On the pavement outside the garden, a little girl in a pink coat sat on a three-wheeled bike, watching her parents scream at each other. She stared at them for a few moments, then turned away, clearly bored, and began pedalling her bike determinedly towards Dracula. He smiled at her, and she smiled back in the mischievous way of all children when an adult they don’t know – a stranger – notices them. She pedalled faster, then turned her handlebars and darted between two parked cars, her eyes fixed on the pavement on the other side of the road. Dracula looked past her and saw a car approaching, moving far too fast. He registered the blank, panicked face of the driver, the screaming parents whose attention was still focused angrily on each other, the little girl on the bike who was about to emerge in the middle of the road, and realised what was going to happen.

Delicious, he thought. How absolutely delicious.

For a moment, he did nothing.

Then he sprinted forward, taking care not to leave the ground or let glowing heat enter his eyes, and out into the centre of the road. The car driver didn’t see him; he was staring into the middle distance, seeing nothing but escape. Dracula accelerated, racing towards the parked cars from between which the bike would appear, any second now. There would be no chance for the car to stop; it would hit the little girl head-on, at killing speed.

He reached the parked cars as a small, determined blur of pink rattled out from between them. To his surprise, the car driver did see her, and then finally him. He braked, but far too late; the car kept coming, screeching across the tarmac towards them. The girl looked round and screamed as Dracula reached her; he lifted her off her bike with one hand, as though she weighed as little as a feather, and dived out of the way. He rolled across the bonnet of a parked car, the girl wrapped in his arms, as the car that had almost obliterated her skidded to a halt twenty metres down the road. For a long second there was silence, until the little girl began to shriek.

Her mother and father rushed out of their garden, their eyes wide, the colour drained from their faces, as he sat up and held the girl out towards them. The woman snatched her from his hands and held her tight, sobbing and shaking and whispering that it was all right, she was OK, she was all right. Dracula climbed off the bonnet, and was instantly grabbed into a crushing bear hug by the girl’s father.

“Merci,” he gasped. “Merci, monsieur. Merci bien.”

He grinned. This was all simply too delightful.

“De rien,” he said.

The father released him, and hauled his daughter out of his wife’s arms. He started scolding her, telling her that she was lucky to be alive, that she knew she was never, ever, ever to ride her bike in the road. His wife looked with eyes that were wet with tears as the driver of the car appeared beside them, his face white with shock.

“I didn’t see her,” he said. “She rode right out. You all saw. I couldn’t have seen her.”

The woman threw herself at him, her face blazing with anger, and pounded his chest with her fists. The driver recoiled, raising his arms in self-defence as he was driven back against the garden wall by the fury of her assault.

“Slow down!” she screamed. “Slow down, you stupid shit!”

“I’m sorry!” shouted the driver, turning his body away from her blows. “I didn’t see her! I’m sorry!”

Dracula watched the unfolding scene with happiness radiating through him. He looked down at the pavement and saw a stone at the bottom of the garden wall; it was about the size of a grapefruit, and smooth. He stepped round the yelling, flailing woman and picked it up.

Perfect, he thought, feeling its weight in his hand.

The driver had curled into a crouch, his head down, his hands over the back of his neck. Dracula caught one of his attacker’s swinging fists and put the stone in it without a word.

The girl’s mother didn’t hesitate for even a single second; she brought the stone crashing down on the back of the driver’s head. He let out a strangled grunt and slid to one knee, blood spurting from his scalp, bright red in the early morning light. The little girl screamed again. Her father pressed her tightly against his chest and covered her eyes with his hand, but made no attempt to stop his wife as she swung the heavy stone a second time. It connected with the driver’s head with a sound like breaking crockery, and he slumped to the ground, his eyes rolling, his limbs twitching.

Dracula turned away as the woman knelt on the pavement, her face a mask of blind animal savagery, and walked back towards the main road as she brought the stone down again and again.

Jamie’s stomach churned as he took a seat at the Ops Room table.

Even by the elevated standards of Blacklight, the last twenty-four hours had been remarkably chaotic; the acts of terrorism that had been unleashed across the world, acts that had cost tens of thousands of innocent lives and announced that Dracula had finally made his move, had sent shock waves through the Department. He had watched the coverage of the unfolding crisis in the officers’ mess, standing silently as Dracula issued his proclamation from atop the walls of the medieval city, as planes tumbled from the sky and men and women were butchered without mercy in subway cars and shopping malls.

Nobody had said a word; Jamie doubted that anything would have been remotely adequate to describe what they were seeing. The first vampire in the flesh at last, the absent threat that had loomed over every Operator for months staring into a trembling camera and announcing the opening gambit of his campaign against the human world.

Unsurprisingly, nobody had talked about anything else for the rest of the night, and a single question had been asked over and over again.

What the hell do we do now?

Jamie glanced around the Ops Room table as Paul Turner got to his feet at its head. His colleagues were staring silently at the Director, their faces pale and tight.

“Zero Hour Task Force in session,” said Turner. “All members present. There are three things that we need to discuss today, the first of which is no doubt extremely obvious. As you must all know by now, what this group was first brought together to prevent has now come to pass. The images from Carcassonne, and from around the world, leave no room for ambiguity. Dracula has finally made his move.”

“Right,” said Angela Darcy. “So what are we going to do about it?”

“I will tell you what’s been discussed so far,” said Turner. “I spoke to the Directors of the other Departments this morning, including the FTB, who are liaising directly with the French government. We have no reliable intelligence regarding what happens to Carcassonne once Dracula’s deadline passes, but given the acts of terrorism that took place last night and the hostages that we know he’s taken, the consensus is that we cannot afford to simply hope for the best. The residents of the city appear to agree, as early estimates suggest that as many as twenty per cent of them fled overnight, with a great many more preparing to leave this morning. The French government has officially requested assistance from NATO and the UN, who have agreed to send peace-keeping troops and disaster-relief resources into the area, although neither is expected to arrive for at least eighteen hours.”

“Why so long?” asked Kate Randall.

Turner gave her a thin smile. “Global bureaucracy moves slowly at the best of times, Lieutenant. It moves even slower when most of the world’s major countries are dealing with the aftermath of the worst acts of terrorism they’ve ever known. Thankfully, both the Red Cross and UNICEF have already arrived at the scene and begun the process of assisting the refugees of Carcassonne. They will be establishing a displaced persons camp outside the city, and Director Allen of NS9 is en route to set up a local command centre at the same location.”