“What do you mean?” cried Vlad. “What trickery is this?”
No trickery at all. You accepted my offer, without hearing the last of its terms.
“Tell me what you are holding back! Tell me at once!”
The mouth set into a hard, straight line, and when it spoke again, its voice was the sound of freezing blood, of pain and hopelessness.
You have nothing left to barter with. I suggest you refrain from issuing demands.
Vlad began to tremble, with rage and the terrible, creeping feeling that he had been outsmarted. Fear was again spilling into his stomach and up his spine, and he regarded the altar with horror.
“I apologise,” he forced himself to say. “I humbly ask to know the final term of the covenant.”
That’s better,
said the mouth, its smile returning.
The final term is this: the first blood you take is the sole key to your undoing. Your first victim will carry the only means of ending your second life.
“What kind of deception is this?” cried Vlad. “You promised me everlasting life!”
I promised you nothing. I told you that I could give you everlasting life; whether you achieve it is entirely up to you. If you were incapable of dying, then how would the contract ever be fulfilled? But I have given you more than any human who went before you, and I would see you more grateful for my generosity.
“What gift is this that I receive in return for my soul, full of conditions and caveats?”
I promised no gift,
replied the mouth.
I offered nothing more than the covenant that has now been agreed.
“Then I withdraw my acceptance!”
Too late,
said the mouth, grinning widely. Then it moved, bursting forward from the altar and enveloping Vlad completely in black fluid that felt as cold and wrong as the end of the world. He screamed soundlessly, over and over, but the liquid held him tight, until it was over, and it withdrew.
He fell to his knees, a desiccated thing; his eyes had tumbled in on themselves, blinding him, and his skin was as dry and leathery as parchment. He was not breathing, but he was still alive, still able to feel the indescribable pain of what had been done to him. When he felt that he could bear the agony no longer, when he thought he must die or be driven mad by the pain, the black liquid moved again, coating him for a second time.
But instead of showing mercy, and ending his torment, as Vlad prayed it would, it sank into him, disappearing into his pores, and a sensation of power beyond anything he had ever felt surged through him. His eyes spun back into place, as his skin smoothed and coloured and his heart began to beat anew, and he rose to his feet on legs that felt as strong as tree trunks, clenching fists that felt as
though they could shatter mountains. A primal roar burst from his throat, and then he was falling, towards the midnight grass, through it, into blackness, back into the deep.
When he came to, he was lying on the floor of the Teleorman Forest. He opened his eyes and recognised instantly the white oaks that rose above him towards the night sky, the smell of the grass beneath his body and the cold breeze that whispered across his face. For a long, disorienting second, he wondered whether he had dreamt what had occurred, whether his mind, ravaged by exhaustion and the horror of his army’s defeat, had rebelled against him, conjuring impossible terrors from the depths of his nightmares. But then he got slowly to his feet, felt power bubbling beneath his skin, and remembered the deal he had made with the terrible grinning mouth.
It seems you kept your word, devil. And I will do everything in my power not to keep mine.
He grinned in the darkness, and felt something shift in his mouth; new teeth slid down from inside his gums, fitting perfectly over his incisors. The tips of these new teeth were razor-sharp, and they cut through his lower lip as though it was tissue paper. Blood spilled into his mouth and he fell to his knees in the throes of an ecstasy beyond anything he had ever imagined, pleasure so overwhelming that he had no option but to close his eyes and wait for it to pass.
When it eventually did, he rose again, and looked at the patch of forest where he had awoken. In a wide circle around him, partially hidden by overgrown bushes and wild undergrowth, were pieces of stone that looked as though they had once been the bases of statues, and a small mound of rocks that might once have been part of something large and rectangular. But the stones were buried in the
earth, covered in moss and dirt, and looked as though they had been undisturbed for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years.
This is the place I went to. But it’s old now. Where I went it was new.
