The blows landed solidly, hammering roundhouse swings that would have levelled most creatures on earth, but Lord Dante didn’t so much as flinch; if anything, his smile widened. Frankenstein grabbed at the hand that was holding him, trying to prise open the fingers as his lungs screamed for air, as his vision began to grey at the edges.
As the room grew dark, he tore his gaze away from Lord Dante and threw a desperate, pleading look in the direction of Latour. His old friend wore a sour expression, the look of a man who has belatedly discovered that something has proven to be much less fun than he had expected, but he made no move to help, even as Frankenstein began to suffocate.
Constellations of white and grey spots whirled across his vision, and he felt his chest begin to contract as the last of the oxygen in his lungs was absorbed, leaving him empty. There was an enormous pressure in his head, as though it was about to burst, but he felt strangely calm; there was no panic, no fear, just an unexpectedly easy acceptance of the fate that was about to befall him. He felt sadness at never having regained the memories of his life, but he also felt a gentle wave of relief; it was awful to live in the dark, and he would be glad to be released from it.
Then, at the last second before he slipped into unconsciousness, the pressure eased. But far from providing relief, it brought with it a screaming wave of agony as his body fought for air. It felt as though every part of him was on fire. He slumped down the wall and rolled lamely on to his back, his chest heaving, his mouth hauling in burning lungfuls of oxygen.
His vision began to clear, and he stared up from the floor into the face of Lord Dante. The vampire king was looking down at him, his chest heaving as he tried to calm himself, the expression on his face something close to lust.
“Not so fast,” breathed the ancient vampire. “You don’t get away so easily, not after all these years.”
Lord Dante looked over at Latour, and gestured towards the prone, gasping monster. “Pick him up,” he said. “I want to introduce him to the rest of our guests.”
Latour hesitated for a moment, long enough for Lord Dante’s eyes to flare in their sockets, an unequivocal gesture of warning. Latour nodded, then stepped forward and scooped Frankenstein up with one hand by the back of his neck, like a cat picking up one of her kittens. Frankenstein dangled limply as the vampire lifted him into the air and carried him towards the door. His chest rose and fell steadily; his chin slumped against it, his eyes barely open. The monster had realised that he was no longer going to die, and it had broken the last of his spirit.
Just let it be over quickly,
he thought, distantly.
That’s all I ask. Whatever is in store for me, let it be quick.
Latour shoved open the door that led back into the theatre, and held it open for the vampire king. Lord Dante strode through it, his eyes blazing red, his face a mask of triumph.
“Brothers and sisters!” he bellowed, and the theatre fell silent. The audience turned their heads to look in his direction and the vampire on the stage let the dead girl fall to the floor. The look on the majority of the vampires’ faces was one of surprise; it was rare for any of them to see Lord Dante, much less hear him address them.
In the decades since Frankenstein had buried his
kukri
knife in the
vampire king’s chest, he had become a peripheral figure in his own club, seldom seen except by the tiny handful of vampires he still considered his favourites. Latour was one of them, and he had often been forced to answer anxious questions from other members about Lord Dante’s health, to rebuff desperate entreaties that they be allowed to enter the private dining room and offer him their supplication.
The vampire king had withdrawn into his small room, where he had feasted on men and women supplied by his butler, and in time he had become little more than a legend; a monster hiding in the shadows where none were allowed to venture, a dark presence behind the scenes who, if the members of the Fraternité were honest, made them feel uncomfortable.
Attendance had steadily declined over the years, a sign that all was no longer right in the old building. It remained the safest place for vampires in all of Paris, a place where every appetite, no matter how obscene, could be indulged, yet fewer and fewer vampires chose to take advantage of its debauched freedoms. The presence of Lord Dante, so diminished from the godlike creature he had once appeared, caused them a discomfort that was almost physical, like an itch that they could not reach to scratch. As a result, fewer than fifteen vampires were inside the Fraternité to hear Lord Dante’s voice boom across the theatre, to see him stride down its aisle as Latour carried Frankenstein easily towards the stage.
“My God,” someone whispered, as the small procession passed.
