There was a time, after Harper had changed me, when I had wished for this moment more than anything else.

If someone had said 'you can have five minutes of your life back, just five minutes and then back to reality', I would have chosen this. I would have chosen the chance to be wrapped in Brandon's embrace. I would have grovelled at his feet if need be and begged his forgiveness if it meant just reliving a small taste of what it had been like when we were together like this. When I had stood outside my old house, staring mournfully through the window, I had yearned to see his face, yearned for his smile and most of all, yearned for his touch. Him, him, him.

What is it they say about being careful what you wish for?

Whirling me around, Brandon pushed me up against the dresser, forcing me to face that image of myself in the mirror. The bruises had faded quickly with just a few stubborn purple abrasions here and there; my hair although cleaner than it had been in a while was unkempt and tousled, my complexion pale and wan. I looked like I was wearing somebody else's dress and I guess, to all intent and purposes, I really was. I looked out of place in this gown, out of place in this setting, out of place with this life. It was all a masquerade.

As his mouth moved again to my shoulders and then down that wide expanse of bare skin on my back, following the path of my spine, I glared at my reflection. Angry, shameful spots of colour stained my cheeks and I gripped the edge of the dresser, my fingernails scratching the wood.

Brandon was already nuzzling at the small of my back, having sunk to his knees behind me, his hands clutching my hips as his mouth worked tirelessly on the soft skin left exposed by the backless gown. He ran his fingers down my legs and gripping the ankle-length skirt, he pushed the fabric back upwards until it was gathered around my thighs. A few agonising seconds passed and nothing happened. Nothing except the tremble of his hands against my legs and a few heavy exhales of breath. And then he went further, pushing the dress up over my behind and I screwed my eyes shut and bit down hard on my bottom lip, breaking through the skin and tasting blood.

When he pressed his mouth against the top of my thigh, just below the curve of my cheek, I flinched. I couldn't help it. The sensation of his lips against my skin verged on pain, like the searing touch of a hot brand on my flesh and when I felt the low rumble of a growl vibrate on my thigh, my eyes shot open, that all too familiar instinctive fear sending sharp poker jabs of heat into my bladder.

He stood up so suddenly, knocking into me as he did so as if he was unsteady on his feet and immediately I saw flecks of poisonous amber reflecting in his gaze as he looked over my shoulder and stared at me in the mirror, his eyes frantic and hungry. He buried his face in my neck, his dark curls falling over his face and tickling my shoulder as his hands reached round and grasped my breasts, cupping them firmly in his hot palms. His heart beat furiously against my back and we remained like that for a few uncomfortable, claustrophobic moments, locked desperately together.

I was free-falling. My control was loosening by the second and it was as if I were plummeting down, down, down, with nothing but some great gaping black maw opening up beneath me. Flailing desperately, I tried to grip onto something, anything that would break my fall, anything that would keep me from hurtling into those black depths of reality. Because reality was going to kill me. Giving into the fear was going to bring this whole masquerade crashing down around me and I couldn't let that happen.

I held tight to the only thing that would keep me alive. Memories.

His name is Brandon David Walden. His birthday is 3rd August. He takes one sugar in his coffee. He likes lazy Saturday lie-ins, his steak rare and his wine white and crisp. He prefers action films but a Richard Curtis flick is his guilty pleasure. Chooses dark chocolate over milk any day, arranges his tie collection in colour order, hates baths and loves showers. His first car was a Golf, his first crush was an older girl in primary school called Eloise and his first kiss was with Eloise's younger sister when they were both nine. His name is Brandon David Walden and he sleeps on the right and I sleep on the left.

Over and over again I chanted silently in my head, trying to lose myself in those little snippets of him that I would always remember. They were engrained within me like an internal tattoo, forever inked on my psyche. Permanent. Binding.

And then I heard her. A strong, resilient voice whispering in my ear.

He likes his vampires bound and tortured, with their guts ripped free from their bodies and in a bloodied pile by their feet. He likes nasty photography and vile snuff parties. He never wanted a child with you. He screwed Clara in your kitchen, on your sofa, in your bed. He controlled you then and he's trying to control you now. His name is Brandon David Noble and he is not your husband. He is not your husband.

His hand pressed hard on my back, bending me double over the dresser and sending the vase of roses crashing over. I watched, numb, as the water tumbled out of the broken porcelain and poured across the surface, soaking the front of my dress and dripping onto the plush carpet at my feet. The prostrate roses lay within reach and I touched one fallen cream petal with my fingertip, dazed as if I was still trapped in slumber. It was only the sound of his zipper that roused me, cracking through the haze with an awful grating sound that made me blink furiously and try to stand up, but he just pushed down harder and forced his knee between my legs.

