The counter was ticking down to zero.

It had become so damn loud in my head that it almost drowned out the anguished chorus of the dead. Hell, it had even almost drowned out Amy's colourful bursts of incandescent rage when she screamed that she hated me over and over again, how she wished I was dead, how she wished she could rip my throat to shreds. During her verbally-profuse assaults, the ticking had seemed to grow even louder, as if some monstrous crow was sat on my shoulder, tapping its wicked beak furiously against my skull bone. Tap-tap-TAP. 

Hiding out in the headmaster's office, with the scent of damp books pervading the air and the candlelight dancing shadows off the walls, wasn't going to rid me of the demon bird and its incessant, maddening beat against my skull. It wasn't going to rid me of what waited in that room at the end of the corridor but right now, hiding seemed like the best option, as pathetic and as cowardly as that sounded.

Every day I had tried. Every day I had gone into that room and faced her and every day she had never stopped begging for blood. There had been no break-through, no crack in the clouds, no sobering life-changing moment. It had just been endless hunger, sobbing and spite-filled diatribe and I was running out of time – fast. If nothing had changed by sunrise, then I was going to have to walk in there and kill Amy, destroying not only her life, but also any hope I ever had of winning over the rest of the group.

The past four days had been gruelling, not only because of what I had to endure inside that room but because of the snide comments, the hard, suspicious glares and the stifling air of tension that seemed to follow me wherever I went. Rolling my head on my shoulders, I winced, feeling the burn of tightly coiled muscles that seemed like they hadn't relaxed in days.

Harper ran his hand softly up my spine, his fingertips searching out the ridges of scarred skin, delicately caressing them before wandering down to the hollow of my back where he rubbed the pad of his thumb lightly in small, languid circles.

"If I could have given you more time...."

He was treading carefully, dodging the remnants of eggshells scattered around me, but I was struggling to hold it together and having him be so nice just made me even more anxious. Sometimes I just needed the old Cain, the one he was when he turned me, the one that would tell me to get a fucking grip and just deal with it. If I ever needed to get a grip it was now.

"It's fine," I said, glancing back to look at him, where he was laid out on the mattress, one hand propped under his head. ""Really, it's fine. We've been through this and I totally understand. You can't play favourites." I hugged my knees tighter into my chest.

Sitting up slightly, he leaned forward, pressing his mouth where his fingers had been just moments before. "You do know that you are my favourite though, right?" I felt him smile against my skin and couldn't help but reciprocate, the warmth seeping into my cheek muscles as his lips travelled upwards.

"Really? And there I was thinking it was Fenton."

He exhaled harshly, his breath tickling my shoulder blades. "Fenton is, and always will be, an ass."

"Oh come on, you like him. You might as well admit it."

His teeth grazed the nape of my neck, sending tremors of pleasure rippling down my back. "I admit nothing," he growled. "And if you don't mind, I'd really rather not think of Fenton when I'm naked. It's very off-putting."

He shifted to sit next to me so he could nip along my collarbone, stopping every now and then to suck gently on my skin. I closed my eyes, wishing I could just wrap myself around his body and lose myself in the smell and taste of him.

With a reluctant sigh, I leant my forehead against his. "She'll be awake by now. I should go to her."

Reaching out, he smoothed back one of my unruly locks, tucking it behind my ear. "Even angels can't win every battle, you know," he said, the dark sombreness in his eyes weighing heavily upon me.

"No," I agreed. "But every angel should fight it out until the bitter end, no matter what the outcome, don't you think?"

He mulled this over for a moment, brushing his lips absent-mindedly over my shoulder as he considered what to say. "I think there's nothing wrong in giving something your best shot and God knows your intentions here are all grounded in the right place. You want to help her. I get that. But don't forget what's at stake here. These people are your people now, Megan, but many of them have lived their whole vampire-lives knowing nothing but tyranny and slaughter. Those who never existed during the Great Cleansing were reared as fledglings with stories of those dark days engrained upon their very souls. You're fighting against years and years of genetic brainwashing on a mass scale. It's not possible to change their thinking overnight, especially when you've got one of their biggest fears locked up in a room down the hall."

"They don't need to fear her. After all, by the morning, it will be over and they can congratulate themselves on being right."

