Kate jumped to her feet, and saw a vampire woman dragging the Operator away by his ankles. Kate screamed for her to stop, and raised her T-Bone to her shoulder, but before she could pull the trigger, the vampire pirouetted off the ground, holding the screaming Operator like a rag doll, spun in a full circle and hurled
the flailing man into the air. He disappeared into the twilight, and out of sight.
Kate fired her weapon, but the vampire skipped out of the way, and grinned at her. She felt for her stake, but the vampire turned and disappeared towards the hangar, leaving her on the edge of the battle. Then she heard a distant thud, and nausea swept through her as she realised what had made it. She swallowed it down, and threw herself back into the fight.
Larissa leapt into the air as soon as the vampires moved, and shot forward to meet them. She felt an anger burning inside her that was stronger than she had ever felt before; she was outraged at the sheer brazenness of Valeri’s attack, and she was beyond furious that he would dare to endanger her friends.
She cut through the first wave of vampires like a knife through butter, her arms wide, her razor-sharp fingernails slicing through flesh and sending blood splashing to the tarmac below. A vampire man in his fifties growled, and changed his course towards her; she waited until he was about to grab for her throat with his gnarled hands, then at the last possible second she flipped up and over him, moving through the air as though she was weightless.
The vampire’s hands grabbed at nothing, and then Larissa was behind him, one hand tearing out his throat in a shocking explosion of scarlet arterial blood, the other punching through his ribs from the rear and destroying his beating heart. The vampire barely had time to realise what had happened before he exploded, splattering to the ground in a splash of crimson.
Larissa easily ducked beneath the outstretched arms of a vampire who had thrown himself towards her from behind, and drew her T-Bone almost lazily. She fired it from her hip, and watched with
satisfaction as it thudded through the vampire’s solar plexus, destroying him instantly. She spun in the air, surveying the battle, and then swooped down to join it.
Admiral Henry Seward looked around with rising horror at what was unfolding on the wide landing area which had become a battlefield. His Operators were fighting with all the skill and bravery he expected, but there were simply too many vampires for them to deal with.
The tarmac was strewn with the bodies of his friends and colleagues. He lifted his T-Bone and punctured the chest of a vampire who dropped from the sky in front of him, and felt savage enjoyment at the look of enormous surprise on its face as it burst into a shower of gore. He pulled the small metal panel from his belt, and checked its read-out.
2:36…
2:35…
2:34…
Not fast enough,
he thought.
Nowhere near fast enough.
He replaced the panel in its pouch on his belt, and ran forward through the chaos, looking for Valeri Rusmanov.
Shaun Turner saw Kate through a momentary gap in the carnage, and ran to her side. He grabbed her arm, and she spun round, raising her metal stake in her hand. He caught it before she had time to plant it in his chest, and pulled her towards the runway.
“This way!” he yelled. “We have to spread out.”
She nodded, then ran with him, ducking and weaving between snarling vampires and black-clad Operators. Around them the battle raged; the rattle of gunfire and the deafening bangs of T-Bones and
Daybreakers merged with screams of pain, and roars of guttural lust as the vampires attacked, again and again. Something thudded to the ground to her left, and she glanced at it as they ran. She immediately wished she hadn’t; lying on the tarmac was the ruined torso of an Operator, her arms and legs missing, her face a frozen mask of unutterable pain.
They hit the edge of the runway, and Shaun threw her one of the two Daybreakers he was carrying. She had never fired the heavy weapon before, but that didn’t worry her; what worried her was what was being done to her fellow Operators. At the runway’s edge, removed from the epicentre of the battle, she and Shaun dropped to one knee, and began to fire round after round into the swirling, swooping mass of vampires.
Valeri hung in the air above the carnage his army was inflicting, and waited for his victory.
Although the resistance from the Blacklight men and women had been far fiercer than he had expected, causing him to have already lost a greater number of his soldiers than he had allowed for, it was still only a matter of time. For every vampire the black figures destroyed, they lost at least one of their own number. Already the Blacklight force had been reduced by a quarter, possibly more; within minutes, sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm them, and then Valeri’s mission would be accomplished.
