Jamie knew it was a violation of operational protocol to bring the helicopter down in the middle of the Marais, but there was no other option that he could see. The pilot had expressed surprise when he heard Jamie’s order, but he had not objected; by the time the team emerged from the building he had set the chopper down in the centre of the wide boulevard, and loaded the black SUV into its hold.
Carrying Frankenstein in his wolf form took all five of the team; the animal was incredibly heavy, and his fur slid through their gloved fingers like spiders’ webs. The pilot saw them emerge, ran over and shoved the gate open. They hauled the wolf through the narrow gap, and, with a huge effort, loaded it into the helicopter. The pilot leapt inside and began strapping the animal down with restraining belts, as Jamie’s team removed their helmets and took their seats.
Jamie climbed in last, his eyes on the many windows that overlooked their extraction; there were lights on in several of them,
and he thought he saw a number of curtains twitch, but he saw no one. He took a quick last look at the grey windowless building, then turned and leapt up into the helicopter.
“Go!” he yelled, and strapped himself into his seat as the engine noise rose to a piercing scream, and the squat helicopter lumbered into the air.
Too late,
thought Jamie.
She said I was going to be too late. Too late for what?
“I’ve got a General Alarm at the Loop!” yelled the pilot, above the howl of the engines. “It was sounded two minutes ago, sir.”
“Get us there as quickly as you can!” shouted Jamie.
The helicopter tore across western France, and boomed out over the English Channel, heading north-west. There was silence in the back of the helicopter; Jamie had told the rest of the team Larissa’s message, and all five of them were wondering what was happening at the base they all thought of as home.
“Five minutes,” repeated the pilot. “We’re coming in—”
The pilot’s voice died out as the interior of the helicopter suddenly blazed purple. The team threw their hands over their eyes, as the light pierced every corner of the helicopter’s cabin. Then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, the light was gone.
“Report!” yelled Jamie. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the pilot. His voice was low, and full of shock. “Whatever it was, it came from the Loop. It looked like a million UV grenades went off at once, sir.”
Jamie looked around at the worried faces of his team.
“Fly faster,” he said.
Cal Holmwood watched the helicopter roar overhead, descending rapidly towards the landing area. Beside him, Larissa tried to get to
her feet, and fell back on the grass. She swore, and grabbed another bottle of blood out of the holdall. She tipped it into her mouth, her eyes fixed on the helicopter as it touched down outside the hangar, its tyres screeching on the burning tarmac.
As soon as the huge vehicle came to a stop, Jamie hauled the door open and leapt out. For a moment, he merely stood, staring; fires were burning from the doors of the hangar to the edges of the long runway, and the ground was scattered with dark, motionless figures, and splashes of drying blood.
My God,
he thought.
This can’t be real.
Then he saw Kate, kneeling on the ground, and ran towards her.
“Kate!” he shouted, his feet thudding across the tarmac. “Kate! Where’s Larissa? Are you—”
She turned to look at him, and he skidded to a halt, three metres away from her. Her face was a mask of agony, and his heart lurched with fear.
It’s Larissa. Something’s happened to Larissa.
Then he noticed Paul Turner standing beside her, as still as a statue. He walked forward on trembling legs, and saw what his friend was kneeling beside.
Shaun Turner lay on the cold tarmac of the landing area, his eyes wide, staring up at nothing. His neck was bent horribly to one side; a ridge of bone, cracked almost in half, was visible beneath the skin. His chest was still, and his hands lay limply at his sides. Kate was cradling his head, her hands buried in his hair. She was not crying; the word did not do justice to the guttural, primal sounds of grief that were emerging from her throat.
Jamie tried to make his body respond; he wanted to run to Kate and wrap his arms round her, wanted to pull her away from the
terrible lifeless thing that had been her boyfriend, but he could not make himself move. He stared dumbly as he watched his friend suffering through a nightmare he knew all too well.
Slowly, like a statue coming haltingly to life, Paul Turner stepped forward. Jamie watched, his eyes wide, his mind unable to begin to comprehend what the Security Officer must be seeing with his glacial grey eyes, his heart breaking for a man who had generally treated him with a respect he had not always deserved. Turner took two robotic steps, and then knelt beside Kate, looking down at his son.
