Department 19: Battle Lines (74 page)

Tim was astonished; it was the most he had ever heard Aaron say in one go and the words cut him deeply. He was happy to accept the charge of having pursued Larissa when he shouldn’t have, of causing her to run away from him and his friends, but what Aaron was suggesting was far, far worse.

He’s saying that I hurt our chances against Dracula.

“I’m sorry if I let you down,” he said. “All of you.”

“Jesus, Tim,” said Kelly. “We know you weren’t deliberately trying to mess everything up, and we know this isn’t how you wanted things to turn out. You just need to realise that you can’t control everything, that everything doesn’t always go your way. Bad things happen.”

“Bad things happen,” repeated Tim. “Amen to that.”

A long way from Sam’s Diner, in the north-east of England, a man and his daughter stopped beside a car in a station car park.

Kate Randall had spent much of the previous three days with her dad. She and Matt had pleaded with Cal Holmwood not to lock their fathers in the Loop’s cells and the Interim Director had eventually relented, permitting them to sleep in one of the dormitories that usually housed new Blacklight recruits. They were locked in every night and confined to the Loop, although that was largely an unnecessary restriction; the two men were not soldiers, and were extremely unlikely to attempt to escape from a classified military base.

To begin with, their conversations had been awkward. She had talked to Matt and been relieved to hear that he was finding the same thing when he spoke to his dad. Pete Randall’s relief, his utter joy at the discovery that his only daughter wasn’t dead, had quickly given way to an annoyance that, from Kate’s frustrated viewpoint, bordered on petulance. He kept returning to the same point, again and again, the one point that she did not have a reasonable answer for.

You let me think you were dead. How could you do that?

She had tried to explain it to him, tried to get him to see what had happened from her point of view: the lack of a future on Lindisfarne, the chance to do something good, something worthwhile. And, most importantly, that Blacklight had promised her that they would
not
allow him to think that, a betrayal that she intended to take up with Cal Holmwood as soon as things returned to what passed for normal at the Loop. But it didn’t matter; as far as Pete was concerned, she had abandoned him.

The situation had been worsened by the long wait for Cal Holmwood, in conjunction with Paul Turner, to decide what action he was going to take against her father and Matt’s. Both men had broken civilian law, and were aware of the existence of both vampires and the agencies that fought against them; there had been rumours, many of which had reached Kate’s ears, that they would be locked up for the rest of their lives.

When the judgement had finally come, Kate’s first reaction had been to burst into tears. Her second was the understanding that she owed Paul Turner her thanks, yet again.

“So this is it,” said Pete Randall. He had his car keys in his hand, and his face was pale and drawn. “This is where we say goodbye. Am I ever going to see you again?”

Kate took a deep breath. She had escorted her father in the van that had returned him to Berwick station, where his strange, awful odyssey with Albert Harker had begun what seemed like such a long time ago, but could go no further. Holmwood had given Pete and Greg permission to return home, in the knowledge that they would spend the rest of their lives under surveillance, but she could not take the chance that anyone she had grown up with might see her; Lindisfarne was a tiny community, and her appearance would raise questions that she didn’t want her father to have to try and answer.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “I hope so. There are things happening, things that I can’t tell you about. But when they’re over, if we’re all still here, then I hope so.”

Pete nodded. He was clearly reluctant to get in his car and drive home; for all his annoyance with her, it was obvious that he did not want to be parted from her again.

“I have to go, Dad,” she said. Her voice sounded strangled and her chest was tight; if she didn’t go quickly, she wasn’t sure she would be able to do so. “Are you going to be all right?”

Pete smiled. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

Kate walked forward and threw her arms round her dad. He crushed her tightly against him, dipping his face down to her ear.

“I’m proud of you, Kate,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”

She felt tears spill from the corners of her eyes and a huge lump rise in her throat. “Thanks, Dad,” she managed, the words mangled and crushed. “I love you too.”

