Department 19 Books 1-3
Will Hill

Table of Contents

Title Page

Department 19

Department 19: The Rising

Department 19: Battle Lines

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

Robert Frost

We want no proofs. We ask none to believe us.

Abraham Van Helsing

Contents

Cover

Epigraph

MEMORANDUM

PROLOGUE

TWO YEARS LATER

Chapter 1 - TEENAGE WASTELAND

Chapter 2 - SINS OF THE FATHER

Chapter 3 - ATTACK ON SUBURBIA

Chapter 4 - SEARCH AND RESCUE

Chapter 5 - INTO THE DARKNESS

Chapter 6 - THE LYCEUM INCIDENT, PART 1

Chapter 7 - IT’S HARD TO BREATHE WITH A HAND AROUND YOUR THROAT

Chapter 8 - THE LYCEUM INCIDENT, PART II

Chapter 9 - A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

Chapter 10 - THE LYCEUM INCIDENT, PART III

Chapter 11 - THE MORNING AFTER

Chapter 12 - A CRIMSON KINDNESS

Chapter 13 - FIRST DATE

Chapter 14 - SPLINTER CELL

Chapter 15 - THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

Chapter 16 - EVERY BOY’S DREAM

Chapter 17 - THE BLACK SHEEP

Chapter 18 - IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS

Chapter 19 - BLOOD AND LETTERS

Chapter 20 - THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS, PART I

Chapter 21 - THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS

Chapter 22 - THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS, PART II

Chapter 23 - ROUND TWO

Chapter 24 - THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS, PART III

Chapter 25 - HE WAS MY FRIEND, AND I LOVED HIM

Chapter 26 - THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Chapter 27 - THREE’S A CROWD

Chapter 28 - ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR

Chapter 29 - A CALCULATED RISK

Chapter 30 - VALHALLA

Chapter 31 - ONE RULE FOR EVERYONE

Chapter 32 - WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Chapter 33 - ON THE WAY TO THE GALLOWS

Chapter 34 - THE HUNTING PARTY

Chapter 35 - YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW

Chapter 36 - THE SECOND INVASION OF LINDISFARNE

Chapter 37 - AT THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

Chapter 38 - LOVE BURNS

Chapter 39 - A FORMAL INVITATION

Chapter 40 - BREAKING POINT

Chapter 41 - THE EASTERN FRONT

Chapter 42 - UNHOLY ISLAND

Chapter 43 - THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES

Chapter 44 - IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

Chapter 45 - THE TRUTH HURTS

Chapter 46 - STAND, AND BE TRUE

Chapter 47 - THE HUMAN HEART IS A FRAGILE THING

Chapter 48 - THE END OF THE TUNNEL

FIRST EPILOGUE

SECOND EPILOGUE

MEMORANDUM

From: Office of the Director of the Joint Intelligence Committee

Subject: Revised classifications of the British Governmental departments

Security: TOP SECRET

DEPARTMENT 1 Office of the Prime Minister

DEPARTMENT 2 Cabinet Office

DEPARTMENT 3 Home Office

DEPARTMENT 4 Foreign and Commonwealth Office

DEPARTMENT 5 Ministry of Defence

DEPARTMENT 6 British Army

DEPARTMENT 7 Royal Navy

DEPARTMENT 8 Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service

DEPARTMENT 9 Her Majesty’s Treasury

DEPARTMENT 10 Department for Transport

DEPARTMENT 11 Attorney General’s Office

DEPARTMENT 12 Ministry of Justice

DEPARTMENT 13 Military Intelligence, Section 5 (MI5)

DEPARTMENT 14 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)

DEPARTMENT 15 Royal Air Force

DEPARTMENT 16 Northern Ireland Office

DEPARTMENT 17 Scotland Office

DEPARTMENT 18 Wales Office

DEPARTMENT 19 CLASSIFIED

DEPARTMENT 20 Territorial Police Forces

DEPARTMENT 21 Department of Health

DEPARTMENT 22 Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)

DEPARTMENT 23 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)

PROLOGUE
BRENCHLEY, KENT 3RD NOVEMBER 2007

Jamie Carpenter was watching TV in the living room when he heard the tyres of his dad’s car crunch across the gravel drive much, much earlier than usual. Jamie looked at the clock on the wall above the TV and frowned. It was quarter past five. Julian Carpenter had never, to the best of Jamie’s memory, arrived home from work before seven o’clock, and even that was only on special occasions like his mum’s birthday or when Arsenal were playing in the Champions League.

He hauled himself off the sofa, a tall, slightly awkward fourteen-year-old with a skinny frame and unruly brown hair, and went to the window. His dad’s silver Mercedes was parked where it always was, in front of the garage that stood apart from their house. Jamie could see his father in the glow of the car’s brake lights, pulling something out of the boot.

