Darkest Night

That’s how long Kate had been gone.

It felt like hours.

Jamie checked his console again, hoping against hope that he would see a message from Larissa glowing on its screen. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help himself; it made him feel like he was doing something, no matter how insignificant, and distracted him for a brief moment from the onslaught of accusation the guilty part of his brain was currently hurling at him.

Your fault! You drove her away! You ruined everything! Idiot! Loser! Failure!

He tried to ignore the howling voice, but couldn’t; it was, after all, absolutely right. He had driven her away, of that there could be no doubt; she had come back to the Loop after their fight and within an hour she had been gone. There was simply no way to even begin to pretend that the two events were not connected. It was his fault, plain and simple, and if he got the chance he would apologise to her until he lost his voice.

What if she’s gone for good? What if she’s never coming back?

Jamie shook his head. He could not allow himself to think like that. It was possible that Larissa was simply blowing off steam, that she had just needed to get away from everything, including him, for a little while. Maybe she had gone back to Nevada, where he knew she had been happy. Maybe a message would arrive from General Allen, telling them that she had gone to visit her friends at NS9 and would be home soon.

Then why would her chip have stopped transmitting?

“Shut up,” whispered Jamie. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

Footsteps echoed down the corridor, a rapid rhythm that would have been inaudible to anyone without his supernatural senses, and Jamie froze, listening for the telltale pause outside the door that would signal Kate’s return. The steps stopped, followed a second later by a beep and the whirring sound of locks drawing back. Jamie was on his feet before the door swung open, heat boiling into the corners of his eyes. Kate stepped into her quarters and recoiled.

“Jesus, Jamie,” she said. “Have you been standing there the whole time?”

“What did you find out?” he asked. He was aware that his voice was on the verge of becoming a growl, but was helpless to control it.

“I pulled her chip’s record,” said Kate. “She got back here just after eight thirty last night and left about forty minutes later. Other than her quarters, she only went to one place while she was here.”

“Where?” he asked.

“You have to promise me that you’re going to stay calm.”

“I can’t promise you that,” he said. “Where did she go, Kate?”

“To the cellblock,” said Kate. “She went to see Valentin.”

Jamie stared at her for long seconds, then strode across the room, and hauled the door open. His feet left the ground and he was halfway down the corridor before Kate managed to shout, “Wait!”

In his quarters on Level A, Paul Turner opened the message that had appeared on the screen of his console and frowned.

It was from Angela Darcy, announcing that she was back from the cellblock and had ordered the Security Division to officially list Larissa Kinley as AWOL while an investigation was conducted. Turner knew that the formal classification was merely procedural – he had no reason to believe that the vampire Operator represented any kind of threat to the Department – but her disappearance was a body blow nonetheless; with the exception of Valentin Rusmanov, whose loyalties were murky and changeable at best, as the morning’s developments were illustrating yet again, Larissa was the most powerful Operator in the Department and her loss would severely diminish Blacklight’s ability to respond to Dracula’s next move, whatever it was and whenever it came.

The news of Larissa’s disappearance had been a bad start to the day. Beyond the tactical problem it presented, Turner was also seriously concerned about the effect her disappearance was going to have on the morale of the Department.

There had been widespread distrust of her when she had accepted the offer to become the first vampire Operator in the Department’s long history but, while it had never entirely gone away, it had been dramatically reduced by Larissa’s role in repelling Valeri Rusmanov’s attack on the Loop and her performance at the Battle of Château Dauncy, in which she and Valentin Rusmanov had fought Dracula to a standstill. He knew there were still people in the Loop who were uneasy at the thought of a vampire Operator, and a small number who would simply never accept her, but he also knew that the majority had come to believe that they were better off with Larissa on their side than without.

Now she was gone, and he suspected that her disappearance would be yet another blow to the already fragile confidence of the Department he now led.

And there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain, he thought. Jamie and Kate and Matt are going to be devastated.

The relationship between Jamie Carpenter and Larissa Kinley – the descendant of the Founders and the vampire girl – was an endless source of whispered curiosity throughout the Loop. Turner had stood in the infirmary barely two weeks earlier as Larissa threatened to murder every Operator in the Department if the medical staff didn’t give her boyfriend the transfusion that would stop his turn taking place. Only Jamie’s intervention had calmed her down, and Turner knew that her disappearance was going to hit the teenager like a ton of bricks. They had been through so much together that he believed it would be hard, if not impossible, for Jamie to move on if she simply didn’t come back.

