Department 19: Zero Hour (12 page)

He ran for the cover of the trees, his arms and legs pumping. As he reached them, Qiang stepped silently out from between the trunks, and the teenager skidded to the ground, screaming as he fell. He scrambled to his feet and backtracked, sobbing hysterically, searching desperately for a way out. A last-gasp break for the main path saw him confronted by the moving shadow of Ellison; at the sight of her the teenager screamed again, then slumped to his knees and threw back his head.

“Do it!” he howled. “Do it then, oh Dark Lords!”

Jamie grinned behind his visor. He had circled round the fire, cutting off the two crawling teenagers and herding them back as they cried and blubbered and insisted that they hadn’t meant it, they had never thought it would work, they’d changed their minds, oh God, they’d changed their minds. Beside the fallen gravestone, the girl who had fainted was groaning as she slowly returned to consciousness.

“So you want to be vampires?” asked Jamie, his voice deafening and almost inhuman through his microphone’s distortion filters.

“No!” screamed the girl. “No, we’re sorry!”

The blond boy was still on his knees. “Yes!” he cried. “Ignore these weaklings! I want to be a vampire!”

Jamie walked silently across the clearing. Two of the teenagers whimpered and cowered away as he passed; he didn’t so much as glance at them. He crouched down in front of the kneeling boy and twisted off his microphone’s filters.

“No,” he said, his voice now a normal tone and volume. “You don’t.”

The teenager frowned. “What are you?” he said. “You aren’t what we summoned.”

“You’re right,” said Jamie. “We’re something else. Get off your knees and stand with your friends.”

The boy got slowly to his feet, his face starting to colour pink. Jamie wasn’t sure whether it was anger or embarrassment, although he suspected the teenager’s friends would not let him forget ‘Do it then, oh Dark Lords’ in a hurry. He staggered across the clearing and hauled the girl who had fainted to her feet. She protested half-heartedly as he dragged her across to the others, and faced the three dark figures.

“What is this?” asked the teenager, a petulant tone creeping into his voice. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What’s your name?” asked Jamie.

“Why should I tell you that?” replied the boy.

“Because you’ll be arrested if you don’t,” said Jamie. “And you’ll spend at least one night somewhere much worse than a graveyard.”

The teenager frowned. “I read Kevin McKenna’s story,” he said. “The one he wrote before you killed him. You’re the ones he was talking about.”

We killed him?
thought Jamie.
That’s new. I haven’t heard that before.

“Tell me your name,” he said. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

“You’re murderers,” said the boy, his voice high and indignant. “You kill people who haven’t done anything wrong.”

Jamie took a step forward. “Do you really want to be right about that?” he asked. “Think hard.”

The boy swallowed. “Chris,” he said. “My name is Chris Hollison.”

“What about the rest of you?”

“Lauren Johnson.”

“Wesley Chambers.”

“Isabel Banks.”

“Thank you,” said Jamie. “So, Chris Hollison, you assaulted a member of the public. You call that not doing anything wrong?”

“You see?” hissed Lauren, digging her elbow into Chris’s ribs. “I told you to leave the old man alone.”

“Shut up,” said Chris, the colour in his face darkening. “I’ll handle this.”

“No you won’t,” said Jamie. “You’ll do what I tell you. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Lauren, instantly. “We don’t want any trouble.”

Chris shot her a look of utter contempt, and Jamie suddenly understood the dynamic of the group of teenagers standing before him.

Chris is the leader,
he thought.
He tells them what to do, and gets off on their obedience. And I bet he really doesn’t like it when someone does it to him.

“That’s good,” he said. “Luckily for you, the man you assaulted doesn’t want to give a statement, so no charges are going to be brought. But I’m afraid you have a much bigger problem. You’ve seen the three of us.”

Wesley and Isabel looked at each with wide-eyed expressions of panic, and Jamie felt his heart soften.

These aren’t bad kids,
he thought.
They don’t really want to be vampires. They just went along with something and now they regret it. Maybe next time they’ll tell their friend to piss off.

“Why is that a problem?” asked Chris. His eyes had narrowed and he was looking coldly at Jamie.

“Because you can never tell anyone what happened here,” said Jamie. “Ever. And I need to be sure I believe you before I can let you go.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” said Lauren, quickly. “Will we?” She looked round at the others, who responded with huge, exaggerated nods.

“I might,” said Chris. “Given that I can’t see how you’re going to stop me. You
are
the ones McKenna wrote about, aren’t you? The vampire police.”

“Don’t worry about who we are,” said Jamie. “Worry about what will happen if you don’t do what I tell you.”

Chris narrowed his eyes even further, then smiled smugly. “You can’t threaten us,” he said. “You’re the police. Our parents pay your salaries.”

Jamie took a step towards the teenager and let his gloved hands move fractionally towards his belt. Chris glanced down; his smile faltered as he saw the array of weaponry that was now within reach.

“Tell me the truth,” said Jamie. “Do I look like a policeman to you?”

Chris didn’t respond, but nor did he step back.

Jamie pulled his console from his belt, logged into the population database, and entered the names the teenagers had given. The results appeared, showing four matches: all between fifteen and seventeen years of age, all living within a mile of the graveyard. He patched them across to the Department’s civilian control programme and tapped ENTER. A new window appeared, containing an abridged version of the Official Secrets Act, and the first of the names alphabetically.

“Isabel Banks,” he said, and held out the console. “Sign this.”

The girl walked forward, until Chris Hollison called for her to wait. She turned back, her face pale with worry.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Are you going to just sign something without even knowing what it is?” asked Chris. “What does it feel like to be so stupid? Describe it to me.”