Pete Randall released his grip and stepped back. He looked at his daughter for a long moment, then opened the car door and climbed into the driver’s seat. She stepped back as the engine rumbled into life, and watched as he pulled slowly away. As he reached the exit to the car park, she saw him twist in his seat and look at her. She raised her hand and saw him wave back. Then there was a rattle of gravel, and her father was gone.

She walked unsteadily back to the van that was idling behind her. She pulled open the passenger door, climbed in, and fastened her seat belt.

“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.

“Home,” said Kate.

Less than a hundred miles to the south, a similar exchange was taking place.

Matt Browning was standing in the kitchen of the house he had grown up in, drinking the first cup of tea he could ever remember his father having made him. He was still in mild shock; he would not have claimed with any great conviction that his father knew where the kettle was, or how it worked. The house was spotlessly clean and tidy, which had been another surprise; he had expected the rubbish to have reached the windows in the time since he and his mother had been gone.

He had gone up to his room while his father made the tea and been struck by a feeling of nostalgia so huge it was almost physical. The room, in which he had spent so much of his life hiding away from the outside world, looked so small. His bed was made, and his shelves of books and comics were as he had left them, but they felt as though they belonged to someone else; he no longer recognised the inhabitant of this room.

“You want another?” asked Greg Browning. He nodded at the mug in his son’s hand.

“No, thanks, Dad,” said Matt. “I’d better get going.”

His dad’s face fell briefly, but he rallied quickly. “Of course,” he said. “I understand. You’ve got work to do.”

Matt nodded.

“I wish I understood it,” said his dad, smiling gently. “But that’s nothing new, is it? I never understood most of the stuff you were doing. You were cleverer than me by the time you were about five.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

Greg frowned. “Don’t apologise, Matt. Don’t you ever apologise for who you are. I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have tried harder when you were little, been more interested. It was hard for me, son. We never liked the same things and I didn’t try hard enough to understand you. I was intimidated, to be honest with you, and I can admit that now. But it’s no excuse. And I
was
always proud of you, whether you believe that or not. I was always telling people about my son the genius.”

Matt blushed. He didn’t know what his dad wanted him to say. Was he asking him to forgive him, to tell him it was all right? He’d happily do so if he thought it would help, but when he looked at his father, he was far from convinced that it would.

“Now look at you,” continued Greg. “Working for the government, trying to save the world. I wish I could tell people that.”

The colour drained from Matt’s face, and his dad smiled again. “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “Your mother, no one else. I understand.”

He nodded. “Are you going to ring her?”

“Yeah,” replied his dad. “As soon as you go. Part of me wants to ring her now, let you talk to her, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea. To be honest, I don’t know if she’d take my call.”

“I’m sorry,” said Matt, again. “I didn’t mean to mess everything up.”

“I know you didn’t,” replied Greg. “To be honest, things weren’t great before you went. They hadn’t been for years. You leaving for the second time was just the final straw.”

“Do you think she’ll come back?” asked Matt.

His father shrugged. “I don’t know, son. I don’t think so, to tell the truth. But it’ll be better once she knows you’re safe. It might make things easier.”

“Do you miss them?” asked Matt, gently.

“Course I do,” replied his dad. “I miss you too. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. Since your mum left, I’ve thought about nothing apart from trying to get back at the people I thought had taken you away from us, and I didn’t care what happened to me in the process.”

“You could go to Sheffield,” suggested Matt. “Get a job up there. Be nearer to Mum and Laura.”

“Maybe,” said Greg. “You giving me advice now?”

Matt smiled. “Looks like it.”

The two men fell silent for a long moment. Matt was aware that he should go, should head back to the Loop and to his desk at the Lazarus Project. They were busier than ever, as a result of what was now referred to as the Browning Theory; the revelation that the vampire virus continued to evolve with its host, was able to confer greater power on new victims the longer it had been allowed to grow, had implications for both their primary analysis and the wider security of the entire Department.

