Chapter 11

Mum appeared in my room about ten o’clock with the perfect cup of tea, which almost made up for only seven hours sleep.

“Your father’s been telling me what an amazing daughter we have. I’ll be honest, dear, I didn’t understand half of what he said, and the other half scared me out of my wits, but I couldn’t be prouder.”

I wasn’t so sure. Those didn’t look like tears of pride. I put the tea down and put my arms around her.

“Oh my,” she said after a very long moment. “Thank you for that, dear. I rather needed that.

“I understand you’re being collected in a couple of hours, so why don’t you come downstairs when you’re ready. We’ll do brunch then I can help you pack, if you like.”

“I’m ready now,” I said, my stomach growling in agreement. “And yes, a hand with packing would be appreciated.”

I told her as much about the previous night as I felt she could manage. Hearing from Nick about what was going on, running to the college, finding out there were still people inside, Seeing the tentacles coming out of all the ground and first floor windows and doors then running for the fire escape, finding a fire axe and using it to break the lock to the roof access, finding the first group of students and sending them up to David, then heading down to the second floor where I’d come across the larger group of students with their teachers, surrounded by the plant.

“Of course, it was all just an illusion brought on by the gas, but it felt very real. I managed to get to them through the wall of the classroom next door and get them out of the building.”

“But if it was only an hallucination, were they in any real danger?”

“Lieutenant Henderson said yes. Apparently, it’s quite possible to scare yourself to death. Besides which, the only way of getting rid of the gas was to burn it up. Anyone inside the building when they dropped that bomb would have been incinerated.”

“Couldn’t they have sent people in with gas masks?”

“As I understand it, the gas affects you even if it contacts your skin, but yes, they could have used hazmat suits, only the lieutenant thinks that any help he could have offered would have been too little and too late.”

“Oh my! But that could have been you too.”

“I’m not so easily scared, Mum. I fight vampires for a living, remember?”

“Hush. Your father’s in his office, and I do not want him learning about that.”

“Sorry Mum.”

“Anyway, have you eaten enough? We should probably get you packed. You go and get dressed while I lay out a few things.”

I felt like dressing conservatively, so I picked out a knee length dress with a pretty floral design, along with all the necessary to wear under it and jumped into the shower. It didn’t take long, but apparently long enough for Mum to have dug out every other piece of demure clothing I owned.

I couldn’t help smiling as I took out the Irish dancing costumes and battle shoes Stuart had provided for me. I also grabbed a few short skater skirts and tee-shirts as well as a few pairs of short shorts.

“I’m not sure we’ll fit all of that in the case, dear,” Mum said.

“Well, I’d be happy to do without the nun’s habits, Mum.” I picked up a couple of ultra conservative outfits and put them to one side.

“Are you sure you want to take those?” she pointed at my more revealing choices. “I mean you do know you are going to be surrounded by a lot of young and, er, virile, shall we say, men.”

“Who will have been instructed that I’m off limits.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t be fair to tease them like that, would it?”

I relented and put back the skimpiest of my skirts.

“There you go, tasty but not irresistible. Good enough for you?”

“I hope so.” She started to load up a couple of small suitcases, folding everything carefully. I put together a fairly bulging wash bag, complete with creams for nighttime and a few bits of makeup. We were ready with ten minutes to spare.

Which was as well because my driver arrived on the dot of twelve.

Dad came out of his office to say goodbye. He gave me a hug like he never expected to see me again.

“Dad, I’m only going to gone be a week.”

“It feels like the beginning of something more,” he said. “I know what I said a day or two ago, but when you get back, maybe we can talk about, you know, after your birthday.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t…”

“…do anything you wouldn’t want me to do. Not totally promising Dad, but I’ll try.”

He nodded. I picked up the suitcases, which didn’t feel as heavy as they should have, and headed out to the disappointingly non-descript car waiting on the drive.

The driver stepped out of the car as I appeared in the doorway. He wore combat trousers and a green tee-shirt, which wasn’t much different from half the guys at college. If it hadn’t been for the buzz cut and the ramrod straight posture, he might have passed for one. He hefted my suitcases into the boot of the car without any effort.

“You know you’re only going to be with us a week, don’t you?”

“Sure, but I like a slightly more varied wardrobe than you lot work with.” I gave him a sparkly smile in case he thought I was being bitchy.

“You’re not what I expected, ma’am.”

I slid into the front passenger seat next to him. “Yeah,” I said, “for one thing I’m not a ma’am, so unless this car is bugged and you’re under some sort of orders, it’s Sarah. Miss or Miss Geller if you absolutely have to be formal.”