Maybe he’s sick, Jamie thought. But as he looked closely at his dad, he didn’t think he looked ill; his eyes were bright and wide in the red light and he was moving quickly, putting things from the boot into his pockets. And Jamie noticed something else; he kept looking over his shoulder towards the road, as if he thought—

Something moved in the corner of Jamie’s eye, near the oak tree at the bottom of the garden. He turned his head, gooseflesh breaking out suddenly along his arms and back, and he realised he was scared. Something is wrong here, he thought. Very wrong.

The tree looked the same as it always did, its gnarled trunk tilted to the left, its huge roots rippling the lawn and bending the garden wall out towards the road.

Whatever Jamie had seen, his father had seen it too. He was standing very still behind the car, staring up into the branches of the tree. Jamie looked closely at the tree and the long black shadows the moonlight cast across the grass. Whatever had moved wasn’t moving any more. But as he stared, he realised that there was something different.

There were more shadows than there should be.

The tree’s leaves were gone for the winter and the shadows should have been the straight lines of empty branches. But the dark patterns covering the lawn were thick and bulky, as though the branches were full of—

What? Full of what?

Jamie looked back to his dad. He suddenly wanted him in the house, right now. His father was still staring at the tree, holding something in his hand, something that Jamie couldn’t quite make out.

Movement, again, by the tree.

Fear rose into Jamie’s throat.

Come inside, Dad. Come inside now. There’s something bad out there. The shadows on the lawn began to move.

Jamie stared, too scared to scream, as the dark patterns began to unfold. He looked up into the tree and now he could see the branches shifting as whatever was in there began to move, could hear the rustling of the bark as something – lots of things, it sounds like there’s lots of them – started to move through the boughs of the oak.

He looked desperately at his father who was still staring into the tree, lit by the red lights from the car.

Why are you just standing there? Come inside, please, please.

Jamie turned his head to look at the tree. On the other side of the window a girl’s face, pale, with dark red eyes and lips drawn into a snarl, stared through the glass, and he screamed so loudly he thought he would tear his vocal chords.

The face disappeared into the darkness and now there was movement as Jamie’s father ran up the drive towards the house. The front door slammed open and Julian Carpenter burst into the living room at the same time his wife ran in from the kitchen.

“Get away from the windows, Jamie!” he shouted.

“Dad, what’s—”

“Just do what I tell you and don’t argue! There isn’t time.”

“Time for what, Julian?” asked Jamie’s mum, her voice tight and high-pitched. “What’s going on?”

Julian ignored her, taking out a mobile phone that Jamie didn’t recognise. He punched numbers into the handset, and held it to his ear. “Frank? Yeah, I know. I know. What’s the ETA? And that’s accurate? OK. Take care of yourself.”

He hung up the phone and grabbed Jamie’s mum’s hand. “Julian, you’re scaring me,” she said, softly. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

He looked into his wife’s pale, confused face. “I can’t,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”

Jamie watched in a daze. He didn’t understand what was happening here, didn’t understand it at all. What was moving through the darkness outside their house? Who was Frank? His dad didn’t have any friends called Frank, he was sure of it.

The window behind Jamie exploded as a branch from the oak tree came through it like a missile and smashed their coffee table into splinters. This time his mum screamed as well.

“Get away from the windows!” bellowed Julian again. “Come over here next to me!”

Jamie scrambled up from the floor, grabbed his mum’s hand and ran across the room towards his father. They backed up against the wall opposite the window, his dad placing an arm across him and his mother, before putting his right hand into his coat pocket and taking out a black pistol.

His mother squeezed his hand so tightly that he thought the bones would break. “Julian!” she screamed. “What are you doing with that gun?”

“Quiet, Marie,” his father said, in a low voice.

In the distance, Jamie heard sirens approaching.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou. We’re going to be all right.

Outside in the garden a grotesque high-pitched laugh floated through the night air.

“Hurry,” Julian whispered. “Please hurry.”

Jamie didn’t know who his father was talking to, but it wasn’t him or his mum. Then suddenly the garden was full of light and noise as two black vans, sirens blaring and lights spinning on their roofs, screeched into the drive. Jamie looked out at the oak tree, now lit bright red and blue. It was empty.

“They’ve gone!” he shouted. “Dad, they’ve gone!”

He looked up at his father, and the look on his face scared Jamie more than everything else that had happened so far.

Julian stepped away from his family and stood facing them. “I have to go,” he said, his voice cracking. “Remember that I love you both more than anything in the world. Jamie, look after your mother. OK?”

He turned and headed towards the door.

Jamie’s mum ran forward and grabbed his arm, spinning him round. “Where are you going?” she cried, tears running down her face. “What do you mean, look after me? What’s happening?”

“I can’t tell you,” he replied, softly. “I have to protect you.”

“From what?” his wife screamed.

“From me,” he answered, his head lowered. Then he looked up at her and, with a speed Jamie had never seen before, twisted his arm free from her grip and pushed her backwards across the living room. She tripped over one of the smashed legs of the coffee table and Jamie ran forward and caught her, lowering her to the ground. She let out a horrible wailing cry and pushed his hands away, and he looked up in time to see his father walk out of the front door.

