Department 19: Zero Hour (31 page)

Jamie stared at the wolf, his stomach slowly revolving, icy cold creeping through him.

We’re in the right place,
he thought.
Something knows we’re here. And whatever it is, it doesn’t want to be disturbed.

To the east, the glow of electric lights lit the night sky a pale orange. Before them, the forest stretched out for what seemed like forever, towering rows of trees that quickly became indistinct from each other, such was the darkness between their trunks and the absence of light from above. To the west, a small village sat at the foot of a low hill; pinpricks of electric light shone from windows, and smoke drifted into the air from a handful of chimneys.

“What’s the plan?” said Larissa.

Tim Albertsson tore his gaze away from the wolf and faced his squad. “All right,” he said. “Larissa, I want aerial reconnaissance of the area. Satellite results have been inconclusive, so I want you to tell us what’s in there, OK?”

“OK,” said Larissa, her voice low and cold. “Sir.”

Jamie looked at his girlfriend. There was a narrowness to her eyes and a set to her jaw that he recognised all too well; it meant that someone, usually him, was in trouble. But she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking at their squad leader. Tim Albertsson returned her stare, the faintest hint of a smile on his tanned, handsome face, until Larissa made a noise that could easily have been either a grunt of laughter or a growl of anger, and shot up into the sky, disappearing instantly from view. Albertsson craned his neck in the direction she had disappeared, then smiled at the rest of them.

“Good,” he said. “Jamie, Kristian, I want you in that village. Find out what they know about the forest, and don’t let them say nothing. They live twenty metres away from it. Arkady, Greta, the three of us are going to set up camp. We’re going in at first light tomorrow, so tonight is likely to be the last rest any of us gets for a while. Is that all clear?”

Jamie frowned. “How is Larissa going to come with us if we go in at dawn, sir?”

“Carefully,” said Albertsson, and smiled. “There’s going to be heavy shade beneath the trees and she’ll be fine as long as her skin is covered. She went out during the day in Nevada plenty of times.”

Did she?
wondered Jamie.

“Did you work with her when she was there?” he asked.

Albertsson’s smile widened. “Very closely,” he said.

“Really?” said Jamie. “She’s never mentioned you.”

Albertsson shrugged. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

Jamie didn’t respond; he stared at the American, his gaze steady.

“Any other questions, Lieutenant?” asked Albertsson. “You have orders in hand.”

Jamie let him wait for a long second or two. “No, sir,” he said, eventually, and turned to Van Orel. “You ready?”

The South African wore a slight frown on his face, but he nodded. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Jamie unclipped his MP7 and T-Bone, and set the weapons down on a tarpaulin sheet Engel had spread over the snow-covered ground. He flipped the visor of his helmet down, then checked his Glock as Van Orel followed his lead.

I don’t want to scare anyone,
he thought.
And I don’t think there are going to be any vamps in this village. But I’m not going anywhere unarmed. Not tonight.

Jamie marched off across the field with Van Orel beside him and his mind racing with suspicion. If anyone had asked him whether he trusted Larissa, he would have instantly told them that he did, and would have been telling the truth. But there were things that nagged at him, that caught in the back of his mind and stayed there.

The elephant in the room, the one they’d agreed to never discuss again, was the wild goose chase she had led him and Frankenstein on when his mother was being held captive by Alexandru Rusmanov: a desperate, headlong trip to Valhalla that Larissa had claimed would help them find Marie Carpenter, but which had in reality been solely about settling a personal score with Grey, the vampire who had turned her.

It had been selfish, and duplicitous, and could easily have put Jamie’s mother in harm’s way; that it hadn’t had been due only to a combination of luck and deduction. Larissa had apologised for it, time and time again, and he had accepted her explanation; that she had been scared for her life and desperately trying to prove herself useful so she didn’t receive a T-Bone stake to the heart. He knew it was an unending source of guilt for his girlfriend, and he had forgiven her, genuinely so, a long time ago.

Jamie had no doubt that she was still keeping things from him, despite the promise that the two of them and Kate and Matt had made to each other in the aftermath of the death of Alexandru and the loss of Dracula’s ashes, when they had become so inundated by lies and secrets that it had started to feel as though they might drown. They had pulled themselves clear before it was too late, and sworn to tell each other the truth, no matter what.

No more secrets,
he remembered.
That’s what we told each other.

But keeping their pact had proved harder than even Jamie, who had a cynical streak a mile wide, had expected; secrets piled up so quickly inside Blacklight, a complex web of things that you were allowed to tell certain people but not others, that it was completely impossible to maintain absolute transparency.

He had known for a while that Larissa hadn’t told him everything about the time she had spent at NS9. There were clear holes in her account of the trip she had taken to Las Vegas, about her interaction with Chloe, the vampire girl she met beside a nightclub pool, and about what she had done in the desert; she had definitely not told him that she was able to go out during daylight if her skin was fully covered. But the one aspect of her time in Nevada he had been
sure
that his girlfriend had been straight with him about was her friends. Her face lit up whenever she talked about them, which was often, and he felt like he already knew Kara, Danny, Kelly and Aaron, despite never having met them.

But in the many hours Larissa had spent talking about NS9, she had never mentioned Tim Albertsson, not even once.

Jamie was certain of it.

An almost-full moon hung above his head as they reached the edge of the field, its silver light illuminating little, such was the darkness at the edge of the forest. Even with the night-vision filters of his helmet turned up to full, Jamie found the murkiness that surrounded him and Van Orel unsettling. But as they reached the low stone wall that enclosed the field, it was immediately clear that there were creatures that lived at the edges of the Teleorman Forest who appeared not to mind it.

Standing in the centre of the small, neat village were almost a dozen men and women, shotguns and axes in their hands, expressions of obvious distrust on their faces.

“I have to say,” said Van Orel, over the comms connection that linked the two Operators, “this place is not going to win any awards for friendliness.”

Jamie smiled behind his visor. “No kidding,” he said. “Do you want to take the lead on this?”

“No thanks,” said Van Orel. “I’m very happy to play backup.”

“Kind of you,” said Jamie, and winced as the South African laughed directly into his ear.

All right then,
he thought.
Let’s get this over with.

He stepped up and over the wall, his boots thudding on to the ground on the other side. Van Orel followed him as Jamie raised his visor, felt a momentary surge of panic as he remembered his carelessness in the graveyard, and flipped it back down.

“Watch them closely,” he said into his microphone. “Cameras, phones. We don’t need to end up on the news.”

“Got it,” said Van Orel.

Jamie lifted the visor again and approached the villagers, trying to summon a friendly expression on to his face.

“Hello,” he said. “Do any of you speak English?”

There was no response from the villagers; they merely stared at him, their breath clouding in the cold air, their weapons hanging at their sides. Then a man stepped forward, and regarded the two Operators with eyes that were little more than dark slits.

Jamie swallowed hard. The villager towered over him by at least half a metre; his muscle-clad torso was covered by a woollen coat that was stretched tight across his chest and biceps, above tree-trunk legs wearing blue jeans and a pair of heavy black boots. The dark eyes peered down at Jamie from either side of a flat, squashed nose that sat above a thick black beard covering the man’s cheeks, chin and neck.

“I speak English,” said the man, his voice a low rumble.

Jamie nodded. “Great,” he said, his mouth dry. “My name is Jamie. I’m a Lieutenant in the British Army. I’d like to ask you some—”

“You are lying,” growled the man. “You are not army.”

Jamie frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You are vampire police,” said the man. “You think that we are all backward out here, away from your cities, but we know what you are. You are the Blacklight.”

“Christ,” whispered Van Orel, whose visor and microphone were still in place. “So much for below the radar.”

“How do you know that word?” asked Jamie.

“I read it, vampire policeman,” said the villager. “Are you surprised that I can read?”

Jamie could feel his annoyance at the man’s attitude threatening to boil into anger. He had said nothing to cause any offence, and the aggression seemed unwarranted.

“No,” he said. “I’m not surprised you can read. What is your name?”

