“If you’re heading back to The Hollows, where does that leave me and the rest of the Lycanthrope?”

“I need you to stay here and prepare for the final attack,” the man said, and he sounded as if he were growing tired of Sparky’s questions.

“But…”

“I’ve told you, I’m not interested in excuses. What happened in Wasp Water was just the start – a practice if you like, for when we attack the bigger towns, cities - London,” the man said, in his low husky voice, as if speaking from behind a mask.

“If only we had…” Sparky started, “Somebody like Kiera. Now she is loose, she’ll go looking for Ravenwood. She’s not stupid – she’ll know that he holds the key to breaking the code – she’ll find him and the code. That’s what she does, that’s what she’s good at – I’ve seen her in action.”

“And so have I,” the man said. “Don’t you think I know that she’ll go looking for the doctor? Why do you think her escape was made so easy?”

“So you let her escape?” Sparky sniggered.

“Of course – I needed someone to find the good doctor and she won’t go far – she’ll never even get out of Wasp Water,” the faceless man said.

“And then you want us to go after her and bring her and the doctor back…”

“There will be no need for that,” the man said, with a certain air of confidence.

“How can you be so sure?” Sparky asked.

“Because Kiera and I are friends now,” the man said. “She’ll bring Ravenwood to me of her own free will.”

“Why would she do that?” Sparky barked, and like him I was curious to know why I would do such a thing.

“Because, Kiera trusts me,” the man whispered.

“So she knows you then?” Sparky asked. “But nobody knows you – no one has ever seen your face.”

“Kiera has seen it,” the man almost seemed to laugh. “Kiera sees everything!”

Hearing a noise behind me, I wheeled round and shrieked in terror as I found myself staring into the menacing face of a Vampyrus. Stumbling backwards, I moved away from it. The Vampyrus came forward brandishing two hooked claws. Its muscles rippling beneath its black and silver flecked fur.

“I’ve found her!” he roared triumphantly.

Before his deep, menacing voice had stopped reverberating off the corridor walls, Sparky and the man with the shadow across his face were coming towards me.

“She knows where the code is!’ the Vampyrus hissed.

My lower jaw began to chatter uncontrollably as I continued to move backwards up the corridor. My stomach began to cramp again, and I suddenly felt hot – as if I were edging my way backwards into a furnace.

I wanted to speak –but my lips flapped together as if I were blowing a raspberry.

“What is it you are trying to say?” Sparky asked smugly.

“R – R – RUN!” I screamed as I turned on the spot and raced away up the corridor.

I ran as hard and as fast as I could and for a moment – just the briefest of moments - my legs seemed to take on a life of their own as they began to propel me forwards at an incredible speed. But out of my peripheral vision, I saw something big and dark leap from one of the rooms that I sped past and come crashing into me. Whatever it was hit me with such force that I slammed into the corridor wall. I gasped as my head made contact with the floor with a sickening thud. I opened my eyes and screamed as I stared into the face of that man. But I couldn’t see his face, not really. It was as if he were wearing a wide brimmed hat which cast a dark shadow across his features. But the shadows moved, twisted and contorted out of shape, as if whatever hid beneath them was writhing back and forth in pain.

Then, everything seemed to swirl in and out around me – from light to dark and back again as I fought to remain conscious. I dragged myself along the floor by my fingertips, desperate not to be caught by him. And then I screamed, the pain exploding like a bomb going off in my leg. I glanced back in horror to see that a wolf had sunk his razor-sharp teeth into my leg and was now slowly dragging me back towards him. But it wasn’t just any wolf – it was Nik who was taking me back to my captors.

“What about your redemption?” I screamed at him.

I shut my eyes against the sight of his drooling and grinning jaws.

“No Nik,” I pleaded. “I thought you had my back!”

My leg felt as if it was on fire. I could hear the grunts and the growls of the others as they approached. I needed to look…I needed to find out what they were going to do to me. I opened my eyes to see the Vampyrus bring his meaty fist down towards me. Everything went black and…

Chapter Twenty-Four

…there was a red light winking on and off in the darkness.