"This isn't about who is right and who is wrong, Megan."

"No? Try telling Charlie that."

He wrinkled his nose. "Charlie's just a dick. There's not a person here who'll tell you different. Even Edward thinks he's a dick, has done for years, but he knows he's a damn good asset. The man's brutal in a fight and he's got a vicious mouth on him but don't let that fool you. He's just as scared as everyone else and when people are scared they hold onto whatever makes them safe and the only way he will feel safe is if Amy is dead."

"Do you think we should have killed her?"

Touching his thumb and forefinger to my chin, he turned my head to face him. "If you'd asked me that a while ago, I would have said one hundred percent yes. In fact, I would have even done it myself and not given her a second thought."

"And now?"

"And now I think you're a bad influence on me, Megan Garrick. An assassin is meant to kill people, not give them a last minute reprieve. I'm severely slacking in my job these days. Still, I guess that what happens when you start hanging out with angels."

"Going soft, Cain?" I chuckled.

He smirked his eyes glinting wickedly. "I'm never soft, you know that."

"I do know, yes." I said, glancing downwards with a coquettish smile. "I know that only too well."

Lying back down, he threw back the blanket and raised a dark brow. "Are you sure you don't need me to remind you?"

I groaned inwardly, simultaneously relishing and hating the tingle of desire that had crept into the base of my stomach, the fire spreading quickly through my veins. "I can't. Not now."

"Damn it," he hissed, rolling his eyes in mock-frustration. "Fine. Go on. Get out of here before I never let you leave."

The problem was I didn't want to leave him and I didn't want to leave this room. I couldn't run and I couldn't hide.

I had no choice but to face up to what I had done.

****

The short journey down the corridor towards Amy's room always felt like the walk of the Green Mile, steadily putting one foot in front of the other as I headed towards my death. Dodging the gauntlet of the hate-filled looks and barrage of suspicion along the way was bad enough, but it didn't get any better once that door was closed and I was on the other side.

Tonight, however, it wasn't Charlie and the others that waited for me but Lucius, who was sat cross-legged by the door to Amy's room, slowly turning the pages of a comic book that rested on his lap. His gloves were by his side, no doubt discarded because they made it too cumbersome to flick through the pages of whatever had captured his keen interest this time and he looked up as I approached, flashing me a warm wide smile.

"Hey kiddo," I said, crouching down in front of him. "What are you doing here?" I wasn't sure I liked him being this close to the room, this close to Amy. It just conjured up images of raven's claws and Caelan dancing madly with him in her arms.

He shrugged as he turned another page. "Waiting for you."

"Oh really?" I replied, amused. "And why's that?"

"Because it's almost time." He stopped browsing momentarily and fixed his blue eyes on mine. The chill undulated down my spine, sending a wave of prickly goose-bumps cascading over my skin.

"And what do you know about that?" I said, warily.

Lucius raised a white-blonde brow and screwed up his nose, almost comically. "You'd be surprised how many of them forget I'm around and say all sorts of things. Sometimes I like to remind them that I'm there, especially when they say mean stuff about you." He scowled and waggled his fingers, leaving me in no doubt just how he liked to remind them. "They don't forget about me then."

"I'm sure they don't," I remarked. He might have been a child, but I knew that Lucius' vengeance against anyone who displeased him could have bought the mightiest of adults to their knees. "But, listen, you need to be careful with that. It's bad enough that I'm clearly outstaying my welcome. We don't want them finding reasons to evict you too."

"Whatever," he retorted with a sullen pout.

"Whatever?" I rolled my eyes. "Don't tell me: Harper, right?"

He grinned. "Harper gave me this comic. It's really cool."

"Trust Harper to give you comics, rather than books. I'm pretty sure he has a superhero complex underneath that villainous demeanour of his."

"He'd make a great superhero," he said, his eyes beaming.

I laughed softly. "Do me a favour, don't ever tell him you said that." I reached out and brushed his hair off his face, feeling that protective thread snagging on my heart. "You know, I don't think it's a good idea that you hang around here. Things are probably going to become very unpleasant."

"It'll be fine," he said and if things weren't so bloody awful, I might have laughed at the assured confidence of the little boy telling me that everything would be okay. Wasn't that what I was meant to say to him?

