William Hill - Department 19

“Look away,” she said.

“Why?” he replied.

“I don’t want you to see this. Please, Jamie.”

He nodded and turned his back on her. From behind him came a wet sound, then a stifled grunt of pleasure.

“OK,” she said, after a long moment.

He turned back and looked at her. Her lips shone red, and her arm was no longer broken; she was rotating it in its socket, inspecting it, and looking at him with shame on her face.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

He reached a hand out to her, and she accepted it, gratitude on her beautiful, blood-streaked face.

They were nearly at the end of the corridor when they heard a soft weeping from behind one of the wooden doors. Jamie pushed it carefully open.

The room was identical to the one that he had inspected earlier, but this one wasn’t empty. Huddled in the corner was a monk, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs. His head was lowered, and he was shaking and weeping as Jamie crossed the room and knelt on the cold stone floor in front of him. Larissa stayed in the doorway, watching the corridor.

“Are you hurt?” asked Jamie, placing a hand on the man’s arm.

The monk raised his head, and Jamie cried out, shoving himself backward across the stone floor.

A crucifix had been carved into the man’s face; across the ridge of his forehead and then down from his hairline, along the length of his nose, through his mouth, splitting his lips into flapping chunks, and down to the end of his chin. The wound was wide and deep, and blood was gushing down his ruined face and onto his habit.

“Oh God,” said Jamie.

At the mention of his Lord, the monk began to babble, a running stream of prayer.

“YeathoughIwalkthroughthevalleyoftheshadowofdeathIwillfe arnoevilbecausethouartwithme.”

Jamie stood up and backed away from the huddled shape, his face twisted with despair.

There’s nothing you can do for him. Think about your mother. Focus.

But he couldn’t. He could think only about the tortured, violated man curled in the corner in front of him and wonder again what manner of creature he was dealing with, a creature that would inflict such savagery on men who had devoted their lives to peace.

“Come on,” said Larissa, softly, and he turned to look at her. “We have to keep moving. You can’t help him.”

He followed her out into the corridor, and they rounded the final corner together. On the ground in front of them, a large arrow had been painted with blood, pointing the way they were facing. Two words had been written beneath it: THIS WAY

Hatred spilled through Jamie, hatred for Alexandru and all his kind, a hatred that burned so hot in his chest he thought he would burst into flames. “Does he think this is a game?” he hissed.

Larissa grabbed his arm.

“It is a game,” she said. “To him, that’s all this is. Ilyana, your father, your mother, those are just details. It’s violence and pain and misery that he loves. Remember that when you face him.”

A shout echoed down the corridor, and Jamie shone his torch along it. Morris, McBride, and Kate were walking quickly down it, and Jamie and Larissa went to meet them.

The team was reunited in front of a large wooden door.

“What did you find?” asked Jamie.

“Later,” said McBride, his face drawn and pale, and Jamie nodded.

They stood in front of the door, the five of them, with Jamie in the center.

This is it. No matter what lies behind this door, you don’t leave this place without her. You make her proud.

“Ready?” asked Morris.

Jamie took a deep breath. “Ready,” he said, and pushed the door open.

But he wasn’t ready at all.

Alexandru Rusmanov sat in the chapel hall on a wooden chair so ornately carved it looked like a throne.

It stood on a raised stone platform at the back of the large hall. An enormous wooden cross stood behind it, before a tall stained-glass window that faced the gray surface of the North Sea, a hundred feet below. A wooden lectern, from which Jamie guessed the abbot had conducted the monastery’s services, had been thrown aside and lay broken on the stone floor.

A long wooden dining table had been treated with similar disdain; it lay smashed along one of the long walls of the hall, surrounded by the plain wooden chairs that had seated generations of the monks of Lindisfarne. Above it, set into alcoves along the high wall, were crude statues of saints. Their carved faces stared down solemnly into the middle of the hall.

Then Jamie saw her.

His mother.

Marie Carpenter stood at Alexandru’s left, her face pale and tightly drawn.

“Mom!” he cried. He couldn’t help himself.

She’s alive. She’s still alive. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

His mother’s eyes lit up at the sound of his voice, and she looked at him with such love that he thought his heart might burst. She hadn’t realized that one of the figures that had entered the hall was her son, but even as relief flooded through her that he was still alive, Jamie was still alive, she was screaming at him not to come any closer, to stay away, to run for his life.

“Listen to your mother, boy,” advised Alexandru, his voice warm and friendly, and spread his arms wide.

Jamie had taken a step toward her, without realizing he had done so, and he paused. He looked along the length of the stone platform, beyond Alexandru’s outstretched hands, and his heart sank.

Standing silently along the platform were more than thirty vampires in a loose line. At Alexandru’s right was Anderson, the huge vampire with the child’s face. His shoulders rose like a ridge of mountains, vast and misshapen, a long black coat covering them and reaching almost to the floor. Beyond him, and beyond his mother on the other side, were vampires of every age and gender. A woman in her sixties, dressed in a prim trouser suit, stood alongside a skeletally thin teenage boy, wearing torn jeans and nothing else. His ribs stood out on his narrow torso, and his eyes were sunken into his skull. Beside his mother, looking at her in a way that made Jamie want to tear his eyes out, was a fat man in a shiny gray suit. His face was red and a coating of sweat stood out on his forehead as he stared at Marie. The vampires looked contemptuously down at Jamie and his companions, while their master regarded him calmly.

“So,” Alexandru said, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together, as though he were about to start a particularly exciting debate. “Jamie Carpenter. We meet again, if you’ll forgive the cliche.”

His eyes flickered to Jamie’s left, his attention caught by something. Then his face twisted into a scowl, and he stared at Larissa with his blood-red eyes. “ You,” he said, all the warmth gone from his voice. “You dare show your face in front of me again?”

“I dare,” replied Larissa.

“Your death will be my masterpiece,” Alexandru said, and grinned at her. “No creature on earth has ever suffered like you will suffer.”

“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” said Larissa, staring up at the ancient vampire.

“You should be,” said Thomas Morris. Then he pulled Quincey Morris’s bowie knife from his belt and ran it across McBride’s throat. The operator fell to his knees, blood jetting from severed arteries, and folded to the floor. McBride was dead before Jamie had time to realize what had happened.

Morris walked slowly across the chapel hall, his head lowered, like a man going to the gallows, and stepped up onto the platform. Anderson moved aside to accommodate him, and Alexandru laughed gently as the Blacklight operator took his place at his side.