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I drank the coffee, watching Rebecca, seeing her vulnerability, feeling the quick

intelligence and courage in her mind. I sensed her confusion, and what could have been the

beginnings of desire, and I felt intense satisfaction. But it was gruelling having to sit there with her so close, so alluring and so easily overcome. I waited as long as I could, and then I left. She will never know how much it cost me, to walk out of that door and leave her

untouched.

Rebecca

Mark sat with that kitten for ages, feeding it milk with a teaspoon, and stroking its little

head. It seemed incredible that a teenage boy who seemed to be so disconnected and

disinterested in pretty much everything around him could be so fascinated with something

as simple as a kitten. It was a charming little thing, though, purring and rubbing its head

against Mark’s fingers. I could definitely understand the attraction.

Mum seemed a bit more dazed than usual for the rest of the evening. Whether it was

due to suddenly having a cat in the house, or the unexpected visit from our neighbour-to-

be, she didn’t say.

Joe went back to watching football on television. I sat next to him, gazing at the moving

figures flickering across the screen, but without actually watching the game. I don’t like

football, but I didn’t want to be left alone with my thoughts tonight. I tried to ignore the

intrusive images of Angus the almost-stranger, but I was only half successful. And when his

face shimmered across my imagination like a dark prophecy, it made me feel deeply uneasy,

and disturbingly intrigued.

Angus

I drove for an hour in silence, pondering my extreme reaction to Rebecca Harding. It

was hard to rationalise something like that. I felt tremendously guilty about contemplating

killing her family. They seemed to be very likeable people, especially Mark. It was much

easier to think now that I was out of the clutches of that heady aroma. That kind of desire

was crippling, and the possibility that I would always feel that way around her worried me. I

was used to being more or less invincible.

I turned my thoughts reluctantly to tonight’s mission. I had two people to take care of,

to reprogram. I wondered whether I would be able to somehow engineer it that they too

would be abandoned, their pelvises shattered. Probably not. It would raise too many

logistical problems. It was going to be difficult enough to snatch two adults from a house

with another occupant, even if the third occupant was eighty-two and hard of hearing.

I gave up thinking about it. There were too many variables. Nothing was set in stone.

Tonight was about reconnaissance firstly, and if the opportunity arose to take them, then I

would do it. I turned the CD player on. The familiar introductory rhythm of Spaceman filled

the car. I liked the Killers. I remembered that Mark had said that Rebecca liked them too.

Irony, my constant companion.

Rebecca

I couldn’t sleep at first, I lay tossing and turning, twisting the sheets around my burning

limbs. And when I finally drifted to sleep, I dreamed of Angus - huge, vivid, terrifying

dreams, and I woke that morning to the screeching of my alarm clock. I felt drained and

listless, but I dragged myself out of bed and downstairs to say goodbye to my mother before

she hurried out of the door. She was flitting around the kitchen searching for her mobile

phone, but she stopped as soon as she saw me.

“Rebecca!” she looked concerned. “Are you OK?”

“I don’t feel very well, Mum,” I admitted reluctantly. I didn’t want her to fret.

Surprisingly, she didn’t.

“Well, baby, I think you should stay home today. You’re probably exhausted from going

back to school so early after the accident. Go on, back to bed, and I’ll call Mr Parker and let him know you won’t be in today.”

I was a bit taken aback. Mum always seemed so indecisive, but then I remembered how

cool and calm she had been during the occasional emergency that had befallen our family.

Mum only panicked when there was no real reason to do so. Even when I had been knocked

down by that idiot, she had been worried, but she hadn’t actually panicked. This was no

emergency, sure, but I was still impressed. And relieved. I nodded my head, and stumbled

back upstairs. I remade my bed, crawled into it, and fell asleep almost instantly.

Angus

Turns out it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I arrived around midnight outside the small

terraced house. The garden out front was overgrown, the windows dirty with paint peeling

in long untidy strips from the window sills. I sensed at once that there were three people

inside, two upstairs sleeping in the same bedroom, one downstairs probably asleep on a

sofa. I reached out and gently touched the mind of the closest slumberer. I’d always found it

easier to feel minds when people slept, and the enamel of their thoughts had dissolved.

Tonight was no exception. The sleeper downstairs was male, by the glimpse I got of his

dreams, although it was hard to tell sometimes. Must be the thirty four year old son. I

probed a bit deeper, and found something that surprised me. On balance, a fairly decent

soul, but very afraid of his mother, and deeply resentful of her constricting hold over him.

He hated her. Interesting.

I reached out slightly further, and felt a very different mind, fuzzy and confused, and

clinging to distant memories. She was terrified of her daughter, and did not want her here,

but she was too scared to confront her.

I reached even further and felt what must have been the mind of the man’s mother and

the elderly woman’s daughter. Vile revolting cesspit of a mind. There was smugness there, a

sense of controlling and harshness, and a memory of satisfaction at the horror in the eyes of

her son as she stood on his kitten, and pleasure as she felt the breaking of tiny bones.

I looked for a way into the house, and found it. Someone had left a window upstairs

open just enough for me to unlatch it and climb silently onto the upstairs landing. I made my

way into the small upstairs bedroom, and using the trail of my target’s mind, I placed a

muffling hand over her mouth and snapped her neck just as she began to wake up. I paused.

There was no break in the rhythm of the elderly woman’s snores. I lifted the woman’s body

and carried her carefully to the head of the stairs, where I held her upright, her head

hanging oddly from her shoulders. I launched her lifeless body down the stairs, and was out

through the window, and in my car before the son woke up. His grandmother slept through

everything.

