For as long as I can remember, I've been plagued by nightmares. Determined to mould me into a good hunter, my parents exposed me at a young age to the horrors of the vampire world. I was six years old when I saw my first dead body, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Noah used live vampires to demonstrate the most effective ways of killing, and he'd punish me if I cried. It was small wonder that blood and death haunted my dreams.
Tonight was worse than ever.
In my dreams, I was stalking a vampire. I wasn't sure where I was, but it was night and thick mist roiled around me like ghostly hands. My footsteps echoed on a pavement I couldn't see through the mist, but the vampire didn't seem to hear me. It kept walking, its movements quick and predatory. It was stalking, I realised.
My hand went to my belt, drawing my knife. The vampire froze and tension coiled through me. It knew I was there , but it didn't turn and face me. Instead, it kept following whatever victim moved ahead of it.
Hunt.
Find.
Kill.
I lunged. It was ridiculously easy in the end; the vampire didn't even fight back. I threw it across my hip and it landed with a bone-jarring thud on the pavement. Straddling it, I plunged the knife into the vampire's chest. Blood, hot and sticky, poured out over my hands. The vampire writhed beneath me, agonised moans breaking from bloodied lips. I should have felt elated, but I didn't. Bile stung the back of my throat. I had the feeling I'd just done something horribly wrong. The dying vampire reared up and a thick shaft of moonlight fell across its face. Luke's face. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth, the light fading from his grey eyes. It was like watching the sun go down, leaving only the clouds. His head lolled back on his shoulders, body going limp and boneless beneath me.
"Luke?" I whispered, my voice hoarse.
But he fell away from me and the blood just kept coming, pouring out of the hole in his chest and pooling around him until all I could see was red. It flowed up around him like a river; I could feel it soaking into the legs of my jeans. I tried to jerk away but it was like I had frozen to Luke's body. He was dead beneath me and I couldn't move. His blood rose like a tide, submerging his body, creeping up round my waist, my chest, my neck.
I was going to drown in Luke's blood. I screamed and the blood flooded into my mouth, flowing down my throat. I choked and gagged -
- and jerked awake, my chest heaving, lungs taut with phantom-screams. My hair was drenched in sweat, sticking to my head and shoulders in wet snarls. Since learning the truth about Luke the night before, I hadn't been able to get him out of my head. I told myself it was simply because of what he'd told me, and not because of the way his eyes looked like the sky or the iron-grip of his arms when he'd briefly held me. That had nothing to do with anything.
I glanced across at Sophie's bed, but my night troubles didn't seem to have woken her. I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, so I had two options. I could lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for the next few hours, or I could do something that would clear my head.
I chose the latter. The only thing that had ever truly cleared my head was running. Noah might have to coerce me into other forms of exercise, but he never had to tell me to run. I loved running and even though it was the middle of the night, it was all I wanted to do.
Slipping out of bed, I tiptoed across the room and pulled a pair of leggings and a loose-fitting sweatshirt out of the chest of drawers. I changed quickly, shucking my pyjamas onto my bed, and lacing up my trainers. My hair I scraped back in a messy braid.
My only problem now was getting out of the house. There was no way I could sneak out the front door. For all I knew, my parents and Marc were still up, planning their next hunt. If not them, then Clara could be downstairs, sharpening her knives or polishing her collection of teeth. I might be allowed to mingle with Riley and the other kids in town, but sneaking out of the house at this time was the kind of misbehaviour that absolutely would not be tolerated.
My eyes drifted towards the window. It was a two-story drop from my bedroom to the ground, too high to jump but not too high to climb. Ivy curled up the walls, some creepers as thick as branches, seizing the house in a strangle-hold. If I was careful, I could use the ivy as a ladder.
The window creaked slightly as I eased it open, and I held my breath. Every fraction of movement sounded magnified in the silence of my bedroom. I was half-convinced everyone could hear it, and any second now Noah would burst in and demand to know what I was doing.
