Department 19: Zero Hour Read Online Free PDF Page A

remaining hope, were two things.
    First, that he be strong enough to face his death with dignity when it finally came.
    Second, that he might yet achieve some tiny victories in his last days and weeks. Refusing to acknowledge the splendour of the food and wine served to him each night was one such victory; it infuriated Dracula to see hospitality go unappreciated, although his own belief in appropriate behaviour prevented him from showing it. No matter how choice the delicacy, how ethereal the wine, Seward responded with nothing more than perfunctory thanks. It was pathetic, if he was honest with himself, an act of stubbornness too small to be regarded as anything else. But in the position of impotence in which he found himself trapped, it was something, and something was better than nothing.
    “Good?” enquired Dracula, from the opposite end of the table.
    “Fine,” said Seward, digging his fork into the gleaming white meat.
    “In which case, I shall have the chef’s fingers removed,” said Dracula, his tone light and pleasant. “It is unacceptable for him to produce fare that is merely ‘fine’, and he has done so for several days now. Please accept my sincere apologies.”
    Seward felt a wide blade of despair slice through him.
    How long did you think it would take him to put an end to this?
he asked himself.
He sees you all too well.
    The chef in question was human, kidnapped from one of the finest restaurants in Paris during the first days of Dracula’s occupation of the château. His disappearance had caused widespread speculation; on the rare occasions that Seward was able to see a television, usually in the vampire quarters in the cellars as he was being dragged back to his room after yet another session of torture, he had seen the man’s face plastered all over the news. Opinion appeared evenly divided between the chef having committed suicide and having run off with one of his waitresses, a pretty Estonian girl who was also missing. The waitress, whose name was Ekaterina, was, in fact, standing beside the door of the dining room, her newly red eyes glowing, her expression one of professional neutrality; the vampire who had been sent to the French capital to acquire the chef had simply not been able to resist her.
    “The food is excellent,” said Seward, his voice low. “As it always is. As well you know.”
    Dracula smiled. “I have dined on delicacies you cannot conceive of, my dear Admiral. Of course I know. Just as I knew that, once your childish pretence had ceased to amuse me, it would not survive a threat to someone you consider innocent. You are so easily predicted, and so weak. So very, very weak.”
    Seward raised his fork to his mouth, chewed the piece of lobster, then spat it wetly on to the surface of the table. A tremor of anger rippled across Dracula’s face, and Seward let a smile full of belligerence rise on to his own.
    “Did you predict that?” he asked, his tone warm and polite, then swept an arm across the table. His plates, wine glass, water glass, and cutlery crashed to the floor in an explosion of noise and flying china. “Or that?”
    Ekaterina’s eyes widened with shock, but she didn’t move; she had clearly learnt quickly that it was unwise to do anything inside the château without the express permission of its lord and master. Dracula half rose out of his chair, then paused; for a terrible moment, his eyes locked with Seward’s, red spilling into their corners. Then the ancient vampire settled back into his seat and reached for his glass of wine.
    “Tantrums are for children,” he said, and took a long sip. “Such behaviour is beneath you, my friend.”
    “You threaten to torture an innocent man to make a point, then lecture
me
about behaviour?” asked Seward, his voice trembling.
    “I made my threat only when
your
behaviour was becoming intolerable,” said Dracula. “We can go back and forth on this matter all evening, if you wish?”
    “It would be a waste