As I drove home I marvelled at how well it had all gone. The son would find his mother

at the bottom of the stairs and assume that she had broken her neck in the fall. The police

would hopefully make the same assumption. Neat and easy.

I arrived back at the hotel at about three in the morning. I don’t sleep every day;

sometimes I can go for weeks without sleeping at all, but tonight I felt worn-out. I fell asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow.

I dreamed that someone had poured flame over me, and that I was trying to run away

from the unseen attacker, but I couldn’t seem to move my legs. I watched in horror as my

feet melted into the ground, pulling me down. I struggled to pull free, but I was dog-tired,

and my limbs became heavier with each convulsive tug. A shrill sound buzzed in my ears; I

recognised the doorbell, but I couldn’t get up, so it went unanswered, and I surrendered

again into the clutches of my nightmare.

Angus

Fergus phoned at eight in the morning to tell me that the house was ready for

occupation, and that he’d even taken the liberty of furnishing it. Fergus loved stuff like that; the more organising something required the better. I told him that I’d met Rebecca Harding,

and he wanted to know what she was like. I thought about that for a few seconds.

“I’m not really sure, Fergus,” I tried to explain. “She seems to be quite rational and

fairly normal, except for the fact that she’s definitely one of us. This could go either way, I guess.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. Is Marcus there?”

“Hey, Angus,” Marcus’ voice was suddenly audible. Speakerphone, obviously.

“Marcus, you were right. She’s been raised a vegetarian. Loads of tea and fibre too.”

Tea and fibre tended to sequester any available iron before it was even absorbed from the

gut. Her whole lifestyle seemed to be conspiring against her. Good for normal people,

maybe, but not for a vampire. I noticed that I was becoming more comfortable with that

word now that I knew there were others out there.

“She needs iron, Angus. But not too much, or she could lose control.” I remembered

the heady, barely controllable rush that followed a massive dose of iron, and shuddered. I

sometimes struggled to control it, and I’d had five decades of practice. What chance would

Rebecca have?

“How much, Marcus?” Marcus had managed to calculate our daily iron requirements.

One gram per day for almost normal activity levels, two grams for massively enhanced

strength and speed and sensory ability. Three grams was pushing it a bit, rendering us barely

conscious in a vortex of power and vibrant intensity, and in my case, barely controllable

rage. It was intriguing to see how differently we responded to our drug. Marcus would get

this feverish glitter in his eyes, the pupils massively dilated so that his eyes looked black, and he would start scrawling gibberish (to me) over all available surfaces, muttering away to

himself. Fergus flitted faster than ever, his hands skittering across his many computer

keyboards, reams of code reflecting spookily in his black eyes. Me, I liked to break things

and, before I learned to control my urges, people too.

I’d managed to tweak the dose of iron that I took on a daily basis to give me the level of

physical force that I preferred. One point two grams. Equivalent to twelve tablets of ferrous

fumarate, or half a human. Modern medicine saved people in ways that it didn’t fully

appreciate.

“I’d start her on about five hundred milligrams per day and work up from there.

Hopefully the gradual emergence of her powers will help her to learn control sooner rather

than later.” I heard the apprehension in his voice. He wasn’t sure. Great.

“OK. Thanks for the house, Fergus. I’ll move in today.”

“No problem, brother.” Click, and they were gone.

I packed a suitcase full of my clothes, mostly dark jeans, and open necked shirts. An

occasional jumper for appearance’s sake only. I didn’t feel the cold, but it didn’t do to walk around in a snowstorm in jeans and a shirt. It attracted attention. I booked out of the hotel

and drove to my newest house, stopping along the way to buy some food for myself and for

the kitten.

The house looked much the same on the outside, except the garden was much tidier,

and the window frames had been freshly painted. The inside was dramatically different,

though. Wooden floors, plush rugs, leather furniture, muted down-lighting. The kitchen was

modern, with an enormous aluminium refrigerator, marble top counters, and a top of the

range espresso machine. The main bedroom upstairs was dwarfed by a huge wooden sleigh

bed neatly made up with white cotton bedding. I was impressed. Even for Fergus, this was a

remarkable achievement. I liked it.

I packed my few groceries away, noticing that Fergus had even remembered to stock

the kitchen with crockery and cutlery. Amazing. I dug two small porcelain bowls out of the

recesses of a cupboard, and placed them on the floor. I was looking forward to having some

company, even if it was only feline.

I waited until just after three, when I sensed that Mark Harding was walking down the

street to his house. I gave him a few minutes to get inside the house before I walked across

the road, and rang the doorbell. He answered it after a few seconds, gently cradling the

white kitten in his arms. He grinned at me.

“Damn! I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

I grinned back. “You’re welcome to come and visit her any time, Mark.”

“Thanks. I’ll definitely do that. She’s gorgeous.” He tickled the kitten under her chin,

and she purred loudly.

I froze. Something was wrong. I closed my eyes and let my mind roam through the

house. Someone was upstairs, but it was impossible to say who it was. I sensed pain and

fear, and incredible frailty.

“Who else is here?” I asked Mark abruptly. He looked startled.

“Rebecca. She wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home today. Why?”

“She’s sick,” I told him as I darted past him and up the stairs. It wasn’t strictly true, but I couldn’t tell her brother that she was dying. Not yet.

I was shocked at what I saw when I opened her bedroom door. Rebecca lay there, still

in a t-shirt and sleep shorts, deathly still, with an unhealthy sheen over her white face. She didn’t even look at me as I lifted her from the tangled nest of sheets on her bed. Her chest

rose and fell, desperately sucking air into her failing lungs. I carried her hastily down the

stairs, past her worried looking brother, and across the road to my house, indicating to Mark

to follow me. He trotted behind me, still carrying the kitten.