Darkest Night

Max stopped. He had no doubt they were harmless, just as he and his friends had been, but he was full of a sudden urge to teach them a lesson, to make them realise that there were things in the night that were far more dangerous than kids full of cider-inflated bravado. And on a gut level, in the base part of himself that he kept hidden from everyone, he was hungry.

“What?” asked the teenage boy, getting up from his swing. “You got a problem?”

Max stared at him, feeling the first flush of heat behind his eyes. The boy’s acne-ridden face was pale in the moonlight, his mouth curled into an arrogant smile.

Don’t rise to it, he told himself. There’s eight of them. Too many.

“No problem,” he said. “Have a good night.”

He walked along the path towards the west gate without a backward glance, knowing the boy would stare daggers after him until he was out of sight; it would be no less than his friends would expect. Max strode through the gate and into the quiet estate where he’d lived for the last five years; his house was a square brick box standing behind a paved drive and a small lawn that he only mowed in the evenings. He unlocked the front door, hung his coat on the hook rack in the hall, and walked through to the living room where he flopped down on to the sofa, put the TV on, and was asleep within a minute.

Thud. Thud thud.

Max’s eyes flew open, his heart racing in his chest. He had dreamt of her again, the same dream as always: the trees, the blood, the screams, the freezing water. He sat up on the sofa, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the one that had been his mother’s.

Two forty-three, he thought. Almost three in the morning.

He got unsteadily to his feet. Something had woken him, something that had managed to penetrate the fabric of his dream and engage his conscious mind. Max went to the window, slid open the curtains that were always closed, and peered out at the dark street.

Thud. Thud thud thud thud.

He jumped. The sound was coming from the front of the house.

Someone was knocking on his door.

Max pulled his phone from his pocket and checked its screen. No messages. No missed calls. Slowly, his heart pounding, he walked out into the hallway and turned on the lights. A dark silhouette loomed outside the front door, clearly visible through the pane of frosted glass.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, and heard a tremor in his voice.

“Nottinghamshire Police, sir,” came the reply. “Open the door, please.”

Max frowned. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“We’ve had a complaint of a disturbance at this address, sir.”

“There’s no disturbance here,” said Max. “You must have the wrong house.”

“Sir, we’re required to follow up on all complaints,” said the silhouette. “Please open the door.”

Max hesitated, then slid the security chain on the back of the door into place. He unlocked the door and pulled it open a few centimetres. “I’d like to see your identification,” he said.

“No problem, sir,” said the man. A gloved hand pushed a leather wallet through the gap between the door and the frame. Max opened it and found a plastic warrant card in the name of Sergeant Liam Collins of the Nottinghamshire Police.

He breathed a silent sigh of relief, and pushed the door shut. “I’m sorry, officer,” he said, as he slid the chain back. “Can’t be too careful, you know?”

“I understand, sir,” said the man, as the door swung open. “There are a lot of dangerous people out here.”

Max had just enough time to see a circle of glass gleaming in the moonlight. Then a searing beam of purple light blinded him, and his face burst into flames.

He fell backwards, screaming incoherently and beating desperately at the fire erupting from his skin and hair. The pain was unthinkable, far beyond anything he had ever known, enough to drive reason from his mind; all he knew, on an instinctive level, was that he had to put the fire out, had to stop himself burning. His fangs burst involuntarily from his gums, slicing through his tongue and transforming his screams into high-pitched grunts. One of his eyes was empty blackness and awful, sickening pain, like someone had tipped boiling water over it. Through the other, he saw billowing smoke as he clawed at his face and head, and the dreadful sight of two men dressed all in black stepping into his house and shutting the door behind them.

The pain in his head lessened fractionally as his pounding fists finally extinguished the flames. The skin on his hands was charred red and black and peeling away in wide sheets, revealing the pink muscle beneath. Max tried to focus, but felt his reeling body resist him as he rolled over on to his front and crawled towards the kitchen, each agonising centimetre requiring a Herculean effort. He heard voices behind him, but ignored them; his remaining eye was fixed on the fridge, and the bottles of blood he knew were chilling inside it. If he could reach them, perhaps there might still be a chance.

