LITMIR.BIZ

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longer feared the invaders and their weapons, and he was determined that he would discover the fates of his Generals, the three brothers whose loyalty he had rewarded by leaving them behind. As the forest began to thin around him, he heard voices in the darkness, and headed silently towards them.

      In a clearing, gathered round a roaring fire, was an encampment of villagers from the plains beyond the forest, who had fled their homes as the Turkish armies approached. There were perhaps fifteen families: men, women and children, warming themselves near the heat of the fire, nursing infants, boiling water in metal cauldrons, holding spitted meat over flames. A number of the women were singing an old working song, and it was their voices that Vlad had heard, the ancient melody carrying sweetly on the cold air. He circled the encampment, slipping silently through the trees, looking for an opportunity. He was hungry, and the smell of the roasting meat was invading his nostrils and making him salivate.

      “Stand where you are, sir.”

      Vlad turned slowly in the direction of the voice, and found himself face to face with a middle-aged man, standing in the shadow of one of the towering oaks. The man was dressed in the sturdy clothing of a farmer, and was holding a bow and arrow at his shoulder, the metal tip of the bolt aiming steadily at Vlad’s chest. He raised his hands in placation, and took a small step towards the farmer, who backed away immediately.

      “No closer,” he said. “And speak, so I would know if you are friend or foe.”

      “I’m neither,” replied Vlad, a smile creeping across his face. “I’m something else.”

      The man lowered his bow by a couple of degrees.

      “You are not Turkish,” he said. “Are you Wallachian? Answer.”

      “I was,” replied Vlad. Then the hunger hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he folded to his knees, his head wrenched back in agony.

      The hunger roared through Vlad Tepes like a hurricane, opening a huge abyss in his chest and stomach, a clutching pit of emptiness. He grabbed at his breast, tearing at his own skin with his fingernails, trying to pull himself open, trying to find a way to fill the gaping hole that had appeared at the centre of his being. His head thundered with agony, as though drills were being applied to his temples, and his limbs were suddenly as heavy as lead.

      The farmer threw aside his bow, and ran to the stricken man. He knelt down and pulled at the stranger’s shoulders; the head came up easily, inches from his own. The farmer looked at the vision of horror before him, the glowing red eyes that stood out in the middle of the twisted face, the gleaming white fangs that extended below the upper lip, and drew in breath to scream. Then the stranger plunged his teeth into his neck, and the scream died in his throat.

      Vlad lunged on instinct alone; the pain of the hunger had driven rational thought from his head. His new fangs slid through the farmer’s skin, piercing the jugular vein, sending blood gushing into his mouth and down his throat. And instantly, the pain and the hunger were gone, replaced by a feeling that was almost godlike. He swallowed the blood that sprayed from the man’s torn throat, until he was sated, and withdrew his fangs.

      The two figures fell to the cold ground.

      Vlad’s chest was thumping up and down, alive with power; the farmer’s was barely moving, as blood seeped steadily out of the ragged hole in his neck. The former Prince of Wallachia leapt to his feet, and found himself floating several inches above the ground. He spun slowly in the air, then laughed, a terrible cackle that echoed between the silent trees and floated across the fire at the centre of the encampment, drawing frowns from the men gathered round it. Several of their wives crossed themselves, and the infants among the group began to cry.

      The laughter faded as Vlad resumed his course back towards the battlefield, floating slowly and effortlessly between the trees and over the undergrowth, spinning and swooping in the air, like a child who had been given a marvellous new toy. Where he had been, there was nothing but a patch of spilled blood, and the dark shape of the farmer on the ground, his body cooling as his life ebbed away.

      6

      CARPENTER AND SON

      Jamie walked along the corridor of the Loop’s detention level, feeling as conflicted as he always did when he was about to see his mother.

      Hers was the only occupied cell; the others had been emptied three weeks earlier, their inhabitants placed in restraining belts and taken into the depths of the Blacklight base to be handed over to the Lazarus Project. The ultraviolet barriers that filled the open front walls of the cells shimmered in the quiet air, the vampires they had contained long gone.

      Marie Carpenter was in the last cell on the left, the same cell that Larissa had occupied for the three chaotic days after Jamie’s mother had been kidnapped by Alexandru Rusmanov, until her heroics on Lindisfarne had seen her released from custody and offered the chance to join the Department.

      Jamie made his way down the corridor, aware that his mother’s superhuman senses would have alerted her to his presence as soon as he stepped through the airlock door and into the containment block, equally aware that she would pretend to be surprised to see him. His mother hated nothing more than drawing attention to the fact that she had been turned into a vampire. He reached the last strip of concrete wall before his mother’s cell, stopped and took a deep breath. Then he stepped out in front of the ultraviolet barrier.

      Jamie’s first instinct, as always, was to laugh; his mother’s cell was like something out of a home interiors catalogue.

      Because she had voluntarily gone into Blacklight custody, and because she was the mother of an Operator, she had been allowed to request items that were not available to any other vampire that had been brought on to the block, and she had made the most of it. In the middle of her cell was the oval rug that had lain in the living room of their old house in Brenchley, and sitting on top of it was the coffee table which Jamie’s father had rested his feet on every evening after he got home from work. The chest of drawers from Marie’s old bedroom stood against one wall, topped with a cluster of photos of her son and her late husband. The battered leather sofa that had dominated their old living room filled most of the rear wall of the cell, and her bed was covered in the lilac sheets and duvet cover that she had slept in for as long as Jamie could remember.

      His mother had politely, but very determinedly, imported her old life into this concrete cube deep below the earth. The Christmas tree that had sat on the coffee table, its multicoloured lights twinkling beneath the fluorescent strips in the ceiling, was gone, much to Jamie’s relief.

      “Hey, Mum,” he said, stepping into the cell. “How’s it going?”

      Marie Carpenter was sitting on the sofa, her nose buried in a paperback book. She looked up, the predictable frown of fake surprise creasing her features, then broke into a huge smile and leapt to her feet. She stepped forward to meet him, and mother and son hugged in the middle of the square room.

      “Hello, love,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “Are you all right? Have you been out today?”

      Despite the uniform he wore and the things he had done, Jamie was still a teenage boy, and never more so than in the presence of his mother. He blushed immediately at the enthusiasm of her embrace, while at the same time a broad grin emerged on his face. This was why he had walked voluntarily into the darkest depths of horror, why he had stood in the middle of an ancient building full of the dead and faced down the most dangerous monster in the world; so that he might be able to hug his mother again, and feel the love that radiated out of her when she was with him, a love that he had only realised he needed when it was taken away.

      “I’m all right, Mum,” he replied. “Yourself?”

      Marie gave him a final squeeze before releasing her grip, and stepping back to look at her son. She cast her eyes quickly up and down him, taking in the black uniform with a look of immense pride on her face, before she reached the pink patch of scar tissue on his neck, and a grimace flickered across her face.

      “I’m fine,” she replied. Her gaze lingered on his neck for a moment, as

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