Valeri beamed with pride at the memory of the attack he had led into the SPC base at Polyarny, but if he was looking for approval, or gratitude from his master, he was to be disappointed. Dracula’s attention was elsewhere; he had returned his gaze to the window, and was deep in thought. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak, but the sudden ringing of Valeri’s mobile phone interrupted him. Valeri pulled it free, saw the name on the screen, laughed and looked over at his master. Dracula nodded his permission, and Valeri answered the phone.
He opened his mouth, but the voice on the other end of the line spoke first, and Valeri froze; his open mouth widened, and his eyes flooded a red so intense it seemed as though the eyeballs themselves must surely burst into flames. He listened, for almost a minute, then slowly lowered the phone from his ear. There was a moment of silence, before Valeri let out a deafening roar of anger that shook the foundations of the house, and hurled the phone against the wall, where it exploded into a thousand tiny fragments of metal and plastic.
“Speak to me, Valeri,” commanded Dracula. “What news, that would anger you so?”
Valeri turned to face his master, his face twisted with hate, his eyes blazing in their sockets.
“Master,” he said, his voice so full of fury that the word was barely more than a grunt. “I have to tell you something that is going to be difficult for you to hear.”
“What did the briefing say?” asked Jamie Carpenter.
Operational Squad G-17 sat in the back of one of the Department’s vans as it rolled across the grounds of the Loop, towards the wide gate that led out into the world beyond.
“Didn’t you read it?” asked Kate.
Jamie gave her a long, slow look, and eventually she rolled her eyes. “999 call from the Twilight Care Home, Nottingham,” she said. “The duty nurse made it. Said someone was breaking in through the second-floor windows, mentioned red eyes and screeching.”
“What about the place itself?”
“Caters for the elderly and the infirm, has a hospice wing and a mental health wing. Most recent records show eighty-four residents and staff rotas suggest a night shift of eight.”
“Security?” asked Larissa.
“None,” replied Kate, shaking her head. “Nurses. That’s all.”
“Let’s get there quickly then,” said Jamie, leaning back in his seat. The two girls exchanged the briefest of glances, and Squad G-17 exited the Loop without saying another word to each other.
The silence was thick with recrimination and tension, like a tidal rip beneath the surface of the ocean, capable of pulling your legs out from under you without warning; it hung in the back of the van, silent and heavy, until the squad reached their destination, and Jamie Carpenter ordered them to check their kit and weapons.
“Checked them before we left,” replied Kate. She had been discharged from the infirmary when the operation had appeared on her console, and had met Jamie and Larissa in the hangar. It had been immediately obvious that Larissa’s conversation with Jamie had not gone to plan; the atmosphere between them was arctic, and both of them appeared to be at least as angry with her as they were with each other.
“Check them again,” said Jamie.
Kate shot him a glance that was almost pitying, then loudly hauled her weapons from their pouches on her belt, checked them cursorily and slammed them back into place. Jamie watched her, anger simmering inside him, threatening to bubble up to the surface, and turned his attention to Larissa.
“You too,” he said.
She stared at him for a long moment that contained a clear question.
Are you really going to make me do this?
He stared back, his face unmoving, and she realised that he was.
“Aren’t you going to check yours,
sir
?” she said, as she pulled the weapons from her belt and checked them quickly. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you in there, would we?”
Jamie didn’t look at her, but he knew she had him. He quickly
ran through his own weapons checks and, satisfied that his squad was ready, physically at least, stepped to the rear of the van.
“Come on,” he said, throwing open the double doors. “Let’s get this done.”
The two girls waited for a moment before following him. It was a barely noticeable pause, but it was there and its meaning was clear.
We’ll come when we’re ready. Not when you tell us to.
Jamie bit his tongue, and watched as they disembarked from the van. His head was spinning; the secrets had piled up so quickly, and resentment had followed close behind.
Larissa had lied to him, about almost everything, about the very person that she was, since the first time he had spoken to her in her cell at the Loop. But had he ever made her feel bad about it, had he ever punished or judged her for the things she had told him, even though they had put his mother’s life in danger? No, he had told her it was all OK, told her that none of it mattered.
And Kate? Kate was being a total hypocrite if she was angry at him for keeping her in the dark about his relationship with Larissa, when all he’d ever done was try to protect her feelings, try not to make her feel like she was the odd one out. And all the while she had been secretly seeing Shaun Turner, which she had seen fit to tell Larissa about, but keep from him.