Then he felt a tiny stab of pain in the side of his neck, and realised there was none.

He slumped to the ground as the syringe was drawn out of his flesh, as though the power supply to his muscles had been turned off. His ruined tongue slid limply out of his mouth as one of the black-clad men pressed a boot against his ribs and rolled him over on to his back. Max stared up at him, his diminished vision beginning to blur and darken, and managed a single mangled word.

“Blacklight …”

The man grunted with laughter. “Not us, mate,” he said, as Max slipped into unconsciousness. “We’re something else.”

When he awoke again, he could feel the steady vibration of an engine somewhere beneath him. Max opened one eye and the pain came rushing back to him, deep, searing agony in his face and scalp. He gritted his teeth and let out a low groan; his stomach was spinning, and he was sure he was going to be sick. He tried to roll on to his side, but couldn’t move; whatever had been in the syringe was still working on him, paralysing his muscles.

Above him, sitting on a wooden bench and leaning against a metal panel, was one of the dark figures that had burst into his home. He stared up with his good eye and wondered how he had ever mistaken them for Department 19. Max had seen a squad of Blacklight soldiers once, a long time ago, and they had been slick, almost robotic in appearance; the man above him was wearing a black balaclava, a cheap black leather jacket, and a backpack that looked like it had been bought in a sports shop. But then he focused more closely, and felt terror spill through him.

Painted on the man’s chest, in crude sprays of white, was a wolf’s head, its teeth huge, its jaws open wide. And all of a sudden, Max knew who had him.

“Night … Stalker …” he managed, his tongue barely obeying his brain’s commands, his mouth filling with saliva.

The man looked down at him. “Welcome back, mate,” he said. “Don’t try to talk. It’ll just make things worse.”

Max stared, his eye wide with fear. He tried to move, felt nothing happen, and bore down with all that remained of his strength. His left hand trembled, but stayed flat against the floor.

“You want me to dose you again?” asked the man. He leant forward and held up a thick black torch. “Stay still or die. It’s up to you.”

The purple lens seemed huge, as though it was about to swallow Max up. He forced himself to look away, and fixed his gaze on the ceiling above him. It was the roof of a van, moulded metal and plastic, long and wide. Beneath him, the engine rumbled on. He knew what happened to vampires taken by the Night Stalker, had seen the bloody aftermath on the news and online. His only chance was to wait, to not provoke his captors, and hope that enough of his strength returned before they reached wherever they were taking him.

Maybe I’ll have a chance then, he thought. Maybe.

The van pulled to a halt, and Max was jerked awake. He had drifted back into unconsciousness and dreamt about her again: the blood, the water, the screams. He opened his eye, saw the man with the wolf on his chest still sitting above him, and tried to move the fingers of his hand, silently praying that whatever they had drugged him with had worn off.

Nothing. Not even the tremble it had managed before.

Panic flooded through him; he wondered whether they had given him another shot while he was unconscious, but he couldn’t check his neck and he didn’t dare ask, providing he could even form the words to do so.

“Are we on?” asked the man, looking towards the front of the van.

“Yep,” replied a voice that presumably belonged to the driver.

“All right then,” said the man, and looked down at Max. “Let’s get you up.”

“No,” he managed. He tried to force his limbs into action, but felt not even the slightest flicker in response. “Please …”

The man ignored him, opened the rear doors of the vehicle, and disappeared. Max lay on the floor, terror pulsing through him, unable to move, barely able to think. Then hands reached under his armpits, and dragged him backwards out of the van.