“Mark,” he said offering me a hand, “or Sergeant Finn if you absolutely have to be formal.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mark. Isn’t sergeant a bit of a high rank for a chauffeur?”

“You could argue that way, but then again, rank has its privileges and when I heard who it was we were being sent to collect, I may have taken advantage of mine a little.”

He had such an adorable smile, I couldn’t help laughing. “So do we have far to go to get to your base?”

“You should know. We’ve actually set up a temporary camp at your old college, or what’s left of it. Mind you, I think you’ll be impressed with how much it’s changed since last night.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, we can move pretty quick when we have to. Your Miss Ephemeris mentioned it was important to isolate the centre of the trouble as soon as possible, so the lieutenant had a platoon of Royal Engineers in to do their thing as soon as the sun came up this morning.”

“That was another of Jen’s ideas? Miss Ephemeris, I mean?”

“Yes, ma’am – sorry, miss; force of habit. She said no-one should go near the wreckage in the dark, just keep the black light spots on it.”

“You mean the UV spotlights? I kind of like black lights though. Where did that come from?”

“It’s an old-fashioned way of saying it, I think. My dad organised this kind of black light disco thing for one of my birthdays when I was a kid. Fluorescent signs painted everywhere. The whole place was dark except for the things that glowed in the UV. It was kind of sick.”

“Didn’t you sort of keep bumping into everyone?”

“No,” he laughed. “The UV causes all sorts of things to glow, like starch in clothing. Other chemicals too. Certain drinks glow weird colours in it. It was hard to see people’s faces, I remember, except where they used special makeup. Just all the colours were psychedelic and wild.

“You know UV is used for all sorts of things. Useful for keeping an keeping an eye out for unfriendlies in certain situations. It’ll show up the starch used in most military uniforms or the chitin in spider and scorpion carapaces. It’s also used to look for certain fluids, you know like blood, urine and semen.”

“Ew, TMI.”

“Sorry, I thought you were interested. You’ve seen CSI, when they use UV torches to examine crime scenes.”

“Yeah, don’t they spray something first?”

“Luminol. It’s a chemical that becomes highly fluorescent in the presence of blood, so even if there are only trace amounts that you can’t see with the naked eye, for instance after a place has been scrubbed clean, it will still show up.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying, Sarah, but you’re really not the sort of person I was expecting. I mean, don’t take offence, please, but you strike me as kind of dainty, you know, not the sort who’d care to get your hands dirty.”

I inspected him for a moment. “You don’t look like the sort of person who’d kill someone.”

“What? I never… I mean…”

“It’s alright, I believe you. But if you were ordered to shoot someone, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

“I… Yes, I suppose I would.”

“Kind of the same here. I may not like what I do, but it needs to be done, and since I’ve been given these abilities which makes me pretty much the only person able to do what I do, I kind of get on and do it.”

“It’s still hard to believe.”

“Well, I suppose seeing will have to be believing. Like that. That, is, amazing!”

We’d just pulled into the college carpark. The entire remains of the main building, which had been about one hundred yards by fifty yards and four stories tall, now lay under a substantial geodesic dome.

“Yeah, quite something. Gorilla glass and seven-oh-six-eight grade aluminium alloy.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Strongest aluminium alloy in use. It’s going to take something special to get through that.”

“Believe me, they have something special.”

He looked at me disbelievingly.

“You see the wreckage inside the dome?”

“Yeah, it was one of our bombs did that.”

“Not quite. All the melted glass bit in the middle was down to your bomb. The thing that tore down most of the building was a kind of highly mobile plant in its death throws. Before that, there was a demon kind of thing, fifteen-sixteen feet tall, that smashed a hole in the wall two stories tall and about as wide.”

“You’re shitting me! Sorry.”

“No shit, and no need to apologise. Unless you’re not supposed to know these things, in which case it’s me that should apologise.”

“Oh no ma’am – miss – I’m here to train with the rest of the guys.”

He climbed out of the car and came round to hold my door open for me. Screw feminism, I could get used to this kind of thing.

“I’ll need one of my cases, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” he said, and opened the boot. “Which one?”

I pointed and he retrieved it, carrying it for me until we arrived at a group of recruits standing around David, who’d requested a pane of gorilla glass and was punching it like his life depended on it. His fists were bleeding.

I ran over to him and put out an arm to stop him.

“They need to know how inadequate that thing is,” he said.

“And you need to remember you’re not like one of them anymore. You don’t mend as quick for one thing.” I lifted his hand to show him. “Besides, you may not have beaten the glass, but you sure as hell beat the guys holding it.”