But he was surprised to find that he didn’t want to leave. While he would not have gone so far as to claim that his dad was a changed man, the anger and frustration that had boiled endlessly inside him appeared to be gone, at least temporarily. Matt wondered whether the loss of his family had been the equivalent of what addicts referred to as reaching rock bottom, if his dad had finally been forced to turn his anger on himself, rather than blaming the disappointing world around him.

“You sure you don’t want another tea?” asked Greg. “One for the road?”

Matt looked at his dad. “Sure,” he said. “Tea would be great.”

His dad nodded, a broad grin breaking across his face. He flicked on the kettle and began to rummage through the cupboards. After a second or two, Matt went to help him.

Henry Seward spat a thick wad of blood on to the floor between his feet and frowned; there was something white lying in the middle of the crimson puddle. He reached out with a hand that trembled visibly in the soft candlelight of his room, picked it up, and held it up in front of his face.

It was a tooth.

Seward’s stomach lurched. He ran his tongue quickly along the rows of his teeth and found the gap; it was on the upper right, about halfway along. He pressed his tongue into the empty space, grimacing as the tip probed the soft hollow of his gum. He gagged, and looked at the tooth again. It appeared to be whole; the roots that had once nestled safely inside his jaw, thick and pale yellow, were intact.

It fell ou
t
, he realised.
It’s not broken. It fell out.

He was sitting on the floor of the small, elegant room that served as his cell, his knees raised, his arms folded across them. Through a window on the opposite wall, the first fingers of dawn were creeping over the horizon to the east, staining the sky purple. Seward still did not know exactly where he was; Dracula had told him they were in France, but that was the limit of the information the old vampire was prepared to reveal. On the clearest, darkest nights, Seward believed he could see the distant glow of electric lights, but what and where they were was a mystery.

There had been no torture since the night he had leapt from the chateau’s balcony. Valeri’s rage had been awesome and terrifying, and for the first time since he had been taken from the Loop, Seward had genuinely believed that his life was about to end. Dracula’s servant had attacked him with a cold, vicious precision, drawing screams from him that had come to sound like animal howls. The following morning, when he had been deposited back into his room, bleeding and sobbing and barely breathing, two vampires had come and tended his wounds with far greater care than usual. Since then, he had been left largely alone; fed and watered in his room and provided with fresh dressings and powerful, numbing painkillers by vampires who were more polite and less hateful than usual.

Seward knew that these new modes of behaviour were not motivated by generosity or kindness; they were the result of Valeri’s instinct for self-preservation. He had heard Dracula order his associate not to kill him, and he believed that Valeri had come far closer to doing so than he had intended. Consequently, he was being coaxed back to something approximating health, to ensure that the elder Rusmanov did not incur his master’s displeasure.

Seward remained proud of himself for what he had done on the balcony. He didn’t know how far he had set Dracula’s recovery back, if at all, but it had felt so good to see the uncertainty on the old monster’s face as his strength began to fail him; it had almost been worth the dark agonies that had followed it. He still didn’t know what the vampire had meant when he claimed, over dinner, that he was everywhere, but in all honesty, he didn’t really care. It was unlikely to be something he could do anything about from inside the tall stone walls of his prison, and was therefore not worth fixating on. He had faith in Cal Holmwood and the men and women of Blacklight, and he was sure they could deal with whatever was thrown at them. His one regret was his firm belief that he was not going to be there to see his friends wipe the smile off the faces of Dracula and Valeri.

He coughed again, his chest heaving, and spat out a smaller lump of congealing blood. He shook almost incessantly, one of his ears rang, and he was in constant pain, but he forced a smile, his bared teeth smeared red.

One of my friends is going to stab your heart out of your chest, you old bastar
d
,
he thought.
And, wherever I am, I’ll be laughing my head off when they do. You can count on that.

Several hundred miles to the north, Julian Carpenter sat up as his cell door unlocked with a muffled series of clunks and thuds.