His heels scraped uselessly across the ground as, despite the panic that was coursing through him, Max forced himself to look around, to see if there was something, anything he might be able to use to save himself from the fate he knew awaited him. He was being hauled across a barren, weed and pebble-strewn patch of wasteland, a place he didn’t recognise; he had no idea how long he had been unconscious, and therefore no idea how far he might have been taken from his home. A squat industrial building rose up before him, its windows barred and broken, its bricks crumbling and its paint flaking away; it looked long abandoned. Max strained his supernatural hearing, listening for a human voice, the sound of a car engine, anything that might suggest that help could be nearby.

He heard nothing.

“That’s far enough,” said a voice from behind him.

The fingers digging into his armpits disappeared, and Max tumbled to the ground, unable to do anything to break his fall. His head connected sharply with the ground, sending a fresh bolt of pain through his battered system, and he let out a gasping sob as he was pushed over on to his back. The two men with the white wolves on their chests crowded over him, torches in their hands, and his vocal cords dragged themselves into life, galvanised by a terror that was almost overwhelming.

“Please,” he said, his voice slurred. “Please don’t kill me. Please. It isn’t fair.”

One of the men tilted his head to one side. “What’s not fair about it?”

“It’s not my fault,” said Max. “Being a vampire. It’s not fair. Please …”

“What do you drink?” asked the man.

Max stared up at him. “What?”

“You’re a vampire,” said the man. “So you need to drink blood. Where do you get it?”

“Raw meat,” said Max. He felt tears well in his remaining eye. “Butchers. Stray dogs and cats.”

“Is that right?” asked the man, and squatted down beside him, his eyes narrow behind his balaclava. “What about Suzanne Fields?”

“Who?” asked Max.

“Surely you remember her?” said the man. “Pretty blonde, nineteen years old. You attacked her when she was walking home through Bridgford Park, then you drank her dry and broke her neck when you were done. Divers found her a week ago, at the bottom of the river half a mile from your house.”

“I don’t know anything about her,” said Max, his voice low. “I never hurt—”

“Don’t give me that,” said the man. “It’s time to come clean, Max. Time to confess your sins. It’ll be better for your soul, if you still have one.”

The nightmare burst into his mind: the blonde hair, the screams, the taste of blood in his mouth, the freezing water as he pushed her under the surface. He had suppressed it, buried it as deep as it would go, but it bubbled up when he was at his most vulnerable; she had haunted him every night since he killed her.

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispered, and let out a low sob. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“That’s good,” said the man. “Admit what you did. Be a man about it.”

“I never wanted to be a vampire,” said Max, the combination of pain and misery flooding through his mind threatening to unmoor it. “I didn’t want it. I didn’t. You have to believe me.”

“I do believe you,” said the man. “But that doesn’t change what you did.”

The tears spilled out of Max’s eye and rolled down his cheek, burning across the ruined flesh like acid.

“What makes it OK for you to kill me?” he asked. “What gives you the right to sentence me to death?”

“It’s got nothing to do with rights,” said the man. “This is a war. And in a war you don’t show mercy to your enemies.”

The black-clad man drew a wooden stake from his belt and held it out; Max stared at it, overcome by horror at the realisation that his life was going to end in this place, far away from his friends and the people he loved.

“Make your peace with whatever you believe in,” said the man. “You’ve outstayed your welcome in this world.”

Max closed his eye. He saw the faces of his friends, and felt his heart ache at the thought of never seeing them again. But then, in the depths of his despair, he felt a momentary bloom of relief: he was glad they had never known what he had become, that he had never had to see the disappointment on their faces.

Because he had told the truth to the man who was about to murder him: he did regret the girl in the park, as he regretted the four others he had killed. He had never meant to hurt any of them; he had lost himself in the hunger, and by the time he had remembered himself, they had been dead.

He couldn’t change it now.

Couldn’t change any of it.

It was too late.

Jamie sat back in his seat and stared at the screen that had been folded down from the ceiling of the van. The connection to the Surveillance Division was active; all that remained now was to wait for their first alert of the night to come through.

“What’s your bet?” asked Lizzy Ellison, from her seat opposite him. “Domestic disturbance? False alarm?”

“Domestic,” said Qiang. “They are always domestic now.”