There were two of them, and they were the biggest there. Maybe eight inches taller than David and four or five stone of muscle mass heavier. They were looking stunned and grateful for the save. I turned to the guys standing about.

“The vampires that come through the portal have all the strength and speed David has, and if they feel pain, they don’t care. Wounds like this,” I showed them David’s bloody fists, “would have healed in the time it’s taken me to say this. If that glass had been held rigid in a frame, like in the dome, it’s possible he would have at least cracked it. You guys are pretty impressive,” I said to the two holding the glass, “but you’ve a bit of give in you even so.”

The crowd responded with a gentle laugh.

“Anyone have a first aid kit?” I asked.

“I don’t need it,” David said as I accepted the kit and took out a bandage.

“Yeah, but if you think I’m going to let you get blood all over my dress, you have another think coming.” I nodded for the guy who’d brought me the kit to bandage up his left hand while I did the right. “You think you could take these guys on without damaging them too much?”

The crowd laughed again.

I looked at them with a smile of my own. “You think I’m joking. I didn’t know we were coming here today, so I need to change into my combat gear. I’m going to disappear into those bushes for a few minutes. While I’m changing, and I’m trusting you not to peak, you pick out your strongest, your fastest, your best hand-to-hand fighters, and you match them up against David here. One-on-one at first if you think that’s fair, then all at once when you realise it’s not.

“Tap out early, because even though he will be pulling his punches, he gets a bit enthusiastic at times and he can fuck you up a lot easier than you think. You saw what he was doing to the glass. Imagine yourself in its place.”

From my refuge in the trees I heard several comments along the lines of, ‘What the fuck?’, ‘Where the fuck did he go?’, ‘Fuck, he’s fast!’ and “Ow, fuck, ow! Okay, okay, tapping out! Fuck!’ Then lastly, ‘Jesus fuck! Ow, shit!’ as I finished changing and reappeared in my Irish dance gear, complete with battle shoes.

“You guys done fucking about?”

David was standing in the middle of three guys, all on their arses. One was the bigger of the guys who’d been holding the glass. The other two were smaller and more wiry. They were all rubbing some part of their anatomy.

“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” the other beefcake asked. “I mean I get what this guy’s about, but this is just taking the piss.”

“Vampires have been around since the Dark Ages,” I said, “or so I understand. There have been people figuring out the most effective way of fighting them for pretty much all of that time. It took them a while to find something that works, and they’ve been refining it for several centuries. I don’t think they’ve improved it much in the last six hundred or so years, and what they’ve settled on is pretty much what you’re looking at.

“I’m guessing most of you guys ended up on the ground because David grabbed an arm and threw you. You’ve seen how astonishingly fast he is. If he’d been trying to kill you, he’d have torn your arms off. If he’d been trying and having fun, he’d have beaten you to death with the soggy end. That’s why my fighting style keeps my arms by my sides.”

“What the fuck do you do then? Bore them to death?”

I picked out the joker easily enough since he was the one with the shitfaced grin while everyone else was laughing. I walked up to him, kicking the toe of my right shoe on the ground and bringing my foot up with a lightning strike that left the razor-sharp edge of my heel just breaking the skin of his neck. I withdrew my leg and kicked him in the chest, using the ball of my foot.

“Not usually,” I said, “but I’ll be sure to keep it in mind if more usual methods don’t work.”

I turned my back on him, retrieved my heel sheath, slid it back on.

I’d half expected the attack because I’d humiliated him in front of his mates, so when my spidy senses tingled, I didn’t even have to duck much to dodge him. I gave him a full boot-full up the backside – well shoe-full up the shitter if you prefer, but that’s a bit crude – which landed him face first in the grass.

“Do you want to keep on doing this?” I asked as he scrambled to his feet, “or do you want to see what a real vampire fight looks like?”

He charged at me. I sighed and settled into my modified dance. Soft grass meant I didn’t have the option of putting my heels down. Even sheathed, they’d tend to dig in, so I kept on the balls of my feet, swung twisted and somersaulted my way out of his grasp, landing a blow each time.

“Spike in the heart,” I said as my flying kick caught him high in the back. He recovered and charged again. I ducked and flew into a scissor kick. “Cut through the spinal cord. Not enough to kill a vampire, but it will stop it for a few seconds. Give you a chance to kill it properly.” I could have dodged the next leap, but this was demo time. I fell backwards with my hands above my head, caught myself and sprung into his leap. “Double spike to the heart,” I said pushing him onto his back, then leapt into a spinning leap that brought my heel down across his throat. I pulled that one because I didn’t want to cause too much harm. “And that would be a decapitation if I had my heel blades out.” I contorted myself and twisted until I was upright and standing over him, stepping away so he didn’t have quite such a free view up my skirt, then offered him my hand.

