Jamie nodded and started forward. Larissa held on to his hand, pulling him back. He turned to her, a tender expression on his face.

“Let me go,” he said.

She looked at him for a long moment, then released her grip.

Jamie walked toward Alexandru. The ancient vampire was sitting forward, clearly excited by the sight of the approaching teenager. His mother was staring down at him, her eyes full of terror. Behind him he heard Kate start to cry, and Larissa breathing heavily, in and out, in and out.

He was halfway across the chapel hall when the huge wooden door behind him exploded.

46

STAND, AND BE TRUE

Frankenstein strode through the jagged hole where the door had been, followed by two Blacklight operators, their visors down and their weapons drawn. The monster towered over them; he had drawn himself up to his full height, and he stared at Alexandru across the blood-soaked room. He was holding a T-Bone in one of his gray-green hands, an enormous silver shotgun in the other, and he was very, very angry.

“Where is Thomas Morris?” he bellowed, his voice reverberating around the stone walls.

Everybody in the room stopped dead.

Jamie pointed to the floor in font of the stage, his heart overwhelmed by the sight of his friend, his head spinning with gratitude and guilt and anger. Frankenstein saw Morris, his body twisted awkwardly, blood pumping steadily from the wide hole in his throat, the last of his life ebbing away. His eyes widened as the monster slowly approached and knelt down on one knee ten feet away from him.

“Thomas,” said Frankenstein, his voice low.

The dying man moved his eyes, slowly, and looked at him.

“Your great-great-grandfather would be ashamed of you,” the monster said.

Morris stared at him, his face a pale mask of fear and pain.

Then he died.

Sitting on the platform, Alexandru applauded, slowly. The claps echoed around the room, and Frankenstein looked up at him. Then he walked quickly over to Jamie’s side and led the teenager back to Kate and Larissa.

“Such theater,” said Alexandru, a wide smile on his face. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. Now, come up here, boy. Your friends may still leave, even the rather large one, but I ask you not to try my patience further.”

Frankenstein looked at the old vampire, his face curled in a grimace of disgust. “There’s no way that’s going to happen,” he said, firmly.

Alexandru sighed, a look of seemingly genuine disappointment on his face. “Have it your way, monster.” He motioned to the vampires lined up beside him. “Kill them all, apart from the boy. Bring him to me.”

The vampires leapt down from the stone platform and rushed headlong toward the remnants of the Blacklight team. Kate cried out as they sped across the stone, their eyes flashing, their fangs bared, their faces twisted with venom, and Frankenstein pushed her firmly back against the wall beside the door, behind Larissa and the operators. He pressed a stake into her hand, and she held it out before her in a trembling fist.

One of the men who had arrived with Frankenstein fired his T-Bone into the snarling line of vampires. The projectile flew high, tearing off the upper half of the head of a vampire man in its twenties. He went down, twitching, his eyes rolled back in his head. But as Jamie stared, the shattered, open skull began to repair itself before his eyes. He circled back against the wall, next to Kate. Larissa fell in next to him, and they pressed their backs to the cold stone as Frankenstein and the operators faced the onrushing vampires.

Frankenstein took half a step back, then hurled himself forward, careening into the vampires, his huge, uneven arms whirling around him like tree trunks in a tornado. Vampires flew through the air, trailing blood behind them, and crashed into the walls. The second operator emptied his MP5 into a cluster of vampires that were trying to surround him, driving them back, before a snarling vampire appeared behind him, and wrenched the helmet from his head. Frankenstein swung a long arm, placed the enormous barrel of the shotgun against the side of the vampire’s head, and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the stone hall, and the vampire’s head disappeared in a cloud of blood.

Larissa snarled and leapt into the fray, a crimson nightmare of biting teeth and clawing fingernails. She tore the throat out of the vampire woman in the trouser suit, who fell to the floor, clawing at her open jugular; she crawled for a few feet, then slumped to the stone.

Jamie raised his T-Bone and destroyed a vampire girl who was approaching Frankenstein from the rear; the shot thudding into her armpit and tearing through her chest. She exploded, showering the monster with blood, but he didn’t even turn. Jamie waited for the projectile to wind back into the barrel of his weapon, and he hurled himself bellowing into the battle.

They fought for their lives.

They fired T-Bones and guns, they swung stakes and knives, and they punched and kicked at the horde of vampires that spun and circled around them. Blood flew in the air and pooled on the ground. Vampires exploded in fountains of crimson, limbs were blown from snarling bodies, and screams of pain and bellows of fury filled the chapel hall.

But it wasn’t enough.

Two vampires leapt onto the shoulders of one of the operators and dragged him to the ground. He pulled the trigger on his MP5 as he was overwhelmed; the bullets raked across the ceiling of the hall, sending flurries of dust down onto the heads of the humans and vampires below. The operator screamed once as the helmet was pulled from his head and the vampires buried their fangs in his face. Blood gushed from beneath their gnawing mouths, and the operator lay still.

Then a high-pitched scream cut through the noise of the battle, ringing sweetly off the stone walls. Jamie spun toward the source and saw the skeletal male vampire holding Kate, his left hand around her waist. With the forefinger of his other hand, he lightly drew a razor-sharp fingernail across her throat. He smiled at Jamie, a look of revolting excitement on his face as he stroked the teenage girl’s skin.

Something crashed into the back of Jamie’s neck, and he sank to his knees, seeing stars. Gray spilled across his vision, and nausea swirled in his stomach. He pitched forward, and his forehead cracked sharply against the stone floor. He rolled over onto his side and saw the vampires take the rest of his team.

Three of them launched themselves at Frankenstein, who had stopped to look at Kate. They hung from his enormous frame like leeches, clubbing at his face and neck with their fists, and he was driven slowly to his knees. A vampire woman in a black T-shirt and glistening black PVC jeans pulled a short serrated knife from her boot and held it to the monster’s neck. He stiffened, but the vampire didn’t kill him. She held the knife to his neck, and he was still.

The surviving operator was sent spinning by a haymaker punch that he never saw. He was backing away from a pair of snarling vampires, a man and a woman who were almost naked, their clothes hanging from them in ribbons, and he was almost decapitated from behind by the blow. It was thrown by Anderson, who put every last drop of his unnatural strength into it. The operator flew into the stone wall, his helmet shattering under the impact, and he slid to the floor. Anderson walked slowly over to the fallen man and put one of his huge feet on the man’s throat. He increased the pressure, pinning the man against the wall, and looked happily at Alexandru.

Larissa was herded against the wall, snarling and spraying blood from her face and hair with every quick dart of her head. Four of the vampires surrounded her, and she stood still, hissing and twitching, knowing she could not take them all.