1 Chapter I - Insanity

Night dressed her in an eerie yet glamorous glow as she descended those concrete steps and stood, teetering, on the pavement. The building she’d left might have been a factory, or a warehouse. I couldn’t read the sign above the door—the words were just symbols that turned to mush in my brain.

For some reason, I stopped. On any other day, my motto was ‘keep walking, keep walking until you drop’. ‘Dropping’ usually meant sleeping in the nearest, safest spot, which wasn’t always near or safe at all. Life on my own, as a teenager who should’ve been studying and fawning over celebrities instead of wandering the streets of Dreswell alone, was hard. There was nothing I could do about it, though.

Shivering, I tried to walk right past her—the strange woman coming out of a strange building on a strange street in a strange industrial estate—but I couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t move. Frozen to the spot, all I could do was look at her.

She was an oddity, though, so looking at her wasn’t some boring, mind-numbing task. Every time my eyes flickered to a different part of her body, they discovered something new. A stately red gown, like you saw on movie posters for films set in the 20s and 30s, covered her body, but it was ripped and torn. It looked like a fox had got at it. Some of the foxes around Dreswell could be vicious, ratty little things. All teeth and mangy fur, rattling through rubbish bins like there was no tomorrow. I could imagine one of them sinking their teeth into her dress.

Still, not while she was wearing it. She didn’t seem like the type to leave her clothes lying around in alleyways, either. There was something to her face—the roundness, the carefully-applied makeup which painted her in shades of pink and red, the way her skin seemed to shimmer—that screamed gentleness. It declared to the world that she wanted for nothing, and never had.

It could’ve lied, obviously. Many things did. I’d learned that lesson enough times for a dozen lifetimes. But there was something definitely off about her, whether her face told the truth or not. She swayed on the spot, looking awfully off-balance in a pair of tiny black heels, her eyes flickering from side to side.

Again, that was odd. While her body moved slowly and clumsily, her eyes were sharp. Darting. Careful. Calculating. They were the eyes of a spy, not a rich woman who’d had too much to drink. They were the eyes of someone who knew exactly what she was doing. But the body disagreed, and that was confusing enough to keep me staring.

I stared until those piercing eyes found me on the pavement, just by the building she’d left. A brilliant smile yanked at the corners of her mouth, showing off the lips smeared with messy red lipstick. A date gone wrong, I thought, instantly. Sympathy hit me.

“Oh, darling! Darling,” she slurred the words—drunk, or maybe high—taking a faltering step towards me. Without thinking, I moved forwards and caught her arm before she fell and cracked her skull open on the kerb, attempting a smile back. “Oh, you are a star, my darling!”

“Do you wanna get home, miss?” I asked, a little wary of how she clung to my arm like a baby monkey holding onto its mother for dear life.

“Home. Home! Oh, my dear, that would be something, if you could get me home.”

For a moment, those careful eyes became a little misty, their exact colour hidden by the darkness. More sympathy tugged at my heart. She wasn’t a threat. Drunk? Almost definitely. Lost? Probably. But dangerous? No. I knew danger. I’d seen it in so many forms that I was sick to death of it. She couldn’t be dangerous.

“Which way is your home, miss?” I spoke softly, trying to be kind to a stranger who seemed like she’d had a worse night than me. Maybe even a worse life. Kindness cost nothing, after all.

“Ah, you are a darling, my dear!” She grinned, the expression making my stomach ever-so-slightly uneasy, before dramatically waving her hand down the street. “I live down there, darling, only a little bit away! It’s not far, really, not far at all!”

With that, she lurched forwards, half-dragging me down the pavement with her. A little bewildered, I held onto her peculiarly ice-cold arm and wondered where on earth this night, and this weird woman, would take me.

To dance under dead moonlight, crystal

We stopped so abruptly that I found myself falling towards grimy cobbles, seeing their criss-cross pattern explode in size. She stopped that. Jerking my arm backward, she kept me on my feet and pulled me a little further down the worryingly dark alleyway. My insides shivered. Logically, I knew I wasn’t in a horror movie or a murder mystery novel, but my heart pounded at my ribcage anyway. Blood spurted through my body as if it was afraid of never being able to rush around my veins again.

Before I could blink, she released my arm. I staggered a little, reaching out to a damp brick wall for support and feeling dirt cling to my fingers. I didn’t care. This was one of the oddest nights of my life.

I had to pause and hold onto that wall and breathe, just to remind myself that I could. Best case scenario, this would all be an interesting story that I could tell to someone, some day. Worst case scenario?

I didn’t really want to think about that.

“Here we are,” she sighed, her voice sounding instantly different. Tiredness seeped through it. Every word sounded like it had been said a thousand times before, or a million. A different sympathy attempted to enter my mind, but I blocked it.

Staring back at her intelligent eyes, my mind came to a slow, dawning realisation.

This woman wasn’t drunk. Or high. She might have been rich, or poor, or mad, but she wasn’t drunk. There was a flip, a switch, something which marked her as sober and—and pretending. Lying. Trying to gain my trust… but why?

To lead me down a dark alleyway. To get me alone. To do whatever she wanted to in a dodgy place devoid of any witnesses, or potential saviours. She wanted to create a victim, by playing one.