He shoved himself up off the floor, cutting his hand on the broken table glass, and ran to the window. Eight men wearing black body armour and carrying submachine guns stood in the drive, the barrels of their weapons pointed at Julian.

“Put your hands above your head!” one of the men shouted. “Do it now!”

Jamie’s dad took a few steps and stopped. He looked up into the tree for a long moment before glancing quickly over his shoulder at the window and smiling at his son. Then he walked forward, pulled the pistol from his pocket and pointed it at the nearest man.

The world exploded into deafening noise and Jamie clamped his hands over his ears and screamed and screamed and screamed as the submachine guns spat fire and metal and shot his father dead.

TWO YEARS LATER

Chapter 1
TEENAGE WASTELAND

Jamie Carpenter tasted blood and dirt and swore into the wet mud of the playing field.

“Get off me!” he gurgled.

A shrieking laugh rang out behind his head and his left arm was pushed further up his back, sending a fresh thunderclap of pain through his shoulder.

“Break it, Danny,” someone shouted. “Snap it off!”

“I just might,” replied Danny Mitchell, between gales of laughter. Then his voice was low and right next to Jamie’s ear. “I could, you know,” he whispered. “Easy.”

“Get off me, you fat —”

A huge hand, its fingers like sausages, gripped his hair and pushed his face back into the dirt. Jamie squeezed his eyes shut and flailed around with his right hand, trying to push himself up from the sucking mud.

“Someone grab his arm,” Danny shouted. “Hold it down.” A second later Jamie’s right arm was gripped at the wrist and pressed to the ground.

Jamie’s head started to ache as his body begged for oxygen. He couldn’t breathe, his nostrils full of sticky, foul-smelling mud, and he couldn’t move, his arms pinned and fifteen stone of Danny Mitchell sitting astride his back.

“That’s enough!”

Jamie recognised the voice of Mr Jacobs, the English teacher.

My knight in shining armour. A fifty-year-old man with sweat patches and bad breath. Perfect.

“Mitchell, get off him. Don’t make me tell you again!” the teacher shouted, and suddenly the pressure on Jamie’s arm and the weight on his back were gone. He lifted his face from the mud and took a huge breath, his chest convulsing.

“We were just playing a game, sir,” he heard Danny Mitchell say.

Great game. Really fun.

Jamie rolled over on to his back and looked round at the faces of the crowd who had gathered to watch his humiliation. They looked down at him with a mixture of excitement and disgust.

They don’t even like Danny Mitchell. They just hate me more than they hate him.

Mr Jacobs hunkered down next to him.

“Are you all right, Carpenter?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“Mitchell tells me this was some kind of game. Is that true?

” Over the teacher’s shoulder Jamie saw Danny looking at him, the warning clear in his face.

“Yes, sir. I think I lost, sir.”

Mr Jacobs looked down at Jamie’s mud-splattered clothes. “It certainly looks like it.” The teacher held his hand out and Jamie took it and pulled himself up out of the mud with a loud sucking noise. A couple of people in the crowd giggled, and Mr Jacobs whirled round, his face red with anger.

“Get out of here, you vultures!” he shouted. “Get to your next lesson right now or I’ll see you all for detention at the end of the day!”

The crowd dispersed, leaving Jamie and Mr Jacobs standing alone on the field.

“Jamie,” the teacher began, “if you ever want to talk about anything, you know where my office is.”

“Talk about what, sir?” Jamie asked.

“Well, you know, your father, and… well, what happened.”

“What did happen, sir?”

Mr Jacobs looked at him for a long moment, then dropped his eyes. “Let’s go,” he said. “You need to get cleaned up before next lesson. You can use the staff bathroom.”

When the bell rang for the end of the day, Jamie made his way slowly up the school drive towards the gate. His instincts were normally sharp, especially where danger was concerned, but somehow Danny Mitchell had crept up behind him during afternoon break. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

He slowed his pace, drifting in and out of groups of children ambling towards buses and waiting cars, his pale blue eyes darting left and right, looking for an ambush.

His chest tightened when he saw Danny Mitchell off to his left, laughing his ridiculous laugh and waving his arms violently around as he made a point to his adoring gaggle of sycophants.

Jamie slipped between two buses and across the road, waiting for the shouts and running feet that would mean he had been seen, but they didn’t come. Then he was into the neat, identical rows of houses that made up the estate he and his mother lived in, and out of sight of the school.

The Carpenters had moved three times in the two years since Jamie’s dad had died. Immediately after it happened the police had come to see them and told them that his father had been involved in a plot to sell intelligence to a British terrorist cell, classified intelligence from his job at the Ministry of Defence. The policemen had been kind, and sympathetic, assuring them there was no evidence that either he or his mother had known anything, but it didn’t matter. The letters had started to arrive almost immediately, from patriotic neighbours who didn’t want the family of a traitor living in their quiet Daily Mail-reading neighbourhood.