But no one came. I eased the window half-open, just enough for me to squeeze out. Then I hesitated. The time I spent with Riley was the only real act of rebellion I'd ever dared, and even then I only did it because I knew I could get away with it. What I was planning was crossing the line Noah had let me draw in the sand, and I didn't want to think what would happen if he caught me.
Sitting on the windowsill, I hovered between two worlds, the cage I'd been raised in and the freedom of the outside. I chose the outside.
As I was swinging my legs out of the window, I glanced across at Sophie's bed. And found her staring right back at me. Panic leaped through me like a wild thing, and I clutched at the window-frame to keep myself from falling.
Seconds that felt like hours stretched between us. I hadn't even made it out of the window and already I was busted. I opened my mouth - to plead my case, I think - and Sophie promptly closed her eyes. I gaped at her. Sophie knew what I was doing and she wasn't going to stop me. Gratitude surged through me.
I slithered out of the window. A breeze murmured through the trees, caressing my face and for a moment I hung where I was, my fingers gripping the gnarled tongues of ivy. If this was freedom then it tasted sweet. I'd have laughed out loud if it wouldn't have got me caught.
Climbing down the ivy was about as difficult as I'd expected. Noah had trained me to shimmy up and down ropes like I was a monkey, but this was hardly the same thing. It was so dark outside that I could barely see any hand or footholds and had to rely on the surety of my own limbs to guide me, slowly and precisely to the ground. It was a good thing I kept my nails short, otherwise I would probably have torn them all off.
I jumped the last foot and landed in a crouch. There was a light on in the house so someone was definitely up. I took off running in case that someone had heard the thud when I hit the ground.
I hadn't stretched or warmed up before starting my run and for once I didn't care. My muscles were going to be sore in the morning and I didn't care about that either. This wasn't a practical jog, something to exercise the body. I needed to run, hard and fast, away from my house, my family, my life. I needed this freedom even if it was only a farce, a tiny taste of what I'd never have.
Endorphins flooded my body as I settled into a steady sprint, my muscles warming and loosening. A feeling of calm settled inside my head. It was as if everything that had happened over the last couple of days was packed away back at my house, and I was running from it, leaving all the questions and all the fear behind. For the first time in the last twenty-four hours, I wasn't weighed down with doubt and worry. My body felt lighter, like I'd shed physical weight, like I could leap into the air and be carried away on the wind. It was exhilarating.
I ran away from the town and in the direction of the woods. Thick trunks loomed out of the darkness like towering soldiers. I didn't falter as I plunged into the unbroken shadows. Something - probably a fox - scurried away from me with a startled bark. In the distance, the cry of a hunting owl drifted through the night. The last time I'd come through here, I'd been arm-in-arm with Riley, heading towards the sounds of voices that signalled the party. That had been the night I met Luke.
I shook my head, irritated. Thinking about Luke was another thing I was running from. I picked up the pace, ducking low-hanging branches and leaping over fallen ones. Cool night air rasped in my throat.
I don't know when I first suspected I was being watched. It started as a prickling sensation, like dozens of spiders were crawling up and down my back. I slowed to a jog, staring around me. The trees stared back, silent and still. The prickling became a shiver, ice water trickling down my spine. My feet slowed until I was standing still.
A patch of brambles clung to my leggings, their thorns like the pointed fingers of spiteful forest sprites. There wasn't so much as a flicker of movement in the woods, but I hadn't stopped for no reason. It was easy for ordinary people to scare themselves, seeing monsters where none existed, imagining menace in something as harmless as a shadow. I wasn't one of those people. Vampire hunters were taught to trust their instincts, and right now mine were telling me something was wrong.
I wasn't alone out here.
The first tendrils of fear wound through me. I had no weapons and I could barely see through the thick darkness. I knew how to use my fists, so I wasn't helpless, but I was a long way from safe.
Turning in a slow circle I peered between the trees, willing my night vision to magically amplify.
