Department 19: Zero Hour (30 page)

They’re somewhere I don’t know, somewhere Valeri never told me about. Which means they could be anywhere in the world. Which means this is impossible.

He took another sip of his drink, deep in thought. Around him, the narrow cobbled streets of San Sebastián’s Parte Vieja thronged with life as tourists moved in slow clusters of camera lenses and baseball caps around the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Chorus and the shops and restaurants that catered to their every need. Young men and women, many of them clearly too young to drink, spilled in and out of the bars and the bodegas, laughing and drinking and shouting. Valentin, who had taken the study of humanity to the level of a fine art, was so engrossed in their charming, awkward interactions that he didn’t notice the smell of the vampire until it was standing beside him.

“I thought you were your brother,” said a lilting, childlike voice. “I’m really pleased you’re not.”

Valentin’s eyes flared involuntarily red, and his heart leapt in his chest.

Good Lord,
he thought.
Unforgivable, to be crept up on so easily. Absolutely unforgivable.

He turned his head and found himself looking up at an uneven mountain of a man, with a small head and a pale, empty face. The vampire was peering down at him with an expression of enormous nervousness.

“Anderson,” said Valentin, his voice smooth and friendly, his equilibrium instantly recovered. “What an unexpected pleasure. If you are here to fight, may I suggest we repair to a more discreet location? I don’t think your master will appreciate us appearing on the evening news.”

“Fight?” said Anderson, his brow creasing with confusion. “Why would we fight?”

Valentin narrowed his eyes. “You are not here on my brother’s orders?”

Anderson gave his head a long, slow shake. “I thought you were him,” he said. “I thought you’d come looking for me. I thought you were going to make me go back.”

“Back where?”

“
There
,” said Anderson, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Back to him.”

“You know where my brother is?”

“Of course I do.”

“Where is he?” asked Valentin, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice.

Anderson frowned. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

“You can tell me, Anderson. Valeri and I are family.”

“But I saw the two of you fighting. And he calls you a traitor now.”

“Brothers fight,” said Valentin. “And they say unkind things about each other. But blood is always what matters in the end.”

Anderson nodded. “It’s sad when families fall out with each other. It’s a shame.”

“It is,” said Valentin. “Will you tell me where my brother is, Anderson? So I can go and put things right with him.”

“I don’t know,” said Anderson. The vampire’s face was screwed up with the physical effort of trying to decide what to do. As the colour in it began to rise alarmingly, Valentin decided to try a different approach.

“You are no longer associating with my brother?” he asked. “Is that right?”

Anderson nodded, his face unfolding with relief at being asked a question he knew how to answer. “I wanted to go, so I asked him if I could go, but he told me I had to stay, because I’d be no good without him and it was dangerous for me to be out in the world on my own. But he was never very nice to me, not like Alexandru was, so I left anyway. Now I live in a little house not far from here, with a cow and some pigs and two dogs, and when I smelt your scent yesterday I was afraid, because I thought he’d found me. So I decided to be brave, and come and see what you wanted. But you’re not Valeri.”

“No,” said Valentin. “I am not. When did you leave, Anderson?”

“After the fight at Blacklight.”

“Because my brother didn’t treat you well?”

“Yes,” said Anderson, his voice low. “But not just that. Because of the other one too.”

“Dracula?”

Anderson winced. “I don’t like to hear his name. I won’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he scares me. People think I’m stupid, but I know enough. I know what will happen when he’s better and it makes me sad. I like the world as it is.”

Valentin smiled. “So do I, Anderson. So do I.” He gestured towards the empty chair opposite his own. “Why don’t you sit down and join me?”

