The darkness numbed me like a sedative straight to the bloodstream.

The candle had flickered to nothing a while ago and I hadn't bothered to re-light it, instead preferring to remain here in the dark, feeling comforted by how it enshrouded me as soon as the flame had died. Not far from where I sat, Amy lay asleep, her deep contented breathing like the most soothing of lullabies. It felt good to hear it; to hear her finally at peace from the insanity that had raged through her veins and it felt good to just sit here, wrapping the darkness around me like the most soothing of bandages. I needed the come-down now, balancing out the tremendous high I'd experienced in that room as the power had surged through me, filling every space with its light.

What are you? What are you? 

Amy's astonished cries still whispered in my ears. I could still picture her startling eyes, free from the tiny bloodshot veins that had caged them, her face free from the madness and hunger that had twisted it into a mask of such desperate hatred. I could still hear the sound of the door being opened, the tiny window that had been fractured into a glass jigsaw puzzle finally falling free from the wood and showering the floor with tiny razor shards. I could still see Harper's stricken face, miraculously burn-free this time, and the stricken faces of those that had crowded behind him to stare dumbfounded into Amy's cell.

"It's done," I had said. "It's over."

"Goddammit," Harper said after a few stunned seconds, as he'd staggered towards me. "You actually did it. Of all the insane, screwed-up things I've seen people do in my lifetime, that's got to have been fucking craziest yet." Then he'd hauled me to my feet and clutched me to him in a hard, almost bone-crushing embrace and I'd noticed how his body trembled slightly as he did so.

When the shadows trembled in the hallway outside from room where I now resided, I glanced up to see him standing there, his face guarded as he leant against the doorframe.

"There's a meeting. They want you there," he said, his tone almost apologetic and I knew immediately he wasn't apologising for dragging me to the meeting in the first place, but for what the meeting was going to entail. It had been inevitable, of course, and even I was surprised that I'd been left alone for so long. I knew I'd have to face the firing squad at some point.

I sighed, climbing to my feet and taking one last reluctant look at the sleeping Amy. "Well then I guess I'd better not keep them all waiting."

I hadn't kept them waiting at all but they looked impatient none-the-less when I walked into the school hall where they had all congregated. I must admit, I did raise an eyebrow when Harper turned in the direction of the hall, rather than the usual science lab meeting point but it became all too painfully clear why, when he pushed open the double doors and I found that everyone had been invited to this meeting. Everyone. Not just Fenton and Edward and their generals, but all the survivors from Brandon's attempted Second Cleansing, the survivors from Oxleas, everyone that we had grabbed along the way and taken with us in our effort to leave the northern side of the city. Even Lucius was there, sat on the side of the stage, his short legs dangling over the edge and noticeable gap around him where others seemed to be giving him a wide berth.

The room fell silent as I entered and I was immediately transported back to my school days, when I'd walked in late to assembly one morning and had to file past the whole school, under the scrutinising, beady gaze of the teachers who'd sat up high on the stage, like devilled birds on a perch. As I approached the gathering, I heard the teenage Megan in my head chanting don't trip, don't trip, don't trip. I didn't trip - thankfully - but that didn't make the short walk across the hall any less torturous. People stood or sat on the floor, some sat on the few plastic-backed chairs that remained intact, but all watched me approach with a stifling mixture of trepidation and fear that made every step feel like I was wearing shoes of lead.

At the front of the hall, standing directly in front of the stage, Charlie waited, looking the most impatient of them all, tapping his foot against the floor and clicking his tongue against his teeth. Close by and looking uncharacteristically jittery was Edward and with him was Blaine, who'd naturally seemed to gravitate towards the brutish compadre of Benjamin since we'd lost Garrick, and Alexander and Peter both of whom I'd met at the Millennium Mills. Fenton stood leaning against the platform with his arms folded across his chest. He was the only one who wasn't staring at me, preferring instead to look anywhere but, and my heart sank a little to see it. I stopped next to Lucius, feeling an affinity with the only other one here who had the ability to rouse that same look of suspicion in their eyes. He flashed me a wide grin, almost as if he were oblivious of what was about to happen, even though I knew he understood only too well.

