The news channel concentrated solely on the north-west. Mark watched glumly as the headline banner rolled past slowly at the bottom of the screen. The anchor was speaking excitedly about three murders. A young man had been found dismembered yesterday afternoon. A dead body had been found in the Hilton Hotel in the early evening. Another murder victim had turned up in a field in Yorkshire this morning.

The Hilton Hotel victim had not yet been identified. The young man was a shop assistant, and the latest victim was some two-bit magician known mainly for his general incompetence. All three had been killed violently, just like the psychic, and the press were eagerly pushing a vampire killer angle.

Mark thought differently. He knew Autumn had killed the man in the hotel. He also knew that he could not have made it to Yorkshire in time for the third death, because Mark had been watching him. That meant there was another killer. Jason walked into the room.

‘I got what you asked for, Mr. Jones. I had to call in some favours …’

‘Thank you,’ Mark said coldly, cutting the big man off. Jason handed him the police reports regarding the recent spate of killings, and he flicked through them quickly. The injuries to the victims were horrific. They had all been partially cannibalised. The lead police officer – somebody called Hildemare – was baffled. Mark threw the papers down on his desk and frowned. ‘Where is Sergei?’

‘In the kitchen with Rowan.’

‘Ah yes, Rowan. What do you think of him?’

‘He’s a Royal Marine Commando. I think he’ll be useful. Sergei likes him.’

‘How is he?’

‘Restless – he wants to go after his sister. You should talk to him. Tell him the plan.’

Mark glanced out of the kitchen window. The first rays of dawn were slowly punching their way through a grey blanket of cloud that had been thickening over the last hour or so. A fine drizzle was misting down from the sky. The world outside was grey and bleak, and the sky held the cold. ‘I think I’ll do that,’ he said.

The shotgun blast tore through the howling. Cam pumped the breach and nearly dropped the flashlight. Why on earth hadn’t they had any that could clip onto the barrel of his gun? Like in the movies? It seemed like a bit of an oversight now. He jumped over the thing that had managed to duck past Grímnir’s chainsaw. The noise was not scaring the Twisted anymore. They kept coming in threes and fours, lurching out of doorways or from around blind corners in the darkness, with their crazed faces a contorted smear of snarling teeth and maggoty rot.

Cam thought it was very fortunate that they were mindless – if they had organised and attacked in force, the small group would have been in dire straits. As it was, they were making progress against the hordes. Grímnir was a rock up front. The Twisted broke against him, the chainsaw ripping them to pieces.

On more than one occasion, Cam had been forced to kick away a grasping hand still attached to the top part of a sundered zombie. They didn’t die unless they were decapitated, but Dow and Grímnir were concentrating on speed, not thoroughness, so crawling body parts had to be ignored. A carpet of moaning, crippled zombies lay strewn out behind them.

‘How far?’ Dow called from the rear. ‘More will be coming!’ The Twisted were fast, and every now and again Dow was forced to turn and fight them off. Cam would stop and aim the shotgun, but it was never needed – Dow was lethal. His gauntlets were a web of destruction in the electric light.

Fucking flashlight! It was difficult to fire a shotgun when you had to juggle a big tube, but somehow Cam was managing. There was no way he was losing the light down here.

‘Just around the next corner,’ Grímnir shouted back. ‘It is a dead end, so none of the Twisted should be there ahead of us.’

‘What?’ Cam and Dow yelled at the same time. ‘What dead end?’ Cam added, but it was too late. They were committed. They ran on, around a tight corner, through a dusty room, and then through a raw, narrow doorway that had been hacked out of the rock.

Cam stopped dead in the roughly hewn portal and blinked. Dow ran into him from behind. ‘What’s the matter?’ Dow shouted in his ear. Cam gestured wordlessly, and Dow looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh my,’ he said quietly.

The opening they were stood in was set into the wall of a gargantuan vertical shaft. The ceiling – if there was one – was lost in a murk of hazy darkness. The air was as thick and humid as a muggy summer’s day, and tendrils of cloud reached here and there, muddying the vast space above them. A golden light glowed far below. Looking down into the light gave Cam a brief but overwhelming sense of vertigo, like floating midway up an inverted well with sky below and dark depths above. Somewhere a long way down, there must be a big hole in the side of The Tower, letting some of the dawn’s light in. Above him, beyond the clouds, it faded into the gloom.

The shaft was around five-hundred feet across. A fat droplet of ice-cold water fell down the back of Cam’s neck, making him jump. He cursed and glanced up. The black walls looked like they had been carved from one gigantic piece of obsidian. Rivulets of water ran in drips and dribbles down the glassy surface, weaving their way towards the buried light and causing a soft rustling whisper that echoed hauntingly.

