“Agreed,” said Schmidt. “Do we have a damage assessment yet?”

Allen nodded. “I sent a drone under the smoke at first light,” he said. “My tech team finished a composite image ten minutes ago.”

“Have you looked at it?” asked Guérin.

Allen shook his head. “Not yet.”

He walked across to the bank of monitors, opened a new message and dragged the attached file on to the wide screen at the centre of the array. It opened, and he felt his heart lurch as Guérin and Schmidt gasped behind him.

The composite was grainy, and had been digitally brightened, but there was no mistaking what it showed. At its centre, the pale, concentric lines of the medieval city stood perched on their high hill, surrounded by a narrow ring of colour: green grass on the low slopes of the hill, grey tarmac roads, white painted lines, the orange roofs of buildings. After that, there was nothing but devastation in every direction; a vast circle of blackened earth with a radius of more than five miles. The roads were scorched lines of black, tracing through the remnants of the city like veins, and where there had once been thousands of homes and shops and offices there was now only a featureless landscape of smoking ruins.

“So little is left,” said Guérin, staring at the screen.

“The full assessment won’t be ready for a few hours,” said Allen. “But my tech team’s estimate is that close to eighty per cent of the city is gone.”

“Scheisse,” said Schmidt, her eyes narrow. “So much?”

“It makes Dracula’s strategy clear, if nothing else,” said Allen. “Once the smoke clears, there’s going to be no way to get anywhere near the old city without being seen. If we make an air approach, his vamps will knock us out of the sky, and he knows the hostages make it unlikely that we’ll take it out long range. What’s left is bad ground to fight on, and unless we think of something else, that’s exactly what he’s going to make us do.”

“So what is the plan?” asked Guérin, smiling thinly. “Leave him in there and hope he doesn’t do anything else?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Although hopefully we’ll be able to come up with something better than that.”

“We?” asked Guérin. “Who is we?”

“I’ve called a meeting of the supernatural Directors for this afternoon,” said Allen. “Two will be here in person, the rest joining us by video link. I will be attending both as the Director of NS9 and as the NATO Commanding Officer, so I would like you to attend as well, Captain.”

“Of course, General,” said Guérin, an expression of pride on his face.

“Who else is coming in person?” asked Schmidt. “Turner and Ovechkin?”

Allen nodded. “Correct,” he said, and returned his gaze to the composite image. “And we need to come up with an implementable strategy ASAP. Because we all know it’s only a matter of time until Dracula makes his next move, and the only question is whether it’s going to be even worse than his first.”

The lift doors slid open to reveal the Level C corridor, its grey walls indistinguishable from the rest of the Loop. Paul Turner walked until he reached the white double doors of the infirmary, and pushed them open.

The white room was full of beds surrounded by curtains, behind which Operators who had already taken part in PROMETHEUS were recovering. One bed was uncovered, halfway down the right-hand wall; lying in it, propped up against a mountain of pillows, was Pete Randall. He was connected by a maze of wires to a bank of machines, but his eyes were open; he looked up as the Director entered the room and gave him a small, nervous smile.

Turner walked over and stopped beside the bed.

“Mr Randall,” he said, returning his smile. “I’m very pleased to see you looking so well. Welcome back to the Loop.”

“Thank you, Major Turner,” said Pete, his voice hoarse. “Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s safe,” said Turner. “She was attacked in the process of extracting you from Lincoln General, but she’s safe.”

“Attacked?” said Pete, his eyes widening. “By who?”

“Two men posing as policemen.”

“Night Stalkers?”

He nodded. “We’re assuming so. I have photos, if you feel up to looking at them? I warn you, they’re not pleasant.”

“Show me,” said Pete.

Turner nodded, drew his console from his belt, and loaded the photos of the men Dominique Saint-Jacques’ squad had killed. They had been cleaned up for examination, but the neat black holes in their foreheads were clearly visible. He held the console out towards Pete, whose face paled as he looked.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

“Do you recognise them, Mr Randall?” asked Turner.

Pete shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “We should have identification soon, regardless. And as I said, Kate is perfectly safe.”

Pete nodded, but he didn’t look remotely convinced.

“I need to ask you about last night, Mr Randall,” said Turner. “I’m sorry, but it’s important. Did you recognise the men who shot you?”

Pete nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “It was Greg Browning.”

Turner inhaled sharply. “Matt’s father?”

“Yes,” said Pete, tears appearing in the corners of his eyes. “He’s the Night Stalker. Or one of them, at least. Did you know there’s more than one?”

Turner nodded. “We knew.”

“I knew something was going on,” continued Pete. “Just little things, you know. Security guards I didn’t recognise, coincidences, unnecessary lies. And Greg was adamant that we shouldn’t help you distribute the cure. So last night I followed him after work. He met up with some other men, some of them from SSL, some of them I didn’t recognise, and they split up and drove off in black vans. Greg and his partner abducted a vampire from a house on the edge of Lincoln, and were going to execute him on wasteland by the canal. I confronted him, until he raised a gun. Then I ran.”

“I’m sorry,” said Turner.

Pete nodded. “I ran down the canal,” he said, his face creased with pain at the memory. “Until … you know …”

Turner nodded. “The bullet went through your shoulder.”

“I suppose I was lucky then,” said Pete. “I lost my balance and fell into the canal. To be honest, I don’t really remember anything after that until I woke up in hospital and saw Kate.”

“How many men did you see last night, Mr Randall?” he asked.

“Eight,” said Pete. “There are four Night Stalker teams, at least. They use the SSL helpline to identify vampire targets, vampires who confess to violence. Then they kill them.”

“Can you give me the names of the men you recognised?”

Pete nodded. “Greg Browning. John Bolton. Ben Maddox. Dan Bellamy. They all work at SSL. And a man who told me his name was Phil Baker. He works as a security guard, and he said he used to be a Marine.”

“Thank you,” said Turner. He pulled his radio from his belt, keyed in a frequency and held the handset to his ear. “Angela?” he said, after a tiny pause.

“Yes, sir?” said the Security Officer.

“I have five men I want brought in for immediate questioning. Greg Browning, John Bolton, Ben Maddox, Dan Bellamy, who are all employees of the SSL charity in Lincoln, and Phil Baker, who may be a former Royal Marine. Priority Level 1 for all of them. Is that clear?”

“Of course, sir,” said Angela. “I’ll let you know as soon as we have them.”

“Thank you,” he said. He pressed END, and kept the radio in his hand.

“Are you going to hurt them?” asked Pete.

He looked down at the man lying in the bed. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” said Pete, then grimaced. “No.”

“I’m not going to hurt them, Mr Randall,” said Turner. “But I do need to make sure they don’t hurt anyone else. That’s my priority. This room is currently off-limits to everyone but the medical staff and myself, but I’ll have you moved as soon as the doctors tell me it’s safe, so Kate can come and see you. You have my word. In the meantime, focus on getting better. I’ll let you know when we have any news about your colleagues.”