Then the air was cold and clear and silent once more; whatever had been there, whatever had flowed out of Dracula’s body and taken him, was gone.

Jamie simply stared for a long moment, his mind struggling to begin the process of understanding what he had just witnessed. Then his eyes widened as reality came crashing back, and he raced across to where Frankenstein’s body was lying on the cold tiled floor. He slid to his knees beside the monster, and waved Larissa away as she made to follow him.

“Find blood,” he said. “For the others.”

She nodded, and sped towards the church doors, leaving him alone with the monster. Frankenstein was still alive, but the pool of blood beneath him was huge and dark; his grey-green skin was almost translucent, and his chest was barely moving. He spluttered, blood running from the corners of his mouth, and fixed his eyes on Jamie’s.

“It’s going to be OK,” whispered Jamie, his voice thick and choked. “We’ll get help. You’re going to be fine.”

Frankenstein’s face slowly twisted into a wide, bloody smile. “You’re not much of a liar,” he said, his voice a low croak. “We both know this is where my path ends.”

“Don’t say that,” Jamie said, fiercely. “Don’t you—”

The monster’s hand closed over his and squeezed it. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right, Jamie.”

He stared at Frankenstein, his throat sealed shut by the lump that had risen in it. The monster stared back at him, then something changed; one moment the wide, misshapen eyes were locked with his own, the next they were staring at nothing, the light fading from them as Jamie watched.

No. Oh, please, please no.

He placed a shaking hand on Frankenstein’s huge chest, willing it to move, willing the monster’s old, battered heart to beat again, and felt nothing.

Footsteps raced along the aisle and Larissa slid to her knees beside him, a plastic bag filled with bottles of blood in her hand. She dropped them on the tiles, and pulled him against her. He went willingly, his eyes squeezing shut as his face reached her shoulder, and began to cry, great wracking sobs that he could no more have stopped than he could the sun rising in the morning.

They stayed like that for a long time.

Paul Turner stared impatiently at his NS9 counterpart.

“I’m not waiting any longer, Bob,” he said. “Are you coming with me or not?”

Allen held up a finger as he spoke into his helmet’s microphone. “Understood,” he said. “Get me a report as soon as possible. Out.” He cut the connection and turned towards Turner. “All right, Paul. Let’s go.”

“About time,” he said, and strode up on to the drawbridge.

The Blacklight Director understood that Allen, as NATO Commanding Officer on the ground, had a great many things on his mind at this particular moment, but Turner had only one: he wanted to enter the old city, discover what had happened to bring the battle to its sudden conclusion, and find his strike team. Allen joined him on the drawbridge, Ovechkin and Tán and a dozen Operators behind him, and together they walked beneath the towering stone arch and on to the steep cobbled street that ran all the way up to Carcassonne’s summit.

“I’ve sent a security team back to the camp,” said Allen. “Your vampire Operators are taking the wounded there too.”

“Good,” said Turner, and nodded. He couldn’t allow himself to think about the losses they had suffered on the ruined landscape at the foot of the hill; there would be more than enough time to dwell on them later. His raised his eyes to the distant Basilica, perched atop the city like a gargoyle, and felt a shiver crawl up his spine.

What the hell was all that? The black fire, the shock wave. What happened up there?

They walked up the street in silence, past looted shops and cafés that had been smashed to pieces, over cobblestones strewn with glass and stained with blood. Turner had tried to reach the strike team as soon as it had become clear that the main battle had been won, but had not been able to raise them; as a result, they were walking into the unknown.

Then, from somewhere up ahead, came the echo of footsteps.

Turner stopped dead, as Operators raised T-Bones and MP7s behind him. Bob Allen was stationary beside him, his face tight with unease; the two Directors stared in the same direction, waiting for whatever was about to round the corner. If it was vampires, or – even worse – Dracula himself, he doubted whether the remnants of the Multinational Force had strength enough to fight on.

Dark shapes appeared in the distance, moving steadily down the hill. Turner’s heart pounded in his chest, then almost burst with relief as the first of the figures passed beneath one of the surviving street lights. It was Larissa Kinley; her face was pale, her eyes dark and empty, but her head was up and she was walking under her own steam.

Thank God, he thought. Oh, thank God.

Behind her came Valentin Rusmanov, the gentle smile on his face giving him the appearance of a man taking nothing more than a pleasant evening stroll, Angela Darcy, and a man with grey hair that Turner didn’t recognise.

That’s three of them, he thought. Now where are the other two?

Less than a second later, he had his answer.

Jamie Carpenter rounded the corner, his eyes smouldering with red fire, and walked slowly down the road, holding something large and bulky before him.

Oh no.

The members of the strike team noticed the cluster of Operators below them, and raised their hands in gestures of tired recognition. Turner gave no response; he was staring at Jamie Carpenter, at the teenage boy carrying the limp shape of Frankenstein in his arms, as carefully as if the monster’s body was the most precious thing in the world.

The Blacklight Director walked up the hill to meet his Operators, his footsteps echoing in the night air until the two groups stopped and faced each other. Turner found himself unable to form a single word; whatever had happened up there in the darkness, four of them had lived to walk back down the hill. If nothing else, that was a remarkable achievement.

“What happened, Operators?” asked Bob Allen. “Did you get him? Is it over?”

Jamie glanced at his squad mates, then looked directly at Paul Turner.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s over.”

Lizzy Ellison joined the growing crowd of Operators below the drawbridge with Jack Williams at her side and a mixture of surprise and confusion filling her mind.

She had been about to plunge her stake into the chest of a vampire when something had burst across the blackened battlefield, an invisible wall of energy that had slammed into her like razor wire, sending pain coursing through her body and filling her head with agonising white noise. The vampire had leapt into the air, screeching and howling and tearing at its skin, then bolted for the horizon, along with seemingly every single one of Dracula’s followers. Ellison had been overcome by the desire to do the same; the feeling had been so awful, so horribly, painfully wrong, that she hadn’t believed she could bear it.

Then, as quickly as it had come, it had disappeared.

Ellison had found herself momentarily incapable of standing and had sunk to her knees, her eyes flaring as she looked round the battlefield. The chaos of movement and noise that had surrounded her for what seemed like longer than she could remember was all gone, leaving behind an eerie silence and the silhouettes of hundreds of Operators as they looked around at each other, clearly unable to understand what had just happened.

Now, those same men and women were gathered in a deep semicircle below the entrance to the old city. Ellison was heartened by their number, but there was no escaping the reality of their losses; bodies were strewn across the battlefield as far as the eye could see. The crowd of survivors was silent, every pair of eyes trained on the drawbridge, through which Paul Turner and three of his fellow Directors had led a team less than five minutes earlier. Ellison had a hundred questions – the same ones, she was sure, as everyone else who had made it through the roaring nightmare of the battle – and she was trying to stay calm, stay patient, although it was hard; she had no idea where Jamie was or whether he was all right, and she had not seen Qiang since the earliest minutes of the fighting.