"I wish that was true, Lucius, I really do. But this time, I'm not sure it will be. I really wanted to help her and all I've done is make things ten times worse. I wish I could convince everyone that she's not as dangerous as they think she is. She's not a monster."

He closed the comic carefully, brushing his fingers over the colourful cover. "Yes, she is."

My eyes widened as I stared at him, my stomach flipping with nauseating somersaults. "Lucius, come on, that's not fair. It's not her fault she's become what she is. She can't help it."

"No, but you can," he said, grabbing his gloves and climbing to his feet, clutching the comic to his chest as if he thought I might try to prise it from his grasp.

I gestured to the colourful cover, where Spider-Man was doing battle with the Green Goblin. "I'm not a superhero, Lucius."

He shook his head. "Not every situation needs a superhero."

"No? Then what am I meant to do?"

"You just have to do the one thing that scares you the most."

Pulling on one of the gloves, he reached out and touched a hand to my shoulder.

"Sometimes the only way to destroy a monster, is to become one yourself."

****

It was hard to imagine a room bleaker than the one in which Amy was being held and I had been in some bleak rooms in my time. I'd been held captive in places where the stench of death fogged the air like the acrid smog of old London, so thick and heavy that it cleaved to your bones and weighed down your soul, but I'd never been in a room where death emanated from someone still alive.

Amy was like a living cadaver, so pale that her skin had taken on a grey, waxy pallor, so thin that it made me wince to look upon her tiny body tied to the chair. Lucius' words whirled around inside my head, battering the ramparts of my conscience and when I looked at her now, I understood only too well, the fine line between mercy and cruelty. I'd so badly wanted to save her that I never fully appreciated the cruelty my act of mercy would inflict upon her. And now, apparently I had to become even more of a monster to end what I had started.

After leaving Lucius, the rest of the night had played out the same as the previous four. She'd cried, begged, pleaded, cajoled, ranted, screamed and it was from the throes of her latest screaming fit that she now sat exhausted, sagged on the chair, her head bowed. A sticky, stream of bloodied vomit snaked down her chin and I leaned over and wiped it with a towel, trying to brush off the accusatory hate-filled stare that burned into my face.

I sighed as I sat back, chucking the dirty towel onto the floor.

"They'll be coming soon," I said. "It's almost sunrise."

Amy groaned, rolling her head on her shoulders.

"You do understand what's going to happen, don't you? You do know that you're going to die?"

"I don't care!" she whimpered. "I don't care, I don't care...."

"Do you want to die? Do you really want it to end this way?"

"Didn't you hear me? I don't care how it ends!" she sobbed. "I just want the pain to stop. I just want it to go away. Make it go away!" Tears began to trickle down her face again, streaking her dirty skin.

The despair twisted and writhed in my gut and I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration, clenching handfuls in my fists. "Amy, please...." I was begging now, reducing to desperate pleas that had no power and no substance, because that's all I had left.

"Why are you even here anyway?" Her eyes narrowed as she glared at me through strands of matted hair that fell over her face. "Why are you doing this?"

"I wanted to .... help, I guess."

"Help? You call this helping?"

She laughed then, a cold, bitter laugh that had no place coming from the mouth of a girl who looked so young. I wondered whether I'd sounded so bitter at that age, dumped in a home by people claiming they would help me and then turning a blind eye to the predators that lurked the hallways at night. Only this wasn't a grotty children's home and twisted perverts with wandering hands. This was life and death and the dark terrible world that existed in between.

"Would you rather we'd left you with the Varúlfur? Because trust me, sitting in a room like this starving for a few days is nothing compared to what they would have done with you."

"At least they'd have just killed me!"

It was my turn to laugh then. "Is that what you think they do? Honestly Amy, they're really not that merciful. I mean, if you're lucky they might have set you loose in the forest and chased you to your death. Or they might have tied you to a chair a bit like this one, in a room a bit like this one and tortured you again and again, not enough to kill you of course, just enough to inflict as much pain as they possibly could, for as long as they possibly could."

"Isn't that what you're doing?" she sneered. "Keeping me alive, starving me, inflicting pain?"

"I'm trying to save you."

"Then it's the same thing," she snapped.

"Does your life really mean that little to you?"

