Department 19: Battle Lines (12 page)

They were scheduled to depart in just over an hour and a half, so Jamie had ordered his squad mates to meet him in the hangar in seventy-five minutes. He had been about to head down to the dining hall to grab a late breakfast when Jack Williams called and told him the news.

Angela Darcy’s squad mates were both in the infirmary, being tended to by the Blacklight medical staff; Jacobs’s arms had been set and splinted, and Carlisle’s wounds had been treated and stitched. They were both going to recover, but Jacobs was going to be inactive for several months, and Carlisle had required surgery to remove a shard of plastic that had stopped a millimetre short of his left eyeball.

“One vamp put them both down,” said Jack. “Angela said she’d never seen anything like it.”

Jamie thanked him for passing on the news, and warned him to be careful out there. Jack told him to do the same and cut their connection.

The door in front of him was no different from any of the hundreds of others on B and C, the residential levels of the Loop; what lay behind it was why his heart was accelerating so sharply. He reached out a gloved hand, noted with anger its visible tremble, and knocked heavily on the door.

Silence.

Jamie knocked again, and was about to turn and walk away when he heard a deep voice emerge from inside the room.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” he replied. “Jamie.”

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the door unlocked with a series of smooth clicks and swung open a fraction. Jamie reached out and pushed it inwards, revealing a spacious room, far larger than his own quarters. It was sparse and scrupulously neat; the surface of the desk was clear, the bed was neatly made, the floor was clean and polished. A pair of armchairs sat opposite the desk. One was empty; the other was straining under the weight of its occupant.

The monster, now once again going by the name Victor Frankenstein, looked up as Jamie walked into his room. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck, and black trousers and boots; a thick multi-coloured beard sprouted from his cheeks and chin, and his hair fell carelessly across his forehead and below his ears. His appearance was not against regulations – Blacklight operated a far looser dress code than the regular military, just as the special forces did – but it worried Jamie nonetheless. On a small table beside the armchair stood a glass, a bottle of whisky and a bowl of ice, and these items worried him too, given that it was barely noon.

“Hey,” said Jamie, settling into the empty armchair.

“Good evening,” replied Frankenstein.

“It’s afternoon,” said Jamie, forcing a smile. “Early afternoon.”

“I don’t care,” replied Frankenstein. He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. “How are you, Jamie? Looking after yourself?”

“I’m trying,” he replied. “It was easier with you looking after me as well.” He smiled again, trying to encourage the monster, to flatter him. “A lot easier.”

“I’m sure it was,” said Frankenstein. “It’s a shame you’ve had to grow up so fast. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I know,” said Jamie. “But that’s the world, isn’t it? Bad things happen.”

Frankenstein nodded. “Bad things happen.”

The monster’s free hand slid to the middle of his chest and rested there. Beneath the material of his shirt was a long pattern of scars, far more recent than the many others that covered his uneven flesh. They had been carved into him with a scalpel by Dante Valeriano, the self-styled vampire king of Paris, whom Frankenstein had injured terribly almost a century earlier, and who had spent the subsequent decades focusing on nothing except his insatiable desire for vengeance. In truth, he had been a fraud, a working-class boy from Saint-Denis called Pierre Depuis who had asserted dominance over the Parisian vampires with little more than bravado and a compellingly fictional history. Jamie and a small squad of Operators had destroyed the vampire king in the theatre where he lived, and brought the captive Frankenstein home, but not before Valeriano had begun to exact his revenge.

He doesn’t know he’s doing it
, thought Jamie.
Doesn’t realise how often he touches his scars.

Jamie felt his own hand twitch towards his neck, where an ugly red patch of skin stretched from his jaw to his shoulder, a memento of the search for his mother, what now felt like years ago.

You’re not the only one
,
he thought.
We’ve all got scars.

“How’s your girlfriend?” asked Frankenstein. “What’s her name? The vampire?”

“Larissa,” said Jamie, through a suddenly clenched jaw. “She’s fine. Thanks.”

Frankenstein nodded. “Is she still in America?”

“Yes,” said Jamie.

“Best place for her,” grunted the monster.