Jesus, what a mess.
Jamie slammed the van door closed and pulled his visor down over his face, glad that no one would be able to see his face for a while; he didn’t trust it not to betray how angry he was.
Larissa and Kate did the same. They were standing in an alley that had been closed off at both ends by blue and white emergency tape. Two policemen were making their way towards them, nervous looks on their faces, and Jamie had time to glance up at the source
of the intercepted 999 call. Rising above them was a large angular building, constructed from thousands of red bricks and topped by a dull lead roof. Windows stood in long rows, smeared on the inside with white residue, the result of half-hearted attempts to clean them. In front of Jamie stood a large wooden gate, big enough for cars and vans to pass through it. Beside the gate, bolted to the brick wall, was a tarnished brass plate on which had been stamped five words.
TWILIGHT CARE HOME
DELIVERY ENTRANCE
The two policemen arrived, glancing nervously at the purple visors hiding the Operators’ faces. They were both young, not much older than the black-clad figures they were staring at, although there was no way they could have known that.
“Er…” said the shorter of the two, a man with hair so blond it was almost white. “Do you…” He trailed off, visibly unsettled by sight of the strange trio standing in front of him.
“What’s the security status, Constable?” asked Kate, her voice distorted by her helmet’s audio filters. The policeman took half a step backwards, then looked at his partner, a taller man with a closely shaved head and a helpless look on his face.
“We secured the perimeter,” replied the second policeman. “No one has been in since we were instructed to hold our position.”
“Thank you,” said Kate. “Stay back, and let us do our job, please.”
He nodded, and stepped back, followed by his partner; the two men watched as Jamie pushed open the wooden gate. It protested loudly, its metal runners screeching across the tarmac, and then the three Operators stepped through it, and out of sight.
They found themselves in a small courtyard, surrounded on three sides by the towering walls of the care home. Two large canvas trolleys filled with sheets and pillowcases stood abandoned by the large back door to the building, beside a pallet of tinned fruit. They made their way quickly across the yard, up three concrete steps and inside.
They emerged into a large industrial kitchen. The floor was coated with a sheen of grease, as were most of the work surfaces. Two gas rings were still lit on one of the stoves, beneath a large metal pot. Jamie crossed the room, twisted off the gas, then peered into the cauldron. A thick brown stew, its ingredients unrecognisable, had boiled itself almost dry, burnt to the sides of the pan in thick, crusty brown ridges, like the rows of a ploughed field. The smell, of cheap meat and old vegetables, hit the back of Jamie’s throat, and he stepped back.
“Clear,” said Kate.
Jamie looked around. She was standing with Larissa by the double doors at the end of the kitchen, waiting for him; the angle of her head and the set of her hips suggested she was not feeling particularly patient.
“Clear,” he confirmed, and went to join them.
They quickly checked the rooms on the ground floor, and found them empty. The whole floor was offices and supply cupboards; nothing moved in any of the rooms, or in the long corridors that connected them. The Operators’ boots thudded across the linoleum floor, and the doors creaked and groaned as they were opened and closed; apart from that, the building was silent.
Jamie led the squad up the staircase, which switched back on itself after a small landing halfway up. On the wall of the landing, in green letters a metre high, two familiar words had been spray-painted.
HE RISES
Jamie squared up to the wall, and clicked the button on his belt that operated his helmet’s camera.
“I’ve logged it,” he said, and started up the stairs again. “We’re not here for graffiti. Let’s get on with it.”
After a second or two, Kate and Larissa followed him. As they pushed through the doors that led to the first residential floor, a low snarl emerged from Larissa’s throat.
Jamie stopped instantly. “What is it?” he asked.
“Blood,” she replied, her voice thick with hunger. “A lot of blood.”
“Ready One,” said Jamie, and the three Operators drew their T-Bones from their belts. “Contain where possible, as per the SOP. Destroy only if necessary.”
“Understood,” said Kate.
“Understood,” echoed Larissa. The anger and petty mischief were gone from both their voices; they were ready to do their jobs.
Jamie led them through the door. A long central corridor extended away to their left and right, with doors set into it on both sides. In front of them was a wide reception desk and nurses’ station, and behind the desk was a dead woman.
She wore a look of terror on her frozen features, and her white tunic was soaked red with the blood that had poured from the hole in her neck. She was slumped in a plastic chair, her limbs at unnatural angles, dumped there once her killer was finished with her.
