me when his dad was killed,
she thought, as she floated in the cool air of her quarters.
And he knows I was sent by Alexandru to kill him the night his mother was kidnapped. He knows both those things and he’s still with me. Why can’t I tell him the rest?
But she knew the answer to her own question.
Because it’s worse. Oh God, it’s so much worse. Because I don’t know if he or Kate could ever look at me the same way again. And because they’re all I’ve got.
In the quiet of her quarters, her hair almost brushing the ceiling
as she floated, Larissa fought back the rage that suddenly spilled through her, making her muscles vibrate and her fangs burst involuntarily into her mouth. She growled, a low rumble full of imminent violence, as she tried to control herself, tried not to swoop down and add a new dent to the collection by the door.
Calm,
she shouted at herself.
Be calm. Without Alexandru you wouldn’t be here, would never have met Jamie, or Kate, never had the chance to make amends for what you did. Calm down, you stupid girl.
She felt her fangs retract, and she slowly unclenched her fists. It was a source of constant amusement to Larissa, who possessed a jet black sense of humour, that she had come to fall for a boy she would never even have met had she not been the obedient servant of the monster that had tried to destroy his family. But there had been no way for her to know that as she flew with Alexandru and his followers towards the house that the unsuspecting Jamie Carpenter shared with his mother and the ghost of his father.
No way for her to know that her new life, her real life, had been about to begin.
Kate Randall closed her laptop, sat back in her chair and stared at the wall above the small desk in her quarters. She had showered and changed into a T-shirt and shorts, and her blonde hair was wet; she could feel water dripping down her neck and across her shoulders.
It was her turn to write Squad G-17’s post-operation report, but she found herself unable to concentrate on it. She was tired, but that was not unusual; endless interrupted sleep patterns came with the territory of being a Department 19 Operator. What was distracting her, and preventing her from focusing on the report, was something that had become an almost constant source of annoyance to Kate.
Jamie and Larissa.
Kate had known about their relationship, or whatever they called it when they were alone, since the very beginning. The two things that annoyed her, that sometimes made her so frustrated that she wanted to scream “I KNOW!” in both their faces, was the fact that they seemed to genuinely believe she was unaware, and that they felt the need to keep it from her at all.
The former was an insult to her intelligence, and she hated being thought of as stupid almost as much as she hated being patronised. The latter was even worse; she knew, with absolute certainty, that they both believed she had a crush on Jamie.
Kate was a girl with a highly developed sense of self-awareness, and would have admitted, had anyone asked her, that there had been a tiny period of time during which she had possibly, just
possibly
, thought about Jamie in that way.
During the madness of Lindisfarne and the days that followed it, days in which the shape and course of her life had been altered forever, when she had been faced with decisions that she would spend the rest of her days second-guessing, he had been there, by her side, helping her through it. He had rescued her on Lindisfarne, as the bodies of her friends and neighbours lay discarded on the streets she had grown up in, and saved her life, all their lives, by destroying Alexandru Rusmanov. Then, when it was over, she had seen him with Frankenstein, and with his mum, and for a few short moments, she thought that she had maybe been a little bit in love with him.
Maybe.
But the feeling had passed, and passed quickly; partly because it was obvious to her from the moment they woke up at the Loop on the morning after Lindisfarne that he had fallen for Larissa, and that Larissa felt the same way about him, but also because in the
cold light of day, away from the blood and the screams and the horror of the night before, the aura that had glowed around him as he stepped forward to face Alexandru was gone. She loved Jamie; in the months since her home had been attacked he had become one of the two closest friends she had ever had, and she would have done anything for him.
But she was not
in
love with him.
That was what hurt her most about the deception that he and Larissa were perpetrating; she was genuinely, unreservedly happy for them both. She had waited and waited for them to tell her, convincing herself they were looking for the right moment, until she had been forced into the bitter realisation that there wasn’t going to be a right moment. They weren’t waiting for anything; they had decided to keep her in the dark.
Well, to hell with that
, she thought.
Tomorrow I’ll tell them I know. No more of this.
After all, it wasn’t as if Kate had been without problems of her own to deal with in the aftermath of Lindisfarne; real problems, unlike the adolescent nonsense occupying her two supposedly best friends.
After they had arrived at the Loop, after the wonderful, heart-stopping moment when the news had been passed to her that her father was among the survivors who had made it to the mainland in John Tremain’s fishing boat, Kate had been escorted down to the secure dormitory on Level B and crashed into a deep, dreamless sleep. She had slept until a female Operator, in the same black uniform that Jamie and his colleagues had been wearing when they arrived on Lindisfarne, shook her awake six hours later and told her that she needed to get dressed and follow her up to the Loop’s Ops Room.
She had done so without complaint, still half-asleep, rubbing her eyes as they made their way into a lift and up to Level 0. The Operator had pushed open the Ops Room door, and held it wide; Kate walked through it, and looked around the large circular room.
There was only one other person in there, a strikingly handsome Latino man in his mid-forties, wearing the now familiar all-black uniform, and sitting casually on the desk at the front of the room.
“Miss Randall?” he asked. His expression was entirely neutral; there was no malice there, no threat, but no warmth either, and for a second, the strangeness of the situation she had found herself in sank into her, and she felt a sharp rush of fear as she nodded.