lift and pressed the button marked 0. The message that had appeared on their consoles had been sent to every single Operator, both the active and inactive lists, summoning them all to a briefing in the Ops Room. Admiral Seward had debriefed Jamie less than three hours earlier, after Squad G-17 had returned from a routine call on a housing estate south of Birmingham, and the Director had not mentioned anything about an imminent meeting. Seward had been so phenomenally busy in the weeks since Lindisfarne that Jamie was not surprised, although he was, privately, slightly hurt; he liked to believe that he had the Director’s ear in a way that the vast majority of rookie Operators did not.
Jamie and Larissa emerged on to Level 0 and made their way to the Ops Room. The wide, oval room was already almost full, and they found standing room against the curved wall at the back of the sea of black-clad figures. Jamie caught Kate’s eye as they made their way through the throng, and he nodded at her. She smiled back at them from her seat near the far wall, before returning her attention to the platform at the front of the room, beneath the giant wall screen that was currently lying dormant.
Admiral Seward was standing on the platform, talking in a low voice to Cal Holmwood, the Deputy Director. The expressions on the two men’s faces were sombre, and Jamie felt a pang of nervousness rise into his chest. Everything had been so chaotic since Lindisfarne, as the Department attempted to adjust to the revelations that had been uncovered by the successful rescue of Jamie’s mother: the unmasking of Thomas Morris as the traitor to the Department, the destruction of Alexandru Rusmanov and the tragic loss of Colonel Frankenstein, which Jamie could still barely bring himself to think about.
“Seward looks serious,” said Larissa, as though she could read Jamie’s mind. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jamie, softly, as Cal Holmwood stepped down from the platform and took a seat in the front row. “Looks like we’re about to find out.”
Admiral Seward stepped up to the lectern that stood in the middle of the platform, and gripped its edges with his hands. He looked out over the massed ranks of Operators, his expression unreadable. Then he cleared his throat, and began to speak.
“Operators of Department 19,” he began. “The time has come to put our cards on the table. Some of what I’m about to say is going to be hard for you to hear, but I believe it’s necessary that you hear it. I know many of you have had questions regarding the events of October 26th, questions that many of you have brought to me in person. I’m sorry that until now I have been unable to provide you with answers. There have been investigations and inquiries under way, and the full picture has only become clear extremely recently. That picture is what I’m here to describe to you today.”
Seward glanced around at his audience, and appeared to find what he was looking for on the faces of his colleagues. He nodded briefly, before carrying on.
“I’m sure the majority of you are familiar with the events that took place on Lindisfarne during the night in question; for those of you who are not, I have declassified report 6723/F, which provides a comprehensive account. What very few of you know is that despite the fact that the mission on Lindisfarne led to the destruction of Alexandru Rusmanov, to the uncovering of the treachery of Thomas Morris and to the loss of Colonel Frankenstein, the crucial event of that night took place more than two thousand miles away, at the SPC base in Polyarny.”
Standing at the back of the room, Jamie bristled.
And we rescued my mother. But I guess that doesn’t deserve a mention.
“On the lower levels of the SPC base,” continued Seward, taking a deep breath, “there is a vault numbered 31. Until the 26th of October it contained the most highly classified artefact held by any of the supernatural Departments of the world. It contained the remains of Vlad Tepes, the man who became known as Count Dracula.”
The room exploded.
Half the seated Operators leapt to their feet en masse, and the air was suddenly filled with hundreds of voices, many of them shouting and yelling. Admiral Seward raised his hands in a placatory gesture, then bellowed for quiet. The noise subsided, leaving behind it an uneasy, almost hostile atmosphere. The standing Operators retook their seats, but did so slowly, the looks on their faces shot through with fear and confusion, and more than a little anger.
“I know this must come as a shock,” said Seward. “The fact of the matter is that the confrontation with Count Dracula in 1892, the confrontation that led directly to the foundation of this Department, did not end with his destruction. This is a matter of open public record, since the account in Stoker’s novel is accurate. Any one of you could have corroborated his account with the documents in the archive, but it appears that none of you felt inclined to do so.
“Dracula was dangerously weak after his journey across Europe, and the knives wielded by Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris spilled the last of his blood, causing his body to collapse. They, along with John Seward, Arthur Holmwood and Abraham Van Helsing, believed him dead; they were the first men ever to challenge, let alone defeat, a vampire, and they had no reason not to. The realisation that Dracula had been rendered dormant rather than destroyed outright wasn’t made until several years later, when Professor Van Helsing was able to begin his study of the supernatural and discovered that a vampire could be brought back to life by introducing a sufficient quantity of blood to the dormant remains.
“When Professor Van Helsing realised the implication of this work, he returned to Transylvania with an envoy of the Russian Tsar, to recover the remains and see them properly secured. The envoy betrayed him, however, and the remains were taken to Moscow. They remained in Russian hands ever since, until the 26th of October, when they were taken from the SPC base by Valeri Rusmanov.”
Seward paused, clearly bracing himself for a second eruption, but none came. A deep shock appeared to have settled over the men and women of Department 19; what they were being told raised a prospect almost too terrifying to contemplate.
“An investigation into the theft by the Intelligence Division has returned some preliminary conclusions. Firstly, it appears that Valeri had been searching for his master’s remains since the early twentieth century, since very shortly after they disappeared into Russia. Secondly, it is clear that he was able to locate and extract them using information provided to him by Thomas Morris, whose treachery appears not to have been limited to assisting Alexandru Rusmanov in settling their mutual grudge against the Carpenter family.”
Jamie felt his face redden as a number of Operators turned slowly in his direction. He stared up at the lectern, refusing to meet their eyes, and silently urged Admiral Seward to carry on.
“The whereabouts of Valeri Rusmanov,” said the Director, “are presently unknown. Surveillance of all Valeri’s known properties and associates has yielded negative results. Interrogation of well-connected vampires has proved equally fruitless. Simply put, we have no idea where he is. In addition, we have—”
“He’s going to try to bring him back, isn’t he?” interrupted an Operator, whose name Jamie didn’t know. “Valeri, I mean. He’s going to try to bring Dracula back.”
“Operator Carlisle,” replied Seward, a grave expression on his face, “I am sorry to say that the Intelligence Division reports an overwhelming probability that he has already done so.”
This time the eruption was punctuated by a series of what seemed to Jamie’s ears to be horribly close to screams. He felt a tight ball of panic close round his heart; he had never seen such a reaction to anything from the men and women of Blacklight, men and women whom he had come to believe could not be shaken by anything, and who were certainly never scared. But the fear in the Ops Room was now palpable, thick and cloying. What the Director was announcing, in his calm, straightforward manner, was something that no one in the room had ever considered, let alone made any preparation for.
It was quite literally the worst thing he could be telling them.
“Enough!” shouted Admiral Seward. “Don’t you think I know how serious this is? I’m telling you because I believe that all of you have the right to know what we are facing. Don’t make me regret that