Kate unclipped the ultraviolet beam gun from her belt, flicked it on and ran the purple light across the woman’s face.
Nothing happened.
“She’s dead,” Kate said, quietly.
“Confirmed,” replied Jamie. “Let’s keep moving.”
The squad made its way down the right-hand corridor, checking every door. The rooms that lay behind them were little more than prison cells, wire-framed beds topped with thin, heavily stained mattresses, uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs and tables, a metal sink and a metal toilet, hidden behind a ragged curtain that was evidently supposed to provide privacy. The windows were high up on the whitewashed walls, near the ceilings, and were barred from the outside. On the tables of some of the rooms stood birthday cards, and crayon drawings, and letters from relatives and friends.
“I would
not
want my grandma to end up here,” said Kate, as they examined the last room of the corridor. “What kind of place is this to put people? It’s awful.”
“I don’t know,” said Jamie, in a low voice. “Maybe if you can’t afford somewhere better, this is where they send you. When you can’t look after yourself any more.”
“Nonsense,” whispered Larissa, fiercely. “This is where you put people to forget about them. No one would ever choose to be here. Their families put them here when they became a burden.”
“Christ,” whispered Kate. “How could you do that to someone you loved?”
Her question went unanswered.
The final room contained more of the same green graffiti, written large on one of the bare walls, and a wide arc of crimson blood, sprayed at high velocity across the narrow bed and worn pillow. The occupant of the room was nowhere to be seen.
“Double back,” said Jamie, leading them out into the corridor and back to the nurses’ station. “Same again.”
Down the second corridor they found more bodies.
They were sprawled on uncomfortable-looking beds, slumped on the cold concrete floor, hurled unceremoniously on to the chairs and desks. They were all elderly; the youngest maybe seventy, the oldest a tiny wizened man with bright, fierce eyes, who could have been anything from eighty to a hundred and fifty. They wore the same thin nightdresses and pyjamas; some had reading glasses around their necks; some had small portable radios beside their beds that were still quietly broadcasting Radio 4.
Terrible violence had been done to them all; blood coated the barren rooms, ghoulishly bright under unforgiving fluorescent lights that cast harsh illumination on broken bones and severed limbs, rent flesh and spilled innards. A single mercy had been visited upon the residents of the Twilight Care Home, on these men and women who were parents and grandparents, who had been so obviously taken by surprise by the carnage that had engulfed them, and could not have hoped to understand the evil that had descended upon them.
One tiny mercy.
“They’re all dead,” said Kate, finishing her sweep with the beam gun. “None of them have been turned.”
Her voice was low, and thick with emotion. There was a level of desensitisation that came with being a Blacklight Operator, where horror and bloodshed were daily occurrences. But it was impossible to completely cut yourself off from the reality of things, from the human tragedies you witnessed.
“There’s nothing we can do for them then,” said Larissa.
“Agreed,” said Jamie. “Let’s continue our sweep.”
The squad moved back to the staircase, and climbed higher into the building. On the second floor they found more of the same;
bodies in their rooms, drained of blood and life, nurses and orderlies strewn on the floor of the corridors, left where they had fallen as they tried to run.
“Six or seven vamps,” said Jamie, as they climbed the stairs again, passing more green graffiti, the same two words over and over, seeming to mock them. “It would have taken at least that many to do this.”
“First Wallsend, now this,” said Larissa. “It’s not good.”
“No kidding,” said Kate. “Nothing about this is good.”
But as the three Operators climbed the stairs to the top floor of the Twilight Care Home, they had no idea just how right she was.
Beyond the double doors, the nurses’ station stood empty. Blood was pooled on the desk, and dripped steadily to the floor. Where it had come from was not immediately apparent; there was no body in sight.
The layout of the third floor was different to the two below; one wing contained the same corridor of bedrooms, but the other wing was a single large room, where the residents socialised and ate their meals. The squad turned away from the double doors that led that way, and moved down the corridor, checking the bedrooms one by one.
The first two rooms were empty.
The third was not.
Unseen by her squad mates, Larissa’s eyes flooded red before the door was even fully open; her fangs burst into place as a low growl rose from her throat. Then she was moving, shoving the door out of Jamie’s hands and disappearing into the room. There was a second snarl, then a crash as something in the room was sent flying. By
the time Jamie and Kate followed her, less than half a second later, she was holding an elderly vampire up against the wall, her fingernails digging into his throat.