The look on Lord Dante’s face was one of pure, unbridled joy; it looked as though he had been brought back to life. His dinner jacket billowed behind him as he reached the front of the stage, and floated effortlessly up on to it. Latour followed him at a respectful distance, carrying his prisoner, and floated up beside the vampire king as he turned to address the meagre crowd.
“Friends,” he boomed. “You find yourselves witness to a truly auspicious event, an event that will stand alongside any in the great history of this Fraternité.”
He paused, beaming out at his confused audience. There was whispering, and one or two fingers pointing in the direction of Frankenstein, but most of the vampires were staring at Lord Dante, scarcely able to believe that he had left the dining room that had become his self-imposed cell, let alone that he was standing before them and addressing them, his face filled with a fire that even the longest-serving members of the Fraternité had not seen for many decades.
“Nearly ninety years ago,” continued the vampire king, “a great wrong was done to me. An act of betrayal so cowardly, so unjustified, that it left me questioning the wisdom of continuing to provide this sanctuary for the creatures of the night, among many other things. I have withdrawn from you, my brothers and sisters; it cannot have escaped your notice, and I apologise for it. The perpetrator, who I am at last able to bring before you, was something base and rotten, a foul thing that should never have been given life; a mistake that I am finally, after long years, in a position to correct.”
In the centre of the stage stood a thick wooden post that had been used for every conceivable horror in the long years since Lord Dante had erected it, when the Fraternité was founded. It was to this post that the vampire king now instructed Latour to tie Frankenstein securely.
As Latour bent to his work, leaning the limp monster against the wood and gathering thick coils of rope from where they lay strewn on the stage, Lord Dante continued to speak.
“Some of you have been members of this Fraternité long enough to recognise the creature beside me,” he said, his eyes burning coals. “This is the creature that did this to me, whom I have waited almost
a century to take my revenge upon.” As he spoke, he unbuttoned his shirt and held it open, displaying the thin slice of metal that protruded from his chest. “And now, my friends, that time is at hand.”
Lord Dante turned away from his audience, and regarded the helpless monster. Frankenstein’s arms were tightly bound behind the post, looped and tied at the wrists, without so much as a millimetre of give. His feet had been set at a more forgiving angle, but were equally secure; the only part of his body that he could move more than a centimetre or two was his head, which he raised slowly as he heard Lord Dante’s approaching footsteps. He forced his eyes open, and saw the ancient vampire looking at him with an expression that seemed almost regretful. Then the vampire king’s face twisted into a wide, teetering grin of madness, and Frankenstein saw the vampire’s right shoulder move as he cocked his fist.
He never saw the punch itself.
It pistoned into his stomach, driving every molecule of air from his lungs; he heard a sound explode involuntarily from his mouth, like a huge balloon bursting, and felt his eyes bulge in their sockets as his body attempted to process the agony that was blooming in his midsection. He opened his mouth to scream, but found he could not; his body was in spasm, paralysed by the need to drag fresh oxygen into his shocked lungs.
He stared helplessly into the face of Lord Dante, his chest tightening and constricting as his lungs deflated, and realised, strangely calmly, that he couldn’t breathe. Panic burst through him, and he twisted and turned against his bindings, his oxygen-starved muscles weakening by the second, his mind racing with terror at the thought of dying like this, like an animal, for the amusement of a handful of monsters. As he thrashed and struggled, increasingly weakly, Lord Dante leant his terrible smiling face in close to his own.
“It’s an awful feeling, isn’t it?” said the vampire king, softly. “Helplessness. It physically hurts.”
Frankenstein stared, incapable of responding. His vision was starting to grey at the edges, and he felt an enormous pressure building in the centre of his chest. He was waiting for darkness to envelop him when Lord Dante sighed, then shoved one of his pale, delicate hands into his mouth.
He felt the cold fingers invade the back of his throat, and then his gag reflex triggered, even as his body teetered on the brink of shutting down. There was nothing in his stomach, so all that burst up and around the vampire’s fingers were strings of watery bile. Lord Dante withdrew his hand, a look of utter disgust creasing his face; he flicked his hand down towards the stage, splattering the liquid on to the wooden boards.
