LITMIR.BIZ

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of eyes and voices, and an extremely uneasy calm settled precariously over the Ops Room. Most of the Operators remained on their feet, and when Seward realised that they had no intention of sitting back down, he carried on.

      “Although there is a tiny chance that Valeri has either chosen not to resurrect his master or has failed in attempting to do so, the official position of the Department from this point forward is that Dracula is once more alive on this planet. We have no way of knowing precisely how long this has been the case, but since the resurrection process requires little more than a sufficiently large quantity of fresh blood in which to immerse the remains, we are assuming that it took place within twenty-four hours of the theft of the ashes, some time on or around the 27th of October.”

      “Why haven’t we seen him?” asked Operator Carlisle, his voice trembling. “Why hasn’t he come in here and killed us all?”

      “He’ll be weak,” Jamie heard himself say, and blinked as the entire room turned to look at him. “After the resurrection. He’ll be weak.”

      “That’s correct, Lieutenant Carpenter,” said Seward, and the sea of heads swung back to face the lectern.

      “Professor Van Helsing wrote at length about the recovery time of resurrected vampires, in the aftermath of the loss of the remains to the Russians. The Science Division has expanded upon this research in recent days, and has come up with some rough conclusions. There are several factors that affect the recovery time of a vampire, principally the creature’s age before it was rendered dormant, and the period of time since it was reduced to ash. It’s far from an exact science, but we have been able to create a workable timeline, leading towards a point that has been given the code name Zero Hour, the point at which we believe a properly tended Dracula will regain his full strength. That point, Operators, lies one hundred and twenty days from now, on the 19th of April.”

      “Christ,” growled Jacob Scott. The grizzled Australian Colonel had not risen from his seat in the second row during any of the outbursts that had taken place around him, and even now his face wore an expression containing significantly more determination than fear. “Four months. If we don’t get him in the next four months, we won’t get him at all. That’s the deal, right?”

      Admiral Seward nodded. “That’s our hypothesis, Jacob. Dracula restored to full strength presents a threat that none of our strategic simulations can accurately model. He is the first vampire who ever lived, the oldest and most powerful; we simply cannot predict what will happen if he is allowed to rise. So our strategy from this point onwards is to make sure that doesn’t happen. We have four months to find Valeri and Dracula, and to destroy them both. After that, it may not be possible to do so. As a result, I have three further announcements to make.” A series of dazed-sounding groans emerged from the black-clad ranks, but Seward ignored them.

      “Firstly, I will be creating and chairing a task force with the specific remit of devising and deploying the Department’s strategy where Dracula and Valeri are concerned. Those of you who are selected for this group will be notified in due course. Secondly, I’m announcing the formation of a classified sub-department of the Science Division, code-named the Lazarus Project. Access to all information relating to this sub-department will be restricted on a strictly need-to-know basis, but it relates to the third thing I want to make you aware of. Until further notice the Standard Operating Procedure will no longer be to destroy vampires: it will be to contain them wherever possible, return them to the Loop and submit them into the custody of the Lazarus Project.”

      There was a half-hearted outburst of objection from the dazed ranks of the Operators, but Seward had reached the end of his patience.

      “Shut up!” he bellowed. “Any Operator who feels unable to implement this new procedure, or who feels unable to handle the situation that I have just outlined, should feel absolutely free to place themselves on the inactive roster. The rest of you I will expect to carry out your responsibilities to the same standards as always. If you have questions, come and see me or ask your senior commander. In the meantime, you are all dismissed.”

      Seward stepped down from the platform and strode out of the Ops Room, closely followed by Cal Holmwood and Paul Turner. The reeling Operators began to talk among themselves, their voices low, their eyes wide. Larissa looked at Jamie, and gave her head a tiny shake.

      “Holy shit,” she said, quietly.

      “That’s a bit of an understatement,” replied Jamie.

      4

      GROWING PAINS

      CHÂTEAU DAUNCY AQUITAINE, SOUTH-WESTERN FRANCE

      On a chaise longue the colour of blood, in Valeri Rusmanov’s study overlooking the vast Landes Forest, lay the first vampire ever to walk the earth.

      Three months after his resurrection, Count Dracula was finally beginning to look like himself; like the man he had briefly been, like the vampire who had lived for more than four hundred years before he had been condemned to a limbo that had lasted for more than a century. A mane of black hair spilled across the vampire’s shoulders, swept back from a forehead that was high and wide. Thick, unruly black eyebrows perched above pale blue eyes which flanked a nose that was sharp and narrow, like the blade of a scalpel. A black moustache covered the entirety of his upper lip, framing a mouth that was thin and cruel. The Count was dressed in a plain black robe, and he stared at the door of the study, waiting for Valeri to return with his supper.

      He was weak. Maddeningly, pitifully weak.

      Each intake of fresh blood, which Valeri dutifully brought him every evening, saw a tiny fraction of his power return, but he was still little more than a shadow of his former self. For several weeks after his resurrection, he had been unable to move, his body soft and malleable, as though made of wet clay, waiting to be fired. In time it had hardened into solid flesh and dense bone, but the terrible power he had once wielded, power that could lay waste to cities and obliterate men and women with little more than a glance, was still only a memory.

      In time, I will be all that I was. In time. And then this world will pay.

      But for the time being, the Lord of Darkness, the Impaler, the Cruel Prince, who had been feared from sea to sea by his own people and his enemies alike, was as weak as a sickly child.

      Dracula lifted his head, grunting at the effort it took, and stared out of the window of his most loyal subject’s study, past the manicured grounds of the chateau to the dark expanse of the pine forest beyond. His mind throbbed with two ancient, primitive desires: for food, and for revenge on the men who had stolen a century of his life from him, the men who had reduced him to this pathetic state.

      After the resurrection, as the ancient vampire began the slow, painful process of recovery, Valeri had started to carefully recount what had happened while Dracula had been lying dormant. The story of the twentieth century, in which humankind had advanced far beyond the imagination of even the most optimistic Victorian futurist, was long, confusing and, as far as Dracula was concerned, almost fatally tedious. It was not in his nature, the nature of either the man he had been or the monster he had become, to spend his time considering the achievements of others; his world view was fundamentally extremely simple.

      As far as he was concerned, the rest of the world existed only for his use, and by his permission, and this new world that Valeri was describing to him would be no different.

      He didn’t care about the growth of the cities, about the technological developments that Valeri described to him in infuriatingly simple terms, as though teaching a lesson to an infant. Aeroplanes, cars, space travel, television, telephones, the internet – none of these innovations interested him in the slightest. He saw no reason to doubt that his place in the new world being described to him would be whatever he decided he wanted it to be, providing that one thing had remained constant over the decades that had passed without him.

      “Do… they… still… bleed?” Dracula had eventually interrupted, his voice barely audible to anyone without Valeri’s superhuman hearing.

      “Yes, master,” replied Valeri. “The humans still

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