The burden of their suspicious stares weighed heavily down upon me.

Every surreptitious sideways glance through narrowed eyes. Every blatant, bold glare filled with revulsion and mistrust. Every cold scowl that followed me wherever I went. I felt them all. And I certainly didn't need any powers of telepathy to know what they were thinking.

Traitor, they accused silently. Traitor, traitor, traitor.

Eventually the uncomfortable silence beat so loudly against my skull that I went in search of Harper, although I wasn't sure whether I was leaping from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. He had hardly spoken a word to me himself since I had left Le Loup Rouge and filled them all in on what had occurred while inside.

I found him, laying down on our make-shift bed in the school hall, which had been appropriated into a dormitory of sorts with the old gym mats used as beds. The scent of blood still hung in the air after the survivors of Oxleas and the Second Cleansing had fled here, many with wounds and injuries still fresh from battle. A few of the more seriously injured were here too, dotted about the room, recovering under blankets that smelt of damp.

Against the wall by the boarded-up windows a girl who looked barely out of her teens in human years, lay curled up on one of the beds, her head resting on the lap of a boy who couldn't have been much older than her when he was made. I remembered her from the battle, a brief but vivid memory of her charging across the field, red hair flying about a face that was twisted into a ferocious scowl as she howled her war-cry. Now her face was twisted with pain, ravaged by two deep claw marks that still scarred her flesh from her eye down to her throat. It was a deep wound but would heal soon, of course, but I knew the fear she was devastated by would take far longer to fade, if it ever would at all. Her companion stared into space with wide haunted eyes as he stroked her hair, humming a tune under his breath, whether to calm her or himself, I wasn't sure. The girl's eyes followed me across the room as I walked over to where Harper lay with his hands linked behind his head and his legs crossed casually at the ankles. Turning my back on her, I crouched down at his side and desperately tried to muster up some moisture in a throat which had gone suddenly dry in my struggle to know what to say.

"Seeking sanctuary, angel?" His face was impassive and bore no hint of a smile but I tried to take heart from the fact he had called me angel and not traitor. There was of course a chance he was screaming it at me inside his head, but I knew Cain wasn't one to suppress his rage – in fact, after killing Varúlfur and screwing women, venting his anger was probably his next favourite thing to do.

"That depends," I replied, keeping my voice low so not to disturb those resting here. "On whether I'm welcome. You haven't said much since we got back."

He arched a brow. "And what would you like me to say? That I think you were a fool to go in there in the first place? You knew that already. That I think you should have pulled that trigger and put a bullet in his skull? You know damn well that's a given. If I haven't said much, it's because I don't have to. What's the point of me telling you something you already know? And more importantly, what's the point of me telling you anything when you know that I'm right? You know you shouldn't have gone in there and you know you should have killed him when you had the chance. You want sanctuary with me? You got it. Now that's something you should know. But don't blame them for hating on you."

Sitting up, he stretched out his limbs and exhaled a long drawn-out yawn. "Anyway, I kind of like the fact they're not hating me so much right now," he said with a smirk and a mischievous glint in his eyes. "It seems in their opinion that being Vanagandr's wife is worse than being an assassin. Vampires are an unforgiving kind, Megan. We can bear a grudge for an eternity."

I slumped back onto the mat. "Well, gee thanks, at least I have something to look forward to."

Harper chuckled. "There is something you can do that might help."

"What's that?" I said hopefully.

He leant forward and sniffed, wrinkling his nose. "Go take a shower. You stink of them."

******

I was dressed and towel-drying my hair in the shower room, when I heard footsteps approaching down the corridor followed by a light rap on the door. Opening it, I was surprised to find Fenton standing there, looking uncomfortable and awkward in the dim light.

"Sorry, did you want to use the shower?" I said, quickly scrunching the ends of my hair. "I'm done, I'm done..."

"Um...no," he mumbled, stiffly. "Actually I came to speak to you."

I stopped mid-scrunch, my mouth frozen in a silent 'o' before I stepped back, gesturing for him to come in. Throwing the towel down onto the bench, I steeled myself for the barrage of accusations and to hear that word traitor spoken aloud, instead of being bombarded by a volley of silent fuck-you's.

"So," I said, locking eyes with him. "Is there where you tell me I've been unanimously voted out? That they want me gone?"

