Department 19: Zero Hour (20 page)

Valentin frowned. “Of course not, Papa.”

“That is because you are a good boy, Valentin. And why we are both so proud of you.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

Alexei knelt down and beckoned his son forward. He went willingly, and let himself be enveloped in his father’s arms.

Valentin left the study full of love. The Rusmanov patriarch was hard, and often cold, but his youngest boy never doubted his love for his sons; it would only be much later, in the fullness of adulthood, that he would realise how poisonous and damaging that love had truly been.

He made his way quickly out on to the grounds, searching for any sign of his brothers. The sun hung in the sky above Constan
ţ
a to the east, and the grass and trees shimmered in its gentle glow as motes of dust swirled in the light. It was never silent outside the dacha; the forest rustled constantly with movement, and the waves crashing at the base of the cliffs were always audible. But there was a stillness, a peace, to the place; it heartened Valentin, and he set about his search with a wide smile on his young, handsome face.

As he rounded the north-east corner of the sprawling house, he heard voices coming from the stable block that stood at the edge of the forest. Valentin quickened his step, so much so that he was almost running when he reached the door and pulled it open.

His heart sank, just a little; at the far end of the building, watching with obvious impatience as one of the staff shoed his favourite horse, stood Valeri. Valentin had hoped it had been Alexandru he had heard; they could have gone for a ride through the forest, or out along the cliff path. Valeri could, on increasingly rare occasions, still be persuaded to do such things with his youngest brother, but they were now invariably accompanied by a grim expression of duty and an insistence on silence throughout.

“What is it?” shouted Valeri, staring at him with a stern expression on his face. “What do you want?”

Valentin stood up straight and walked down the stable block. “A word in private, brother,” he said.

Valeri cursed, ordered the blacksmith to hurry, and strode down the stables, his greatcoat billowing out behind him. “Speak then,” he said, as he arrived at his brother’s side. “What is so important?”

Valentin took a deep breath, then told his brother what he had seen in their father’s study. His voice was lowered, but he could not hide his excitement at the prospect of approaching the status of equality with the rest of the Rusmanov men; he had known the time would eventually come when his youth no longer counted against him, and he was hopeful that the moment had finally arrived.

Valeri listened in silence as he finished his tale, then smiled thinly and shook his head. “Is that it?” he asked. “Father has taken every maid and governess that has ever set foot in our house, yet you come running in here to tell me what I already know like some gossiping scullery maid?”

Embarrassed heat rose into Valentin’s cheeks.

“And now you’re
blushing
like a scullery maid,” said Valeri, smiling cruelly.

Valentin looked down at the dirt floor of the stables; he could no longer meet his brother’s eye. Then a hand shot out and took hold of his arm, squeezing it hard.

“Say it,” said Valeri.

“Say … what?” gasped Valentin, through the pain.

“Say, ‘I’m a scullery maid.’”

“No,” said Valentin. “I won’t—”

Valeri squeezed again and twisted, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of Valentin’s arm. “Say it,” he said, his voice low and full of menace.

Tears welled up in the corners of Valentin’s eyes. “No,” he managed again. “You can’t—”

Valeri twisted harder.

The pain was awful; it burned and pulsed, and Valentin wondered almost absently whether his brother would actually break his arm out of nothing more than spite. He pulled and pushed, trying to loosen the grip, but couldn’t; it was like trying to break free from a statue. Shame and frustration roared through him as the pain increased. He wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair, that Valeri was bigger than him, but he knew such a protest would only encourage his brother; it was a complaint completely unbefitting a Rusmanov. Anger, at himself and at his stupid, hateful brother, boiled up through him, filling him with fire, scorching everything in its path, and, acting on nothing more than furious instinct, Valentin did something he had never done before.

He balled his free hand into a fist, reared back, and punched his older brother square in the face.

Valeri’s eyes flew open, and he released his brother’s arm. Then his expression of surprise turned to one of clear, terrible delight.

