He turned slowly, straining his ears. The camp was quiet; most of its residents were gathered round fires and in tents, huddled over radios and mobile phones, listening for any update on what was taking place less than five miles away. The technical staff and the small security squad that had been left behind were inside the mess hall, silently watching civilian news channels on wall screens. From the far distance, the occasional crackle of gunfire floated into the camp on the evening breeze.

Guérin listened, suddenly aware that his heart was racing, and scanned the dark horizon until his eyes hurt.

He could see nothing. He could hear nothing.

There’s nothing there, he told himself.

But he was wrong.

The noise came again, louder this time, and recognition flooded through him; it was the muffled sound of voices.

No, he thought, as he spun round and froze to the spot. Not voices. It’s laughter.

The vampires appeared over the trees to the north, a dark cloud rolling towards the camp at impossible speed, so many that Guérin could not even hope to count them; the distant points of glowing red light seemed to number in the hundreds, or even the thousands. They reached the treeline and swooped towards the ground; in another few seconds, they would surge over the fence and into Field 11, one of the resident camping fields.

Thousands of men and women, entirely unaware of what was coming.

Unarmed.

Unprepared.

The thought broke Guérin’s paralysis. He grabbed his radio as he ran back through the Field 1 gate, bellowing into the handset to anyone who could hear him.

“Vampires! Run! Run for your lives!”

Bob Allen fired his T-Bone into the heart of a vampire, then was thrown to the ground as a deafening blast rang out behind him.

He scrambled across the blood-soaked ash, his heart pounding, and got to his feet in time to see the flaming remains of one of the helicopters that had carried the Multinational Force to the battlefield spin into its neighbour, sending it tumbling out of the sky. It hit the ground and exploded, sending a mushroom cloud of fire blooming into the air and thousands of razor-sharp pieces of metal over the battlefield in a deadly hail. The rest of the helicopter fleet, more than twenty of them, began to rise and bank, pulling themselves up and away from the fire that had suddenly appeared beneath them.

Allen stared, wondering what the hell had happened behind them as they had been fighting. Then he saw three distant plumes of smoke rise from the blasted suburban landscape, and understood.

Shoulder-fired rockets slammed into the underbellies of three more helicopters, blowing them to pieces and triggering a terrible, unstoppable domino effect. The explosions took down four more of the closest helicopters, which spun through the rest, shattering rotor blades and destroying engines. As Allen watched, dumbstruck, the entire fleet sank to the ground in an apocalypse of fire and noise that paused the entire battle. Flames and thick black smoke billowed up into the air as twisted fuselages settled against each other, creating a wall of fire along the northern edge of the battlefield. The NS9 Director desperately searched the sky for parachutes, but saw none.

Nobody is getting out of that, thought Allen. Nobody.

Something moved at the centre of the inferno, and for a brief moment Allen hoped he was about to be proved wrong. A dark figure stepped through the flames, followed by another, and another, until a vast group of shadows filled the horizon, all moving forward with red light where their eyes should have been.

Jesus, thought Allen. Oh Jesus Christ. We’re dead.

We’re all dead.

The line of vampires was at least as large as the army that had lined up against them, possibly even larger. It came across the ruined landscape without hurrying, stretching out in both directions as far as Allen could see, and for a long moment he just stared at it; the Multinational Force was now vastly outnumbered and surrounded, its air support was burning in a huge twisted pyre, and he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do.

Dead. All dead.

Guérin’s voice burst into his ears. “Vampires!” he shouted. “Run! Run for your lives!”

Reserves of adrenaline that Allen would not have believed he possessed surged through him, clearing his head. He twisted the comms dial on his belt and shouted directly into the ear of every Operator still alive on the battlefield.

“Battalion Three, return to camp immediately! Battalions Four through Six! Regroup at rally point, on the double! New hostiles to the north!”

In his office at the top of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure’s anonymous building in Paris’s seventeenth arrondissement, Central Director Jean Vallens watched a live satellite feed of the helicopters crashing to the ground in flames.

He stared, incredulous, as fire roared into the sky. He had listened to the NATO briefings inside the displaced persons camp, and had been heartened by the confidence of General Allen and his fellow Directors; their faith in a positive outcome had at least allowed him to hope, if not fully believe. Now, as the fires burned and men and women dropped like flies, he realised their faith had been misplaced.

Movement filled the screen, as hundreds and hundreds of vampires made their way towards the burning helicopters and the remnants of the Multinational Force beyond. For a second, Vallens thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him; the vampires seemed to be appearing out of thin air. Then he saw a cluster of dark figures emerge from the ruined shell of a suburban house, and realised what he was seeing; the vampires were swarming up out of the cellars and basements of the buildings that had burned down. They must have been hiding in them since the fires had been put out, when the vast cloud of grey smoke had hidden the city from view; the Multinational Force had quite literally driven and flown over their heads.

Such patience, he thought. To stay underground for three days, just waiting. Such careful planning. Incredible.

Vallens watched as the second vampire front moved in from the north, cutting off the primary route of retreat and surrounding the surviving Operators.

“Are you seeing this?” he asked. He was alone in his office, but the speakerphone on his desk was connected to a conference call with Alain Ducroix, the French Army’s Chief of Staff, and Pascal Desjardins, the Minister of Defence; the three men comprised the central brain trust of their country’s domestic and military intelligence. “Are you watching?”

“I am watching,” said Desjardins. “What do we do, Alain?”

“I’ll update NATO,” said Ducroix. “Jean, talk to Captain Guérin and get us an update on the grand. Then you’re going to have to brief the President.”

Four-fifths of the strike team made their way up the medieval city’s main thoroughfare, towards the high towers of the Basilica at the summit.

The low angle hid Dracula from view, but Frankenstein had no doubt the first vampire was still there, floating in the darkness and overseeing the destruction and chaos he had unleashed far below.

“So quiet,” said Larissa.

“Spooky, isn’t it?” said Valentin, smiling happily.

“Don’t you take anything seriously?” asked Larissa. “Are you just incapable? Our friends are dying down there, and one of our squad mates is missing.”

The ancient vampire’s smile disappeared. “I have taken few things in my life more seriously than this, my dear Lieutenant Kinley. I’m sorry if my small joke was so terribly offensive.”

“Shut up, both of you,” said Jamie. “We don’t have time for bickering. We need to—”

The explosion was huge, even across the distance between the northern edge of the battlefield and the old city. Frankenstein turned with his squad mates and saw orange flames light up the landscape as the Multinational Force’s helicopters sank out of the sky in a tangle of metal and smoke and fire.