Fenton's face hardened with a ripple of tension. "No one has voted you out, Megan. They want you and Harper to stay..."

I laughed a little too loudly and it echoed shrilly around the room. "In other words, they want Harper to stay and they know if I go, then he will follow?"

"You have to understand their concerns. Harper betrayed his own kind when he went rogue, but he was Benjamin's chosen blood-son. He was destined to lead us. But you, on the other hand, are Vanagandr's wife...

"Was Vanagandr's wife," I said through gritted teeth.

"....was Vanagandr's wife," he continued. "And after what happened tonight, they think he clearly still has a hold over you. So I'm here to ask you if he does, because if that's how it is, then as far as I'm concerned, you're nothing but a liability and I can't have someone here who is going to bring the Varúlfur to our door, Harper or no Harper."

I stared at him for a moment, clenching my fists and cutting my nails into my palm in an effort to suppress my anger. I nodded. "Okay, well, I appreciate your honesty, Fenton. Rest assured that you don't have to worry about a thing. Lucius, Harper and I will be gone come nightfall."

His eyes widened. "Wait...what?" he stuttered.

I folded my arms across my chest in a defiant gesture. "If you think I'm a liability, then you're right, I am. Lucius and I are both liabilities and we have been since day one and we will continue to be liabilities until either we're both dead or until we have defeated them. You knew what you signed up for from the moment Garrick told you about us and if you can't handle that, then we'll go and leave you to skulk in the shadows. I understand what I did and yeah, I get that everyone probably hates me because of it...."

"It's not about hate, Megan, it's nothing personal. It's about trust and if we can't trust you...."

"Garrick trusted me. Harper trusts me." I sighed, my shoulders dropping slightly as I saw the clear doubt in his eyes. "Look, I know what I should have done. I know that I failed to do what you, Harper and the others wouldn't have given a second thought about. But you weren't there and you don't know him like I do. You want the honest truth? I sat there and listened to everything he had to say and despite everything he's ever done, I felt sad for him."

"You felt sad for him?" he glowered at me, his lips curling into a sneer. "He killed Garrick. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Of course it does!" I snapped, feeling my eyes prick with tears I didn't want him to see, defiance rapidly losing out to frustration and grief. "I was there, remember? I watched him die."

"Then how the Hell can you defend that beast?" He was close to losing it. I could see the rage overtaking his usually cool, collected demeanour as he glared at me.

"I'm not defending him," I insisted. "I'm not. But to me, he's not just a beast. I aimed that gun at him, I mean, right at him and all I could see was that face – the one that stood next to me at the altar, the one I used to wake up to every day, the one I promised to love for the rest of my life. Do you think it's that easy to pull the trigger and watch the bullet rip that face apart? He might be a beast, but I'm not an animal."

"No, you're a vampire and he's a Varúlfur. There should be no hesitation."

"But I'm not a vampire, am I? One day I was a human, the next I was dragged kicking and screaming into this world I knew nothing about, only to discover that I wasn't really a vampire, but something else entirely...and now everything is so fucked up that I don't even know who I am anymore. You want to know why I didn't kill Brandon? It's not because he has a hold over me, it's because I get what he's going through. He's losing everything about his human side that he's ever clung onto. He's a slave to his destiny, unable to prevent what happens to him and maybe I just might understand a little of what that's like. I never asked to be a vampire and I certainly never asked to be an archangel and now, suddenly, I'm on this freight train and the controls are jammed and the only way I'm getting off is if I somehow manage to figure out what the Hell I'm meant to do or I stay on, crash and die. That's not much of a choice, is it? Choose a destiny that I don't want or choose death? Yes, I was Vanagandr's wife, but I'm not going to apologise for that. To you or to anyone. You can't help who you love, Fenton. I can't help that I loved Brandon, any more than I can help being in love with Harper now..." I looked pointedly at him. "...and any more than you could help being in love with Garrick."

Fenton's eyes widened with shock and he swayed a little on his feet, as if I had reached out and slapped him across the face. His lips curved upwards into a nervous smile which faded quickly into nothing and I watched as he floundered in front of me with panic etched across his features, as if invisible hands were grabbing hold of him and threatening to pull him under the surface. Part of me wanted to reach out and save him; part of me wanted to let him drown in the knowledge that I knew exactly what he had felt for his maker.