Frankenstein felt his whole body tremble, as his gag reflex broke his paralysis; he sucked in a single quavering, tremulous breath, and air that felt like razor blades scoured his throat and lungs. He slumped against the wooden pole, his eyes rolling back in his head, his huge, lumpen chest heaving, and knew nothing more.
Breathing heavily, Lord Dante turned back to his audience, who were staring at him with rapt attention, cruel excitement on their faces.
“Send word,” he breathed. “To every member of the Fraternité de la Nuit, wherever they may be. Tell them that Lord Dante is risen, and that he summons them here two nights from now. Tell them he has something planned that not a single one of them will want to miss.”
“A cure?” asked Jamie. “What do you mean a cure?”
“A cure for vampirism,” answered Professor Talbot. “What else?”
“Is that even possible?”
“We certainly think so.”
“But how?”
“Using a self-replicating, DNA-authoring, genetically engineered virus.”
“What?”
Talbot smiled again, more openly this time, and led Jamie towards the huge hologram double helix. They stopped in front of it, and Jamie watched the impossibly complex design rotate slowly as the Professor began to talk.
“OK,” said Talbot. “Tell me how the condition that we refer to as vampirism is transferred.”
“By biting,” answered Jamie. “If a vampire bites you, and you don’t die, you turn.”
“That’s right. But can you tell me what makes you turn?”
Jamie shook his head.
“Exactly,” continued Talbot. “Nor would I expect you to; there are only a handful of people in the world who really understand the process. But in the simplest terms, this is what happens when a vampire bites you. Their fangs are coated with a fluid, a unique type of plasma that is passed into your bloodstream in the act of biting. This fluid contains a virus, unlike any other that occurs in the natural world. For one thing, it’s remarkably aggressive; it replicates itself millions of times over, spreading through your blood until it infects every cell in your body. You understand what a cell is, yes?”
“I’m not stupid,” replied Jamie, casting a hard look in the Professor’s direction. Talbot smiled, and continued.
“This aggressiveness is why there is such a small window in which the process can be stopped. But it is possible; the virus is aggressive, and fast-acting, but short-lived. If blood is transfused into the victim faster than the virus is able to multiply, it burns out within a few hours, and the turn doesn’t take place. But if that doesn’t happen, or happens too slowly, the virus will multiply, and multiply, and multiply, until it reaches saturation. And then the turn begins in earnest.”
Talbot gestured in the direction of the hologram.
“This is a strand of human DNA,” he said. “Roughly twenty-three thousand genes arranged around twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. These genes contain the blueprint for building, and then maintaining, the systems that make up a human being. How they do this is too complicated for me to explain to you now, so just understand that a combination of genes accounts for why you look the way you do, why you are as tall as you are, why your eyes are blue rather than green. This information is coded into every single cell in your body, ready to be passed on to your children, and your grandchildren. Are you with me so far?”
“I understand,” said Jamie, his eyes fixed on the spinning hologram.
“Good,” said Talbot. “The virus that is passed on to the victim during a vampire attack is not what gives them their superhuman abilities. The virus is merely the agent of that process. Once it has achieved saturation, the virus begins to alter parts of the victim’s DNA, essentially overwriting the existing code. This new code, which is rapidly copied to every cell in the victim’s body, is what causes the turn. It’s what makes vampires.”
“Hang on,” said Jamie, his brow furrowing. “If you change my DNA, does that mean I change too? Like, physically? I thought it would just mean I passed the new code on to my kids?”
Talbot stared at Jamie, admiration on his face.
“Bravo,” he said. “There are men and women a lot older than you who fail to understand that. You’re absolutely right; under normal circumstances, changing an organism’s DNA would not result in physical changes to the organism in question. There are specific instances in which it is possible; there is a gene therapy treatment for cystic fibrosis sufferers that involves them inhaling a genetically engineered aerosol that essentially fixes some of the broken cells in their lungs, but that is a very specific case, dealing with only a tiny, tiny number of cells. Ordinarily, a change to the DNA would do nothing.”
“That’s why the vampire virus is different, isn’t it?” said Jamie. “Because it changes people, right away.”
“Exactly,” replied Talbot. “The new DNA code that the virus writes into the victim’s cells has a kind of trigger within it, an update button, if you like. Once the code is copied across all the cells, the new DNA acts upon the body, changing it physically, giving the victim their strength and speed, and their compulsion
to feed. It is absolutely unique. And the process is irreversible. For now at least.”
