Jamie shook his head.
“He was a fine man. By 1939 he’d been out of the RAF for nine years. But he reenlisted the day Britain declared war on Hitler’s Germany, against the wishes of your great-grandfather, who is the man with whom this story really begins.”
“I don’t know anything about him,” said Jamie. “I don’t even know his name.”
“His name was Henry Carpenter. He was a good man as well, at least the equal of his son. And everything that has happened to your family for the last one hundred and twenty years, everything that happened to you and your mother yesterday, can be traced back to the fact that he worked for a truly great man, a legend whose name I suspect you will know. Professor Abraham Van Helsing.”
Jamie laughed; a short, derisory noise, like a dog’s bark. He didn’t mean to, and the monster swung him a look of deep annoyance, but he couldn’t help it.
Come on. Seriously.
“Van Helsing wasn’t real,” he said, smiling at the monster. “I’ve read Dracula.”
Frankenstein returned Jamie’s smile.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “that will make this considerably easier.”
“I’ve read Frankenstein, too,” said Jamie quickly, before he lost his nerve.
“Good for you,” said the monster. “Might I be allowed to continue?”
“OK,” said Jamie, disappointed. It had taken all his courage to mention Mary Shelley’s novel.
“Thank you. Now, there are certain truths that you are simply going to have to come to terms with, and the quicker the better. Professor Van Helsing was real. The Dracula story, and all the people in it, is real; it happened almost exactly as that lazy drunk Stoker wrote it down. The vampire seductresses who distract Harker from his escape plans are fictional; the wishful thinking of their author. As is the count’s ability to turn into a bat, or a wolf, or anything else for that matter. But the rest is close enough. All of which means, in case you need it spelled out for you, that vampires are real. Although that shouldn’t be too hard for you to believe; you met two yesterday.”
Jamie felt like he had been punched in the stomach. “The girl who attacked me…”
“… was a vampire, that’s correct. As was the man I fired at in your living room. His name is Alexandru. And he is the main reason we’re sitting here now, having this conversation.”
“Who is he? What will he… what will he do to my mother?”
“I’ll get to him. The business with Dracula occurred in 1891, two years after your great-grandfather took work in Professor Van Helsing’s house. The men who survived the journey to Transylvania, whose names you no doubt know…”
“Harker,” said Jamie, distantly. “One of them was called Harker.”
He turned and looked at the bronze plaque on the garden wall, saw the names engraved on it, and felt things start to click into place in his mind.
You believe him. Or are starting to at least. My God.
“Jonathan Harker,” Frankenstein replied. “That’s right. He, along with Professor Van Helsing, John Seward, and Arthur Holmwood, swore an oath when they returned home, a promise they would remain vigilant and deal with Dracula again if it was ever required.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the teenager.
“It wasn’t,” Frankenstein continued, quickly. “Trust me, he’s dead. Unfortunately, he was not the only vampire in the world; merely the first-and the most powerful. He was a man once, the prince of a country called Wallachia, named Vlad Tepes. A terrible man, who butchered and murdered thousands of people. In 1476, his army lost its final battle, and he disappeared along with most of his supporters, until he appeared a year later in Transylvania, calling himself Count Dracula. With him were his three most loyal generals from the Wallachian Army. The three brothers Rusmanov: Valeri; Alexandru, who you met yesterday; and Valentin. As a reward for their loyalty, Dracula made them like him, along with their wives. And for four hundred years, they were the only vampires in the world, their power and their immortality jealously guarded by Dracula, who forbade them from turning anyone else. But when Dracula was killed, the rules died with him, and the brothers began to convert a new army of their own. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the condition began to spread. And it’s still spreading.”
Frankenstein paused, then cleared his throat, a deep sound like a bulldozer’s engine starting up. “This organization, the base you are in now, the people you met yesterday, it all grew from the promise those men made to be vigilant. They grew exponentially throughout the twentieth century, founding equivalent organizations in Russia, America, India, Germany, and Egypt, becoming what you see around you.”
Frankenstein gave Jamie a sly grin. “Which, to all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. The only people outside the organization who know about us are the prime minister and the chief of the general staff. No one can ever acknowledge its existence or tell anyone they are a member. As your grandfather was. And your father. And as you would have been offered the chance to be in about five years’ time.”
Frankenstein stopped talking. Jamie waited to see if he had merely paused and, once it became clear that he was finished, tried to think of a way to respond to what he had just been told. “So…” he began, “what you’re telling me is that my dad was a secret agent who fought vampires for a living. Real vampires, who actually exist, in the real world. Is that right? Is that what you’re asking me to believe?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Frankenstein replied. “I can’t make you believe it.”
“You have to realize how crazy this sounds, though. Surely?”
“I know it is a lot to take in. And I’m sorry you had to hear it like this. But it is the truth.”
“But… vampires?”
“Not just vampires,” answered the monster. “Werewolves, zombies, any number of other monsters.”
“Werewolves? Come on.”
“Yes, Jamie, werewolves.”
“Full moon, silver bullets, all that stuff?”
“Silver bullets are unnecessary,” said Frankenstein. “Normal bullets will work just fine. But the moon controls them, as it always has.”
Jamie’s interest was piqued, despite his skepticism. “What are they like?” he asked. “Have you ever seen one?”
Frankenstein nodded. “They are terrible, tormented creatures,” he said. “Savage and instinctive. I hope you never encounter one.”
Jamie paused. “And where do you fit into all this?” he asked, cautiously.
“You’re a well-read boy,” Frankenstein replied dryly. “You work it out.”
“But that was just a novel,” Jamie replied.
“Like Dracula?”
“Well… yes.”
Frankenstein looked away. “That miserable little girl,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “She gave my pain to the world as entertainment.”
Jamie tried another angle. “So what happened the night my father died? I mean, what really happened?”
For a moment, he didn’t think the monster was going to respond. Frankenstein was staring into the distance, lost in his memories. But then he shook his head, as if trying to clear it, and answered. “I don’t think you’re ready to hear about that yet.”
The cruelty of this statement almost broke Jamie’s heart. He composed himself, though not so quickly that the watching Frankenstein failed to notice, and continued. “What about yesterday?” he asked.
“Alexandru has been looking for you and your mother ever since your father died. Yesterday he found you.” Frankenstein replied. He saw the look on Jamie’s face and anticipated the question that was coming. “We don’t yet know how. But he did.”
“Why am I still alive?”
“The girl, Larissa her name is, was supposed to kill you. She didn’t do it.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know that either. She says she won’t talk to anyone except you.”
“Me?” Jamie asked, his eyes suddenly wide. “Why me?”