Anderson hesitated, his big, empty face incapable of pretence, then lowered himself into the chair, its wicker sides creaking appreciably as the waiter instantly appeared beside them. Valentin ordered a second Americano, and, after a long moment’s consideration, Anderson asked for a cup of coffee with an umbrella in it. He looked nervously at Valentin as the waiter scurried away, clearly unsure whether he had done the right thing, and the ancient vampire fought back a smile. Anderson, who had committed countless murders and inflicted innumerable tortures on the orders of the two elder Rusmanovs, possessed a gentle simplicity that felt strangely like innocence, and Valentin wondered whether the misshapen vampire would hurt a fly without someone to tell him to do so.

He doubted it.

“So my brothers and I all smell the same?” he asked.

Anderson flinched, clearly fearing rebuke, his eyes widening, his face twisting with worry. Then he saw the warm smile on Valentin’s face and broke into one of his own, a happy, sunny expression of relief.

“Not now,” he said. “But from a distance, yes. I knew it was one of you, but I couldn’t tell which one. For a moment, I thought … I thought …”

“You thought I might be Alexandru,” said Valentin, gently.

Anderson nodded, and looked down at the table. The waiter reappeared, and there was silence as he unloaded their drinks from his small tray. When he departed, clutching a handful of euros, Anderson raised his head, and Valentin saw tears in the huge vampire’s eyes.

“Do you miss him?” asked Valentin. “Alexandru?”

“I do,” said Anderson, his voice strained and unsteady. “I loved him.”

“So did I,” said Valentin. “For a long time, I loved him very much.”

“He loved you too,” said Anderson. “He didn’t like Valeri, but he talked about you often. He missed you.”

“I felt the same,” said Valentin. “It was hard, though. The vampire who died was not the man I missed.”

“I don’t understand,” said Anderson. “He was your brother.”

“He was,” said Valentin. “But he wasn’t the same, by the end. Do you understand what I mean?”

For a long moment, Anderson’s face went blank, as though the power to it had been cut. Then one of the saddest smiles Valentin had ever seen rose slowly on to it.

“I do,” he said. “He went bad. After Ilyana, he went bad.”

Alexandru went bad long before that,
thought Valentin.
Decades, maybe centuries even. But you’re right, that was the final straw. That was when the last part of the man he had been died.

“That’s right,” he said. “You stayed with him, though. You were loyal.”

Anderson’s smile broadened, becoming something that was close to beautiful. “I was,” he said. “To the very end. I was there when he died, when the boy killed him.”

“Jamie Carpenter,” said Valentin.

Anderson nodded. “He pulled a cross down on Alexandru, and his friends hurt us. One of them hurt me, but I escaped.”

“And Valeri took you in?”

“Yes. He told me it was what Alexandru wanted. He said they had talked about it.”

You poor creature,
thought Valentin.
Passed from one master to the next, like a slave.

He took a sip of his Americano. “But you didn’t like being with him?”

Anderson shook his head. “He wasn’t nice to me. Not like Alexandru. Alexandru treated me well.”

Alexandru tortured you and tormented you and made you do awful things in his name,
thought Valentin.
He was a sadistic, abusive bully, but you loved him, and that’s what you remember.

“You did the right thing, Anderson,” he said. “By leaving, I mean. Valeri is a shadow of the man Alexandru was, and you were right not to let him tell you what to do.”

Anderson nodded. “I know,” he said. “I was so scared, but I did it. I have a farm, south of here, where I live now. I have a cow and two dogs and—”

“And some pigs?” interrupted Valentin, smiling gently at the vampire.

“That’s right,” said Anderson, his face a mask of happiness. “There are seven of them. I could show you, if you wanted? It’s not far.”

“I’d love to see them,” said Valentin. “But I’m afraid I can’t go now. I have to see my brother, as I said.”

Anderson’s face fell, but he nodded. “Maybe some other time?” he said, in a small voice.

“Definitely,” said Valentin. “As soon as I’m done with Valeri. If you tell me where he is, I can go and see him tonight and get it over with.”

Anderson frowned, but this time the block that Valeri had placed in his head failed to hold. “He’s at his château,” he said, slowly. “With his master. That’s where they are.”