The shaft above and below was criss-crossed with brittle boughs of rock that spanned the vertiginous drop. Above, fifteen or twenty of these fragile, thread-thin crossings disappeared into a misty gloaming. Below, they were framed by the light and Cam could see that some of them had been shattered. He imagined that he was looking down into the neglected and splintered remains of a deity’s infinite Kerplunk set.

Cam had the awful feeling that he might end up playing the part of the marble. Ahead of him, the floor tapered into a narrow spindle of rock that arced out to span the bore. Only two feet wide, it had no rail or balustrade. The black stone was polished and slippery with dew. In places, great gashes cut its width down to less than a foot. Cam poked a tentative foot out onto the awful delicate bridge. It groaned.

‘I’m not going across that!’ Cam stated resolutely.

‘We’ve got to,’ Dow shouted over his shoulder. ‘They’re right behind us.’ Grímnir was already halfway across, jogging along as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Seeing such a big man move with such speed across such a narrow strip made Cam feel nauseous. The thought of going over it himself made him gag.

‘I’m not doing it.’

‘We’ve no time for this,’ Dow snapped.

‘Do I look like a fucking tightrope walker?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never even been to the circus!’

‘Just get moving,’ Dow growled. ‘I can see them!’

The howling was loud now, and Cam grudgingly conceded that maybe the bridge wasn’t that bad an idea after all. ‘I’ll be best mates with Joey the Dog Faced boy next,’ he grumbled as he edged forwards, his hands held out for balance.

There was an animalistic scream from behind him, and he looked back. A couple of ORCs had reached the bridge; Dow was fighting them off ferociously. One fell from the edge, and Cam watched as its body slammed sickeningly against a black wall far below.

‘Oh shit,’ he said. Dow crept backwards, his gauntlets flashing out. Cam dropped the flashlight – he couldn’t keep hold of it and maintain his balance when the shotgun kicked. The light disappeared into the brighter depths of the shaft.

Another group of Twisted rushed onto the bridge. They shambled forwards in a precarious single file. The front one grasped wildly for Dow. Its face had completely rotted off, leaving nothing but a skull with sharp yellow teeth and a pair of unblinking black eyes. A worm flicked its tail languidly from its nasal cavity. Its hairline was a green and black obscenity: a ragged line of fleshy scraps, like a blanket that had been ripped apart, thread and weave dangling awry over the scarred bone of its skull. Incongruously, a luxurious black mane fell from ruined scalp to broken shoulders. The noise of the mob was getting louder. The bulk of the Twisted were not far behind. Cam set his feet as steady as he could, as Dow backed towards him.

‘Push them back – push them back, and then for God’s sake duck!’ Dow looked over his shoulder, saw Cam, saw the levelled shotgun, and nodded. He surged forwards and his foot slipped on the treacherous rock. Cam held his breath, certain that Dow was going to fall. Then the Elf recovered and put everything he had into a left hook. The Death’s Head zombie ducked and then slipped. It fell flat on its stomach, grabbed the stonework, and clung on. Dow’s gauntlet drove the creature behind it from the bridge, and it screeched as it tumbled into oblivion. Dow ducked.

Cam pulled the trigger. The three Twisted that were still stood up exploded in a cloud of congealed blood and grey guts. The awful mass of spinning refuse tumbled towards the light. The recoil was a bitch; Cam flailed wildly to catch his balance, and eventually settled his heels on the narrow bridge. His ears rang. Dow aimed a kick at the Death’s Head zombie, but it scampered nimbly on all fours back to the edge of the bridge. It stood and stared at them. The crazed howling of the hoard came from the door behind it. Edging forwards, Cam put his hand on Dow’s shoulder and then they moved backwards slowly together.

The Death’s Head zombie turned and disappeared back the way they had all come. Moments later, a surging mass of the Twisted spilled mindlessly out onto the bridge. In the end, it was their sheer numbers that saved Cam and Dow. It was ridiculous, really. If the Twisted had come steadily, one at a time, no doubt they would have overwhelmed the two Elves. Instead, overcome by feral hunger, the ORCs charged out all at once; a torrent of shoving monsters. Almost all of them fell immediately, jostled over the edge by those behind, pushing and clawing at each other as they slipped into the abyss. A steady stream plummeted down the great bore, and every single one howled. Hundreds of the Twisted tumbled to oblivion.

Some managed to keep their feet, and they scampered agile and snarling towards Dow and Cam. Cam lost track of the number of times they had to stop and brace themselves for an attack. Dow’s lashing gauntlets pummelled zombies and they were pitched, crushed and broken, into the void.

