Must be so painful with their super-hearing
, he thought, and smiled grimly behind his visor.
Good.
The stream of bullets tore through the floating vampires, and they tumbled back down to the seats like falling leaves. A fresh bout of screaming erupted, before Angela and Jack were on top of them, their stakes flashing up and down in the purple light of the fire.
Jamie felt motion to his right, and spun round; a door was opening, a door that he had not noticed as he made his way along the curved wall. He fumbled for his T-Bone, and had it to his shoulder just before a vampire in a spotless tuxedo emerged, his red eyes blazing. Jamie pulled the trigger; the shot was high, as he had been forced to rush, but it made no difference. The stake tore the vampire’s head clean away from his shoulders, and carried it on its flight.
The headless torso staggered, its hands groping at its neck, before Jamie’s weapon reached the end of its wire, and began to rewind. The stake jerked to a halt, and the head was thrown clear; as it bounced and rolled away into the shadows, Jamie saw a look of outrage on what remained of its face. He ran forward, plunged his stake into the headless body’s heart, and returned to his position.
He watched Claire and Dominique T-Bone two vampires that were attempting to flank them, watched Angela fire her Glock 17 empty, the bullets thudding unerringly into the heads of a dozen smouldering vampires, and then he saw movement in the corner of his eye, and turned to look up at the stage.
What he saw stopped his heart cold.
Oh God, no,
he thought.
Oh Jesus, no. Why didn’t I think of this? Why didn’t I realise?
On the stage, the vampire who had been torturing Frankenstein was standing motionless with his back to Jamie. Beyond him, where Jamie’s friend had been bound to the post, was something from the deepest circles of hell, a mewling, howling monstrosity.
Frankenstein’s face was still recognisable, atop the grey body of a swollen, grotesquely misshapen wolf. Its legs kicked savagely against the post that it was still loosely tied to, and as Jamie watched, the heavy wood shattered under the impact. The wolf fell forward, landing heavily on three of its legs; it shook the fourth one until the last of the ropes that had held it were gone, and stood shakily on all fours. Jamie saw the last of his friend’s humanity ebb away, saw his face twist and lengthen, saw the jaw break and reset in less than a second. Then Frankenstein was gone, and the enormous wolf that had replaced him threw back its giant head and howled.
The noise was otherworldly, so huge and so full of dancing, running misery that every living thing in the theatre stopped and turned towards the stage. Angela Darcy, ever the professional, took the chance to survey the situation.
“Fourteen vamps still alive, Jamie,” she said.
“We’ve got a bigger problem,” replied Jamie, his voice low and full of shock. “Much, much bigger.”
“Why didn’t we see this coming?” asked Jack Williams. “Why didn’t Intelligence flag this up?”
“There was no time for an Intelligence evaluation,” said Jamie, distantly. “I was told to get wheels up ASAP. I never thought… I never…”
“What do we do about it?” demanded Angela. “We can worry about who should have seen it coming later. Bringing him home just got a hell of a lot more difficult.”
The wolf was peering around the theatre, its breath blasting out of its nostrils, its tongue hanging from its vast mouth; it appeared to be trying to make sense of its surroundings. The huge head swung slowly to the left, and then to the right, where its yellow
eyes landed on the vampire who had been torturing it. With a deafening snarl, it hurled itself towards him.
Lord Dante flung himself up and back, evading the crunching jaws by mere millimetres.
This can’t be happening
, he thought.
This is not fair.
The vampire king swooped up to the ceiling of his theatre, desperately trying to think of a way to salvage the situation or, if that proved impossible, to guarantee that he made it out of the building with his life. The wolf was back on its feet below him, howling up at him, but he knew he was beyond its reach. He looked down at the five black-clad figures as they began to move again, plunging their stakes into the burning bodies of his audience.
You’ll pay for this, whoever you are,
he thought.
You will rue the day you crossed Lord Dante, the vampire king of Paris.
Jamie backed away from the wolf, his heart screaming with pain as he saw what had become of his friend. It was almost too much for him to bear. He had no idea what to do now; in none of the scenarios he had run in his head on the flight across the Channel had he even allowed for the possibility that was now unfolding before him.
