Max stopped. He had no doubt they were harmless, just as he and his friends had been, but he was full of a sudden urge to teach them a lesson, to make them realise that there were things in the night that were far more dangerous than kids full of cider-inflated bravado. And on a gut level, in the base part of himself that he kept hidden from everyone, he was hungry.
“What?” asked the teenage boy, getting up from his swing. “You got a problem?”
Max stared at him, feeling the first flush of heat behind his eyes. The boy’s acne-ridden face was pale in the moonlight, his mouth curled into an arrogant smile.
Don’t rise to it, he told himself. There’s eight of them. Too many.
“No problem,” he said. “Have a good night.”
He walked along the path towards the west gate without a backward glance, knowing the boy would stare daggers after him until he was out of sight; it would be no less than his friends would expect. Max strode through the gate and into the quiet estate where he’d lived for the last five years; his house was a square brick box standing behind a paved drive and a small lawn that he only mowed in the evenings. He unlocked the front door, hung his coat on the hook rack in the hall, and walked through to the living room where he flopped down on to the sofa, put the TV on, and was asleep within a minute.
Thud. Thud thud.
Max’s eyes flew open, his heart racing in his chest. He had dreamt of her again, the same dream as always: the trees, the blood, the screams, the freezing water. He sat up on the sofa, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the one that had been his mother’s.
Two forty-three, he thought. Almost three in the morning.
He got unsteadily to his feet. Something had woken him, something that had managed to penetrate the fabric of his dream and engage his conscious mind. Max went to the window, slid open the curtains that were always closed, and peered out at the dark street.
Thud. Thud thud thud thud.
He jumped. The sound was coming from the front of the house.
Someone was knocking on his door.
Max pulled his phone from his pocket and checked its screen. No messages. No missed calls. Slowly, his heart pounding, he walked out into the hallway and turned on the lights. A dark silhouette loomed outside the front door, clearly visible through the pane of frosted glass.
“Who’s there?” he shouted, and heard a tremor in his voice.
“Nottinghamshire Police, sir,” came the reply. “Open the door, please.”
Max frowned. “What’s this about?” he asked.
“We’ve had a complaint of a disturbance at this address, sir.”
“There’s no disturbance here,” said Max. “You must have the wrong house.”
“Sir, we’re required to follow up on all complaints,” said the silhouette. “Please open the door.”
Max hesitated, then slid the security chain on the back of the door into place. He unlocked the door and pulled it open a few centimetres. “I’d like to see your identification,” he said.
“No problem, sir,” said the man. A gloved hand pushed a leather wallet through the gap between the door and the frame. Max opened it and found a plastic warrant card in the name of Sergeant Liam Collins of the Nottinghamshire Police.
He breathed a silent sigh of relief, and pushed the door shut. “I’m sorry, officer,” he said, as he slid the chain back. “Can’t be too careful, you know?”
“I understand, sir,” said the man, as the door swung open. “There are a lot of dangerous people out here.”
Max had just enough time to see a circle of glass gleaming in the moonlight. Then a searing beam of purple light blinded him, and his face burst into flames.
He fell backwards, screaming incoherently and beating desperately at the fire erupting from his skin and hair. The pain was unthinkable, far beyond anything he had ever known, enough to drive reason from his mind; all he knew, on an instinctive level, was that he had to put the fire out, had to stop himself burning. His fangs burst involuntarily from his gums, slicing through his tongue and transforming his screams into high-pitched grunts. One of his eyes was empty blackness and awful, sickening pain, like someone had tipped boiling water over it. Through the other, he saw billowing smoke as he clawed at his face and head, and the dreadful sight of two men dressed all in black stepping into his house and shutting the door behind them.
The pain in his head lessened fractionally as his pounding fists finally extinguished the flames. The skin on his hands was charred red and black and peeling away in wide sheets, revealing the pink muscle beneath. Max tried to focus, but felt his reeling body resist him as he rolled over on to his front and crawled towards the kitchen, each agonising centimetre requiring a Herculean effort. He heard voices behind him, but ignored them; his remaining eye was fixed on the fridge, and the bottles of blood he knew were chilling inside it. If he could reach them, perhaps there might still be a chance.
Then he felt a tiny stab of pain in the side of his neck, and realised there was none.
He slumped to the ground as the syringe was drawn out of his flesh, as though the power supply to his muscles had been turned off. His ruined tongue slid limply out of his mouth as one of the black-clad men pressed a boot against his ribs and rolled him over on to his back. Max stared up at him, his diminished vision beginning to blur and darken, and managed a single mangled word.
“Blacklight …”
The man grunted with laughter. “Not us, mate,” he said, as Max slipped into unconsciousness. “We’re something else.”
When he awoke again, he could feel the steady vibration of an engine somewhere beneath him. Max opened one eye and the pain came rushing back to him, deep, searing agony in his face and scalp. He gritted his teeth and let out a low groan; his stomach was spinning, and he was sure he was going to be sick. He tried to roll on to his side, but couldn’t move; whatever had been in the syringe was still working on him, paralysing his muscles.
Above him, sitting on a wooden bench and leaning against a metal panel, was one of the dark figures that had burst into his home. He stared up with his good eye and wondered how he had ever mistaken them for Department 19. Max had seen a squad of Blacklight soldiers once, a long time ago, and they had been slick, almost robotic in appearance; the man above him was wearing a black balaclava, a cheap black leather jacket, and a backpack that looked like it had been bought in a sports shop. But then he focused more closely, and felt terror spill through him.
Painted on the man’s chest, in crude sprays of white, was a wolf’s head, its teeth huge, its jaws open wide. And all of a sudden, Max knew who had him.
“Night … Stalker …” he managed, his tongue barely obeying his brain’s commands, his mouth filling with saliva.
The man looked down at him. “Welcome back, mate,” he said. “Don’t try to talk. It’ll just make things worse.”
Max stared, his eye wide with fear. He tried to move, felt nothing happen, and bore down with all that remained of his strength. His left hand trembled, but stayed flat against the floor.
“You want me to dose you again?” asked the man. He leant forward and held up a thick black torch. “Stay still or die. It’s up to you.”
The purple lens seemed huge, as though it was about to swallow Max up. He forced himself to look away, and fixed his gaze on the ceiling above him. It was the roof of a van, moulded metal and plastic, long and wide. Beneath him, the engine rumbled on. He knew what happened to vampires taken by the Night Stalker, had seen the bloody aftermath on the news and online. His only chance was to wait, to not provoke his captors, and