There were ghosts in the old Millennium Mills.

Pale, ravaged faces looked out at me from the darkness, their wide eyes like deep wells filled with agony and woe. These ghosts did not reach for me. Instead, they clung to each to each other, huddled in pairs, fingers digging into flesh and not wanting to let go. Many sat alone, staring into space or looking warily about, jumping at every sound as if they expected their worst nightmare to come crashing in.

But for these ghosts, their worst nightmare had already happened. Brandon hadn't lied about the Second Cleansing but he had been deluded about how many vampires had been slaughtered. I wasn't the only one left, but those that had survived, barely looked alive at all. They were like ghouls; ghostly revenants damaged irreparably by the Varúlfur's attempt to flush them from their hiding places. This was the day they had feared for most of their lives, the day they had been told about time after time, the day they had hoped would never come again. Only it had, and what was left behind was terrifying to behold.

The lower basement where they had taken refuge felt like a mausoleum. The stench of blood pervaded the air and in places I could see great smears of it painting the floor, where vampires had died and their bodies dragged to adjoining rooms. Everything smelt of rot and decay and death, and yet for some that wasn't the worst odour.

As I walked past the survivors, I saw some of them sniffing the air, detecting an unpleasant stench invading their senses and some shrank back, as if they could climb into the very walls to escape it, while others glared at me as if I were the enemy.

"You stink of them," Garrick said softly, walking beside me. "No offence."

"None taken," I whispered back. "I don't suppose there's anywhere to wash?"

"The water supply was disconnected years ago. This place is a shell." Garrick sniffed. "But I can get you some clothes to change into." He shot a derisive look at my torn and filthy dress and I wrapped my arms around myself self-consciously, wishing that I could just rip it from my body and burn it to ash, together with my memories of the past few days.

As we walked through the basement, Lucius stayed closed to my side, gripping one of my arms with his little glove-covered hand and for once, I welcomed his touch, feeling strangely comforted by his presence. Whenever I glanced down at him, he just smiled right back up at me, despite the unrelenting horror that surrounded us on all sides. Harper remained behind me like my ever-present dark shadow, not close enough to touch but close enough for me to feel his warm breath on my back.

Wandering over to a corner, Garrick crouched down to speak to a young woman who lay there. A deep graze scarred her cheekbone and as Garrick spoke to her in hushed tones, he reached out and touched a hand to her face. She nodded in response, reaching back to a large duffle bag upon which she had been leaning and pulled out some clothing and shoes. Walking back over to me, he thrust the bundle into my arms and I noticed how his eyes didn't meet mine with such confidence as they usually did.

"Here, these should do for now, they might not be quite your size but it's better than what you're wearing now."

I glanced down at what he had gifted me, a pair of skinny jeans, a black shirt and scuffed ballet pumps. Looking over at the girl, I mouthed thank you to her and she stared blankly back at me as if I wasn't even there, before lying back down with her back against the wall.

Leading me to a side room at the far end of the basement, Garrick and Lucius waited by the door so I could get dressed. Harper followed me inside and for a brief moment, I felt a touch of modesty that I hadn't felt around him for a long time. He leaned against the wall, just inside the doorway, his legs crossed at the ankles and his thumbs hooked into his jean pockets. His eyes never left me, and as I turned my back on him and slipped the dress from my shoulders, I knew that if I turned to face him again, he would still be watching me, taking note of every bruise, every scar and everything underneath the surface that I was desperately trying to hide. Harper Cain, despite all his arrogant swagger and unbridled rage, always saw in me what others didn't and I always felt exposed under the scrutiny of his stern gaze. And right then, I think I felt it more than I ever had.

When I was done, I stared for a moment at the torn and dirtied dress which lay by my feet. I could feel its touch upon my skin as if I were still wearing the damned thing and wondered whether I would ever rid myself of the sensation of the sullied silk. It felt good to wear shoes again, but the pumps couldn't hide the blood stains that smothered my feet nor dull the pain in my soles. The borrowed clothes could hide the scars and bruising but I could still feel every hit and every punch they had inflicted upon me. Yet all the clothing and shoes in the world couldn't remove the stain of shame that covered every inch of me and they couldn't erase Brandon's screams of agony.