Brandon groaned as he pressed against me. Or was it a growl? I wasn't sure. All I knew was that when I looked into the mirror, his eyes were blazing amber and I was fascinated and horrified all at the same time. The malevolence shone through, a monster's eyes in a human face, and yet they were clouded with such anguish and pain it was as if that human side of him was horrified too. His hardness pushed against my thighs, one hand clawing the soft flesh of my hip, his other now gripping my shoulder.

He is my husband. He is my husband. He is.....

He was wheezing. Great pained breaths laboured his body and he shuddered against me, his head drooping and dark damp curls hanging down over his face. When he looked up again, I saw it straight away and cried out in alarm.

The skin was rippling across his cheeks, stretching and pulling over bone. His lips curled back over his teeth and as I watched, frozen, his mouth began pulling at the corners, widening horribly as his jaw snapped. His fingers dug in deeper, knuckles cracking and enlarging. It was as if I was looking into one of those mirrors at the funfair, his body distorting before my eyes, only I knew this was no mirage. It was real and I could feel how real it was.

A strange keening noise escaped his lips, a cry of such torment that I was hypnotised as I stared at his reflection in the mirror, transfixed by his reluctant transformation and by his obvious pain. When those sharp yellow eyes locked together with mine, he pulled away from me abruptly, stumbling backwards and flying into the chair, sending it tumbling to the floor. On all fours, he arched his back, clenched fists grinding into the carpet as his moans broke down into choked, guttural growls.

I took a hesitant step towards him, my hand reaching out to tentatively touch his shoulder.

"Get away, Megan." He snarled and lashed out with his fist and I tumbled backwards, hitting the side of the dresser hard and knocking it against the wall. The mirror smashed on impact, large jagged pieces of glass falling onto the top, some shards shattering into tiny particles like diamond dust, others falling to the carpet close to where I now lay fallen.

Brandon beat at the floor with one fist, pressing his forehead against the carpet as he did so. He inhaled and exhaled deeply and for a moment, he was calmer, as if he were gaining some control over his body, fighting against every instinct and every pull of his true form to take over.

"Bran..." I whispered and his head shot up, a jerking movement that was accompanied by another crack of bone, maybe in his neck or shoulder blade and as he turned to look at me, his cheeks wet with tears, I could see that he wasn't winning the fight at all.

He was just delaying the inevitable.

I gasped when I saw the slow movements of his change, as his face shifted and undulated, each gradual movement of flesh and bone horribly clear to see. He gritted his teeth as his body began to spasm. I knew that fighting it was causing him immense pain. A long line of drool snaked from his mouth, stretching down fat and pregnant before breaking off and hitting the carpet.

I had seen Varúlfur transformations before but none quite like this. Somehow it seemed worse because it was him and I knew that I had never wanted to see this. I had never wanted to see the man that I knew changing. I had never wanted to see that human side of him slip away, because that meant finally letting go of everything I remembered. It meant finally hammering down those nails on the lid of Megan Walden's coffin and accepting that I was dead; that we were dead.

His shirt was saturated with sweat, clinging to his back and I watched as his spine shifted under the damp fabric, each vertebrae becoming more pronounced as they popped out in turn. His hands twisted into claws and he began to crawl away towards the bed, each movement laboured and agonising, the shiny leather of his brogues slipping on the carpet. He didn't get very far before looking at me again, his mouth forming unintelligible words as if he had lost the ability to speak. Finally, in frustration, he practically spat out the word in a half-growl, the 'r' clearly difficult for him.

"Rrrrrrrrr....uuuuun," he said.

I stared into his eyes for a few seconds, stunned and paralysed by his command. When he howled and collapsed to the floor clutching his head, I realised I wouldn't be given a second chance.

My fingers found a large jagged piece of glass near my feet and I picked it up, wincing as the sharp edge cut into my palm. Scrambling to my feet, I backed away as he writhed on the floor, his human grunts soon giving way to something far more animal in sound, like the snuffling and snorting of a dog punctuated with loud whimpers of pain.

The urge to run consumed me and I did just that, casting one last look at my husband as he rolled around on the carpet, completely lost to his inner battle. When the handle of the door turned under my grip and met with no resistance, I yanked it open and threw myself into the corridor beyond, driven by a deep primordial need to escape from my enemy. That awful Varúlfur stench quickly overpowered my senses and I felt the first touches of disorientation that came from being in a Varúlfur compound, albeit Brandon's secret compound. I fled towards the staircase, willing my legs to keep moving and bouncing off the walls as I ran with sheer panic raging through my body. I could hear Brandon's screams of pain floating along the corridor behind me, haunting my every step as stumbled down the stairs, desperate to be as far away from that noise as possible. 