They had sold the house in Kent a few months later. Jamie didn’t care. His memory of that awful night was hazy, but the tree in the garden scared him and he couldn’t walk across the gravel drive where his father had died, choosing instead to walk around the edge of the lawn, keeping as much distance between him and the oak as possible, and jumping across the gravel on to the doorstep.

The face at the window, and the high, terrifying laugh that had drifted through the smashed window of the living room, he didn’t remember at all.

After that they had moved in with his aunt and uncle in a village outside Coventry. A new school for Jamie, a job as a receptionist in a GP’s surgery for his mother. But the rumours and stories followed them, and a brick was thrown through the kitchen window of his aunt’s terraced house the same day Jamie broke the nose of a classmate who made a joke about his dad.

They moved on the following morning.

From there they caught a train to Leeds and found a house in a suburb that looked like it was made of Lego. When Jamie was expelled from his second school in three months, for persistent truancy, his mother didn’t even shout at him. She just handed in their notice to their landlord, and started packing their things.

Finally, they had ended up in this quiet estate on the outskirts of Nottingham. It was grey, cold and miserable. Jamie, an outdoor creature, a country boy at heart, was forced to roam the concrete underpasses and supermarket car parks, his hood up and pulled tight around his face, his iPod thumping in his ears, keeping to himself and avoiding the gangs that congregated on the shadowy corners of this suburban wasteland. Jamie always avoided the shadows. He didn’t know why.

He walked quickly through the estate, along quiet roads full of nondescript houses and second-hand cars. He passed a small group of girls, who stared at him with open hostility. One of them said something he couldn’t quite hear, and her friends laughed. He walked on.

He was sixteen years old, and miserably, crushingly lonely.

Jamie closed the front door of the small semi-detached house he and his mother lived in as quietly as possible, intending to head straight to his room and change out of his muddy clothes. He got halfway up the stairs before his mother called his name.

“What, Mum?” he shouted.

“Can you come in here, please, Jamie?”

Jamie swore under his breath and stomped back down the stairs, across the hall and into the living room. His mother was sitting in the chair under the window, looking at him with such sadness that his throat clenched.

‘What’s going on, Mum?” he asked.

“I got a call from one of your teachers today,” she replied. “Mr Jacobs.”

God, why can’t he mind his own business? “Oh yeah? What’d he want?”

“He said you got in a fight this afternoon.”

“He’s wrong.”

Jamie’s mother sighed. “I’m worried about you,” she said.

“Don’t be. I can look after myself.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Maybe you should start to listen then.”

His mother’s eyes narrowed.

That hurt, didn’t it? Good. Now you can shout at me and I can go upstairs and we don’t have to say anything else to each other tonight.

“I miss him too, Jamie,” his mother said, and Jamie recoiled like he’d been stung. “I miss him every day.”

Jamie spat his reply around a huge lump in his throat. “Good for you,” he said. “I don’t. Ever.”

His mother looked at him and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

“Believe me, I do. He was a traitor, and a criminal, and he ruined both our lives.”

“Our lives aren’t ruined. We’ve still got each other.”

Jamie laughed. “Yeah. Look how well that’s working out for us both.”

The tears spilled from his mother’s eyes, and she lowered her head as they ran down her cheeks and fell gently to the floor. Jamie looked at her, helplessly.

Go to her. Go and hug her and tell her it’s going to be all right.

Jamie wanted to, wanted nothing more than to kneel beside his mother and bridge the gap that had been growing steadily between them since the night his father had died. But he couldn’t. Instead he stood, frozen to the spot, and watched his mother cry.

Chapter 2
SINS OF THE FATHER

Jamie woke up the next morning, showered and dressed, and slipped out of the front door without seeing his mother. He walked his usual route through the estate, but when he reached the turning that led to his school he carried straight on, through the little retail park with its McDonald’s and its DVD rental shop, across the graffiti-covered railway bridge, strewn with broken glass and flattened discs of chewing gum, past the station and the bike racks, down towards the canal. He wasn’t going to school today. Not a chance.

Why the hell did she get so upset? Because I don’t miss Dad? He was a loser. Can’t she see that?

Jamie clenched his fists tightly as he walked down the concrete steps to the towpath. This section of canal was perfectly straight for more than a mile, meaning Jamie could see danger approaching from a safe distance. But although he kept his eyes peeled, the only people he saw were dog-walkers and the occasional homeless person, sheltering under the low road bridges that crossed the narrow canal, and he gradually began to let his mind wander.

He could never have articulated to anyone, least of all his mother, the hole his father’s death had left in his life. Jamie loved his mother, loved her so much that he hated himself for the way he treated her, for pushing her away when it was obvious that she needed him, when he knew he was all she had left. But he couldn’t help it; the anger that churned inside him screamed for release and his mum was the only target he had.

The person it deserved to be aimed at was gone.

His dad, his cowardly loser of a dad, had taken him to London to watch Arsenal, bought him the Swiss Army knife he could no longer bear to carry in his pocket, let him fire his air rifle in the fields behind their old house, helped him build his tree house, and watched cartoons with him on Saturday mornings. Things his mum would never do, and he would never want her to. Things he missed more than he would ever have admitted.