“Let him go,” he said, his voice soft. Kate looked round at him, her face streaked with tears. “Please,” said Turner. “Please let him go.”
Kate stared at him for a long moment, and Jamie felt a terrible bond of grief crystallise between them. It was palpable, even from where he was standing. Then she gently slid her hands out from under Shaun’s head. Turner replaced them with his own, and Kate stumbled to her feet, backing away, towards Jamie. She stood beside him, her eyes locked on Shaun’s father as he entered the worst nightmare of every parent.
Jamie looked at her, trying desperately to think of something to say, but everything his mind could come up with sounded pitifully inadequate. Then a small noise floated through the night air, a hitching, rattling sound that seemed to be full of all the grief in the world. He looked on, utterly helpless, as one of the most desperate, stomach-churning moments of his life played out.
He watched as Paul Turner began to weep over the body of his son.
Jamie reached out and touched Kate’s shoulder. She flinched, then turned to face him, the expression on her face appearing to teeter
on the brink of catatonia. Her eyes were wide and staring, her mouth hung open, as though her internal processes had been shut down.
He looked at her, completely unable to think of anything to say; instead, he fumbled for her shoulders, and pulled her tightly against him. She came willingly, burying her head against his chest, and beginning to tremble as the first of a series of terrible, racking sobs escaped her. He held her as tight as he dared, as if trying to shut out everything that had happened around her, as if he could make it better by preventing her from seeing it. He lowered his head so his mouth was beside her ear, and started to whisper to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond; he held her as she shook and shivered in his arms.
They stayed that way for a long time, as the Operators who had survived whatever had happened while Jamie and his team were in Paris began to gather round Paul Turner, their heads lowered in respect for his loss.
Doctors in white coats ran between injured men and women, and a steady stream of stretchers rolled in and out of the hangar. Three Operators were making their way across the landing area, systematically staking the smouldering remains of the vampires; they exploded with small claps of air, the blood in their veins boiled dry by the searing ultraviolet fire.
Jamie stared desperately around; he couldn’t see Larissa, or Admiral Seward, and he could feel panic rising in his chest, even as he tried to comfort Kate. He saw Jack Williams talking to his brother Patrick, and when Patrick walked away, Jamie called Jack’s name. He made his way over to Jamie, as Angela Darcy appeared at his side, her eyes wide with distress.
“What happened?” he asked, quietly. “What the hell happened, Jack?”
His friend’s face was a ghostly mask as he replied. “Valeri attacked us,” he said, softly. “Brought an army, at least two hundred of them, and attacked the Loop.”
“Let me take her,” said Angela, nodding towards Kate. “You two need to talk.”
For a second, Jamie resisted; he didn’t want to let go of his friend. But Angela was right; even in the midst of all the horror surrounding them, there were things that needed to be said, and done. He gently eased Kate away from his chest, and let Angela slip her arms round her; she went unprotestingly, and as Angela began to stroke her hair, Jamie led Jack out of earshot.
“Why wasn’t there a warning?” he asked, looking around at the carnage that had taken place on the very doorstep of the Blacklight base. “How did they get so close before we fought back?”
“Someone gave them a route through the sensors,” said Jack. “Or that’s what people are saying anyway. I’m not sure anyone really knows.”
“Where’s Admiral Seward? He’ll know.”
Jack looked at his friend, and pain broke across his face.
“Jamie…”
Oh no
, thought Jamie, cold running up his spine.
Oh, please no. Not him too.
“Don’t tell me he’s dead, Jack,” warned Jamie, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. “Don’t tell me that, OK? Please?”
“He’s not dead,” said Jack. “At least, as far as we know. Valeri took him. Alive.”
“Took him where?” asked Jamie. “Have they run his chip?”
The locator chip that was embedded in the arm of every Operator
could mark their position anywhere in the world, to within less than a metre. Each one had a unique frequency, and a battery that would last a century. Jamie had been implanted with one when he was young, so young he didn’t remember it happening; his father had done it as a way of protecting him, and it had worked; it had been what led Frankenstein to him, the night his mother was taken.