Jamie bore down on the fury that was rising up through him with all his strength and somehow managed to push it back.

Be calm,
he told himself.
It’s not his fault. Be calm.

Frankenstein’s hatred of vampires was long-standing and potent. He had made his feelings on them as a species clear to Jamie the very first time they had gone out on an operation together; he believed them to be aberrations, creatures that had no right to exist in the world. His encounter with Lord Dante had not improved his opinion of them, and he had still not forgiven Larissa for wasting their time during the search for Marie Carpenter, despite Jamie’s repeated pleas for him to do so.

“She seems happy,” he said, as brightly as he was able. “So maybe it is.”

Frankenstein stared at Jamie with his misshapen, multicoloured eyes, his gaze heavy and unblinking, and momentarily full of warning. “What about your other friend?” he asked. “The girl from Lindisfarne? Kate, was it?”

“She’s fine,” said Jamie, grateful for the new topic of conversation. “She’s getting stuck into this new project she’s running with Paul Turner. I hardly see her at the moment.”

“That’s life inside the Department,” said Frankenstein. “There’s always something going on.”

“Tell me about it,” said Jamie. “I’ve just come from a Zero Hour briefing. You’re not going to believe what—”

“I don’t want to know,” interrupted the monster.

“I know, but—”

“Jamie,” said Frankenstein, his voice like thunder. “We’ve been through this before. Cal offered me a place on the Zero Hour Task Force and I turned it down. You know that. I don’t understand why you find it so difficult to respect my decision.”

They looked at one another for a long, silent moment.

“You’re still on the inactive list,” said Jamie, eventually. It was a statement rather than a question.

“That’s correct,” replied Frankenstein.

“Why?”

“I would have thought that was obvious. I’m dangerous. I’m of no Operational use to anyone.”

“You’re dangerous three days of the month,” said Jamie. “And I’m obviously not suggesting you go out during them. But the rest of the time—”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Frankenstein. “As always, I’m curious as to why you think this is any of your business?”

Jamie felt his face fill with angry heat. “I’ll tell you why it’s my business,” he said. “It’s my business because I risked my life, and the lives of four other people, to drag you out of that theatre in Paris and bring you home safe.
That’s
why.”

“Why did you do it, though?” asked Frankenstein. “Why did you risk so much to rescue me?”

“Why?” asked Jamie, leaning forward in his chair. “What the hell do you mean, why? Because we’re on the same side. Because I thought we were friends. Because I didn’t want you to die. Take your pick from any of those. Dante would have killed you if we hadn’t got there when we did, and now all you can do is drink whisky and ask me stupid questions? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You’re lying to yourself, Jamie,” said Frankenstein. The monster’s tone was even, maddeningly so. “
Why did you rescue me
?
”

“Because what happened to you was my fault,” shouted Jamie. “If I hadn’t listened to Tom Morris, then everything on Lindisfarne would have happened differently. You wouldn’t have fallen, or been bitten, or lost your memory. So when we found out you were still alive, I couldn’t let you die, OK? I had to find you and bring you home. Do you understand? I
had
to.”

Frankenstein smiled at him, an open expression that seemed full of genuine warmth. “I know, Jamie,” he said, his voice low. “And if you think I don’t appreciate what you did, then you’re sorely mistaken, I promise you. I owe you my life, truly I do. But we both know why you did what you did. Because you felt guilty, because you believed that rescuing me would atone for the mistake you believe you made last year. Which, as I’ve tried to tell you a thousand times, was never your fault in the first place. Bad things happen, Jamie. They do. You trusted a senior Operator that you had no reason not to and things went wrong. You blamed yourself and I understand that. But you rescued me, you brought me home, and now you can put down that weight you’ve been carrying around with you since I fell. I meant it when I said I owed you my life, Jamie. But that doesn’t mean you get to tell me how to live the rest of it.”

Jamie felt his anger dissipate, and slumped back into his chair.

“I get it,” he said. “I get how bad Paris was. I mean, I don’t really, but I can guess.”

“It’s not just Paris,” said Frankenstein. “Dante, Latour, they’re only part of it.”

“So what is it?” asked Jamie.