The shadows converged on her face, darkening her features and her blood-stained lips curled back from her teeth in a hateful grimace. "You think this is a life? Scrabbling around in any hole I can find, hiding from the sun, hiding from them, feeling this horrible bloody hunger all the time? Do you have any idea the last time I got any decent sleep? I can't sleep properly because all I can think about is how much it hurts. This isn't a life. This is a walking nightmare. I die every single night. I die every time I open my eyes. I die every single minute that I'm alive!"

I sat stunned. It was like being hurled back in time, catapulted into a living, waking Hell in which I'd found myself after Harper had turned me, crawling through the dirt like some animal, not knowing whether the pain and hunger would ever stop. To endure that every day, to never know anything but pain and hunger and grubby desperation, well, I wasn't sure I'd have wanted to live either. I was lucky, I'd survived. I'd clawed my way out, but Amy had never escaped from her grave.

"What happened to your maker?"

A flicker of consternation echoed in her eyes and for a moment she looked more lost than ever, before appearing to pull it back, burying whatever those feelings were she had for her maker that had almost broke through to the surface.

"I don't know," she said. "Five night after he made me, he walked out and never came back."

"Five nights? But that's barely nothing at all!"

She said nothing and turned her head away, sullenly sucking on her lower lip where the skin looked dry and sore.

"Why did he leave? Surely he must have said something, given you some indication why?"

"He didn't tell me anything!" she said. "He didn't give a shit about me. Never did. I think he just did it to see if he could and then once it was done he didn't want the responsibility. He wasn't much more than a kid himself. After he did it, he barely spoke to me at all. Just sat in the corner watching me in pain, watching me cry and doing nothing. Then one night he went out and I never saw him again. I don't know what happened to him, but I hope he's dead. I hope they got him and ripped out his guts. I hate him!"

"When was this, Amy? How long have you been turned?"

"Last year. Since springtime. I remember the bluebells. He tore open my neck one evening on Hampstead Heath and I remember lying there as he did it, hoping that he didn't get the blood on the bluebells. There seemed something so wrong about that. I didn't want bloodied bluebells to be the last thing I ever saw." She sniffed. "Now I wish they had been."

"Don't say that."

"Why not?" she retorted. "Anyway, it doesn't matter because they'll be coming in here to kill me soon, won't they?"

I clenched my fists and shifted in my seat, wishing she hadn't told me about the bluebells, wishing I'd never asked her, wishing she wasn't staring at me now with those awful bloodshot eyes.

"Oh," she whispered, the realisation sweeping over her. "They're not coming in are they?"

"Yes, they are. But they're not coming to kill you. They're just coming to make sure it gets done." My throat was burning. I swallowed, almost choking on the fire. "You see, not every vampire is like your maker. We do things a little differently here. We clean up our own messes."

"And I'm yours."

I nodded. "Yeah, you're my mess. My problem."

Outside, the sun was awakening. I could feel it; the passing of the night giving way to the coming of the new day. It was instinctual, like an internal alarm clock calling you to your rest, warning you that it was time for lock-down. Or in this case, time for the execution.

Standing up, I grabbed the chair, dragging it across the room and wishing the sound of it shrieking along the floor could drown out the tap-tap-tapping that was shrieking in my head. Looking out of the small dirt-encrusted window in the door, I saw them all beginning to congregate, like the old hags did at the guillotine, gleefully waiting for the heads to fall. Charlie stood centre stage, his chest puffed out like a crowing cockerel, clearly enjoying his moment in the spotlight. Fenton was there too, strangely distanced from the others and I knew whatever happened from here on out, I was going to have to work damned hard to make amends for lashing out at him. I watched them all, these people that had become my family, wondering whether they would ever live without the burden of history holding them captive in a time that didn't exist anymore.

When Harper walked in, his body tense and his mouth set in a tight, grim line, the guilt hit me hard and for a moment, I couldn't look at him. Inevitably though, my eyes sought him out as if the very sight of him would give me the courage I so badly needed. Whether he sensed my eyes upon him, I had no idea, but he looked up and caught my gaze through the window, the expression on his face turning from resigned acceptance to one of questioning concern, when I mouthed the words 'I'm sorry'. 