A hand touched my lower back and I flinched to find Lucius standing there, looking up at me. It was cold in the old Mills, the chill had seeped into the foundations like a permanent fixture and the little boy's nose was tinged pink.

"Cute gloves," I said.

Lucius beamed and held his hands up in front of his face, wiggling his fingers. "Garrick gave them to me."

"Smart idea." I offered up a small smile to Garrick as he walked in, collapsing against the wall with a deep sigh.

"I don't know why I never thought of it before," he said, shaking his head. "Lucius' gift works by hand to skin contact. Cover the hands and no more unexpected nightmares."

Lucius had the grace to look slightly sheepish and I grinned reassuringly and reached over to ruffle his hair, brushing his long white-blonde fringe back off his forehead. For a moment, I just stared at him, feeling that ever-present mix of awe and fear. "How did you do it, Lucius? How on earth did you escape? I searched for you everywhere."

"The secret tunnel, of course," he said, rolling his eyes. "Garrick showed me."

My eyes flickered to Garrick. "You had a secret tunnel? Are you kidding me?"

"Megan, I have a lot of secrets full-stop, you should know that by now." A momentary glint of the Garrick I knew sparked in his eyes.

"But a tunnel?"

"It's not a tunnel as such anymore, although it was originally. The end is blocked off now due to an old tunnel collapse and then bricked in afterwards. Now it's more of a hidden alcove in Benjamin's study. I showed Lucius where it was and told him that if the asylum were ever discovered, he should hide there until it was safe to come out."

I shot a glance at the boy. "And you were there the whole time?" He nodded, his blue eyes meeting mine. "But how is it they couldn't detect you? Their sense of smell..."

"....is useless when it comes to Lucius," Garrick interrupted. "Lucius has no scent. One of the many qualities of The Lost, undetectable even to the keenest of noses. In that situation, the Varúlfurs' ability to track by scent alone would have been quite defunct."

"And you were hidden there the whole time?" I stared at Lucius, wondering how I could never have noticed his lack of scent, although to be fair, I had always been far more concerned about getting to close to him in fear of what nightmares he might conjure up in my head.

"Uh-huh," he replied. "Until they were gone."

"Could you see?"

"Yep," he said, his hand gripping my wrist tighter. "I heard you calling me and I wanted to come out, but the man was there and then so were you and then the other one came and I saw him hit you and you fell. He hurt you." A little frown darkened his brow.

"Yeah, well," I said softly. "Don't worry about him; let's just say he got what he deserved in the end."

Harper lifted his head slightly to look at me, his face scanning mine as if he were trying to burrow into my skull and steal the images that flashed across my mind.

"And then what happened?" I asked.

"I stayed there until Garrick and Harper came back."

"I tried calling Page and when I got no answer, I realised something was terribly wrong," Garrick said. "By that point, attacks were being reported all over the city and when I couldn't reach Page or Sergio I knew immediately that the killings had been staged to draw us out." He paused, stopping to massage his temples with his thumbs as if he was trying to dull the throb of a headache. "Of course, we went back there straight away but by then it was too late. Page and Sergio were dead and you were gone." When he met my eyes, I saw the deep pain etched within, a yearning awful darkness that revealed nothing but suffering and guilt and I instinctively knew just why Garrick looked so haunted. He had taken everything upon himself. The murders, my disappearance, maybe even The Second Cleansing itself.

"We scoured Whitechapel looking for you, but no one had seen you," he continued. "Everyone was too busy hiding or trying to flee. Rumours of another a Cleansing had swept the city and everyone was doing what they could before dawn broke, because if you don't find somewhere else before the day arrives, the chances are that you will be torn from your bed and tossed out to burn in the sun. That's if they haven't ripped you apart by then anyway. We holed up for the day, unable to do anything but sit and wait for the next evening to come and by then Hell had been unleashed in London. Whitechapel and the rest of Tower Hamlets had been Cleansed completely; they hit there the hardest, knowing that it was our base and desperate to find the boy. Then Hackney, Camden, the City, Westminster were taken next. Every hour we heard about fresh attacks, other parts of the city that had been flushed out. So far, south of the river seems safe but Walter and Noble's reach doesn't stretch over the divide and that could mean that they haven't yet united with the other clans."