By the time they reached the far side, Cam was gasping for breath and sweating heavily. They pressed themselves into the relative safety of a small alcove that contained a door. Cam leant forwards and kissed a cold, black wall. ‘I think I’ve shit myself,’ he announced to nobody in particular. A meaty hand slapped him on the shoulder, and he winced.

‘That was well done, Camhlaidh Ó Gríobhtha, well done indeed,’ Grímnir told him.

‘Thank you,’ Dow added sincerely. ‘Your shot saved my life.’

‘Come off it,’ Cam said. ‘If you’d fallen, I’d have been next. And I never would have made it across without you.’

‘Nevertheless, thank you.’ Dow turned to Grímnir. ‘More of them will manage to cross soon. Where next?’

Wordlessly, Grímnir pointed to the door. It was massive and appeared to be made of the same stone as the shaft. ‘This is the home of the Tattooist,’ he said.

‘How do we get in?’ Cam asked.

Grímnir looked at him as if he were stupid. ‘We knock.’

Swirling clouds moved in a slow whirlpool above Sam’s head. The blacks and greys of the drifting behemoths were edged with deep lilac light. Reds and oranges were mixed into the vortex: streaks of colour stirred into the sky like strawberry sauce into frozen yoghurt. The desert beneath it was bleak, the coarse sand made ochre in the half-light. The occasional dead-looking cactus or a random cairn of stones did little to break up the flat wilderness. The horizons were lost in grey, hazy mist.

Sam stood in the eldritch landscape and wondered what he was doing here. With a start, he saw that he was naked. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep next to Annalise’s naked, sweating body in a small room in Mayfield Station. He turned on his heel and stared around the unfamiliar desert in consternation. Then the pain started.

It came from his spine, flaring out to grip the muscles of his chest and neck. It crawled insidiously down into his abdominals, causing them to spasm. Sam collapsed to his knees, folded over at the waist, a scream frozen and silent on his lips. It hit his arms next, then his legs, cramping them in agonising waves. Sweat broke out on his body: cold stinging sweat that fell to the gritty ground in thick, ugly droplets. Where they landed, tiny black blossoms flowered.

For a moment the pain subsided, retreating to the small of his back where it had originated. Sam raised his head and screamed in torment. With eyes opened wide, he saw the wolf staring back at him, so close he could have reached out and touched it. Yellow eyes bored into his, its lips were peeled back in a snarl, the stiff fur on the back of its neck raised and bristling.

The wolf was black. Silver streaks rose from its front paws and wrapped around its shoulders. They merged, forming a widow’s peak which ran between its eyes and down the centre of its broad muzzle. Long, wicked canines dipped from the top jaw to the lower lip. He had seen this before. Somewhere, in darkness … he had dreamt it after he started on the prophylaxis, back when he was still with Tabby and the world had been a much more complicated place. Friday night.

A low growl rippled through the air between them, and Sam realised with a jolt that it was coming from him. The wolf tensed slightly. Sam was concentrating on those massive teeth when the pain came crashing back with a vengeance, twice as fast, twice as painful, tearing through him and paralysing him. His arms jerked outwards spasmodically just as the wolf leapt.

Hard teeth fastened on his throat. He had felt this before, too, on a cold road in the pouring rain. The wolf tore ferociously at the flesh of his neck. Sam could do nothing but stare up. He felt a merging …

The clouds stopped swirling and solidified far above his head. Then the sky sped down towards him and the light died. His night vision was good, perfect, and he watched, waiting for the moment he would be crushed to bloody paste.

Red brick hung several feet above his head. Sam took a quick breath. He looked around. He was in the small room in the Mayfield Station. A golden creature with black spots crouched across the room, staring at him. He stared back, wondering what he should do.

The thing was big, and it looked vicious. It had yellow cat’s eyes and stood on all fours, though Sam thought it might stand upright if it wanted to. A thick, wedge-shaped head hosted a square jaw that bristled with big, evil-looking teeth. Its paws – if they could be called paws – had a distinct primate twist to them: long talons extended from the end of simian fingers. He tried to speak, but a growl came from his throat. The leopard creature growled back, and Sam lifted a hand up in a gesture of peace.

Great talons extended from his fingers, like those of the monster across from him. He realised he was also crouched on all fours. His chest was massive, barrel-like, and covered in coarse black fur, just like the wolf from his dream. His stomach was similarly coated, as were his thick, muscular arms. He stood and felt a surge of power in his legs. Reaching up, he felt his mouth, and razor-like talons nicked his long muzzle.

Roaring with sudden fear, he looked for an exit. The door was shut. He made his way over and stared at it, but he couldn’t remember how to open it. With terrifying speed, intelligence began to seep away. He clung desperately to his conscious mind, but it was becoming more and more difficult. Familiar pangs of hunger were rising in him, and it was getting harder and harder to concentrate on anything else.

A hiss of a snarl came from behind him. The creature that had been Sam spun just in time to catch the leopard thing in his arms. It tore a chunk from his shoulder. The tang of his own blood filled the room, and the last of his reason fled away. Then there was only the fight for survival.

Sam woke, naked and twisted up in Annalise’s limbs. The room was a scarred and pitted bomb site. The walls were lashed with massive talon marks that had been scored into the brick. The door was similarly scarred and dented. What little furniture there was – an old bureau of some sort and a flimsy desk – had been dashed into splinters. Smears and speckles of powdery blood were everywhere.

Standing up, he stretched and groaned as bones clicked and distended, snapping back into place. Annalise moaned and rolled onto her knees. Her heavy breasts swung free, and Sam felt a surge of desire wash through him. He reached out to her, but she slapped his hand away absently.

‘Did you dream?’ she asked.

‘Yes – something about a wolf …’ He looked at the devastation around him, then back at Annalise. ‘You?’

‘A leopard.’

Sam remembered the golden creature he had fought in his dreams.

The door swung open with a groan, and Cú Roí stepped in with Leach lurking behind him. Cú Roí looked around and nodded. The change is upon you, he said, his voice washing around Sam’s mind like a thrashing worm. Soon, you will be able to control it.

‘This is normal?’ Sam demanded. Leach stepped in and his hand lashed towards Sam’s face. He caught it and stared into the man’s bulbous eyes. ‘Master,’ he added after a long moment. Leach stepped away.

You are one of my children, now. Both of you are. The rewards are unimaginable. Get dressed and join me. I have some questions for you, Samuel Autumn. Cú Roí turned and walked away.

Leach slung some ripe-looking clothes on the floor in front of them and then followed his Master. After they had gone, Sam began to laugh. ‘What is it?’ Annalise asked.

He reached out and pulled her to him, his hand slipping down to cup a buttock. ‘Don’t you get it? I’m a fucking werewolf!’ He began to laugh again, and only stopped when she dragged his face down into a hungry kiss.

Flaming eyes flickered and spat out of a black face. The Tattooist stared at his uninvited guests with undisguised hostility. At least that’s what Cam thought it was – it was difficult to get a good handle on emotions when twin balls of fire sat in place of honest eyeballs.

Dow seemed just as worried as Cam. He stood to one side; one gauntleted fist pushed into the palm of his other in an absent display of aggression. Grímnir, on the other hand, had greeted the Tattooist with a cry of pleasure and a bone-breaking hug, the tattoos on his biceps stretching as muscles swelled with the effort. The Tattooist had pushed him off irately before shooing them into the room behind the thick door. He peered out over the flimsy bridge suspiciously and harrumphed when he saw the zombies milling at the other end. Then, ducking back, the Tattooist pushed the heavy door closed with an ominous thunk. It must be counterbalanced, Cam thought to himself.

Once the solid barrier had clunked back into place the Tattooist released the ratchet on a nearby winch and a heavy portcullis dropped down from the ceiling with a deafening clang, effectively sealing the door shut. The Tattooist turned to face them. His eyes blazed, great loops of fire spilled down his face, and his mouth turned down into an ugly moue.

Grímnir wasted no time. ‘Hello, my old friend, I need your help.’

‘I thought you were dead,’ the Tattooist snapped.

Cam looked around. They were in a large vestibule. It was two storeys tall and around the size of a fairly decent hotel lobby. The ceiling was high above them; cross-hatched beams were lost in the shadows of its vaulted depths. The walls were coarse grey limestone, more suited to the rearing balustrades of a castle than an entrance hall.

Cam put the door to his back. It was comforting to have a solid slab of stone between him and the ORCs. There was an archway opposite him, around fifty feet away across irregular slate flags that made up the ground floor. It punched through the far wall and was big enough to comfortably drive a van through. Beyond it, Cam could see green lawns, and beyond them, the rich pastels of daybreak. Inside, a balcony ran above the arch, jutting out from the back wall to create a long gallery with doors facing each other at either end. Where the gallery met the doors, it swept around corners of the room and then turned into twin stairways that descended to the grey stone floor, curving like a bull’s horns. There were two more doors, one set in the wall at the base of each stair.