Almost stumbling, he collapsed onto the bench, this usually stiff and aloof man who held all his emotions locked in an unbreakable glass jar somewhere inside and who now sat there, exposed and looking utterly lost.

"Did he tell you?" He ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back in a way that threw a ghostly image of Garrick in front of my eyes, enacting the same exact pose.

I sat beside Fenton on the bench, suddenly feeling unsteady on my feet myself. "No," I replied softly. "No, he never said a word."

"Then...how?" he asked, stunned.

"Woman's intuition?" I shrugged. "To be honest, I saw it the first time I saw you both together. It was the way in which you looked at him. It reminded me of the way I knew I looked at Harper, something that transcended the bond between fledgling and maker, something...more. You're usually a closed book, Fenton Grainger, but not with him. When it comes to him, you're so easy to read." I glanced at him. "Did you and Garrick...?"

He looked ready to hit me, or run. Or maybe both. "Don't ask me that," he gasped.

"Sorry, sorry," I hastily apologised. "....just curious. It's not my business."

"Yet you seem intent on making it your business," he retorted, stiffly.

"Not at all," I said. "Look, I'm sorry. Really I am."

Leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, he rubbed his thumb gently across his lips as he stared across the room, momentarily lost in his memories. "There was only ever him, you know. I'd never felt ...." He trailed off, clearly struggling with his confession. "Well, I'd never felt that way for another guy before. But he was....."

"He was Bartholomew Garrick and he had that effect on people." It was true. Oh, Harper had his charms when it suited him, but Garrick had been charming pretty much most of the time. Even at his most devious and cruel moments, he still oozed charm from every damn pore. "Trust me, I know," I added.

His eyes narrowed. "Did you and him....?"

"Not your business," I shot back. "But for the record....no. We didn't." I swear he visibly relaxed on hearing my words. His whole body seemed to uncoil, the muscles unclenching one by one.

"How did you meet him?"

He carried on staring into space but smiled as he did so, it was a small smile but one that lit up his face, making his eyes come alive and his features soften. Fenton wasn't one to smile all that much and I marvelled at how different he looked when he did.

"I was on the streets, living rough when Garrick found me," he began. "I used to go to this soup kitchen in Whitechapel until I had a bit of trouble there with some dealer who took a dislike to the fact that I wouldn't run for him. I wasn't into that kind of shit. Anyway, I ended up in Muswell Hill and that's where I met Garrick. To be honest, at first I wasn't sure whether he was one of the dealer's gang. He wasn't homeless, that much I knew. Live on the streets long enough and you know who's meant to be there and who's not and I knew straight away Garrick wasn't one of us. He tried to strike up conversation when I was queuing for food one evening and he was acting too interested, you know? People don't generally take an interest out on the streets, you look out for yourself and you don't get involved with others because you have no idea whether they're going to screw you over, so naturally I was wary of him but he was...."

"Persistent?" I asked with a smile of my own.

Fenton gave a wry grin. "Yeah, something like that. I was....unsettled by the attention. I tried to avoid attracting attention as much as I could, I'd had my fair share out there already, so I told him that whatever it was he wanted, I wasn't interested. He seemed to get the message and leave but the next night, I went down to the soup kitchen again and there he was outside, waiting for me. The weird thing is that I never normally went to Muswell Hill on Tuesday's, I usually walked along the canal to the one in Camden but for some reason I went back, and as soon as I saw him standing there, I knew straight away I'd gone back because I'd hoped he'd be there. I wanted to see him again and I had no idea why. The whole thing weirded me out completely. Anyway he insisted I get some food and we sat there and he watched me eat. He didn't eat a bloody thing of course and when I was done he pushed his tray at me and told me to eat his meal. I got angry then, I don't even know why – I guess I felt like he was stomping all over my pride, treading it into the ground and spitting on it, sitting there and not needing to eat. I hated that he wasn't hungry, that he didn't have to come there and eat the dry half-stale bread and bland stew. And I hated that I had to. I despised myself because my life had been reduced to that."

I could see the anger then; that bruised sense of pride that he'd never been able to rid himself of, the stain of shame that no amount of scrubbing could ever wash away, no matter how many years had passed since.