"The Walter and Noble clan itself is barely united," I said, noting how Garrick's eyebrows raised just a fraction. "The place where he...where they took me was a separate compound and Grayson and Richard know nothing about it."

"Why would Brandon have a separate compound?" Harper asked.

Those eyes again, digging under my flesh, creeping around inside my head.

"It was for me," I said, my voice hardly more than a whisper. "They'd planned it all. The ambush at the asylum wasn't just for Lucius. They were coming for me too."

The room was quiet for a moment, but I could hear low stifled sobs echoing through the basement outside, like whispers on the evening breeze.

"He's planning on taking over, isn't he?" Harper said, his emerald eyes widening in realisation. "If he's got a secret compound, then it means he's breaking away from Grayson and Richard. If they knew what he was doing, they'd see it as an act of rebellion, maybe even a direct threat to their power over the clan."

"But even if he could gain the clan's loyalty, Walter and Noble would never willingly step aside to let him take control." Garrick shook his head and his matted long Mohawk fell across the side of his face.

"And he doesn't mean to let them," I replied. "He knows only too well that they will never let him rise to power. His plans for the clan are....well, let's just say they're not on the same page. The problem is that he can't claim leadership while they're still alive, their influence is too strong."

"Fuck," hissed Harper, raking his fingers through his hair. "He's going to kill them."

"But he risks all out clan war," cried Garrick. "There's no guarantee that the clan will get behind him and even if they did, he'd have to get the other clans south of the river onside. Their rivalry is notorious, they've always resented the assumed superiority of the Walter and Noble clans and Brandon hasn't yet earned the reluctant respect of the other leaders. Why should they follow him?"

"The clan will support him," I insisted. "He's....far stronger than anyone could have imagined." I paused, remembering the sheer size of the beast standing in front of the compound and crashing through the trees as if the very ground was shaking under its feet. "And when he proves his loyalty to Drachmann and the client, then all the clans will unite under his rule. They won't have a choice."

"He's already betrayed them once, why would Drachmann trust Brandon?" Garrick said.

"Because he's going to bring London to its knees until he's found us. Why do you think he's Cleansing the city? He's trying to find Lucius and once he has his sacrificial lamb, there'll be no stopping him. He alluded to as much down in the catacombs that night at Gainsborough. I never knew what he meant then, but it seems he's been planning this for a long time."

"Good God," gasped Garrick, his face twisting with despair. "He truly has gone mad. We have to get everyone out of the city. I had hoped that if the south remained relatively untouched that we could take refuge in Greenwich with Fenton, but this changes everything."

"Who's Fenton?"

"Fenton Grainger. He's my eye and ears in the south."

"Well maybe we can still go there if the clans haven't yet united. It will buy us some time to recover, regroup and work out a plan to fight back."

"Fight back?" Garrick stared at me, aghast. "Megan, do you not understand what is happening? They are Cleansing the city and you said yourself they will not stop until they have found us."

I glanced at Harper who pursed his lips and said nothing.

"So what? We just sit back and let this happen?" I said. My chest tightened with panic.

"What the fuck are we meant to do?" Garrick snapped back. "Go out there, Megan. Go take a look at the dregs they have left behind. Go on! The Varúlfur have destroyed us. Edward and Blaine are scouring the city but so far, they have found more bodies than they have found survivors. It's like a fucking graveyard and the few of the living that have dragged themselves here might as well be dead anyway. All they are doing is waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the Varúlfur to find us and finish the task."

"Then why sit here and wait for death? We should be moving on, heading south. Call Edward and Blaine back, tell them we are going to find Fenton and...."

