Department 19: Zero Hour (62 page)

He came back,
he thought.
I had honestly given up hope that he would.

He forced himself to walk towards Valentin. The vampire’s smile widened as he approached; when he was within range, the youngest Rusmanov grasped his hand and clapped him hard on the shoulder.

“Major Turner,” said Valentin. “Long time no see.”

“Valentin,” replied Turner, fighting back a smile of his own. He was suddenly almost euphoric at the sight of the ancient vampire. “It’s good to see you.”

“I wouldn’t commit to that sentiment just yet,” said Valentin. “Not until you hear what I have to tell you.”

Turner nodded. “All right,” he said. “Tell me.”

Valentin took a deep breath. “I found them,” he said. “As I promised I would. Dracula, my brother, their associates. And your former Director.”

Ice spilled through Paul Turner’s body. “You saw Henry Seward?” he said. “With your own eyes? Is he alive?”

Valentin nodded. “Yes,” he said. “For now, at least. But we need to hurry.”

Turner frowned. “We?”

“You heard me,” said Valentin. “Take me to Cal Holmwood, then get everyone ready. We don’t have much time.”

Matt Browning walked down the
Mina II’
s ramp on to the familiar tarmac runway of the Loop and paused, rooted to the spot.

He was utterly exhausted; the flight had been barely four hours long, but his body was still running on Nevada time, and was convinced it was barely midnight. That, coupled with the stiff foam collar that was wrapped tightly round his injured neck, the splint and bandage covering his finger, and the emotionally draining experience of the operation in San Francisco, had left him feeling as though he had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. He wanted nothing more than to climb carefully into his bed and grab at least a couple of hours of desperately needed sleep, before he returned to the Lazarus Project labs and got to work on the data he had brought back from America.

But the sky stopped him in his tracks.

The entire eastern horizon was filled with glorious light, a seemingly endless watercolour vista of pink and purple and orange and yellow, rising from the tops of the trees to a scattered layer of low white clouds, above which the blue-black of the departing night was still visible. It was simply breathtaking; the kind of sky that made even Matt, a man devoted to science and reason, understand why people chose to believe in God. He stared, unable to tear his eyes from the wonder of it all, until a small voice spoke from behind him.

“Oh no,” it said. “Your neck.”

Matt felt a familiar flutter in his chest and smiled, despite his pain. He turned and found Natalia Lenski looking at him with wide eyes, her blond hair fluttering in the morning breeze.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Nothing permanent.”

She reached out with a trembling hand and gently touched his injured finger. “You are hurt,” she said.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Honest. Two or three days of keeping my head still, that’s all.”

Natalia looked far from convinced, but nodded. She pointed at the sky. “Pretty,” she said.

Matt looked directly at her. “Yes,” he said.

Natalia blushed, her cheeks colouring a delicate pale pink. Then she darted forward and kissed him, her soft lips pressing urgently against his. Matt frowned, then closed his eyes and kissed her back. The flutter in his stomach turned to heat, spreading up through his chest, until she broke the kiss and stepped back. Matt opened his eyes and saw a look of such profound misery on her face that the fire raging within him was instantly extinguished.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you OK?”

“I am sorry,” she said. “I wanted you to have something nice before you heard.”

Matt frowned again. “Before I heard about what?” he asked.

“About Jamie,” said Natalia, and dropped her eyes to the tarmac.

Matt’s insides froze. He stared at the Russian teenager, his eyes widening, his legs beginning to shake, then reached out and took hold of her arms. She raised her head and looked at him.

“What about him?” he managed to ask. “What’s happened to Jamie?”

Matt walked stiffly along the Level C corridor, his neck throbbing with pain, his heart pounding in his chest, and pushed open the doors to the infirmary.

Jamie was lying in the bed nearest the doors, his eyes closed. On the table beside him stood a glass of water, a pile of files and folders, and two plastic bags full of blood; it was these that drew Matt’s gaze.

This is real,
he thought.
Part of me was hoping Natalia had got it wrong.

His friend looked peaceful as he slept, but the sight still sent a chill up Matt’s spine. It was exactly how Jamie had described
him
, when
he
had been lying in a coma in a guarded room at the back of the infirmary, after Larissa’s vampire side had almost killed him. Jamie had come to see him as he lay unconscious, for reasons he had never been able to fully articulate; what had happened to Matt had scared him, he said, and he had felt very alone, in desperate need of someone to talk to. So desperate that he had chosen as his confidant a boy in a coma that he had, at that point, never spoken to.

Matt smiled, even as sorrow filled his heart. This was not how it was supposed to have gone; he was supposed to have found a cure so that Larissa and Jamie’s mother could be returned to normal, not find himself standing beside the bed of another innocent person who had been changed forever into something that was both more, and less, than human. As a result, the overriding emotion filling him was guilt.

You failed him,
he thought.
He believed in you and you let him down. You let them all down.

Jamie stirred, his long arms rising languidly above his head in a semi-conscious stretch. Then his eyes opened, and for a long moment, the two teenage boys simply stared silently at each other. Then a slow smile rose on to Jamie’s face.

“Nice collar,” he said. “Shame I haven’t got a ball you can fetch.”

Matt grinned. “Dick,” he said. “How are you, Jamie?”

“I’m not really sure how to answer that,” said Jamie.

Matt walked across to the bed and peered down at his friend. “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s see them.”

