“What do we do, Alan?” asked Cynthia.

He looked at his wife. Her eyes were wide, her skin pale, but he saw no panic on her face.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I really don’t know.”

Kate Randall was sitting at her desk in the Security Division, her head and heart still pounding with the hope that Paul Turner’s briefing had instilled, when she heard the beep.

She, along with most of her colleagues, had attended a number of sombre, painful meetings in the Ops Room; she had been there when the names of the men and women who died in Valeri’s attack on the Loop had been displayed, and when the Director had explained, in the aftermath of Château Dauncy, that Dracula was lost and the prospects of finding him were now slim. Good news had been extremely hard to come by over the last year or so, as darkness had piled upon darkness until it seemed poised to swallow them all.

Now, there was a small, flickering light at the end of the tunnel. They still didn’t know where Dracula was, or what he had planned, but the discovery of a cure represented a real chance to change things for the better, to release thousands of people from a condition the vast majority of them had never wanted, and to bring a halt to the violence that was currently sweeping, almost unchecked, throughout the country.

The beep was accompanied by the appearance of a new window on the screen of her computer. Kate enlarged it, and frowned. It was a message from the Surveillance Division, forwarding a classified alert that had been released ninety seconds earlier. She scanned the text, her frown deepening, then picked up her phone and pressed the button for her direct line to the Security Officer.

“Kate?” said Angela Darcy. “Everything OK?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “The Civil Aviation Authority just put an alert out. They’ve lost contact with a commercial flight off the west coast of Scotland.”

“What flight?”

“Virgin Atlantic 025,” she said. “An Airbus A340, travelling from London to New York. Four hundred and twelve passengers and crew.”

Beep.

“Has there been a response from the RAF?” asked the Security Officer.

“It’s just come through,” said Kate, reading the new message. “They’ve scrambled two Typhoons from Coningsby. They should be at the last recorded position in twelve minutes.”

“OK,” said Angela. “Keep me updated.”

“Yes, Captain,” said Kate. She hung up the phone, opened a new window, and accessed the secure Intelligence Services network; it was crammed with chatter, as GCHQ and SIS discussed the missing plane. The cockpit transmissions were already being listened to, but the extremely preliminary conclusion was that they contained nothing unusual.

Beep.

Another message appeared. Kate read it, and felt incredulity rise on to her face. She grabbed the phone again, and dialled her commanding officer.

“Have they found it?” asked Angela.

“I don’t know,” said Kate. “But an alert just came through from the American FAA. They’ve lost contact with three commercial flights in the last five minutes. One that had just left Atlanta, one over the California desert, and one over the Atlantic on approach to New York.”

“Three planes?”

“That’s what they’re saying,” she said.

Beep. Beep.

Kate’s fingers flew across her keyboard, opening the new messages.

“This is crazy,” she said. “I’ve just got two more. The French have lost an American Airlines 757 on Paris approach and the Italians have lost an Emirates 777 somewhere near Turin.”

“I’m logged in,” said Angela. “What the hell is this?”

Kate shook her head. “I’ve no idea,” she said. “Could they be mistakes? Some kind of air-traffic control error?”

“The national systems are all independent,” said Angela. “I can’t imagine what it would take for all of them to go wrong at the same time.”

Beep. Beep beep beep.

Four new windows opened on the screen. Kate stared at them, her heart racing, her eyes wide. “Four more,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Japan, China, the Bahamas, Mexico. Jesus. These can’t all be right. Surely they can’t be?”

“I don’t know,” said Angela.

“What do we do?” asked Kate.

“I’ll brief the Director,” said Angela. “He needs to know what’s happening, even if it’s nothing to do with us.”

It is, though, thought Kate. Neither of us wants to say it, but we both know it is.

“All right,” she said. “What do you want me—”

The door to Kate’s office banged open. She spun round in her seat and glared at the Operator standing in the doorway. “I’m on the phone,” she said. “Can you give me a—”

“Turn your TV on,” interrupted the Operator. “Something’s happened in Moscow.”

“What?” asked Kate, but the Operator had already disappeared back through the door.

“Kate?” asked Angela. “What’s going on?”

“Turn on your TV,” said Kate. “I’m coming to you.”

She hung up the phone, strode out of her office, and ran across the Division towards the room she had once spent almost as much time in as her own. She knocked on the door and pushed it open; Angela was sitting behind her desk, her face pale, her attention fixed on the screen on her wall, which was showing the BBC News channel.

“What’s happening?” asked Kate.

Angela shook her head. Kate frowned, her heart pounding, and turned towards the screen, which was showing a shaky, grainy shot of a crowd of people clustered together on a wide street. Ambulances were arriving in droves, their lights flashing, and the sounds of crying and screaming echoed out of the screen’s speakers.

“Terrible scenes in Moscow this evening,” said a disembodied voice. “Details are still sketchy, but what we know for certain is that, some fifteen minutes ago now, an emergency call was made from the Kurskaya Metro station, and that the call made reference to a train having arrived ‘full of blood’. As you can see from this exclusive footage, emergency services are now on the scene, as conflicting reports emerge from inside the Russian capital. We have heard claims that a train has derailed at Kurskaya, we have at least one account of a possible gunman on a train, and we have received a number of reports of vampire sightings across the Moscow Metro system.”

Beep.

“Not another one?” asked Kate.

“Argentina,” said the Security Officer, her voice low as she stared at her computer screen. “They’ve lost a 747 over Buenos Aires.”

Kate just stared; she felt numb, as if her insides had been turned to ice. She couldn’t process what was happening; the entire world seemed to have fallen into chaos in the last five minutes.

“Stand by for breaking news,” said the news presenter. “We’re getting … this is absolutely remarkable … but we’re now getting reports of a number of explosions at subway stations in Beijing. We’re working to get you more details as soon as we can, but …”

The footage of Moscow disappeared, revealing the presenter looking away from the camera, a deep frown on her face, one hand pressed against the microphone in her ear.

“Is this right?” she said. “Are you sure you want me to …”

There was a moment of silence, until the presenter finally looked back down the lens.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “We are now receiving unconfirmed reports of vampire attacks on passengers on both the Paris Metro and the London Underground. The New York Transit Authority has ordered a complete closure of the New York subway system, presumably in response to these reported incidents. I don’t … I just …”

Beep. Beep.

The screen changed to show an archive photograph of a walled city, one that looked like a sprawling medieval castle. The caption beneath the image read CARCASSONNE, FRANCE.