The rest of the team filed silently inside, Morris closing the door behind them.
“Where’s the family?” asked Frankenstein.
Larissa stared at him. “Where do you think?” she asked. “They’re gone.”
“God damn you,” muttered the monster. “You and all the rest of your kind.”
Jamie walked through the kitchen, around a battered wooden dining table, and led them into the rest of the house.
It was empty, as Larissa had promised it would be.
They stood silently in the kitchen. Jamie’s head was lowered, his mind racing with one terrible image of his mother after another. Morris was looking nervously at the door, desire to leave this place and return to the Loop written all over his face. Larissa was watching Jamie, an expression of shame on her face, and Frankenstein was staring at the vampire girl so intently he didn’t appear to be blinking.
“Everything about you is a lie, isn’t it?” he said eventually, his voice low.
Larissa returned his gaze, and sneered. “You don’t know anything about me,” she spit. “Nothing.”
Frankenstein’s gaze didn’t so much as flicker. “I think I do,” he said, softly. “I think I know a lot about you. Do you want to hear what I think?”
“I really don’t care,” Larissa snapped. “If you’ve got something to say, get on with it.”
Frankenstein nodded. “I don’t think you’ve ever killed a single thing in your life. I think you’re a scared little girl who was pretty enough for Alexandru not to kill her. I think you were terrified of him, and I think you probably spent every second of every day looking for a way to escape from him. But I think you were too scared to try it. Am I warm?”
Larissa looked away, and the monster continued. “I think you probably lied about the men and women you killed until Alexandru believed you, probably until you even started to believe it a little bit yourself. I think you probably survived on the leftovers of others’ kills and on animals when you could find them. I think you lied, and lied and lied so much that you made Alexandru believe you were almost as bad as him, although if you’d asked the rest of his followers, I bet none of them would remember ever seeing you take a life. I think that’s why you were entrusted with killing Jamie.”
The monster’s voice was rising now, thick fury spilling into it. “I don’t think you spared Jamie; I don’t think you could do it, when it came down to it. I don’t think you could kill him. And while I’m grateful for your weakness, your lies and your bravado and your criminal selfishness have wasted time that could have been spent looking for Marie Carpenter, time we did not have to spare. And if we’re too late to help her because of the time and attention we wasted on you, wasted on a pathetic little vampire girl we would have been better off letting you die in the garden where Alexandru dropped you, then so help me God I will make you pay for it for the rest of your days!”
Frankenstein was visibly shaking, his great shoulders trembling with anger.
“Look at me!” he roared, and Larissa, whose head was turned toward the wall, jumped. “If you can’t, then look at him at least! Do him that courtesy, after you’ve wasted our time and left his mother in the hands of a madman! Look at him!”
Larissa’s shoulders hunched, then she slowly turned back to face them. Jamie felt a gasp rise in his throat as he saw her face.
The vampire was crying.
Tears ran down her pale cheeks, leaving narrow lines that glistened under the electric light above the table. Her expression was one of utter misery, and she looked at Jamie with pain etched across her face.
“The night your mother was taken. After you left me in the park,” she said, her voice barely audible, “I ran. I got a couple of miles before Anderson caught me and brought me back to him.” She spit this last word, her face momentarily curling with disgust. “Alexandru pulled me into the air, smiling, telling me he had to teach me a lesson, talking to me like everything was normal. Then he beat me until I lost consciousness and dropped me out of the sky.”
She looked at Frankenstein and hate twitched across her face. “You’re right,” she continued. “I’ve never killed anyone. Never hurt anyone, until the soldier and the boy in the garden, and I didn’t mean to hurt them. I was in so much pain, I can’t even-”
Larissa looked away, composed herself, then looked directly at Jamie.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I truly am. I thought you’d kill me if you thought I didn’t know anything, and I don’t want to die. I haven’t had a chance to live, not yet. I don’t want to die.”
“Why take us to Valhalla?” asked Jamie, quietly. “Why lead us on a wild-goose chase?”
“It was all I could think to do. I know you think I led you there to get even with Grey, but that wasn’t it. I just knew I couldn’t stall you anymore, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else, and I thought that if it was the last time I was going to see the outside world then at least I could see the person who did this to me and-” she broke off, fresh tears pouring down her face.
Jamie watched her cry and fought back the urge to comfort her, to step across the kitchen and put his arm around her. “Do you know anything that can help us?” he asked. Frankenstein started to groan, but Jamie held a hand up, quieting the monster. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t,” he continued. “But we need to know. Anything Alexandru did, or said, before you attacked us, anything unusual? Anything at all?”
“Nothing,” said Larissa. “He was just Alexandru, the same monster he always was. The day before the attack I heard him on the phone ordering more Bliss, but that wasn’t unusual. He went through tons of the stuff.”
Jamie’s blood froze in his veins, and he looked over at Frankenstein, who had turned as still as a statue.
“The day before?” the teenager managed. “The day before my mother was taken?”
Larissa nodded, a confused look on her face.
“What is it?” asked Morris, breaking his silence. “What’s wrong?”
Frankenstein’s head slowly swiveled toward Jamie, the expression on it full of thunder. “The Chemist,” he said, slowly. “He lied to us.”
I told you he knew more than he was saying! I told you that right outside his house! Why wouldn’t you listen to me?
“Let’s go,” said Jamie, walking quickly toward the door, the detonator hanging loosely in his hand.
“Go where?” asked Morris, following the teenager out of the house.
“Dartmoor,” answered Frankenstein. “And put your damn foot down.”
The Blacklight team stood on the edge of the moor, checking their equipment. A hundred yards along the road stood the Chemist’s neat, pale stone farmhouse, smoke drifting lazily from the red chimney.
“We do this my way,” said Frankenstein, clipping a pair of UV grenades to his belt. “No arguments. The rest of you have had your chance. Is that clear?”
Jamie stared up at the monster but said nothing. Morris nodded, and Larissa looked away, her eyes still ringed pink from crying.
“Good,” said the monster. “Follow me.”
The giant man led them along the road, the heels of their boots clattering out a steady rhythm on the asphalt. He pushed open the gate, walked quickly along the path, and knocked heavily on the front door.
It opened immediately.
“There’s no need to knock,” said the Chemist, smiling at them. “I heard you coming from-”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Frankenstein pulled the beam gun from his belt, his hand a blur of gray-green in the night air, leveled it, and pulled the trigger. The Chemist took the concentrated UV light square in the face. His skin exploded into flames, and he staggered backward, screaming in pain. Frankenstein looped the hand that was holding the beam gun into the doorway, and the barrel crashed against the Chemist’s jaw. Something crunched, and the vampire went to his knees, still screaming, still beating his face with his hands, trying to extinguish the purple flames. Frankenstein kicked the Chemist onto his back and stepped into the house. The rest of the team stared, uncomprehending; the entire assault had taken little more than three seconds, and the suddenness of the violence had frozen them where they stood.
The monster reached down, grabbed the Chemist by his hair, and dragged him along the hallway that stood beyond the front door. “Close the door!” he bellowed. “Get in here and close the door!”
Fear spilled through Jamie as he looked at Frankenstein’s face. The monster’s features were twisted into a
