A woman's laughter cut through the thin membranes of my slumber.

It had a girlish quality, with a light and lyrical tone but there was something about it that made me frown, as if it sounded wrong somehow, like when you listen to someone singing off-key. When the voice whispered so close to my right ear, my eyes snapped open, sure that whoever it was now lay next to me, but all I saw was the grey, cracked plaster of the asylum wall.

To my left, Harper lay on his side, with his back towards me and that great dragon tattoo encircling his hip bone, a constant reminder of the beast that waited just beneath the surface of his heavily-inked skin. I could still spy small beads of perspiration on his body and I vaguely wondered why I was freezing cold, when he was clearly still emanating heat from before when we had clutched each other as if it were the first time all over again.

It had been a rough, desperate attempt to grasp onto something tangible; a furious need in me to shake off the terrors that Lucius had imprinted on my mind and instead focus on something feral and untameable. I had wanted to lose myself in the heat of Harper's desire but had found myself instead feeding the insatiable hunger of my own needs, biting into his throat until his blood covered my chin and ran down my breasts, smearing our skin as our bodies pressed firmly together.

He had cried out in pain and I had enjoyed it, mostly because he reciprocated soon after with a bite to my inner thigh, his fingers exploring as he sucked hard on my flesh. I had held his head there against my skin, grabbing handfuls of his hair with both hands and arching my back as dual shots of pleasure and pain made me writhe beneath him. When he finally pulled me onto his lap, I kept my eyes open the whole time as I moved against his firm body, because I needed to see only him and because I knew the moment I closed my eyes, I would see them.

And now my body ached but it was nothing compared to the sharp shards of pain that stabbed at my temples. I sat up and massaged my head, moving my thumbs in circular motion and it was then that I heard the laughter again, this time coming from somewhere down the corridor. I stared at the open doorway for a moment, feeling the light touch of anxiety as it ran its fingertips across my neck and scratched its nails down my spine. Reaching for the closest piece of discarded clothing - Harper's t-shirt - I pulled it over my head and carefully, so not to rouse him, I stepped over him and padded over to the door. The cold of the tiles quickly seeped into the soles of my feet and I tiptoed across the floor like some blood-stained ballerina, performing the most macabre dance routine.

Soon I reached the main passageway. To my left, I could see the distant orange glow of the hearth in Benjamin's old room, flickering shadow-puppets across the walls. It was as inviting as it always was, a small pocket of warmth in a dismal reality, but instead of walking towards it, I turned right and followed the laughter as it continued to echo through the corridors. As I walked, I trailed my fingertips along the wall, feeling for the voice, searching for her under the flaking paint that crumbled under my touch. Every time I thought I had found her, she slipped easily out of my reach and I would hear that maddening laughter further away, as if she were goading me, luring me onwards.

I began to quicken my pace, breaking into a light jog and hearing my bare feet slap against the floor and the sound of my breath, whistling over my dry cracked lips. The lights blinked overhead, went out for the briefest of seconds and then came back on again and somehow the shadows seemed darker and denser than before.

Finally I turned a corner and found myself in Garrick's bedroom. Harper's blood brother was nowhere to be seen. The sheets on his metal-framed bed were crumpled and one pillow had fallen to the floor. By the side of the bed, on a tall wooden table, his tatty leather-bound notebook sat open and I felt its pull from where I stood. I was surprised that he had left it unattended. Garrick never went anywhere without that damn book and he certainly never let it out of his sight.

The door that led the way down to Lucius' room was open.

Had it been open before? I frowned and took a step towards it, glancing longingly back at the book. I wanted to see what Garrick was up to. In fact, until I had spied the book within my reach, I hadn't realised just how much I wanted to read what lay scribbled out on those well-thumbed pages.

"Garrick?" I called out tentatively. "Garrick, are you down there?"

When he didn't answer, I took a deep breath and quickly crossed the room, reaching out with a shaking hand to touch the words written in black ink, some smudged, some heavily underlined in emphasis. Nephilim. Cain. Elioud. Serpent. Canaan. None of it made any sense and the text only compounded the headache that was raging like a maelstrom and threatening to open up my stomach and spew out bile and blood in equal measure.

