Allen raised his T-Bone and skewered a vampire soaring above the battlefield like a vulture. As the woman was dragged screaming to the ground, Allen ran towards her, drawing his stake as he did so, a silent plea tumbling through his mind.

Please. Don’t let it end like this. Give us a miracle. Please.

Foster sprinted down the stairs as two of the hostages picked up the vampires’ guns from where they had fallen. He met them at the bottom as the two large windows at the front of the hotel exploded in a blizzard of flying glass, and vampires poured through them.

“Drive them back!” he yelled.

He dropped to one knee, and started firing. The SIG’s bullets sliced through a vampire as she leapt through one of the windows; she crashed against the frame, stuck in a dozen places by broken glass, and hung there. Vampires piled up behind her, and Foster sent bullets into their heads and necks. Behind him, the other two guns roared into life, and although he saw a number of holes appear in the walls and ceiling, plenty of bullets hit home. Blood flew in the air as screams echoed through the lobby and the vampires scrambled backwards, trying to escape the killing zone.

“Cynthia!” he shouted. His wife appeared at his side, and he pointed towards the offices at the rear of the lobby. “Check them! Look for more weapons!”

She ran towards the doors as Foster returned his attention to the wide front of the hotel. The flood of vampires had slowed to a trickle; he shot a woman peering through a window in the head, and heard a gratifying chorus of hisses and growls from outside in the square.

They’re nervous, he thought. They’re not sure what to do now.

“Come out,” shouted a voice. “There’s no need for any of this. Come out and you can all just leave.”

Foster stood up, the SIG still trained on the windows.

“Nothing,” said Cynthia, arriving back at his side. “No weapons.”

“OK,” he said.

“What do we do?” asked one of the hostages. “Do we go?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said another. “There’s no way we can trust them. We should stay here.”

“And do what?” asked Foster. “We’ve got three guns between us. When whatever is happening outside the city is over, the vampires will all come back here and there’ll be no way to hold them off. If we stay, we’re dead.”

“We should have stayed in our rooms,” said a woman, staring at him accusingly. “We were safe there.”

“For how long?” asked Foster, his voice rising with anger. “If you really believe that they were going to let us go when whatever this is is done, then go back to your room. You can tell them you had nothing to do with it.”

“It’s too late,” hissed the woman. “They’ll kill us all now as punishment.”

“Then we don’t have much of a choice, do we?” he said. “We have to keep going.”

“And do what?” she asked.

“Fight,” said Foster, simply. “It’s our only chance. Maybe some of us will get away.”

“Some of us?” said the woman. “What about the rest?”

Foster stared at her, and didn’t respond.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “We’re dead. We’re all dead.”

“That’s enough,” said Cynthia. “Nobody made you leave your room.”

The woman narrowed her eyes in the direction of Foster’s wife, but fell silent. The American Colonel nodded, and faced the rest of the hostages.

“We go straight out the front door, fire our guns empty, and scatter,” he said. “Keep running, no matter what you hear, or what happens to anyone else. Is everybody totally clear on that?”

There was a low murmur of agreement.

“All right,” said Foster. “Follow me.”

He walked across the lobby, his gaze fixed on the windows, alert to a second assault if it came. On the floor near the reception desk, beside the body of the vampire he had shot in the mouth, lay a snub-nosed Uzi machine pistol; he picked it up and held it out to Cynthia, who took it without a word.

Foster reached the door, took a deep breath, and stepped through it. Part of him was expecting to be killed instantly, his throat torn out by a vampire hiding in the shadows outside the entrance, but nothing happened; he stepped on to the cobblestones, his wife beside him, the rest of the hostages behind, and looked at what was waiting for them.

The square was full of vampires.

There had to be at least a hundred of them; they were standing silently in the darkness, with glowing eyes and smiles on their faces. At their centre, regarding him with an expression of open loathing, was the vampire who had caught him and Cynthia as they tried to escape from the carnage that had been unleashed in the city.

“You,” growled the man. “Of course it’s you. I should have killed you when I set eyes on you.”

“You’re right,” said Foster. “You probably should have.”

“At least I get the chance to put that mistake right,” said the vampire, his eyes blazing. “Any final words?”

“Go to hell,” said Foster.

“You first,” said the vampire. “I’ll see you there.”

Here it comes, he told himself. This is it. This is the end.

The crowd of vampires swayed and pulsed in the darkness. Foster silently gave thanks for the life he had lived, for the woman he had been privileged to share it with. Then he wrapped his finger round the SIG’s trigger, and prepared to die.

“They are overrun,” said the President. “It is time. Order the launch.”

Vallens felt ice crawl up his spine. The President’s conclusion was inarguable, given the images being relayed from the satellites over Carcassonne and Captain Guérin’s description of the situation, but he still could not truly believe what was about to happen.

“Sir, I …” began Ducroix, but the President spoke over him.

“That is a direct order, General. Order the launch.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ducroix, his voice low and hoarse.

Here we go, thought Vallens. God help us. And may our children forgive us.

When Angela swam back into consciousness, she was once again alone inside the church.

The pain seemed less; whether that was because her body had gone into shock, or because she was now so dangerously low on blood that signals were no longer being effectively transmitted to her brain, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she could think slightly more clearly, and that if she was going to do anything about her situation, she was going to have to do it now.

She focused all her concentration on her right hand, trying to make it move, even just a millimetre. She gritted her teeth, her head pounding with rising pressure, and pressed as hard as she could; after a long, agonising moment in which nothing happened, her hand began to tremble. She bore down with every bit of strength she had left, her body screaming with pain, and saw her palm slide along the nail that had been pounded through it. Her hand had moved less than a centimetre, but it had moved; she relaxed her muscles, and tried her hardest not to burst into tears of relief.

Angela took a deep breath and focused again, working her hand back and forth, faster and faster.

Larissa flew round the curve in the road and stopped dead beside Jamie.

Before them was a beautiful cobbled square, with small, neat shops and cafés on three sides and the façade of a grand hotel on the fourth, its pale stone carved and rising to soaring roofs and ramparts. Standing in front of it, filling the square with a pulsating red glow, were vampires.

Dozens and dozens of vampires.

Their attention was fixed on the stone archway of the hotel entrance, where Larissa could see a small cluster of men and women, several of whom were holding guns.

Who the hell are they? she thought. The hostages?

But as she wondered, her heart racing in her chest, the vampires turned, seemingly as one, and looked at the strike team.