Matt smiled. “I appreciate your faith in me, sir.”

“I’m glad,” said Turner. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“Who do you want me to use, sir? With Larissa gone, we’re down to two options.”

The Director shrugged. “Use whoever the results suggest will be best,” he said. “The infirmary and the cells are full of cured vampires, more than enough for you to thoroughly test them both. Get started straight away, and don’t mention a word of this to anyone but me. That includes Jamie Carpenter and Kate Randall, and even Natalia Lenski. Is that clear, Lieutenant?”

Matt frowned. “What am I supposed to tell Jamie, sir? He’s going to want an explanation.”

“Tell him whatever you want,” said Turner. “As long as it isn’t the truth. I want to see results no more than five minutes after you do, no matter how preliminary they might be. I want you to bring them to me in this room, in person. Is that understood?”

Matt’s face was pale, but he nodded.

“Understood, sir,” he said.

The Blacklight Director allowed himself a brief moment after Browning was gone in an attempt to let his mind catch up. Things were moving so quickly that it was becoming a struggle just to keep all the information in his head, let alone process it and arrive at conclusions.

Decades of fighting, he thought. Hundreds of lives lost, thousands, in every dark corner of the world, and the answer to it all is a blue liquid in a plastic bag. I wonder what the founders would have made of that.

He suspected that Abraham Van Helsing, who had carried out the first research into vampires and vampirism, would wholeheartedly approve. What Harker and Holmwood and the others would think, he couldn’t begin to imagine; they had lived in a world in which antibiotics were a distant dream, let alone genetically engineered viruses that could rewrite the very building blocks of a human being.

Turner wished he could tell Henry Seward about the cure; he was sure it would hearten the former Director to know that the Lazarus Project, which he had founded, had succeeded so spectacularly. But he knew he couldn’t; Henry was recovering well from the tortures he had suffered inside Château Dauncy, under the strict, watchful eye of his wife, Emma, but was no longer a member of Blacklight. His retirement had been agreed several months earlier, and with the end of his military career had come expiry of the security clearances required for any kind of access to the Department.

Turner leant back in his chair and closed his eyes, relishing the sensation of an emotion that was rare and unfamiliar.

Hope.

He savoured the moment, then opened his eyes and tapped rapidly on the keyboard of his terminal, launching the communications application on the wall screen. He selected NEW, scrolled down to the Prime Minister’s name, and clicked CALL. The system applied its series of checks, encryptions and security measures; after what seemed like an eternity, the call began to ring. There was a click as the connection was established, and then the politician’s voice echoed from the speakers set into the walls.

“Major Turner,” said the Prime Minister. “This is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until our regular call on Friday.”

“Yes, sir,” said Turner. “But I think you’ll be pleased when you hear what I have to tell you. I’m calling with good news. Very good news, in fact.”

“That makes a change,” said the Prime Minister. “What is it?”

Turner took a deep breath. “I need you to apply to the World Health Organisation, sir. For special exemption to release a new drug into the population.”

“Why would I want to do that?” asked the Prime Minister.

“I’ll explain, sir,” said Turner. “But I suggest you sit down first.”

Janet Delacourte stood in her garden and watched the Sentry descend towards the runway that stood barely half a mile beyond her fence, the familiar pain beginning to build in her ears.

The Boeing E-3 was unmistakable, even without eyes as sharp as hers. It was huge and fat-bodied, lumbering through the air without the grace of many of the other planes she had watched come and go over the decades, and on its back spun its distinctive radar dome, a saucer as wide as the plane itself that allowed it to scan thousands of miles of earth and sky. Its running lights blazed, and Janet felt the air swirl around her as it was whipped and churned by the approaching aircraft. It touched down with a deafening screech and hurtled past her, its engines howling, but she watched with a smile on her face. Over the course of a long life that had proved disappointing in so many ways, she had always been able to rely on her planes.

And, in truth, the E-3s were far from the loudest she had known. RAF Waddington was now home to the Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance programme, flying heavy Sentinels and RC-135s that were every bit as noisy as the Sentrys, and unmanned Reaper drones that were ominously quiet. Even now, after so many years, it was rare for Janet to sleep through a take-off, but on several occasions she had seen a Reaper return that she knew she had not seen depart.

Always at night, she thought. They always take off at night.

During the Cold War, before the RAF had begun to scale back its bomber fleet, Waddington had been home to three squadrons of Vulcans, the huge delta-shaped planes that had carried Britain’s nuclear deterrent into the stratosphere, ready to lay waste to the USSR if the order came. When they landed, and particularly when they took off, the noise had been so monstrous that Janet had often been left with blood running from her ears and a ringing in her head that lasted for hours. The Wellingtons and Lancasters that had headed east during the Second World War, their bellies heavy with bombs destined for the Ruhr and the Rhineland, had been quieter, although no less capable of causing pain; she had counted each one out and each one back, her heart aching when, all too often, the numbers didn’t match.

At least you don’t have to worry about that any more, she reminded herself. If nothing else.

The noise of the Sentry had faded away, and it was again quiet in the garden, although it was never truly silent. There was always the distant rumble of the vehicles on the base and the steady, relentless thud of the radar tower as it revolved, but Janet was so used to such sounds that she barely heard them; she looked no older than forty-five, but she had been living in the small house on the edge of Waddington for almost eighty years.

Janet flew back through her garden and into her kitchen. She stirred the saucepan of soup that was simmering on the stove, and poured herself a glass of wine as her supernatural hearing picked up the sound of an engine out on the road. When she had bought the house, cars had been the preserve of only the most well off, and the road that now ran through the woods towards Lincoln had been a rutted track that reached a dead end half a mile to the east. It was still far from being a main thoroughfare, but the cars that did come along it tended to be going much too fast, and were usually driven by teenagers. There were dozens of turnings in the woods where they parked up to drink and smoke with their friends, and do other things with their boyfriends and girlfriends, things that Janet did not remotely approve of. She was sure that the modern generation would consider her ancient and out of touch, but that was perfectly fine with her; she was, after all, more than a hundred and twenty years old.

She gave her soup another stir, and was raising her glass to her lips when the lights in her house went out.

Janet swore heartily; for a self-confessed prude, she possessed a remarkably colourful vocabulary, acquired in a munitions factory during the war. One of the downsides of her home’s remoteness was the unreliability of its utilities; the electricity was unpredictable, to say the least, and she rarely went an entire winter without the drains blocking or her phone and television being cut off. She marched across the kitchen and pulled open the door that led down to her cellar. Bolted to the wall on the landing was the fuse box that had been installed ten years earlier; she had rewired the entire house after noticing that one of the plugs in the living room was sparking and fizzing behind plastic that was visibly melting.