He was furious with himself for not having made the connection; he had seen the rising full moon from the helicopter as they made their way to Paris, and he had seen Alexandru’s werewolf close its mouth over Frankenstein’s hand before the two of them fell over the cliffs. He had replayed that memory, one of the most painful he possessed, a thousand times since it had happened, but his focus had always been on the terrible final moment when his friend disappeared from view; the injury done to him before he fell had seemed irrelevant, in light of what had followed. Now his mind was racing as he tried to think of a way, any way, that he could still save his friend.
He circled round to the back of the theatre, away from the wolf, which was staring up at the vampire floating high above, its jaws hanging open, its yellow eyes narrow.
“Regroup!” he shouted, and watched as his team peeled away from the remaining vampires and backed quickly towards him. They met at the top of the aisle; below them the theatre burned, the purple ultraviolet flames that had burst from the vampires’ bodies now replaced with flickering yellow and orange as the seats and the carpets were engulfed.
The remaining vampires, twelve by Jamie’s count, not including the one floating above them, were huddled together in the middle of the theatre. They looked lost, and disoriented, as though they were unable to believe what was happening. One woman was holding the charred body of a man in her arms, and appeared to be whispering softly to it, her face close to the smouldering ruin.
“Let’s end this,” said Jamie, softly, and led his team down the aisle.
Destroying the last twelve vampires was the work of less than a minute; none of them put up any resistance at all, and the looks on their faces, as they stared around at the rivers of spilled blood, at the roaring flames that licked round their ankles, suggested that many considered their destruction to be a kindness.
“You devils!” bellowed the vampire who was floating near the ceiling. “How dare you? Don’t you know who I am?”
Angela drew her T-Bone to her shoulder and fired. She was so quick that Jamie gasped, but the floating vampire knocked the projectile aside with a derisory sneer.
“I am Lord Dante!” it screamed. “The vampire king of Paris. This is my home!”
At the sound of the vampire’s voice, the enormous wolf howled
anew, shaking the theatre. Then the howl was cut short, replaced by a low, guttural growl. Jamie turned to see what had prompted it, and saw a lone vampire had floated up on to the stage and was slowly approaching the wolf, his hands out before him in a gesture of placation.
“What the hell is this?” asked Dominique.
“I’ve no idea,” replied Jamie.
The vampire stopped a couple of metres away from the wolf, which had lowered its head towards the ground, its weight back on its rear legs. It was still growling, and from this side view Jamie saw with horror the metal bolts sticking out of the thick grey fur at its neck.
“Henry,” said the vampire, slowly. “That’s your name. Henry. Don’t you recognise me? It’s me, Latour. What has become of—”
He got no further.
At the mention of the vampire’s name, the wolf’s growl exploded into a snarl of rage. In one huge, lightning-fast step it closed the distance between them, and clamped its huge jaws round the vampire’s head, cutting off his words. The vampire began to scream from inside the giant maw, his fists thumping uselessly against the wolf’s snout. Then, with a terrible crunching sound that would haunt Jamie for the rest of his life, the wolf closed its jaws. Blood squirted out between its yellow teeth and splattered to the floor, before the wolf tore Latour’s head from his body with a shake of its giant snout that seemed almost casual, and swallowed it whole.
There was a scream of rage from the ceiling, and Jamie looked up at the vampire who called himself the king of Paris. His hands were clawing at his face, his eyes wide and blazing.
“You foul monster!” he shrieked. “I will hunt you to the ends of the earth! I will pursue you with every breath I have left! You will die a thousand deaths for what you have done!”
“T-Bones,” said Jamie, suddenly, looking up at the raving vampire. “Everyone. Right now.”
He raised his weapon to his shoulder, waited a split second for the rest of his team to do the same, then fired. The combined bang of exploding gas was incredibly loud, and Lord Dante, whose attention had been focused entirely on Frankenstein, looked round in time to see the projectiles coming, but not in time to avoid them.
The five metal stakes tore through his body from all sides. Two crunched through his thighs before burying themselves in his stomach, one ploughed through his armpit before crashing into the red plaster of the ceiling, one thudded deep into the heavy bone at his shoulder and the last one tore through his throat, obliterating it.
A huge spray of blood burst from Lord Dante’s neck, and fell the long distance to the floor of the theatre. For a moment, the vampire king twisted in the air, as the heavy metal wires hung from his body; he seemed to be trying to speak, but all that emerged from his gaping mouth was a series of bloody gurgles.
