Scott Mariani - Uprising

As he drove wildly away, he tore his phone out of his pocket and went to dial 999.

The battery was dead. He tossed down the phone and drove faster through the misty night. There had to be somewhere he could stop and make a call, but all he saw around him was countryside. He pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator and kept it there for five straight minutes. Was there nothing here? Where was he?

Miles passed, and then he noticed a light through the trees. A house, maybe a country pub.

Dec stared at the light for half a second too long. By the time he looked back at the road, it was already too late. The tight bend rushed up faster than he could react.

The Golf ploughed into the verge, left the road and smacked straight into a tree, and the expanding airbag punched him in the face as he went flying into the wheel.

He had no idea how much time went by before he woke up in the wrecked car.

He tried to move, and cried out at the excruciating pain in his left wrist. His head whirled with nausea. He felt the blackness rising.

No. No. Got to get help. Got to help Kate. Got to get—

That was his last thought before he woke up again to the glare of flashing blue lights and there were two police officers looking down at him.

VIA Headquarters, central London

Next morning, 6.28 a.m.

Alex pushed through the steel and glass doors of Schuessler & Schuessler Ltd and crossed the broad foyer to the reception desk. Fresh off the plane from Bucharest, she was wearing a long dark grey Ralph Lauren cashmere coat over a merino wool polo-neck and jeans. The heels of her Giuseppe Zanotti knee-high studded boots clicked on the shiny tiles.

Kindly old Albert, the night watchman, was coming to the end of his shift, and she gave him a sweet smile as she signed in.

‘Early start this morning, Miss Bishop,’ he said.

‘Well, you know me, Albert.’

‘We haven’t seen you for a couple of days.’

‘I had some overseas business to take care of.’

‘Busy busy.’

She grinned. ‘Always.’

She skirted the plush reception area, past the leather armchairs and the tinkling fountain, headed for the lift and rode it all the way to the top.

Schuessler & Schuessler were a large legal firm and occupied the lower three floors of the building. The legal people had no idea what really went on behind the doors of the company that occupied the upper two floors.

The lift opened onto a small, bare landing and Alex stepped over to the only door leading off it. It bore the words ‘KEILLER VYSE INVESTMENTS’ in gold lettering. She took a strip card from her handbag and ran it down the slot, hearing the clunk as the lock opened for her. On the other side of the door was a long windowless corridor, walls and floor tiled in gleaming white. She passed through another door at its far end and entered a second reception.

At a desk sat an austere-looking woman in a dark suit, her hair scraped back into a bun. Alex knew there was a pistol under the desk, loaded with Nosferol-tipped rounds and aimed right at her as she walked over to the fingerprint and retinal scanner and ID’d herself to the voice recognition system. Steel doors whooshed open and Alex stepped through into a square ante-room. Inlaid into the centre of the polished granite floor was a large circular emblem bearing the VIA insignia.

This was the nerve-centre of one of the world’s most secretive organisations, operating under the auspices of a worldwide Federation whose existence was known only to a very select few.

Alex nodded greetings to familiar faces as she cut a path through the airy open-plan office space where VIA operatives talked on phones, typed at computer terminals and watched the latest developments on the giant screens that monitored the agency’s global activities.

At the far end of the upper floor was Rumble’s private office. She walked in without knocking.

Harry Rumble, medium build, slim and greying elegantly round the temples, was dressed in a charcoal pinstripe suit. He could have passed for a City businessman; he was anything but. He was the chief of the Vampire Intelligence Agency, the Vampire Federation’s security wing, set up to police its hundred thousand or more members across the world.

The Federation, embodiment of the modern age of vampirism. VIA’s role within its global empire, working under the watchful eye of the Federation Ruling Council, was to control the registration of new members and enforce the three laws that were engraved on the crystal plaque above Harry’s desk.

1. A vampire must never harm a human

2. A vampire must never turn a human

3. A vampire must never love a human

The enforcement part was Alex’s job — as a lot of renegade vampires had found out the hard way. When they stepped out of line, she moved into action.

Rumble peered up at her over his half-moon glasses as she walked in. She knew he didn’t need them but just wore them because he thought they made him look sophisticated. Vampires could see like a cat.

Xavier Garrett, Rumble’s assistant, stood across the other side of Rumble’s desk.

He was tall and vulturine with a high brow and oiled black hair, wearing the same sombre, crumpled suit he always wore. He flicked a look up and down Alex’s body, and one corner of his mouth twisted up into the best rendition of a smile he could do.

‘Cool as a body on ice, hotter than a chilli pepper,’ he said. ‘Looking good this morning, Agent Bishop.’

Alex and Garrett’s relationship was a simple enough one of mutual distaste. He regarded her as insubordinate and a maverick, and hated that she had Rumble’s ear.

She regarded him as something that made slimeballs look good. Neither of them made any secret of their feelings.

‘Hey, Garrett. The undertaker called earlier. He wants his suit back.’

Garrett’s smirk twisted into a sneer.

‘Did you get my report, Harry?’ she asked Rumble. She was the only VIA field agent to call the boss by his first name and not ‘sir’. That drove Garrett crazy with envy, and she enjoyed it.

Rumble nodded. He tapped a key on the laptop in front of him and the screen’s reflection lit up in his lenses.

‘You did a good job out there,’ he said. His brow was creased with worry. And that was an unusual expression for Harry Rumble. He turned to Garrett. ‘Xavier, you didn’t check those shipment dates with Slade yet, did you?’

‘I was—’

‘Now would be a good time.’

Garrett curled his lip, getting the message, and left the office.

When they were alone, Alex said, ‘What, so private even your assistant doesn’t get to hear?’

Rumble peeled off his glasses and sat back in his chair chewing at one of the stems. ‘Franklin hasn’t reported back from Budapest.’

Franklin was Alex’s senior field agent counterpart stationed at VIA’s Munich operation. After rumours of vampire attacks had started appearing on blogs in Hungary, Rumble had sent him in to investigate.

‘He arrived there Saturday. No word from him since Tuesday. I don’t like it.’

‘You think something’s happened to him?’ she asked.

‘It’s not like him to go silent on us,’ Rumble sighed. ‘But that’s not all. Look at my screen.’

Alex moved round the edge of the desk so she could peer at Rumble’s laptop.

‘Whoa.’

‘My feelings exactly.’

The screen showed a map of the world. Capital cities marked in white. VIA stations marked in blue. Little red flags marked the locations of recent illegal vampire activity. Once in a while, a vampire would defy the regulations and go rogue, feeding uncontrolled on humans in their area, failing to use their Fed-issued Vambloc supply with the result that victims frequently remembered details of the attacks, their wounds didn’t heal quickly, and they got sick. In extreme cases, where the vampire returned to the same victim for several feeds over a period of a few days, they died and were turned.