Jamie felt familiar anger race through him, and told himself to stay calm. There had been boys like Chris Hollison at every school he had attended: bullies, who got what they wanted by intimidation, who gave the impression of being smarter and cooler than everyone else, even though they always turned out to be full of shit.

And cowards,
thought Jamie.
They’re always cowards when someone comes along who’s scarier than them.

They were the boys who had targeted him after his dad had died, sensing isolation and weakness; the boys, he knew, who had made his friend Matt’s life a misery.

Maybe this won’t be a complete waste of time,
thought Jamie.

“Watch your mouth, Mr Hollison,” he said. “It’s an amended version of the Official Secrets Act. It states that you will never discuss or in any way acknowledge your interaction with the three of us. Sign it, Isabel.”

She cast a final look at Chris, then shuffled forward and scraped her finger across the console’s screen.

Jamie loaded the second page. “Wesley Chambers.”

Wesley walked forward and signed. He did so without hesitation, although Jamie noted that he didn’t meet Chris Hollison’s eye as he walked back to stand beside Isabel.

“Chris Hollison.”

The blond teenager shook his head. “I’m not signing that.”

“Yes you are,” said Jamie. “The only question is whether you do so voluntarily.”

“You can’t make me,” said Chris, his tone more petulant than ever. “And even if you could, you can’t check whether I obey it. So what’s the point?”

“As I speak,” said Jamie, “a monitoring grid is being put in place. Before you even get home, we’ll be watching and listening. Phone calls, emails, internet activity, conversations with your friends and parents and brothers and sisters. We can listen to you through your mobile phones, even when they’re switched off. And, for a period of time that is entirely up to me, you’re going to be followed. You’ll never see them, but you should get used to knowing that you’re being watched. There’s nowhere you can go that we can’t follow, and nothing you can say that we can’t hear. So you
are
going to sign, Mr Hollison, and then you’re going to keep your mouth shut. Because, if you don’t, you’re going to find yourself in a small room with no windows while your parents wonder why you never came home from school. Am I making myself clear?”

The four teenagers stared at him with open horror.

“That’s bullshit,” said Chris, his voice quavering. “You can’t do that.”

“I already have,” said Jamie. “Sign.”

Hollison walked slowly forward, his face like thunder, and scrawled his name on the screen. He stayed for a moment longer than the others, staring belligerently into the opaque purple of Jamie’s visor, then stepped back.

“Lauren Johnson,” said Jamie.

The girl signed, then hurried back to her friends. Jamie placed the console on his belt, and looked at the teenagers.

“What happens now?” asked Wesley.

“You go home,” said Jamie. “You don’t say anything about this to anyone, and you go on with your lives.”

Three of the teenagers sighed heavily, as though they had been holding their breath during the entire process. Smiles rose on their faces, and they looked at each other with obvious relief.

Chris Hollison didn’t sigh, or smile. He was still staring at Jamie, his face full of anger.

You don’t know how this happened, do you?
thought Jamie.
How you got put in your place in front of everyone. You’re trying to think of some way to save face.

He was almost certainly correct. But as Chris Hollison opened his mouth, a deep growl emerged from the undergrowth behind him. A frown creased the teenager’s forehead. Then he was flung forward as something leapt on to his back, driving him screaming to his knees.

The helicopter swept north, its running lights dark, its heavy shape little more than a shadow above the landscape.

The armour-plated hold could carry twenty-four fully equipped Operators, but was occupied by only two. Paul Turner and Kate Randall sat facing each other, their helmets beside them, their weapons and kit checked and ready, even though Cal Holmwood had assured them they would not be needed.

The Interim Director had summoned them to his quarters and shown them the message he had been sent as the first Operational squads were heading out of the Loop. Kate, who knew about Valhalla from Jamie’s and Larissa’s descriptions of the place, was delighted when Holmwood ordered them to follow it up; it had long been somewhere she wanted to see.

Paul Turner, on the other hand, did not appreciate being summoned anywhere by anonymous message, and clearly did not believe that Cal should be jumping simply because someone inside Valhalla told him to. But the Scottish commune, which was one of the oldest vampire colonies in Britain, was home to men and women who had always treated Blacklight as allies rather than enemies, and it was Cal’s belief that they would not have made contact unless it was important.

“Four minutes,” said their pilot, his voice rattling out of speakers set into the walls of the hold.

Kate felt excitement ripple through her as the helicopter began to descend. Despite Cal Holmwood’s assurances, safety could never be one hundred per cent guaranteed in any situation that involved vampires, especially a large number of them in one place, and her nerve endings were starting to twitch. Opposite her, Paul Turner wore the expression of a man who wants to get an annoying job out of the way and focus on more important matters.

As they sank steadily towards the southern end of Glen Shiel, Kate peered out at the landscape rushing past below. In daylight, it would have been spectacular: the jutting peaks, twisting green valleys and sparkling lochs of western Scotland. At night it was dark and foreboding, a vista of shadows upon shadows, that slid together to create a canvas of black that stretched to the horizon. The helicopter banked left, avoiding a sheer wall of rock that rose seemingly from nowhere to their right and affording Kate a fleeting glimpse of the entire valley. At the northern end was light, a yellow and white glow studded with what looked like red and blue and green.

That must be it,
she thought.
Valhalla.

Cal Holmwood had given them a brief history of the community before they left his quarters, but Kate had already heard most of it from her friends. It had been founded in the 1960s by the vampire known as Grey, who had intended it as a place where vampires could live peacefully, away from the temptations and dangers of the normal world. It welcomed anyone, as long as they were prepared to work: gardening, building, tending the herd of cattle that supplied the residents with blood.