cent on it. He knows he’s caught.”
“I’m telling the truth,” said Frankenstein. “She told me you were playing cards and she sneaked out. She saw me next to your truck and asked me if I was a thief. I’m not lying.”
“What were you going to do to my daughter?” asked Lene’s father, his voice little more than a whisper. “What were you going to do if we hadn’t stopped you?”
You didn’t stop me, thought Frankenstein, anger spilling through him. If I was the kind of person you think I am, I’d be twenty miles down the road with your daughter and you’d never see her again. Because you were playing cards instead of watching her. Because you—
The thought was driven from his mind as a crowbar crashed down on the back of his neck, sending him to his knees. One of the drivers had crept round the back of the rig that Frankenstein had been retreating along; now he stood over the fallen giant with the bar in his hand, bellowing.
“He’s down, boys!” the man roared. “Let’s show him what we do to his kind!”
The men surged forward, their weapons raised, Michael Neumann in the lead. Rage exploded through Frankenstein; he erupted to his feet, his enormous frame jet black in the shadows between the trucks, and grabbed one of the drivers by the neck. The man’s roar died as his throat was constricted by the monster’s huge hand, and then he was jerked off his feet and into the air, as Frankenstein threw him against the side of one of the trailers with all his might. The man crashed into the thin metal, leaving a huge dent, then slid to the ground, blood spraying from his head.
The rest of the men skidded to a halt, their eyes wide. This was not how it was meant to go; they were supposed to teach the stranger a lesson, and leave him on the ground while they went back inside and finished their game.
“Come on!” shouted Michael, his voice faltering. He ran forward, a torque wrench raised, but then the enormous shadow of Frankenstein engulfed him, and he stopped. He stared up into the terrifying face of the monster, and his courage deserted him, along with the men who had accompanied him; they fled back towards the café, shouting for someone to call the police as they did so.
Frankenstein reached out and took the wrench from the man’s hand. Lene’s father offered no resistance; he was transfixed by the sight of the giant man standing over him.
Frankenstein lowered his head until it was level with the man’s. Breath rushed out of his mouth and nostrils in huge white clouds, and blood trickled over his shoulder from where the crowbar had split the skin of his neck.
“Next time,” he said, his voice like ice, “pay more attention to your daughter than to your cards. Do you hear me?”
Michael Neumann nodded, shaking.
“Good,” said Frankenstein, and dropped the wrench. It clattered to the ground at Michael’s feet, beside the unconscious shape of the man who had been thrown against the trailer. Michael turned and ran, without looking back.
Frankenstein prowled the edge of the parking area, looking for a way out.
His heart was pounding, his stomach churning at the memory of the sound the man had made when he crashed into the side of the truck, and at the ease with which he had inflicted the violence. He had just attacked, on instinct, without thinking.
It had felt so normal.
Once their fear subsides, they will call the authorities, he thought. And it won’t matter that they attacked an innocent man; when they see me, it won’t matter at all.
He reached the end of one of the long lines of trucks, and suddenly found himself bathed in light. The last rig on the stand, an enormous thirty-wheeler, was covered in hundreds of bulbs of different colours, like a vast Christmas tree laid upon fifteen pairs of wheels. Frankenstein looked up at the cab, and something opened up in his mind.
Above the wide windscreen was a dot matrix display, like the ones that displayed the destinations on the fronts of buses. This one displayed only a single word.
PARIS
A nauseating tangle of memories burst through the monster’s head, images and voices, feelings and places he couldn’t identify. But he understood that the word was familiar, the first thing he had found that was.
Movement in the cab caught his eye, and he ducked low beside the truck’s wide radiator as the driver settled himself behind his steering wheel. A moment later Frankenstein’s whole body vibrated as the huge diesel engine roared into life.
Now. You need to move now.
Still crouching, he ran around to the side of the rig. There was no time to break into the trailer; the truck would be moving before he could even get the locks open. He ran past the huge tyres of the cab until he reached the trailer’s frame. Beneath the container, lying on steel cross members, were three large storage pods, most likely for spare parts and tools. The space between them was a coffin-shaped gap, below the trailer’s container and a metre and a half above the tarmac of the road.
With no time left, Frankenstein dived into the gap, landing hard on the cross members, which were arranged in an X shape. He hauled himself into the space, and found that the bars were close enough together to support his weight. He wedged himself hard against the round edge of one of the storage pods and braced his legs against a second. Diesel fumes filled his nostrils as the driver put the truck into gear and resumed his journey south, to Paris.
13
HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE
“Incoming,” said Jamie. He spoke into the microphone built into the side of his helmet, which linked him to the other five Operators on the Operational frequency. “Heads up, Jack.”
“How do you know?” asked Jack, his voice sounding directly in Jamie’s ear.
“Larissa,” replied Jamie. It was all that needed to be said; the vampire girl’s senses were hundreds of times more sensitive than those of a normal human, and she had heard the trucks entering the shipyard long before the rest of the squad would have been able to.
Jack swore. “How long?” he asked.
“Less than a minute,” answered Larissa. “Three trucks, I don’t know how many vampires. At least ten.”
“Ready One,” said Jack. “Nobody moves until I give the go, clear?”
Squad G-17 immediately lowered their visors, pulling their T-Bones from their holsters. Ready One was the code for imminent contact with the supernatural; it meant that the use of force was authorised.
Four heavy thuds sounded from the edge of the dock, and Jamie craned round the corner of the container to see what had made them. Thick ropes were lying on the ground, thrown from the deck of the towering freighter. He looked up at the high steel wall, and saw a flash of movement through the fog, a dark shape disappearing into the gloom. Then the rumble of engines began to shake the ground beneath their feet, and three black trucks appeared from the north.
They drove in single file, approaching slowly along the crumbling central road of the shipyard. The Operators, concealed in the deep shadows cast by the containers and the high concrete wall, watched them as they passed. Their paint was peeling, and the trucks were coated in