He was furious with his father for leaving him and his mum, for making them leave the old house he had loved and move to this awful place, leaving his friends behind.

Furious for the glee he saw in the faces of bullies at every new school he was forced to start, when the whispers began and they realised they had been presented with the perfect victim: a skinny new kid whose father had tried to help terrorists attack his own country.

Furious with his mum, for her refusal to see the truth about her husband, furious with the teachers who tried to understand him and asked him to talk about his dad and his feelings.

Furious.

Jamie emerged from his thoughts and saw the sun high in the sky, struggling to push its pale light through the grey cloud cover. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw that it was nearly midday. Ahead of him a flattened trail led up the embankment into a small park, surrounded by tall birch trees. The park was always empty; it was one of his favourite places.

He sat down in the middle of the grass, away from the trees and the short shadows they were casting in the early afternoon sun. He hadn’t picked up his packed lunch because he would have had to go into the kitchen and deal with his mother, so he had filled his backpack with a can of Coke and some chocolate and sweets. The Coke was warm, and the chocolate was half-melted, but Jamie didn’t care.

He finished eating, tucked his bag under his head and lay down and closed his eyes. He was suddenly exhausted, and he didn’t want to think any more.

Fifteen minutes. Just a nap. Half an hour at the most.

“Jamie.”

His eyes flew open and he saw black night sky above him. Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes and looked around at the dark park. He trembled in the cold of the evening and his skin began to crawl as he realised he was sitting at the point where the shadows cast by the trees met one another.

“Jamie.”

He whirled around. “Who’s there?” he shouted.

A giggle rang through the park.

“Jamie.” The voice was lilting, like his name was being sung and allowed to echo through the trees. It was a girl’s voice.

“Where are you? This isn’t funny!”

The giggle again.

Jamie stood up and did a slow turn. He couldn’t see anyone, but beyond the first ring of trees the park was pitch black, and the trees themselves were wide and gnarled.

Plenty of room for someone to hide behind.

Something was tapping at the back of his mind, something to do with a girl and a window, but he couldn’t remember.

Something crunched underfoot, behind him.

He spun round, heart pounding.

Nothing.

“Jamie.”

The voice was closer this time, he knew it was.

“Show yourself!” he yelled.

“OK,” said a voice right beside his ear and he screamed and turned, fists flailing. He felt his right hand connect solidly with something and adrenaline roared in his veins, then froze.

On the ground in front of him was a girl, about his own age, holding her nose. A thin stream of blood was running on to her lip, and he saw her tongue flick out and lick it away.

“Oh God,” Jamie said. “I’m so, so sorry. Are you OK?”

“You dick,” the girl sniffled from behind her hand. “What did you do that for?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Why did you creep up on me?”

“I was just trying to scare you,” she said, sulkily.

“Why?”

“For fun. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Something else was rattling around Jamie’s mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Well, you did scare me. So, congratulations, I guess.”

“Thanks,” snorted the girl. She held out her hand. “Help me up?”

“Oh, sorry, of course,” Jamie replied, and reached down and pulled her to her feet. She brushed herself down, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and stood in front of him.

Jamie looked at her. She was very, very pretty, dark hair tumbling down her shoulders, pale skin and dark brown eyes. She saw him looking and smiled, and he blushed.

“See anything you like?” she asked.

“Sorry, I wasn’t staring, I was just, er…”

“Yes you were. It’s OK. I’m Larissa.”

“I’m…”

Tumblers fell into place in Jamie’s mind and fear overwhelmed him.

“You used my name,” he said, taking a step backwards. “How did you know my name?”

“It doesn’t matter, Jamie,” she said, and then her beautiful brown eyes turned a dark, terrible red. “It doesn’t matter any more.”

She moved like liquid, covering the distance between them in an instant. She took his face in her hands, with a grip that felt horribly, immovably strong.

“Nothing matters any more,” she whispered, and he looked into her red eyes and was lost.

Chapter 3
ATTACK ON SUBURBIA

“I can’t do it.”

The voice sounded like it was coming from a hundred miles away. Jamie struggled to open his eyes. He was lying on the grass, the girl called Larissa sitting next to him. He tried to crawl away but couldn’t move. His limbs ached, and his head was full of cotton wool.

“Damn it, I just can’t,” she said, apparently to herself. “What’s wrong with me?”

He forced his eyes open, and looked at her. Her eyes were brown again, and she was looking down at him, a gentle expression on her face.

“Who… are… you?” he managed. “What did you do to me?”

She lowered her head.

“You were supposed to be mine,” she said. “He said so. But I couldn’t do it.”

“Your… what?”

“Mine. In every way.”

With a huge effort Jamie forced himself up to a sitting position.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.” She looked up at the sky. “You should go,” she said, looking back at him with sadness in her face. “They’ll be there by now.”

A tidal wave of adrenaline crashed into Jamie’s system. “Who? Where?” he demanded.

“My friends. You know where.”

Jamie leapt to his feet and looked down at Larissa.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he asked, his voice trembling. In his mind’s eye he saw a face at a window.