“It’s impossible for you to understand,” said Frankenstein. “I’d buried so many of the things I’ve done, buried them so deeply that I’d been able to convince myself that maybe I wasn’t the monster everyone claimed, that maybe the good I’ve done could outweigh the bad. But it can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why not?” said Jamie. “Why shouldn’t it?”

“Because it doesn’t. You can never truly bury the past. I thought I had and, when it all came back to me, it was like experiencing it all again for the first time. It was like having my soul torn to pieces in front of me. I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me, Jamie, or pity me. But I need you to understand that I can’t go back out there. I just can’t.”

Jamie felt his heart go out to the huge grey-green man, who had once sworn a solemn oath to protect the Carpenter family. It was obvious to him what the missing word in Frankenstein’s explanation had been.

He’s ashamed
.
Of the things he did. Of himself.

“The thing you don’t want to know about is big,” Jamie said. “There’s a new type of vamp out there. Really strong. Really fast. Angela Darcy’s squad took one down last night and two of them ended up in the infirmary, so I’m going to say this for the last time. We could really use your help out there.”

“I’m sorry,” replied Frankenstein. “I can’t. What about you? Are you going out?”

Jamie checked his console. “In just over an hour,” he replied. “The entire active roster is going out today or tonight.”

“You’re taking your rookies?”

He nodded. “Holmwood has temporarily activated all the trainees. They go back to the Playground as soon as this is dealt with, but as of right now, they’re officially Operators.”

Frankenstein poured himself another glass of whisky. “Are they ready?” he asked.

“No,” said Jamie, honestly. “But I think they’ll do OK. And, to be honest, they’re going to have to. This is pretty much the definition of in at the deep end.”

The monster took a sip of his drink. “Keep a close eye on them.”

Jamie forced a laugh. “Both of them are older than me; one was some kind of SIS assassin and the other was a Para on the verge of SAS selection. I’m hoping they’re going to keep an eye on
me
.”

Frankenstein put his drink down and leant forward.

“I’m serious,” he said, his voice rumbling like an earthquake. “I don’t care what they did, where they did it, or for how long. They’ve never seen the things that you and I have seen. So I’ll say it again: keep a close eye on them. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah,” replied Jamie. “OK, sure, I hear you. I’ll be careful.”

Frankenstein sat back. “I’m sure you’ll try,” he said. For a brief moment, his eyes seemed to sparkle with laughter and Jamie felt the atmosphere in the room lift. “Now let’s talk about something less gloomy. How is Matt enjoying being asked to save the world?”

Jamie opened his mouth to answer, then felt his console vibrate once in its loop in his belt. It was the alarm he had set for himself, to make sure he had enough time to do everything he wanted to do before meeting up with his squad.

“Matt’s fine,” he replied, standing up. “I’ll tell you next time, I promise.”

“You have to leave?”

“I do,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I thought you weren’t heading out for an hour?”

“I’m sorry,” repeated Jamie, noting the expression of sadness that had flickered across the monster’s face. “I’ll come down tomorrow, OK?”

“All right,” replied Frankenstein. “Good luck with the op. Be careful. And remember what you promised me. Stay away—”

“I know,” interrupted Jamie, a smile breaking out across his face. “I know what I promised you. You remind me every time I see you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“All right,” said Frankenstein, the sad ghost of a smile on his face. “Tomorrow.”

“Really?” asked Valentin Rusmanov, placing two cups of tea on the low table that sat in the middle of his cell. “That’s really what he made you promise?”

“Stay away from Valentin,” said Jamie, grinning. “He reminds me every time I see him.”

“How perfectly lovely,” replied Valentin, settling easily on to the
chaise longue
that stood against one of cell’s bare concrete walls. “Under normal circumstances I would not consider myself easily flattered, but I must confess it gives me a rather warm feeling to know that the monster considers me worthy of such warnings. Has he explained
why
you should stay away from me?”

“He says you can’t be trusted,” replied Jamie, sipping his tea. “He doesn’t believe your reasons for being here.”

“Well, I suppose I can’t really blame him for that,” said Valentin. “Although I am glad you choose to ignore his warnings. And I do rather resent his hypocrisy.”