The momentary rush of euphoria that had filled Valentin as the punch connected evaporated, and he ran for the stable door, his heart pounding in his chest, his brother thundering after him. He made it through the door and, as the dacha’s grounds opened up before him, believed for a single, glorious moment that he might escape. Then Valeri crashed into him, wrapping thick arms round his legs and driving him to the ground.

Valentin started to cry, bitter tears of pure frustration, and hated himself for them. Pain and fear mingled into panic, but beneath it something deeper and more primal thrashed and howled: the sickening horror of helplessness. He screamed for mercy as Valeri dragged him back into the stables by his ankles, flipped him up and over, and rammed his head into the horse trough.

The water was freezing; it sprayed up his nose and poured down his throat, and he began to cough underwater. His eyes were open, but he could see nothing as pressure began to build in his chest; he bucked and thrashed, whipping his head back and forth as the cold began to numb it. And in some distant corner of his mind he understood that Valeri wasn’t going to let him go, that he was going to drown him in the horse trough.

Red and grey spots circled at the edges of his vision as he began to suffocate, his lungs screaming for air, his body weakening with each passing second. As he went limp, when all he could see was grey and all he could feel was pain, he was jerked upwards, his brother’s hand in his hair, and thrown down to the hay-covered floor.

He lay there for a long time, coughing and sobbing and dragging air into his trembling body. When he was finally able to move, he curled himself into a ball, unable to face his brother; shame filled every fibre of his being, every bit as hot and sharp as the physical pain in his chest.

“Look at me,” said Valeri, softly.

He shook his head, his eyes fixed on the floor.

“Look at me, brother.”

Valentin slowly turned his head, and looked. His brother was standing over him, regarding him with an expression that could easily have been mistaken for affection by someone who did not know Valeri Rusmanov.

“Next time you hit someone,” he said, “be brave. Men don’t run, brother. Men stand and fight.”

Amen to that,
thought Valentin, and turned the handle.

The door slid open with a long, juddering screech, and Valentin instantly heard movement from within the depths of the house. He walked calmly into the centre of the entrance hall, which had always been immaculate in his father’s day; now dust coated the floor and the furniture, and several of the wooden wall panels were broken and scratched. He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead and sending a torrent of rainwater cascading down his neck, and waited for whoever was lurking in the dacha to show themselves.

For a long moment, there was only silence. Then Valentin heard footsteps thud across the floor from the direction of the kitchen, and a vampire in his mid-twenties strolled casually out of the corridor.

“About time, Pete,” said the man. “Seriously, how long does it take to …”

His voice trailed off as he saw the smiling figure of Valentin standing before him. He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening and flickering red in the corners, and opened his mouth as the ancient vampire moved.

Valentin crossed the space between them in a blur and took the vampire by the throat, cutting off whatever sound he had been about to make. He lifted the man into the air, carried him backwards as though he weighed nothing, and slammed him into the wall with an impact that shook the entire house. The vampire’s eyes flared open with shock and pain, his fists beating futilely at the hand that was holding him.

The youngest Rusmanov slid the man down the wall until his scrabbling feet touched the floor, then hammered his right leg out in two devastating kicks. The vampire’s legs broke mid-shin with a pair of sickening crunches; the colour disappeared from his face as though it had been sucked out and, as the hand around his throat released him and let him slump to the floor, he let out a piercing howl of agony.

Valentin stepped back, leaving the stricken vampire screaming and clutching at his shattered legs, and took a deep breath. Throughout the house he could hear the rattle of footsteps and a cacophony of frightened shouts and growls. He isolated the separate sounds, and nodded to himself as the noise grew louder.

Eight more of them. As I thought.

He kept moving until his back was almost against the front door, a position from where he could not be surrounded. It was unquestionably overcautious, as Valentin doubted that the vampires making their way through his family’s house were capable of causing him a problem from whichever direction they attacked, but he saw no need to complicate matters; he had no desire to be inside the dacha any longer than necessary.