Garrick stepped forward, his lips curled into a sneer and his fists clenched. "And what then, Megan? Build an army? Rise up against them again? Has your ordeal these last few days rendered you blind and stupid? We don't have enough people left to gather an army. We don't have the means to rise up against the Varúlfur. Not this time. You know, I never thought I would hear myself say this, but Harper was right. How foolish was I to think that they would not retaliate against us? How arrogant was I to think that we could ever win this war? Gainsborough was a fluke, a surprise attack that somehow managed to go our way but it won't go that way again. We will never have another Gainsborough. We will never be able to drag the vampire race out of the gutters. All I have done is make things a hundred times worse for us than it was before because now they will not stop until they have crushed us once and for all."

"Stop it," I said, horrified as his voice carried through the room. "Do you want them to hear you talking like this? How are they meant to recover from this if you do not give them some hope?"

"Hope?" He spat out the word like it left a nasty taste in his mouth to say it. "Hope is nothing but a dream. We reached for it once but it was all a hollow lie. How can I give that to them again? Better to hold tight to the truth and accept our fate than make them believe we can be something more than what we really are. I tried that already and look what I did to them. Look at their faces. I convinced them all that we could win. I made them think that we could beat our tormentors; I raised their hopes and have stood back and watched them fall from such a great height. I did that. Me. I have broken them, Megan. I have broken them."

He stood before me, the once strong and vibrant Bartholomew Garrick, the leader of the underground movement, warrior of Whitechapel, beacon of hope and marker for everything the vampire race could become and I saw that it wasn't just the injured who were broken. He was broken. His eyes were as dead as those he had dragged bleeding from the basement. His body was as lifeless as Kale's, as Sergio's and as Page's. He might as well have been wandering in Purgatory, just another ghost tortured by his own pain, devoid of everything except despair and suffering.

"I can't believe you would just give up." My voice cracked with raw pain as if something inside was clawing at my throat, wrapping tightly around my trachea and squeezing, squeezing until I could barely breathe. "Not you. Never you."

He sniffed dismissively, wiping the back of his hand across his nose but his lifeless eyes wouldn't meet mine.

"I should have done it years ago. I have wasted my life searching for something that didn't exist. I have wasted my life on dreams, but no more. I am done now. It is over, Megan. Finally, it is all over."

********

He sat at the end of the corridor, where the basement steps led up to ground level, with his back pressed against the wall and one knee pulled up into his chest, the other stretched out in front of him. His fingers traced patterns in the dust by his side but I knew he remained as alert as always, his back was too straight, too stiff, and in his other hand he clutched his blade. Forever the assassin.

I lowered myself to the floor opposite where Harper sat and for a moment, we said nothing, our silence punctuated by the sounds of laboured breathing and those ever-present muted sobs coming from the main basement room.

"How the mighty Garrick has fallen, huh?" he said finally. "Twists the knife a little deeper, doesn't it?"

"I can't believe he would just give up." I shook my head incredulously.

"I guess he is more like me than anyone ever cared to imagine. Who'd have thought?"

"And what about you?" I said. "Do you think the same as he does?"

A smirked danced at the corners of his mouth. "Wouldn't that just affirm everything you've ever thought about me, angel?" He sighed deeply, scratching at his beard with bloodied nails. "Garrick paints a bleak picture and trust me; it is fucking bleak out there. I have seen hope die over and over in the eyes of those who have curled into a ball and waited for the inevitable. But I have also seen the fire in the eyes of those who refused to give up, their scars bear witness to their struggle, they fought back even when all hope was dead, so no, I don't wallow in the same self-pity and guilt that Garrick now does. It was bound to happen though. No one can survive on dreams alone. At some point, reality is going to hit you square in the face and that's got to hurt."

"But he has witnessed these times before, why give up now?"

"Because back then, this was Benjamin's war and it was up to Benjamin to revive the masses. Garrick merely helped to pick up the pieces afterwards and he believed wholeheartedly then that we would rise again because Benjamin could have told him the sky was green and the seas were honeyed milk and he would have trusted his word. This time round, Garrick bears sole responsibility for what has happened. We played a risky game goading them in the way we did and we are paying dearly for it."

