Tess gloried in the dark power she found within herself. She had experienced many kinds of strength in the past, in the different animal forms she had a.s.sumed, but she had never imagined that a human shape could make her feel like this. It was wonderful to be able to walk the city streets at night in full view of any watching eyes and know that she was invulnerable. She could do anything, go anywhere she liked; no one could stop her, no one could harm her in any way.

She turned towards her companion and the two of them exchanged grim smiles of complicity. But even as they did so, Tess knew that she wouldn't care if she never saw him again. Let them hunt together tonight; let her learn from him whatever she had to know. After that she was on her own, gloriously alone, for ever.

Literally for ever. For all eternity. Because vampires live for ever, spreading their condition like a disease to everyone they feed upon. Unless they are unlucky, that is. Unless someone discovers their existence and tracks them down to their hiding place and drives a stake through their heart. But who, these days, believes in vampires?

Tess laughed to herself, quietly, and discovered the new sound of her voice. She liked it; it was dark and husky, as different from her human voice as Martin's was from his. She knew that it would be as hypnotic to a potential victim as a mongoose's dance is to a snake. All she needed now was an opportunity to try it out.

Although it was the early hours of the morning, the streets were not empty. Taxis serviced the nightlife of the city, twisting through the quiet streets. Occasionally a police car cruised past; occasionally a speeding biker, revving hard. Drifters idled their way home from pubs and night-clubs, and homeless people beat the streets to keep themselves warm. Every time they came within a few metres of another human being, Tess felt her hunger gnaw at her, as though she had come in from a long day at school and smelt dinner roasting in the oven. But her companion kept well away from anyone else on the street, and she decided to stay close. The two of them let everything pa.s.s them by, like lions walking peacefully through a herd of small game, their attention fixed on better things.

'Why the docks?' said Tess, as they first came in sight of the river.

'Good hunting ground,' said Martin.

'But we've pa.s.sed plenty of possibilities,' said Tess. 'What's so special about the docks?'

'Dark, for one thing,' said Martin. 'And for another thing, who wants to drink the blood of boozers and dossers? It's weak and impure. Gives me a headache.'

Tess looked at him carefully, but he didn't appear to be joking. He pulled up his coat collar as he stepped on to the bridge and, aware of the bright street lights all the way across, Tess followed suit.

On the other side of the river they turned right. A few cars were parked beside the road, and in one of them two men were sitting. Tess glanced through the window as she pa.s.sed by. One of the men was reading a newspaper, the other was pulling absently at the crease in his trousers.

'No good?' she said to Martin as they walked on.

'Cops,' he said. 'Plain clothes. Not bad, if you like cholesterol.'

Tess peered into his shaded eyes and he grinned at her. This time he was joking.

'My tastes aren't that refined,' he said. 'Not yet, anyway. Too much light, though. Be patient.'

They walked on until they came to the first of the ships moored up against the river wall, then crossed over the road and turned up a dark side-street.

'Now we're in good hunting grounds,' said Martin. He slowed the pace a bit and became more watchful, looking casually but carefully into parked cars and checking out the yards that opened off the street. On the corner, a man and a woman were sitting in a high-bodied van. They looked anxiously at the two Switchers as they pa.s.sed. Martin took no notice of them.

'Dealers,' he said. 'Small fry, though. They use drugs themselves, just deal to feed their habit. If you could get the guy who supplies them, now, you'd be on to a good thing.'

'Why?'

'Because they're usually clean, those fellows. Too careful to get mixed up in the stuff themselves.' He chuckled to himself in a manner that Tess might have found sinister on another occasion, then went on, 'I've had a good guzzle or two on that kind. Very clean, they tend to be. Very well fed.'

'Why don't we wait here, then?' said Tess. 'Someone's going to come and supply those two in the van, aren't they?'

'I doubt it. That's what the cops are thinking, too. That's why they're there. But the big fish are too smart to get copped that easily. They're somewhere else, you can be sure, laughing their heads off at this lot.'

Tess shrugged and kept pace with Martin as he strode through the streets, always seeking out the darkest ones. As they turned yet another corner, they caught a glimpse of a woman in high heels running across the junction at the other end. Tess's hopes rose. She knew that the two of them could have been on her in a few powerful strides, like greyhounds on a hare, but once again Martin shook his head.

Tess was beginning to lose patience. 'Why not?' she said. 'What on earth was wrong with that one?'

'Nothing, as far as I know,' said Martin. 'But why run when you don't have to? It's undignified.'

'What do I care about dignity?' said Tess. 'I'm hungry.'

Martin stopped abruptly and swung around to face her. 'Hungry?' he said. 'What do you know of the hunger of a vampire, eh? I mean the real hunger, not your pathetic peckishness?'

Tess felt her lips draw away from her teeth in an automatic, defensive sneer.

'You'd better not be hungry,' Martin went on. 'Not really hungry, I mean. We can live for a long, long time on these streets without raising anyone's suspicions, but not if we let our appet.i.tes run away with us.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Tess.

'I'm talking about the difference between keeping the wolf from the door and having a real feed. The fact is, you can't be that hungry, any more than I can, because you've had your breakfast and your dinner and your tea at home, haven't you?'