She nodded her head.

Jamie turned and sprinted out of the park, running as though his life depended on it.

Please not my mum. Please don’t let them hurt my mum.

When Jamie reached the end of his road his heart was pounding so loudly in his chest he though it might explode. His vision was greying, the muscles in his legs screaming, but he pushed through the pain and sprinted the last fifty metres to his house and pulled himself round the gate post and towards the front door.

It was wide open.

He ran into the hallway. “Mum!” he yelled. “Are you here? Mum!”

No answer.

He ran into the living room. Empty. Through into the kitchen. Empty.

No sign of her.

He ran up the stairs and pushed open the door to her bedroom. The window above her bed was open to the dark sky, the curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. Jamie ran across the room and put his head out of the window.

“Mum!” he screamed into the inky blackness. His right hand slipped on something on the ledge and he looked down and pulled it away. Red liquid dripped down his wrist.

He looked at the windowsill. There were two small pools of blood on the white surface, and more smeared across the glass of the open window.

Jamie stared in horror at his hand, then something came loose in his head as he realised that his mother was gone, and he put back his head and wailed at the sky.

And miles away, high in the dark clouds, something heard his cry and turned back.

Time passed. Jamie had no idea how long.

He couldn’t stay in his mother’s room, couldn’t look at the blood, horribly bright against the white paint and the clear glass. Somehow he made it downstairs to the living room. He was sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the wall, when he heard something come through the front door and close it softly behind them.

He was beyond fear now. He was numb. So he just watched as the tall, thin man in the grey suit walked into the room and smiled at him with teeth like razorblades, his dark red eyes shining in the gloom.

“Jamie Carpenter,” the man said. His voice was like treacle. “It is a supreme pleasure to finally meet you.”

The man bared his teeth and took a step towards Jamie, and then the front door exploded into sawdust and an enormous figure, holding what looked like a huge pipe, stepped into the living room doorway.

“Get away from him, Alexandru,” the massive newcomer said, in a voice that shook the entire house.

The thing in the grey suit hissed, and arched its back. “This is not your concern, monster,” it spat. “There is unfinished business here.”

“It will stay unfinished,” the figure replied, then pulled the trigger hanging below the pipe. There was an enormous bang, like a giant balloon being burst, and something sharp exploded out of the weapon and flew across the room so fast it was a blur, trailing a metal cord behind it. Alexandru leapt into the air, impossibly quickly. The projectile smashed a hole in the wall of the living room, before retracting as rapidly as it had been fired, spiralling back into the end of the pipe.

The creature in the grey suit hung in the air, its eyes blazing with anger. It snarled at the figure in the doorway, then smashed through the big window at the front of the house and accelerated into the sky.

Jamie hadn’t moved.

The giant darted to the window and craned its enormous neck in the direction the thing called Alexandru had disappeared.

“He’s gone,” it said. “For now.”

It turned to Jamie and in the light of the living room he got his first look at his saviour, and cried out.

The huge figure was a man, at least seven and a half feet tall and almost as wide. He had mottled greyish-green skin, a high, wide forehead and a shock of black hair above it. He was wearing a dark suit and a long grey overcoat. A wire ran up his sleeve from the end of the pipe he was holding and disappeared somewhere over his shoulders.

He walked forward, and as fear and loss started to shut down Jamie’s mind, he saw two wide metal bolts sticking out of the sides of his neck. The man extended his hand towards him.

“Jamie Carpenter,” he said. “My name is Frankenstein. I’m here to help you.”

Jamie’s eyes rolled back white and he fainted into sweet, empty darkness.

Chapter 4
SEARCH AND RESCUE
STAVELEY, NORTH DERBYSHIRE FIFTY-SIX MINUTES EARLIER

Matt Browning was sitting at his computer when it happened.

He was working on an essay for his English literature class, a comparison of the speeches by Brutus and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, typing quickly into his aging laptop, when something thundered out of the sky and crashed into the small garden behind the terraced house he shared with his sister and his parents, throwing dirt and brown grass into the evening air.

Downstairs he heard his mother shriek and his father slur at her to shut up. In the bedroom next door his little sister Laura started to cry, a high wail full of confusion and determination.

Matt saved his work and got up from his desk. He was small for his sixteen years, and skinny, his brown hair flopping across his high forehead and resting against the tops of his glasses. His face was pale and close to feminine, his features fine and soft around the edges, as though he were slightly out of focus. He was wearing his favourite crimson Harvard T-shirt and dark brown cords, and he slid his feet into a pair of navy Vans before walking quickly across the small landing and into his sister’s bedroom.

Laura was lying in her cot, her face a deep, outraged red, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth a perfect circle. Matt reached into the crib and picked her up, resting her against his shoulder and quietly shushing her, bouncing her gently in his arms. There was a glorious moment’s silence as she took a deep breath, then the cries began again. Matt crossed the tiny room, pulled the door open and headed downstairs.

