Jamie shrugged. “There you go then,” he said. “There’s not much point in me getting used to having you around again, is there?”

Silence settled over them once more. It was not as glacial as it had been when she first walked into his quarters, but it was still cold, still full of guilt and recrimination.

“I missed you, Jamie,” she said.

Pain stabbed at his heart. “Don’t say that,” he said. “Please don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s the truth. I don’t regret leaving, and I get that this isn’t what you want to hear, but I really did miss you.”

“I missed you too,” he said. “For a long time.”

“And then what happened?”

“I stopped,” he lied.

Bob Allen stood at the edge of the displaced persons camp, staring at the cloud of dark smoke hanging over what was left of the city of Carcassonne. The fires had raged through the night, the sky pulsing orange, the heat uncomfortable even across miles of countryside.

Then, barely an hour before dawn, they had started to go out.

The satellites had been unable to pinpoint exactly what was happening – their cameras had recorded little more than bursts of movement in the darkness – but the inferno had rapidly begun to subside, as though it was being blown out by some vast celestial being. The new plumes of smoke from the dwindling fires had reduced visibility even further, leaving the men and women in the camp, along with the millions watching the unfolding disaster on televisions around the world, with no option other than to wait and see what remained when the sun finally rose over the eastern horizon.

Allen had waited with his colleagues and the charity directors, giving orders and discussing the unfolding situation at length, but his head and heart were somewhere else, although nobody he spoke to would have known that was the case; he was hugely experienced at hiding his true feelings from others.

Outwardly, he continued to appear the calm, highly capable American General whose leadership they could trust completely. Inwardly, he was wracked with pain at the death of Danny Lawrence.

There were many Operators back in Nevada more experienced than Danny had been, but Allen believed that none of them had been able to match the young Virginian for natural talent; the only one to come close had been Tim Albertsson, who had also died a violent death, many thousands of miles from home. Over the last year or so, Danny had been the Operator to whom Allen had entrusted the majority of NS9’s highest priority missions, and never once had he let him down.

And now he was dead.

Allen had listened to Danny’s final, shouted challenge to the vampires who killed him, his blood running cold, his body and mind frozen by helplessness.

Come on then! Come on then if you’re coming!

It had been the reason he had not slept for a single minute of the long, burning night; Danny’s last words had echoed endlessly through his head, bringing him to the verge of tears, particularly once he had gathered himself together enough to make the call he knew he had to make, to tell Danny’s friends that he was gone.

Kara, Kelly, Aaron and Carlos had managed to maintain what his friend Paul Turner would have called a stiff upper lip, but there had been no hiding the shock and hurt in their eyes, even as they immediately asked whether there was anything they could do. Allen knew at least two other people who were going to be devastated by Danny’s death, and had already asked the Blacklight Director to pass the news on to Matt Browning. He had no idea how to get in touch with Larissa Kinley; she had dropped off the radar months earlier, much to his professional and personal disappointment.

Across the wide fields to the east, he watched the morning sun attempting in vain to penetrate the acrid grey pall, trying his very hardest not to blame the Red Cross team for what had happened, despite their reckless disobedience of a direct order. He knew they had been trying to help men and women too scared or simply unable to leave the doomed city on their own; they had paid for their mistake with their lives, and there was nothing to be gained from speaking ill of the dead, although part of him wanted to.

Part of him really, really wanted to.

“Sir?”

Allen turned to see Luisa Ramirez standing a respectful distance away, her face pale.

“Is it time?” he asked.

“It is, sir,” she replied. “They’re waiting for you in the command centre.”

“Thank you,” he said, and nodded. “Tell them I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ramirez. She walked towards the middle of the camp as Allen turned back to face the smouldering ruins of Carcassonne. Less than five miles away, on a nondescript suburban street beneath the smoke and amid the ash and rubble, lay whatever remained of three of his Operators. And as he stared at the swirling cloud of black and grey, Allen couldn’t shake the certainty that Danny Lawrence and his squad mates were merely going to be the first of many, many deaths to come.

Five minutes later, Allen pulled open the door of his now greatly enlarged command centre and stepped through it. He could hear a low hum of conversation as he walked towards the centre of the structure, where Captain Guérin and Director Karla Schmidt of the FTB were waiting for him.

“We said nine,” said Schmidt, and looked at her watch. “It is almost quarter past.”

The German team, consisting of more than sixty Operators and almost as many support staff, had been at the camp for two days, but Schmidt herself had only arrived six hours earlier; she had been in Paris, liaising with the French government, since the crisis had begun. She had immediately sent one of her Operators to the command centre with a request to see him, but it had been barely forty minutes after Danny’s team were lost, and he had refused the request; he had been scarcely able to form a coherent thought, let alone bring another Director up to speed on a situation that was evolving faster than anyone could process. He had sent the FTB Operator away with a suggestion that Schmidt ask Guérin to brief her, a professional snub that he suspected he was paying for now.

“My apologies,” said Allen. “Shall we get started? Captain Guérin?”

The French officer nodded. “Before we begin,” he said, “I would like to say that I am very sorry for the loss of your Operators.”

“The FTB also offers it condolences,” said Schmidt. “I worked with Operator Lawrence on two occasions, and I thought very highly of him.”

“Thank you both,” said Allen. “It’s appreciated.”

Guérin nodded. “To business, then,” he said. “Unsurprisingly, details are very hard to come by. The Red Cross has given a final evacuation estimate of ninety-one per cent. UNICEF believes the figure is eighty-seven. As a result, we can say for certain that the city was not empty when it burned, and fatalities are now inevitable.”

“Perhaps as many as six or seven thousand,” said Schmidt. “If UNICEF turns out to be correct.”

Allen nodded. “An exact number is going to be difficult to come by.”

Guérin frowned. “Why can we not send volunteers in to search for bodies?” he asked. “The sun will not set for another nine hours.”

“Because it is not safe,” said Schmidt. “Apart from the high temperatures and the risk of collapsed buildings, you need to understand that vampires can go out during the daytime, as long as they keep their skin out of direct sunlight. It is perhaps unlikely that Dracula will have vampires patrolling the ruins, but it cannot be ruled out. His deadline for the city to be empty was very clear.”

“Then the bodies will stay where they are,” said Guérin.

“Let them,” said Allen. “There are more important things right now.”