LITMIR.BIZ

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and as smooth as honey, full of whispered promises and dark secrets. She turned towards the fence and saw the old man on the other side of it, standing on the pavement with his hands in his pockets. For the first time since she had seen him two days ago, standing quietly on the corner of her road as she walked home from college, he was not smiling. Instead he was looking at her with an expression of great sadness.

      The fence between them was more than six feet high, green metal topped with wicked spikes, and it emboldened her. She took a step towards the old man.

      “Why are you following me?” she asked, her voice sharp. “What the hell were you doing in my garden this morning?”

      The old man’s smile returned.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “You look like someone I used to know.”

      She opened her mouth to ask who, but before she could form the words, the old man moved. He stepped into the air, as casually as most people would climb a staircase, and floated up and over the fence. His coat billowed out behind him, the sleeves riding up, and Larissa caught sight of a narrow black V tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, before he landed gently in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he closed the distance between them impossibly quickly and clamped a hand over her mouth.

      “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear. “I truly am.”

      Then he buried his face in her neck. She felt pain, so sharp it was almost sweet, and then she was gone.

      It was still dark when Larissa awoke. She was lying on the grass beneath an oak tree, and she was cold and damp with dew. Her head felt heavy and she struggled to her feet. She walked through the quiet stalls and rides of the funfair, kicking through piles of litter and abandoned food, heading towards the park gates.

      She remembered nothing about the previous night, nothing after she left her father standing in their drive. Where were Amber and the rest of the girls? How could they just leave without her – hadn’t any of them bothered to look for her when they left? In the back of her head a deep, gentle voice told her that everything was going to be all right, but she didn’t think it was.

      She didn’t think that was even close to the truth.

      The house was dark as she turned into the drive, shivering, her arms wrapped tightly around her. She hoped that her parents were worried out of their minds, but she knew they would probably not have even noticed that she hadn’t come home.

      She crept up the stairs, not because she cared if she woke anyone up, but because she didn’t want to be asked questions that she had no answers to. She would get some real sleep in a proper bed, then phone Amber and find out what had happened. Larissa undressed, lay down on her bed, pulling her duvet around her like a cocoon, and was asleep in less than a minute.

      An hour later she awoke and buried her face in her pillow so she didn’t scream. Her head was splitting in two, a huge thunderbolt of agony running through her forehead, as though someone had buried an axe in it. She rolled over, the pillow clamped to her face, her eyes wide with pain and terror, and then the hunger hit her, and she doubled up into a foetal ball. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, a pain so huge it felt as though it must have come from somewhere outside the universe, an enormous, howling emptiness that filled her entire body. She screamed into the pillow, her body convulsing, thrashing back and forth as though she was having a seizure. She screamed and screamed, and after what felt like an infinity of time, but was probably no more than a minute, the hunger subsided.

      Larissa pushed the pillow away from her face. She felt as weak as an infant, and saliva was running down her cheeks and chin in sticky rivulets. Pushing the duvet away, she rolled over and flopped out of bed, and didn’t hit her bedroom floor.

      She floated a foot above the carpet.

      Incomprehension flooded through her, and she was overcome by a terror so profound she felt her eyes begin to roll back in her head, as unconsciousness fought to claim her. She thrust her hands down and felt rough material under her fingers, and her vision cleared. The floor was still there; at least that was something. She twisted in the air, tears of panic springing involuntarily into the corners of her eyes and spilling down her cheeks, and she spun slowly, rotating so she was looking down at the floor. Then suddenly, whatever was holding her in the air was gone, and she thudded face down on to the ground.

      Larissa pushed herself to her feet, weeping openly, and stumbled out of her bedroom and into the bathroom. She had barely closed the door behind when the hunger struck again, driving her to her knees. The vacuum in her stomach and chest reared open, spilling waves of agony through her body, and she shoved her fist into her mouth and screamed around it, a muffled shriek that tore at her throat. She flopped to the bathroom floor and writhed on the cold tiles, her body spasming, her mind emptied by the enormity of the pain. She twitched, and convulsed, and waited, desperately, pleadingly, for it to pass.

      Eventually it did. She gripped the washbasin and pulled herself up in front of the mirror. It took her a few seconds to recognise the reflection in the mirror as her own; her skin was pale and beaded with sweat, her body was visibly trembling, and when she looked closely at her eyes she jammed the fist back into her mouth and screamed again.

      Dark red was spreading from the corners of her eyes, as though blood was being dripped slowly into them. The crimson was slowly diffusing through the white of her eyeballs and darkening her irises to a shiny black. Her vision was clear, and as she watched her eyes change, she wished it wasn’t; the red in her eyes seemed to be almost alive, swirling and spinning like an oil slick, darkening and pulsing in lazy motions that turned her stomach.

      The hunger hit again, a sledgehammer of agony and emptiness, and she bit down on the fist in her mouth, involuntarily, spilling blood into her mouth. And instantly, the hunger was gone, replaced by a pleasure so enormous it was heavenly. Her blood ran down her throat, and she felt her knees weaken as a feeling beyond anything she had ever felt overwhelmed her; she felt as though she could push down walls, run for a hundred miles, leap and fly like a bird.

      She felt like there was nothing she couldn’t do.

      Then the feeling was gone, and she slumped back to her knees. She hungrily sucked more blood from her hand, but the pleasure did not return. But although she didn’t know what had happened to her, although the part of her that was still recognisably Larissa was frightened beyond measure, she realised she now knew one thing, knew it with great certainty.

      Blood had taken the pain away. And if her own no longer worked, she would need some from somebody else.

      Larissa staggered to her feet, and stumbled out of the bathroom. Then she crossed the landing, and turned the handle on the door to her brother’s bedroom. He had thrown the covers off during the night, and his skin was pale, bathed in a shaft of moonlight that was creeping in between the curtains above his bed. She could see the veins in his neck pulsing steadily, and the hunger screamed and thrashed in her head, driving rational thought almost entirely out her, bellowing for her to feed, screeching and cursing in her reeling mind. She took a step towards him without even meaning to, then stopped.

      It was Liam lying there; her annoying, infuriating, beautiful, funny little brother, who had never hurt her on purpose, never hurt anyone as far as she knew. She summoned up the last of her dwindling strength, and ran from his room, slamming the door shut behind her. She heard him rise from his slumber, grumbling something inarticulate, then she was gone, sprinting down the stairs and through the front door, the street outside still dark, and she was running, away from the people she loved, away from the only home she had ever known.

      Chapter 29

      A CALCULATED RISK

      “I just want to say again how unhappy I am about this,” said Morris.

      “Do you really have to?” asked Jamie. “I think you’ve made it pretty clear already.”

      Jamie had explained his plan to Morris on their way down through the levels of the Blacklight base; he had listened incredulously before telling Jamie that there was no chance that Admiral

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