Jamie smiled, then bared his teeth as though presenting them for inspection at the dentist’s. His face contorted and reddened with effort, and after a long moment, two white fangs slid down from above his upper teeth. He ran his tongue across them and shook his head.

“That feels so weird,” he said. “I can’t even tell you.”

“It
looks
weird,” said Matt. “What about your eyes?”

“I don’t know,” said Jamie. “Larissa told me I won’t be able to control it for a while. It will just happen.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Matt. “What happened, Jamie? Who did this to you?”

“The first victim,” said Jamie. “He bit me.”

“The who?”

“Are you kidding me?” asked Jamie. “Don’t you ever read your Zero Hour reports?”

Matt shook his head.

“The first man Dracula ever bit,” said Jamie. “He’s almost as old, maybe almost as powerful. Grey found him in Romania, and we went to see if he would help us fight Dracula.”

“Who’s we?” asked Matt.

“Me and Larissa,” said Jamie. “And four others, from other Departments.”

“Jesus,” said Matt. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”

“You were already gone,” said Jamie. “We didn’t get selected until after you’d gone to Nevada.”

“I tried to find you,” said Matt, his voice low. “The day before I went. I sent you messages.”

“I know,” said Jamie. “I’m sorry, mate. I screwed up the night before, screwed up badly. I wasn’t up to seeing anyone.”

Matt nodded. “So what happened in Romania then? You found this first victim and he attacked you?”

Jamie shrugged. “Sort of,” he said. “He refused to help, and Larissa told him he didn’t have to, that we could use his blood and what was on his fangs to make vampires powerful enough to fight Dracula. He still refused, so I called him a coward, and he bit me. He said he was giving me what I wanted.”

“How did Larissa handle that?” asked Matt.

“Not well,” said Jamie. “She screamed and attacked him. I lost consciousness, but she told me that the rest of our squad attacked him as well, and got taken apart. Then he gave me to her and said it was up to her what she did. The next thing I knew she was standing right where you are now, screaming and yelling and saying she’d kill anyone who tried to stop me from being transfused. It was pretty crazy. I managed to talk her out of it, just about.”

“Christ,” said Matt. “That is crazy.”

Jamie shrugged again. “Maybe,” he said. “You have to see it from her perspective, though. We’ve talked about this loads of times, about what would happen if I ever got turned, and she’s always made it clear that it would be her worst nightmare. Now it’s happened, and to be honest with you, I’m pretty sure that at least part of her thinks I did it on purpose.”

“Did you?” asked Matt.

“No,” said Jamie, instantly. “I thought about it when we got selected for the op, and I guessed it might be the end result, for at least one of us. But I didn’t go looking for it, Matt. It just happened.”

Matt nodded. He was sure there was at least a small part of his friend that was going to relish being a vampire, would enjoy the speed and strength that came with being turned, but he didn’t think that, given a genuine choice, it would be something Jamie would have volunteered for. With a mother and a girlfriend who were both vampires and both vocally hated the condition, it would have been far more selfish than Matt was willing to believe his friend was capable of being. His turning was going to break his mother’s heart, and he was certain that Jamie would never knowingly cause that to happen.

“So what happened to your neck?” asked Jamie. “Did Adam do it?”

“No,” said Matt. “It’s probably all classified, for now at least, but it wasn’t Adam. It was the NS9 squad leader.”

Jamie’s eyes opened wide. “What the hell?”

Matt shrugged, extremely carefully. “No idea. He put a gun to my head, forced me to take my samples, and dragged me out of the lab. I made him crash the squad’s SUV into a wall, and gave myself whiplash in the process.”

Jamie’s smile had disappeared. “Jesus,” he said, softly. “You crashed a car into a wall?”

Matt went to nod, and grimaced as a bolt of pain shot through his neck. “Yeah,” he said. “I pressed his foot on the accelerator. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt and I was, so it sort of made sense at the time.”

Jamie nodded. “You’re OK, though?” he asked. “Right?”

“It’ll be fine in a few days,” said Matt. “Now enough about my neck. I’ve got a question for you, a big one. I’ve never asked Larissa, because it felt a bit too personal.”

“Go for it,” said Jamie.

“What does blood actually taste like?” asked Matt, and smiled widely.

“Honestly?” said Jamie. “It’s absolutely disgusting. It takes like metal wire wrapped in raw steak. But the feeling you get when you drink it is indescribable. Literally.”

“Did you get the hunger?”

“I think so,” said Jamie. “But not like Larissa did, or most other vamps do. When I woke up this morning, there was a painkiller IV in my arm, and one of the doctors gave me blood to drink. So, if I got the hunger at all, it came and went pretty quickly. I reckon getting turned in a state-of-the-art infirmary is the way to go.”

Matt grinned. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“You should,” said Jamie. “So tell me about America, mate. I’m really sorry I didn’t know you were going. Did NS9 ask for you?”

“They asked for a scientific observer,” said Matt. “Cal picked me to go.”

“That’s awesome,” said Jamie. “And you totally deserve it. So tell me about it.”

Matt smiled, and quickly ran through everything that had happened in San Francisco. Jamie’s eyes widened as he heard of John Bell’s awful final decision, his face screwed up in a grimace of disgust as Matt described recovering the man’s blood and flesh from beneath the wheels of the truck, and a look of deep fury settled on to his friend’s face as he described the final minutes of Major Simmons’ life.