He left the stone ruins behind, and began to walk in the direction of the distant battlefield. The occasional scream still floated through the night air, and in the distance he could see a dull orange glow emanating from the fires he knew the Turks would have built to burn the bodies of the dead. Although he did not know what he was going to do when he reached the site of the battle, he knew he no longer feared the invaders and their weapons, and he was determined that he would discover the fates of his Generals, the three brothers whose loyalty he had rewarded by leaving them behind. As the forest began to thin around him, he heard voices in the darkness, and headed silently towards them.
In a clearing, gathered round a roaring fire, was an encampment of villagers from the plains beyond the forest, who had fled their homes as the Turkish armies approached. There were perhaps fifteen families: men, women and children, warming themselves near the heat of the fire, nursing infants, boiling water in metal cauldrons, holding spitted meat over flames. A number of the women were singing an old working song, and it was their voices that Vlad had heard, the ancient melody carrying sweetly on the cold air. He circled the encampment, slipping silently through the trees, looking for an opportunity. He was hungry, and the smell of the roasting meat was invading his nostrils and making him salivate.
“Stand where you are, sir.”
Vlad turned slowly in the direction of the voice, and found himself face to face with a middle-aged man, standing in the shadow of one of the towering oaks. The man was dressed in the sturdy clothing of a farmer, and was holding a bow and arrow at his
shoulder, the metal tip of the bolt aiming steadily at Vlad’s chest. He raised his hands in placation, and took a small step towards the farmer, who backed away immediately.
“No closer,” he said. “And speak, so I would know if you are friend or foe.”
“I’m neither,” replied Vlad, a smile creeping across his face. “I’m something else.”
The man lowered his bow by a couple of degrees.
“You are not Turkish,” he said. “Are you Wallachian? Answer.”
“I was,” replied Vlad. Then the hunger hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he folded to his knees, his head wrenched back in agony.
The hunger roared through Vlad Tepes like a hurricane, opening a huge abyss in his chest and stomach, a clutching pit of emptiness. He grabbed at his breast, tearing at his own skin with his fingernails, trying to pull himself open, trying to find a way to fill the gaping hole that had appeared at the centre of his being. His head thundered with agony, as though drills were being applied to his temples, and his limbs were suddenly as heavy as lead.
The farmer threw aside his bow, and ran to the stricken man. He knelt down and pulled at the stranger’s shoulders; the head came up easily, inches from his own. The farmer looked at the vision of horror before him, the glowing red eyes that stood out in the middle of the twisted face, the gleaming white fangs that extended below the upper lip, and drew in breath to scream. Then the stranger plunged his teeth into his neck, and the scream died in his throat.
Vlad lunged on instinct alone; the pain of the hunger had driven rational thought from his head. His new fangs slid through the farmer’s skin, piercing the jugular vein, sending blood gushing into his mouth and down his throat. And instantly, the pain and the
hunger were gone, replaced by a feeling that was almost godlike. He swallowed the blood that sprayed from the man’s torn throat, until he was sated, and withdrew his fangs.
The two figures fell to the cold ground.
Vlad’s chest was thumping up and down, alive with power; the farmer’s was barely moving, as blood seeped steadily out of the ragged hole in his neck. The former Prince of Wallachia leapt to his feet, and found himself floating several inches above the ground. He spun slowly in the air, then laughed, a terrible cackle that echoed between the silent trees and floated across the fire at the centre of the encampment, drawing frowns from the men gathered round it. Several of their wives crossed themselves, and the infants among the group began to cry.
The laughter faded as Vlad resumed his course back towards the battlefield, floating slowly and effortlessly between the trees and over the undergrowth, spinning and swooping in the air, like a child who had been given a marvellous new toy. Where he had been, there was nothing but a patch of spilled blood, and the dark shape of the farmer on the ground, his body cooling as his life ebbed away.
Jamie walked along the corridor of the Loop’s detention level, feeling as conflicted as he always did when he was about to see his mother.