The wide entrance hall was suddenly full of movement and noise as vampires spilled into it from the corridors on either side. They crowded round their fallen friend, shouting and shrieking and asking him what had happened, failing entirely to notice the stranger standing in the shadows. The vampire with the broken legs was alternately screaming and gritting his teeth against the pain, but was nodding his head in the direction of the door, trying in vain to warn his friends. In the end, Valentin spared him further effort.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Valentin, his voice loud and pleasantly warm. “Please may I have your attention?”

The eight vampires turned as one, their eyes flooding red, their fangs sliding into place, guttural growls and high-pitched hisses rising from their throats. Valentin smiled as he took a closer look at them; they were a ragtag bunch of five women and three men, the youngest barely out of her teens, the oldest a man who looked as though his vampire side was the only thing allowing him to walk unaided. At the centre of the group, a woman who appeared to be in her late forties pulled herself together slightly quicker than the others, and it was to her that Valentin turned his attention.

“I’m prepared to overlook the fact that you are trespassing in property that belongs to my family,’ he said. “Providing you answer me one simple little question. Where is my brother?”

The woman spat on the floor as the rest of the vampires howled with derision. “You have no authority here, traitor,” she said. “This house belongs to Valeri, and we are here at his command. Here, waiting for you.”

Valentin smiled. “Tell me your name.”

“My name is Genevieve,” hissed the woman. “
Yours
is traitor.”

Valentin’s smile widened. “Indeed. Valeri is part of my family, to my eternal shame and regret, so I believe you’ll find my statement was quite accurate. But let’s not dwell on that. You say you are here at my brother’s command?”

The vampires growled their agreement.

“And you,” continued Valentin, directing his gaze squarely at Genevieve. “You are in love with him, are you not?”

Her eyes widened, and her cheeks coloured a red that was visible even through the scarlet glow radiating from her eyes. “I don’t … I refuse to …”

“There is no sense denying that which is obvious,” said Valentin. “It was clear from the way you said his name. So my brother sent the nine of you here to stand guard, in case I made an appearance. Then what? You are expected to kill me?”

“Correct,” said Genevieve, her voice low and thick. “You must pay for your treachery.”

“And what then?” asked Valentin. “What promises did he make, if you were successful in destroying me? I imagine
you
were assured a place in his bed, but I fail to see what could have motivated the rest of you to accept such an assignment. Money, perhaps? Power? Fear?”

More growls rose from the cluster of vampires, although they were less full-throated than before, and Valentin believed he could hear uncertainty in at least one or two of them. Genevieve, who was clearly their leader, whether self-elected or otherwise, seemed to sense it too.

“He mocks us!” she shrieked. “He belittles our faith in our master!”

“You are wrong,” said Valentin, his voice low and gentle. “I am not mocking you. I am trying to help you. If you attack me, you will all die. And, whether you want to believe it or not, Valeri is fully aware of that outcome. You are not his favourites, his advance guard, or his trusted lieutenants. You are cannon fodder, nothing more. But if you tell me where he is, I will spare you, as it is clear that you have been misled.”

“We will tell you nothing,” said Genevieve.

“Last chance,” said Valentin, certain that it would not be taken. The woman was obviously devoted to his older brother; her fervour was going to carry the rest of the vampires with her, to their doom.

“For you,” snarled Genevieve, and leapt forward, her eyes blazing, her face twisted with hate.

Valentin moved with a speed that defied reality and met her in mid-air. His hand shot out and crunched through her sternum as though it was made of balsa wood. A shocked grunt burst from Genevieve’s mouth as his fingers found her heart and tore it from her chest; her eyes widened momentarily, before she exploded in a thunderclap of crimson blood that soaked Valentin from head to toe. He landed gracefully on the wooden floor, threw the remains of the heart aside, and barrelled into the remaining vampires like a tornado descending on an unsuspecting town.