He was floating lazily back and forth above the battle, searching for his prize; he saw no need to involve himself in the fighting, and instead was devoting himself to the capture of Admiral Seward. It was difficult; the plain black uniforms made every Operator look alike, preventing Valeri from getting an accurate lock on his quarry. He rotated slowly, and then stopped; there was still no sign of
Admiral Seward, but his sharp eyes picked out something else that interested him. He began to descend, slowly, towards his unsuspecting target.
Larissa sprinted across the tarmac, faster than human eyes could see, and with a single swipe of her hand, tore off the head of a teenage vampire boy who was about to sink his fangs into Cal Holmwood’s neck. She had seen the vampire creep up behind the Colonel, who had just staked an enormously obese vampire woman; she had burst into what seemed like enough blood to fill a swimming pool. He had been distracted, for the briefest of moments, by the eruption of gore in front of him, and the teenage vampire had seen his chance.
But Larissa, who could now move with a speed that frightened even her, had been too quick for him; his head was still bouncing away along the runway when she plunged her stake into his headless body, destroying him. Colonel Holmwood didn’t even thank her; he just nodded briefly, and ran back into the battle. Larissa watched him go, and then something crashed into the back of her neck so hard that she cracked the tarmac of the runway as she hit it, face down.
For a second, she lay still, unable to move.
The impact felt like someone had dropped a car on the back of her head; she had never felt anything like it, not even during the beating she had suffered at the hands of Alexandru, the beating that had almost killed her. She heard an involuntary groan emerge from her mouth, and she slowly rolled over on to her back.
Standing over her, his face completely expressionless, was Valeri Rusmanov.
The second oldest vampire in the world was huge, almost as
broad as he was tall, his enormous frame hidden beneath a thick grey greatcoat. He peered down at her, his face wrinkled with distaste.
“You are the traitor they speak about,” he said. It was not a question. “You are the one they are scared of, the one who helped to kill my brother. And yet you lie before me after a single blow. How disappointing.”
He leant down, and then his fist hammered towards her face, as quick as a lightning bolt. Larissa flung herself to the side, and heard the crunch of rubble as the runway exploded under the impact. She forced herself to her feet, trying not to show him how much the blow to the back of her neck had taken out of her.
“Better,” he grunted. “Dying on your back is for old men; dying on your feet is for soldiers.”
He lunged forward, swinging one of his tree-trunk arms; she ducked underneath it, and circled to her right. He laughed, a loud grunt that sounded more animal than human, and came for her again. She skipped out of his reach, and lunged, thrusting her fingers towards his eyes, hoping to blind him; he moved his head impossibly quickly for a creature of his size, then almost casually curled his hand round her wrist, and snapped it.
A thunderclap of pain shot up Larissa’s arm, and she cried out, her head thrown back. Valeri swung his other fist with the slow inevitability of a wrecking ball, and crunched it into her stomach. Every single molecule of air was driven out of her lungs by the punch, and her eyes widened as she realised she couldn’t breathe.
Valeri drew her close, and looked carefully at her, like a scientist examining an interesting specimen. With a gargantuan effort, she forced her screaming lungs to inhale, and pulled sickly sweet air in through her nose and mouth. The pain in her wrist was still huge,
bright red and throbbing, and as she struggled weakly in his grip, she watched his fangs slide slowly down from above his upper lip.
He smiled narrowly at her, then suddenly dipped her at the waist, like a ballroom dancer finishing a routine. She hung in his grasp, powerless to resist; as he slowly lowered his huge fangs towards her throat, Larissa turned her face away from the burning coals of the ancient vampire’s eyes, and waited for the inevitable.
“Valeri!”
The single word boomed out across the wide-open space of the Loop, and Larissa jerked her head back around. At the sound of his name, Valeri looked up, and Larissa watched his face contort into the purest depiction of hatred she had ever seen on the face of a living creature; she twisted in his grip, craning her neck towards the source of his venom.
