Free Department 19: The Rising by Will Hill

towards the farmer, who backed away immediately.
    “No closer,” he said. “And speak, so I would know if you are friend or foe.”
    “I’m neither,” replied Vlad, a smile creeping across his face. “I’m something else.”
    The man lowered his bow by a couple of degrees.
    “You are not Turkish,” he said. “Are you Wallachian? Answer.”
    “I was,” replied Vlad. Then the hunger hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he folded to his knees, his head wrenched back in agony.
    The hunger roared through Vlad Tepes like a hurricane, opening a huge abyss in his chest and stomach, a clutching pit of emptiness. He grabbed at his breast, tearing at his own skin with his fingernails, trying to pull himself open, trying to find a way to fill the gaping hole that had appeared at the centre of his being. His head thundered with agony, as though drills were being applied to his temples, and his limbs were suddenly as heavy as lead.
    The farmer threw aside his bow, and ran to the stricken man. He knelt down and pulled at the stranger’s shoulders; the head came up easily, inches from his own. The farmer looked at the vision of horror before him, the glowing red eyes that stood out in the middle of the twisted face, the gleaming white fangs that extended below the upper lip, and drew in breath to scream. Then the stranger plunged his teeth into his neck, and the scream died in his throat.
    Vlad lunged on instinct alone; the pain of the hunger had driven rational thought from his head. His new fangs slid through the farmer’s skin, piercing the jugular vein, sending blood gushing into his mouth and down his throat. And instantly, the pain and thehunger were gone, replaced by a feeling that was almost godlike. He swallowed the blood that sprayed from the man’s torn throat, until he was sated, and withdrew his fangs.
    The two figures fell to the cold ground.
    Vlad’s chest was thumping up and down, alive with power; the farmer’s was barely moving, as blood seeped steadily out of the ragged hole in his neck. The former Prince of Wallachia leapt to his feet, and found himself floating several inches above the ground. He spun slowly in the air, then laughed, a terrible cackle that echoed between the silent trees and floated across the fire at the centre of the encampment, drawing frowns from the men gathered round it. Several of their wives crossed themselves, and the infants among the group began to cry.
    The laughter faded as Vlad resumed his course back towards the battlefield, floating slowly and effortlessly between the trees and over the undergrowth, spinning and swooping in the air, like a child who had been given a marvellous new toy. Where he had been, there was nothing but a patch of spilled blood, and the dark shape of the farmer on the ground, his body cooling as his life ebbed away.

6
CARPENTER AND SON
    Jamie walked along the corridor of the Loop’s detention level, feeling as conflicted as he always did when he was about to see his mother.
    Hers was the only occupied cell; the others had been emptied three weeks earlier, their inhabitants placed in restraining belts and taken into the depths of the Blacklight base to be handed over to the Lazarus Project. The ultraviolet barriers that filled the open front walls of the cells shimmered in the quiet air, the vampires they had contained long gone.
    Marie Carpenter was in the last cell on the left, the same cell that Larissa had occupied for the three chaotic days after Jamie’s mother had been kidnapped by Alexandru Rusmanov, until her heroics on Lindisfarne had seen her released from custody and offered the chance to join the Department.
    Jamie made his way down the corridor, aware that his mother’s superhuman senses would have alerted her to his presence as soon as he stepped through the airlock door and into the containment block, equally aware that she would pretend to be surprised to see him. His mother hated nothing more than drawing attention to the fact