“His château?” asked Valentin.

“Château Dauncy,” said Anderson. “That’s what it’s called. It’s north of here, in France. Near Bordeaux.”

“Thank you, Anderson,” said Valentin. “You’ve done the right thing.”

The vampire smiled, then drank his coffee in one long slug. He put the cup, tiny in his huge hands, like a child’s toy, back on the table and got slowly to his feet.

“I should go home,” he said. “Thank you very much for the drink. If you wanted to come and see me sometime, that would be nice.”

“It would,” said Valentin. “And I will. I promise.”

Anderson looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t think you will,” he said, eventually. “But that’s all right. It was kind of you to say it.”

“I’m a man of my word, Anderson,” said Valentin. “If I say I’ll do something, I do it. You can trust me.”

Anderson nodded, but said nothing.

“All right,” said Valentin. “Goodbye then, Anderson. Look after yourself, and your cow and your dogs and your pigs. If the worst happens, if the one whose name you don’t like to say does rise, you keep your head down. And be careful.”

“I will,” said Anderson. “It was nice to see you, Valentin. You aren’t as scary as I remember.”

Valentin laughed, a warm sound that floated out across the crowded street. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I suspect you are probably right.”

Anderson nodded a final time, then disappeared into the crowd and was gone.

Valentin sipped his drink and lit a Bliss cigarette from the silver case resting on the glass tabletop. A voice was whispering at the back of his mind that what he had just done, manipulated Anderson’s simple, honest emotions by pretending to care about him, made him no better than either of his brothers, but he silenced it. There was too much at stake for such soft thinking, and too little time left. The best thing Anderson could do was get himself as far away as possible from any vampire involved in what was coming, and stay there.

In any case,
he rationalised to himself,
Anderson said quite plainly that he does not want Dracula to rise, and his distaste for Valeri was all too clear. He and I are on the same side.

Valentin let the effects of the Bliss-infused smoke roll through him, marvelling at the remarkable turn of events that had just taken place. After weeks of bloody, frustrating searching, the information that he had started to believe he would never acquire had fallen into his lap because, on some basic, elemental level, he and his brothers shared a common scent, a smell that had blazed like a beacon to Anderson, and given rise to a fearful curiosity that had got the better of him.

It’s about time we made a breakthrough,
he thought, draining the last of his drink.
Blacklight has been fighting with everything it has just to stand still. Maybe this is the moment the tide turns.

Valentin ground out his cigarette and looked at the mass of people flowing in every direction in front of his table, men and women laughing and stumbling through their small lives without the slightest idea of the Hell that awaited them if a conflict they could never know was taking place ended with the wrong side victorious. He envied them their lack of vision, their willingness to embrace the small and the mediocre, their ability to be satisfied inside their cages, their endless, unjustifiable optimism.

Their humanity.

Château Dauncy,
he thought, getting to his feet and pulling his coat round him.
Near Bordeaux. That shouldn’t be too hard to find.

“Well,” said Tim Albertsson, looking round at the members of the DARKWOODS team and trying to force a smile, “I guess the message is pretty clear.”

Jamie Carpenter didn’t respond; his gaze was locked on the wide tree in front of them. Nailed to its trunk was a wolf, its stomach sliced open and pinned back, exposing its insides. Maggots crawled across its organs and gathered in a squirming pile where the animal’s blood had pooled at the base of the tree.

“Right,” said Van Orel, his face pale. “Don’t go any further.”

“Subtle,” said Engel, her voice little more than a whisper.

The six Operators were standing at the very edge of the Teleorman Forest, at the perimeter of their target area. The helicopter that had carried them the short distance from the
Schwartzhaus
had set down in the same field where Grey had woken up barely three days earlier, confused and hungry and missing forty-eight hours. The desecrated tree stood at the northern edge of the field, to one side of a path that led into the forest, its disembowelled warning strung up for all to see.