“Who’s there?” I croaked, sitting up on a bed. My body shivered uncontrollably, and I had never felt so ill. My skin was burning up, stabbing pains knifed through my stomach, and my back ached as if it had been stamped on. Crying out in pain, I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and the floor felt cold against my burning feet. That red light winked on and off again from the corner, but as my bleary eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I could see a square of pale light just ahead. I stumbled towards it, my legs buckling beneath me. With my hands stretched out, I felt like someone trying to find their way blindfolded. Then my fingers brushed against something hard and cold – it was metal. A door. That square of pale light was coming through a hatch set into it. I was in a cell.

Had I been captured again? Was I back in my cell in the zoo?

My brains felt scrambled, and my heart thumped so hard that it felt as if my eyes were going to explode in their sockets.

I banged weakly on the door with my fists, and a dull thud echoed back at me. The red winking light moved in the darkness – it was coming towards me, then dropped to the floor and disappeared.

“Where am I?” I whispered, and knocked the cold sweat out of my eyes.

“You’re somewhere safe,” a voice said, and a strong set of arms wrapped themselves around me and held me close. My head rested against their chest, and the faint smell of tobacco coming from their shirt made me realise that the red light I had seen had been the end of a cigarette being smoked in the dark.

“Potter?” I barely managed.

“I’ve got you, sweet-cheeks,” he whispered, guiding me back towards the bed in the corner of the cell.

“Where am I?” I asked again as he gently laid me down.

“In the cells beneath the police station,” he answered, his voice was soft, like a dream floating over me.

“Police station?” I mumbled.

“That’s right.” he said, his voice still a whisper. “We’re safe here.”

“I’m thirsty,” I told him.

“I’ll get you some water,” he said.

“I don’t want water,” I groaned as the pains in my stomach twisted like a corkscrew. “I want some…”

“No, Kiera,” Potter said, and I could feel one of his strong hands stroke my sweat-dampened hair from my brow.

With my eyes closed against the pain, I gripped his arms and pulled him close. “Please Potter,” I begged. “Just a little – it will take the pain away.”

“No,” he said firmly and pushed me down onto the bed.

“Please…”

“No,” he insisted.

“I hate you!” I spat.

“Don’t most people?” he said, and as I flopped back onto the bed, I could picture his face with that wry smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

I opened my mouth to speak and said…

“…What are the odds of me escaping a cell only to find myself freely sleeping in one on my first night of freedom?”

“I’m sorry,” I heard Nik say.

I opened my eyes to see him standing in the doorway. His giant fur covered frame almost blocking out the pale light that came from the corridor outside.

“Sorry for what?” I asked him.

“For biting through that wire,” he grunted.

“Let’s just forget it and get some sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow I’m going to go and get my friends I left by the fountain and then go and find Doctor Ravenwood. You and me can both go our separate ways.”

Nik came into the cell and lay on the floor beside my bed.

“Why don’t you just run, Kiera – save yourself?” he asked.

I reached down and from my rucksack I pulled out a can of the tinned fruit that I had taken from the supermarket. On the front of the tin was a picture of a ripe juicy apple that had been cut in half.

“See that apple, Nik?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“You see those seeds? If you took them and planted them in the ground each one would grow into another apple tree. In turn those trees would produce apples and each apple would be full of seeds which again if planted would make several more apple trees and so on it goes.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.

“Well if you just kept on planting those seeds, in the end you would end up with a world covered in apple trees. That’s just the same as the vampires. The more the Vampyrus feed on humans, the more vampires will just keep on multiplying until in the end…I won’t need to run, because there will be no place left to run to. The world will be infested with vampires. I will have to stop running someday – so today seems as good a day as any.” Closing my eyes, I turned towards the wall, and added, “Instead of having a world of apple trees there will be a world of…

“…pain,” somebody said.

“Hopefully her pain has gone,” another voice said.

I opened my eyes to see a teenage boy and man standing in the doorway of my police cell staring in at me. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, not believing what I was seeing. The boy was Isidor and he didn’t look like a boy at all really, it was just that he looked dwarfed by the height of Jack Seth who stood beside him.