“Florin,” said the man.

“And what’s this village called?”

“You could not pronounce it,” said Florin. Behind him, one of the other villagers laughed.

“Easy,” said Van Orel, his voice low and urgent in Jamie’s ear. “Take it easy, man.”

“You’re probably right,” said Jamie, forcing a small smile. “I probably couldn’t. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Florin shrugged.

“Thank you,” said Jamie. “We’re looking for someone who lives in the forest, someone who has lived there for a long time. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

Florin’s eyes narrowed even further. “Nobody lives in the forest.”

“Are you sure?” asked Jamie. “We have other information.”

“I am sure, policeman,” said Florin. “The forest is a place of death. A cursed place. What is in there does not live.”

“So there is something?”

“You saw the wolf,” said Florin. “It was not there yesterday.”

“So it was put there for us?”

“I am not saying anything,” said Florin. “You leave now.”

“One more question,” said Jamie.

Florin shook his head. “No more.”

“Come on,” said Van Orel.

Jamie knew he should follow his squad mate’s advice, but was reluctant to do so; it galled him to slink away when he was told to, like a schoolboy sent out of the classroom by a teacher. But he also had no desire to aggravate the situation until it turned physical; there would be little to be gained from violence, on either side.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll go. Thank you for your time.”

Florin said nothing. Behind him, the rest of the villagers began to disperse, but the huge man didn’t move; his eyes stayed fixed on Jamie’s own. Jamie met the dark gaze for a long moment, then turned back towards the wall. Van Orel was already on the other side, waiting for him. Jamie was about to climb over the pale stone and join his squad mate when the villager’s voice rumbled again, and he turned back.

“Do not go into the forest,” said Florin. “If you value your lives, and your minds, you will not go in. It is old, and full of darkness. We stay at the edges, and we do not enter it unless we must. If you go in with your uniforms and your weapons, then I fear that all that awaits you will be sorrow. So leave, while you still can.”

“You know what’s in there, don’t you?” said Jamie, his voice low. “Is it a vampire? A very old vampire?”

“It is death,” said Florin. “Cold, and patient, and empty. We will not speak again.” And with that, the huge villager turned and strode away without a backward glance.

Jamie watched until the man’s towering shape disappeared into the gloom, then turned to face Van Orel. The South African had flipped up his visor and had an incredulous expression on his face.

“Mate,” he said. “Where the hell are we? I mean, seriously.”

Jamie smiled. “Not a clue,” he said. “Let’s head back. Maybe Larissa will find something.”

“So you and Larissa,” said Van Orel, as the two Operators fell back into step beside each other. “That’s a thing, right?”

Jamie nodded. “It’s a thing.”

“That’s cool,” said Van Orel. “She seems awesome.”

“She is.”

Van Orel smiled. “She’s sort of terrifying too. Or is that just me?”

“Trust me,” Jamie said, and grinned widely. “It’s not just you.”

Floating in the darkness above the thick canopy of trees, Larissa tried to hold back the desperation that was threatening to crash through her like a tidal wave.

She loved hearing Jamie say she was awesome, and didn’t mind him agreeing with Van Orel that she was terrifying; her vampire side, lurking as always in the back of her mind, took it as a great compliment. And she knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, to use her supernatural abilities to listen to people who didn’t know they were being listened to, but as far as she was concerned, the current situation justified it.

She had floated above the camp for several minutes, listening to Tim talk about her to Jamie with a familiarity that made her blood run cold. She didn’t know whether her boyfriend already suspected that something was going on, that there was a history he wasn’t aware of, but it would only be a matter of time if Tim continued to be so deliberately suggestive. At some point, Jamie, whose temper could be dangerously short on occasions, would demand to know exactly what Tim was implying, and even though Larissa knew she had technically done nothing wrong – she had pushed Tim away when he kissed her in Mexico, had warned him not to try it again in Las Vegas – it was going to be hard convincing Jamie of that when she had carefully cut Tim out of every story she had told about her time in Nevada. He trusted her, she was sure of that, but she would not be able to blame him if he was unable to believe her.