Jamie walked straight through the UV field and went to her. He handed her the blood and sat on the bed next to her as she tore the first one open with her teeth, holding it in her good left hand.
“Look away,” she said.
“No chance,” he replied.
She didn’t wait to see if he would change his mind; she upended the plastic pouch and squeezed the contents into her mouth. Her eyes turned red as the blood slid down her throat, and she swallowed convulsively, her throat working, her head thrown back. There was a fizzing sound, and Jamie looked down at her arm.
What he saw astonished him. The charred, blackened skin was bubbling, as though it had been soaked in acid. Before his eyes, the flesh lightened to a dark red, then a bright scarlet, then to the same pale pink as the rest of her. Muscle fibers and thin sheets of skin regrew, knitting to the revived flesh and filling the holes the fire had burned.
The fizzing lessened, and Jamie gasped. Larissa’s arm looked no worse than if she had been lying in the sun for an afternoon.
She was breathing hard, her lips thin, her eyes crimson.
“Does it hurt?” he asked. “When it grows back?”
She nodded, then opened her trembling mouth. “Not as badly,” she said. “But it hurts.”
She pulled open the second pouch and drank it hungrily. A thick stream of blood broke from the corner of her mouth and ran down her chin; Jamie fought the absurd urge to lick it off. The fizzing noise came again, and the color of her arm faded until it was impossible to believe any injury had been done to it. He reached out and stroked the new skin; it was warm and smooth.
She took his hand, looked him in the eyes.
“I would never hurt you,” she said. “I’m sorry for leading you to Valhalla without telling you why I wanted to go. But you can trust me. I’ll never lie to you again.”
He leaned over and kissed her. Her lips met his, but this time he pulled away and stood up off the bed. She looked at him, confusion on her face.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and smiled.
39
Department 19 Northern Outpost
RAF Fylingdales, North Yorkshire Moors
Fifteen minutes ago
Flying Officer John Elliott checked his screens, stepped through the door of the bunker into the cold evening, and breathed out a cloud of warm air. Night watch was the worst. The hours stretched out forever and tiredness pulled constantly at him, no matter how many coffees he drank and cigarettes he smoked.
He checked his watch: one eighteen. Forty-two minutes to go.
Elliott lit a Camel Light, grimaced as the smoke crawled across his dry throat but persevered. Dave Sargent had the next watch, and as soon as he keyed in his access code and swung open the door of the bunker, Elliott could stand down. He could be in his bed within four minutes. He had timed it.
The young flying officer looked out across the base and to the moors beyond. The giant pale blue golf balls that had hidden Fylingdales’ Cold War radar dishes were gone now, but the vast three-sided phased array pyramid that replaced them rose up from the top of Snod Hill, silent and still ominous even after a year stationed here.
The Blacklight outpost was at the western edge of the base, away from the roads that carried busloads of tourists to Whitby during the summer months, away from the RAF personnel and their families, a nondescript gray concrete square with a heavy steel door set into it that led down into a small bunker, one square room with two desks set into the walls and a tiny bathroom at the rear. The barracks was a short distance away along the route of the fence, linked to the front of the bunker by a gravel path. The low brick building was dark; the rest of Elliott’s unit were asleep in their beds.
Beyond the fence that ran past the bunker were the empty moors, the bracken and long grass undisturbed by ramblers and hikers who knew better than to approach the base. Across the moors, in the hills above Harrogate, was RAF Menwith Hill, the NSA listening post that was sovereign US territory.
Elliott had been there a couple of times, had eaten a burger in the diner and drank Coors Light and lost forty dollars in the bowling alley. The Yanks had made themselves right at home, building an authentic American small town in the shadows of the vast radar fields that scanned the world’s airwaves for the words and phrases that threw up red flags on the Echelon database.
Before he joined Blacklight, Elliott had thought the people who believed in things like Echelon were crazy loners who spent all their time wearing tinfoil hats and feverishly posting on the Internet. Now he knew things that would make them weep into their keyboards.
Something crunched the gravel softly behind the bunker.
Instantly, Flying Officer Elliott drew his Glock from its holster and pulled his radio from its loop on his belt. He keyed his ID code into the pad and held it to his ear.
“Code in.” Commander Jackson’s voice sounded tired and grumpy.
“Elliott, John. NS303-81E.”
“What’s going on, Elliott?”
“I heard something, sir. Behind the bunker.”
“Did you investigate?”
“No, sir.”
The commander swore heartily. “Go and check it out. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
“Sir, the protocol-”
“Three minutes, Flying Officer. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Elliott placed the radio back in his belt and wrapped his left hand around his right. Treading softly, he stepped along the side of the bunker. Experience told him it would be an animal of some kind, a badger burrowed under the fence from the moors, or a seagull come inland from the coast and too tired to fly back. But the protocols existed for a reason. No one came near the Blacklight bunker without authorization, and any unusual noise was taken very seriously.
He reached the corner of the bunker and steadied his Glock in his hands. He took a deep breath, then stepped around the corner.
Nothing.
The wide space between the wall of the bunker and the fence was empty, the gravel track undisturbed. Elliott lowered his weapon and reached for his radio to let Commander Jackson know it was a false alarm.
Thunk.
Adrenaline splashed through Elliott’s nervous system. No animal had made the heavy noise that had come from the front of the bunker. He raised his pistol again and stepped sharply round the corner and against the long wall of the bunker. Before him, RAF Fylingdales glowed brightly with amber yellow light, and Elliott wished for the first time that the flat expanse of grass that separated the Blacklight bunker from the rest of the complex didn’t exist.
He checked his watch as he inched along the concrete wall. Forty-five seconds since he had spoken with Commander Jackson. Just over two minutes until backup arrived.
Elliott crept along the wall, the nose of his gun steady in the cool evening air. Then he heard a noise that chilled the blood in his veins, and he saw the muzzle of the pistol start to tremble involuntarily.
It sounded like a laugh.
A high-pitched, almost childlike laugh.
