Will Hill - Battle Lines

What was left of the vampire exploded in a thud of boiling blood, splattering across the dirty concrete floor. Angela was already moving, sprinting across the car park and yelling into her helmet microphone, demanding emergency medical evacuation for her fallen squad mates.

Jamie Carpenter stood outside a door on Level C and took a deep breath, trying to slow his racing heart.

He had left Ellison and Morton absorbing the detail of their briefing, what little there was. Of the five vampire targets they had been given, only one had so far been identified: Eric Bingham, a paranoid schizophrenic who had been caught attempting to strangle his infant niece, had wandered past a police station in Peterborough and been captured on CCTV. The Surveillance Division’s facial recognition system had instantly identified him, logged his location into their system, and tracked him as he moved slowly south. The other four targets were mysteries, nothing more than heat blooms on satellite screens. Every effort would continue to be made to identify them before Jamie’s squad moved against them; knowing whether they had been violent men before their turnings could prove vital.

They were scheduled to depart in just over an hour and a half, so Jamie had ordered his squad mates to meet him in the hangar in seventy-five minutes. He had been about to head down to the dining hall to grab a late breakfast when Jack Williams called and told him the news.

Angela Darcy’s squad mates were both in the infirmary, being tended to by the Blacklight medical staff; Jacobs’s arms had been set and splinted, and Carlisle’s wounds had been treated and stitched. They were both going to recover, but Jacobs was going to be inactive for several months, and Carlisle had required surgery to remove a shard of plastic that had stopped a millimetre short of his left eyeball.

“One vamp put them both down,” said Jack. “Angela said she’d never seen anything like it.”

Jamie thanked him for passing on the news, and warned him to be careful out there. Jack told him to do the same and cut their connection.

The door in front of him was no different from any of the hundreds of others on B and C, the residential levels of the Loop; what lay behind it was why his heart was accelerating so sharply. He reached out a gloved hand, noted with anger its visible tremble, and knocked heavily on the door.

Silence.

Jamie knocked again, and was about to turn and walk away when he heard a deep voice emerge from inside the room.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” he replied. “Jamie.”

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the door unlocked with a series of smooth clicks and swung open a fraction. Jamie reached out and pushed it inwards, revealing a spacious room, far larger than his own quarters. It was sparse and scrupulously neat; the surface of the desk was clear, the bed was neatly made, the floor was clean and polished. A pair of armchairs sat opposite the desk. One was empty; the other was straining under the weight of its occupant.

The monster, now once again going by the name Victor Frankenstein, looked up as Jamie walked into his room. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck, and black trousers and boots; a thick multi-coloured beard sprouted from his cheeks and chin, and his hair fell carelessly across his forehead and below his ears. His appearance was not against regulations – Blacklight operated a far looser dress code than the regular military, just as the special forces did – but it worried Jamie nonetheless. On a small table beside the armchair stood a glass, a bottle of whisky and a bowl of ice, and these items worried him too, given that it was barely noon.

“Hey,” said Jamie, settling into the empty armchair.

“Good evening,” replied Frankenstein.

“It’s afternoon,” said Jamie, forcing a smile. “Early afternoon.”

“I don’t care,” replied Frankenstein. He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. “How are you, Jamie? Looking after yourself?”

“I’m trying,” he replied. “It was easier with you looking after me as well.” He smiled again, trying to encourage the monster, to flatter him. “A lot easier.”

“I’m sure it was,” said Frankenstein. “It’s a shame you’ve had to grow up so fast. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I know,” said Jamie. “But that’s the world, isn’t it? Bad things happen.”

Frankenstein nodded. “Bad things happen.”

The monster’s free hand slid to the middle of his chest and rested there. Beneath the material of his shirt was a long pattern of scars, far more recent than the many others that covered his uneven flesh. They had been carved into him with a scalpel by Dante Valeriano, the self-styled vampire king of Paris, whom Frankenstein had injured terribly almost a century earlier, and who had spent the subsequent decades focusing on nothing except his insatiable desire for vengeance. In truth, he had been a fraud, a working-class boy from Saint-Denis called Pierre Depuis who had asserted dominance over the Parisian vampires with little more than bravado and a compellingly fictional history. Jamie and a small squad of Operators had destroyed the vampire king in the theatre where he lived, and brought the captive Frankenstein home, but not before Valeriano had begun to exact his revenge.

He doesn’t know he’s doing it , thought Jamie. Doesn’t realise how often he touches his scars.

Jamie felt his own hand twitch towards his neck, where an ugly red patch of skin stretched from his jaw to his shoulder, a memento of the search for his mother, what now felt like years ago.

You’re not the only one , he thought. We’ve all got scars.

“How’s your girlfriend?” asked Frankenstein. “What’s her name? The vampire?”

“Larissa,” said Jamie, through a suddenly clenched jaw. “She’s fine. Thanks.”

Frankenstein nodded. “Is she still in America?”

“Yes,” said Jamie.

“Best place for her,” grunted the monster.

Jamie bore down on the fury that was rising up through him with all his strength and somehow managed to push it back.

Be calm, he told himself. It’s not his fault. Be calm.

Frankenstein’s hatred of vampires was long-standing and potent. He had made his feelings on them as a species clear to Jamie the very first time they had gone out on an operation together; he believed them to be aberrations, creatures that had no right to exist in the world. His encounter with Lord Dante had not improved his opinion of them, and he had still not forgiven Larissa for wasting their time during the search for Marie Carpenter, despite Jamie’s repeated pleas for him to do so.

“She seems happy,” he said, as brightly as he was able. “So maybe it is.”

Frankenstein stared at Jamie with his misshapen, multicoloured eyes, his gaze heavy and unblinking, and momentarily full of warning. “What about your other friend?” he asked. “The girl from Lindisfarne? Kate, was it?”

“She’s fine,” said Jamie, grateful for the new topic of conversation. “She’s getting stuck into this new project she’s running with Paul Turner. I hardly see her at the moment.”

“That’s life inside the Department,” said Frankenstein. “There’s always something going on.”

“Tell me about it,” said Jamie. “I’ve just come from a Zero Hour briefing. You’re not going to believe what—”

“I don’t want to know,” interrupted the monster.

“I know, but—”

“Jamie,” said Frankenstein, his voice like thunder. “We’ve been through this before. Cal offered me a place on the Zero Hour Task Force and I turned it down. You know that. I don’t understand why you find it so difficult to respect my decision.”