Laughter spilled out of the stairwell and my head whipped around, my attention diverted away from the book as the ghost-woman called out to me once again. As if in a daze, I walked robotically to the doorway and looked down into the darkness. Even my vampire sight could not penetrate the inky blackness that pooled at the bottom of the staircase and I squinted to make out something moving in the gloom, but everything was still and silent; too silent.

My foot edged onto the first step and placing my hands on the walls either side of the narrow stairwell, I took another tentative step down into the shadows. The laughter assaulted me again, floating up and practically gripping me, tugging me downwards. A memory whirled into my mind, a face I knew I should remember, but the features were blurred and distorted.

"Clara?" I whispered. She laughed again. Mocking me now.

Not Clara. Someone else.

Further and further I descended, still unable to see the bottom or the door to Lucius' room.

Hesitantly, I took another step and quickly withdrew my foot, recoiling from the black water that sucked at my bare ankle. The stairwell was flooded and panic rolled through me when I realised that Garrick must have come down here to save Lucius. There was no other reason he would have left his precious notebook. Without thinking, I stepped down and was soon up to my waist. The stairs plunged from underneath my feet and I was wading in the floods, gasping as the icy depths converged upon my body.

The further I went, the more I realised there was something not quite right about this and even worse, something not right at all about the water itself. It seemed thicker than normal water, the resistance building against my body as I tried to move through it and now it was up to my shoulders, so deep that I was forced to swim. I should have reached the door by now. The stairwell was a small, confined space and yet here I was, as if attempting to cross some vast underground lake. Laughter peeled close to my ear and I whirled around, my desperate cry echoing off the walls as I frantically searched the darkness for the source, treading water and becoming more panicked by the second. I had to go back. The cold was saturating my bones, adding weight to my limbs. I felt the water lapping at my neck and knew that I was slowly sinking, my body so tired now as I struggled to tread water. I began to swim again, groaning in fear when I realised that the staircase had disappeared, swallowed up in the darkness and I had no notion of where it was or in which direction I should go.

Disorientated and exhausted, I called out to Harper and it was then I felt a hand grip my ankle, sharp nails digging into my flesh as I was pulled under. Frantically I kicked out, but my legs felt heavy and powerless against the onslaught. I opened my mouth to scream and the thick waters oozed into my mouth and throat, choking me and I fought with all my depleted energy. Another hand grabbed at me, a touch so cold that it rivalled even the plunging temperature of the water. I couldn't see a thing in the darkness below, it consumed me, smothering me completely as the air was slowly pushed out of my lungs and the pain in my chest was excruciating, as if my ribs were being crushed one by one. I desperately reached out, trying to break through to the surface and quickly more hands took hold of my wrists, preventing me from fighting back. One of my arms was pulled viciously in one way and the other was twisted in an unnatural angle behind my back until I felt the bone snap, as my body was tugged in all directions in a deathly tug of war. 

I screamed again, but no sound came out, my mouth opened wide in an agonised silent maw and the waters continued to pour into me, filling every space, until I was sure I was going to burst. Fingers curled into my hair, tearing it from the roots. Nails scratched at my skin, gouging my flesh. So many hands grabbed at me now that I couldn't fathom how many creatures were down here in the sludgy depths, all I knew was that I was sinking deeper and deeper and the pain was not just assaulting me from the outside, but from the inside too. My skin stretched, splitting over my swollen limbs. My eyes bulged and the last thing I saw before they were forced from my bleeding sockets was a woman's pale face rushing at me through the black waters, her long dark hair spread out around her and her lips stretched back grotesquely over sharp teeth.

Vampire teeth.

Now I was screaming and the sound resonated loud and clear, as I broke through the surface, my lungs shrieking for air that rushed in where the water had been.

I was back in our room, curled up and foetal on the thin mattress and by my side, with one hand lightly touching my wrist and the other slowly flicking through the pages of a brightly illustrated copy of Peter Rabbit that rested on his lap, was Lucius. With a cry, I scrambled away from him, pushing my back up against the wall and gathering the blanket around me as if it would serve as some form of protection against the strange little boy.

Closing the book with a snap that made me flinch, Lucius looked up at me, his bright blue eyes sparkling and his long blonde fringe falling against his eyelashes and making him blink.

"Hello," he said.