The little stoat must have called upstairs the second Queck admitted her through security, Alex thought. Her mind raced to understand what this was about. If it was some kind of disciplinary hearing, it could surely only be about one thing. Could the VIA top brass already know about Baxter Burnett going rogue on her? Had his little escapade outside the school made it onto YouTube already? She could see the headlines: ‘
Gibson flung open the door with a dramatic flourish that looked like he’d been practising it in the mirror. Alex blinked as her visitors came striding into the office. Leading the way, nose in the air and robes trailing behind her, was Supremo Olympia Angelopolis. At her side strutted the figure of her PA, Ivo Donskoi: grizzled hair cropped military-style, small, narrow-chested, dark suit, a laptop under his arm. Four F.A.N.G. guards marched in behind them, shut the door and stood either side of it with their high-capacity assault weapons cocked and locked.
Alex was speechless. Gibson just had time to throw her a quick smirk before he went scurrying towards the Vampress. ‘Ma’am, it’s a great honour to welcome you in person to our—’
‘Quiet,’ Olympia commanded with a snap of her fingers. ‘I haven’t cancelled some very important meetings and come all this way to bandy words on ceremony. Ivo, if you please.’
Without a word, Ivo Donskoi shoved the paperwork on Alex’s desk to one side, set the laptop down on the desk and flipped it open. As the screen flashed into life, Alex found herself staring at the garish graphics of a website she’d never seen before.
‘Do you know what this is?’ the Vampress demanded. ‘No, I didn’t think you did.’
‘“They Lurk Amongst Us”?’ Alex said, peering at the screen. ‘Errol Knightly — bestselling author, vampire hunter. Uh-huh. Right.’ She looked up at the Supremo. ‘Come on. We’ve seen these types plenty of times before. It’s obvious this guy’s just a showman.’
Olympia’s lips tightened. ‘And it seems you’ve become the star of his little show, my dear.’
‘You’re going to have to explain what this is about,’ Alex said.
Donskoi cut in. ‘Ten days ago, your superior Harry Rumble sent you on a mission to investigate possible rogue vampire activity in our eastern Europe sector. Correct? We want to know what happened.’
‘It was in the Carpathian mountains,’ Alex said, even more baffled. ‘Out in the middle of nowhere. The VIA mainframe had flagged up a blog where some bunch of amateur wannabe vampire hunters were talking about going into this little rundown cottage in the woods where local rumour said there was a vampire. It was almost certainly going to be just another false alarm, but we decided to check it out. In the end, it turned out to be for real. It was one of the first signs that Gabriel Stone’s rebellion was about to kick off. I think the vampire was one of his Trad followers.’
‘And you dealt with the situation?’
‘Yes, I did. This was all in my report at the time. Why are we going back over it?’
Olympia smiled. ‘Let’s go through it again.’
Alex shrugged and went on. ‘Okay. The situation was messy. By the time I got there, the humans were already in trouble. Three of them, young guys in their twenties. The target took two of the humans down before I terminated him.’
‘And you followed the proper procedure?’
‘To the letter of the Fed regs. I injected the two dead humans with Nosferol to make sure they stayed that way, and gave the survivor a shot of Vambloc to kill his short-term memory. Then as an extra security measure I took out the whole place with an incendiary device. The report was logged with Harry Rumble and everything was gone through in the debriefing. I can’t understand what the problem is.’
‘Let me show you the problem, Agent Bishop,’ Donskoi said.
Locked in an office in another part of the VIA Headquarters, someone was furtively taking out a very unauthorised mobile phone and dialling a number that nobody else within the organisation could ever know about.
‘It’s me,’ the vampire whispered urgently, glancing at the door furtively, fearful that someone outside could be listening. ‘Have you got it?’
‘Yes,’ said Gabriel Stone’s voice on the other end of the line. He sounded tense. ‘We have it. The plan is in motion.’
‘There’s been an unexpected development,’ the vampire whispered. ‘Angelopolis is here. She flew in unannounced from Brussels yesterday. It was all kept hush-hush, but she’s in some kind of meeting with Bishop. The two of them are right here in the building.’
‘My man is on his way as we speak,’ Gabriel said.
‘Tell him to get here fast. Angelopolis
Chapter Forty-One
Donskoi reached down to the laptop and clicked to another page of the same website: www.theylurkamongstus.com. In the centre of the screen, a video clip began to download.
Alex’s gaze flicked sideways to the block of text that accompanied it.
STOP PRESS! Latest news from the front lines in the war against the Undead. For all you people out there who know the truth, and for all you doubting cynics who are about to be silenced … Errol Knightly is proud to present a sneak preview of the most sensational video evidence ever seen that VAMPIRES EXIST. Warning: what you are about to see is real, and not suitable for viewers of a sensitive dis position. Of the group of vampire hunters who captured this incredible footage in Romania, only one escaped with his life. Our technicians are hard at work cleaning up the rest of the footage and we guarantee that when you see the complete video, there will be no more excuses, no more doubters
…. YOU WILL BELIEVE.
‘What?’ Alex said. Nobody else spoke. She could feel their eyes on her as the video clip finished loading and the images began to play on the screen. Only then did she understand.
‘Oh, shit,’ she said.
‘You might say that,’ Gibson sneered.
The picture was grainy and indistinct, but Alex recognised the setting immediately as the dank, stinking basement of the semi-derelict cottage deep in the Romanian countryside where her mission had taken her. The greenish-hued images unfolded, jerkily but unmistakably, to a muffled, distorted soundtrack of wild screaming. The first human going down, writhing in a dark pool on the cellar floor; a blurred flash of brick wall; a snatched glimpse of the red-smeared face of the vampire, opening his mouth — just for a split second, the money-shot glimpse of his fangs, gleaming white in the murky shadows of the basement — before he grabbed the second human and ripped his throat out.
Alex had seen enough horror movies to know what a fake vampire looked like on a screen. This one didn’t look fake. He looked every bit as real as he had face to face.
‘But where was the camera?’ she muttered. ‘There
Gibson smirked. ‘Maybe you have some other explanation as to why we’re seeing this?’
‘Silence,’ Olympia said.
Now the hidden lens turned round to point in the opposite direction, and Alex’s mouth hung open as she saw herself onscreen, walking down the cellar steps. She was wearing the tight-fitting black combat kit she’d used for the job, carrying the Desert Eagle in its tactical holster. Her features were a little grainy but clearly recognisable.
‘What an entrance,’ Donskoi said. ‘Joan Crawford would have envied it.’
Alex couldn’t speak. She heard herself on the video clip saying ‘Surprise!’ Saw her hand go to her holster and draw the pistol.
Then, just about audible over the speakers:
