Which is great for them, thought Jamie. It doesn’t help her, though. Doesn’t help my mum.

Through the small window, he could see the purple ridges beneath her eyes, the results of a nose so badly broken it had needed splinting, and the harness suspending her arm, which had been coated from shoulder to wrist in plaster. Jamie considered it a miracle, having read the report of her reaction to the cure, that she had not broken her neck or fractured her skull.

In barely thirty minutes, he – along with every single other member of the Department – was due in the Ops Room for a briefing by the Director. He knew there was nothing to be gained by standing helplessly outside the infirmary, that they were not going to suddenly change the rules and allow him in to talk to his mother, but he was still reluctant to leave. Because he needed to talk to her; to ask her why she had done what she did, why she had taken such an enormous risk.

I never knew how unhappy she was, he thought. How much she hated being a vampire. I mean, I knew, but I never really knew. Because I didn’t want to hear it. I had my own problems, and they were all so huge and important and she was safe down there in her cell so I just assumed she was OK because that made it easier for me.

I let her down so badly.

Jamie stared at his mother, wishing he could tell her the two things that suddenly seemed like the most important in the world.

That he loved her.

And that he was sorry.

Pete Randall knocked on Greg Browning’s office door and pushed it open.

“Are you watching this?” he asked. “It’s crazy.”

Greg nodded, his eyes fixed on the TV in the corner of the room. “I’m watching. The Prime Minister looks very pleased with himself.”

“Are you surprised?”

His friend shrugged. “I suppose not,” he said. “Probably too much to expect a politician to show a bit of humility.”

“We need to call a meeting, Greg,” said Pete. “We need to start working out what we’re going to do about this.”

Greg tore his eyes away from the screen and looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“We need to amend the call guidelines, for a start,” said Pete. “Give the hospital list to the operators so they can pass it on to the vamps who ask about the cure. And we should get a press release out, saying that we’re ready to assist distribution of the cure in any way we can.”

“Why would we do any of that, mate?”

He frowned. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“This organisation was founded to help the victims of the supernatural,” said Greg. “Right from the start, we said that would include vampires who are victims themselves. And you think the best way to do that is for us to announce that we think they’re nothing more than a disease that needs curing?”

“Of course not,” said Pete. “But like you said, most vampires are victims themselves. They never wanted to be turned. This gives them a chance to undo it.”

“And help Blacklight in the process,” said Greg. “Is that what you want? To do their dirty work for them?”

“This has nothing to do with Blacklight,” said Pete. “This is about helping people, which is exactly what we founded SSL to do.”

“I disagree, mate,” said Greg. “But it doesn’t really matter, in any case. The board has already told me there are to be no changes to policy or procedures.”

Pete frowned. “You talked to the board without me?”

“I’m sorry,” said Greg. “I didn’t realise I needed your permission. I’ll make sure I ask you next time.”

Pete narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on here, Greg? Why are you being like this?”

Colour rose into Greg’s face. “Nothing’s going on, mate,” he said. “You suggested something, I disagreed, and so did the board. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but for right now, I’m done talking about this.”

“This is the biggest thing that has—”

Greg slammed his hand down on the surface of his desk. His eyes were suddenly blazing, and Pete belatedly realised that his friend was absolutely furious.

“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Greg, his voice low. “I’m done talking about this. So unless there’s anything else, I suggest you go and do some work.”

Pete stared at Greg, a deep frown on his face. Every other member of SSL had reacted to the announcement of the cure like it was Christmas come early, especially after the fear and panic the second Dracula video had caused.

It makes no sense, he thought. Why is he acting like this?

“Actually, there is something else,” he said, hearing the icy chill in his own voice. “I finished my review of the call logs.”

“And?”

“I found another Night Stalker victim.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Greg.

“The old woman who got killed in Waddington last week,” said Pete. “She was a regular. Eight calls in five weeks, the last one two days before she died.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Greg, the colour in his face fading slightly. “We’re getting almost ten thousand calls a week now. I reckon every vamp in the country has probably rung us at least once.”

“Probably,” said Pete. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

Julian Carpenter sat in the garden of his mother’s cottage, listening to the BBC on an old portable radio. The Prime Minister’s announcement was being replayed at fifteen-minute intervals, and a fierce debate was already underway in the television and radio studios of the country; the phone-in he was listening to was rapidly descending into a cacophony of shouted insults and threats.

One of the loudest voices belonged to a man who was furious not at the cure itself, but at the amnesty that had been announced alongside it; he was bellowing that his brother had been killed by a vampire, and that the government was now officially letting his murderer off the hook. One of the other callers was a vampire, and was trying to simultaneously sympathise with the man and explain that, without the incentive of the amnesty, the strength of the anti-vampire feeling surging through the country would mean that many vampires who desperately wanted the cure would be too scared to come forward. An Oxford philosophy professor was trying, largely unsuccessfully, to get a word in, and was arguing that the very existence of the cure was a human rights violation, an admission by the government that they viewed the vampire population of the United Kingdom as a disease that needed wiping out. In the midst of it all, the DJ was desperately trying to regain some semblance of control of the conversation.

Julian didn’t care about the wider impact of a cure; he was pleased at the prospect of fewer vampires in the world and, although he empathised with the point the increasingly angry caller was making, he could also understand the reasons for issuing an amnesty.

What he did care about was what the cure meant for his family.

It was possible that his wife loved being a vampire. He doubted it, but the sad truth was that he simply didn’t know; given what she had been through in the years since he had seen her, it was unrealistic to assume that the woman living in a cell in the bowels of the Loop was the same woman he had slept beside for two decades. But, either way, his greatest fear, that his wife was trapped in a nightmare from which she could never escape, had now been quashed; if she wanted to be cured, and he hoped with all his heart that she did, she was now in the best possible place for that to happen.

And so is Jamie, he thought. Although he might think being a vampire is brilliant, for all I know.

Julian tried not to think about what the future might hold for his wife and son; if he dwelt on the impotent reality of the situation he found himself in, his guilt quickly became unbearable. But the Prime Minister’s statement had given him hope that his family might be able to change their situation, even if he wasn’t able to do anything to help them himself.