He tried to yank me down, but again the tingle at the back of my brain warned me. I stooped, braced and pulled and he pretty much succeeded in pulling himself upright into an unbalanced stance which would have landed him on his face again had I not held him back.

“Had enough?” I asked. “Because I won’t hold back so much if you want to continue.”

“No, no, I’m good.” He held his arms up defensively. “And I apologise for what I said earlier. We didn’t know why you were part of this, but I think we get the idea now.”

I turned to David. “Shall we show them what this is really about?”

“If you like?”

“Don’t hold back.”

“You sure?”

“Well, I don’t intent to, apart from keeping the blades tucked away that is.”

He rushed me, blindingly fast, but once again my threat detector gave me early warning. I tripped into a brief blur of movement and sidestepped his attack. My last minute swerve would have given him a hold on my ankle had I tried the same trick of kicking him as he went past, but I knew I was against someone serious here.

We exchanged blows for ten minutes with neither of us getting close to the other. It occurred to me he’d been watching me fight for weeks now, so he probably knew all the moves I’d trained to use. This needed something different. I feinted into one of my rarely used manoeuvres. He responded to it in a way that was guaranteed to block it and give him an opportunity to take a swipe at me, only I pulled myself out of the jump at the last moment, straining myself to twist around to where I wanted to be. He saw my intention at the last moment and tried to pull away, which meant my heel struck him in his back a little lower than I’d intended. He dropped in evident pain.

I landed clear of him and held a ready stance. I still wasn’t sure how much control he had when he was full involved in a battle. I could see the animal rage in his eyes as he rounded on me, but he fought it, and I actually watched the person inside rise to the surface and take over.

“That wouldn’t have ended it,” he said.

“No, but I think it worked well for a demonstration, don’t you think?”

There wasn’t a closed mouth among our spectators, except for Lieutenant Henderson who was advancing on us with an admiring smile on his face.

“David knows my moves,” I said to the crowd, “which is why it took a while. That last was something of a wrench to my body because I started a move I expected him to recognise and respond to, then I twisted about and turned it into something that gave me a shot at him. As it was he saw the danger at the last moment. If my blades had been out, I’d have stabbed him in the kidney, which wouldn’t have done him a lot of good, but it wouldn’t have even slowed down a real vampire.

“They really are that fast and that strong, but they don’t think so much. Even so, I hope this demonstration was enough to show that you do not want to get into close quarters with them. I don’t know your tactics that well, but you should maybe come up with something that has you keeping your distance and firing from more than one location at a time. If just one of you has a go, chances are they’ll dodge your bullets long enough to get to you. The more you have from different directions, the harder it’ll be to avoid your shots.”

“Will bullets work on them? I mean doesn’t it have to be wooden stakes?”

“I don’t know. These are not the vampires of mythology, or rather maybe they are, but with less of the Dark Ages superstition mixed in. It’s possible metal will do the trick, though back then they would have had steel-bladed weapons, and they knew decapitation worked. I have to think they’d have tried stabbing as well, but I’m not sure how great their anatomy would have been back then, so who knows how many of them would have missed the heart?”

“But wouldn’t they need to know where the heart was for a stake to work?”

“Yes, I guess so. David, I’m just guessing here. Anything to contribute?”

“I was stabbed a few times with both stake and blade. Fortunately for me they missed the heart every time. Less fortunately for them. A blade’s thinner than a stake, so maybe easier to miss the target or maybe it doesn’t cause as much damage.”

“Except the stake has to get through the ribs,” one of the soldiers said.

“Not difficult if you have the strength.”

“We’ve both staked vampires with demon horn, and that worked really well.”

“Demon horns have their own power,” David said. “They’re different.”

“So maybe wood has power as well. I suppose the answer is we don’t know. It’s possible that Miss Ephemeris might know more, otherwise feel free to experiment and report back to us.”

“Or make use of the specially crafted rounds I’ve had made for you,” the lieutenant said, dropping an ammo box on the ground in front of his troops. “Metal jacket around a hardwood centre. Designed to break open and splinter on impact.”

“Oooh, juicy. Do they have holy water in them too?” It was the joker trying to regain a little street cred.

“Not as such, but I’m sure the padre would be happy sprinkle some on if you think it might help.

“Have you done with your demonstrations for now? Because I have one of my own I’d like to show you.”

“We covered basic vampires,” I said, “but there are a few extra we could go through.”

