At the centre of the second line of the Multinational Force, with only the vampire Operators between him and Dracula’s followers, Julian Carpenter sprinted forward.

For what felt like as long as he could remember, he had been spinning aimlessly, seemingly unable to assert any control over the chaos his life had become. His family, career, friends, even his liberty: all had either been compromised or taken from him entirely, leaving him a spectator in the limbo that had become his reality. But some part of himself had returned as he flew to France in direct disobedience of the order Cal Holmwood had given him, and had grown once he reached the displaced persons camp and found himself surrounded by Operators and technicians and guns and T-Bones and helicopters. Now, as he drew his MP5 from his belt and trained it on the snarling, charging line of vampires, a profound sense of peace settled over him.

I’m home, he thought, and squeezed the trigger.

Fire licked from the end of the submachine gun’s barrel as the deafening rattle of gunfire filled his ears and the smell of cordite filled his nostrils. The vampires he had aimed at scattered in all directions, hurling themselves into the air and swooping away as the two armies collided, but Julian ignored the ones his bullets had missed and focused on those they hadn’t. Through the raging, fighting mass, he saw a vampire with ragged holes where his knees should have been trying to crawl back the way he had come, churning the ground with his elbows as he dragged himself across it. Julian sprinted forward, letting his MP5 swing down on its strap as he drew his T-Bone, and skidded to a halt. He raised the launcher in a smooth arc, and as he levelled it and sighted down the barrel, his chest tightened with nostalgia so profound that it momentarily threatened to send him to his knees.

Jesus.

He shook it off, and pulled the trigger. The T-Bone fired with a bang of exploding gas and a screech of unspooling wire, and the metal stake punctured the crawling vampire’s back; the man burst in a shower of steaming blood. The stake wound back towards the T-Bone’s barrel as Julian stalked forward, searching the chaos for the other victims of his bullets.

Movement.

On his right.

He spun, bringing the T-Bone round, and was hit in the face by what seemed like a bucket of blood. It splashed across the visor of his helmet, soaking the shoulders and chest of his uniform, and Julian staggered backwards, recoiling with horror. He wiped frantically at his visor with his gloved hands, and felt his stomach lurch as he saw the source of the blood: a Blacklight Operator, her helmet gone, her throat sliced to the bone, her eyes wide and staring as she sank to her knees and toppled over on to her side. For a long moment, he merely stared; despite the hours spent lost in his memories, his endless daydreams of reinstatement, and his desperate need to do something, to be something again, he had forgotten the raw reality of this life. It was death, and pain, and blood.

In the end, it always came down to blood.

Julian balled a fist and punched the side of his helmet. His head cleared, in time for him to duck beneath a severed arm hurled from somewhere inside the pulsing, thundering crowd, take a deep breath, and wade back into the fight.

Floating above the drawbridge that had once controlled access to the medieval city of Carcassonne, Osvaldo watched with an impassive expression as vampires began to die in their hundreds.

He felt a tiny pang of sorrow as men and women whose company he had enjoyed were staked and shot, their blood spilling on to the ground, their lives ending in sudden violence, but their deaths were ultimately irrelevant, and unavoidable. The first few minutes of the battle had always been destined to be chaos; both armies were fresh, and the initial exchanges would favour the experienced soldiers and their guns and stakes. From his high vantage point, he saw the two long lines envelop each other, creating a seething mass of humans and vampires, tearing and clawing and firing and flying.

Screams began to echo across the darkening expanse of the battlefield as the battle began in earnest. Osvaldo knew this was when his master’s army would assert themselves: once the fighting became close and messy, and their speed and savagery would begin to tell.

And it wouldn’t matter in the slightest if every single one of them died, he reminded himself. This is merely the opening act of the play.

Jamie Carpenter soared over the battlefield, carrying Frankenstein effortlessly beneath him, marvelling at the scale of the fighting taking place below.

His view of it was fleeting, such was the speed he and the rest of the strike team were travelling, but it was enough to make quite an impression; the battle was already spread out across more than a mile of blasted landscape, the air full of movement and gunfire and screaming, the ground littered with bodies and soaked with vampire remains. Jamie tore his gaze away and focused on the looming shape of the medieval city, its pale stone darkening in the fading light, and, as he rose over the outer walls, his squad mates close behind him, he saw a distant figure floating near the summit of the hill, high above the raging battle.

Dracula, he thought, his heart leaping in his chest. Right where they said he would be.

This is going to be too easy.

Jamie swooped over the walls, rising above the wide cobbled street that led up through the city. He accelerated, the evening air cool as it rushed over his uniformed body, the rooftops passing below him in a blur, and allowed a smile to rise on to his face. As he soared over a wide square, he heard something above him, something that sounded like a flock of birds, and rolled to the side so he could look up and see what it was.

The sky above him was full of vampires.

They dropped silently out of the clouds, a vast dark swarm, and ripped into the strike team like a bolt of lightning, sending them spinning towards the ground. Something connected with the side of his helmet and he saw stars, his vision greying at the edges as his grip on Frankenstein loosened and gave way; the monster slipped from his grasp and fell towards the ancient city. Jamie lunged after him, but was hammered from all sides by heavy blows that drove him back and forth, bellowing with pain. He fought back furiously, but might as well have been trying to punch the wind; there seemed to be vampires all around him, as insubstantial as smoke, apart from when they struck. He ducked under a swinging fist and looked desperately around for his squad mates, but it was like trying to see through a colony of bats that had taken wing at the same time; all around him was darkness and churning movement.

A boot slammed into his stomach. Jamie folded in the air, the breath driven out of him, and sank towards the ground, barely able to even slow his fall. Cobblestones rose up to meet him, and he hit them hard enough to drive his teeth together on his tongue, spilling warm coppery liquid into his mouth. Pain raced through him, before being driven away by the heady taste of his own blood.

He leapt to his feet and scanned the narrow street he had landed in. There was no sign of his squad mates, or the vampires that had attacked them. He looked up, expecting to see them hurtling down towards him, but the sky was clear and empty; it was as though they had never been there at all.

Stupid, he told himself, and felt his eyes blaze with heat. Arrogant. Stupid.

Jamie leapt into the air, determined to locate the rest of the strike team and get their mission back on track.