dropped the stake, drew the T-Bone to his shoulder, led the running vampire by a few feet, and fired.
The stake slammed through her heart, obliterating it.
This time the explosion was smaller, almost petite, and she was gone before the metal cable was fully rewound. Jamie reached down and picked up the stake, placed it back in the loop on his belt, and made his way up the stairs.
Terry allowed himself a small smile. Standing against the wall, watching the teenager’s progress on a bank of monitors that had been raised from the floor of the circular room, a soldier whistled softly through his teeth.
“He’s good,” he said, shaking his head admiringly.
“He’s better than that,” said the soldier next to him. “He’s a natural.”
A sharp laugh, like the bark of a dog, echoed through the room. The two soldiers turned and looked at Major Harker, who was watching one of the monitors with his fists clenched tightly by his sides.
“The hallway is child’s play,” said the major, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Let’s see how he does in the garden.”
But Jamie passed through the garden, an overgrown labyrinth of ivy and oak trees, without any trouble. He used his weapons in perfect combinations, never allowing a vampire within ten feet of him, staking and moving, disabling them from long distance with the pistol and the MP5, identifying the primary threat in each situation and dealing with it first. He moved along the narrow stone paths cautiously but not slowly, never presenting a stationary target that the vampires could surround. When the garden was clear, he kicked open the door of the crumbling stone shed that stood next to the garden’s gate and went inside.
It was dark, so he pulled a thin black torch from his belt and swept it quickly across the room. Against the back wall, no more than eight feet away from him, the beam picked out the pale face of a girl, her fangs clearly visible as triangular points of white, and he drew the MP5 and fired a volley of bullets ten inches below where he had seen the face. Something screamed in the darkness, and he brought the torch back up and shone it against the rear wall. The girl’s face was still where it had been, although now it hung limp against her chest, blood coursing from its mouth. He stepped forward, widened the beam, and was surprised at what he saw.
The girl was in her late teens, and she was fixed to the wall by heavy handcuffs around her wrists and ankles, in a deeply uncomfortable-looking spread eagle. The bullets from his gun had turned her chest to dark red jelly, but she was still alive, and as he approached, she raised her head and howled at him. Jamie took a half step back, despite himself, then pressed forward as the girl’s head slumped back down.
He shone the torch along each of her limbs to the handcuffs. She was chained at full stretch; there was no way she could apply any leverage to the bolts and free herself. Even so, Jamie drew the stake from his belt, raised it above his shoulder, and stopped. The wounds in the girl’s torso were already starting to heal, and Jamie decided he would leave her. She was no threat to him secured to the wall, and killing something that was immobilized, even a vampire, felt like murder. Instead he left the shed and walked through the wrought-iron gate that led out of the garden.
He worked his way through the rest of the grounds of the mansion, luring two vampires down a narrow alley between two garages and spearing them both with a single T-Bone shot, a kill so audacious that a spontaneous round of applause broke out in the Playground until it was silenced by a ferocious look from Major Harker. Jamie stepped lightly over the fans of blood the vampires left on the walls, made his way across a courtyard toward the estate’s main driveway, and only at this late stage, did he feel the cold fingers of fear grab at him.
The driveway was wide enough, but it was flanked by two towering rows of trees, the branches of which met high above, forming a dark green tunnel. As Jamie began to walk down it, he was reminded of the approach he and Frankenstein had made to the Loop, but when the branches began to move and rustle, he was plunged back into the night his father died, and terror threatened briefly to overcome him.
But this was a different situation. He had been powerless to do anything about the things that had crawled through the branches of the oak tree; here, that was not the case. He ripped the MP5 from its holster and sprayed the branches of the overhanging trees with bullets, fire spitting from the end of the gun’s barrel. He fired it empty, reloaded, and fired it empty again. Five vampires fell from the branches, hitting the ground bone-breakingly hard, their bodies peppered with holes and spewing blood. Jamie walked methodically across the driveway, staking each vampire in turn. He walked down the driveway toward an ornate metal gate marked EXIT, and was about to grasp the handle when a searing pain tore into the left side of his neck. He looked down at his chest and saw with amazement that blood was coursing down it in rivers. Jamie turned slowly around and stared into the face of the girl from the shed. She was looking at him with blazing red eyes, full of triumph, and as he reached for his T- Bone, she blurred, then disappeared, along with the rest of the simulated world.
Suddenly, everything was dark, and Jamie fought back panic. One of his hands flew to his neck and felt only slick, sweaty skin and the bottom of the helmet he had forgotten he was wearing. He shoved it from his head and squinted under the bright lights of the Playground. He looked down and saw Terry staring up at him, his face full of open admiration. He turned and saw the crowds of watching Blacklight soldiers and staff staring up at him, and as he looked blankly at them, one soldier began to clap. The applause was taken up throughout the line of spectators, and soon it had become a deafening roar, punctuated by cheers and congratulations. Jamie allowed a smile to creep over his face, allowed it to widen when he saw Major Harker, his face as dark and ominous as a thundercloud, striding away from the crowd and toward the nearest exit.
Jamie climbed down from the platform and was nearly flattened by a thumping pat on the back from Terry. The instructor’s face was full of pride, and Jamie looked away, embarrassed. Terry helped him remove the armor and the simulated weapons, then stepped in and gave him a quick rib-crushing hug that lifted him off his feet.
“Did I do all right?” Jamie asked. “I thought I failed.”
“Everyone fails the first time,” replied Terry. “Everyone. Most don’t make it out of the house, never mind the garden. And you only failed because you showed compassion. It was misplaced, but it was admirable.”
“Thanks,” said Jamie, grinning widely now.
Behind him, the crowd was beginning to disperse. The men and women of Blacklight made their way around the walls of the Playground toward the various doors, many shaking their heads at what they had seen, several smiling in his direction, offering thumbs-ups and silent claps. None of them approached him, and Jamie thought he knew why; down here, Terry was the boss, not Admiral Seward, and they would not interrupt the student and the instructor.
Jamie watched them leave, then felt a sickening burst of pain in his kidneys as a fist slammed into his side. He crumpled to the ground, rolling over as he did so, and found himself looking up into Terry’s smiling face.
“Get up,” the instructor said.
17
Jamie turned off the shower and stepped out from under the water. Terry had dismissed him a little over half an hour ago, and the teenager had fled gratefully for the soothing drumming of the hot water on his stretched, beaten skin. He was covered in cuts and bruises, and his limbs felt as heavy as concrete. But despite the pain, or perhaps because of it, he felt invigorated; his mind was racing even as his body begged for rest.
Jamie dried himself with a towel, then walked out of the shower block and into the changing room. His clothes were piled on one of the benches, but there was something hanging above them, something that hadn’t been there when he had run for the shower thirty minutes earlier. He looked around and saw that there were also two metal cases on the bench to his left. Stepping forward, he examined the dark object hanging above the damp ball of training clothes and then took a sharp breath.
It was a Blacklight uniform.
The jumpsuit was jet black in the fluorescent light of the changing room, the lightweight matte material reflecting nothing. Taped to the front of it was a handwritten note. Put this on.
Jamie did so, stepping into the legs of the suit, sliding his arms down the sleeves, pulling the zip up to his