"Oh come on, you know as well as I do that this was always on the cards," I scoffed. "Brandon told me as much."

"Maybe, but there's no denying our actions have come at a hefty price," he said. "The problem with Garrick is that he has always thrived on the hope of a better life for us, it was like a religion. He's been living off of zealous energy and misguided hope for most of his vampire life and now, it's as if his God has deserted him. He's lost to us."

"Then do something, Harper," I urged. "Take control. You did it before and they will listen to you, I know they will. The longer we cower here in the darkness, the higher the chance the light will diminish completely and that fight you saw in them will die with it. Do something. Do what Garrick cannot."

Harper regarded me darkly, his expression unreadable, before shaking his head. His soft deep laughter enveloped me and I realised then just how much I enjoyed this side of him, the one that didn't always want to fight me until the bitter end.

"Do you know, I should have realised the moment that you refused to die quietly in my cellar, that my life would never be the same." He ran his tongue over an incisor, the heat radiating from his eyes as he ran them over my face. "Will you always be a thorn in my side, Megan Garrick?"

I couldn't help but smile. "Does it sting?"

"Always. But it's a pain I'm not sure I want to live without."

The spark in his eyes faded as quickly as it had appeared and he looked away, pretending to find more interest in the dust that he had gathered under his fingertips, piling it into a small mound before brushing it all away, leaving grey powdery stains on his palm.

"He hurt you."

I wasn't ready for it. I had known it was coming. The Brandon conversation. But I still wasn't ready and felt the words catch in my throat as I struggled to know what to say.

"You don't need to answer," he said. "I know it."

The heat flared in my cheeks. "They hurt me. He...."

He saved you. Not once but twice. I silently cursed the thin whisper that hissed into my ear.

"Harper...."

"Look, I don't know what you had to endure and I don't want you to tell me. You don't need to. I saw his face at the cemetery; I saw the way he looked at you. Brandon Walden is a tortured man and his sick desire for the life he had will be his undoing. When I meet him again - and I will meet him - I will make him pay for every finger he laid upon you, for every wound he and his brothers inflicted, for marking you with his repulsive scent as if you belonged to him. You are not his possession, you never were and you never will be."

"He didn't.....you know." I couldn't say it. I could barely even think it.

"No, but he wanted to. I have learned that you can endure a lot of pain, Megan. Good pain. Bad pain. Oh, I'm not saying it doesn't hurt, I've heard your screams, remember? My point is that you bear it like no other I have ever met. But this is different. I look into your eyes and feel like I am looking at somebody else. Whatever he did, you are changed because of it. I can see it, Megan. I can sense it."

A tear slipped down my cheek and I quickly wiped it away. "Well, it is done now. And I am here and that is all that matters."

"Are you here though? Or are you just some ghost of the woman I knew?"

"I am real," I said. "I am as real as the walls surrounding us; I am as real as the ground under our feet. As for who I am, I'm not sure I know that anymore. All I do know is where I belong and that is here."

"And I can barely believe that you are here. Josiah said that you would find your way back to us, but as each day passed and you didn't return, I could only think the worst."

I stared at him, my stomach knotting at the mere mention of the seer. "Josiah told you that I would come back?"

"Yes, he foresaw it. He couldn't tell us where you were, but said you would come back when it was time, whatever that fucking meant. I swear that man just likes screwing with our heads just for the sheer hell of it."

"You don't like the seers much," I remarked.

"I don't trust them."

"Is Caelan a seer? She is, isn't she?"

"You don't miss a trick, do you angel?" he said, exhaling deeply.

"I've learned that it's sometimes not what is said, but what isn't. Who is Caelan, Harper?"

Gripping the knife, he pressed the tip of the blade against the floor and began to slowly spin it around and round by the handle, watching it turn as if mesmerised by the blade glinting in the gloom of the stairwell.