“Briefly then. These guys have been briefed on most of what you told me yesterday.”

“Greshnicks,” I said.

“Which are?”

“Like vampires on steroids. Stronger, faster, harder to hurt. I think they’re a different species because their weak point is a second brain or brainstem at the base of their spine. They heal really quickly, even there, so the trick, if you can’t get to their heart or neck directly, is to hit the secondary brain which will paralyse them from the waist down temporarily, then make use of the few seconds that gives you to go in with a killing stroke before it gets up.”

“Noted. What next.”

“Fyarl demon.”

“Like the one that came through the wall last night. Go for the horns with something juicy like the fifty cal.”

“Okay, krrst.”

“Ultraviolet light to pin them and show up where they are. Time when they come out of phase and have a bunch of violence waiting for them when they do.”

“I guess so. Hellmaw.”

“Don’t give them any UV if you can help it. Keep them small and chop ‘em up if you can. Otherwise give them too much UV and stand back.”

“Yeah, okay. Well, I suppose I don’t have much else to offer after all. There is one more that we’ve encountered, but we have no idea how to touch it. I don’t know if you’ve encountered anything else in your time, David.”

“You didn’t mention the manticores.”

“Seriously?” one of the soldiers asked.

“Yeah. Not quite as per mythology. They are about the size of a horse but cat like with a sting in the tail, literally. They use the tail like a whip, also literally, meaning they can spray droplets of venom at you. We don’t know what happens if it gets you because in the one fight we had with them, we avoided it. Suggest you do the same. They also have nasty teeth and claws and loose skin around the neck making it tough to remove their heads. More animal than anything, so I would expect them to be vulnerable to any weapons you have, but they are wicked fast.”

“There are quite a few others I’ve faced that you haven’t seen yet,” David chipped in, “but they’re rarer, so I’d say we save them for later in the week.”

“Okay, if we’re done for now,” Lieutenant Henderson said, “would you gentlemen collect your weapons and a half dozen magazines of the new ammo each and follow me.”

The soldiers collected their guns and magazines quickly enough and we followed their commanding officer down to the dome where Miss Ephemeris was waiting for us. She held the case with my axe in it.

“You may want this,” she said, “but thanks for these.” She showed me the horn daggers, now with a small prism attached to each.

Inside the dome we made our way as a single group towards the glassy spikes at the centre. When we arrived, Henderson waved to indicate Jen should take the lead.

“Last time we did this, we attracted the attention of something very large and powerful. I may have overdone it with the power then, so I’m hoping these will sneak in under the radar, however if we end up with the same issue, I do have a failsafe.” She handed me one of the modified daggers. “Press here to activate it, and here to disconnect the prism. Since you were the least affected last time, let’s put you in control.”

To the group as a whole she said, “I’m not sure if we need to be close to the portal in order for this to work, or if the portal needs to be in the dark, but let’s try without. If it works you should have a sneak preview of what’s waiting on the other side. Be ready for an unpleasant shock.”

I activated the spying device, and a small window appeared in front of it. Last time, it had half filled the room. This time it was about as big as a person’s head. As before, it showed an immense, gloomy plain filled mainly with vampires and the occasional bigger nasty. Nothing nearby that I didn’t recognise, and no manticores that I could see, or hellmaws for that matter.

“Walk around it,” Jen said. “You’ll be able to see in all directions. If you spot anything standing thirty feet or so tall with a face full of eyes and no mouth, let me know. As far as we can tell, that’s their commander, and he is one unpleasant son of a bitch.”

“That’s a fuck load of bad guys,” Joker said.

“Okay, Sarah, that’s enough for now.”

I nodded at Jen and pressed the button to deactivate the spying device.

“I didn’t see him. Any ideas where he might be?”

“No, I’m just glad he wasn’t there this time.”

“Okay,” Henderson said, “for my next demonstration, I’d like you troops to take up positions about fifty yards back. Miss Ephemeris, would you accompany me to a point of safety behind them. David and Sarah, please prepare yourselves to fight.”

I exchanged glances with David who shrugged and drew his daggers. I unsheathed my heel blades and held my axe single handed by my side.

I’m not sure what the lieutenant did, but the glass above and around us darkened. In the centre of the spikey glass bowl in front of us, the familiar glitter of the portal appeared, but covering a considerably larger volume than usual.

Vampires began to appear as they realised they had a way through into our world. Slowly at first, then as they discovered how large the portal was, they began arriving in more alarming numbers.

David and I were able to keep them at bay to start with, but their numbers doubled every minute or so, and soon enough we were fighting back to back and easing away from the portal.