"Okay," Harper said to them all, although his cold gaze rested most heavily upon Charlie. There was a weariness to his voice that I didn't expect, as if he had wrangled with them for hours about this and who knows, maybe he had. "Obviously the events of the past few days have caused some dissent amongst us. What happened yesterday was unexpected, to say the least. Some of you are worried. Some of you are frightened. You want answers, well, now's your chance."

He gestured towards me and for a moment, nobody spoke. A few furtive glances were cast around the hall, almost as if they were daring each other to speak, even though they had all no doubt been highly vocal before I'd been summoned here to face them.

It was, as I could have predicted, the stocky, shaven-headed vampire who spoke up first, his stance as defensive as his face was indignant. "Where's the Feeder?" he demanded.

"If you mean Amy, she's sleeping," I said. "She's had quite an ordeal, I think she deserves some rest. And she's not a Feeder anymore, so you can quit calling her one."

He snorted. "We only have your word for that."

"You were there, Charlie," I replied, trying to remain calm. I didn't want to give him my anger and frustration, knowing that if I did, I might as well have pulled the damn trigger myself. "You saw for yourself that she was cured. What came out of that room, was not the creature you put in there."

Fenton did look at me then, a fleeting look of curiosity that made me flush uncomfortably and then it was gone again, replaced with indifference and distance. Too much distance.

"So you reckon she's safe? One minute she wants to rip everyone's throat out and now everything's okay?"

God, how I hated his smug, sarcastic tone.

"Yes," I said. "She's perfectly safe. Do you think I would have been able to stay with her these past hours if she was still a Feeder? Trust me, she's cured."

Charlie sneered. "Well, you would say that seeing as you were the one that had everything to gain from the Feeder's supposed recovery."

"What have I gained, Charlie?" I snapped, unable to stop my voice from rising and echoing around the hall, prompting a few raised eyebrows and a rustle of alarmed voices. "I'm standing here in no better position than I was five days ago. You still don't trust me. You still think I made a bad decision. And what's worse is that now instead of you all judging me for being Vánagandr's wife, you're now all judging me for what I did in there. You're all looking at me like I'm the enemy, like you think I'm about to flip out and incinerate this whole place and everyone in it. So tell me, what the bloody hell have I gained from all of this?"

Harper shook his head. "Nobody thinks you're going to do that, Megan."

"You're a terrible bloody liar, Cain. You think I can't see what they're all thinking? That I can't see the way they're all looking at me?" I reached out my hand, letting the glow envelop my fingers and hearing a few of them gasp and feeling strangely satisfied and sickened at the same time when I saw some visibly draw back. "They don't trust this and they don't trust me."

I clenched my fist, dousing the flame in my palm, before pulling it back and rubbing the skin over my knuckles self-consciously. "See?" I said pointedly at him.

Maggie stepped forward, her face a picture of calm diplomacy as always, but I could still see the same fear flickering in her eyes just the same. "Megan, please don't think this is us against you. You're one of us and yes, you're right, it did take a while for people to get their heads around the fact you were married to Vánagandr. It comes with a natural distrust but it's not one that hasn't been overcome with time. But this is different, this is something that none of us have any experience with."

"And you think I have? This is new to me too, Maggie, don't forget that."

"Is that meant to ease our minds?" scoffed Charlie. "That you're wandering around with this .... power...and you have no idea what you're doing? We saw what you did to Harper."

The accusation bit viciously. "I didn't mean to do that; you know I didn't."

"Is that what you're going to say when you do the same to us, or worse? I didn't mean to do it! That's not good enough, Megan, I'm sorry but it's not."