Hers was the only occupied cell; the others had been emptied three weeks earlier, their inhabitants placed in restraining belts and taken into the depths of the Blacklight base to be handed over to the Lazarus Project. The ultraviolet barriers that filled the open front walls of the cells shimmered in the quiet air, the vampires they had contained long gone.
Marie Carpenter was in the last cell on the left, the same cell that Larissa had occupied for the three chaotic days after Jamie’s mother had been kidnapped by Alexandru Rusmanov, until her heroics on Lindisfarne had seen her released from custody and offered the chance to join the Department.
Jamie made his way down the corridor, aware that his mother’s superhuman senses would have alerted her to his presence as soon as he stepped through the airlock door and into the containment block, equally aware that she would pretend to be surprised to see him. His mother hated nothing more than drawing attention to the fact that she had been turned into a vampire. He reached the last strip of concrete wall before his mother’s cell, stopped and
took a deep breath. Then he stepped out in front of the ultraviolet barrier.
Jamie’s first instinct, as always, was to laugh; his mother’s cell was like something out of a home interiors catalogue.
Because she had voluntarily gone into Blacklight custody, and because she was the mother of an Operator, she had been allowed to request items that were not available to any other vampire that had been brought on to the block, and she had made the most of it. In the middle of her cell was the oval rug that had lain in the living room of their old house in Brenchley, and sitting on top of it was the coffee table which Jamie’s father had rested his feet on every evening after he got home from work. The chest of drawers from Marie’s old bedroom stood against one wall, topped with a cluster of photos of her son and her late husband. The battered leather sofa that had dominated their old living room filled most of the rear wall of the cell, and her bed was covered in the lilac sheets and duvet cover that she had slept in for as long as Jamie could remember.
His mother had politely, but very determinedly, imported her old life into this concrete cube deep below the earth. The Christmas tree that had sat on the coffee table, its multicoloured lights twinkling beneath the fluorescent strips in the ceiling, was gone, much to Jamie’s relief.
“Hey, Mum,” he said, stepping into the cell. “How’s it going?”
Marie Carpenter was sitting on the sofa, her nose buried in a paperback book. She looked up, the predictable frown of fake surprise creasing her features, then broke into a huge smile and leapt to her feet. She stepped forward to meet him, and mother and son hugged in the middle of the square room.
“Hello, love,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “Are you all right? Have you been out today?”
Despite the uniform he wore and the things he had done, Jamie was still a teenage boy, and never more so than in the presence of his mother. He blushed immediately at the enthusiasm of her embrace, while at the same time a broad grin emerged on his face. This was why he had walked voluntarily into the darkest depths of horror, why he had stood in the middle of an ancient building full of the dead and faced down the most dangerous monster in the world; so that he might be able to hug his mother again, and feel the love that radiated out of her when she was with him, a love that he had only realised he needed when it was taken away.
“I’m all right, Mum,” he replied. “Yourself?”
Marie gave him a final squeeze before releasing her grip, and stepping back to look at her son. She cast her eyes quickly up and down him, taking in the black uniform with a look of immense pride on her face, before she reached the pink patch of scar tissue on his neck, and a grimace flickered across her face.
“I’m fine,” she replied. Her gaze lingered on his neck for a moment, as it always did, before she forced her eyes away and broke into a smile. “How’s Kate?”
Jamie’s own smile faded.
His relationship with his mother had improved immeasurably since they had returned from Lindisfarne. The truth about Julian Carpenter, about the man he had really been and the circumstances surrounding his death, had liberated them; the dark mess of grief and betrayal that had crippled them both in the aftermath of his death, that Jamie had been unable to stop himself from taking out on his mother, had cleared, leaving them free to rebuild. They both still missed him, in their different ways, and Jamie had come to terms with the fact that he probably always would. But the grief now seemed manageable. What had been a yawning, unfillable chasm
was now merely a hole, deep, and slippery at the edges, but that he could now avoid falling into, most of the time at least. Sadly, it was no longer the only one; there was now a hole of almost equal size with Frankenstein’s name above it.
