At the other end of the corridor, the three Blacklight operators waited. From behind the door came a piercing scream, a rush of air, then a wet splashing sound. The door opened and Julian Carpenter emerged, his uniform soaked in blood. Behind him, the walls of the room dripped red, and he left crimson footprints on the stone floor as he returned to his men.

27

THREE’S A CROWD

Jamie lifted his hands away from his face and looked at Frankenstein. He had covered himself when the monster finished his story; he didn’t want to let him see his tears.

“So that’s why Alexandru has my mother?” he said, his voice shaking. “Because Dad killed his wife?”

“I don’t know,” said Frankenstein. “It would appear so.”

“Why does it appear so?” said Jamie, anger filling his voice. “It seems pretty clear to me.”

“I’m sure it does,” replied Frankenstein. His calm tone was maddening.

“Why doesn’t it to you then?” he said, fiercely. “What aren’t you telling me?”

The monster sighed. “There are a lot of people who, in light of what happened later, don’t believe your father killed Ilyana at all. Neither Major Turner or I saw her die. We just heard the shot.”

Jamie stared at him. “You think he faked it.”

Frankenstein slammed his fist down on the surface of the table. “I was your father’s closest friend,” he said, his voice like ice. “And I have stood at the side of your family for almost ninety years. And yet you sit there and question where my loyalties lie? I have done things in the protection and service of your ancestors that would make your ears bleed, and you question me?”

“I’ll question whatever I want!” yelled Jamie, standing up from the table and sending his chair clattering to the floor. He put his hands onto the surface and leaned toward Frankenstein. “Do you think Ilyana is still alive? That my father let her go? Tell me!”

The monster slowly unfolded himself out of his chair and rose to his full height. His shadow engulfed Jamie. “Listen to me,” he said. “I would have died for Julian Carpenter. I never doubted or questioned him, until a swarm of vampires brought the Blacklight jet down in a ball of fire on the runway of this base, killing eight good men in the process. It happened a quarter of a mile beyond the outer fence, on the edge of the most strictly classified and highly protected base in the country. A place that doesn’t exist on any map, a place that planes and satellites are not permitted to fly over. A place—”

“A place where hundreds of people work every day,” interrupted Jamie. “Any of them could have told Alexandru where we are.”

“No,” said Frankenstein. “They couldn’t. The civilian staff are flown in and out every day on a plane with no windows, from an airport fifty miles away from here. They have no idea where they are. Only senior operators are allowed to come and go.”

“And there’s how many of them? A hundred? Two hundred? More?”

“About two hundred. And you’re right, any of them could have told Alexandru where Blacklight is. But very few of them could have given him a map of the infrared sensors that fill the woods for ten miles beyond the fence. Only about six people in Department 19 have access to that information. And without that information, there would have been time for the passengers to pull their chutes. But she was so low when they hit her, there was no time for anyone to do anything. She exploded, right out there on the runway. The investigation was still ongoing when your father died, ten days after the crash. He left base the night he died without warning or permission, without telling anyone where he was going. But he was still logged into the network when he left, and a duty officer saw something unusual on his screen. When they investigated, they found an e-mail your father had sent to an unknown address. Attached to it were maps of the infrared sensor array.”

Jamie walked stiffly away from the table and slid down the wall to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his head against them. When he spoke again, his voice was tiny. “Why would he do it? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Frankenstein lowered himself back into his chair. “After he died, the data forensics team dug through every key Julian had ever pressed on a Blacklight computer. Buried way down in his personal folders, behind about a dozen passwords and layers of encryption, they found a letter he had written. In it, he claimed to be righting the wrongs that had been done to your family, the injustice you had suffered at the hands of the other founding families. He believed that they still only thought of him as the descendant of a valet, and they would never see or treat him as an equal. He cited the fact that no Carpenter has ever been director as proof of how your family was perceived, and he said that he was not going to tolerate it any longer.”

“How would bringing down the jet accomplish that?” asked Jamie, without raising his head.

“The Mina’s pilots that day were John and George Harker,” said Frankenstein. “Two descendants of arguably the most famous name in Blacklight history.”

The image of the plaque in the rose garden burst into Jamie’s mind.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh, Dad. What did you do? There was only one thing he didn’t understand: one final straw to cling to. “Why did Alexandru come for us, if Dad was working with him? Why would he want us dead?”

“I don’t know,” Frankenstein said, simply. “Maybe Julian did kill Ilyana and made a deal with Alexandru so that he would spare you and your mother. Maybe Alexandru double-crossed him. Or maybe he did let Ilyana live, and Alexandru double-crossed him for the sheer hell of it. It doesn’t matter now. He’s gone.”

Jamie raised his head and looked at Frankenstein with puffy, teary eyes. “Isn’t there any part of you that still believes in him?” he asked. “That believes he didn’t do it?”

The monster turned his chair toward Jamie, rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward. “I believed in him for as long as I could,” he said. “I fought his case for months after he died. I examined every scrap of the evidence against him, reviewed every line of the data forensics report, checked and double-checked every word. I refused to even entertain the idea that Julian could have done such a thing; I threatened to resign a dozen times.”

He looked sadly at Jamie, and took a deep breath. “I never found anything that would exonerate him. We buried John and George, and we waited for Alexandru to make his next move. But it never came. And as time passed, I eventually had to accept what everyone else had come to realize; that Julian had done what they said he had done, and I was just going to have to live with it, no matter how much it hurt my heart to do so.”

Frankenstein sat patiently, watching Jamie. But Jamie wasn’t thinking about his father; he was thinking about his mother and the awful way he had treated her after his dad had died, the terrible things he had said. Hot shame was flooding through him, and he would have given anything to be able to tell her how sorry he was, to tell her he was wrong and ask her to forgive him.

“I was so angry with him for leaving us,” he said, eventually. “My mother always told me I was being unfair. But I wasn’t. He betrayed everyone.”

“Your father was a good man who did an awful thing,” said Frankenstein. “He made a terrible mistake, and he paid for it with his life.”

“And eight other people’s lives,” said Jamie, his voice suddenly fierce. “What did the people on the plane do to deserve what happened to them? Not be nice enough to anyone whose surname was Carpenter? How pathetic is that?”

Frankenstein said nothing.

“I’m ashamed to be his son,” spit Jamie. “No wonder everyone in this place looks at me like they do. I would hate me, too. I’m glad he’s dead.”