“And that’s what you’re trying to undo?” asked Jamie. “The changes that are made to the DNA?”
“That’s right.”
“How? How would you even attempt something like that?”
Talbot waved his arm towards the bank of silver cabinets that stood along one of the walls of the Lazarus Project.
“Those machines are gene sequencers,” he replied. “Powered by the largest supercomputer array in the world. We’re mapping the altered DNA, isolating the new code that the vampire virus writes into each cell. Once that process is complete, the plan is to engineer a counter virus that will go through an infected system, delete the new code and return the victim’s DNA back to its original state.”
“Why can’t we do that now?” asked Jamie.
“As I already told you, there are approximately twenty-three thousand genes in a strand of human DNA. That in itself might not sound like many, but you can take my word that it is. And there is a far bigger obstacle in the way: the DNA of every single person on earth is unique. Deleting the vampire viral code from the DNA is not the difficult bit – the difficult bit is restoring the code that the virus has deleted. There is no all-purpose code we can write in once the vampire code is gone; the code that would have been overwritten in your cells is completely different to the code that would have been overwritten in mine.”
“So how can you make it work?”
“The virus we’re designing is like a tiny biological supercomputer. It analyses each cell as it replicates through the body, deletes the vampire code it has been programmed to recognise and then, using incredibly sophisticated chemical analysis of the proteins in the
surrounding cells, rewrites the empty sections of the code. Once it has done that for every cell in a system, it uses the same trigger as the vampire virus, an amino acid that we’ve been able to isolate and map, and the victim’s system is returned to normal, all traces of vampirism gone from their body.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“Conventional wisdom would tell you that it is. But we’ve made developments and breakthroughs in this lab that are generations beyond the genetic work being done out in the world, in even the most highly resourced research facilities. What you see around you, Jamie, is the most ambitious, most complicated and most expensive science project ever conducted. And it’s what we believe will eventually bring an end to the curse of vampirism.”
“How long?” asked Jamie, his voice trembling. “How long until you can make this work?”
How long until I can tell my mum and Larissa that they’re going to be all right?
“I don’t know,” said Talbot. Jamie opened his mouth to voice his dismay, but Talbot raised a hand and cut him off. “I understand your agitation, really I do. And I can tell you, honestly, that the progress we’ve made is staggering. But I also have to tell you, with equal honesty, that it could be years before we have a workable vaccine.”
“Years?” said Jamie, his heart sinking in his chest.
“It could be less,” said Talbot, forcing a smile that was clearly meant to be encouraging. “It could be a year, or even a matter of months. But we aren’t going to be able to cure your mother tomorrow, much as I’d like to.”
“But we will be able to cure her?” Jamie could hear the desperate pleading in his voice as he asked the question. “One day? That’s what you’re saying, right?”
Talbot looked at him solemnly.
“Perhaps I was wrong to bring you down here,” he said, softly. “I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t wrong,” said Jamie. “Really you weren’t. It’s better knowing that someone is working on a cure, even if it might take a while. I’m not a child; I didn’t expect you to be able to cure her tomorrow. But if you’re saying there’s a chance you might be able to cure her in the future, then that’s something I’m grateful to know.”
“Well,” said Talbot, a smile on his face, “in that case, I’m glad.”
He walked away from the hologram, and Jamie followed him across the wide room. The Lazarus Project staff, the majority of whom had stopped what they were doing to watch the conversation between Jamie and Talbot, returned their attention to their work, although several of them nodded and smiled at Jamie as he passed their desks. Talbot led Jamie round the DNA hologram and towards the row of gene sequencers, passing by the heavy airlock door at the back of the room.
Jamie slowed as they passed it. There was a rectangular window set at eye level in the thick white metal but, frustratingly, he could see nothing through the small block of glass. Talbot noticed that the teenager had dropped back, and turned to him.
“Everything OK?” he asked.
Jamie blushed slightly. “Yeah,” he replied. “Sorry. I was just wondering…”
“What’s behind the door?”
“Right.”
“It’s OK,” said Talbot. “That’s where we keep the research subjects.”