He wasn’t sure the same would go for Jamie’s best friend. Matt Browning was buried deeply in the endless grind of the Lazarus Project – too deeply in the opinion of most neutral observers – and Turner doubted that even the unexplained absence of his friend would prove anything more than a momentary distraction. It wasn’t that he believed that Matt wouldn’t care about Larissa being gone, or wouldn’t be worried about Jamie, but rather that he was so completely engrossed in his work that his remarkable brain would not be able to justify expending any of its prodigious capacity on something that he could do nothing about.

Kate Randall, on the other hand? On that score, Turner was far from certain. She had first-hand experience in dealing with loss, awful, dreadful experience that had first pushed the two of them together, and he knew how tough she was, how resilient and capable. But she was also devoted to her friends. He was sure there would be a part of her, the part she hid from almost everyone, that would wonder whether there had been anything she could have done, whether there had been signs and signals that she had missed, whether she had somehow failed Larissa when she needed her.

Turner found himself smiling as he thought about Kate, then felt a sharp pang of guilt stab at him. After he became Director, he had made the decision to allow some distance between himself and the teenage girl he had come to rely on. It was for her own good; her rapid rise to a position of influence within the Security Division had caused resentment, and he knew full well that there were many people inside the Loop who believed she had intentionally cultivated a close relationship with him or, even more unkindly, that he had given her special treatment because she had been in a relationship with his son when he died. If he kept her close now that he was Director, as he would have preferred to, the accusations, the belief that she was a teacher’s pet, that she was nothing more than his favourite would become ever more insistent.

Accusations which were complete bullshit.

In an ideal world, he would have made her Security Officer, and done so without the slightest hesitation; his job was to ensure that the vital roles inside Blacklight were filled by the best people, and Kate was simply that good. But the world was far from ideal, and it would have been an endless distraction that he, and Kate, did not need.

Especially not now, he thought. Not if Larissa really is gone.

The wall screen opposite his desk lit up as a loud tone rang out of the speakers, displaying an INCOMING CALL message. He read Angela Darcy’s name in the window and clicked ACCEPT.

“Sir?” asked the Security Officer.

“I’m here, Captain Darcy,” he replied. “What is it?”

“I need you to go online, sir. Right now.”

Turner frowned, and opened a browser window. “What site?” he asked.

“Any of them, sir,” said Angela.

The Director’s frown deepened. “Stay on the line,” he said, and typed the address for BBC News into the search bar. The site loaded, and a thick black BREAKING NEWS headline filled the screen, twelve words that stopped the breath in his lungs.

VIDEO MESSAGE SHOWS VAMPIRE CLAIMING TO BE DRACULA, ISSUES WARNING TO HUMANITY

Turner clicked on the headline. The page shifted to an article that was only two paragraphs long, with More to follow beneath them, but he paid the words no attention; his eye was drawn instantly to the video embedded at the top of the page. The rectangular box was black, with the words A MESSAGE at its centre. With a hand that had begun to almost imperceptibly tremble, Turner clicked PLAY.

The words faded away, replaced by a dimly lit shot of a seated figure. Turner felt his stomach lurch. Little more than the figure’s face was visible, but that was more than enough; the pale skin, the narrow features, the piercing eyes, the moustache and the long hair were instantly, awfully recognisable.

Dracula.

“Citizens of the world,” said the first vampire, his voice low and smooth. “I am Dracula, and I bring glad tidings for you all. You shall have the privilege of witnessing my rise, which is now at hand. It cannot be stopped, nor given pause. It is certain. It is as inevitable as the setting of the sun. Those of you who kneel may find me merciful. Those of you who oppose me will die. In time, I will speak again.”

The footage returned to black, before two words appeared that chilled Turner to his core; he had seen them so many times, in photographs and grainy phone footage, on walls and pavements across the country.

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Turner let out a long, deep breath.

“Are you still there, Angela?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the Security Officer.

“Get the Intelligence Division on this immediately,” he said. “Every single frame. I want them to find something that tells us where Dracula is. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”