A consensus of agreement ignited in the rest of the group, as some nodded their heads, some vocally concurred and an undercurrent buzz of whispering rippled through the room.

I glared at Charlie, wrinkling my nose with disdain. "Trust me, if I did do the same to you, I'd mean to do it."

"Megan," Harper warned, rolling his eyes. "That's not helping the situation."

"I wasn't trying to," I shot back. "Because let's face it, there's not much I can say or do to prove I'm not about to burn everyone to cinders." I turned to face them all. "You want the truth? If I wanted to, I could do it. And very easily too. And yes, the first time, when they took Harper, I couldn't control it properly because I didn't know how. But now I do. Just as I knew how to save Amy in that room, which I might add, I did without harming a single one of you in the process. I can control it now and I know that won't mean a damn thing to any of you, but it happens to be the truth. What should mean something to you though is knowing that I'm not a danger to you, to any of you." I looked at Charlie. "You're my family, whether you want me or not, I'm with you. I'm loyal to you and I would burn the rest of the world down if it meant protecting every single person in this room. Every single one."

The hall fell silent again, apart from Charlie who emitted a strangled cry of frustration and stared at me with a strange look upon his face. The weird thing was I could have sworn that he looked like he believed me, he just didn't seem to want to.

Edward rubbed a hand over his rough beard, tugging on a few straggly strands of hair as he smiled wryly. "No offence, lass, we welcome the loyalty and all, but I'm not sure we'll be needing ya to burn down the rest of the world. A vampire needs to eat after all and we could do with a few more people hanging around rather than just us, ya know?" He chuckled, but his expression grew serious again as he glanced around the room. "Look, we know you wouldn't turn on us, maybe we just needed to hear you say it."

"This is bullshit," Charlie growled.

"Yes, it is." Fenton pushed himself away from the stage, running his tongue over the tip of one incisor as he stared at me and if my heart hadn't sunk completely before, it was plummeting the depths now, unable to tread water any longer. He stepped into the gap between Charlie and me, but surprisingly it was the other vampire he squared up to. "It's bullshit that we're standing around questioning Megan, when right now, she's the best weapon we have."

"You can't be serious," Charlie laughed coldly. "She brought a Feeder here! Even you know how fucking crazy that was."

"Yes, you're right, it was crazy. In fact, it was insane. But Megan sorted it and it's done now. We shouldn't be wasting time debating this. Have you forgotten we have a war on our hands? Have you forgotten that the Varúlfur claim more and more of the city everyday while we sit back on our laurels and let them do it? We have bigger problems than one Feeder. We have bigger problems than wondering whether one of our own is going to turn this place into fireball, which to be fair, she would have done yesterday if she couldn't control whatever this power is that she has. We're making a war between ourselves when we have one right outside our door. Now that's crazy. That's insane."

Harper, who had stood to one side, his arms folded across his chest, watched Fenton as he spoke and a small smile tugged on the corner of his mouth. His eyes appraised the other man, a glimmer of pride flickering across the emerald which he quickly quashed when he caught my intrigued gaze upon him and his face twisted into an irritated scowl.

"Does anyone else have anything to say?" he said to them all. Sheepish faces stared back at him. Some shook their heads, some averted their gaze as if suddenly ashamed that they had dared to voice an opinion. "Charlie?" He turned his attention to the other man who shifted uncomfortably and shook his head.

"I don't like it, that's all I'm saying," he grumbled.

"We'll keep a watch on the girl," Harper assured him. "But in the meantime, why don't we get back to doing what's important and that's working out what our next step will be."

"Aye, which is what, lad?" Edward said with a grin that looked almost comical peeking out from his black bushy beard.

Harper grinned back, a smile even the Devil himself would have been hard pressed to rival.

"Working out the damn instructions for this new weapon of ours."

*****

"You didn't have to do that," I said to Fenton, as we stood back, watching the last of the group file out of the hall. "I didn't deserve your support."