"When Benjamin died, Garrick spent years trawling through his notebooks and papers. He used to write journals mostly during his travels in Europe, from the time before he was made a vampire and after also. Our father was an avid journal writer, in fact, dare I say he was practically obsessed with recording his adventures, as soon as one diary was finished, he would start on the next one. And Garrick, lost in grief and mourning, became obsessed with reading them, thumbing through page after page. Much of it detailed the long and bloodied history between vampire and Varúlfur and Benjamin's vision of a great uprising and how it might be achieved, which of course, Garrick lapped up, determined to make that vision a reality. And then one day, he realised that there was a journal missing from the rest, Benjamin's story, it seemed, was incomplete. He practically pulled the asylum apart searching for that damned notebook and then finally he found it, concealed inside a fake panel in the bookcase behind Benjamin's treasured Dickens collection."

"What was in the notebook?"

"Lucius was," Harper replied, with a half-smile. "Benjamin had written about a boy, something he had learned through his father, Ezekiel and then gone on to research it himself, discovering this story about the fabled Lost children of the angels, children who were Lost to the eyes of Heaven and Hell, but that who held the power to change the world forever. The stories pointed to one child in particular, a boy with white hair who would be hunted by those wishing to open the gates of the Underworld and free God's once-treasured son and most feared enemy. As soon as Garrick learned of Lucius, it became his goal to find him. The timing was right according to the stories and all signs indicated that London was to be the place in which the boy was hiding and so, Garrick sought the help of the seers to locate him."

"If Lucius is lost to the eyes of God and Lucifer, how is it that Josiah could find him?"

"Apparently, I'm told it's not an easy task by any means, but Lucius appears to them as a blur on the landscape. It's as if someone has tried to erase him from the picture and what is left behind is a black mark, a bit like a smudge I suppose."

"Okay, so Garrick went to Josiah for help which would have meant that he would have entered into a contract with the seer. What was the payment?"

Harper fixed his gaze upon me, deep shards of emerald piercing me as he locked eyes with mine. "I was," he said simply. "I was the payment."

"I don't understand," I frowned in response. "I mean, I know Josiah hates you, that much is clear, but what could he have possibly wanted from you?"

"Oh he didn't want anything from me. And the hate came later, trust me. Josiah didn't want me, but his sister did."

My mouth dropped open with a sharp intake of breath. "Caelan?"

"Yes," he replied, his dark countenance suddenly shrouded in the shadow of memories that clearly still haunted him. "Caelan wanted me. And so I went to her and I paid Garrick's debt to the seers. If only I had known I would continue paying it long after the act."

"Oh my God," I gasped. "Caelan was the one you were with when Jenny was taken by the Varúlfur. I thought...."

"That I betrayed Jenny for some random fuck?" he sneered. "Well go on, you wouldn't be the first to think that. I was with Caelan because I had to be, not because I wanted to. Garrick got the boy. And I got a dead wife for my troubles."

I felt my shoulders sag under the weight of this new revelation, burdened by the fact Harper had been helpless to free himself from the binds of the seer's contract, in the same way that I now too, was bound.

"You lost your wife that night, so why does Josiah hate you so much? You abided by the contract; you met your end of the bargain."

"Well, what he didn't bargain on was Caelan falling in love with me and what he certainly didn't predict, with all his great powers of foresight, was that I would tell her that I despised her. That I despised everything about her. I despised the thought of touching her; I despised even looking at her. She was devastated by my rejection. In fact, she never got over it."

"And he hates you for that? What the Hell did he expect? You were just doing what you had to do to help Garrick. Falling in love with Caelan wasn't one of the stipulations."

"No, it wasn't," he said. "But by the time he realised what she had planned, it was already too late. Caelan gave herself to the sun. Inconsolable at my harsh rejection of her affection, she locked herself into a room with a very big window and she waited for sunrise to claim her. When Josiah finally found her, she was burning and barely alive. She survived, but now much of her body is scarred by the flames, her injuries were just too severe. Caelan will never heal. That is why Josiah hates me, Megan."

Finally I understood. Finally I saw everything so clearly. And finally I realised just how foolish I had been to agree to be bound into a contract with Josiah Hope.

I had underestimated him. And Harper was going to pay the price all over again.