They’ll be fine, she told herself. I’m sure they’ll both be fine.

A low murmur spread through the crowd as figures began to emerge on to the drawbridge. Ellison held her breath, without realising she was doing so, as a squad of Operators walked quickly across and joined their colleagues in the crowd below. Behind them came the Directors from Blacklight, NS9, PBS6 and the SPC; they stopped near the edge and surveyed the dark, silent mass of Operators, their expressions unreadable. Finally, as the pressure in her chest began to build to painful levels, five men and women walked slowly out of the medieval city.

Ellison’s eyes found Jamie Carpenter, and she felt her heart swell so rapidly with pride that she wondered whether it might burst; then she saw what he was carrying in his arms, saw the grey-green skin of the fallen monster, and pride was instantly replaced by sorrow.

“Operators,” said General Allen. “I do not have the words to do justice to what I’m about to tell you, so you’ll have to settle for the simple facts. The mission has been a success. Dracula is dead.”

There was no elation in the American’s voice; as Ellison watched, his gaze moved beyond the crowd of survivors to the scattered bodies of those who had not been so lucky. For a long moment, nobody moved or made a sound, until Jack Williams silently raised a fist in the air and held it there.

A second fist rose, far over on the other side of the crowd, then another, and another, until everyone, Ellison included, was holding a clenched hand above their head, a gesture of triumph but also of tribute to the dead. She remained that way for a long time, in silent solidarity with her colleagues, but her attention stayed fixed on the members of the strike team.

Valentin was grinning widely, Larissa and Angela Darcy and a grey-haired man she didn’t recognise were smiling awkwardly, but Jamie Carpenter was merely staring into the distance, his face pale, the limp body of Frankenstein resting in his arms.

Sometime later, Jamie sat in the back of one of the convoy of trucks that were slowly returning to the displaced persons camp.

It had taken a great many minutes, combined with the gentle entreaties of more than half a dozen of his colleagues, to persuade him to let go of Frankenstein’s body; an irrational part of Jamie’s brain had been insisting that it wasn’t final, it wasn’t really real, until he released his hold on his late protector, that time could somehow be wound back if he simply refused to acknowledge what had happened. In the end, he had allowed Jack Williams and Dominique Saint-Jacques, both of whom had accompanied him to Paris to rescue the monster, so long ago now that it felt like it had happened to other people, and four other Operators to carefully carry Frankenstein’s body to one of the jeeps, where they had laid it gently in the vehicle’s bed.

In the back of the truck, nobody spoke.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jamie saw Paul Turner staring at him with unmistakable pride, but was unable to meet his Director’s gaze. His heart was cleaved in two by grief, and his mind was still reeling from the horror he had witnessed in the Basilica; he wanted nothing more than to regain the strength to fly back to the Loop and sleep for a week while everybody else dealt with the fallout of the battle.

After he had finally been persuaded to let go of Frankenstein, he had been hugged half to death by Ellison. Over her shoulder, as he hung unprotestingly in her arms, he had seen Alan Foster and his wife cry tears of joy as they were reunited, had seen Larissa and Angela sitting together in the back of one of the jeeps, their heads lowered as people kept a respectful distance, and had watched Operators who had previously been mortally afraid of Valentin approach the ancient vampire and shake his hand. He had managed to gather himself for long enough to ask Ellison if she had seen Qiang, but his squad mate had shaken her head; there were hundreds of survivors, hundreds of wounded, and many hundreds of bodies lying on the battlefield, and it was going to take a painfully long time to identify them all.

A thought occurred to him, one that made him feel guilty for it having taken so long to do so, and he looked up.

“Please can someone send a message to the Loop for me?” he asked. “To let my mother know I’m OK?”

General Allen nodded. “Of course, son.”

“Thank you,” said Jamie, and lowered his head again.

Bob Allen watched as Operators filed out of the trucks and dropped silently from the sky.

The displaced persons camp was a hive of activity; men and women were being ferried to the hospital and staggering into the mess hall as exhausted Operators patrolled the perimeter and the surviving citizens of Carcassonne milled round their tents, too excited or simply too frightened to go back inside. The early estimate was that around eight hundred men and women had been killed during the vampire attack on the camp; it was another awful number in a day full of pain and loss, but it would have been much worse had the massacre not been ended by whatever had happened inside the Basilica. The trucks and jeeps immediately drove back out to continue the grisly task of collecting the bodies from the battlefield, covered by the handful of helicopters that had not taken part in the original deployment, and had therefore not been blown out of the sky.

Allen turned to Paul Turner. “When can we get a report from the strike team, Paul?”

The Blacklight Director shrugged. “When they’re ready,” he said. “I’m not going to rush them.”

Allen nodded. He wanted to know what had happened, was desperate to know, but he would not push the issue unless it became necessary; the Operators who had made it back down after their showdown with the first vampire deserved at least a few minutes to gather themselves.

The assessment team he had despatched to the Basilique Saint-Nazaire had already delivered a preliminary report from inside the old church; blood was everywhere, outside the building and in, the walls and floors were broken, the windows were smashed to pieces, and there was no sign of Dracula or what had caused the explosion of black fire and the devastating shock wave. They had so far found no sign of any vampires inside the medieval city; the only living beings they had encountered had been the last of Dracula’s hostages, who were now being escorted back to the camp.

Allen had no idea how many of his Operators were lying out there on the battlefield, their eyes staring at nothing, their blood soaking the ground. He knew it was wrong to think of his Department’s losses as separate from those suffered by the others, but he couldn’t help it; he would mourn all the dead, regardless of their nationality, but the lost men and women of NS9 would stay with him always.

Larissa Kinley appeared, managed a momentary smile in his direction, and asked to speak to Paul Turner in private. The Blacklight Director nodded his head, and Allen watched as they stepped out of earshot.

“I want to go back,” said Larissa.

Turner frowned. “Back where?”

“To the Loop,” she said. “I know there must be a thousand things that need doing here, but I’m asking for your permission to leave, sir.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“It’s private, sir,” she said. “But I’m sure you can guess.”

Turner smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I suspect I can.”

“So?”

“You can go,” he said. “I would tell you to fly back here when you’ve done what you need to do, but that’s not going to be an option, is it?”

“No, sir,” she said, and smiled at him. “Thank you, sir.”

“Fine,” said Turner. “Don’t leave again before the rest of us get back.”

“I won’t, sir.”

“All right. Dismissed.”

Larissa nodded, backed up a few steps, and rose easily into the air. She surveyed the sprawling camp as she climbed, the wide fields full of light and noise and movement, then accelerated north-west, the cold air raising gooseflesh on her arms despite her uniform.