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she. It’s like we’re a bunch of tigers running with wolves. We like their company to a

degree…”

“And occasionally we’ll eat one…” Marcus and his tasteless jokes.

“But they’re just not the same as we are. And now Angus has met a female tiger.

Yummy!”

“The hormones must be whipping through your system like a tornado. And maybe

through hers too. I wonder if that’s what triggered her switch to iron metabolism?

Hmmm…” Marcus sounded intrigued again. “I’m going to need a blood sample from you,

brother. And one from your tigress, if you can manage it.” I had long ago become used to

being a guinea pig for Marcus. He would get his blood, of course. I owed him that much, and

more.

“I wonder if we should pay you guys a visit.” Fergus sounded thoughtful.

A twinge of jealousy shot through me, but I suppressed it. “I think you should. Marcus

can do his blood tests, and Rebecca can meet the family, poor girl.”

Fergus sounded pleased. “I’ll start organising. We’ll stay in a hotel, obviously. Your

house is too small for all of us.”

“I’ve got things I need to finish up here,” Marcus said gruffly. He didn’t like to be

rushed.

Fergus sighed exaggeratedly. “Forty-eight hours, then, brother.” Click, and they were

gone.

It was still dark outside when the alarm went off in the morning, ripping me away from

the ghostly memories of some strangely gratifying dream. I swung my legs over the side of

the bed, struggling to wake up. I knew that if I lay my head down for just one more minute, I

would wake up hours later, late for school and in loads of trouble. It had happened before.

Often.

I blinked owlishly as light flooded my room. Mark stood in my doorway, grinning, his

finger still on the switch. I lunged at him, and almost caught him, but he slipped away

downstairs, laughing triumphantly. I sat back down on the bed as memories of yesterday

unexpectedly poured into my head. I looked around at my bedroom, surprised at how

normal everything felt. I was still worried about getting to school on time, for goodness

sake. The ordinariness was comforting. I can do this, I thought.

I had a quick shower and dressed in a clean uniform, strapping the ungainly knee brace

around my leg almost as an afterthought. It was all about keeping up appearances. I tied my

still wet hair back in a rudimentary plait, brushed my teeth, and hobbled downstairs, crutch

free. Much better.

Mum had left for work while I was showering, and Mark had finished his breakfast, and

was sitting in the corner of the sitting room at the computer, clearly deeply immersed in

what he was reading. Joe had left soon after Mum. He had never been an early riser before,

but now he was seeing some girl, and he liked to be at her house early to walk with her to

college. Love in action – changing the habits of a lifetime.

“Time to go, Sis. I’ll walk with you today.” Mark stood near the door suddenly, bag

slung over his shoulder.

“You don’t need to do that, Mark. My knee is fine now. And what about Harry?”

“I’ll send him a text. I know your knee is fine. I’m more worried about you trying to rip

people’s throats out and suchlike. What will the neighbours say?” He burst out laughing

again. I glared balefully at him. “No, seriously, Rebecca, I think I’ll keep an eye on you until your iron levels have stabilised. I thought you were going to die yesterday.” He shrugged.

I was grateful for his uncharacteristic concern. “Thanks Mark. I’ll get my stuff.”

The walk to school was uneventful. Mark had stopped teasing me about blood and

throats and things like that. Maybe he was worried that we would be overheard, and

someone would take his ridiculous banter seriously. He was taking this secret keeping

business seriously. Good. I wasn’t ready to be outed yet.

Mark left me at the gate and went to find Harry. I made my way to my first lesson of

the day – maths – trying to remember to limp. The knee brace helped.

“Freakface!”

Oh crap. Shanice again. I sighed, irritated. I’d been thinking about this afternoon, and

seeing Angus again. I’d also been trying to dismiss those intrusive thoughts and
not
think about him and how he looked and smelled and felt. It took a lot of concentration to think

such conflicting things at the same time. Shanice interrupted that concentration, and I was

suddenly angry with her. I turned abruptly.