In the kitchen at the back of the house his mother was frantic. She was wearing her cream dressing gown and a pair of pale blue slippers and flitting back and forth beneath the two windows above the sink, peering into the dark garden and telling her husband over and over to call the police. Greg Browning stood unsteadily in the middle of the room, one hand pressed against his forehead, a can of lager in the other. He looked round as Matt walked into the kitchen.

“Shut your sister up, would you?” he grunted. “She’s giving me a headache.” Then he turned back to his wife. “Will you stop flapping and take the damn baby?” he said, his voice starting to rise.

Matt’s mother quickly took Laura from Matt and sat down with her at the table.

“Get the phone for your mother.”

Matt lifted the phone from its cradle on the wall next to the door and passed it to his mum. She took it with a confused look on her face.

“Now you can call the police while me and Matt go and take a look in the garden.”

“No, Greg, you shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t?”

Matt’s mother swallowed hard.

“I mean, don’t go out there. Please?”

“Just shut the hell up, OK, Lynne? Matt, let’s go.”

Greg Browning opened the door to the back garden and stopped in the doorway, listening. Matt walked over and stood behind him, looking over his father’s shoulder into the darkening sky.

The garden was silent; nothing moved in the cool evening air.

Matt’s father took a torch from the shelf beside the back door, turned it on and stepped out on to the narrow strip of patio that ran below the kitchen windows. Matt followed, scanning the dark garden for whatever had fallen past his window. Behind him in the kitchen he could hear his mother trying to explain what had happened to the police.

His dad shone the torch in a wide arc across the flowerbeds that bordered the narrow strip of lawn. At the edge of the grass the beam picked out a flash of white.

“Over there,” said Matt. “In the flowerbed.”

“Stay here.”

Matt stood on the patio as his father walked slowly across the threadbare lawn. He inhaled sharply as he reached the edge of the grass.

“What is it?” Matt asked.

No reply. His father just kept staring down into the dark flowerbed.

“Dad? What is it?”

Finally, his father looked round at him. His eyes were wide.

“It’s a girl,” he said, eventually. “It’s a teenage girl.”

“What?”

“Come and look.”

Matt walked across the lawn and looked down into the weed-strewn flowerbed.

The girl was lying on her back in the dirt, half buried by the force of her landing. Her pale face was smeared with blood, and her eyes and mouth were grotesquely swollen. Black hair fanned out around her head like a dark halo, matted with mud and clumped together in bloody strands. Her left arm was obviously broken, her forearm joining her elbow at an unnatural right angle. Her light grey shirt was soaked black with blood, and Matt realised with horror that there was a wide hole in her stomach, along the line of her abdomen. He saw glistening red and purple, and looked away.

“It looks like someone tried to gut her,” his father said quietly.

“What is it, Greg?” shouted Matt’s mother from the kitchen doorway. “What’s happening?”

“Shut up, Lynne,” Greg Browning replied automatically, but his voice was low, and for once he didn’t sound angry.

He sounds scared, thought Matt, and crouched down beside the girl. Despite the damage to her face, she was beautiful, her skin so pale it was almost translucent, her lips a dark, inviting red.

Behind him his father was muttering to himself, looking from the sky to the ground and back again, searching for an explanation for why this girl had fallen into their garden.

Matt placed his hand on the cool skin of her neck, checking for a pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find one.

Who did this to you? he wondered.

The girl opened her swollen right eye and looked straight at Matt. He screamed.

“She’s alive!” he yelled.

“Don’t be stupid,” shouted Greg Browning. “She’s—”

The girl coughed, a deep spluttering rattle that sent new streams of blood running down her chin. She turned her head towards Matt and said something he couldn’t make out.

“My God,” said Matt’s father.

Matt pushed himself up off the grass and slowly approached his father’s side. He looked down at the stricken girl, who was moving her head slowly from side to side, her lips curled back in a grimace of pain.

“We have to do something, Dad,” said Matt. “We can’t leave her like this.”

His father turned on him, his face full of anger.

“What do you want me to do?” he shouted. “The police are on their way, they can deal with it. We shouldn’t even touch her.”

“But Dad—”

Greg Browning’s face twisted with rage and he raised a fist and took a step towards his son. Matt cried out, covering his face with his forearms and turning away.

“You’ll be quiet if you know what’s good for you,” his dad grunted, lowering the fist.

Matt looked at his father, his cheeks flushed red with shame and impotence, his brain alive with hatred. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, when a deafening roar filled the evening air and a squat black helicopter appeared over the trees that stood at the bottom of their suburban garden.

Matt covered his face and did his best to remain upright as the helicopter’s rotors churned the dust and dirt of the garden. He could see his dad shouting but could hear nothing over the thunder of the engines and the shriek of the wind. He craned his neck, his hands shielding his eyes, and watched the helicopter disappear over the roof of their house.

Matt turned and raced towards the house, past his mother who was standing motionless at the back door, through the kitchen and the narrow corridor and towards the front door.