Behind those screams, an alarm bell was shrieking in my head, like some kind of inner warning system alerting me to oncoming danger but by then, it was too late. The danger was already upon me and as I reached the landing where the staircase twisted ninety degrees, I was faced with Daniel barrelling straight towards me. I noted with horror that he was already partway through his transformation, clearly ignited by the howls of Brandon from the floor above. 

Sweeping my arm in a wide arc, I lashed out with the glass, slicing him across the face, blood spraying from the wound and sending him tumbling backwards. He spiralled heavily down the stairs, his powerful legs knocking the posts free from the banister and sending wood splintering up into the air. Landing at the bottom with a heavy thump, he lay dazed momentarily and I took the chance to hurtle forwards, jumping over his recumbent form.

Just when I thought I had cleared him, his hand shot out catching me on the ankle and I stumbled, falling hard onto my side, still trying to hold onto the mirrored shard. Blood from my palm was now trickling freely down my wrist, little rivulets of red like mini-tributaries running out from the source. I kicked out, my bare feet hitting the target with very little effect and the long skirt of my gown encumbering my limbs.

"Bitch," Daniel snarled, tugging on my leg and pulling me towards him easily, the silky fabric assisting him as he slid my body across the polished floorboards. Struggling, I slashed at his arm again and again, criss-cross welts marking his skin but he wouldn't let go, he just grinned wider, displaying strange animal teeth in a half-human face. 

Shaking off his brief stunned stupor, he lurched forward, pouncing on top of me and pinning my arms up above my head. When he slammed my wrist against the floor, my grip on the glass loosened and it fell from my grasp and clattered out of my reach. I shrieked as his long lupine tongue rolled out of his mouth, slurping up the saliva that was dripping down his chin and he smacked his lips together, as if savouring the taste of his own hunger. The blood from the wound on his cheek dripped down onto my face and I was reviled by its bitter taste and yet invigorated by it also. As his snapping jaws grew closer and closer, I used the only weapon I had left.

When I sunk my incisors into his face, in exactly the same place where the glass had opened up his cheek, the blood spurted thick and fast into my mouth and over my face. Daniel screamed a very human scream and tried to pull his head back, but I held on tight, digging in deeper until I heard the sucking, tearing sound of flesh ripping as he wrenched his face away. He staggered away, clutching at the gaping hole and desperately trying to hold the flap of torn skin in place.

"Look what you did," he shrieked. "Look what you did. Bitch, bitch. I'm going to fucking kill you." His legs buckled under him as he hit the stairs, sending him sprawling backwards. "Going to rip you to pieces, I swear. I'm....I'm ...."

You know the thing to remember about the Varúlfur, Megan?

I heard him then. I heard Harper as resonant as if he was standing right next to me, blades gripped in either hand, emerald eyes blazing.

They're pack creatures at heart. Unstoppable as a group; not so effective when on their own.

Reclaiming the glass, no longer feeling the pain of the cut on my hand as I gripped it tight, I rose to my feet, my eyes fixed upon the Varúlfur still locked halfway between monster and human, something having gone seriously awry during his ill-fated transformation. As I advanced towards him, I remembered every impact of his fists against my body. I remembered every slash of his misshapen claws. I remembered every bite. I remembered every inch of torture he had inflicted upon me and the memory of it all made me smile. I smiled when I saw the panic flicker across his amber eyes. I smiled when I heard the distinct whimpering sound he made and I smiled again as I thrust the jagged shard of mirror hard into his throat.

Half-straddling him on the stairs, I drew my face closer to his, enthralled by the sweet gurgling sound bubbling out of his mouth and engrossed by the way his widened fear-filled eyes were slowly fading back to human as the life ebbed from his veins.

"You Varúlfur are good for one thing and one thing only," I whispered. "Die for me, dear Daniel."

I pushed the glass in deeper, then pulled it out quickly, standing up to watch as the blood gushed in a torrent from his neck and he flailed desperately, hands instinctively seeking out the ragged wound. His efforts were pointless of course. Nothing was going to stop it now and when it was done, I breathed out long and deep.

And from above me the beast howled and howled, an awful skull-splitting sound that shook my body right down to the bone and made me drop the mirror, clapping my bloodied hands over my ears in terror. On and on it went, the crescendo building like the energy of some great storm threatening to erupt and I knew then that I would hear that sound for eternity.

Even when I was dead, it would never leave me, like another one of those internal tattoos, forever to blacken my soul.

Permanent. Binding.