Valentin Rusmanov strode across the tarmac towards them, his face twisted into a smile of pure violence. As he walked, he shrugged his suit jacket from his shoulders, letting it fall to the ground, and rolled his sleeves past his elbows. Around him, the fighting ceased; everyone, human or vampire, stopped to watch the third oldest vampire in the world make his entrance.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own age, brother?” he snarled.
Valeri’s answering growl shook the ground beneath Larissa’s feet, and then he dropped her, as though she was nothing. She hit the ground hard, and scrambled backwards away from him, her wrist flaring with pain every time it touched the cool tarmac of the runway.
Valentin strode towards his brother, four hundred years of hatred burning in his heart. A vampire woman in her twenties ran at him as he walked through the bloody carnage of the battlefield, her teeth bared, her arms outstretched. Without even a glance in her direction,
Valentin swung his right arm, so fast that it was nothing more than a blur, and connected with the vampire woman’s head. It disintegrated into a fine spray of blood and bone, leaving the body to take several faltering steps before it crashed to the ground.
Paul Turner, who like everyone else had stopped when Valentin had bellowed his brother’s name, took advantage of the momentary confusion, and fired Daybreaker rounds into the spines of four vampires who had been distracted by the impending collision of the two remaining Rusmanov brothers. Their screams, and the explosions of blood that followed them, broke the truce that had settled temporarily over the landing area, and vampires and Operators threw themselves back into the fight.
Valentin and Valeri faced each other on the dark tarmac of the runway, their eyes glowing molten red so dark it was almost black. At the edge of the long strip of tarmac, Larissa lay on the grass and watched, her heart pounding.
“You have always been a stain on our family’s name, brother,” spat Valeri. “But I would have thought that this betrayal was beneath even you.”
“You know nothing about me,
brother
,” replied Valentin, smiling. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“You are a traitor,” said Valeri, simply. “I know that much. And you will die.”
He moved, so fast that even Larissa could barely see him, and swung his fist towards Valentin. The power in the punch was devastating; it would have smashed his brother’s head to pulp had it connected.
But it didn’t.
Valentin moved in a blur, sliding away and down from where
the punch was aimed. He appeared behind his brother like a jack-in-the-box, and brought both his fists down on the back of the ancient vampire’s neck. Valeri crashed to the ground, blood exploding from his face where it was driven into the tarmac. But he was moving before the crimson liquid even began to run, leaping back to his feet and expanding the distance between himself and his brother.
“You’re faster than I remember,” grunted Valeri, grudgingly.
“And you are as slow and predictable as always,” replied Valentin, then looked over at Larissa. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
Larissa shook her head, bewildered.
“I would have helped sooner,” continued Valentin, his attention returned to his brother, who was circling him slowly. “But no one thought to come and let me know I was needed. I was forced to make my own way out, to get away from that infernal alarm, if nothing else. Just in time too, it would appear.”
Larissa opened her mouth to shout a warning, but there was no time. Valeri shot forward like a bullet out of a gun, his arms wide, intending to grab his brother round the waist and drag him to the ground, but Valentin needed no warning. He stepped effortlessly into the air, and brought his foot down on the back of his brother’s head, stamping it into the tarmac with a revolting crunch as Valeri’s nose and jaw broke. This time Valeri was still for a moment, as pain exploded through his head.
This cannot be
, he thought, as he tasted his own blood in his mouth.
This is impossible.
Valentin leapt away, and regarded the prone figure.
“So strong, brother,” he said, softly. “So powerful but so slow, as you always have been. You never understood that there was more to battle than brute strength. Hopefully, you’re realising it now?”
With a roar that shook the ground, Valeri pushed himself to his feet, and stared at Valentin, his expression clouded with raging, all-consuming hatred. His face was squashed flat, the nose broken in at least two places, the jaw crooked and lumpen, and blood was running freely from a dozen cuts. Valeri shook his head quickly, as if to clear it, then came for his brother again.