such levity. He withdrew it and replied.
“Not quite. You would need a bigger room than this to hang a portrait of every member of Blacklight who has been lost. An awful lot bigger. No, this is for the elite of Department 19, the best and the brightest, or those who died before their time. This is where our ancestors live on, Jamie. Every member of both of our families is in this room.”
Jamie was awestruck by Morris’s words and by the sights around him.
He walked slowly forward, looking at the men and women who stared down at him from the red walls, reading the plaques, seeing the same names over and over again as he made his way down the gallery: Benjamin Seward, Stephen Holmwood, Albert Harker, David Harker, Quincey Morris II, Peter Seward, Arthur Holmwood II, John Carpenter, David Morris, Albert Holmwood.
Three-quarters of the way down the gallery, a single bust of a man’s head stood atop a marble pillar in the middle of the wooden floor. It was carved from dark gray stone and stared down the gallery toward the door, as if challenging anyone who might enter. The face was rugged, had probably been handsome in its youth, and wore a thick mustache above a thin mouth and angular jaw. Jamie stopped to read the inscription on the marble, and Morris, who had been walking quietly six feet behind the teenager, did likewise. QUINCEY HARKER
ALL THAT WE ARE, WE OWE TO HIM
1894-1982
“Jonathan Harker’s son,” breathed Jamie, and Morris nodded.
Jamie walked around the bust, and continued through the gallery. The portraits were getting older now, the paint fading in some, cracked in others, the frames duller and more beaten down by the years. He reached the end of the gallery and looked up at the six paintings that faced him from the wall, their eyes full of pride, the men who had sat for the portraits all long dead.
ABRAHAM VAN HELSING
1827-1904
JONATHAN HARKER
1861-1917
QUINCEY MORRIS
1860-1891
JOHN SEWARD
1861-1924
HON. ARTHUR HOLMWOOD
1858-1940
HENRY CARPENTER
1870-1922
On a low shelf beneath the portraits, a number of small items had been placed; a stethoscope, a small gold pin with an ornate family crest engraved on it, a battered cowboy hat, and a kukri knife in a leather scabbard.
“My God,” breathed Jamie. “They were real. I don’t think I realized until now. They really lived.”
“Lived-and died,” said Morris. “Some before their time.” He turned to Jamie, tears in the corners of his eyes, and when he spoke again, his voice was charged with passion. “You and I are very similar,” he said, his eyes bright. “Descendants of founders. Members of the six great families of Blacklight. But we’re both black sheep. Both weighed down by the actions of our ancestors.”
“How so?” asked Jamie.
“The trouble your father has caused for you must be obvious by now. Mine began over a century ago.”
“Why?”
Morris looked at him for a long moment, as if weighing a decision in his mind.
“I’m not going to tell you it all now,” he said, eventually. “It’s late, and it’s a tale that deserves telling well. But it boils down to one essential truth; you or I could save the world a hundred times over, but we’ll never be a Harker, a Holmwood, a Seward, or a Van Helsing. The inner circle will always be closed to our families.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jamie.
“Follow me,” Morris replied, gesturing down the gallery. They walked most of the way back to the arched doorway and then stopped in front of a portrait. Jamie looked at the plaque below the frame.
DANIEL MORRIS
1953-2004
“Is that?…”
“My father? Yes. He was the director of Department 19.”
Jamie frowned. “No Carpenter has ever been director. Admiral Seward told me.”
“My father barely was,” replied Morris. “He was removed from office almost before he got started. Too aggressive, too reckless, or so they told him. Yet Quincey Harker, whose bust stands in the middle of this gallery, who was named after my great-great-grandfather, turned the Department into an army and was deified for doing so.”
Fire had risen briefly in Tom’s eyes as he spoke, but now it faded again. His hand fluttered to the bowie knife on his belt and touched the handle.
“Was that his?” asked Jamie softly, gesturing toward the weapon.
Morris looked down at his belt, then back at Jamie, surprise on his face.
He didn’t know he was touching it.
“It was my great-great-grandfather’s,” Morris replied. “It’s the knife that he pierced Dracula’s heart with, the last thing he ever did. It was given to my grandfather when he joined Blacklight. He passed it on to my father, and it was left to me when he died.”
Jamie was speechless.
The knife that killed Dracula. My God.
He forced himself to speak. “What happened to him?” he asked.
Morris laughed bitterly. “My father? I think he just had the wrong name. Our name. Not one of the four that matter around here.”
“Why are you telling me this, Tom?”
Morris sighed. “Because I like you, Jamie. And I want you to understand what you’ve got yourself into. You can believe in this place too much, buy into it too completely. It’ll take everything from you that you’re prepared to give-and more. But you’ll only ever be the descendant of a valet and the son of a traitor, just like I’ll always be the son of the only director to be removed from office. I’m telling you this because you need to stay focused on the two things that matter: finding your mother and bringing her home.”
18
“ Wake up.” The voice was low and smooth, but there was kindness in it, as well as the hint of an eastern European accent, and Marie Carpenter rose slowly from unconsciousness.
She opened her eyes a fraction, and screamed.
In front of her was a face she had seen before, a thin, pale face topped by dark waves of shoulder-length hair, with sharp features and sunken eye sockets, from which blazed two dreadful crimson orbs. The thing’s mouth was twisted into a wide snarl, and two razor-sharp white fangs were pointing directly at her.
It screamed right back at her, its foul breath blowing the hair away from her face. She screamed again, and it matched her, an awful high-pitched howl that hurt her ears. Then the thing smiled at her, and terror overwhelmed her. She had time to see that they were in a long, low room, with stone walls and a concrete floor, had time to think it looked like a cellar or a basement, then her vision turned white, and she slipped back into darkness.
Some time later, she drifted awake into a world of pain.