He pursed his lips and smoothed back his hair in a very unsettling Garrick-like way. "No, you didn't, but yes I did. Charlie and his little sidekicks have been running around all week whispering into the ears of anyone who would listen. The last thing we need is a bloody mutiny on our hands."

"Yeah, well, all the same ... thank you. And I'm sorry, for you know, being a bitch."

"Don't be sorry," he said. "You do it so well."

I smiled as his eyes met mine. "I guess I deserved that one though."

Harper, who had spent some time in deep conversation with Edward before he'd too left the hall, gesturing me with a mock-salute before he'd disappeared out the double doors, sauntered over to where Fenton and I stood, scowling at the vampire by my side.

"You left it a bit late to step in," he said. "I was starting to think maybe Megan had rendered you mute yesterday instead of blind."

"Apparently your girlfriend reserves acts of retribution just for you," retorted Fenton. "Maybe you should check your relationship status on Facebook, you might find it's changed from 'in a relationship' to 'I'll probably kill you given half the chance'."

"Not funny," I frowned.

"What can I say? You're not the only bitch around here."

"You know, that's the first thing you've said in a while that I can completely agree with," Harper said. "Well that, and the little speech you just made back then, even though you were cutting it a bit fine."

Fenton narrowed his eyes, but the smirk lit up his face. "Are you feeling okay because I could have sworn there was a compliment hidden in there somewhere?"

"A compliment? From me? You're living in a dream world, Grainger. Quit being so fucking needy all the time."

I let them banter back and forth for a moment while I checked on Lucius, who was still perched on the side of the stage, only now his head was turned to face the door to the hall, his attention fixed solely on something beyond my sight in the gloomy corridor beyond.

"Hey kiddo, what's up?"

With a single blink, he turned back to look at me. "Amy's here," he said.

"She is? Where?" Running to the door, I glanced out. Sure enough, tucked into one of the boarded-up window bays, Amy was crouched with her arms wrapped around her knees, looking at me with wide eyes, her face still streaked with dirt. I had no idea how Lucius could have known she was here seeing as she blended into the darkness so seamlessly, but I knew better than to question him on such things.

"How long have you been siting there?" I asked.

"Long enough," she said with a sniff.

Cautiously approaching the bay, I pulled myself up onto the high, deep sill and nestled into the shadows next to her. She smelt of blood, vomit and the cold wet earth and yet underneath it all, there was a very subtle hint of vanilla, like maybe she had washed her hair not so long ago and a hint of shampoo still remained. Eyeing the disheveled state of her top and jeans, I knew I was going to have to fetch something from Fenton's stash of second-hand clothes and was already despairing that I wouldn't be able to find anything small enough to fit her tiny frame. Scrunched up into a tight ball, she looked every inch her human teenage years and I was suddenly struck by an image of her walking these corridors, wearing her tie and blazer, her schoolbag banging against her legs. It could have been her. She could have been here when the school had been alive and yet, she was here with us, just another ghost haunting the the cadaverous shell it had become, with its peeling walls and dead stale air.

"They want me gone, don't they?"

"You're staying, it's already been decided," I said firmly. "They'll get used to it, you just have to give them a bit of time. Some of them have a bit of trouble adapting, that's all."

"It's weird," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I feel so ... empty."

"Empty?" Panic spiked in my gut.

Amy nodded. "Yeah, before I just felt full of hunger and pain and now, I'm not sure how to feel. It's like there's this big empty space where the hunger was and I have no idea what I'm meant to fill it with."

"Hunger is all you've ever known since you were turned. It's no wonder you don't know how to feel now. Do you remember anything from before? When you were human, I mean."

She stiffened and wrapped her arms tighter around her legs. "I'm hardly going to forget that. I had everything a girl could possibly want. A nice town house in Notting Hill. Walk-in wardrobe. Three family holidays a year."

I stared hard at her until she rolled her eyes.

