Department 19: Battle Lines by Will Hill Read Free Book Online Page B

happy, and Jamie made her positively blissful at times. But they were often the only things inside Blacklight that did. She was a vampire member of an organisation whose sole reason for existing was to destroy vampires, and although she had proved herself time and again since being allowed to join, there were plenty of Operators inside the Loop who still looked at her with barely concealed disgust. Part of it was the fact that she had spent her first days there in a cell on the detention level, part of it was the perception that she had endangered the life of Jamie’s mother to serve her own needs, but mostly it was the mere fact of who, and what, she was. She was surrounded by hostility, and suspicion, with no indication that either was going to end any time soon.
    At NS9 she had instantly been given a fresh start, the clean slate she knew she would never be granted at the Loop. She had been made to feel welcome and valued, and had made friends, so quickly and naturally that it had surprised her: men and women whose company she enjoyed, who made her feel normal and gave her energetic self-loathing a rest. As she drifted over Papoose Lake, descending slowly towards the wide-open doors of the NS9 hangar, she saw one of them waiting for her in the long rectangle of yellow light. She slipped easily to the ground and smiled at Tim Albertsson, who grinned back at her with his perfectly straight, perfectly white, all-American teeth.
    The tall, broad former Navy SEAL was Larissa’s handler during her secondment in the desert. He was of Scandinavian descent, as his blond hair and blue eyes would readily attest, and a member of NS9’s elite Special Operator programme.
    “Nice flight?” he asked.
    “Very nice,” she replied. “Beautiful in fact. It felt like I could see all the way to the ocean.”
    “With your eyes, you probably could,” said Tim.
    Larissa laughed. “Maybe.”
    “Dinner?” asked Tim. “I’m meeting everyone in the diner.”
    “I can’t right now,” replied Larissa. “I’ve got a meeting with the Director, and I’m going to try to call home in a few hours. But I’ll come round if I get time in between.”
    Tim nodded. “Say hello to Jamie for me if you don’t make it,” he said.
    “I will,” said Larissa, knowing that she wouldn’t.
    “Cool,” he said, and smiled widely. “I might see you later then.”
    “Maybe,” she said, and walked into the hangar, her heart thumping in her chest.
    *
    Larissa waited until the lift began to descend, then leant heavily against the metal wall.
    Her heart was refusing to slow down. Part of the reason, she knew, was Tim, with his handsome face and his hair and his casual, easy-going confidence, but it was mostly because of the realisation that had been steadily building inside her for the last week or so. It intensified whenever she was about to speak to Jamie, because it was the one thing she couldn’t tell him; the one thing she knew he wouldn’t want to hear.
    She got out of the lift on Level 1 and floated along the corridor. She never thought twice about flying inside the NS9 base, never felt self-conscious or worried that the next person she saw would give her the look of contempt she had become all too used to. Inside the base that everyone called Dreamland, the only emotion her vampire abilities provoked with any regularity was good-natured jealousy from Operators who wished they had her strength and speed.
    Larissa knocked on the door of the Director’s quarters and felt it swing slightly open. The door was rarely closed, let alone locked, and she had never seen a single guard stationed outside it; it was just one of the many ways that NS9 differed from Blacklight. She pushed it open, calling General Allen’s name as she did so.
    “Come on in,” shouted a voice.
    Larissa floated through the door. The room beyond was square with a wide desk standing to one side. On the wall opposite a vast black screen had been hung, reaching almost from