A stained-glass window, a huge affair of lambent red and blue-green, was set in the gallery wall. The same size and shape, it was a counterpoint to the arch directly below it. The window glowed soft rose and aquamarine. The light spilling through the arch, unfiltered and raw, was bright and cheerful in comparison.

They were back at the edge of The Tower. Cam wanted nothing more than to walk between the stairways and through the arch they flanked. He took an unconscious step towards the light; it was the first he had seen in what felt like a very long time. He desperately wanted to gaze out on the perpetual dawn that embraced this reality.

The Tattooist placed a hand on his chest to stop him. Cam could feel its heat even through his clothes. The Tattooist was a huge man with jet black skin. It was not the black of somebody whose ethnic origins lay in Africa: it was the complete black of night. His hair was henna-red, stuck up in deranged clumps from his scalp, and his lips were thin and bloodless white. He wore a dirty grey robe that fell rather ridiculously to his shins, and his slim frame and hunched shoulders should have made him look like an escaped lunatic. He should have looked comical, but any desire Cam might have had to laugh never made it further than his hindbrain because of the Tattooist’s eyes.

‘He’s an Ifrit,’ Cam hissed at Dow.

‘But I am not deaf,’ the Tattooist’s words were full of contempt.

‘Oh, er, sorry?’ Cam muttered.

The Tattooist ignored him. His attention was firmly placed on Grímnir. ‘What are you doing here?’ The words were anything but welcoming.

‘We need to find the Maiden.’

‘And you came here? You’ve brought those freaks right to my front door.’

‘Well, there is some poetic justice there,’ Dow muttered.

‘What? What did you say?’ spat the Tattooist.

‘You heard me, Ifrit. Your kind created those monsters; maybe it’s right that you should be besieged by them.’ He turned back to Grímnir. ‘Why have you brought us to this creature?’

‘Ignorant whelp,’ the Tattooist said. He stepped towards Dow, his fingers flexing and the fires of his eyes spilling brighter to his cheeks. Cam suddenly became very aware of how tall the Ifrit was. Easily seven feet. His length made him appear slight, but on closer inspection, it was obvious that the Tattooist rivalled Grímnir for breadth.

‘Er,’ Cam said.

Dow stepped towards the Tattooist, his own face a mask of rage. Grímnir stepped between them and thrust out with both hands. Dow stumbled and fell on his arse. The Tattooist was more difficult to move, but even he was forced backwards two inexorable steps.

‘Stop this,’ Grímnir growled. ‘You do not know his story, but he can be trusted,’ he said to Dow as the angry Elf hauled himself back to his feet. ‘These are good men who have risked themselves to help me,’ he said to the Tattooist. ‘Old hatreds die hard – I know this better than most. But we have a common enemy, and for now we must work together. Now still your tongues, or I will put both of you out onto the bridge until you make your peace.’ Cam did not doubt that Grímnir would do just that. The big man stared at Dow and the Tattooist until he received a nod from each of them. ‘Good. Now, is there somewhere we can sit and talk?’

‘Follow me,’ the Tattooist said and walked to the closest door on their left. Great bands of iron crossed its width, held in place by huge spikes with flattened heads. The Tattooist pulled it open and ushered Grímnir through. Dow followed after a pointed pause. Cam walked to the door and put a hand against it. A series of thick industrial-looking deadbolts were attached to the inside.

‘Why is it so big? This thing looks like it was designed to stop a battering-ram.’

‘This whole place is a fortress,’ the Tattooist snapped. ‘There are alternative exits through the apartments either side of this hallway, and each of these doors is strong enough to keep an army out. They’re a failsafe. Do you know why that is, Elf?’

‘Erm …’

‘It’s because,’ the Tattooist continued over him, ‘I live alone deep in a magical Tower infested with ravening monsters. I’ve survived for centuries without them even knowing I was here, but I’m the paranoid type. That’s why I live hidden away down here. And being the paranoid type, I thought that one day some idiot – some incredible dolt, some fantastical thick-headed nincompoop, some unbelievable ignoramus … some … some … some …’ the Tattooist trailed off, apparently so angry that he was lost for words.

‘Wanker?’ Cam suggested helpfully.

The Tattooist glowered at him. Looping streams of incandescent fire spat from his eyes, and Cam turned his face away from the heat.

‘Wanker. Yes. That’s exactly it. I always thought that some wanker might bring them down on me. And here you are. Now get in there.’

Cam nodded and stepped quickly through the door. The Tattooist closed the door and pointedly slid all the deadbolts into place. They were in a kitchen. A big hearth was embedded into the wall on their right. There was a spit across it. A solid-looking table sat nearby, with