Behind him he could hear his dad shouting his name, but he didn’t slow his pace. He flung the front door open in time to see the black helicopter lowering itself on to the grey tarmac of the road, its rotors whirring above the parked cars that lined their street.

Matt’s dad appeared behind him in the corridor, grabbed his son’s shoulder and spun him around.

“What the hell do you think you’re…”

Greg Browning’s voice trailed off as he stared out into the street. Matt turned and watched as a door slid open in the side of the helicopter and four figures emerged.

The first two were dressed all in black and looked like riot policemen, their uniforms covered with plates of black body armour, their faces hidden beneath black helmets with purple visors.

Both were carrying submachine guns in their gloved hands.

Behind them followed a man and a woman in white biohazard containment suits, their faces visible behind the thick plastic of their masks. Between them they were carrying a white stretcher.

They cleared the helicopter and quickly approached Matt and his father. The first of the figures – soldiers, they look like soldiers – stopped in front of them.

“Was an emergency call made from this house?” it asked. The voice was male, and didn’t sound much older than Matt’s.

Neither he nor his dad answered.

The soldier took a step forward.

“Was an emergency call made from this house?”

Terrified, Matt nodded his head.

The black figure turned to the others and beckoned them towards the house, then pushed past Matt and Greg Browning and disappeared into the hallway. The rest of the new arrivals followed, leaving Matt and his father in the doorway. They stood there, staring at the helicopter with no idea what to do, until Matt’s mother started to scream and they turned and ran into the house.

They found her in the kitchen, holding Laura in her arms, the two of them screaming in unison. Greg Browning ran across the room and took his wife in his arms, whispering to her, telling her everything was going to be OK, telling her not to cry. Matt left them by the table and walked out into the garden.

The two soldiers were standing either side of the girl, their guns lodged against their shoulders and pointing at the sky. On the ground, the man and woman in the biohazard suits were examining her.

Matt walked towards them, but before he was close enough to see what they were doing the nearest soldier turned towards him and levelled the black submachine gun at his chest. Matt froze on the spot.

“Please stay where you are, sir,” the soldier said. “For your own safety.”

“What’s going on here?” said a small voice from behind Matt. He was too scared to move, but he craned his head over his shoulder and saw his dad standing on the narrow patio. He looked like someone had deflated him.

“Take your son into the house, sir,” the soldier said.

“I want to know what’s going on,” Matt’s father repeated. “Who are you people?”

“I’m not going to tell you again, sir,” the soldier replied. He sounded as though he was reaching the limit of his patience. “Take your son inside. Now.”

Greg Browning looked like he was going to reply, but thought better of it.

“Come inside, Matt,” he said, eventually.

Matt looked from his father to the soldier pointing the gun at his chest. Behind him he could see the other soldier and the biohazard team watching him. He was about to turn and do as his father said when the girl lifted her head from the flowerbed and sank her teeth into the arm of the man in the white plastic suit.

All hell broke loose.

The man screamed and wrenched his arm out of the girl’s mouth. Blood pumped out of the ragged hole in the plastic, and splashed across the lawn.

The second soldier swung his gun. The heavy stock of the weapon crashed across the girl’s chin, and she instantly stopped moving, as though she had been turned off.

The soldier who had been facing Matt lowered his gun and turned to his colleagues.

“How bad is it?” he yelled.

The woman in the biohazard suit had knelt down next to her partner and was examining the wound. She looked up at the sound of the soldier’s voice.

“It’s bad,” she replied. “We need to get him out of here.”

“Bag the subject,” the soldier said. “Do it quickly.”

“There isn’t time. He needs clean blood, right now.”

“He’ll get it. Bag the subject.”

The woman stared at the soldier for a fraction of second, then let go of her colleague and laid the white stretcher flat on the lawn.

“Help me,” she said to the other soldier.

The soldier crouched down and took hold of the girl under her shoulders and pulled her out of the flowerbed. Matt gasped as he saw the damage to the lower half of the girl’s body.

Both her legs were snapped mid-thigh, the white bones piercing the blood-soaked black skirt she was wearing. Her left foot was horribly twisted at the ankle, and the right was missing three toes, the red stumps bright in the fading light.

Matt ran towards her. He didn’t know what he was going to do, just that he had to do something. He heard his father shout at him, but ignored him. The soldier who had hit the girl with his gun turned, saw him crossing the lawn, and started to move, a shout of warning issuing from his lips. But he wasn’t quick enough; Matt slid on to his knees beside the broken girl and looked at the woman in the biohazard suit.

“Can I hel—”

The girl’s arm flashed out and slid across his throat. Matt felt a millisecond of resistance as her fingernails dug into the smooth skin of his neck, then it was gone, and an enormous spray of something red burst into the night air, soaking his chin and his chest.

There was no pain; just surprise, and a suddenly overwhelming tiredness. Matt stared at the dark liquid squirting into the air, and only realised it was his own blood as he fell gently backwards on to the patchy grass of the lawn. It pattered thickly on to his upturned face, and as his eyes closed he felt hands pressing against his neck, and heard one of the soldiers telling his father that this had never happened.

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