Then things turned south in a big way as three greshnick appeared side by side.

“What the hell are you doing?” I heard Jen screaming. “You need to shut this down right now.”

“Just a little longer,” Henderson said. “Okay guys, open fire.”

The inside of the dome was large, but even so, the sound of several dozen automatic rifles firing away in the enclosed space deafened me. Vampires were disappearing into dust all around us as the new ammunition proved its effectiveness. It eased the pressure on David and me enough that we were able to add our own damage to the mayhem. We continued backing away though, because we needed a clear field before attempting to take on the greshnicks.

That wasn’t the lieutenant’s plan though.

“Time to take down the big guys,” he called, and three shots rang out, each one fell to the ground, legs temporarily paralysed. “Cages!” he yelled, and half a dozen massive steel cages craned out of nowhere. Three were lowered over the disabled greshnicks, the other two dropped on a mass of vampires, each crushing several and capturing at least one.

Vampires were still pouring through the portal, most of them turning to dust as the army marksmen kept up a steady rate of fire. David and I were just about keeping up with those that remained, but the numbers were still increasing, and any moment we could find ourselves facing something worse than a greshnick.

“Shut them!” Henderson yelled and shutters closed over the cages. Moments later the light level in the dome increased and the last vampires through the portal fell screaming and writhing as the ultraviolet light burned away their skin.

Ravenous monsters or not, I couldn’t stand the screaming. I ran to each of them and gave them a coup de grace with my axe. David joined me in the clear up after a second.

The enclosed cages started jumping about like toys as their captives, now recovered from their injuries, started smashing against them, seeking to escape. One giant fist burst through a shutter and the creature roared in pain as the daylight began eating at its skin. It withdrew into the darkness and quieted, calling out to its companions in some incomprehensible language of guttural snarls. The three of them quieted.

“What the fuck was that?” Jen screamed at Henderson, batting at him in that entirely girly way that shows displeasure without actually causing any significant damage.

“That was an experiment on several levels,” Henderson said. “Firstly, it shows we can control opening and closing the portal. Daytime, we can filter out the UV, nighttime we use the black light spotlights in the gantries up there. Secondly, we have ourselves a few monsters to examine. I’ll admit I was only intending to grab a handful of vampires, but when Sarah mentioned these greshicks, I just had to have one. Three is a bonus.”

“And just what do you intend doing with them?”

David and I were approaching at a fast walk, almost there.

“Experimentation seems like a good start. We know from what we’ve seen, we can control them with UV. We need to see what else works. Thirdly, I wanted to see how effective the new ammunition was, and you can see it worked pretty well, and lastly, and this was unexpected, we can see that the portal has increased significantly in size. That’s new information, and something we need to factor in.”

I arrived just ahead of David, just as the lieutenant stopped talking. I snapped out a punch, full strength, and broke his nose. He ended up on his arse.

The soldiers, who’d been approaching, broke into a run. Henderson held up a hand waving them off and struggled to his feet. His breath wheezed and his face wasn’t as attractive as it had been. The guy who’d helped me bandage David’s hands went to him and pulled his nose straight with an audible crack, prompting a yell of pain.

“This was supposed to be a training exercise,” I yelled. “I mean, sure, taking on a few would have been instructive, but you let it get out of control.”

“It was never out of control.”

“You had David and me outnumbered out there…”

“At which point I ordered my men to start firing…”

“With untested weaponry.”

“I could have opened the filters any time…”

“Without knowing whether they would have the desired effect.”

“I was pretty sure.”

“Sure enough to put a couple of civilians at risk?”

“You’re hardly civilians…”

“We’re not in your fucking army, and we don’t go looking for this sort of trouble.”

“But if we hadn’t done this you wouldn’t know about the portal increasing in size, would you? You’d have gone on your next patrol and ended up in a situation like this one, without backup.”

“Well…” He was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “You had no right to put us in that situation.”

“Under normal circumstances, no. Maybe not even under these circumstances. But you showed us what’s on the other side of that portal trying to get through. This is as close to a war as we’ve faced in a lot of years, and I’m going to have a hard time selling it to my superiors. Less so now that I have some hard evidence to show them, as well as some effective weapons to report. You’re going to need a lot of help if they break through like you say they’re trying to, which means I’m going to have to convince a lot of very unimaginative people that we’re facing a credible threat.

“I apologise for putting you in danger, but I had as much faith in you and David as I did in my men and the systems we put in place here. I can see you’re upset, so maybe we should take the rest of the afternoon off.”

“Why did you have me pack for a week before bringing me ten minutes’ drive from my parents’ house?”

