“So you can let your pet monster blow me to pieces after I do? I don’t think so.”
Frankenstein rolled his eyes, then stepped away from the Chemist, who was glaring malevolently at the people who had invaded his home.
“I should press this,” he said, nodding toward the detonator in his hand. “God knows the world would not miss you. But I suspect you might consider it a kindness, and that is not what you deserve.” He looked around at the rest of the Blacklight team and motioned to the door.
“Can you stand?” whispered Larissa, and Jamie nodded. She let go of him, and he swayed unsteadily for a moment before walking toward the door, followed by Larissa and Morris.
Frankenstein walked backward after them, his eyes never leaving the Chemist, who was staring at him with naked murder in his eyes. “Don’t move until we’re gone,” he warned. Then he pulled the living room door shut in front of him and joined the three figures who were waiting for him on the garden path. They hurried through the gate and along the road toward their waiting vehicle.
“What does all this-” began Morris, but Frankenstein cut him off.
“Not now, Tom. We’ll debrief in the car. OK?”
Jamie walked along the road, his mind full of misery and hopelessness, his feet made of lead. He looked over at Larissa as they approached the car and gasped.
Her eyes were a deep, liquid crimson.
Then she moved.
She grabbed his wrist-so quickly it had happened before he even realized-unpeeled the fingers that were wrapped around the detonator, took it easily from his grip, and disappeared into the night sky.
33
There was silence in the SUV. Thomas Morris was behind the wheel, guiding the car towards the Loop, and a series of questions that no one in the vehicle was looking forward to answering. Frankenstein was in the passenger seat, staring out of the window at the passing countryside; the flat landscape sped past as the powerful engine devoured the distance. Jamie sat in the back, his hands over his face.
Eventually, Morris spoke.
“How bad is this going to be?”
Frankenstein laughed, a deep grunt without humor in it. “How bad do you think?” he replied. “We took a vampire off base without authorization, disobeying the specific orders of the director, then let her escape. We fraudulently commandeered a helicopter and a pilot, and lost the only lead that might have led us to Jamie’s mother. I think it might be quite bad. Don’t you?”
Morris nodded glumly, his eyes on the dark road.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” asked Jamie, his voice barely audible. “We’re never going to find her.”
Frankenstein leaned around his seat’s headrest and looked at him. “I promised you I would help you find her,” he said. “And I will continue to do so. But you have to be prepared for the fact that after tonight, we are probably going to be doing this on our own. And that’s assuming that Admiral Seward doesn’t have us both arrested. Which he very well might.”
Jamie nodded. He hadn’t expected to be told anything different. He had been wrong, so terribly wrong, and now Larissa was gone, and he had jeopardized the careers of two men who had believed in him, two men who had helped him.
“I’ll tell Seward it was my idea,” he said. “I’ll take the blame for everything.”
“I appreciate the gesture,” replied Frankenstein. “But that isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. We should never have let you take her out of her cell. You couldn’t have done it without the code Tom gave you, and Seward knows that. We’re in this together.”
Morris groaned and turned the SUV off the motorway, sending it speeding past RAF Mildenhall on their left, approaching the final turning that would take them through the woods and into the Loop. A C-130 Hercules roared low over the road, lights flashing on its enormous belly as it rushed toward the long Mildenhall runway. The SUV shook and rattled as the huge aircraft thundered over them, then there was a loud thud on the roof of the car, and Morris spun the wheel to keep it on the asphalt. He slammed his foot on the brake and brought them sliding to a halt at the side of the road.
“What was that?” asked Frankenstein. Then the passenger door on the opposite side of the car to Jamie was pulled open, and Larissa swung easily into the seat next to him.
“Did you miss me?” she asked, sweetly.
Frankenstein hauled the T-Bone from his belt and shoved it against her throat. She pulled it easily out of his hand and threw it out of the open door. The monster fumbled for his stake, but Jamie shouted at him to stop, and turned to Larissa.
“Where have you been?” he shouted, his face bright red with anger. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
“I’m pleased to see you, too,” she said, then handed him the cylindrical detonator. He looked at it dumbly. “I went to make sure the Chemist was telling the truth,” she continued. “Something told me you would be unwilling to take me at my word.”
Frankenstein laughed. “This is absolutely-”
“I’m not talking to you,” interrupted Larissa. “I’m talking to Jamie.”
Jamie looked at the angry gray-green face looming at them from the front seat of the car, then at Larissa’s calm expression. “And?” he asked. “Was he telling the truth?”
Larissa nodded. “He was. I know exactly where they are.”
Morris craned his head around from the driver’s seat.
“How can you possibly expect us to believe you?” he asked.
“I don’t expect anything,” she replied. “Take us back to base and get a satellite over Northumberland. I can show you with your own eyes.”
It took them no more than ninety seconds to cross the distance from the authorization tunnel to the wide semicircle of tarmac in front of the hangar, but in that time a welcoming committee had gathered to meet them.
Morris brought the SUV to a halt, and the four passengers stepped out of the car. Admiral Seward was the first to reach them, his face so red it looked as though he might burst.
“I don’t know where to start,” he said, his voice tight with fury. “In my twenty years in this Department, I’ve never seen such insubordination, such flagrant recklessness, or such godforsaken outright stupidity!”
“Sir-” began Morris, but Seward shouted him down.
“Don’t say anything!” he bellowed. “Not a damn word, do you hear me? Any of you!”
He waved a hand, and two operators appeared alongside him.
“Take her back to her cell, immediately,” Seward said. “If she so much as blinks without your permission, destroy her.”
One of the operators drew his T-Bone and pointed it at Larissa’s chest. The second hauled the detonator roughly out of Jamie’s hand, then placed his other hand on her lower back and shoved her toward the hangar.
Jamie threw a desperate look at Frankenstein, who widened his eyes in a clear warning not to say or do anything. Instead he spoke to the director.
“Admiral,” he said. “She says she has the location of Alexandru Rusmanov. Let her show us before she goes back to her cell.”
“Are you telling me what to do, Colonel?” asked Seward, his voice cold.
“No, sir,” replied Frankenstein. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t let our actions allow a Priority A1 target to get away. Sir.”
Seward stepped forward and stared up into the monster’s face. “Do you have any idea how serious this is?”