Then the winches of the five T-Bones fired, and he was pulled to pieces.
The five stakes whirred back into the barrels of the weapons with heavy
thunks
. A second later the vampire king of Paris fell into the aisle of his theatre, landing with a series of wet thuds. His legs were severed, as was one of his arms; they landed on the sloping floor, and rolled away towards the stage. His midsection was ruined, but his chest and his head were intact; blood was still gushing from his throat, and as Jamie watched, his bile rising despite the things he had seen in the last three months, the vampire began to age.
His hair turned bright white, and great tufts of it fell to the red carpet. His skin greyed, and wrinkled, and suddenly his face was that of an old man. His chest rose and fell so slightly it was barely
noticeable. His eyes stared up at Jamie’s visor, a look of desperate pain etched into them.
Jamie was about to give the order for the vampire king to be staked, when a shadow fell across him, and he felt a blast of hot air on the back of his neck. He turned his head, ever so slowly, and found himself staring into the huge yellow eyes of the wolf that had been his friend. The blood-soaked snout was only centimetres away from his visor.
More slowly than he had ever moved in his life, Jamie twisted his body round so that he was crouching in front of the huge animal. It tilted its head to one side as he did so, its eyes never leaving his purple visor, its mouth hanging open. He backed away, lifting his feet and placing them down as carefully as he could; he did not want to make a sound, or a sudden movement.
The gap between himself and the wolf slowly increased, and then he was at the top of the aisle, standing with the rest of his team. They stared as the wolf padded forward, and stood over what remained of Lord Dante.
The vampire king’s mouth worked silently as the great wolf’s breath blasted against his face, blowing the long strands of white hair back against the blood-soaked floor. With great effort, Lord Dante lifted his one remaining hand, and placed it gently against the thick fur of the wolf’s snout. The wolf closed its huge yellow eyes for a moment, seeming to enjoy the vampire’s touch. Then it lowered its head, and began to eat the vampire king’s chest.
Lord Dante didn’t scream, but Jamie was sure that was only because he was incapable of doing so. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, his hand gripping the wolf’s fur, his mouth forming a perfect circle, as the thick, razor-sharp yellow teeth chewed through his flesh; he was still alive as Frankenstein broke through his ribcage,
and tore his beating heart from his body. The wolf mashed it between his teeth, growling with pleasure, then swallowed the raw meat.
As the remains of Lord Dante exploded around it, showering its grey fur with crimson, it threw back its head and howled a deafening roar of unmistakable triumph.
“What now?” breathed Jack Williams, asking the question that all five members of the Blacklight team were thinking. “What the hell do we do now?”
The wolf was standing in the aisle before them, less than three metres away, licking Lord Dante’s blood from the soaked, steaming carpet. It appeared to have no interest in them, but it had growled, without looking up, when Jack had stepped alongside Jamie. The inference seemed to be clear; that it had not yet decided what to do with them, and would prefer it if they stayed still while it did.
“Dominique,” said Jamie, softly. “You have tranquilliser darts, right?”
“Not darts,” replied Dominique Saint-Jacques. “I have tranquillisers, but they’re hypodermics. You can’t fire them.”
“Then what the hell use are they?” hissed Jamie.
“They’re for human witnesses,” said Dominique, sharply. “Not for werewolves.”
Jamie sighed. “Give them to me,” he said.
“How many?”
“All of them.”
Dominique lifted three hypodermic needles from a metal container
on his belt, and passed them down the line to Jamie. He flipped the plastic caps off, and looked at the tiny needles.
“Will these put him down?” he asked.
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” said Dominique. “I hope so, for all our sakes, but I don’t know. That’s the truth.”
“Great,” said Jamie. “Well, I guess we’re going to find out.”
Jamie lifted his visor, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The fires were burning themselves out, the chairs and small patches of carpet that had been aflame now merely smouldering. There was blood everywhere, and Jamie took a moment to appreciate the work his team had done.
Sixty vampires, give or take. No injuries, no casualties. Not bad at all.
He smiled again.
No injuries yet anyway. That might be about to change.
He took a slow, deliberate step into the aisle. The wolf growled again, a little louder than the last time, and then Angela’s voice rang in his ears.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like?” he replied.