It had been slow going at first, the thaw between Jamie and Marie. There were new complications, not least of which was the condition that required Marie to spend her days and nights in the depths of the Loop behind an ultraviolet wall. There was much to say, and over the first couple of weeks, as both of them adjusted to their new lives, it was all eventually said.
Jamie apologised for how he had behaved since his dad had died, cutting off his mother’s attempts to tell him he didn’t need to, plunging ahead until it was all out of him. Marie had listened, tears running down her face, until he was done, then offered an apology of her own, for failing to cope with the death of her husband, for failing to realise that her son still needed her. By the time she was finished, they were both in tears, tears that turned out to be as cathartic as they were painful. There was only one remaining aspect of their rebuilt relationship that caused Jamie to worry.
Marie Carpenter absolutely adored Kate.
And hated Larissa.
He understood why; it was Kate who had put her arm round Marie after the hunger had hit her in the aftermath of Lindisfarne, Kate who had escorted her on to the rescue helicopter, talking to her in the gentle, friendly way that came so naturally to her. Larissa, on the other hand, was a vampire, and as far as Marie was concerned, vampires were all monsters, despite Jamie’s protestations to the contrary.
He knew he was wasting his time; Marie had been kidnapped and tormented by the very worst the vampire world had to offer, and was appalled by the change that had been inflicted on her. But he
tried anyway, because he knew that eventually the time would come when he would want to tell his mother about what was happening between him and Larissa, and he didn’t want her first reaction to be revulsion.
“She’s fine, Mum,” he said. “She said to say hello.”
Larissa is fine too. More than fine, actually.
“She’s a good girl,” said Marie, firmly. “I knew it from the moment I met her.”
Jamie didn’t say anything. Instead, he wandered across the cell, and looked at the photos his mother had arranged on top of the chest of drawers. A small picture in a silver frame caught his eye, and he leant in for a closer look.
His mum, heavily pregnant with him, was leaning back on the bonnet of the dark blue BMW he remembered from when he was very young, a wide smile on her face. The sun was shining from outside the frame, illuminating a bright green row of trees beyond the car, casting the dark silhouette of his dad across the bottom of the photo. The shadow’s hand was raised to its face, holding the camera that had recorded the moment.
She looks so happy
, Jamie thought, then straightened up and turned back to his mum, as he realised she had said something he hadn’t heard.
“What was that, Mum?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.
“I was saying that Henry came down to see me today,” she said. “Did he tell you?”
“Henry?” replied Jamie. “Who’s Henry?”
“Henry Seward,” answered Marie, the look on her face suggesting that it should have been obvious.
“
Admiral
Seward?” asked Jamie, incredulous. “My commanding officer? Is that who you mean?”
“Of course that’s who I mean, Jamie,” replied Marie. A look of concern had emerged on her face. “Is something wrong?”
No, nothing wrong. Definitely nothing weird about my boss hanging out with my mum in her cell. Not at all.
“I suppose not,” said Jamie. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t want anything. He just came down to say hello. He normally pops down about once a week.”
“Once a week? Like,
every
week?”
“I’ve upset you,” said Marie, a look of slight panic on her face. The possibility of her son stopping coming to see her was never far from her mind, and was the thing she was most afraid of. “Can we talk about something else?”
Jamie was still attempting to stretch his head round the concept of his mother and Admiral Seward socialising, but he let it go when he heard the nervousness in his mother’s voice. He took a deep breath.
“Of course we can, Mum,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Marie smiled a broad smile of relief, and floated over on to her bed, apparently so relieved she had avoided a fight with her son that she didn’t even realise she was using her vampire abilities in front of him.
“Tell me where you went this evening,” she said, settling down on the lilac bedding. “I worry about you, out there with all those monsters. Tell me what you were doing.”
Jamie crossed to the rear of the cell, flopped down on to the battered sofa and began to tell his mother about his day.