“This site is cordoned off. No-one in or out without my say so. It’s easier to control the spread of information this way, and we need to avoid a panic.”

“Well, on your say so, you’re going to let me off this fucking site and drive me home.”

“I can’t do that, Sarah. Your parents are expecting you to be away for a week, so you’re here with us for the duration.”

“You’re violating my legal rights.”

“Only in as much as I’m entitled to do so.”

“So, what are you going to do if I walk away? Shoot me?”

“I’d prefer to avoid that if I could, and I do have other ways of subduing you. They’re not particularly pleasant, but I’ll use them if I feel you’re putting the security of this site at risk, or if I feel you’re about to injure me or any of my men.

“We’ve a number of tents behind the dome. You and Miss Ephemeris are sharing one, David is to have another. Where is David?”

We looked around, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Sergeant Gates, go find him,” Finn ordered.

The Lieutenant turned to me. “Let the sergeant here take you to your tent now. Your luggage will be with you shortly and we’ll let you know when food is ready.

“Oh yes. Your phones won’t work. We have jammers set up around the camp as standard.”

“So, we are being held prisoner? What are you going to do when you find David? Shoot him?”

“Of course not. We’ll persuade him to come back...”

“At gunpoint? You’ve seen how he fights, and I doubt he’s all that happy with you guys right now.”

“Well, we’ll have to see how things turn out, won’t we? As for your being prisoners, I’d prefer to say guests, detained on matters of national security. By the end of the week, you’ll be convinced that we’re doing the right thing here. I mean, your Miss Ephemeris did call us in, so she must think we’re worth the effort, even if she doesn’t particularly like my methods at the moment.

“You should take some time away from all this to talk things through. We are on the same side here, just our methods are a little different.”

#

As tents go, it was fairly spacious. We each had a camp bed and a folding desk and chair. Jen had only brought the one suitcase, but then that was her choice. True to what Henderson had told us, our phones weren’t picking up any signal.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Jen said, sitting on her bed.

“Yeah, I’m not sure that was really your intention when Nick and I sat in your try outs making fun of you.” I was taking the opportunity to change out of my fighting clothes and back into something more comfortable. Skirt and top for one thing, flats for another.

She laughed, short and quietly. “You know I’d entirely forgotten about Mitchel.”

“It’s okay, so have I. And it was worth being dragged into all this if only for the upgrade.”

“You’re not freaked out by it all?”

“I was a bit at first, but I like who I am now a lot more. I’m not so keen on all the fighting, but I can live with it as a price for becoming this version of me. I mean I’m a lot tougher than most girls, and I seem to be changing still. A week ago I doubt I could have broken anybody’s nose.”

“Yeah, he so deserved that.”

“What do you think expanded the portal like that?”

“Well, we’ve been expecting that to happen anyway, but in the past it’s happened more gradually. I’d say it could only have been one thing, don’t you think? That bomb of his.”

“Sure, I mean that’s the only significant thing that’s happened since it opened to let the hellmaw through.”

“I really don’t like that name.”

“Devil’s snare?”

“You might be wandering into areas of copyright infringement there. Fine we’ll go with hellmaw. So, high temperature or intense ultraviolet?”

“I have no idea. We should maybe talk to Mr Giles.”

“Chance would be a fine thing. At the very least we’d need a phone signal.”

“Or maybe ask for him to be brought here, along with whatever books he thinks might help.”

“Then he’ll be trapped in here with us.”

“Yeah, but which is better? Him out there with no idea what’s going on, or him stuck in here with his books, possibly able to advise.”

“You make a good point.”

“Besides, he’ll most likely have Nick and Laurel with him, won’t he?”

“Well, Nick was helping him with his research, and he’d taken most of his books back from the college so he could work at home, and Laurel finished all the work we were doing on the prism devices, so it’s possible.”

“So, if I can get a message to Nick and tell him I can’t call and to remember what we used to do back when my dad wouldn’t let us meet up during the holidays.”

“And what’s that?”

I showed her the Morse code app on my phone. “Type in the message and hit send, the flashlight does the rest.”

“And what happens when the guards spot someone flashing Morse code messages?”

“I use a rolled-up piece of paper to hide the light, except in the direction of his bedroom window, and he responds one flash yes, two flashes no. When Dad had me grounded, he knew I was bright enough to try something like that, so he’d keep an eye on Nick’s house. An occasional flash didn’t rouse any suspicions, especially if he was swinging the torch about rather than switching it off and on.”

“You really used to do that?”

