If someone in the Surveillance Division decided to take a look, they would see – or think they were seeing – the only car they knew he owned sitting idle in the cottage’s drive while he walked the nearby countryside, where they would not be able to get visual confirmation. If they wanted to be absolutely sure of his whereabouts, they would have to send someone out to check in person, and even if they did so, and found Ben wearing his chip, the teenager had no idea where Julian had gone. He didn’t think there was any way they could find him, but he refused to be complacent: Blacklight’s resourcefulness was something he understood better than most.

Julian got out of the car and pulled his bags from the boot as a man emerged from one of the trailers and strolled towards him; he was perhaps fifty, his face deeply tanned and lined, a blue cap perched atop his head.

“Mr Frank?”

“That’s me,” said Julian.

“Pat Landon,” said the man, and extended his hand. “We spoke on the phone.”

“We did,” said Julian, shaking the offered hand. “Are we all set?”

“She’s fuelled up and ready to go,” said Landon.

“All right,” said Julian. He put the green duffel bag on the Ford’s bonnet, unzipped it, and pulled out a brown envelope. “Here you go.”

Landon took the envelope and peered inside.

“You can count it,” said Julian.

Landon appeared to consider this for a moment. “No need,” he said.

Julian smiled at him. “We only just met,” he said. “Count it.”

Landon shrugged, and pulled a thick sheaf of notes out of the envelope. He licked the tip of his finger and quickly counted them. “Ten thousand.”

“So we’re good?” said Julian.

“We’re good,” said Landon. “I can’t take you all the way to Carcassonne, but I guess you knew that?”

“I knew,” he said. “The airspace is closed, right?”

Landon nodded. “All the way out as far as Toulouse,” he said. “The closest I can get you is a place called Fumel-Montayral. It’s a local aerodrome about two hours’ drive to the north. I’ve arranged for someone to meet us there and take you into town. You should be able to get a car there.”

“That’s fine,” said Julian.

“Good,” said Landon. “All right. Let’s do it.”

The two men walked across the grass towards the plane. It was a white and blue Cessna 172, which suited Julian perfectly; the little four-seater was one of the most common planes in the world, and could almost have been hand-selected to not attract attention.

Landon unlocked the plane’s passenger door and held it open. Julian threw the duffel bag on to the seat, then unzipped the black holdall and checked that the letter was still where he had put it. He knew it was stupid – there was no possible way that it could have disappeared during his drive to the airfield – but he couldn’t help himself. Some things simply went beyond the rational.

His fingers closed on the rectangular shape, and he pulled it out of the pocket far enough to see the five words he had written barely five hours earlier.

Fingers tapped his shoulder, causing him to jump. Julian pushed the envelope back into the pocket, zipped the holdall, and turned to find Landon looking at him with a curious expression on his face.

“Ten thousand in cash is a lot for this trip,” said the pilot, and nodded at the holdall. “I don’t make a habit of involving myself in other people’s business, but is there anything in that bag that’s going to get me into trouble?”

Julian smiled. “Do you really want to know?”

Landon stared at him for a long moment, then grunted with laughter and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Get in.”

Paul Turner paced back and forth in his quarters.

In less than five minutes he would brief his Department on their response to a situation that was nothing less than a threat to the entire world as they knew it, but his mind was somewhere else entirely; it was with a teenage girl lying unconscious five floors below him.

A small part of him was furious with Kate. Greg Browning had been broken, sobbing and screaming with rage and disappointment, and she should have known better than to think he could be reasoned with and approach him unarmed. Turner had ordered her to step back, but she had ignored him, and now she was fighting for her life. They would never know for certain whether Matt’s father had meant to shoot her, but it didn’t matter; the gun had fired and the damage was done.

The rest of him was churning with pain, his heart aching for the girl he had come to love like a daughter, and for whom he had more affection than anyone else in the Department. He could not imagine a world without her in it. He had lost his son, and that had almost destroyed him; to lose her as well was unthinkable.

Turner took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind, to focus on the extremely pressing matter at hand; there was nothing he could do for Kate, and he would not be honouring her by allowing his pain to distract him from what he needed to do. He could clearly picture the Ops Room; by now, it would be full to bursting with every man and woman who called the Loop home, as they waited to be told what was happening. It would be his job to make them believe they were going to survive what was coming, that they would be in safe hands as he led them into battle.

They deserved nothing less.

And he would not let them down.

Jamie sat in the middle of the fifth row of seats, his foot tapping with impatience.

The Ops Room was packed; every seat was occupied, and people were standing two and three deep along the curving walls. Beside Jamie sat Larissa, her eyes fixed on the lectern behind which Paul Turner would shortly appear. The tight seating forced them into a proximity that his ex-girlfriend was clearly uncomfortable with, but thankfully not so uncomfortable that she had refused to sit next to him; such a rejection would have been extremely awkward for both of them.

On her other side sat Matt, and beyond him Natalia. The Russian girl was staring at exactly the same spot as Larissa, her back straight, her hands resting on her thighs, but Jamie couldn’t help but notice, out of the corner of his supernaturally sharp eye, that every thirty seconds or so she stretched out the little finger of her left hand to touch Matt’s leg. The tiny gesture of affection made him smile inwardly, even though it drew into sharp focus exactly what he had lost.

What he was increasingly sure he could not get back.

The Ops Room door opened and Paul Turner walked through it. The low hum of conversation filling the wide space immediately gave way to silence as the Director stepped up on to the stage and looked out across the massed ranks of his Department. Jamie felt tension twist in his stomach as Turner cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and began to speak.

“Men and women of Blacklight,” he said. “I stand before you now not only as your Director, but as a husband, a father, a colleague, and as a human being who will not stand by and let darkness overwhelm us. Because the moment of reckoning has arrived. We’ve known it was coming for many months, no matter how hard we may have tried to convince ourselves otherwise, and now it’s here. So make no mistake: this is the fight of our lives. Of all our lives.”

The Director surveyed the room, as Jamie felt heat threaten to rise into his eyes.

“If we, and our friends from around the globe, do not stop Dracula now, he will never be stopped,” continued Turner. “And Carcassonne will only have been the beginning. He has made his vision of the future perfectly clear: anyone who does not submit to him will be killed, and any force that tries to stand against him will be destroyed. Vampires are flocking to his side, and soon he will have an army capable of tearing through cities like a tornado, of unleashing chaos and violence on a scale that will make Château Dauncy look like a playground squabble. I do not want anyone to be under any illusions about the stakes of the battle that will soon be fought. We are the only people who can push him back. We are all that stands between the world and Armageddon.”