Tess was about to tell him that she hadn't, in fact, what she had eaten that day was breakfast, lunch and dinner, but she decided against it. 'More or less,' she said.

'Right,' Martin went on. 'But if you hadn't, and if you didn't have them yesterday, either, then you'd be really dangerous.'

'To who?'

'To us. Because when you pulled someone in. and started feeding, you wouldn't be able to stop.'

'So what?'

'So they'd find a dead body, drained of blood, wouldn't they? With two tiny incisions on the neck.'

'But no one believes in vampires these days.'

'No. But they soon would if it happened often enough, wouldn't they?'

Tess shrugged. 'Who cares, anyway?'

'I do,' said Martin, with cold determination. 'I plan to live in this city for a very long time. A very, very long time. And I don't plan on being discovered. That means we have to go carefully, drink little and often, so as not to make people suspicious.'

Tess looked up and down the street, sighing with incredulity. 'You're mad, do you know that?' she said. 'You're going to feed off a different person every night and you think you can get away with it? You think your victims are going to shake your hand and say, "You're welcome, come again?" Don't be ridiculous! All right, the police won't believe the first, person who complains, but they'll believe the tenth and the eleventh and the twenty-first!'

The creamy quality slipped back into Martin's voice. 'You haven't read the literature, have you?'

'What literature?'

'All there is. On vampires. Our victims forget, didn't you know that? They pa.s.s out as we feed and go to sleep. When they wake up they feel a bit weak and fuzzy-headed, but they have no memory of us at all. And who's going to notice a couple of pinp.r.i.c.ks on their throat? Specially if we're careful.'

Tess looked Martin straight in the eye, still wishing she could win the point but knowing she was beaten. At last she smiled mischievously, and nodded.

'Understood,' she said.

They resumed their patrol, silent and agile as cats on the frosty street. They turned again, following the darkness wherever they could and then, as they pa.s.sed the open doors of an abandoned coal-merchant's, Martin stopped and sniffed the air. Tess joined him and immediately caught the same scent. There were two people nearby. Very nearby.

Stealthily; the two vampires slipped into the yard. In the nearest corner, hidden from the street by the open corrugated iron door, a car was parked. Quite a new car, clean and without a scratch. Martin crouched low and crept up to the driver's door, Tess on his heels. Under the cover of almost perfect darkness, they peered into the car, their vampire eyes penetrating the dim interior. Tess had expected the couple to be kissing, but they were sitting apart in total silence as though they had just had an argument. The man, in the driver's seat, was grey-haired and well-dressed. He was staring straight ahead of him, smoking a cigarette. The woman was much younger, with long brown hair and a heavy sheepskin coat. Her face was turned away from him, gazing out of the pa.s.senger-side window towards the wall of the yard.

Martin winked. Tess nodded and slipped around to the other side of the car. No midnight feast had ever been more eagerly antic.i.p.ated than this one.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS Sunday and Tess slept late. She slept so late that her father slipped into the room to check that she was all right before he went off to play a round of golf with a friend from the office.

'It's normal for a teenager,' her mother told him when he expressed concern. 'She'll be up and about soon.'

But when Tess had still not come downstairs by lunch-time, her mother made a cup of tea and brought it up to the bedroom. The first Tess knew of the day was the rattle of the runners on the curtain rail and the subsequent blaze of winter sunlight that fell upon her face. To her, still sleeping off the vampire feed of the night before, the sudden burst of light on her skin felt like a bucket of boiling water. She yelped and sat up, scrabbling for the bed covers.

'Tess!' said her mother. 'What on earth is wrong?'

Tess said nothing, but threw herself back down on the bed, pulling the duvet up over her head.

'Come on, Tess,' said her mother brightly. 'I've brought you a cup of tea.'

Tess's voice was m.u.f.fled beneath the duvet. 'Leave me alone. I don't want to. get up.'

'But it's one-thirty! If you don't get up soon you'll 'miss the daylight altogether!'

'What do I want with daylight?' Tess's voice sounded slightly husky to her mother.

'Are you ill, sweetheart? Have you got a sore throat?'

'No. I'm not ill. I just don't want to get up, all right?'

Her mother stayed in the room for another minute or two before deciding not to make an issue of it and returning downstairs. Tess listened to the receding footsteps, then turned over and tried to go back to sleep.

It was too late, though. She was awake now in a groggy, leaden sort of way. The events of the previous night slid into her mind, producing a strange mixture of guilt and delight. She knew that what had happened was wrong, but the memory of the hypnotic power of her vampire eyes and voice still thrilled her, and the sensation of that keen hunger being satisfied. She wondered where the couple from the car were now, and laughed out loud to think of them waking together and wondering how they had come to fall asleep in the first place. She thought of Martin sleeping in his blacked-out room and wondered whether she, like him, could get out of going to school.

Carefully, inch by inch, Tess drew the cover from her face. The light didn't feel so bad, now that the initial shock had pa.s.sed. She reached for the cup of tea that her mother had left on the bedside table. As she sipped it, she ran her tongue around her mouth, feeling her teeth. They were neat and even again now, the canines back to their normal, blunt condition. But Tess's mind was still functioning along nocturnal lines, and it wasn't until daylight began to fade and her father returned from his game of golf that she finally dragged herself out of bed and went downstairs for a late, late breakfast.

