Department 19: Zero Hour by Will Hill

Lords, hear us, we beg.”
    This is too perfect,
thought Jamie. He set his microphone to external, twisted the volume up to full, and stepped silently out of the shadows.
    “Don’t move,” he bellowed. “Stay right where you are.”
    The screams that pierced the quiet of the graveyard were satisfyingly loud and high-pitched.
    Two of the teenagers tipped backwards on to the grass, their eyes and mouths wide, and began to crawl frantically, digging at the dirt with their fingers, dragging themselves away from the dark shape that had roared at them with a voice like something from the depths of Hell. One slumped to the ground in a dead faint, her eyes rolling back in her head, her mouth hanging open, while the last, the blond boy who had spoken, leapt to his feet and fled, his face a wide, gasping picture of unadulterated terror.
    He ran for the cover of the trees, his arms and legs pumping. As he reached them, Qiang stepped silently out from between the trunks, and the teenager skidded to the ground, screaming as he fell. He scrambled to his feet and backtracked, sobbing hysterically, searching desperately for a way out. A last-gasp break for the main path saw him confronted by the moving shadow of Ellison; at the sight of her the teenager screamed again, then slumped to his knees and threw back his head.
    “Do it!” he howled. “Do it then, oh Dark Lords!”
    Jamie grinned behind his visor. He had circled round the fire, cutting off the two crawling teenagers and herding them back as they cried and blubbered and insisted that they hadn’t meant it, they had never thought it would work, they’d changed their minds, oh God, they’d changed their minds. Beside the fallen gravestone, the girl who had fainted was groaning as she slowly returned to consciousness.
    “So you want to be vampires?” asked Jamie, his voice deafening and almost inhuman through his microphone’s distortion filters.
    “No!” screamed the girl. “No, we’re sorry!”
    The blond boy was still on his knees. “Yes!” he cried. “Ignore these weaklings! I want to be a vampire!”
    Jamie walked silently across the clearing. Two of the teenagers whimpered and cowered away as he passed; he didn’t so much as glance at them. He crouched down in front of the kneeling boy and twisted off his microphone’s filters.
    “No,” he said, his voice now a normal tone and volume. “You don’t.”
    The teenager frowned. “What are you?” he said. “You aren’t what we summoned.”
    “You’re right,” said Jamie. “We’re something else. Get off your knees and stand with your friends.”
    The boy got slowly to his feet, his face starting to colour pink. Jamie wasn’t sure whether it was anger or embarrassment, although he suspected the teenager’s friends would not let him forget ‘Do it then, oh Dark Lords’ in a hurry. He staggered across the clearing and hauled the girl who had fainted to her feet. She protested half-heartedly as he dragged her across to the others, and faced the three dark figures.
    “What is this?” asked the teenager, a petulant tone creeping into his voice. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “What’s your name?” asked Jamie.
    “Why should I tell you that?” replied the boy.
    “Because you’ll be arrested if you don’t,” said Jamie. “And you’ll spend at least one night somewhere much worse than a graveyard.”
    The teenager frowned. “I read Kevin McKenna’s story,” he said. “The one he wrote before you killed him. You’re the ones he was talking about.”
    We killed him?
thought Jamie.
That’s new. I haven’t heard that before.
    “Tell me your name,” he said. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
    “You’re murderers,” said the boy, his voice high and indignant. “You kill people who haven’t done anything wrong.”
    Jamie took a step forward. “Do you really want to be right about that?” he asked. “Think hard.”
    The boy swallowed. “Chris,” he said. “My name is