"So I hit him," he continued. "I threw his tray across the room and I punched him as hard as I could, right in the face. Can you believe I did that? And the thing was, he probably could have stopped me, but he didn't. It was as if he wanted me to do it. I just remember all Hell breaking lose in the soup kitchen, the support workers all rushing to break up the fight that wasn't really a fight at all. And all the while, Garrick just stood there, watching me as the chaos whirled around us. His lip was bleeding where I punched him and he just licked the blood away and stared at me with a weird smile on his face, like it was nothing. I remember thinking, this isn't right, he should be angry at me, he should be trying to fight back, getting a crafty punch in while the workers were struggling to restrain me. But instead he was just looking at me, I mean, right at me and I don't even know why but I felt wound up, you know? Wound up in all sorts of ways that made no sense to me whatsoever."

He stopped to rub the back of his neck, as if the muscles there needed some kind of release from the tension that was tugging on the top of his spinal cord.

"We got chucked out, of course. They don't tolerate violence in those places. When we got outside, Garrick just walked away. I was furious, confused, and I found myself chasing after him and demanding to know what he was playing at. Do you know what he did? He laughed. He stood there and actually laughed at me. I went for him again, I was so bloody angry, only this time, he fought back. We ended up trading punches down some alley, knocking seven bells out of each other until our noses were bloodied and do you know what, I loved every damn minute of it. Every time he hit me, every time I hit him. It was like the biggest rush, or at least I thought so at the time. Finally, he caught me with an uppercut to the eye and my brow split open and the blood was running down my face. He was on me in an instant, pushing me against the wall and it took me a moment to realise he was sucking on the wound, lapping up the blood and his hands were in my hair. I was...stunned and more confused than ever, but I didn't want him to stop. And when he buried his face into my neck and bit me, I knew that was it – that was the rush I'd wanted. I wanted the pain, I wanted the buzz and I wanted him. And I wanted it all more than I'd ever wanted anything in my life."

I nodded numbly, remembering that feeling, remembering the fear and the pain – oh god, the pain – remembering that first taste and a desire you think you will never satisfy no matter how much you drink, no matter how much you thrust your body against theirs.

"How did you end up there, Fenton? That is, if you don't mind me sticking my nose into your business a little more."

"Persistence runs in the family," he mused. "I was a soldier. A Gulf War veteran at the grand old age of twenty-five. Honourably discharged after I took a bullet to the back and was temporarily paralysed. I came home without the use of my legs, screwed up on military inoculations and with the smoke of the Kuwaiti oil fields engrained upon my lungs. I was in rehabilitation for a long time afterwards, learning to walk again, and my wife, Lacey, well, let's just say she grew tired of waiting on a man who raged at her because he couldn't get to the bathroom in time. She got tired of being afraid of the man who went off to war as her husband and who returned as someone she didn't even recognise, all because whenever he looked at her, all he could see was the bodies of the slaughtered men, women and children who resembled the pieces of meat you'd see hung in the window of a butcher's shop, rather than the human beings they were. Anyway, by the time I was walking again and ready to go home, I had no home to go to. The government withheld my benefits on a technicality and that was that. I ended up with nowhere to go and out there living rough, no one gave a shit that I was a war hero. There's no heroes on the streets."

"And then I met Garrick. He made me feel like I had a purpose again. I missed Lacey, but if you want the harsh truth of it, I missed the army more. I never felt more alive than I did there, facing the gauntlet of every sniper, every mine, facing death around every corner. Civilians think that a soldiers is nothing but a number to the MOD. But back here on the streets, I wasn't even a number, I was nobody, I was nothing - less than nothing even. You're just another statistic on some government report. Soldiers like me are forgotten about, discarded, thrown out onto the streets like rubbish. Somehow we're meant to move on, find new lives, new jobs and yet all the while, all we can hear is the constant crack of gunfire in our ears and see the bodies of our friends blown apart over and over again. And if you don't move on and rehabilitate yourself into civilian life, you're just an embarrassment to the country you once served because soldiers aren't meant to lose it, are they? Soldiers are meant to cope. Soldiers aren't meant to wind up on the streets because their wife doesn't want the man they've come back as. Soldiers aren't meant to wake up screaming from the horrors they've witnessed, especially British soldiers...stiff upper lip and all that. I thought I'd lost everything, but Garrick gave it all back to me."