As I turned the key in the lock, the key that I had secreted in my pocket on my way in, his sharp hearing must have caught the sound and his gaze snapped down towards the empty keyhole on the other side. With a panicked cry, he threw himself towards the room, shoving those closest to him out of the way in a desperate attempt to get to me, but it was already too late. It had been too late from the moment I'd spoken to Lucius. From the moment I knew exactly what I had to do.

Wedging the chair under the handle, I stepped back as he banged his fists furiously against the door, glaring wildly at me through the window.

"Open the door, Megan! Open it now!"

I shook my head and looked away, withdrawing my blade from the holster under my jacket as I stepped towards Amy who, despite her earlier insistence that she wanted to die, shrank back and whimpered as I approached.

"Megan, stop! Stop this now, open the fucking door!"

Ignoring him, I circled Amy, standing behind her and touching a hand to her long red hair, I pulled it back so it was no longer covering her face. She whipped her head to one side, desperately craning her neck to try and look at me.

"What are you doing?" Her breath came in small, sharp gasps, her eyes widening as I gripped the blade tighter.

"The one thing that scares me the most."

The bird wasn't hammering now, but the demon was. Harper punched and kicked, raged and screamed. Again and again he battered the door, venting so much force that it shook the wood in its frame and I knew it wouldn't take long for him to break through. After all, what was one door against the unrelenting fury of Harper Cain?

"Megan, don't do this! Please just open the door!"

I gave him a small smile and cut the ropes that bound Amy's hands.

For a moment, she didn't move, she just remained frozen to the chair, her hands still behind her back even though no binds held her there. She began to tremble, her whole body visibly shaking and at the door, Harper's fight became frantic, his fists beating harder and faster than ever before as he stared wide-eyed at the Feeder.

The Feeder I had just cut loose.

When it came, I didn't flinch. Instead, I just took a step to the side as Amy exploded from the chair, sending it crashing backwards, the splintered wood narrowly missing me. Throwing herself into the corner of the room, her fawn-like legs buckled once, but she soon steadied herself, pushing her bony arms out on either side to clutch at the wall. Her chest heaved in and out violently as she glared at me, drool pooling at the corners of her awful mouth.

Lucius had been right. She was a monster. A fevered beast of a thing that had become lost the moment her maker had deserted her and left her to wander the city alone. Hunger was all she had ever known and no amount of addiction therapy was ever going to save her. I knew that now, just as I knew this had always been destined to have only one outcome.

Sometimes the only way to destroy a monster, is to become one yourself.

As she hurled herself at me, I closed my eyes for a split-second, silently praying that Harper would know what to do, that he would keep himself safe – keep them all safe from the monster inside the room. When I opened my eyes, I saw flashes of her face, so full of mad craving, so full of ravenous thirst. I saw her arms outstretched, fingers ready to dig into my flesh and tear me apart. I saw her violent rage and I met it with my own, unleashing the fire that had been frenziedly bubbling under the surface of my skin, so desperate to be set free, so ready to for me to use it, to become the one thing that scared me more than anything.

The spread of light was faster this time, almost as if it sensed my lack of resistance and it quickly took hold, embracing us both in a white hot glow that seemed to grow in a way that was both terrifying and wondrous all at the same time. As she sank her teeth into my shoulder, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into a firm embrace, the pain of her incisors tearing into my skin inconsequential compared to the furious scald of my wings as they tore free from my back. Amy screamed and tried to pull away, but I just tightened my grip and concentrated on the fire that burned all around us, revelling in the power that flowed through every vein, every muscle, every bone.

Unfurled to their full awesome extent, my wings practically filled the small space that had been Amy's prison, the tips touching the peeling plaster of the ceiling and walls, a kaleidoscopic backdrop that fractured light into every corner with so much force, that spider-like cracks began appearing in the brickwork. As the whole room seemed to shake, I realised that I was no longer scared of what I was. I was no longer terrified of the power that lived inside me. The fear had gone, replaced by an energy that felt as natural to me as breathing, an energy that was instinctual. I could still feel its wild potency, its hunger for more, but I reigned it in, knowing that it was my will that channelled it where I needed it to go. My choice. My desire.

The light burned on, the fire raged and yet I was the one in control. Finally, I was the creature I was always destined to become.

Powerful. Formidable. Awe-inspiring.

And, if I chose to be, monstrous.