“Yeah, Dad used to ground me quite a bit when I was younger. Nick and I used to get in a lot of trouble, except Nick used to get off most of the time, while I’d end up in my room on short rations, so we came up with this method. Nick types the dots and dashes into his phone as I flash them out to him and it translates them for him. We actually got good enough at Morse that we didn’t need the translation app in the end.”

“I thought you said he sent one flash yes, two flashes no.”

“When I was grounded. We’d exchange full Morse messages when we were just chatting late at night.”

“Fine, if you think it’ll help.”

“I do.”

So, we found us a soldier who conveyed our request to the lieutenant, who then came to see us. He gave us a good looking over as though we we’re trying something on, but Jen was ready for him.

“Look, it’s like you said, we’re in this together. You don’t have anything useful for us to do right now, so why not bring in Mr Giles and his books? We could at least be looking for a few clues as to what happened to the portal.”

“I’d also be grateful if you could pass this to my friend Nick,” I chipped in, handing him an unsealed envelope. “He may or may not be with Mr Giles. We kind of talk every day usually, so he’ll be wondering why I haven’t contacted him.”

He took the note out and read it.

“So, what did you do when your dad wouldn’t let you meet up, and what’s the significance of Pegasus?”

“Oh, we’d pick out a constellation and look at it. Just knowing that we were both doing the same thing kind of helped.”

“Boyfriend, is he?”

“Well, he’s a boy and he’s a friend. We’ve known each other since before we were interested in that sort of thing, so I think we’d find it weird crossing that line now.”

“Fine, I don’t see why not. I’ll send a car for Mr Giles in a while. He can share David’s tent. I imagine he’ll be here after we’ve eaten, which will be in an hour or so. In the meantime, is there anything you’d like to talk to me about?”

“We’ve been discussing the size of the portal,” Jen said. “We think it may have been had something to do with that flash bomb you used. Either the high temperature or the radiation.”

“Okay.”

“So if they send another hellmaw through, you can’t use anything like it to take it out.”

“Understood.”

“If they do send through another hellmaw, you won’t be able to use the UV spots to keep the portal closed, which means they’ll be able to send through a fuck load of bad guys.”

“So?”

“Er,” Jen had identified the problem, but not the solution.

“Can you set up a sort of canopy over the portal?” I asked. “As far as we know, the hellmaws can’t move other than to grow, and they won’t grow if we shield them from the dark light spots. Whatever else comes through will end up in the UV as soon as it’s pushed out from under the canopy.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll get that set up. So you think if we use another argon flash we could make the portal bigger still.”

“I think that’s what the boss is counting on.,” Jen said. “He’s been talking about tearing the portal wide open, but if he had the capacity to do it himself, he would have. I think he’s trying to trick us into doing it, so in the meantime, nothing that does anything like what that bomb of yours did. You also need to be extremely careful with those creatures you captured. The group I’m involved with did the same and we learned the hard way. They are infected with a parasite which radically alters any person it gets into.”

“Does it now?”

“Yes, and not in a nice way either. David was infected about four centuries ago and for the first three he turned into one of the most blood-thirsty, evil bastards you ever met.”

“He seems better now.”

“Did you find him yet?” I interjected.

“Not yet, but we’re still looking.” He turned back to Jen.

“We managed to destroy the parasite, although that sent him temporarily insane. He destroyed the lab, along with all samples of the cure, all documentation and every scientist who had half a chance of recreating it. David overcame what we did to him…”

“To an extent,” I added.

“…but our organisation never recovered to the point of knowing how to fix it.”

“David thinks it would have been kinder to kill him than cure him,” I said. “He was aware of every evil thing he did, very much as though it was him doing each one. He just didn’t care at the time. Then his conscience returned when he was ‘cured’ if that’s even an appropriate term for it.”

Jen nodded sadly. “I suspected as much, so perhaps it’s as well that we haven’t been able to recreate the cure. Anyway, it is absolutely imperative that you ensure none of your soldiers are exposed to those creatures’ blood. If that happens, you will not end up with the super-soldier you may want to make. Instead you’ll create something ten times worse than any vampire or greshnick that comes through. What you will have is something with the enemy’s speed and strength, but with the worst sort of human intelligence and imagination, and no sense of right or wrong.”

“Again, I’ll take that under advisement.”

“You don’t get it,” I said. “You can’t make use of anything that comes from that side. Whatever you try to do with it, you’ll end up with something worse and uncontrollable.”

“Alright, if that’s all, dinner will be served in about three quarters of an hour and your friend will most likely arrive shortly after. You never know, we may have found David by then as well.”

“For your sake, I hope not.” I muttered, “After that stunt you pulled, I doubt he’ll be that kindly disposed to you lot.”