“It stopped transmitting halfway across the North Sea,” said Jack. “It’s gone.”
Jamie stared at Jack, horrified. The chips were located beneath the muscle of the forearm; a surgical procedure would be required to remove it, and that didn’t even allow for the fact that the locator chips’ very existence was one of Blacklight’s most closely guarded secrets. The implications of the Director’s chip ceasing to transmit were unavoidable, and deeply unsettling.
“Have you seen Larissa?” asked Jamie, his voice thick with emotion.
Admiral Seward was in the hands of a monster, and his closest friend, his girlfriend, was nowhere to be seen; he felt as though he was standing on quicksand.
“I haven’t, Jamie,” said Jack, softly.
Jamie’s stomach lurched. Larissa was a vampire, with superhuman strength and healing, so her being injured was, unfortunately, the least likely outcome. If he couldn’t find her, if she was nowhere to be seen, it was far more likely that she was dead, especially as whatever had happened before they landed had decimated what he assumed had once been Valeri’s army; he couldn’t see a living vampire anywhere.
At the edge of the long runway that split the middle of the Loop’s grounds, where the tarmac gave way to the wide expanse of grass,
three figures climbed slowly to their feet, and began to walk towards the burning landing area.
Cal Holmwood walked in the middle, ready to offer support to either of the two vampires that walked at his sides. Valentin Rusmanov walked with slow determination; the blood that Holmwood had fed him, tipping it into his mouth like a mother feeding a newborn baby, had revived his body, but he was still far from fully recovered. He was bleeding from a number of places: from his ears, from beneath his fingernails and from the back of his throat. Every few paces he spat a thick wad of dark blood on to the ground. His body was screaming with pain, but it was holding together, and that was enough, for now at least.
His memory of what had happened ended only seconds after the ultraviolet bombs had detonated. He had been feeding Larissa, his mind screaming at him to chase his brother, to put an end to Valeri once and for all, but he had found himself unable to leave the wounded vampire girl. His blood had been flowing into her mouth when the ground began to shake.
Valentin had watched as a wide hole opened in the ground, less than twenty metres from where he was kneeling beside Larissa, and a huge transparent ball had risen from the darkness. Then a high-pitched whine, louder and more painful than any sound he had ever heard, had split his head open, and the world had turned purple. He had remained conscious just long enough to realise that the foul smell permeating his nostrils was his own burning flesh, and then there had been nothing but deep, empty darkness.
Larissa remembered even less; she had not seen the huge bombs emerge from beneath the grounds of the Loop, had not seen the flash that had burned her eyes from their sockets. She remembered the terrible feeling of Valeri laying her throat open to the cool
evening air, and the soothing feeling of Valentin’s arm beneath her fangs, and then there was nothing.
She was in less pain than the ancient vampire; Holmwood had given more of his supply of blood to her than to Valentin, but every step still sent rivers of agony coursing up her spine. The skin at her throat was pink, and tender, and she knew she was still weak; she had tried to fly, tried to step into the air and go looking for Jamie, but had folded back to the ground, bleeding from her eyes and ears.
After she had told Cal Holmwood to help Valentin, after she had told him that the vampire had tried to help her, Jamie’s name had been the first word she uttered when the Colonel returned to her side.
Holmwood had told her that his helicopter had returned, had landed only minutes earlier, and that was what had prompted her ill-fated attempt to fly, an attempt that had seen Holmwood bellow angrily at her, telling her to take it easy. She had acquiesced, forcing herself to remain still as he finished tending to Valentin; but now she was on her feet, and they were making their way back towards the survivors of Valeri’s attack, and Jamie was all she could think about.
“What happened?” asked Larissa, as they crossed the runway and walked on to the landing area. Patches of fire still burned where the vampires of Valeri’s army had fallen, even though almost all the bodies had now been staked. Three Operators were diligently destroying the last of them, a small cluster who had burned together by the entrance to the hangar. “What did this?”