Having said all of that, though, the likelihood of a deliberate and well planned raid on that place was remote now that both Jack and Anne were dead. But a spontaneous and haphazard one could be just as dangerous.
The rest of us would work together as a kind of mobile assault team. Fergus had convinced us to start with the bunker where the females were held. His motivation for launching our strike here was simple. Clear the bunker out and you had a preassembled mass grave just waiting to be filled with as many corpses as you could find. And we were planning on finding plenty.
Mark volunteered to drop as many of the bloodfeeders that we could find at the bunker. A series of experiments conducted by an overjoyed Marcus had demonstrated that Mark was able to distinguish between male and female hearts with unerring accuracy. But when Mark realised that he would have to destroy hundreds of lives again, he'd seemed a bit hesitant. The sheer scale of the destruction gave him pause, until Hugo had helpfully pointed out that the death Mark could give them was a million times more humane than the one Oliver and I offered. No arguments there. Mark had nodded gravely. Oliver had looked bitterly disappointed again.
Rebecca seemed resigned to staying behind. I asked her why she'd agreed to remain in Russia when she was obviously burning to go with us, and she'd smiled gently and said that she knew I would prefer her to stay safe, just as she would prefer that I keep myself as much out of harm's way as I could in the coming days.
"I will try," I promised her.
"I know," she replied gently. "I know. And look after my brother, Angus."
"That's a given. Although he is probably a lot deadlier than the rest of us combined."
"I know," she sighed again. "Just don't let him be too deadly too often."
"I know what you mean, my little love. I will try to protect him as best as I can from his capacity for mass destruction. He is still a good soul, you know. I checked."
She laughed aloud at that, but she seemed reassured. We spent the remainder of those three days discussing our future together, and relaxing in each other's company. Mark had disappeared in the interim, and reappeared only briefly, bleary eyed, and in search of batteries for the Xbox controller. Oliver had looked intrigued and followed him back to the depths of the house, but he had reappeared a few hours later, shaking his head.
"They kicked me out," he explained with a grin. "I killed all the bad guys before they had a chance to even get involved. Sore losers, the lot of them."