hundreds of men and women turned back to face him.
He was surrounded by vampires.
They regarded him with smiles on their faces, their fangs now fully extended, their eyes gleaming terrible crimson.
This is how it ends. Torn to pieces on my first mission. My father would be ashamed.
23
Jamie marched along the cellblock corridor, Frankenstein following a couple of steps behind. Jamie had refused to go to the infirmary and have his neck properly dressed, had not even changed his acrid-smelling uniform. Several Blacklight operators had stared at the white wad of bandages as he stormed through the hangar, the huge colonel following in his wake.
Jamie stopped in front of Larissa’s cell, the UV wall shimmering in front of him. She was lying on her bed, her eyes already fixed on him, as though she had been expecting him to arrive. Then Jamie realized that she had probably heard him from the first moment he entered the block; he found it strangely easy to forget that she was a vampire.
She smiled at him, and then the smile died on her lips as Frankenstein stepped into her field of vision and stood next to Jamie. She had a book splayed over her lap, and she immediately brought it up to her face, obscuring it from their view.
“I need to talk to you,” said Jamie.
The book didn’t move.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, anger rising in his voice. “I said I need to talk to you.”
“I heard you,” said Larissa, from behind the book. “And there’s nothing I’d like more in the world than to talk to you back. But I don’t do threesomes.”
Frankenstein muttered something under his breath.
“Nothing personal,” said Larissa.
Jamie looked at the monster, ready to plead with him to leave them alone, but Frankenstein was already turning away from him.
“Thank you,” he shouted, as the huge man’s footsteps thumped away along the corridor. When the door at the end of the block clanged shut, Larissa put the book down, jumped off the bed, and walked over to him, a wide smile on her face.
“I knew you would be back,” she said.
“This isn’t a social visit,” Jamie said, sharply.
Her eyes dropped from his as he spoke, and then widened as she observed the bandage over the right side of his neck. “What happened to you?” she asked. “Don’t tell me someone bit you?”
The concern in her voice made Jamie’s heart flutter. “Nothing like that,” he replied. “I got burned. On a mission.”
“A mission!” she exclaimed. “Was it a super secret one? I bet it was. Ooh, tell me all about it!”
Jamie blushed a deep scarlet, and Larissa laughed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You just looked so serious with your bandaged neck and your dirty uniform. Did you come down here to tell me off?”
“I came down here to ask you about Alexandru,” he said. “I came down here because I thought you might be the one person willing to help me.”
Larissa tilted her head to one side and fluttered her eyelashes.
“That’s so sweet,” she said, choking back fake emotion. “Am I your only hope?”
Jamie turned away from her and strode up the corridor, forcing himself to slow his pace, determined that he would not run away.
“Wait,” she called, and he stopped. “Please. Come back. I was only playing.”
He stood in the corridor, between two empty cells, breathing hard. It was embarrassment that had caused him to run, embarrassment that she was not taking him seriously. And although he couldn’t have explained why, it was imperative to him that she do so. He composed himself and walked slowly back to her cell.
She smiled as he reappeared, but he saw the last flicker of genuine concern on her face, and he was glad.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t spoken to anyone for two days. The guards don’t even look at me.”
Then they’re idiots, Jamie thought, and blushed.
Larissa sat down cross-legged on the floor of her cell, and waited for him to do the same. He folded himself crouching to the ground, carefully, moving his neck as little as was possible, and then they were facing each other, no more than three feet apart, the UV field flickering between them.
“Will you tell me where Alexandru is?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know. Honestly.”
“Will you tell me where the last place you saw him was?”
She shook her head again, causing a lock of dark hair to fall across her forehead. Jamie tried not to look at it; the urge to brush it away was overwhelming.
“Why not?”
“Because if I tell you, I’ll never leave this cell again.”
“I can talk to them-”
“It won’t work. I’ll take you there, but I won’t tell you. I hope you can understand the difference.”
Jamie lowered his head. He knew she was right. If she admitted to not knowing anything, Seward would have her destroyed; if she told him what she did know, Seward would have her destroyed. Her only chance was to admit she had information, refuse to reveal it, and hope they became desperate enough to play the game on her terms.
He looked up. “So, you’re useless then?” he said, as spitefully as he was able.
She flinched, and a tremor of hurt rippled momentarily across her face.
Good. Good.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you,” she said, sounding for the first time like the teenager she had been before she was turned. “I just won’t tell you where I last saw Alexandru. Ask me something else.”
“There’s nothing else I want to know.”
“Really?”
“Really. All that matters is him-and my mother.”
“You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”
Jamie looked at her. “Of course I am,” he said.
“You should be. You have no idea what Alexandru is capable of.”
A shiver ran up Jamie’s spine.
I don’t want to hear this. I know I need to, but I don’t want to.
“What’s he like?” he asked, cautiously.
“He’s the second oldest vampire in the world,” Larissa replied. “He does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He kills humans for food, he kills vampires and humans for fun. There’s nothing you can do to stop him.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You need to. You’ll get hurt if you don’t. And I don’t want to see that happen.” She smiled at him, and he felt his stomach revolve. “A year ago, a girl who was running with him killed a farmer in Cornwall,” she continued. “She came back to the place we were staying covered in his blood, absolutely dripping with it. Anderson asked her if anyone had seen her, and she confessed that the man’s family might have seen her leaving the barn where she