Jamie shrugged. “You never know,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and actually see a real vampire tonight.”

“Steady on, sir,” said Ellison, smiling broadly at him. “Let’s not get carried away.”

Qiang let out a grunt of laughter, a sound that never failed to amaze his squad leader. When he had first arrived at the Loop, the Chinese Operator had seemed more like a robot than an actual human being: utterly professional, precise, and not given to conversation beyond what was necessary for the Operation at hand. Now, more than six months later and following a concerted campaign by both Jamie and Ellison, Qiang was a markedly different person. He was still unlikely to ever win the award for most light-hearted member of the Department, but he was now capable of making a limited amount of small talk, of telling his squad mates about the family and friends that he had left behind in China, and, on extremely rare and joyous occasions, making small, bone-dry jokes.

As the months after Zero Hour had lumbered slowly past, Jamie had come to see his squad as a lone beacon of stability in a world that was becoming ever more uncertain, and when he had thrown himself into his job in an attempt to escape the misery and chaos that had been threatening to drag him down, his squad mates had been right there beside him. Neither Ellison nor Qiang knew the truth about his father, or why he no longer spoke to Frankenstein, but they knew about Larissa; everyone in the Department did.

Word of her departure had raced through the Loop, causing dismay among those who understood that Blacklight was weaker without her and relief among the many Operators who had never truly been comfortable with a vampire wearing the black uniform. In the first days after her disappearance, dozens of Jamie’s colleagues had asked him what had happened, if he had any idea where she might have gone, until his patience began to visibly wear thin and people realised that questioning him further would have been unwise.

The only thing Ellison and Qiang had ever asked was whether he was all right. He had told them that he wasn’t, but that he didn’t want to talk about it, and they had left it at that. It had been a show of respect for which he remained profoundly grateful.

Ellison had, in fact, been entirely awesome since the day she had joined the Department. Jamie had once told Cal Holmwood that she was going to sit in the Director’s chair one day, and nothing had happened since to make him revise that opinion. She was a brilliant Operator, smart and agile and fearless, but more than that, she had the uncanny ability to drag him out of himself, to cut through the fog of gloom that hung over him and force him to laugh, usually at himself. Jamie knew he was susceptible to self-pity, and Ellison was the perfect antidote: irreverent, kind, funny, and absolutely unwilling to indulge him. He loved Kate and Matt and relied on them more than anyone, even more than his mum, who, for all her empathy and unconditional love, could never really, truly relate to what his life had become. But Ellison was close behind them on his priority list; when he was on Operations with her and Qiang, he felt accepted and valued and appreciated. He felt at peace. As a result, it was not uncommon for his heart to sink when the time came for them to head back to the Loop.

Jamie was roused from his thoughts by the loud alarm that accompanied a new window opening on the van’s screen.

ECHELON INTERCEPT REF. 97607/2R

SOURCE. Emergency call (mobile telephone [phone])

TIME OF INTERCEPT. 23:45

OPERATOR: Hello, emergency service operator, which service do you require?

CALLER: Police.

OPERATOR: What is the nature of your emergency?

CALLER: I just got home from work and something’s been painted on my neighbour’s front door.

OPERATOR: Does this qualify as an emergency, sir?

CALLER: It’s the same thing that’s been in the papers, that Night Stalker thing. The wolf’s head. It’s right on the front door.

OPERATOR: You can call your local police station to report vandalism, sir. This line needs to be kept clear for emergencies.

CALLER: Right. Sorry.

INTERCEPT REFERENCE LOCATION. Violet Road, West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire. 52.933714, -1.122017

RISK ASSESSMENT. Priority Level 2

“All right,” said Ellison, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s go.”

“Have you got the location, Operator?” asked Jamie.

“Yes, sir,” replied their driver, his voice sounding through the speakers. “ETA three minutes.”

“Very close,” said Qiang, as the van accelerated, its engine rumbling beneath them.