“What!” I almost barked at her.

She smirked at me and took a few steps forward so that her face hovered near mine.

“Ooh, Freakface here is getting
cross
with me. Ooh, what am I going to do?” I smelled her fetid breath as she leaned even closer, and heard the tittering of her friends and fellow

bullies in the background. I should theoretically have been afraid of her, all two hundred

pounds of malice and spite, but I wasn’t. Not anymore. When something really big happens

in your life, I guess you forget to sweat the small stuff. I was tired of always trying to avoid this big reeking nemesis of mine.

“Back off,” I growled at her.

I saw the change in her eyes, the intention, and her face hardened. I was prepared for

the blow, and swayed backwards as her hand shot out, glancing off my chin and shooting

past my left ear. She was suddenly off balance, her face even closer, her nose a tempting

target. I put my right hand out and hit her in the face with my palm, feeling the crunch of

breaking bone as her nose was squashed against her cheeks, feeling the spattering of blood

on my arm and face. She squealed and lurched backwards, tripping over her bag, and

landing with a thud on her large backside. I stood and watched her, waiting for retaliation,

but none came. She held her shattered nose and sobbed.

The first thing I noticed was the intensely alluring smell of blood. I lifted my right hand

and looked at my palm. Shanice’s blood was smeared and splattered across it like some gory

Rorschach test. I had an almost irresistible urge to lick that thick crimson liquid from my

skin. But Mark was swiftly at my side, grabbing my wrist and turning my face to look at him,

mouthing
NO,
and pulling me away. I looked at him through a red haze, and I realised what I had almost done. The haze faded slowly as I stood staring into my brother’s eyes, trying to

anchor myself, to get back to being normal. Then I was back, and I was suddenly very

frightened.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” Mark repeated over and over, his eyes on mine, his hands clamped

around my wrists. I gazed back at him, wishing that he could be right, and knowing that he

wasn’t. I nodded, signalling the return of my control, and he released my wrists, and we

turned to face the commotion that had evolved from my clash with Shanice.

She was on her feet now, still sobbing, while one of her friends patted her gingerly on

the back. My maths teacher, Mr Townsend, was standing nearby with his hands on his hips,

frowning. I watched him, but I could feel the horrified glances of the bystanders who had

witnessed the encounter.

“What happened here, Shanice?” He asked the instigator first. I was annoyed, but it’s

always that way. The person who got hurt is assumed to be the victim, whether they started

the whole mess or not.

“She hid be!” Shanice gestured towards me with her free hand. The other was still

wrapped protectively around her squashed nose. Blood was oozing briskly from between

her fingers. I held my breath, not wanting to get a whiff of that again.

“Rebecca?”

“She tried to hit me first.” I felt I had to defend myself. Mr Townsend frowned again.

“Right. You two are both suspended for the rest of the day. I’ll be telling Mr Parker

about this, and I’m sure he will want to discuss this with both of you tomorrow.” The threat

was there, and as threats go, it was a pretty good one. Mr Parker, our headmaster

transformed into a terrifying giant of a man with a legendary temper when he was annoyed.

If I hadn’t been so worried about my own craziness, I would have been suitably anxious

about the idea of having to explain this fracas to him.

“Now go home and get cleaned up! Show’s over!” He rounded on the spectators and

they scattered.

I turned to Mark. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

He smiled and nodded. “No worries, Sis. Go home now, have a shower, and go see

Angus. The neighbours will just have to think what they want.” He chuckled again. I had to

smile.

“See you later,” I said hopefully.

“Bet on it. I’ll be there straight after school. Go now.” He waved me off.

I walked home slowly, wondering how my fourteen year old brother had managed to

grow up so quickly. I realised that he must have somehow sensed the danger in me, and

he’d decided to protect me from myself. I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude and

love and admiration for my brother. I owed him big.