A rustle of movement somewhere to my right made me spin round. My heart was beating faster than normal and it had nothing to do with my run. Vampire hunter or not, I was scared. I tried to grab that fear and shake it into submission, but it slithered away from me, spreading out through my whole body.
Sometimes flight was a better choice than fight.
I took a step backwards, then another. A branch snapped under a heavy weight. It was far too close for comfort. I abandoned any pretence that I wasn't scared and ran. Brambles and branches tore at me as I dashed through them, as if they were trying to grab me and hold me still, a sacrifice for whatever was following me.
This wasn't the first time I'd been jogging in the woods. I should have been able to follow my path back to the town, but in my panic I'd got turned around. I didn't know where I was and everything looked the same.
Moonlight spilled through a gap in the leafy canopy overhead, turning the trees to ghosts. I skidded to a stop and swung round, trying to get my bearings. There was no sign of anything behind me, but the prickly-spider feeling was still marching up and down my back. I didn't need to see my pursuer to know they were there.
I started running again, trying to find some semblance of familiarity in the woods around me, anything that would help me find my way back home. But the shadows had painted everything identical until I felt like I was running in place, never actually getting anywhere.
Crazy thoughts tripped through my head. I was never going to escape the woods, but be trapped here forever, running round and round in circles from something I couldn't even see. Then I spied a shimmer of moonlight. The trees were thinner up ahead, the forest petering out. I put on an extra spurt of speed and exploded through the tree-line, out into a wide meadow.
My legs trembled like overcooked spaghetti, my heart a painful drumbeat against my ribs. I stared at the trees, my body coiled to run again, but nothing followed me out. The prickling on my back faded. Relief swept over me and I swayed on the spot, my lungs aching as I sucked in oxygen. The drumbeat on my ribs calmed down and suddenly I felt ashamed. I'd run from something I couldn't even see. All the bravado I'd sported when I first decided to embark on a solo hunt, and yet I'd fled like a scared kid from a noise in the woods. I could imagine the sheer disdain and disbelief on my dad's face if he ever found out.
What if . . . I cringed. What if Noah was right? I did need more training and I'd been shirking my responsibilities to play normal-girl with Riley. But did I even consider vampire hunting my responsibility in light of what Luke had told me?
I was so confused that my head hurt. I didn't know what to think.
Straightening up, I finally got my bearings. I'd emerged from the woods into a low-lying meadow, one of many that made up the patchwork countryside surrounding Greylark Asylum. The asylum itself hunched at the end of the meadow, a great black block that moonlight seemed to shy away from. I shook my head in disbelief. No matter how far or how fast I ran, I couldn't get away from my problems.
I walked towards Greylark before I was aware of what I was doing. It would have been easier to just turn around and try and make my way back home, but I couldn't seem to turn away. I was a fish on a hook and the asylum was reeling me in. Or maybe Luke was doing the reeling.
I shook my head again, mentally berating myself. I wasn't going to Greylark because I hoped Luke would be there. Seeing him again would be a bad idea. He was a vampire and I had to remember that.
Hunt.
Find.
I couldn't finish my mantra. I'd tried to kill Luke, and if I'd been successful I would have ended an innocent life. That only made me think about the vampires my family had killed the previous night. If they'd been innocent, if all vampires were innocent, how could I ever hunt them again? Equally, how was I supposed to tell Noah what I'd learned?
Greylark's hulking shadow dropped over me. I tipped back my head and stared up at it, the blind windows and crumbling stone walls. It was a ghost of the past, yet it was where my present and future had been thrown into the air. No matter how many times I told myself there was no reason for me to be here, somehow I couldn't keep away.
A shape materialised from the shadows cloaking the asylum, and I sprang back a pace, my fighting instincts kicking in. My mysterious pursuer from the woods had frightened me, but out here there was nowhere for them to hide. They couldn't sneak around and try and scare me anymore, they'd have to face me. And I was ready to fight.