'Anything special on at school, tomorrow, Tess?' said her father as they sat down to dinner that evening.

Tess had been withdrawn and sullen since she got up. At the best of times she got irritated by her parents' questions about school; now she saw this as a feeble attempt to draw her into a conversation that she didn't want.

'When is there ever anything special going on in school?' she answered, filling her mouth with roast beef.

Her father sighed and put down his knife and fork. Tess failed to heed the warning and reached out to turn the page of the magazine she had laid open beside her plate. He whipped it out from under her nose and flung it with a slap on to the floor. Tess's mother jumped at the uncharacteristic display of anger.

'I've had about enough of you, Tess,' he said. 'You mope around all day and treat your mother and myself as second-cla.s.s citizens.'

Tess experienced a moment of anxiety, Her parents were so rarely critical that she hardly knew how to react. For a moment she was vulnerable, staring at the place where her magazine had been, struggling with shame. Then before she knew what was happening, the cold calm of her vampire mind came to her defence. Without looking up, she cut another forkful of beef.

'Do I?' she said.

'Yes, you do. You're doing it now.'

'Am I?'

Her father thumped the table with his fist, and Tess giggled inwardly at the sight of her mother jumping again, this time spilling her gla.s.s of water into her lap. But if her father noticed, he didn't pay any attention. He glared at Tess and said, 'I asked you a civil question and I expect a civil answer!'

'You asked me a boring question about a boring subject because you have a boring need to make boring conversation over dinner.'

Tess's words were met by a stunned silence.

'Boring dinner, I should have said,' she added, pushing a heap of mashed carrot and turnip towards the edge of her plate.

Her father stood up and pulled the plate away, knocking over his own gla.s.s of water in the process. Tess laughed as her mother leapt up and threw her already sodden napkin into the puddle. Then, slowly, she got to her feet and confronted her father. His face was stiff with fury.

'Until further notice,' he said, 'you are to stay in the house. I don't know who it is that you're meeting when you go out in the evenings, but whoever it is, they're clearly a bad influence on you.'

'Maybe,' said Tess. 'Or maybe I'm a bad influence on them. It all depends on which way you look at it, doesn't it?'

Her father stared at her, still unable to believe what he was hearing. Her mother was fussing with the highly-polished surface of the table, trying to pretend that nothing was happening while her life fell apart all around her.

'Get up to bed, young lady.'

'That's exactly where I was going.'

'And don't come down again until you're in a more reasonable humour, you understand?'

'Don't worry,' said Tess, heading towards the door. 'I won't come down until I'm Daddy's little darling again. Is that what you want?'

Her father's hands were clenched into fists, and they were shaking.

'Get out!' he yelled. 'Get out of my sight!'

Taking her time, Tess went out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. Then, as an afterthought, she came back in, picked up her magazine from the floor and walked out.

Tess lay on her back on the bed in the darkness and stared up at the ceiling. Her father had been a fool to challenge her; there was no way he could win. As soon as he was asleep at night she would be gone, out of the window and away across the city, feeding herself with the best that Dublin could offer. And in the morning she wouldn't go down to breakfast even if he asked her; even if he begged her. What could he do? He couldn't force her to get up and go to school. She would lie in bed and sleep away the day, refusing to eat or drink. By the time a week had pa.s.sed he would be putty in her hands; her mother, too. She would be like Martin: ruling the roost, getting whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it. Tess smiled to herself in the darkness, then Switched and ran her tongue over her fangs. This was so easy, so perfect. She thought back over all her previous worries about what she was going to do when she reached fifteen. It all seemed so absurd now, and the answer so simple. It was good that she had met Martin and learned his secret. Perhaps she would meet him again tonight and hunt alongside him? But then again, perhaps not. They had no need of each other, after all, and the more she thought about hunting alone, the more she liked the idea.

Her mind stilled, alerted by soft footsteps on the stairs. Her mother, by the sound of it, coming to make her peace. Tess felt the familiar hunger and was surprised as the image of Martin's mother, pale and haggard, entered her mind. Of course! She smiled to herself, suddenly understanding the cause of the woman's mysterious anaemia.

The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and came on across the landing. Tess felt her mouth beginning to water at the prospect of an unexpected snack. Her mother was outside the door. The handle began to turn.

Not yet, though; not yet. Just in time, Tess got a grip on her vampire instincts. It was too early in the evening and too risky with her father in the house. Far better to wait for a more convenient occasion. Or an emergency, when other sources were hard to come by. Tonight, after all, she was eager for the hunt. There might well be times in the future when she felt more inclined to dine at home.

The light from the landing burst in and blinded Tess as the door opened. In the nick of time she Switched, keeping quite still as she did so, her face turned towards the wall.

'Tess?'

Her mother came cautiously into the room as though she was afraid that her daughter would pounce on her. Tess turned towards her, and watched as she picked up a chair and brought it over to the bedside.