Angus

When Rebecca rang the doorbell at ten that morning, I thought that she had decided to

skip school for the day. But when she told me what had happened, and more importantly,

what had almost happened, I realised that it was a bit worse than I had thought.

Rebecca sat curled in her corner on the three seater sofa, her eyes filled with anguish

as she described her near catastrophic encounter with the smell of fresh blood, and how

much she had wanted to taste it.

“It could have been a lot worse,” I told her. “You did fairly well, actually. For one, you

didn’t actually lick the blood on your hand, no matter how much you wanted to. And

secondly, you didn’t go for Shanice’s neck either.”

“You haven’t met Shanice, have you,” she said dryly. I laughed.

“Mark saved me. I think he knew something like this would happen.”

“I am really going to have to get him a big present some time soon.”

“I think he wants the kitten,” she smiled at me. Speak of the devil. It sauntered in to the

sitting room from wherever it had been hiding and mewled at Rebecca. She picked it up and

it sat purring on her lap, clearly satisfied with the situation.

“Rebecca, whether you like her or not, the fact that you didn’t bite Shanice when you

smelled her blood is a very good sign. I would never have been able to do that when I was

your age. I think that’s why our father kept us out of school. Boys fight, and blood gets

spilled. It’s one of those things. My father knew he couldn’t take that risk. I didn’t expect

you
to be breaking noses quite so soon though.”

“She had it coming. She’s been trying to bully me for ten years.” She paused, her brow

furrowed in thought. “The strange thing was that I really enjoyed breaking her nose. It was

so satisfying. And afterwards, when I realised what I had done, I wasn’t really sorry I’d done it. I tried to
feel
sorry, but it just wasn’t there. I was a lot more upset that I’d almost exposed myself as beyond freaky by licking her blood off my hand. That really scared me.”

I nodded slowly.

“Have you ever hurt someone and actually enjoyed it?” she wanted to know, looking at

me with a worried expression, and stroking the kitten’s back. It purred even louder.

How to answer a question like that. Hmmm. I decided to be truthful. Mostly.

“Yes.” I let that sink in for a few seconds. “I think it’s because when you develop this

need and ability to kill people and drink their blood, your brain makes a kind of automatic

adjustment, so it doesn’t feel completely wrong to hurt other people.”

“So, what, am I a psychopath now?” her voice rose in panic.

“No Rebecca, you are most definitely not. Just because you enjoy hurting someone

when it becomes necessary, it doesn’t mean that you are now going to run about murdering

and torturing people indiscriminately. Intellectually you know that that would be wrong, so

you will try to avoid it. But when you have to hurt someone, you will, and you won’t feel bad

about it. It’s kind of a self defence mechanism.”

She sat quietly, trying to absorb and process my reasoning, and after a while she

nodded.

“I get it.” But she didn’t look too happy about it. “Do you think I can still go back to

school now?”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. I always expected to finish, but now it all seems so pointless. Problem is,

if I drop out now, Mum will suspect the worst.” She laughed suddenly. “Well, no, she

couldn’t, could she? She’d think I had
human
problems, like being pregnant or something like that.” She looked at me and blushed. I tried to think of something else. Being in the

same room as Rebecca Harding was difficult enough, but even thinking about her being

pregnant, and how she’d get that way, well, that became excruciating. Even without

factoring myself into the equation.

“I need to learn how to do this. Yesterday it didn’t seem so scary. I suppose because it

wasn’t quite as real as it is today.”

“That reminds me. I’ve got some iron tablets for you.”

“Do I have to take them?” I knew she meant
do I have to be this?

“You are an iron metaboliser, Rebecca. Whether you want to be one or not. You need

iron, because if you don’t take it, you could die, or you could tear someone’s throat out in

desperation eventually.” She looked shocked by my harsh words. I leaned forwards, and

continued. “The best thing you can do is accept it and learn to control it.” Tears were