"Okay, okay, maybe it wasn't quite like that. Actually, I'm from Croydon, you know, not far from where that Reeves furniture shop burnt down during the riots? The fire didn't quite reach my house unfortunately. Maybe I should have started one, they would never have known it was me, they'd have blamed it on the looters."

"So if you're from Croydon, how the Hell did you end up being bitten by a vampire on Hampstead Heath of all places?"

"I was a runaway. Mum's an alcoholic, she took up with some low-life scrounger from down the Tavern and I got fed up of watching him beat the shit out of her after every session. Got fed up of her letting him do it. I wasn't going to hang around waiting for him to start on me, so I packed a bag and left. I was more or less fending for myself anyway, so it didn't make much difference whether I did it there or somewhere else."

"And you thought the streets would be better than home?"

"I wasn't on the streets at first. Kipped at a few friends' houses, then those bloody sticky beak social services cows got involved and so I run away, took the Tube up to Hampstead Heath and that's where I met him." Her expression changed instantly, distorting grotesquely into a hate-filled mask that reminded me a little too much of the face I'd seen every single day for the past week. "I thought he was a bit of alright, you know? A few years older than me, seemed pretty cool, a bit weird sometimes maybe but most boys are, aren't they?"

I chuckled. "Hmmm, yeah and I hate to break it to you but they get a whole lot weirder as they get older."

"I don't suppose that's something I'll ever have to worry about now," she said, with a shrug of her bony shoulders.

"Did you ever go home? After he turned you?"

"Nah, what was the point? There was nothing there for me. Did you?"

"Yes," I said and for the briefest of seconds I was there, running my hands over Egyptian cotton sheets and the marbled worktops, breathing in the scent of his shower gel and the fresh flowers in the hallway. I shot her a smile. "There was nothing there for me."

When Lucius appeared, stopping in the open doorway, he and Amy studied each other for a few seconds, in that unabashed open way that children often do.

"Amy, this is Lucius. Lucius, this is Amy," I said by way of introduction.

The girl's eyes widened slightly, as she tilted her head, examining him from head to toe and back up again. Shuffling forward, her hands curled over the edge of the sill, almost as if she was trying to get closer without having to take the risk of actually getting closer to him.

They always know, I thought, feeling a sudden sharp pang of sadness for the boy, they always know to steer clear of him. 

When Amy uncurled her legs and slipped down from the window bay, that pang of sadness turned into stunned surprise, as I watched her approach Lucius until she was so close that she could touch him. Lucius, as always, seemed completely unfazed by the intensity of her attention and instead seemed to mirror her interest, looking up at her with wide curious eyes.

"You're not human," she observed finally.

"No," replied Lucius. "Neither are you. Do you like comic books?"

Amy's returning smile was broad, warm and instantaneous. "I love comic books."

And there it was. An acceptance that I never expected. An acceptance that came without question or fear or suspicion. Not even I had ever given him that.

"Great!" enthused Lucius. "I can show you my collection. Harper gave me a whole stack of them."

Amy's brow wrinkled a little. "Who's Harper?"

"One of those weird ones I was telling you about," I said with a wry grin as I jumped down from the window bay. "But comic books later, okay? You need to go take a shower, no offence but stinking of rotten blood isn't going to stop everyone from thinking you're still a Feeder. Go get cleaned up, I'll get Fenton to sort you out some new clothes. And you, young man...." I turned to Lucius. "You and I have a date at the library."

The little boy frowned, his face suddenly marred by a sullen pout and anyone who knew Lucius' obsession with books, might have been forgiven for wondering why on earth the blonde-haired bibliophile seemed so troubled by the thought of going to the library.

Of course, however, this wasn't your average library but a place where the bookcases seemed to stretch on and on into an infinite star-lit sky and where the librarian didn't greet you with a stern warning to be quiet, but with a smile. A smile that made you feel welcome, a smile that promised the world, a smile that made your flesh tingle and your soul ache.

A smile so tempting that you might never want to leave the library again.