“You mean the vampires we’ve been catching for you?”
“That’s right. They need to be isolated from any viruses or
bacteria the staff or Operators might be carrying, and they need to be contained. They’re still vampires.”
“My squad brought two in yesterday,” said Jamie, a flicker of pride on his face.
“Of course,” said Talbot. “Mr Connors and his daughter. Very useful from a genetic perspective, two members of the same family.”
“Are they doing OK?” asked Jamie. “They were really scared when we caught them.”
“They’re fine,” replied the Professor. “We treat all our subjects extremely well.”
“Can I see them?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied Talbot. “The sterilisation procedure to access the clean room takes almost forty minutes to complete, and I can’t spare any of my staff to take you through it. I’m sorry.”
Jamie stared at the airlock door, and realised he wanted to go through it incredibly badly. It was partly the fact that he had been told he was not allowed to, but it was also the idea that behind the heavy white door lay the key to finding the cure that Talbot had described to him, a key that he was, at least in part, helping to provide.
But he could wait.
He had no intention of pushing his luck with Professor Talbot, who had already demonstrated enormous trust by allowing him even this far into the Lazarus Project. He resumed his course towards the gene sequencers, and after a momentary pause, Talbot joined him.
“So how long have you been working on this?” he asked, as Talbot began to check the readings on the front of the machines. “How long have you all been down here?”
“I’ve been working on a variation of this project for most of
my adult life,” replied Talbot. He took a small console from his pocket, and entered a series of numbers into a spreadsheet. “I was recruited into Department 19 a year ago, and we accelerated our efforts after Dracula’s remains were lost. But my work was already well under way before then; I worked with Francis Collins on the Human Genome Project in Maryland, then on viral engineering at the Strangeways lab in Cambridge, and then I got the opportunity to continue my work down here.”
“Opportunity?” asked Jamie, grinning. He knew full well that it would have been made clear to the Professor that refusing the offer was not a realistic option.
“I suppose it was really more of an instruction,” replied Talbot, smiling back. “But not one I was reluctant to follow, especially once the scale of the project was made clear to me: complete authority to recruit staff, a computer array more powerful than any in the world, a basically limitless budget and the challenge to do something that would save thousands of lives. Who could have turned that down?”
“Obviously not you,” said Jamie.
“Obviously.”
They moved down the line of gene sequencers, Talbot taking readings from each one in turn.
“So who are all these people?” Jamie asked, nodding towards the men and women hunched over their desks.
“Geneticists,” replied Talbot, without looking round. “Virologists. Doctors. All hired from the best research institutes around the world. They’re the finest minds in their fields.”
Jamie stared at the Lazarus Project staff; there was a focused intensity in the room, a feeling of communal genius bent to a single purpose. Each of the men and women in the white coats appeared
to be simultaneously in a world of their own and part of a greater organism, like super-intelligent bees in a hive. He knew he could never, ever, in a thousand years, understand the work they were doing, but the thought did not make him feel inadequate. Instead, all he felt was admiration.
Talbot straightened up, regarding Jamie with a warm smile.
“Is there anything else I can show you?” he asked. “Anything else you want to know? If not, I should probably be getting back to work.”
Jamie was about to say no, when a thought suddenly leapt into his mind, and he blushed a deep, dark red.
“What is it?” asked Talbot.
Oh God. Can I? I haven’t turned, so it must be safe. But still.
“If a human being,” he said, cautiously, “were to, er, kiss a vampire? That would be risky, right?”
Talbot gave him a long look, then broke into a laugh.
“Speaking hypothetically,” he replied. “I assume we are speaking hypothetically, Mr Carpenter?”
“Of course,” said Jamie, his face burning.
“Of course. Well, in that hypothetical situation, the human would be quite safe as long as the vampire in question kept his or her fangs withdrawn. The virus that causes the turn doesn’t exist anywhere else, so the risk of infection would be negligible.”
“Right,” said Jamie. “That’s good to know.”
“Hmm,” said Talbot. “I’m sure it is.” He grinned broadly at Jamie, then placed a hand on his back and led him towards the door. “If you have any other questions,” he continued, “or if you just want someone to talk to, you know your way down here. OK?”