She’d succeeded.

“This is your home?” I took a step backwards, my eyes fixated on her face. Smooth. Gentle. Nothing like the eyes which stared back at me. She seemed to be a patchwork of different parts, put together by someone else for some strange goal.

“The act has been dropped, darling,” she laughed, but the laugh froze my stomach and echoed hauntingly around the alleyway. “We can stop playing pretend. I’m too old for silly games. I need you, my dear—what is your name?”

Transfixed, I couldn’t even answer her question. My mind blanked. In that moment, I had no name.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, no… You’re like little Cleo, aren’t you?” She mused, before shaking her head and smiling widely. “Yes, you are Cleo. Cleo, my friend, you will become my pet tonight. My dearest, closest pet. A companion, if you will.”

I wanted to tell her to shove off. I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to say something, anything, but my tongue died in my mouth. Thick and useless, it blocked off any words I wanted to scream at her.

“All you need to do, pet, is come a little closer.” She stepped forwards, her grin widening and becoming nearly unnatural. “Close your eyes, and trust me.”

She moved forwards again, closer, but I couldn’t move back even though every fibre of my being was screaming at me to. I was helpless—and she had effortlessly switched from prey to predator.

“Oh, you’ll make a wonderful pet.”

A cold saviour, accustomed to danger

Concrete slapped my back. Air rushed from my lungs, erupting in a cloud I would’ve called ‘dragon’s breath’ years and years ago. Her hands—claws, they felt like claws carved from ice—latched onto my arms. Nails gripped my flesh.

She was a maniac. I was a maniac for ever following her. This was where kindness got you. Flat on your back, winded, with your skin getting shredded to bits by some lunatic.

Mad. Insane. She had to be. This wasn’t normal.

Thoughts flashed through my mind quicker than I could recognise them. My chest convulsed, stabbing pains ricocheting across my ribs. Her fists flashed in front of my vision, the blows becoming blurs. What had I ever done to deserve this?

My gaze was vague and hazy from some unknown injury, maybe my head smacking the ground or the rapidly growing nausea expanding like a cancer in my stomach. I tried to flail around and defend myself. Pulling my shoulders to the side, I fought to recover control over my arms.

I failed.

A hand slapped my cheek harshly, the stinging pain making me oddly embarrassed. Heat rushed to my face. Who was she? How could she do this to me? In a matter of seconds, I’d been overpowered and practically disciplined by my attacker. She had the aura of a sick, twisted mother, forcing her child to be exactly as she wanted them to be.

Burning vomit travelled up my throat, threatening to spill into my mouth. All the pain—all the senseless attacks—blended into one continuous sense of hopelessness and dull aching.

I was barely conscious as she bowed her head just to the side of my face. I couldn’t feel the tear in my neck, only recognising the feeling of fluid trickles escaping from my body. My blood.

You could die from blood loss, couldn’t you? I didn’t know the symptoms but, lying there, I could guess them. Becoming cold and numb, like a shell of a person. Losing the ability to hold onto reality. Watching your vision become bleak, darker and darker. Spots became black lakes, taking over the sense I relied on the most.

Clenching my eyes closed, I searched my mind for some miracle to save me from this monster. She couldn’t be human. I’d never been a conspiracy theorist, but this was straight out of a horror movie.

Nothing from this world could reduce me to a bloody mess in a matter of seconds. I wasn’t some ridiculously weak and frail victim. I wasn’t a mindless, one-dimensional punching bag, only meant to make someone else look stronger. I wasn’t a supermodel with stick-thin arms. I could hold my own.

But not against this… creature. This demon in human form.

“Shadow-queen, you can’t sire here.” The words shocked me into opening my eyes, seeing only a mass of dark hair and a thin strip of empty, navy-blue sky. “Not on Hardy bloodline territory. You know this.”

“Ha! Shadow-queen, shadow-queen!” The woman’s mouth left my neck, cold air attacking the exposed flesh she left behind. Vomit seared my tongue and dribbled out of the corner of my mouth, the disgusting taste barely registering in my woozy mind. “You call me a queen and dare to treat me like this? Say my name, low-blood!”

“Sai.” Calm and level, the unknown voice cut through the insanity of the night like a knight’s longsword from some fairy tale, although I was far from being able to scream out and beg for a rescue. “You cannot sire here. Leave, unless you wish to begin a war with the Hardy bloodline.”

“Wars. Bloodlines. As if any of you could ever hold a candle to those who came before!” Anger ripped through the air, indignant ferociousness. “Call me a queen and leave me, low-blood, me and my pet.”

“I can’t do that, Sai. If you don’t leave, a dozen of my bloodline will arrive within minutes. You leave, or we fight.”

Finally, my conscious had enough. The unforgiving urban world which had watched me suffer and struggle through teenage life drained away, bit by bit, until voices became mush and my senses disappeared.

I didn’t feel like I was floating—I felt like I didn’t exist. Mere moments ago, I had a body. Bruised and bleeding but concrete. Now it was gone.

I was gone.

There was no miracle. No saviour. Only the lonely face of Death, welcoming me to its realm.