The Devil in No Man's Land: 1917 (4 page)

“Well, damn it all, there's four of you standing right there,” roared the Field Marshal. “Do you mean to tell me—”

“I didn't see anything, sir,” said Ellis. He looked at the rest of the squad. “Did any of you?”

The others shook their heads.

Gough's face reddened to the point where the blood splashed on his cheeks and upper lip disappeared, but he said nothing. He stared at Ellis, his eyes blazing, then dropped his eyes back to his map and waved a dismissive hand.

Ellis led Quincey Harker out of the study, and the rest of the Special Reconnaissance Unit followed.

The following day, in torrential rain, the Third and Fourth Canadian Divisions, reinforced by two British Divisions, took the town of Passchendaele. The burning of the church, and its contents, appears in no official record.

The offensive, which had begun three and a half months earlier on the 11
^th
July, resulted in an Allied advance of just under five miles, at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand casualties. In March 1918, barely four months later, the Allies abandoned every inch of territory captured during the battle to enable reinforcements to be sent to counter the German Lys Offensive.

More than forty thousand men were lost in the mud forever.

One of them, no more than a boy, was the first vampire Quincey Harker ever encountered.

He would not be the last.

Join Quincey Harker in Rome in 1918 for the second instalment of the Department 19 Files:

UNDEAD IN THE ETERNAL CITY

Rome, 1918

The Great War is over, but the world is in the grip of a Spanish influenza pandemic, and people are dying in their millions. Quincey Harker and his Special Reconnaissance Unit are recuperating in Rome, trying their hardest to drink away their memories.

But they are not the only visitors to the Eternal City: Valeri Rusmanov, the oldest and most powerful vampire on earth, and his wife are roaming the dark streets on a ghastly holiday, delighting in the death that surrounds them, soaking in the sounds of the sick, feasting on innocent blood... and about to cross paths with Quincey and his men.

Copyright

First published as an ebook in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children's Books
2013

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Text copyright © Will Hill 2013

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007522248
Version 1

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