“Weapons and kit check,” said Jamie. Excitement was crackling through him at the prospect of something that might actually be worth the attention of his squad. Ever since V-Day and Gideon and stupid, reckless Kevin McKenna, Patrol Responds had become purgatory: night after night of false alarms, attacks on suspected vampires who turned out to be every bit as human as their assailants, denouncements and accusations that were usually the malicious result of some minor grudge. This, the call they were now racing towards, had the potential to be different. Everyone inside the Department was following the Night Stalker attacks with great interest, although, for once, Blacklight seemed to know little more than the public and the media.

There had been ten attacks so far, all in the Midlands and East Anglia, all bearing signature similarities, most notably the wolf’s head painted on the doors of the victims’ homes and across their bloody remains. Public opinion seemed to favour the lone crazy theory, that the Night Stalker was a single individual carrying out vigilante executions, but Jamie, along with the majority of his colleagues, thought otherwise. He knew better than anyone how powerful vampires were, how fast and agile, especially when cornered; even allowing for the element of surprise, he didn’t believe that anyone could carry out ten vampire killings on their own, unless they were also a vampire. Which was a possibility, although Jamie subscribed to a simpler solution: that there was no such thing as the Night Stalker, but several Night Stalkers, at least two, perhaps even four or five.

“Twenty seconds, sir,” said their driver.

Jamie fastened his helmet into place, flipped up the visor, and looked at his squad mates. “Ready One as soon as we touch the ground,” he said, and felt his eyes bloom with heat. “Non-lethal. Clear?”

“Clear,” replied his squad mates.

The van slowed to a halt. Jamie twisted the handle on the rear door and pushed it open. “Go,” he said.

Ellison and Qiang leapt down on to the tarmac, their weapons at their shoulders, their visors covering their faces. He was beside them in an instant, floating a millimetre or two above the ground; his vampire side, the part of himself that heightened his senses and kept him sharp, was wide awake, and hungry, as he looked around. They were standing in a quiet suburban estate, a long row of square, two-storey houses with neat lawns and mid-range Japanese cars in their driveways.

“Shall I circle, sir?” asked their driver, his voice loud and clear through the comms plugs in Jamie’s ears.

“No,” he replied. “We’re not going to be here long. Ask Surveillance to bring up the CCTV grid for a ten-mile radius from this location and leave a line open.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jamie nodded, and looked at the house standing before them. It was identical to all the others on the estate, with one ghoulish exception; sprayed on its front door, in white paint that had dripped all the way down to the step, was a crude wolf’s head, its teeth huge, its eyes wide and staring.

“Night Stalker,” he said. “Or a good impression, at least. Check the door.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ellison, and jogged up the driveway, Qiang close behind her. She moved to one side of the door frame, her back against the front wall of the house, and tried the handle. It turned in her hand, and the door swung open.

“Sweep the house,” said Jamie. “Both of you. Quick as you can.”

His squad mates disappeared inside as he took a closer look at the quiet street. The night air was still and cool; his supernatural ears could pick out the low drone of dozens of televisions from inside the identical homes. Jamie spun slowly in the air, until movement on the other side of the road caught his eye; a curtain had fluttered in the window of the house opposite, as though someone had been peering through it until he looked in their direction.

Nosy neighbour, he thought, and flew slowly towards the house. What would we do without them?

Jamie rose over the low wall at the front of the garden, crossed the lawn, and waited in front of the window for the curtain to open again. He had absolutely no doubt that it would; the van and his squad’s unusual appearance would prove too tempting. Long seconds passed until the curtains parted, ever so slightly, and the face of an elderly woman peered through them. Her eyes locked with Jamie’s, and he smiled widely as they flew open with fright. The curtains snapped shut again; he waited a moment, then flew along the front of the house and knocked hard on the door.

“I didn’t do nothing,” called a voice from inside. “Get away with you. I won’t look no more.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I need to ask you some questions.”

Silence.

“I’m not opening the door,” shouted the woman, eventually. “I don’t care who you are, I don’t open up after dark and that’s all there is to it.”