Battle Lines. Will Hill

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      The monster’s free hand slid to the middle of his chest and rested there. Beneath the material of his shirt was a long pattern of scars, far more recent than the many others that covered his uneven flesh. They had been carved into him with a scalpel by Dante Valeriano, the self-styled vampire king of Paris, whom Frankenstein had injured terribly almost a century earlier, and who had spent the subsequent decades focusing on nothing except his insatiable desire for vengeance. In truth, he had been a fraud, a working-class boy from Saint-Denis called Pierre Depuis who had asserted dominance over the Parisian vampires with little more than bravado and a compellingly fictional history. Jamie and a small squad of Operators had destroyed the vampire king in the theatre where he lived, and brought the captive Frankenstein home, but not before Valeriano had begun to exact his revenge.

      He doesn’t know he’s doing it, thought Jamie. Doesn’t realise how often he touches his scars.

      Jamie felt his own hand twitch towards his neck, where an ugly red patch of skin stretched from his jaw to his shoulder, a memento of the search for his mother, what now felt like years ago.

      You’re not the only one, he thought. We’ve all got scars.

      “How’s your girlfriend?” asked Frankenstein. “What’s her name? The vampire?”

      “Larissa,” said Jamie, through a suddenly clenched jaw. “She’s fine. Thanks.”

      Frankenstein nodded. “Is she still in America?”

      “Yes,” said Jamie.

      “Best place for her,” grunted the monster.

      Jamie bore down on the fury that was rising up through him with all his strength and somehow managed to push it back.

      Be calm, he told himself. It’s not his fault. Be calm.

      Frankenstein’s hatred of vampires was long-standing and potent. He had made his feelings on them as a species clear to Jamie the very first time they had gone out on an operation together; he believed them to be aberrations, creatures that had no right to exist in the world. His encounter with Lord Dante had not improved his opinion of them, and he had still not forgiven Larissa for wasting their time during the search for Marie Carpenter, despite Jamie’s repeated pleas for him to do so.

      “She seems happy,” he said, as brightly as he was able. “So maybe it is.”

      Frankenstein stared at Jamie with his misshapen, multicoloured eyes, his gaze heavy and unblinking, and momentarily full of warning. “What about your other friend?” he asked. “The girl from Lindisfarne? Kate, was it?”

      “She’s fine,” said Jamie, grateful for the new topic of conversation. “She’s getting stuck into this new project she’s running with Paul Turner. I hardly see her at the moment.”

      “That’s life inside the Department,” said Frankenstein. “There’s always something going on.”

      “Tell me about it,” said Jamie. “I’ve just come from a Zero Hour briefing. You’re not going to believe what—”

      “I don’t want to know,” interrupted the monster.

      “I know, but—”

      “Jamie,” said Frankenstein, his voice like thunder. “We’ve been through this before. Cal offered me a place on the Zero Hour Task Force and I turned it down. You know that. I don’t understand why you find it so difficult to respect my decision.”

      They looked at one another for a long, silent moment.

      “You’re still on the inactive list,” said Jamie, eventually. It was a statement rather than a question.

      “That’s correct,” replied Frankenstein.

      “Why?”

      “I would have thought that was obvious. I’m dangerous. I’m of no Operational use to anyone.”

      “You’re dangerous three days of the month,” said Jamie. “And I’m obviously not suggesting you go out during them. But the rest of the time—”

      “I’m sorry,” interrupted Frankenstein. “As always, I’m curious as to why you think this is any of your business?”

      Jamie felt his face fill with angry heat. “I’ll tell you why it’s my business,” he said. “It’s my business because I risked my life, and the lives of four other people, to drag you out of that theatre in Paris and bring you home safe. That’s why.”

      “Why did you do it, though?” asked Frankenstein. “Why did you risk so much to rescue me?”

      “Why?” asked Jamie, leaning forward in his chair. “What the hell do you mean, why? Because we’re on the same side. Because I thought we were friends. Because I didn’t want you to die. Take your pick from any of those. Dante would have killed you if we hadn’t got there when we did, and now all you can do is drink whisky and ask me stupid questions? What the hell is wrong with you?”

      “You’re lying to yourself, Jamie,” said Frankenstein. The monster’s tone was even, maddeningly so. “Why did you rescue me?”

      “Because what happened to you was my fault,” shouted Jamie. “If I hadn’t listened to Tom Morris, then everything on Lindisfarne would have happened differently. You wouldn’t have fallen, or been bitten, or lost your memory. So when we found out you were still alive, I couldn’t let you die, OK? I had to find you and bring you home. Do you understand? I had to.”

      Frankenstein smiled at him, an open expression that seemed full of genuine warmth. “I know, Jamie,” he said, his voice low. “And if you think I don’t appreciate what you did, then you’re sorely mistaken, I promise you. I owe you my life, truly I do. But we both know why you did what you did. Because you felt guilty, because you believed that rescuing me would atone for the mistake you believe you made last year. Which, as I’ve tried to tell you a thousand times, was never your fault in the first place. Bad things happen, Jamie. They do. You trusted a senior Operator that you had no reason not to and things went wrong. You blamed yourself and I understand that. But you rescued me, you brought me home, and now you can put down that weight you’ve been carrying around with you since I fell. I meant it when I said I owed you my life, Jamie. But that doesn’t mean you get to tell me how to live the rest of it.”

      Jamie felt his anger dissipate, and slumped back into his chair.

      “I get it,” he said. “I get how bad Paris was. I mean, I don’t really, but I can guess.”

      “It’s not just Paris,” said Frankenstein. “Dante, Latour, they’re only part of it.”

      “So what is it?” asked Jamie.

      “It’s impossible for you to understand,” said Frankenstein. “I’d buried so many of the things I’ve done, buried them so deeply that I’d been able to convince myself that maybe I wasn’t the monster everyone claimed, that maybe the good I’ve done could outweigh the bad. But it can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

      “Why not?” said Jamie. “Why shouldn’t it?”

      “Because СКАЧАТЬ