“It looks like you’re trying to commit suicide by werewolf.”
“I assure you I’m not,” he said. He was staring at the enormous animal as it lapped blood from the floor, and was, frankly, terrified. But he knew what he had to do. “I’m not leaving without him. He’s why we came.”
“He?” demanded Angela. “It’s not
he
any more, can’t you see that? Are you going to take a werewolf back to the Loop with us?”
“That’s the plan,” Jamie replied, taking a second step forward.
The wolf growled again, more urgently, and Jamie felt his legs begin to shake.
“What are you going to tell Admiral Seward?” demanded Angela.
“Don’t worry, he’s still my friend for twenty-nine days of the month? What do you think he’s going to say to that?”
“I’m hoping he’s going to say congratulations on a successful mission,” said Jamie. “Now shut the hell up and let me do this.”
He took a third step, bringing him within two metres of the animal, and then suddenly the wolf’s head was up, quicker than Jamie’s eyes could follow, its mouth wide and coated red, its nostrils flared, a sawing growl of warning emanating from its throat as its misshapen yellow eyes locked on Jamie’s own.
Jamie stopped dead. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was absolutely sure that if he dropped his gaze, the animal would tear his throat out. So he stared back at the wolf, and saw something remarkable happen.
The huge eyes, sunflower yellow with pupils as black as night, suddenly narrowed, in an unmistakably human gesture of recognition.
“That’s right,” said Jamie, softly. “You know me. Don’t you?”
He took another step forward. The wolf reared up, but it didn’t step back, or leap forward and kill him.
“Don’t you?” he repeated. “What’s my name? You know it. What’s my name?”
He was within a metre of the animal now. The wolf looked confused, and suddenly miserable, as though the elation of victory had been replaced by deep anguish. It moved its head quickly from side to side, its growl lowering in volume and rising in pitch, until it sounded almost questioning.
“What’s my name?” Jamie asked, stepping forward again.
He was directly under the enormous snout; he could have reached out and touched the slick-red grey fur.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “What’s my name?”
The wolf’s mouth opened, and it looked down at him with an
expression of abject suffering. Jamie braced himself for the sensation of teeth closing round his head, but he did not shut his eyes.
“
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaamieeeeeeeeeeeee
,” howled the wolf.
Jamie threw himself against the enormous snout and wrapped his arms round the animal’s head, his mind empty of everything but the knowledge that he had found his friend, and saved him, as Frankenstein had once saved him.
The wolf’s enormous tongue flicked out of its mouth and licked Jamie’s face. The huge animal was still growling, but the tone of the rumbling noise had changed. It no longer sounded like a warning; now it sounded oddly like the purring of a cat. Jamie felt the rough texture of the tongue on the side of his face, and fought back tears. The wolf lowered its head, and nuzzled against him, its yellow eyes closed. Jamie saw his chance and, with guilt stabbing at his heart, plunged the three hypodermic needles into the thick fur at the animal’s neck.
The yellow eyes flew open, but the wolf didn’t pull away from him. It regarded him with a look in its eyes that Jamie initially took for sadness, for disappointment, but realised almost instantly was trust, was faith, in him. The eyes closed again, as the huge animal slumped to the floor, its grey flank settling on the blood-soaked carpet. Its chest rose and fell steadily, as its tongue rolled out between its teeth and hung limply towards the ground.
Jamie sighed, a deep, rattling release of everything that had built up inside him over the past three months. He felt elation, and pride, and fear, and guilt, all mingled together in a cloud of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. He pulled the needles out of the wolf’s neck, and took a faltering step back.
“Holy shit,” whispered Jack Williams. “You did it, Jamie. You did it.”
Jamie was turning to his friend, a smile spreading on his face, when the radio on his belt suddenly buzzed into life. He lifted it from his belt, keyed the RECEIVE button and held it to his ear.
“Jamie, it’s me,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“Larissa!” exclaimed Jamie. “Larissa, we got him! We were almost too late, but we found this—”
“Jamie, listen to me,” interrupted Larissa. “I called to tell you that I love you. OK? I don’t want to never have said it.”
“What are you talking about?” Jamie asked. “We’ll be home in forty-five minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” said Larissa. “You’re going to be too late.”