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 that she had been turned into a vampire. He reached the last strip of concrete wall before his mother’s cell, stopped and took a deep breath. Then he stepped out in front of the ultraviolet barrier.
Jamie’s first instinct, as always, was to laugh; his mother’s cell was like something out of a home interiors catalogue.
Because she had voluntarily gone into Blacklight custody, and because she was the mother of an Operator, she had been allowed to request items that were not available to any other vampire that had been brought on to the block, and she had made the most of it. In the middle of her cell was the oval rug that had lain in the living room of their old house in Brenchley, and sitting on top of it was the coffee table which Jamie’s father had rested his feet on every evening after he got home from work. The chest of drawers from Marie’s old bedroom stood against one wall, topped with a cluster of photos of her son and her late husband. The battered leather sofa that had dominated their old living room filled most of the rear wall of the cell, and her bed was covered in the lilac sheets and duvet cover that she had slept in for as long as Jamie could remember.
His mother had politely, but very determinedly, imported her old life into this concrete cube deep below the earth. The Christmas tree that had sat on the coffee table, its multicoloured lights twinkling beneath the fluorescent strips in the ceiling, was gone, much to Jamie’s relief.
“Hey, Mum,” he said, stepping into the cell. “How’s it going?”
Marie Carpenter was sitting on the sofa, her nose buried in a paperback book. She looked up, the predictable frown of fake surprise creasing her features, then broke into a huge smile and leapt to her feet. She stepped forward to meet him, and mother and son hugged in the middle of the square room.
“Hello, love,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “Are you all right? Have you been out today?”
Despite the uniform he wore and the things he had done, Jamie was still a teenage boy, and never more so than in the presence of his mother. He blushed immediately at the enthusiasm of her embrace, while at the same time a broad grin emerged on his face. This was why he had walked voluntarily into the darkest depths of horror, why he had stood in the middle of an ancient building full of the dead and faced down the most dangerous monster in the world; so that he might be able to hug his mother again, and feel the love that radiated out of her when she was with him, a love that he had only realised he needed when it was taken away.
“I’m all right, Mum,” he replied. “Yourself?”
Marie gave him a final squeeze before releasing her grip, and stepping back to look at her son. She cast her eyes quickly up and down him, taking in the black uniform with a look of immense pride on her face, before she reached the pink patch of scar tissue on his neck, and a grimace flickered across her face.
“I’m fine,” she replied. Her gaze lingered on his neck for a moment, as it always did, before she forced her eyes away and broke into a smile. “How’s Kate?”
Jamie’s own smile faded.
His relationship with his mother had improved immeasurably since they had returned from Lindisfarne. The truth about Julian Carpenter, about the man he had really been and the circumstances surrounding his death, had liberated them; the dark mess of grief and betrayal that had crippled them both in the aftermath of his death, that Jamie had been unable to stop himself from taking out on his mother, had cleared, leaving them free to rebuild. They both still missed him, in their different ways, and Jamie had come to terms with the fact that he probably always would. But the grief now seemed manageable. What had been a yawning, unfillable chasm was now merely a hole, deep, and slippery at the edges, but that he could now avoid falling into, most of the time at least. Sadly, it was no longer the only one; there was now a hole of almost equal size with Frankenstein’s name above it.
It had been slow going at first, the thaw between Jamie and Marie. There were new complications, not least of which was the condition that required Marie to spend her days and nights in the depths of the Loop behind an ultraviolet wall. There was much to say, and over the first couple of weeks, as both of them adjusted to their new lives, it was all eventually said.
Jamie apologised for how he had behaved since his dad had died, cutting off his mother’s attempts to tell him he didn’t need to, plunging ahead until it was all out of him. Marie had listened, tears running down her face, until he was done, then offered an apology of her own, for failing to cope with the death of her husband, for failing to realise that her son still needed her. By the time she was finished, they were both in tears, tears that turned out to be as cathartic as they were painful. There was only one remaining aspect of their rebuilt relationship that caused Jamie to worry.
Marie Carpenter absolutely adored Kate.
And hated Larissa.
He understood why; it was Kate who had put her arm round Marie after the hunger had hit her in the aftermath of Lindisfarne, Kate who had escorted her on to the rescue helicopter, talking to her in the gentle, friendly way that came so naturally to her. Larissa, on the other hand, was a vampire, and as far as Marie was concerned, vampires were all monsters, despite Jamie’s protestations to the contrary.
He knew he was wasting his time; Marie had been kidnapped and tormented by the very worst the vampire world had to offer, and was appalled by the change that had been inflicted on her. But he tried anyway, because he knew that eventually the time would come when he would want to tell his mother about what was happening between him and Larissa, and he didn’t want her first reaction to be revulsion.
“She’s fine, Mum,” he said. “She said to say hello.”
Larissa is fine too. More than fine, actually.
“She’s a good girl,” said Marie, firmly. “I knew it from the moment I met her.”
Jamie didn’t say anything. Instead, he wandered across the cell, and looked at the photos his mother had arranged on top of the chest of drawers. A small picture in a silver frame caught his eye, and he leant in for a closer look.
His mum, heavily pregnant with him, was leaning back on the bonnet of the dark blue BMW he remembered from when he was very young, a wide smile on her face. The sun was shining from outside the frame, illuminating a bright green row of trees beyond the car, casting the dark silhouette of his dad across the bottom of the photo. The shadow’s hand was raised to its face, holding the camera that had recorded the moment.
She looks so happy, Jamie thought, then straightened up and turned back to his mum, as he realised she had said something he hadn’t heard.
“What was that, Mum?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.
“I was saying that Henry came down to see me today,” she said. “Did he tell you?”
“Henry?” replied Jamie. “Who’s Henry?”
“Henry