My fingers curled round the edge of the bench, nails digging into the wood as I fought to control the boiling bubble of grief that was cracking against my rib cage, spreading heat into my throat and burning my trachea. Oh Garrick!

"That's why Garrick gave you control south of the river," I said, finally understanding. "He was utilising your military expertise and weapons knowledge. It all makes sense now."

"Struggling to work out just why he would put his faith in someone like me, were you?"

I squirmed uncomfortably next to him.

He sat up, with his back straight against the wall. "To be honest, I thought the same a hundred times and more. I still think it, especially after Oxleas."

I turned to face him, aghast at this words. "It wasn't your fault, Fenton. There was nothing you could have done."

"You're wrong," he said with a venomous self-disgust in his tone. "That was my world out there. My kingdom. The place where I should have been in total control and I failed. He gave me my life back and so much more besides. He gave me a reason to live again. He gave me a reason to want something more than this grubby little existence we're expected to play out day after monotonous bloody day. I wanted him and I didn't give a shit that I did. None of that mattered to me, I can't even explain it, because I don't think there's another man alive that could possibly make me feel that way, but he did. He gave me a reason to love again. And I failed him." He locked eyes with me and I almost shrank away from the way they bored into me with such intensity. "Don't you see? I can't fail him again. I have to protect what's left of us."

"I'm part of that us, Fenton. We share the same blood-line."

"Then honour that blood-line, Megan. Garrick believed in you. Prove that his faith in you wasn't misguided."

I laughed then, a small infectious chuckle that soon ballooned into a loud burst of laughter bordering on the hysterical. I knew how it sounded. I could hear it. Hell, I could see the incredulous gape painted on Fenton's face.

"You think his faith in you is something to laugh about?" he snapped, bitterly.

"Maybe he was wrong," I burst out, jumping up from the bench. "Have you ever thought of that? That the great Bartholomew Garrick just might have got it all horribly, horribly wrong?"

"Why would you say that?"

"Because I don't know what to do, Fenton, that's why!" I grabbed at my bag and yanked at Benjamin's journal, holding it aloft, that journal that continued to hide its secrets from me, that journal that continued to haunt me day after day after day. "It's all in here apparently, and I haven't got the foggiest idea of how to decipher the damn thing. I'm meant to be an archangel and yet even my creator has deserted me. I don't have a clue how to harness my powers, I don't have a clue where to find Michael and I don't have a clue how I'm meant to stop the God-slayer, Drachmann and Lucifer. And now Garrick is dead and all he's left me is this blasted book full of the ramblings of a man who was clearly losing his mind." I launched it at the wall, watching distraught as a couple of pages came loose as it fell and they fluttered like butterfly wings down to the damp floor.

With a frown, Fenton bent down and retrieved the pages, straightening them out and tracing his fingertips over the faint words inked there.

"The hooded woman waits at the Deadly Never Green Tree," he read.

"See!" I exclaimed in exasperation. "How the bloody hell am I meant to make sense of that?"

Fenton's brow wrinkled. "Well, the Deadly Never Green Tree is the Tyburn Tree. It's where the Kings Gallows were, they used to execute people there, traitors mostly. It was the most grisly sideshow attraction in London. Hundreds used to flock there to watch the executions."

"What?" I gasped. "You've heard of it?"

"I was raised a Catholic," he explained with a shrug. "There's a convent there now, so I might be wrong, but your hooded lady could be a nun."

"A nun?" The hair on the back of my neck prickled ominously.

"Yeah," he nodded, picking up the book and placing the loose pages carefully inside the worn leather cover. "Maybe not the ramblings of a man losing his mind, after all?

Standing up, he approached me and pushed the journal against my chest, holding it there as he studied me carefully.

"Whatever you need from me, you've got it. I'll speak to the others and smooth things over the best I can, but you need to do what you promised. If Garrick believed the answers lie within these pages, then that's where you will find them. He had faith in you, why don't you try having some faith in him? Don't dishonour his memory by giving up before you've even tried. He was worth more than some half-hearted effort and a whole lot of whining about your fate."

Leaving me standing there, grasping the book against my heart, he headed towards the door, before turning back to look at me. His eyes travelled over my face, searching for what, I could not even imagine.

"Read the book, Megan. Find the answers. But do it now, before it's too late and you bring something far worse than the Varúlfur to our door."